by Erica Boyce
“Yeah. He’s not alone, actually.” This much I know. “A lot of my clients are seriously sick. No one needs magic more than they do.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” she says from somewhere far away. “Well, anyway. You get back to your lunch now. I’ll go see if I can find that husband of mine.” She pushes herself out of her chair and walks out the door.
I stare down at my plate, swallow, try to imagine back an appetite.
* * *
No matter how many cows I’ve fed or rows I’ve plowed, it always feels like I’m pretending to farm, like somewhere, a real farmer is shaking his head at me. But I know I’m good at making circles, even though Claire is the only one who’s actually seen me do it. I can tell.
Tonight, I’m feeling pretty great about how it’s all coming along. I’m about a quarter of the way done with marking the cornstalks, and I’ve made a few changes to the design already. This might just be the best one yet, my own masterpiece, and I’m humming a Led Zeppelin song as I shuffle back to Sam’s porch for my empty paint cans.
I lean on the porch rail and am taking in the sweet, warm air when a voice comes from behind me.
“So, I’m guessing you’re Daniel? Or should I be calling the cops?”
I’ve never really understood that phrase “heart in my throat” until now. I spin around so fast, my hip thunks the railing, and I’m finding it hard to swallow when I see her under the yellowy porch light. A cloud of dark-blond hair. Freckles. Eyes that, even in the dimness, there’s no mistaking for anything but green. And a mouth full of crooked teeth, laughing at me.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Nessa.”
Chapter Six
Nessa
Judging from the look on his face, this guy might need a new pair of pants. I’m bent double with laughing, though I know Mom would shake her head if she saw me.
“Um, hi.” He struggles to recover. “My name’s Daniel, but…uh…you already knew that.” He grips the back of his neck with one hand, bracing himself.
“Don’t worry. You should’ve seen my parents when I walked in at dinner time.” My dad had shouted, bits of hamburger bun flying out of his mouth as he swooped me around the room. It was my mom, though, that I watched as I dragged my bag up the stairs to my room. Her smile was like a coat of paint on one of these run-down barns, no bones behind it.
I walk over to the railing where Daniel has settled. “They didn’t know you were coming, then?” he says. “Sam didn’t mention…”
“Nah. I didn’t really know myself until a few weeks ago.” Until I made my weekly call home and Dad told me Mom couldn’t come to the phone. He said something vague about her church friends, but I knew about the doctor’s appointment they’d scheduled for that morning. There’d been plenty of doctor’s appointments before, of course, and every time there was good news, my mom had been there on the phone, reporting breezily on test results while my dad muttered in the background about boring me with the details. The fact that she wasn’t there that time meant they’d heard something bad. And I had to check on them, in person, to see what it was.
“So, spray paint, huh?” I jut my chin toward the can in his hands. “I hate to break it to you, but the neighbors will spot that vandalism within a day. We’re pretty nosy around here.”
“Oh no, this stuff is glow-in-the-dark.” He spins around the can so I can read the label. “It doesn’t really look like anything in the day. I used to use white—the only non-glow-in-the-dark color that shows up at night, you know? But then I started to realize all it’d take was one farm worker who didn’t know about the project seeing the marks in the field, and…”
“Your cover would be blown. Got it.” I step closer to him to pick up a can, and the floorboards creak as he shifts away.
“So, uh, you flew in from Georgia? Sam mentioned you were working on a farm there.”
“I was last summer, yeah. It was a pretty cool place, basically a closed system where they fed the spent plants to the pigs, then used their waste as compost.” The man who owned the place, gnarled and tanned, had narrowed his eyes at me when I first showed up on his doorstep. He finally let me in the door when I explained that I grew up on a farm, and I was looking to learn and strong for a girl. Strong, period. “But now, I’ve moved on.”
It comes in a flash, like always—the farmhand in Georgia who fell from an unsteady ladder, his femur broken clean through the skin. It was all my fault. I needed to get away, far away. I swallow it back down and pick a flake of paint off the railing. “I’ve been out in California foraging for mushrooms and stuff like that for about a year now.”
“Wow.” He raises his eyebrows. Moth wings shuffle, panicked, against the bulb of the porch light above us.
“I know. Annoyingly anti–desk job.” I twirl one curl of hair around my finger until I can feel the sharp tug at my scalp.
Daniel only moves one shoulder up and down, a wry twitch. “I mean, I can’t really talk.”
I release the curl. “Hey, yeah, that’s right, Mr. Alien. I can’t even imagine how you got into all this.” I wave out to the field. “That’s gotta be a long story.”
“Yes and no,” he says. “I learned about it in high school. Until then, I’d always assumed I’d go to college when I graduated, but something just felt right about it.” His eyes light up as he says it, like he’s never had a chance to say it before.
“Your family must’ve been thrilled.” I can still picture the exact fault lines where my mom’s face collapsed when I told her I was going into farming.
“Mmm.”
I stare out into the field, my feet dancing nervously beneath me, shushing back and forth across the floorboards in the quiet. “Show me how this works, exactly.” I jump off the porch and land on the patch of dirt worn bald and slick from a thousand jumps before. Daniel follows me down the stairs and into the thick of the cornfield.
“First, I draw out the plans with the client.” He pulls a disintegrating sheet of notebook paper out of his pocket and waves it in the air, sending a little bubble of night breeze toward my face. The cornstalks rustle around us. “The first couple nights, I pace the field, figuring out how to translate their idea into something in real life. Then, I start to tag.” He points at a slash of paint across three cornstalks in front of us. “Starting in the middle, then moving out in a spiral.”
“Do you always do the same shape?” I picture the things I’ve seen on TV, circles sprung with mystery.
He laughs once, which he quickly turns into a cough. “Like a signature design? No, that would mess with the secret. Don’t you know that there are thousands and thousands of alien tribes out there? For the same one to mark Earth twice with its symbol would just be too much of a coincidence.”
“Oh, right, of course. How could I forget?” The silence stretches between us for a couple of heartbeats, itchy. I reach out and rub a leaf between my fingers. Its surface squeaks under my skin.
“I’ll be done tagging in a week or two.” He leans back into his heels a little. “Then, I start to press it down, all in one night. There’s this tool.” He moves his knobby fingers in front of him, mapping it out in the air. “It’s like a swing, sort of. The kind that you see hanging from a tree in old movies, a piece of wood with rope attached to either end. And you put one end down against the base of the cornstalk and step down on the other end until the base snaps and you’ve got a few stalks down.”
“It’s pretty cool that you can do that whole thing by yourself.” I can’t even imagine how many nights it would take me, checking so many times to be sure it was right and counting every mark.
“Yeah.” His hands drop down to his sides. “I used to do it with someone else, this girl I learned it from in the very beginning. In a lot of ways, it’s much easier with someone else. But it’s harder in some ways, too.” He falls quiet, and I decide not to ask him exactly what h
e’s talking about. Not tonight, anyway.
“Well,” I say instead, “that sounds awesome. I can’t wait to watch it all unfold.” He doesn’t respond, just rolls the paint can back and forth between his hands, the ball inside clinking against the sides of the can. “It’s been a long day with the travel and everything. I think I’m going to head to bed. See you later?”
“Sure. Good night, Nessa.”
When I get back to the porch and look over my shoulder, he’s still standing there, tucked into the cornstalks, staring out into the depths of the field. The rolling paint can almost sounds like the bell around a cow’s neck as it plods back home.
* * *
The next morning, my dad whistles tunelessly in the kitchen below me. I close my eyes against the dawn and try to remember every time he’s done that. When I was a teenager and hated him a little for waking me up, and I’d take the stairs down two at a time and pour myself a thermos of coffee to take out to the fields, silently daring him to tell me I was too young to be drinking that and that I should go back to bed (he never said either). When I was a kid and he was a monument, forever, a giant who knew everything and let me clomp around in his work boots while he laughed and laughed. When I came home from college to visit and he was suddenly just a person, when it hurt to watch him wave to me through my rearview mirror.
“Nessa? Your dad’s going to head out to the fields any minute if you want to join him, sweets.” It’s Mom, standing in the doorway in her old holey sweater.
“Yup. I’m up.” I roll out of bed and walk down into the kitchen. I stand in the doorway and watch Dad for a minute. He’s skinnier than he once was, it’s true, but his movements are still sure and sturdy. He turns from the coffeemaker and pushes a tall mug across the countertop toward me. I take a sip and let the bitterness roll across my tongue. “Man, nobody brews a cup as strong as you.”
“It’s his trade secret.” My mom bumps one bony hip against mine on her way past, reaching for the mug he’s pouring her.
“So, what are we tackling today?” I ask.
“Prepping the combine, then dealing with the irrigation system. You know, all our greatest hits.” I know he’s probably already scripted his midmorning monologue about highway robbery prices and ancient machinery. “You up to it?”
Of course I am, have been since the day I noticed the fringe of grime under his fingernails and knew what it meant. I drain my coffee and drop the mug into the dingy water in the sink. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
Six hours later, the world has fallen away inside the barn. The smell of hay wafts up as I shift on my knees around the combine’s gear box, laid out on the ground. The cows used to live right where I’m kneeling, but my parents sold them, every last one. Even Oreo, the black-and-white Holstein that Charlie and I named when we were kids, who was far too old to produce any milk and kept only for sentimental purposes. Even she was gone.
My work gloves are dark with grease, and my shoulders ache, but I need to replace that bearing. I’ve missed this farm work since I moved to California. Hunting for mushrooms just doesn’t have the same tang to it, the same burn and satisfaction.
Just when I think I’ve gotten the right angle on the bearing, my dad taps my shoulder. “Lunchtime, Nessa.”
I push my sweat-grimy hair out of my eyes, peel off my gloves, and step out into the daylight, squinting.
“You go ahead in. I’m just gonna finish up one more thing,” Dad calls as he walks into the barn.
I roll my eyes and smile; those words have meant Dad eats half an hour later than us at almost every meal. Though now that it’s just the two of them, maybe Mom waits for him to eat her lunch.
There’s only one plate on the kitchen table, hummus and carrots and whole-grain bread she must’ve driven two towns over to find. “I can make my own lunch now, Mom. You really don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” she calls, folding laundry on the coffee table in the living room. “I don’t mind it.”
I sigh, run my hands quickly under the sink, and sit down.
“How’s it going out there today?” she says.
“Fine, I guess.” I scoop the mealy hummus into my mouth and crunch on the carrot, its vessel.
There’s a pause, the dull thump of a pair of jeans hitting the tabletop. “Really, Nessa. What made you come home? We weren’t expecting you until Thanksgiving.” She steps over to the kitchen doorway, her thin arms wrapping themselves across her chest.
She knows why. She must know why. She’ll never bring it up on her own, though, so I may as well ask. “How did Dad’s latest appointment go?”
She’s startled for a second, her face flying open before settling back into its worried wrinkles. “Oh. It was all right, I suppose. They say no news is good news, don’t they?”
I stop chewing and wipe my hands on my lap. “Mom. That’s what you said last time, remember? Then it turned out he had prostate cancer. You guys didn’t tell me until he was halfway through his chemo.” I’m getting too loud, I can feel it, even as my throat closes and my vision blurs.
“Sweets.” She reaches for me, dropping her hand back down at her side before it touches me. “You know Dad just doesn’t want you to worry—”
“Worry about what?” The screen door opens, and there he is, taking off his baseball cap and running his thumb over the divot in the wall where the door handle hits. The hat hides his eyes for a second, and I wipe mine dry.
“About the farm, Dad. You know, the usual.”
“Yes, you know how she always comes in with some big ideas from her modern farms,” Mom finishes smoothly, squeezing my shoulder and stepping back to her laundry.
“Come on now, Nessa. I’ve been farming since before you were born, and I’ll keep farming for as long as it takes for this place to become an overnight success.” He winks, one of his old jokes, then grabs his ham sandwich from where my mom left it on the counter and sits down next to me. “Although now that you mention it, I’ve been meaning to ask if you’ve read about any new techniques lately.”
I tear a crust off the bread on my plate, stuff it in my mouth, and start talking through it. “Well, have you ever heard of polyculture?”
Chapter Seven
Molly
Nessa is back, and just like that, the house is alive again. She has that effect on places, on people. Half the town is in love with her and smiles fondly when she tumbles in the door, picking things up off shelves and asking questions.
At the grocery store when she was sixteen and ambling beside my shopping cart, I overheard a couple of out-of-town boys mumble something rude about her body. It coursed through my veins like fire, and I wanted to stab my finger at their hollow chests until they shrank back to where they came from. I bit my tongue, my shoulders hunching under the weight of all those things I was holding back.
Nessa spun around on one flip-flopped heel, dipped into a curtsy, and said, “Oh, thank you so much for your opinions, boys. You are gentlemen and scholars, and I’m truly blessed that you took the time to critique me. Shall I send you my homework so you can grade that, too?” They froze, mouths half-open and faces glowing red under their suntans. When she stepped toward them, simpering, they turned tail and scurried down the aisle. She walked back to the cart, muttering, “Assholes,” and I was too busy swallowing my laughter to tell her not to swear.
Then there were the other times. The times I heard her crying through the closed door and over the sink running. The times I watched her fade off to somewhere else right in front of me, eyebrows pushing together and tongue chewed. The other moms would complain loudly and proudly about their teenagers, battles fought and mostly lost over makeup, video games, and college applications. I always knew there was something different about my Nessa, something lacing her fingers together under the dinner table and whispering over her shoulder at night. It split me in two, a
nd there was nothing I could do.
Sam never saw it. He was head over heels for the daughter in faded jeans following him around the farm, asking him the questions he’d always wanted to be asked about frost forecasts and tractor engines. He told me I was overthinking it and that Nessa was fine, just fine.
And now? It’s hard to say. I’ve watched her closely since her return home, waiting always for her to tell me something went terribly wrong in California, that she cannot cope anymore, that she needs us. With every held breath that’s met only with her chatter, I begin to hope that I’m wrong. Even so, the raw raking of your daughter’s sobs is not something you’ll soon forget.
* * *
“That new kid working over on the Shannons’ farm is a little weird, don’t you think?”
I nearly gasp in line at the post office before catching myself.
“You know, I was just wondering about him. Real quiet. Yesterday, I swear I saw him walking down our street five times. Molly, what do you know about him? I thought I caught him talking to Sam after church.”
“Oh, well.” I spin around to see Betsy and Sharon, their arms full of boxes destined for the Home Shopping Network’s returns department. “He’s just another in the long line of intern types.” I fold and unfold the signature confirmation receipt from our mailbox, running my finger over the crease.
“Lord knows, we’ve got plenty of those.” Betsy nods wisely. “Just the other day, Howard got an email from some college student out in New York City, wanted to get back to his roots.” She rolls her eyes. “Well, I looked him up, and turns out he’s a music major with college professor parents, no farming experience or background to speak of. Needless to say, he won’t be doing any work on our farm.”
“What I wouldn’t give to see Howard try to teach some scrawny city kid how to farm! Can you imagine?” The two bend over their packages, faces red with twin laughter, and I try to join in.