Chapter 36

Ribbons of morning light spilled across tangled sheets, awakening me. Puffy-eyed, I peered at the clock, surprised to see it was almost eight, though I couldn’t name the day.

A little sluggish, but I sat up feeling somewhat better. Gunnar’s words had softened, and I knew he meant them. Still, my heart was heavy and thoughts were burdened.

Slowly, I stretched and tested my feet on the floor. It had been the first time in a long while that I’d slept without the nightmares. Knowing everything calmed my soul, and a quiet moment washed over me.

I wandered out into the hall. Gunnar had left a cardboard box outside my door. I kneeled down and opened it and studied the beautiful portrait of Mama holding me on her lap under an umbrella of blue skies. She’d dressed me in pretty pink ruffles and a matching bonnet that shaded my wide toothless smile. I pulled out a stack of art, sifting through the textured pages. A smaller charcoal sketch of a beaming Abby swaddling a baby in the doorway of Gunnar’s barn. Another painting of a younger Mrs. Stump with her four little girls buttoned to her long skirts, hands draped along a budding belly. I recognized Henny’s pouty grin, Lena’s secret smile, Baby Jane’s soft eyes, and Ada’s fierce chin. Youthful hope brimmed in Mrs. Stump’s face. Beautiful likenesses of everyone.

How hard it was for Gunnar to lay down this talent. How hard it must’ve been for Claire to hang up portraits of other women’s children instead of her own.

I trailed a finger over the works and examined the art again. Families that should be seen: in foyers, sitting rooms, over the Stumps’ broken couch, and on Abby’s paint-worn walls. Pictures that gladdened hearts and hearth.

I carried me and Mama’s painting to my bed, curling up beside it. Tired, I drifted back to troubled sleep.

An hour later I woke to fresh tea on my nightstand. I gulped it down and felt more like myself. The house was quiet and I peeked out my door. Gunnar’s bedroom door stood cracked, which meant he was someplace else.

I padded back to my window. The fog scratched across the fields. I stared out at the Kentucky corners of my world that could make you feel alive, forget time and other things.

Beyond, mountaintop broke through clouds as the sun birthed a new day. A new day with a startling new knowing crept into my heart.

A barefoot Baby Jane darted across the yard, dirty and unkempt. She stopped by the oak and glanced all around. Then she peeked up, catching my movement in the window. Concern crawled through her brows.

Slowly, I lifted my hand, waved, and then I remembered and held up one finger for her to wait. Hesitant, she nodded back. I plucked the ribbon I had been saving for her off my bureau and dropped it out the window.

Surprised, she scooped it up, admiring. Shyly, Baby Jane held up her basket to show me two eggs tucked inside. She took out a posy of daisies from her dress pocket and placed it atop them.

A softness took hold of my heart and I waved again.

Baby Jane set the basket under the tree and scurried away.

Beside her basket, my hoe rested against the oak’s trunk. Its wood handle blackened from the fire, slick as creek stone from years of toil.

I remembered when Rainey first taught me how to hoe. So many times, we’d broken spring blisters on that old thing, toughened our winter hands. Now Rainey would be holding a gun, toughening his heart. Likely never to come back to these parts. Forever lost.

I needed to send him a good-bye letter. Tell him I’d changed my mind. I hoped a fitting excuse would come to me. I could never pretend it was a “good night,” or tell him that he was kin—dare to let him go off to war like that, hurting. I would rather him start life anew with this small heartbreak than with the bigger hurtings of a stolen namesake. He deserved that.

“Good night.” I bent over and wept until I couldn’t wring out another drop. “Good night, dear Rainey. Find a safe life and a fine city woman.”

City. Families . . . Mine.

I knew if I pushed Gunnar, I could sell my land and move away. He couldn’t stop me from quitting school. I’d be sixteen in a few weeks.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, the messy hair, swollen eyes, and sloppy gown. Disgusted, I ran the brush through my tangles. I picked up Rose’s slip from the bureau and pulled out a clean dress from the closet, and changed. Inspecting, I shimmied up my skirts, pinched the fabric of my silky slip.

Mountain woman, Emma had said, educated at Centre.

I dropped my skirts, moved over to the dresser to find some paper to write Rainey, and then I saw it. My mind jogged the jelly-jar memories, beckoned the Ferris wheel in the field. Clanky, clanky.

I studied the pile of things that Gunnar had brought up from downstairs, lingering on the packets of sunflower and cucumber seeds from the fair. I opened the tiny envelopes and shook some of the seeds onto my palm.

My gaze shifted to the gold eagle emblem on the Future Farmers of America booklet, the club’s creed.

Slowly, I thumbed through the pages. Curling my fingers over the seeds, I spied the colorful flyer next to the booklet, studying its advertisement.

Clutching the booklet and flyer and seeds, I stepped over to the window. Dead fields lay silent. Acres of what had been, wouldn’t be, and what could be.

Gunnar’s beliefs and mine.

His old, ailing hands trusting mine.

Family.

I rolled the seeds over in one hand and clenched them in a fist while I tapped the flyer and booklet against my leg.

Believe, believe, believe . . . I opened my palm and blew, scattering the tiny seeds onto the sun-puddled windowsill. Setting the Farmers’ booklet atop the fallen seeds, I looked at the flyer in my hand.

“I believe”—I pressed the green paper to my lips and peered down at the ledge to the words scripted onto the Farmers’ pamphlet—“ with a faith born not of words but of deeds . . . in less dependence on begging and more power in bargaining; in the life abundant and enough honest wealth to help make it so—for others as well as myself . . .” I quietly read the Future Farmers of America creed.

Without thought, I tore a square out of the bright green flyer. Folded counterclockwise, crimped, unfolded, folded again, pressing creases while staring out to the land and mountains of my birth.

“Believe . . .” The paper crackled over the Farmers’ litany. “I believe . . . in being happy myself and playing square with those whose happiness depends upon me . . .”

I wiggled my fingers inside the paper pocket folds. Fresh tears splashed down on my new fortune-teller.

Believe. Believe. Believe.

No time to let it cure.

I grabbed the Future Farmers of America booklet off the windowsill and ran down the steps.

Gunnar sat hunched over the kitchen table, the candle cross pressed between his palms.

I set the fortune-teller in front of him. “This is for us.” I tapped. “I think we should get a contract with them, Gunnar.”

I laid the wrinkled Farmers’ booklet down beside it. “And I want to join this club that lets females in so I can learn more about agriculture and grow fine crops.”

Gunnar rubbed a calloused tip over the gold eagle, nodded. Then he picked up the fortune-teller and studied it. Tears dampened his drawn cheeks. Gently, he slipped his bent thumbs and forefingers inside the tiny folds and worked the pickle-covered flaps.