Chapter 10 - The Bottomland
The rain stopped by three in the afternoon, leaving the sky over the ridge the color of clean glass—bright, cold, and pale blue near the horizon.
My father and I stood on the knoll above the creek, where the thirty acres of bottomland met the oak timber of the Harlon place.
The soil was dark—black river silt that smelled of rot, wild onions, and deep water. It was the best soil in the county, the kind that could grow corn six feet high without fertilizer if you kept the weeds out of the rows.
Across the creek, half a mile up the slope, the red roof of the Harlon farmhouse showed through the bare oak trees like an old scab on the hill.
A thin line of blue smoke was rising from the kitchen chimney.
Darla was probably standing by the cookstove, stirring the navy beans for supper, while Colton sat in the Windsor chair with his linen bandage, staring at the ash pit.
They would go on living in that house. They would go on sweeping the floorboards that groaned under every step, drinking the sour coffee from dawn until noon, and telling each other that the world outside the ridge was full of town blood that rotted from the inside out.
My father reached down, picked up a handful of the wet, black earth, and let it run through his knotty fingers.
"It's good land, Sarah," he said.
"Yes," I said.
I looked down at my right hand.
The skin across my knuckles had scabbed over now—a hard, brown ridge that didn't hurt anymore when I made a fist.
I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out the three-inch piece of shattered glass I had carried from the bedroom, and tossed it into the middle of the creek.
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It made a small, clean plink as it hit the grey water, sank through the current, and settled into the dark mud at the bottom, where the water was too deep for anyone to reach it without getting their hands wet.
Then I turned my back on the ridge, picked up my grandmother's trunk, and walked down the hill toward the road that led to town.
