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I stopped dead in my tracks.
“No,” I said flatly. Henry gave me a pained look.
“Lizzie, there’s not much else to sell.” Betsy’s family lived in a two-story house just behind the courthouse in Oakden, and her home had multiple living areas and indoor plumbing. We didn’t even have electric lights and I considered myself lucky that the outhouse was closest to my bedroom so my midnight runs to the bathroom were short. Every step counted on those bitter winter nights. I knew we were humble folk, but I’d never thought of us as poor.
“Don’t panic yet,” Henry reassured me. “I’m just guessing. You said today was a good day, right?”
“You know as well as I do that good days have nothing to do with money or with harvests or anything else,” I muttered. Dad’s bad moods weren’t the usual kind of bad mood. They didn’t only come on when things were bad, and they didn’t always go when things became easier.
Henry shrugged.
“Let’s ask him later. At dinner, maybe.”
“But what if he says we need to sell the tractor?”
“Then we sell the tractor and we make do with the horses for a year or two until we get a better crop. It has to rain sometime, and when it does, the yield will go back up and the price won’t even matter as much.”
Just as I’d been doing for my entire life, I took comfort in my brother’s confidence. I was soon too busy feeding the animals to worry, anyway. Henry fixed the wobbly disc on the plow, and Mother made navy bean soup for dinner. But as she was clearing the table after we ate, Henry cleared his throat.
“How much did the wheat fetch, Daddy? Judge said even top condition grain was only fetching sixty cents a bushel.”
Mother froze, her hand still extended toward my plate. She flicked a panicked look from Henry to Dad. Then she forced a smile and said, “Let’s not talk about that now—”
“Yes. It’s true,” Dad said. “Top grain got sixty cents. We got forty-two.”
The words fell like a bomb into the middle of the room. Henry and I sucked in air, and Mother sank back into her seat, resting the plates on the table in front of her chest.
“Will we sell the tractor?” Henry asked quietly.
“Can’t,” Dad said abruptly.
I was immediately pleased that a tractor sale was out of the question, but still, I clarified, “Can’t? Won’t, you mean.”
“No, Lizzie. We can’t,” Mother said quietly. “I mean, we could, but it won’t do us any good. We owe much more on the finance than it’s worth now.”
“But...we bought it in 1929. Shouldn’t we have paid it off by now?” Henry said.
Dad huffed an impatient breath and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Jesus Lord, give me strength. Henry, how am I ever going to send you out on your own if you don’t have the good sense to know it takes years to repay a tractor?”
“And how would I know, Dad, if you don’t tell me these things?” Henry said stiffly.
“Well, since we’re clearing the air now,” Mother began gently, “there’s a few other things you should know. We’re a little behind with the tractor repayments, and more than a little behind with the property taxes.” I gasped, and she flicked a sad smile my way. “You knew these last few years have been tough and there was a lot riding on this year’s harvest. We didn’t want to worry you with the details, but you two are adults now. Goodness, Lizzie—you’re seventeen now. Dad and I were courting when I was your age. We need to stop sheltering you.”
“You kids don’t need to worry because I’m going to see the bank manager tomorrow,” Dad said, pushing his chair back. “He’ll sort us out with a line of credit to catch up on everything and see us through to next year’s harvest. And it’ll rain soon. Probably any day, now that we’ve plowed. You’ll see, things will go right back to normal next year.”
It had been a blisteringly hot day, and with Dad out in Texline at the bank, Henry and I plowed the back field while Mother did some canning. Now the sun was low in the west, and I enjoyed the milder warmth of the sunset as I collected the eggs from the hen yard. I was sunburned, as I was most days over the summer and sometimes the winter too. Mother always said that my “pretty red hair” was a blessing. Since my favorite place in the world was out under that big Texas sky, I was constantly reminded that the ghostly white skin that came with it could also be a curse.
When I was little, I told Mother that I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up. She gave me that soft look that parents often wear when children ask for something impossible—part amusement, part pity, part fondness.
“Girls don’t become farmers, honey. Girls become farmers’wives. That’s what you’ll be.”
Even as a little girl, that struck me as absurd. My mother was as much a farmer as my father was. If he was in the field working, she was often right alongside him, or back at the house tending that vegetable garden that was almost a farm in itself. When Dad wanted to buy the tractor, my mother sat in on every call and every meeting, and they made the decision between two models together. Mother’s temperament was made of cast iron. Nothing scared her. Nothing fazed her. Andnothingwas too hard for her.
Girlscouldbe farmers. I’d seen it with my own two eyes in Mother.
I heard the roar of an engine as I set the last of the day’s eggs into my basket. Being so far back from the main road, we didn’t really get any drive-by traffic, so I knew it was Dad, and the violent acceleration and grinding gears were a dead giveaway—the meeting had not gone well.
When I went inside, I found Mother sitting at the table, a bowl of half-shelled peas in front of her. She forced a smile, but I could see the strain around her mouth. Dad was in his room with the door closed. If it was daytime and that door was closed, then Dad was in bed, and he wasn’t coming out anytime soon.
