Chapter 3 Rowe
Rowe
As they drive off, the SUV’s tires kick up a cloud of dirt that smacks me right in the face.
Thank you, horrible man with the knee-quaking green eyes (not that I noticed), who assumed the only clothes I own are overalls.
One glance at my ripped jeans explains why he thought that. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on him.
As I choke on grit from the dust cloud that keeps on giving, I decide that, yeah, I should be hard on him. He looks like the kind of guy who’d get you pregnant and then leave you.
I don’t need that happening to me.
So I spit out my dirt breakfast.
I swear, if this day gets any worse, I’m going to scream.
Just as I’m turning into the yard, following the pigs, who are prancing off as if they didn’t almost just get killed, a tractor sputters up.
“Morning, Rowe.” Clarice Sinclair waves.
My seventysomething neighbor grins widely as she bounces atop her slow-as-molasses John Deere. Today, Clarice is wearing a frayed straw hat and a baggy lime-colored shirt over jeans that are rolled up to her calves.
“Morning,” I volley.
Every day without fail, Clarice drives her tractor into town to grab breakfast at Hardee’s with her friends.
Several years back her driver’s license was suspended, seeing as how she went legally blind for a minute (or three) and ran into several buildings—buildings that belonged to her then-husband.
Luckily, no one was hurt in the rampage.
Even though Clarice swore up and down that the blindness was temporary, and had only surfaced because her husband of fifty years had left her for a woman half his age, the judge (who also happened to be his cousin) was not swayed in his decision to ban Clarice from operating fast-moving vehicles.
However, he did say she could drive her tractor. He said it as a joke, most likely. But that is not how she took it. So now, good old John Deere is her main form of transportation to and from town.
“Who was that man you were talking to?” Clarice asks as she snails by.
“I don’t know.”
“Some fancy car.”
“Yep.”
“From where I was sitting, looked like he had a cute butt.”
I bust a gut, laughing. “Yeah, he may have had that.”
He may have had that? May have? Who am I kidding?
The mystery man who despised overalls was hot. Superhot. Straight-off-the-presses hot.
Not that it matters, because I’ll never see him again.
“He had pretty hair, too,” she continues, like an undersexed geriatric who just arrived on the doorstep of an assisted-living facility ready to meet the octogenarian of her dreams.
The worst part is, she’s right about the stranger.
His dark hair was wavy and just long enough to kiss the spots behind his ears. His jaw was straight, and his green eyes reminded me of sage grass—a beautiful color, when he didn’t have that smug smirk on his face. Which was the whole time I talked to him.
Also, as much as I hate to admit it, his neck was football-player thick, and it got all corded and muscle-y when he was annoyed.
Which also happened throughout our entire conversation.
My mind flashes back to how he accused me of trying to get myself killed. He was the one going a gazillion miles per hour. The nerve of him, mansplaining where I can stand in the road.
Hmm. I wouldn’t mind him mansplaining what to do in the bedroom.
Oh my gosh. Quit it right now. You’re never seeing his hotness again, Rowe. Cool your jets.
I mean, what sort of person blames the almost-victim for being run over?
A seriously privileged jerk.
“Did you get his number?” Clarice calls as her tractor tires keep spinning way too slowly down the road.
“No, I sure didn’t.”
“Huh.” She picks at a spot on her chin, which may or may not be growing a hair. “Maybe you can catch up to him in your truck.”
I laugh again. “I’m not getting his number. He wasn’t from around here. He didn’t even know what a piggycorn is.”
“Who doesn’t know about piggycorns?” she says, voice overflowing with disbelief. Then she considers her statement and backpedals. “Besides us, I mean? And a lot of the world, I guess.” Clarice scratches her chin. “Does anyone in the outside world know or care about piggycorns?”
“That is beside the point,” I snap.
“Well”—she cups a hand beside her mouth and yells loud enough for folks one county over to hear—“maybe you still got a chance with those Collins boys. Everybody knows you’ve got cobwebs growing in your coochie, Rowe. You gotta get back out there and find you a man.”
Uh. It’s official. Worst. Day. Ever.
When a geriatric, tractor-riding farm woman tells you that your vagina is atrophying, the day officially sucks.
I back up into the yard, trying to put as much distance between me and Clarice as possible. “Great seeing you, Mrs. Sinclair!”
“Maybe one of them Collins boys will take you. Rhett’s acne ain’t as bad as it used to be!”
“Bye, now!”
I shut the gate behind me and quickly pinpoint the piece of fencing that the pigs squeezed through.
“You little weasels. Y’all need to stop getting out.”
They snort in reply, foraging through the brittle late-summer leaves that blanket the yard.
I push the fence back into place and head inside, scrubbing my feet on the doormat and slipping out of my boots.
A new vine emerges from under the floorboards, picking up the old shoes and depositing them in the corner where they belong.
If there’s one perk to living on top of magical soil, it’s that the vines outside the house tend to do nice things for you.
“You are never going to believe what happened,” I start, charging into the kitchen and slapping Sally’s hat on the counter.
I don’t expect my mom to be in there, figuring she’s still hiding upstairs to avoid talking to me. But when I enter the rooster-decorated room, she’s sitting on a stool at the counter, phone in hand, talking to Bill, whose face I see on the screen.
“You’ve got to tell her,” he says.
I fold my arms and frown. “Okay, what is it? What’s going on?”
“Swing the phone where I can see Rowe.”
She does as Bill says, and there he is, his bright-white teeth smiling at me. They nearly glow against his dark skin and the ivory beard that covers his jaw and mouth.
“Hey, Bill. You about to head over?”
He’s standing beside his silver Airstream, which looks more like a bullet than it does a camper. Bill claps a hand against the metal side. “I’m ready to go live the jam band dream.”
A hearty, soul-cleansing laugh lifts from my throat. Bill’s a good guy. We’ve known him for years—he was one of Dad’s best friends. After he died, Bill became like a second father. He had lost his wife a few years earlier and understood the pain of losing someone who’s vital to your life.
In the months following Dad’s burial, Bill would drop in to see how we were holding up. He helped around the house, brought us supper. It was a couple years before he and Mom started dating, and when they did, I was glad for them. Really, truly happy that she was happy again.
Mom smiles brightly. It’s a fake smile, the one she puts on when her world’s crumbling into an ash heap. “Rowe, you’ve got to smell this new tangerine candle I made.”
She plucks a glass jar off the counter and pops the lid. Inside, hardened orange wax climbs the walls of the container as if it’s trying to break free. My mom loves to make candles, though the final product often turns out messy.
She lets me sniff, and it does smell good—citrusy, homey, like a kitchen on a spring morning.
Mom hugs it to her chest. “I burned it during my meditation, and the scent put me in the zone to receive blessings, Rowe.”
“Sabra,” Bill says sternly to Mom, because she is clearly stalling.
Her face crumples and she shakes her head. Okay. So she’s not sick. Does that mean Bill is?
“Bill, are you okay?”
He pats the air. “I’m fine, Rowe. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. This is something your mom needs to tell you.”
She slumps back on the stool, and I can’t help but feel pity for her because of everything she’s been through these past few years. But still, whatever it is, she needs to just say it.
“Spit it out, Mom. I’m already done with today, and it’s not even lunch. So whatever you’ve got to tell me, spill it. Yank off the bandage, because you’re not doing me any favors by keeping quiet.”
“Go on, Sabra,” Bill says gently.
He has a very understanding but firm presence—what comes to mind when I think of what a man should be like. Quiet but kind.
He reminds me a lot of my father, and I’m grateful for that.
Mom mutters behind her hand, “Meer woosing de furmmm.”
“I don’t speak German, Mom. What did you say?”
“Sabra,” Bill scolds. “We’re leaving in an hour, come hell or high water. I’m loading up the last of my things in a minute, and then I’m heading your way. We’ve got to get on the road if we’re to reach Orange Beach in time for the concert tonight.”
Mom inhales deeply. “Okay. Here it is. Rowe, you know that ever since Dad died, things have been tough. That we’ve had bills.” A bitter laugh slips from her mouth. “What am I saying? Of course you know. You left school because of the cancer.”
Just thinking about it makes my throat knot up.
I’d been an English major, but when Dad got sick, Mom needed extra help around here.
Everything happened at once—the cancer diagnosis, people not buying piggycorns (which, to be fair, had been rapidly declining for years).
It was one thing after another, all of it compounding so that by the time he died, she was using all their savings to pay his medical bills.
The farmhands were let go, and I never returned to school. I was simply too heartbroken from losing both him and Luke to muster up the energy to get my degree.
Plus, it wasn’t like I could abandon my mom in her time of need. Leaving her alone in this big old house with the piggycorns and Buster the Cat didn’t seem right.
So I stayed.
“You were only going to be here for six months,” she reminds me, her eyes full of sorrow. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Hey.” I swing my arm like it’s no big deal, like I’m ready to give life the good old college try. “I wouldn’t trade the time that I’ve spent here for anything else. Besides, I’ve done just fine. I’ve managed to get some side gigs designing landscapes.”
All the extra money I’ve brought in has gone directly back into the farm—food for the pigs, paying bills.
She licks her lips. “Right. About that. When Dad was in the thick of his illness, I took out a second mortgage to pay for the chemo. The thing is, since no one’s bought a piggycorn in a while—well, we’re struggling, Rowe.”
My heart breaks for her. She’s so worried, but it’s all gonna be fine.
I rub her arm in reassurance. “I know that. But I don’t want you to worry about this place. I’ve got a little money in the bank. While you’re gone I’m gonna fix up the farm, make it so shiny and new that for the first time in years, we’ll be real competition for Sally Ray.”
Her gaze drops. “I’m afraid . . .”
She trails off, and Bill sighs quietly. “Just tell her.”
“What, Mom?” She’s very quiet. Deathly quiet. Now I’m getting worried. “What is it?”
My mother swallows loudly and lifts her gaze, and when she pins it on me, sorrow brims in her eyes. “Rowe, we’ve already lost the farm. It’s in foreclosure.”