“Those were my father’s,” he said. “He was a big reader, like you.”
The way he said it, I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Try to get outside,” he said finally. “Let the land talk to you. There’s only so much you can learn from books.”
I just nodded. There was no arguing if you didn’t want to earn his wrath.
In the photos we had in our old house, my father was smooth faced, with a square jaw and a smile in his eyes, striking in his uniform. But out here, his hair was wild, his beard growing in. His eyes were often flat, or distant, or staring at something none of us could see.
“Give it a chance.”
“She will,” said my mother, always eager to head off that moment when he lost his temper. She put a hand on my arm.
“I will,” I said, eager to help her. “It’s pretty here.”
The words, spoken in fear, tasted dry on my tongue.
He nodded his approval, eating the stew my mother made. “Even food tastes better out here, doesn’t it?”
We all agreed. Maybe it was even true.
The next morning, when the sun was barely lighting the sky, he pushed into my room.
“You’re not spending another day with your nose buried in books, kiddo,” he said. His form was dark, filling the doorway. “Come with me.”
I dressed quickly—jeans, a hand-me-down sweatshirt of Jay’s, my Converse Chuck Taylors, red and broken in just right, like all the cool kids at school. Usually it was my brother following behind Dad, me watching, feeling both left out and relieved. But that morning I followed him outside.
He sat on the porch step and I sat next to him.
“Listen.”
“To what?”
“Just listen.”
As we sat there, and the sun rose painting the sky pink, the trees came alive with birdsong. I’d come to know their individual calls: the melodic trill of the scarlet tanager, the buzz of the black-throated green warbler, the cock-a-ree! of the red-winged blackbird. The wind made its own music rustling through the leaves, whistling in the eaves.
My father ran a hand through his hair, then dropped it heavily on my shoulder.
“That’s what we’re supposed to hear, not the blaring of an alarm, street noise, sirens, television chatter. This is the real world. Everything out there is fake, toxic.”
I felt something shift inside me. A thing that had clung and resisted, railed and raged, let go. A breath that I had been holding released.
“Today, I’m going to teach you how to garden.”
That morning was the first time I glimpsed her, a girl in the woods. As I followed my father to the patch of land he’d cleared for the garden where we would grow our own vegetables, I caught sight of her in the trees. She smiled at me, but when I raised my hand in greeting she turned and ran.
“I saw someone,” I said, rushing to catch up with my father. His big strides put him far ahead, me always scrambling to keep up. Jay was as tall as he was now, not as big or strong. But they walked in step, side by side when they were together. “In the woods.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” said my father, looking behind us.
“A girl.”
He shook his head. “Just a rabbit probably.”
Wild wheat-colored hair, tiny, a tattered flower-printed shirt over jeans, dirty. I thought to argue, then bit my tongue.
“There are other folks nearby,” he said. “People who choose to live the way we want to, keep to themselves. You’ll meet them soon enough I imagine.”
This thought cheered me, too. Other people. New friends, maybe.
He looked behind us again. “But for now, it’s just you and me, kid.”
The rest of the day passed in a blur of effort—helping to finish clearing, hoeing, aerating the soil, hauling water from the creek, planting seeds, and seedlings he bought in town. The sun was warm, but the air was cool in the shade, the day breezy and fresh. I was sweating with effort, dirt under my nails. But somehow it didn’t feel dirty or hard, somehow that dirt felt cleaner than anything else I’d ever touched.
At lunch, we sat under the shade of a big oak tree and ate peanut butter sandwiches, and apples my father had packed in his rucksack, drank water from his metal canteen. I noticed that he was still wearing his dog tags, the metal flashing in the sunlight. He was right. Food did taste better here.
“You’re a hard worker,” he said. “That’s good. I know this—isn’t easy. But you’re strong.”
I swelled with pride, looked up at him and ventured a smile, which he returned. We didn’t know each other, not really; we were strangers just starting to understand each other better. He’d been deployed for most of my life. Jay had had much more time with him. When I looked in his face, I saw my brother, but I didn’t see myself.