when I saw that last pulse in her neck, were my view from the kitchen window over the sink. These had been my two favorite places to look out over the farm.
Beyond the farm were the people I had grown up with—people who now shunned my husband. My anger at them seemed to backwash, flooding the very land I had so loved, leaving me helpless and poorer.
We had been approached several times about selling some of the land. There were no malls in Clarion then. Everyone still shopped downtown, but with the interstate on the northern boundary of the land and the state road on the east, we were sitting on prime commercial real estate. The first offer was so high we ignored it as a mistake.
A few months after Momma died, Clyde Brewer, the oldest brother in a family of local realtors came puffing up to the front door. He spread his map out on the front-porch table, pointed to the corner acre, and quoted us a price that was twice what we had been offered before—enough to support us for two years. His client, some company from out of town, wanted to open a new kind of store—a “convenience” store.
Even then we didn’t realize what the land would eventually be worth. We didn’t foresee the malls, movie theaters, and restaurants that would one day crowd the highway. We had no intention of selling the farm. We didn’t need the cash. We raised most of our own food, had no rent or mortgage. With that and what Adam earned, we were doing well. But Clyde Brewer wanted just an acre, as far from the house as it could be. Out of curiosity, we added ten percent to his offer and called him back. He took it in a heartbeat. Fate had taken with one hand and now gave with the other.
I was waiting. Waiting for Adam to come back to himself, for people to forget what he had done, for the land around us to take on new associations and cease being sorrow’s postcards.
Late that winter, a light, sticking snow fell one morning after the kids had left for school. I’d baked cookies for Sarah’s teacher’s birthday. The scents of cinnamon and ginger permeated the house as I packed the treats. On the way to the elementary school, I dropped by to see Daddy and leave him some of the beef stew we’d had for supper the night before. After I dropped off the cookies, I headed home.
As I turned off the road and up the driveway to the farm, Wallace leapt off the front porch, waving both arms. I pulled up behind the house. The stable door stood open. Inside the door, dark red blood puddled in a small oval on the floor. Nearby, a long smear of red and two bloody footprints.
“Adam?” I called. “Adam!”
Wallace jogged up behind me. “They took him to the hospital!” He tapped himself in the middle of his sternum. “He got kicked in the chest, then fell back and banged his head. He went down and I couldn’t get him to come to. He was bleeding bad. You know I don’t have my car with me. I called the ambulance. They took him to Mercy Hospital.” Wallace talked faster as we ran back to the truck, telling me how he’d been leading out one of the stallions when something spooked the horse. A single kick had knocked Adam up against a stall post.
I sped away. Adam had never been to a doctor or a hospital.
A pretty, stout nurse pushed a clipboard at me. “Here.” She handed me a pen. “These are just standard forms. They should have been signed when he was admitted, but he was unconscious.”
I stared at the forms, then signed.
She took the clipboard, then thrust another form at me. “This release, too,” she said as she dove for the telephone.
I hesitated, blinking at the words, but could not focus.
The nurse muttered impatiently into the phone, then put her palm over the receiver. “Honey, could you go ahead and sign? I’ve got to get this one and there’s a call light on.”
I signed the rest of the forms and pushed them toward her, hoping she would tell me where my husband was. Instead, she asked me to sit in an ugly, blue-gray waiting room until Adam was sent up from X-ray. Finally, another nurse appeared, smiling at me as if I were a celebrity, and announced Adam’s room number.
Adam slept