The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,7

away. I wanted to lie down where I was with only the sky above me. I recognized this desire as the feral love of an animal for its place of being. It seemed most akin to the awe and holiness I knew I should feel in church. I also sensed in that impulse a kind of danger, a dissolution that could lead me from my own kind.

I was grateful, then, for the farm and the animals that demanded my attention. They tethered me, protecting me from the impulses that the land engendered.

Everything on the farm seemed purposeful: the bird calls; the thickness of the morning dew; light moving across the kitchen floor; the barn’s musk of hay, fresh manure, and dust. Even the sow’s prissy, mud-caked haunches were imbued with grace.

I settled in, grew lean and muscular. I ripened, ready for whatever came next, certain it would be good and new. I’d slept through the war, but now I was waking up. At night, I tossed and turned in my bed. In the house of my refuge, I set aside the God I was raised on and woke each morning, tenderized by light, bird song, and hard labor.

The farm was once again the solace it had been. It knew me and I knew it. On the hottest night in the summer, when I could not sleep for the heat and my sister Rita snorting through her dreams beside me, I made myself a solitary pallet outside under the stars. But the bugs kept me awake. Finally, with only the full moon for light, I got up and, in boots and nightgown, walked the creek and cut through the fields. A breeze stirred the corn, whispering, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Everywhere my foot pressed the land I heard, “Home. Home. Home.” I was in love.

But love of land is not enough for a young body. I had put on weight and curves. I was stronger than I had ever been. At the feed store, at church, anywhere I went, I could feel as much as see how men were looking at me. Their gazes, like hands, cupped my hip or shoulder.

Some of the men were the same boys who had called me “carrot top” when I was a young girl, sneering as if red hair was an aberration worthy of hell. Many of them, fresh from combat, were broken-faced. Around them, I felt the burden of my innocence. I told myself that their attention was just the war’s end, just men lusting, as I did, for the land and smelling it on me. If one of them showed up at the farm, I did not stop my work to chat and flirt. I put him to work.

Something had been in the corn, so I rode the plow horse, Becky, out to check the fence between the Starneses’ pasture and our cornfield. I reined to a halt deep in the shade of a broad, low oak near the border of the Starneses’ land. One of their stallions was after a mare. I had seen horses mate before, but this time I went closer, right up to the fence, and watched. The receptive mare danced before the stallion and then stood still, her tail swished to the side. Becky snuffled and took a little two-step under me. Despite the cool of the shade, heat rose up from my belly.

I did not hear or see Cole Starnes ride up. But suddenly he was there in the shade, taking off his hat and wiping his face. I startled. Becky shinnied sideways again.

“We weren’t planning on breeding her this season,” he said, as if we had been discussing the situation for a while. “She came on earlier than we thought. Caught us off guard.” He was a good-looking boy, tall and thin, with a broad, friendly face and cowlick above his forehead.

I could feel the red in my ears. I kept my eyes on the horses.

Cole kept talking. “We were working on the tractor. Didn’t know she was coming on. I don’t like that tractor much.” He glanced back toward his house as if he expected to see the tractor coming his way. His horse stomped and pulled.

I turned without a word and left just as the stallion dismounted.

After that, Cole gave me a little nod and a comment every time we ran into each other, which began to happen more often. Every Sunday after church he was there, not saying much, talking about fences, tractors, and