developed, had led her all over the world.
“A bunch of Mexicans, this time. All gone now, vanished into some illegal immigrant hell.”
“Johnny?”
“He’s gone too. Packed his pickup, loaded his wife, and drove off without even saying goodbye.”
“Probably already had another job lined up,” Miriam said.
Shirley imagined how Johnny would describe himself to a potential employer—twenty years running a farm, a few cattle, corn and wheat. Then, as she bumped over the rutted road, she thought of how she would put her own possibilities into words: wife and mother, dedicated community volunteer who still baked her own bread. As for Miriam, she would describe herself, Shirley thought, as a magnet for music lovers with a soprano voice that still in the lighter repertoire continued to be sought after, although now most of her commissions came from small-town orchestras, the ones that had survived.
Miriam, never married, had supported herself with her singing, while Shirley knew she would have been lucky to find a job as a librarian or an elementary school teacher—and even that would have required a degree—if Brian had ditched her, as he had sometimes threatened to do in the old, hot days.
Miriam said, “It was a pretty good harvest, for this kind of farm,” and Shirley realized she had known all about it and had only asked when the harvest had happened out of politeness. “The crops were never rotated and Johnny used chemical fertilizer.”
“Well, that’s what Daddy told him to do.” Shirley stopped the car in sight of the farmhouse and Miriam unfastened her seat belt and climbed out, deft and slender as she had always been (except, Shirley reminded herself, for one terrible summer when she was ten and Miriam, to everyone’s amazement, had turned fat and sour at thirteen. But the episode had been brief; their mother had seen to that.)
She scrambled out of the car, following her sister who was climbing the farmhouse fence. “We can drive around to the gate,” she called, but Miriam was already hoisting her leg over the top railing. She dropped to the other side, wincing on contact with the hard ridged dirt.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Shirley asked, hurrying after her.
“Just turned my ankle.” Miriam leaned on the fence, massaging her right ankle; she was wearing bright-red shoes with heels.
Shirley was glad Miriam was too occupied to notice the way she hauled herself over the fence. It had been a long time since she’d faced such an obstacle, and she’d gained some weight although she kept herself in pretty good shape with weekly visits to the gym where the trainer sometimes complimented her on her strength and flexibility—but that was part of the trainer’s job, to keep her clients happy. Now, Shirley was glad for every pair of weights she’d lifted—baby-blue five pounders; she was able to haul herself up the fence with only a few gasps at the top. She did not drop to the ground on the other side but lowered herself cautiously.
Miriam was trying her weight on her ankle. Nothing seemed to be wrong, and she struck off across the field.
The farmhouse, empty but still intact, was half-hidden by a mock orange hedge, its second story windows lighted by the setting sun. Beyond it, a snaking line of walnut trees followed a wire fence. Through the trunks, Shirley saw the concrete flash of new foundations.
“They’ve started,” she said.
Miriam didn’t answer. Stooping down, separating weeds, she clawed up a handful of dirt. “Look, all clay, hard as concrete. Ruined even for corn after all these years.”
Shirley reached a finger to touch the dirt. She noticed that her sister’s hand was trembling.
“It could be turned around with the right techniques,” she said.
“Do you have any idea what that would cost?”
Shirley studied her sister. How hard it had always been to accept Miriam’s authority, shining now from her pale blue eyes. Her face was remarkably unlined and from a little distance she would still look like a tall athletic girl.
“I have no idea,” she said.
“Believe me, I looked into it,” Miriam told her.” The soil could have been reconstituted, you’re right, but even aside from the astronomical cost, it would all have to be planted in soybeans, the only crop that’s profitable now, and this farm is too small to—”
“Five hundred acres?”
“The only farms that are making money are thousands,” Miriam said. “Everything’s changed, Shirley. The government subsidies, the climate. Nobody grows corn and wheat anymore, unless they’re just hobby farming.”
“What about organic vegetables? I read restaurants pay good money for tiny peas.”
Miriam sighed. “Too labor intensive. The only crop this land is good for now is houses.” She waved at the foundations gleaming through the trees.
“Row after row after row,” Shirley said.
“Actually not. This is the newest design, a real innovation. Laid out like a village, sidewalks, trees—”
Shirley had seen the plans, published a few weeks back in the local newspaper under an admiring headline. “Houses so jammed together they don’t even have yards.”
“Yards don’t make ecological sense,” Miriam reminded her. “The green belt we’re planning—”
“A border. How wide?”
“We’ve laid aside twenty acres.”
“Twenty acres in the gulley, too steep for building.”
“Doesn’t that make sense?”
“Not my kind of sense,” Shirley said. With the field under her feet, she felt the desperation she’d felt as a child when a beloved patch of earth fell to the bulldozers. She’d thought then she would willingly kiss each inch of the plain, scrubby fields that had been her kingdom, kiss every inch of the ten miles that divided the farm from town. Even now she would have crouched down on the torn ground and kissed it if she’d dared to risk her sister’s laughter.
“I hate it,” she said softly.
“What?” Miriam scrutinized the distance.
“What you decided to do. It’s not fair.”
Miriam looked at her. “I think Mama and Daddy divided their estate as fairly as they could. You get the farmhouse and five acres and I get the rest.”
“The house will be surrounded by that.” Shirley pointed at the foundations. “Row after row—”
“Not rows.” Miriam raised her voice a little. “All the streets will be curved, and we’re going to plant trees, to shield you.”
“Three foot saplings. I’ll be dead by the time they’re big enough to provide a screen.”
Miriam sighed. “What can I say? At this point I can’t afford to run a farm. This is my only asset, this four hundred and ninety-five acres, to provide for me in a few years
