Chad Jones's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Chad stood at the edge of the property, staring at twenty acres of wet grass and mud that nobody wanted. The guy offering it was someone's cousin, maybe an uncle — hard to keep track in a place where everyone seemed related. The land had been in his family once, abandoned when the water table rose and made it useless for anything but mosquitoes. Then the man pointed to the barn. It stood white against the gray sky, with windows cut into the shape of a man's body. Chad's grandfather had built it that way, the guy said, before the flooding started. The barn was the reason they left — pouring money into something that kept sinking. Chad could take it all for almost nothing, but everyone would know the Joneses had failed here first. He looked at the man-shaped window and thought about his buddies, about dirt under their hands instead of a ball. "I'll take it," he said. The man pulled something from his truck bed. An axe with blades like wings and a handle carved to look like muscle. He held it out. "Your granddad's. Been in my shed since they cleared out." Chad took it, felt the weight pull at his shoulder. The man produced a paper, already signed on one side. Chad scrawled his name with a pen that barely worked. Walking back to his car, Chad passed an old family photo nailed to a fence post. Five men flexing, grinning like they owned the world. His grandfather was in the middle. Chad wondered if any of them knew what would happen to this place. The axe rested against his leg. He'd tell his friends tomorrow. They'd laugh, probably, at the swamp and the sinking barn. But the land was his now. That was enough to start.