Thomas Carpenter's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The fire caught fast on Orchid's sticks. Dark fell over the field, and my daughters gathered close for warmth. We had good dirt under us and no roof over us. I meant to fill that gap the only way a poor man can. I lifted my fiddle from the box. "Play the harvest song, Papa," Lilac said. She sat with her knees tucked under her pink dress, the flower still bright in her hair. She had marked our wheat rows before dark, sure as any grown farmer. Now she wanted a tune, and I could not tell her no. I set the fiddle to my chin and drew the bow. The first notes wobbled, then steadied. Petunia clapped the beat with her hands. Her flower basket sat beside her, berries spilled loose in the grass. She began to sing the words her mother taught her, low and clear. Orchid jumped up and spun in the firelight. Her boots stamped the good dirt. Lilac took her small hands and they turned in circles, laughing, until Orchid fell dizzy in the grass. I played faster. Petunia rose and pulled me up by the elbow, and we danced too, my bow gone quiet in my hand. "You still remember how," Petunia said against my shoulder. "I thought the road took it out of you." "Not all of it," I said. We traded stories then. Lilac told how she once mistook a weed for wheat and I let her plant it anyway. Orchid told a story with no ending that made us laugh harder than any joke. Petunia named each berry in her basket and where it grew. For one night, no one counted my eleven coins. No one spoke of the field's true owner. The fire burned low. Orchid slept first, curled in the grass. Lilac fought her eyes shut and lost. Petunia laid a blanket over both girls and sat beside me while the last log crumbled. "This felt like home," she said quietly. "It shouldn't. It isn't ours." "Tomorrow I make it ours," I said. "I find the owner. I ask to work the ground." She squeezed my wrist the way she always did. Then she slept too. I stayed awake by the coals. I meant to keep the promise. But as the fire died, I heard hooves on the grass. A rider came out of the dark, slow and certain, straight toward our camp. He carried a lantern high, and behind it his face was hard. "This is my land," the rider said. "Who told you to sleep on it?" I stood. My family slept behind me on ground that was not ours. The man I planned to find at dawn had found me first, and I had no deed, no coin, and nothing to offer but my two hands.