Page 89 of The Unmaking of June Farrow

Callie stamped her hooves excitedly behind the fence when I made it to the barn, mane flicking as she shook her head.

“Hi, Callie.” I caught her nose with my hand as I passed, stroking along her chin before I opened the door.

Eamon was behind me a moment later, hanging a bucket of oats for her on his way to the barn. He got straight to work, fetching two chains from where they were hung on the post. I took another long drink of my coffee before I set it down and rolled up my sleeves.

“Okay. Tell me what to do,” I said.

For a second, I thought I saw the shadow of a grin at the corner ofEamon’s mouth, but he turned away from me, crossing the barn to the racks that were stored on the opposite wall.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ve just never known you to take orders.”

My lips twisted to hide my own smile. Were we joking now?

I watched closely as he assembled the rigging so that I could repeat the process if necessary. First he dumped the ash from the chambers, and then he refilled them with the contents of the metal containers I’d seen him open before.

“It’s chaff,” Eamon explained. “Burns for an hour, sometimes more, and that’s enough to cover about half an acre if you’re moving fast enough.”

“How many acres are there?”

“Twelve.”

I did the math in my head. That meant he was getting through about four or five acres a day. Between the two of us, we might be able to manage it all by sundown.

“How much have you lost?”

He set his hands on his hips, the number making his expression change before he said it out loud. “Almost two.”

So, he’d already taken a significant hit. I wondered if Esther knew the extent of it, or if he’d kept it from her.

“And how long until harvest?”

“I think I can start in another week. Maybe two.”

“All right,” I said, pushing away the next thought. I didn’t know if I’d still be there in a week. “Show me.”

He pulled two clean bandanas from his back pocket, handing me one, and we tied them around our necks. The process was a simple one, but it was tedious and time-consuming. Eamon filled the containers with chaff and lit them, and as soon as he closed the hatch, smoke began to spill from the holes punctured in the metal.

“You walk ahead of me, tear out anything sick. The bad ones need to be pulled up completely. At the end of each row, we switch.”

He said it like we’d done it before. We probably had.

We walked to the corner of the field, where the tobacco was most discolored, and I started up the row first, scanning the plants from bottom to top. It was only a few steps before I had to start cutting, gathering up the leaves in bunches before scraping them from the stalk.

Eamon followed at a slow pace, letting the smoke gather as he moved. It curled around the plants, bleeding between the rows before it drifted up into the air, hiding the blue sky. There was more sick tobacco than I expected, and I was tearing out plants more quickly than I wanted to, leaving holes in the field every ten to fifteen feet. Some of them had to come up completely, like Eamon said, and after the first several were pulled from the earth, I looked back at him, searching for any sign that he was anxious. But there was no point in dwelling on what was already done. The life of a farmer was a precarious one, every harvest season bringing with it its own challenges and losses. This one could sink him, but all he could do was get the job done. That was the only thing he had control over.

When we reached the end of the row, Eamon set the rig on my shoulders and gathered up the fallen crop, hauling it to the end so it could be burned. The weight of the dowel wasn’t extraordinarily heavy, but it was uncomfortable, and the balance was difficult. It took a few minutes for me to get the trick of it, and even then, one dip to the side almost sent the canisters crashing to the ground.

“You said your father taught you how to do this?” I asked.

The question caught him off guard. “Yeah.” He started down the row ahead of me and I followed, squinting through the sting of the smoke to keep him in sight. My eyes were already watering.

“Where are they? Your family?”

A pause. “This is my family.”

My steps faltered, and the smoke thickened around me as the canisters swung, making it harder to see him. It wasn’t cutting or meant to make me feel guilty. It was just a simple, honest answer. One that made that knife in my gut twist.