I had talked to Martha every night in the kitchen after dinner, over coffee I kept too long because I was distracted and she understood. We had not talked about what happened if we lost the farm, because we had both grown up in this county and we both knew what that looked like, and neither of us was ready to say it plainly yet. The tractors had appeared this morning before I was dressed.
I had come out onto the porch with my coffee and watched the first truck turn in from the county road, and then another behind it, and then another, until there were seven trucks and the field was filling with machines so new they still had factory film on the cab windows. I had called the bank immediately, thinking there was some mistake, some equipment-financing situation I hadn’t been told about. Thomas Wernan had not known what to tell me.
“Tell me your name,” I said. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I say it too early, you’ll remember the worst part first. I need you to remember the right part.”
