Cold Black Earth Read Free

shed. The old corn crib had been replaced by a pair of cylindrical steel grain bins with a grain leg and a dump pit. She still missed the old crib; instead of watching the place evolve, she saw abrupt changes on her infrequent visits, and it was always traumatic. She peeked into the equipment shed to take stock of a million dollars’ worth of toys: tractors, combine, planter, semi and trailer for hauling grain. A farm was a considerable business, as Rachel had explained many times to urban sophisticates impressed with her having risen so far above her background.
    She walked the perimeter of the acre of grass and trees surrounding the house. This had been all the world she had needed when she was small, exploring this vast realm, obeying strict instructions not to go near the road. Some trees had grown and some had gone; the patch of ground she had been given for a vegetable garden when she was ten was just a change in the texture of the grass now. Standing by the road at the head of the drive, Rachel looked at the handsome frame house Swan Lindstrom had built and his descendants had expanded, now the seat of an established western Illinois corn and beans operation, a family farm hanging on in the age of agribusiness. Rachel was home, and her heart was desolate. She had come halfway around the world again, this time to find comfort in the familiar, and there was no comfort here.
    She walked back up the drive and made for the far corner of the lot. Shielded from the house by the barn, Rachel stepped to the fence and managed to get herself up and over without serious damage to her jeans. Pleased she could still handle a barbed wire fence, she set out across a field full of corn stubble toward the trees lining the creek.
    The creek had carved a meandering hollow across the land. It was the northern limit of Lindstrom land and prized outlaw country for farm kids. Matt and his friends had tried to dam the stream and built a fort of fallen limbs on its bank. In the tangle of brush beneath the trees were a few places clear and level enough for an adolescent girl to sit and read a book or just poke a stick in the water and brood.
    It was rough going over the field and Rachel almost turned back, but her native stubbornness kicked in. By the time she reached the trees she was sweating. In summer the creek bed was a thicket, but now it lay exposed, fallen branches and dead leaves clogging a meager trickle of water, bare trees clinging precariously to the slopes.
    She made her way along the edge of the gully, looking for the old paths down and not finding them. Finally she managed to descend, slipping on the hard earth, grabbing onto branches. At the bottom she stood on the bank with her hands in her coat pockets, kicking at shards of ice that had formed along the edges in the night. What am I doing here? she thought. Nothing, she decided, and that was good enough for now. She began walking east along the creek, stepping carefully.
    After a hundred feet or so she stopped, looking in vain for something familiar. Wherever her brooding place had been, it was gone now. Trees grew and fell and rotted in twenty years; the land changed. Once as a girl she had decided to see how far she could walk upstream. She had walked for what seemed miles, then climbed up out of the gully and been dismayed to see the back of the Larsons’ house, their closest neighbors.
    I will walk until I get to the bridge where 400 East crosses the creek, Rachel told herself, and then I’ll climb up and walk home by the roads. It would be a circuit of about three miles and a good morning’s workout. She had on her running shoes, and even if she got her feet wet in the creek it wasn’t going to kill her.
    She made a couple of hundred yards without too much trouble. She remembered this part, where the gully widened a little and the trees grew bigger. On a level patch of ground traces of a fire showed that thirty years after she had grilled hot dogs on sticks with Matt