Worth: Chapters 1–10

The storm heated up, the thunder booming louder, the lightning lashing harder, the air filling with the moist feeling that comes just before it rains. All that racket had Vernon and Belle fidgety.

I scrambled to hook the net while Ma brought Dimple around to pull it. That old cow had eyes as big as a pitching ball at the fair. She stepped into the rope and began to pull, Ma leading her with a bucket of oats. As the net went up, hay billowed out of one end. Blast it all. I hadn’t got all the hay in the center like I should’ve.

I scrambled to hook the net while Ma brought Dimple around to pull it. That old cow had eyes as big as a pitching ball at the fair. She stepped into the rope and began to pull, Ma leading her with a bucket of oats. As the net went up, hay billowed out of one end. Blast it all. I hadn’t got all the hay in the center like I should’ve.

We needed every ear of that corn if we wanted to make good on our homestead claim. Pa needed the money to pay off the bank for all our equipment and seed.

Chairs came to us through piecework. Ma fixed pots and scythes and rakes and picks for eggs or some such, took what we needed, then traded the rest to Ralph Pitcher for store credit at the mercantile. We ate standing up for near to a year before we had all three chairs.

Chairs came to us through piecework. Ma fixed pots and scythes and rakes and picks for eggs or some such, took what we needed, then traded the rest to Ralph Pitcher for store credit at the mercantile. We ate standing up for near to a year before we had all three chairs.

Sitting up in bed, I listened to Pa fret as I tried to fix that fool clock.

But I wasn’t going to let that no account city boy bury me alive. I’d show Pa just what I could do. Since Doc Kelly had finally cut me loose from that contraption, I could start moving around a bit, building up the strength in my leg.

“Take her easy there, son.” Doc Kelly ran to sit next to me. “You rush this and you’re liable to just break the leg again.”

Pa set his jaw, steepled his hands over his plate, then said, “God, thank you for this good food. May you bring such bounty from our own earth in the months to come. Amen.”

Ma finished the prayer in a whisper. I always wondered what she said, but didn’t want to pry into what was between her and God.

The other boys closed in around me as I hobbled toward the door, saying, “How do, Wood? What brings you to town, Wood?”

Mr. Kennel put me in the front with all the littlest kids. I looked like a giant hunkering down with elves. But those little folks knew things I didn’t have a clue on.

Heard Ma swivel in her chair, then say, “He’s been living in the city among those street gangs that steal from anyone they can lay their fingers on. You saw what happen to Hester Feringeld. She had a week’s pay plucked from her very pocket when she pitied a young girl in the street. That kind woman stopped to give the girl an apple and one of those dirty urchins came up and stole her pay. Her own children had what for to eat for a week.”

“And just how do you think those children ended up on the streets, Mary Eve?”
“No-account families.”
“Or tenement fires.”

My fingers shook as I got dressed, but it could have been my fear as much as fatigue that made them so.

Mr. Kennel had Horace Danver standing up in the corner to think hard on his misdeeds, but he hadn’t thought better of such behavior by recess.

Horace jumped right back up. Those boys charged into a heads-down-shoulders-locked tussle. Folks circled them, shouting, “Get that land-grabbing cowpoke!”

Danver land backed up to the Gantry ranch, so those families drew their battle lines in the dirt—the Danvers screaming crop damage, the Gantrys shouting fence cutting. We had the Clemson cattle to contend with, but Pa never thought of suing for damages like most folks.

The idea of cutting into a dead body made me shiver, but I was glad the whole thing hadn’t led to a lynching like it had over in Clay County when those Taylor folks got strung from a bridge after they burned a homesteader in his barn.

And she wanted me to do well in school, so I tried to forget about Trevor and do my best to remember all I knew about ciphering, but those little tykes who sat in front of me ran circles around me—adding, subtracting, multiplying, even dividing.

And she wanted me to do well in school, so I tried to forget about Trevor and do my best to remember all I knew about ciphering, but those little tykes who sat in front of me ran circles around me—adding, subtracting, multiplying, even dividing.

The boys taunted me, saying, “How’s your brother there, Wood? He clean your boots for you too?”

But my Ma and Pa sat right next to me. I could reach over and touch them if I didn’t think Pa would cringe.

Never wanted to grit my teeth against the pain of leaning down to do something as simple stupid as tying my own darn shoe.

Sitting there, eating my stew, I heard John muttering away in the lean-to, but he wasn’t prattling on. No, this time he spoke real slow like he might be praying.

Seeing the road Ma took, I rolled my eyes and threw my head back to wait for her to saunter up to the idea that I might not be good with tinkering, but I just hadn’t found my calling yet.

Facing the dresser she’d bartered for, Ma stared at me out of the corner of her eye.

But that day, he kept to himself, sometimes stopping to stare in at the wall in my bedroom. Or maybe he was staring at John, who probably sat in the lean-to reading my primer like I should’ve been doing.

Thrashing about on a hay bed can leave you in such a state. Ma had to pluck many a hay bit from me when the fever twisted me about back in my bedridden days.

“Nothing looks like a dangerous occupation with you.” Ma walked around him, then pulled a chair up to the hearth. “Warm yourself.”

Seth said, “You know the Danvers don’t trust Baker after he backed Doc Kelly over Calvin’s death.”
“Then who has a hand in cooling things down?”
“Not enough folks by my reckoning. I thought we could go over there and talk some sense.”

The kids all snickered when I dragged myself into school after everyone had come in and found their places.

One day, I found a kind of flower on my bench in that dank room. Someone had left an orange on a hanky in my spot—peeled and opened like a flower.

“Oh, Anemone Cordimas, meet my ma, Mary Eve Peale.”
“Mrs. Peale.” Anemone nodded her head.
“Anemone, the nymph who refused to yield to the wind.”
“Yes.” Anemone smiled to have someone say something about her name that had nothing to do with a flower.