The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell Read online

  She’d biked home extra slow after school that day, thinking, I am a crisis.

  Dinah toasted one of the leftover biscuits, and by the time she was spreading it with apple butter, Kara had dropped her backpack on the couch. Her black hair, pulled into a high ponytail, made a fountain of curls past her shoulders, like always, and like always, she wore a puffy sweater and those denim cutoffs she’d had since she was fourteen. They’d been too big then, but now they showed off her brown legs and fit so well that Dinah turned back toward the counter. Kara’s German mother was as pale as Dinah herself, but Kara had inherited her Dominican father’s warm, tawny brown skin.

  When she handed the biscuit to Kara, the girl’s eyes went wide. “For me? Thank God.” She took it and talked around a bite. “This is exactly why you and I should just get married.”

  Dinah’s whole body went hot. “What?”

  Kara swallowed and licked her thumb. “I’m so hungry.”

  A joke. Like always. Dinah wanted to bang her own head against the wall. Something should only be called a joke if it was funny.

  Kara leaned against the kitchen counter. “So, what did he want?” she asked quietly.

  There was no other way to say it. “The well.”

  Kara stopped breathing.

  “He’s not going to get it,” Dinah said.

  Kara slowly breathed in. “Last night, my parents were talking about selling.”

  The Hernández family might as well be her own. Dinah turned off the faucet. “And do what?”

  Kara shrugged, looked out the window at the dusk beyond it. “The city. Jobs.”

  But. Then Gates would charge money for the produce. And they wouldn’t be able to buy even half of what they were using now.

  And Kara would be gone.

  “Are you really moving?” Dinah forced herself to look Kara in the eyes, because if she couldn’t do that then she didn’t deserve her.

  Kara shrugged. “Papi kept saying ‘Dominicans don’t take bad deals; he’s taking advantage,’ and Mom said, ‘Germans go somewhere they can eat.’ But she knows what he does—the deal he offered us didn’t even match what he gave the Walkers.”

  Because that was the other thing. There was always some business excuse for it, but there was the rate he’d just offered Kara’s parents. And there were the Franklins, the Liberian family who had sold fifty acres to buy a truck—the price per acre had been fifty dollars lower than what he’d paid for similar land from the McCaffreys. And then there was the Kangs’ store. They’d had to leave Dinah’s freshman year.

  If they lost the well to that man, her neighbors might have no choice but to sell, and what he’d offer most of them would be far from enough to start over.

  “Girls.” Her mom came into the kitchen, a notebook and the household folder in her hands. “I’ve got to do some things at the table. Would you mind working in the bedroom?”

  They always went to Dinah’s room. This was just her mom’s way of asking them to please go away and be quiet. Which was fair, because her mom was digging through every piece of the farm, every financial projection, every possible scenario to find a way to come up with five thousand dollars.

  Kara spread out her notebooks on Dinah’s bed and Dinah closed the door. Warren had caught her staring at Kara enough times to tease her about it mercilessly when they were alone, but he at least had the good sense to let them have some space when Kara came over. So he was carving another little hen to add to his collection in the living room, and they had the bedroom she shared with him to themselves.

  “I just wish to God my parents would stop coddling me.” Kara flopped cross-legged on the bed. “Every time I try to work at home, they’re looking over my shoulder, asking about lesson objectives and if I’m grading Warren and Hannah and Matías fairly and all this stuff, like they think I’m not qualified.” She picked at the bedspread. “And I’m just an assistant, you know? I’m not qualified. But Mr. Simmons lets me help with lesson planning, proctoring the tests, and a lot of the grading. I’ve read all the books and training materials he’s given me, and I’ve got this massive list of educational psychology reading—”

  Mr. Simmons was using her to do all his work so he could take the credit and the bigger paycheck and go home early. But Kara needed to learn the job, wanted to be ten times better than Mr. Simmons and Ms. Breyer, so what else was she supposed to do?

  Dinah sat on the edge of the bed. “Your parents underestimate you. And Warren says you’re a better teacher than Mr. Simmons already.” Kara had always been simultaneously brimming with hope and plans, but so scared of failing that she never just went for it.

  A hopeful smile crept over Kara’s face. “Did he really say that?”

  Dinah nodded. “And you were so scared of the semester starting.” This girl was destined to leave Charlotte County. Kara, the girl who had lived across the ravine for Dinah’s whole life, who wanted so much to matter to the world that she was burning to leave their mountains. Who somehow felt that right here, now, she did not matter.

  Kara flopped onto her side and buried her face in the blanket. “It’s terrifying, walking into a classroom of kids, knowing what they learn is up to me. Three of them got in a fight today over who poked someone first and it turned into a big meltdown and I froze while Mr. Simmons handled it. I wanted to leave and not come back; I was so embarrassed.”

  “But you did stay.” Dinah shifted closer to her.

  Kara didn’t reply, just stayed facedown in the blanket.

  “You’ve got this,” Dinah said.

  “Ugh.” Kara sat up and reached for one of the notebooks.

  The school printer had broken down, so Kara was supposed to be hand-making flashcards for the study session she was leading for the history test. Dinah helped her cut thick paper and marker the edges with a neat border while Kara wrote up the content.

  When Dinah glanced over at Kara’s notebook, she was sketching the Galaxy Girl logo in the corner. Flashcards be damned, apparently.

  Dinah did not understand the fascination, but if graphic novels were Kara’s obsession, hearing Kara talk about them was Dinah’s.

  “Explain it to me,” she said. “Why do you love Galaxy Girl so much? What is it about a meteor giving people supernatural powers that keeps you up reading till three in the morning?”

  Kara’s pencil never stopped sketching. “They’re soldiers of the revolution, Dinah. They fight the system.”

  Hearing Kara say those things fogged Dinah’s common sense. Dinah dug her fingers into the bedspread. She could see it happening, every detail of it in her mind. Leaning forward, touching her lips to Kara’s, the warmth and the electric fizz under her skin, the way Kara would realize this was what she wanted, too.

  But that was about as real as superheroes, so she covered it up with something else. “Sure. But scientifically, there’s nothing about a meteor that could give someone supernatural strength.”

  Kara rolled her eyes. “You have to use your imagination, girl, or you’ll lose it.”

  If what was going on in her head was any indication, her imagination was just fine.

  Once Warren was in bed asleep, Kara decided to stay the night like she did half the time on Fridays. Her mom had shut herself into her own bedroom with yet more paperwork and dark circles under her eyes.

  Dinah should be helping, but her mom wouldn’t let her.

  Kara slid under the covers and rolled toward her, the light from the window falling on her face. “On top of everything else, Mr. Simmons and I got into a fight about Thanksgiving lesson plans,” Kara said softly.

  Dinah stayed quiet and listened.

  “He said ridiculous stuff about colonists being the first Americans, and I wasn’t going to say anything because, you know, he’s my boss. But then I had to, and he said I had no right to change his curriculum.”

  Maybe Dinah could light his head on fire. Maybe that would help.

  “It’s just … being Dominican means my ancestry i
s European and African and Taíno. The Taíno were indigenous to Hispaniola. It was their home. But millions and millions of them were murdered by the diseases and labor conditions and slavery forced on them by the Europeans. The Taíno were wiped out of their own home.” Her voice fractured. “Having to hear that man completely ignore the people who were here first—when this was their home—hear him claim that Europeans were the first Americans, when that implies indigenous people were not Americans at all … But he just said it wasn’t relevant. Like I didn’t matter and neither did they.”

  The two girls lay on their sides, face to face, while Kara whispered so quietly Dinah could barely hear her.

  “This is my home, but is it? The rest of Papi’s family is in St. Louis. We’re the only Dominicans in this county, now that Tía Elena left. Even Galaxy Girl is Mexican. Which is great but it’s not the same. Mom gets a little hurt, I think, that I connect so much to my dad’s family, especially because her parents were German immigrants during the third war, you know? And they have this amazing story. But I’m brown like Papi, and I share that with him. He always says to make life work, we have to bring our whole selves. But do I have a whole self? I don’t know.”

  Dinah reached over and touched Kara’s hand with her fingertips. “Your whole self is my favorite thing.”

  Kara sighed. But she didn’t move her hand, and Dinah couldn’t move at all. She wanted to say all these words, but they just swarmed through her head and wouldn’t come to her lips.

  She would never be as brave or as strong as this girl. She couldn’t even tell her don’t go, stay with me, I need you.

  By the time she worked up the courage to say literally anything else, Kara was asleep.

  Whispers of dried leaves scuttling over the roof filtered down. The bed creaked as Dinah rolled over, tucking her pillow into a ball under her head.

  Warren’s asthmatic snoring lessened. She was waking him with her rustling around.

  Kara was not leaving. No one else was leaving.

  She sat up and touched her feet to the cold, creaking floorboards. She slid on the coarse wool socks on the table by her bed. Even with her flannel pajamas, the cold would seep through tonight.

  Dinah tiptoed past Warren’s bed, stepping over the creakiest floorboard by the doorway. She liked the house most at night. She could turn on a lamp and stare at the braided living room rug washed in yellow light, the windows dark, holding everything out.

  Nighttime was when Dinah pretended.

  Instead of turning on the lamp, she picked up the guitar case beside the couch. She opened the door and stepped onto the porch, careful not to let the flimsy screen door bang behind her.

  It was one of those cloudless nights, where the sky looked like someone had taken the top off the world.

  There had to be some way to help Kara and to keep her family from selling the orchard. To find the answer for her own farm.

  Her mom’s grandparents had cleared this land, her own grandparents had installed the wind turbine, her mother had kept it all together by connecting every local farm that needed an anchor.

  It wasn’t really even a farm—a few acres of woods climbing the side of the mountain for a trap line, a small clearing her great-grandparents had carved into the forest so they could plant a big enough garden.

  Dinah sat on the porch, her feet on the step, and opened the guitar case. Her father’s guitar. An old, worn one with bad strings, but it still made music. She rested it on her lap and curved her fingers around the neck.

  The strings scraped cold on her fingers. Kara kept asking to hear her play, but Dinah hadn’t played in front of her since her dad had left. It was too invasive, somehow. Her father had taught her.

  He could be dead by now, for all she knew. All the possible reasons for why had curdled together, so she’d let it go. The how was the thing she couldn’t leave behind. He had to have known what would happen, that this could happen, if he left.

  She played for an hour while her mind turned over the water and five thousand dollars and those bruises on her mother’s shoulder, and then finally her hands stilled on the strings.

  If she talked to the neighbors, maybe together they could raise enough money to keep Gates from taking the well. It would be cheaper for them in the long run than paying cash for water anyway, and if she quit school and got a job somehow, she could slowly pay each of them back. Her mother would say no—she wouldn’t want to ask. But Dinah would.

  She shivered. The wind was colder now, leaking through her flannel pajamas.

  Tomorrow everyone would be helping with canning at Kara’s, so she could talk to them all together. Dinah pressed her cold palms to her eyes and took what felt like the first full breath of the whole day.

  Her eyes still felt hot and swollen by morning. She’d tried so hard to sleep that she hadn’t slept at all.

  “Here, eat something before you go.” Her mother set oatmeal in front of Dinah before she could protest. She didn’t really have time for breakfast. Not today.

  The bruises on her mother’s neck had darkened. Even from here, she could see one of them under her chin.

  Her mother sat down with her tea. “I hear you, you know. At night, when you play your guitar.”

  Dinah looked up from her bowl. “You do?”

  “I love that you still play. That you’re so musical.”

  She wasn’t musical, not the way her mother meant. She was simply random notes, connected by nothing but air. Sound, maybe, but not music.

  The whole way to the McCaffreys’, Warren seemed to handle the biking just fine. But Dinah was so tired, Kara practically had to drag her up the blacktop for Saturday chores.

  Laura McCaffrey took one look at her and brought a mug of strong, bitter tea. Dinah took a moment to drink it before milking the goats. The woman was a warm, motherly whirlwind of homemade bread, knitted scarves, fresh butter, and come in, shoes off, sit down, it’s too cold out for skinny kids like you.

  She, Kara, and Warren were helping with chores this morning so Laura and her husband could go repair a loose section of fence before they all went over to the orchard to help can produce for the Hernández family’s winter pantry. The deal was at least one productive member from each household, rotating homes so everyone had enough hands for the work.

  At Kara’s, Warren and the younger Hernández kids carefully washed bucket after bucket of pears, bringing each one to Dinah and Kara at the sawhorse table outside. They cored and sliced while everyone else buzzed through the kitchen, Kara’s mom supervising the men working the pressure canners and Laura McCaffrey directing the traffic of steaming jars.

  Every time Warren came over with another bucket, he looked back and forth between Dinah and Kara until Dinah narrowed her eyes at him. He ran away, smirking.

  Juice dripped everywhere, tracking down her arms, as she cored and sliced pear after pear. And then Dylan, Alex, and Chrissa Franklin set up more sawhorse tables, and they all switched to crushing garlic and chopping tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and cilantro for sofrito. Mr. Hernández used the aromatic cooking base all the time, but Mrs. Hernández used it also—the flavors went well with a lot of her family recipes, too.

  The roasty smell of oil and garlic, three pots of mustard always on the table, crispy potato pancakes, windows always open to the outdoors even if it was cold out, a sunset peach–painted living room with a comfortable, sagging couch—these things meant the Hernández home. And she couldn’t watch them disappear.

  By noon, her shoulders ached. Tomorrow, it would be their turn to have everyone come help with canning. Their tomatoes and peppers were piling up, so they’d do sauce, salsa, and soup. And in another week, it would start over again to get the last of the produce before the frost did.

  The worst of the drought was farther north in the plains, but it was so dry down here, even the trees were dying. Without their well, every farm in the area would be done.

  Apparently there used to be a lot of small farms everywhe
re, all over the U.S. But they’d all been sold, leaving only the mountains behind. With the honey and crimson of the October trees, and little fairy worlds of burnt-red sumac hiding rabbit burrows, and the hills that made her feel like she was dying as she biked up one side and flying as she pulled her feet up to whoosh down the other, she couldn’t imagine why no one had wanted her mountains.

  But Amazon Agriculture and Tyson-Deere had deemed the Ozarks “not profitable.” No good way to use the giant, remoteoperated combines and planters in the mountains. So Charlotte County and the Arkansas counties surrounding it had been left behind.

  Before she’d died, Dinah’s grandma had loved to talk about the days before the depression. She’d even talk about the long and expensive war before it, and then the downturn from so much less government spending when the war ended. It triggered a problem with the banks, starting the economy-collapsing depression of 2029. But her grandma’s stories always stopped there; 2029 she wouldn’t talk about, even though it had been forty years since.

  By the time Dinah was able to wash up, the Franklins and McCaffreys had already left. Today had gone long and everyone had their own work to do. Tomorrow. They were coming to her place tomorrow, and she’d get everyone’s attention to talk about the well before they started work this time.

  Warren rolled the bikes over from Kara’s porch. Dinah held his handlebars while he climbed onto the seat; it would be too big for him for at least another year. “Wait.” Kara pulled something out of her pocket and shoved it at Dinah.

  Fifty-two dollars, in ones and fives. “What is this?” Dinah clutched the bills and met her brown eyes.

  “It’s for the well. If you give him a big payment, maybe he’ll give you more time.”

  Dinah’s lips parted. “But—where did you get it?”

  “It’s from teaching.”

  “Your savings?” For Kara to move. For her to study.

  “I was just going to use it whenever I had to move out. Which isn’t right now.”