By the time the principal’s send-off to the class rolled around, a few families had left, back to their trucks. The speeches had been interminable in the cold. The sky looked gunmetal gray, a color that seemed familiar but also wrong. The wrong time of year for it.
The principal said, “Go forth. Go forth and don’t just plant seeds of change. Let yourself take root.”
What was he saying, who was he talking about or to? Go where? Do what? There were more eighteen-year-old local girls in jail than there were in town. I knew if I lingered at the reception in the gym, which I wasn’t planning to—red punch that stained, dead boys staring out at me from photographs in the trophy case—some of the new graduates would ask me for work. Or weed.
The principal had a white jutted jaw, a way of droning on. And in the middle of his speech, it began to snow.
The crowd murmured. The principal broke off midword. Whatever he had to say, he would never finish it. Some of the seniors stuck out their tongues or turned up their palms to catch the snow, like children.
Snow in June. It was thrilling for a second, before we thought about it. From her seat onstage with the choir, Lisbeth and I exchanged a glance. No spring again. No spring this year.
* * *
June passed. The gray sky deepened. Every morning I woke in my tiny house, telling myself I would not have to light a fire, not this morning, not this late, not in summer. But then I felt the ache from shivering all night. I felt the air, crisp as bones. I swung the quilt around my shoulders and crept down the ladder. In the dark I fed wood into the stove.
Through the narrow window, I could see the big farmhouse on the hill, sharper than ever since the trees had no leaves. I could almost imagine a vein of blue smoke above the roof. But no smoke would come from the farmhouse chimney now unless I lit it.
It was quiet on the farm, always, but I began to notice it more. The house and purple finches, nuthatches, cardinals, the birds that would come to the sill for breakfast crumbs—my mama knew all their names—where were they? Morning after morning I stood at the window and realized other things were gone. No woodpeckers thrummed in the trees or thudded their beaks against the house. No owls whooped like boys in the night. I still heard the coyotes, high and cold, that sweet-howl call and response that made my heart freeze, tight in my chest, both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
But I heard no peepers. Where were the frogs? The two ponds on the property looked low and stagnant. No ducks skimmed the water’s surface. Nothing came from the sky except cold rain. Then snow.
My livelihood, my very life, depended on summer, on warmth and sun. Lobo had left me in charge of the farm knowing I could handle it. I could water and rotate, I could keep the plants alive. I could keep my mouth shut and stick to the deal with the boy.
But in July, it didn’t get colder, it just kept on not getting warmer, not getting better.
It was strange to celebrate the Fourth without cookouts, Popsicles, and tank tops. I made vegetable soup to bring to Lisbeth’s house, and when the sky, which was perpetually dull and heavy like a fistful of dirty wool, darkened, her neighbors set off fireworks. Roman candles, bought across the border in West Virginia.
Then it snowed again.
I didn’t want to believe they could happen at the same time, fireworks and snow. The Roman candles dissipated, their sparks extinguished in the cold, wet air. Snow gathered, lacy as ash but mounting on sheds, on the roof of my truck parked in the alley between the houses and an old bar. A man poked his head out of the bar, looked at the sky, then stumbled back into the dark and pounding bass, throwing his drunken arms out for balance like an ice skater. Lisbeth’s neighbors were grilling. I heard sizzling as flakes struck the coals. This snow was going to stick.
Lisbeth was quiet. How much longer could we do this, anyway, sit around in lawn chairs in her folks’ backyard? People our age were signing leases. If I didn’t have the farm to manage, the crop to sell, maybe she and I could do that, get an apartment together in a city, Chillicothe or Marietta. We could take sandwiches to the river where the barges battened kayaks, and fishing lines, threaded with lead weights, hung from the trees, dangling in the water like a girl’s long hair.
Instead, here we were, watching the neighbors’ thermal underwear stiffen on a clothesline. More than ever, I felt trapped. By my family, by the plants, by Ohio.
“Should’a brought that in,” Lisbeth’s daddy said about the laundry, taking a pull on a cold lemonade.
* * *
In August, people in town, when I shopped for groceries and fertilizer and diatomaceous earth, had finally stopped saying, What a ridiculous year. What an unusual year. This is one for the record books. By August, it wasn’t funny anymore. The buds never unfolded. The flowers never came.
A letter came to everyone in the county. I opened it at the mailbox and trudged up the quarter-mile driveway back to the lower field. By the time I reached my tiny house, I had read the letter a few times.
In response to the unprecedented cold weather our nation is experiencing, and under the advisement of a committee of parents, educators, and administrators, the school board has voted to suspend school until October 1, at which time this situation may be reassessed. We will contact you with further updates.
The letter wasn’t a huge surprise. I remembered the high school didn’t turn on the heat until the end of October, and I doubted they could afford two extra months of heating, especially not knowing how cold it would get. The part of the letter that concerned me was the last line.
We encourage you to spend this time with your families.
My pocket shook. Lisbeth was calling.
I didn’t have reception in the driveway—most of the farm didn’t—but my tiny house sat on its own hill, which caught some weak signals from the tower in town. She didn’t bother with hello. “Did you get the letter?” she asked.
I set the rest of the mail on the shelf inside the door. “Yes.”
“Thoughts?”
I paused. “I don’t think you have to worry about those altos this year.”
Lisbeth fell silent.
“Come on,” I said. “It’ll be like a long vacation for you. We can hang out together so you won’t get bored. Why don’t you come over right now?”
“You know I can’t do that. I can’t come out there.”
“Come to Crossroads at least. Get your grease fix.”
She didn’t answer, and I glanced out the window by the woodstove. The metal roof of the farmhouse looked silver in a new freckling of snow. In its basement, I knew, the lights glowed warm and white, and the air smelled like a mossy jungle, heavy and spicy and wet. Now, the basement was the only place anything could grow.
I placed my hand above the top of the stove. It was ice-cold. “Lisbeth, I guess I should go. The fire’s out. I have to get more wood. In August.” I tried to laugh.