Page 103 of The Auction
“Need a hand with anything?” Jackson offered.
Don’t suppose you’re handing out new livelihoods?
“Both our trucks washed up into a muddy ditch. Would love to push them back out and check out the damage.”
Mr. Talley and Jackson didn’t say much after that. They just followed Creed out to where the trucks were covered in mud. And apparently, they were way stronger than me because it didn’t take them but a few tries of pushing and rocking to get both trucks out of the mud and back up on the gravel.
Neither started, but Creed would know what to do about that.
“Can I fix you both some lunch as a thank you?” I offered, as they were cleaning up by the hose attached to the house. Power wasn’t on yet. When I called on the last few bars of battery on Creed’s phone, the electric company said they’d have power back by midafternoon. But I could at least make them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I hadn’t found my phone. When I tried to call it from Creed’s there had been no ring tone.
Forget the water it had been dropped into, the moving sludge of mud and dirt could have swallowed it up by a couple of feet. I tried to take comfort in the fact that maybe two hundred years from now someone would find that phone as part of some archeological dig.
“No, we’re good, Juliette.” Mr. Talley said. “We lucked out and the herd was on high enough ground to keep themout of harm’s way, so we’re offering help to everyone else. Want to stop at a few more farms before we head home.”
The Lucketts and the Myersbergs would be the two closest.
“And the horses?” Creed asked, who was also now spraying the mud off his boots and hands.
“All good,” Mr. Talley told him.
There was a strange sense of relief that washed over Creed, who must care about horses in general more than I realized.
“I know you haven’t spent a lifetime farming, Creed,” Mr. Talley said, clapping Creed on the shoulder, even though he had to reach up to do it, “but you’ll see. This is just part of it sometimes. And it always comes back.”
Creed nodded and I thought I would pay all the saved money in my box of cash underneath the floorboards in my bedroom to know what he was thinking.
The Talleys left, and not an hour later, the power did come back on.
I heated us up some soup I’d made the other day and the silence between us lingered.
After lunch we hauled out the downstairs rugs onto the front porch. Just the woven one from Creed’s bedroom and the wool one from the living room. Together, we draped them over the banister around the porch, but we both took a step back.
Nothing like the smell of old, wet wool.
“That’s going into the trash,” Creed said.
“Sure, but we can’t afford a new one,” I told him.
He nodded. “I’d rather make do with warm socks than smell that. We can afford those.”
The good news was, there wasn’t much damage inside the house beyond the rugs. While the floor had takenon water, it had drained pretty quickly and was drying out. Only the rugs and the feet of the furniture had gotten wet.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Creed said, pushing the bowl of soup away from him.
And it felt like it was a super big admission coming from him. This was a man, I thought, who wasn’t often without a plan of attack.
In my mind, I got up from where I was sitting across from him, pulled back his arm, and sat on his generous thigh. I hooked an arm around his beefy neck and told him we’d find a way to get through this together. Like any other married couple.
Except, we weren’t like any other married couple.
“You want to hear it?” I asked. “The truth. All of it?”
He nodded once.
I took a breath because I knew what saying all this out loud could mean. Back when we’d first gotten married and I’d been plotting about taking out the crops myself, this was exactly the scenario I’d dreamed up.
