from The Grinding Season

by Natalie Baszile

Was it Benjamin Franklin or Dwight D. Eisenhower who said farming looked easy when your plow was a pencil and you were a thousand miles away from a cornfield? Whoever said it, Franklin or Eisenhower, and whether they were talking about corn or cane, it didn’t really matter—Wheatie was about to find out for herself.

The sun was sliding into the corner of her rearview mirror, the sky softening as the day’s light drained away, and Wheatie’s mind raced with thoughts of land—wide-open swatches of tilled earth, the musky fragrance of damp soil, the gritty feel of dirt under her nails. She loosened her grip on the wheel, flexed her fingers, then tried the radio again, scrolling through garbled country western stations and the melodic drone of Native American chanting. At the far end of the dial, she caught the echo of an announcer’s voice between the bands of static, then a song she thought she knew, teased the dial to the right and back again, straining to hear. The Royal Coach drifted toward the yellow dividing line, which cut and shifted through the waves of rising heat. When Wheatie glanced up from the radio, she fixed on the glint of light thrown by oncoming cars, mesmerized, until the Doppler honk reminded her that she’d coasted over the line. A hard yank on the wheel and she steered the Royal Coach back into her lane, turned the radio off, and took a breath. She was deep in the Mojave, with half a desert and four states to go before she reached the land she was thinking of. Another move like that, another close call, and she could forget about all of it.

“Come on, now. Keep it together,” Wheatie said with a firm slap to her cheek, then pressed her left hand against the wheel and stared at it. Her skin, usually dark and smooth, looked ashen. Her joints ached. She twisted the wedding ring from her finger and dropped it into the empty ashtray between the seats.

Across from her, Cleo slept in the passenger seat. Wheatie was reminded again of how little they favored, how much Cleo looked like her father. She had Davis’s face, slightly square, his same small nose and full mouth, his same toasted cinnamon complexion. She lay sideways, her head against the door, her slender legs and bare feet tucked beneath her. Perspiration dampened the side of her face and neck. And though she was ten, soon to be eleven, Cleo still looked like a baby as she slept: her eyes barely closed, her lips slightly parted, her head tilted back at precisely the same angle it used to be when she fell asleep on Wheatie’s shoulder. Wheatie leaned over and rested her hand on Cleo’s leg, filled with the sudden need to smell and touch her. She kept her hand there, even as Cleo stirred, frowned, opened her eyes.

“It’s hot,” Cleo said, stretching. She swabbed her neck with the hem of her blouse, lifted her head to the window.

Wheatie checked her watch, held her hand up to the vent and felt the stream of hot air against her fingers. The air conditioner had held through Indio, thank God, but failed as they skirted the southern edge of Joshua Tree. She reached into the back seat and felt for the cooler, rolled back the lid, and dipped her fingers into the half-inch of water at the bottom. Even that was warm.

“We’ll stop for something cold,” she said, patting Cleo’s leg. “The first place we see.”

With a magician’s grace, Cleo slipped from beneath the shoulder harness and pressed her face against the glass. “There’s nothing out there,” she said. “We don’t even know where we are.”

“Sure we do,” Wheatie said, determined to sound upbeat, and fished the map out of the glove compartment. She unfolded it, spread it across Cleo’s lap. “Here,” she said, pointing to the red vein of highway. “You can be our guide.”

And for a moment, Cleo actually seemed interested in marking their progress. She sat up, drew the map closer, crossed her legs Indian style in the seat. She traced the red line with her finger. But then she looked up from the map and stared though the windshield again. “I want to go home,” she said and began folding the map’s bottom corner—Southern California, Baja, and the Pacific Ocean disappearing into crisp accordion pleats.

Wheatie tightened her grip on the wheel. “Honestly, Cleo. We’ve been through this.”

“But I still don’t understand why we’re—”

“I said, I’m not talking about this anymore,” Wheatie said.

“Yes,” Cleo said, balling the map’s corner in her fist, “but you haven’t even—”

“My God,” Wheatie interrupted. “What more can I tell you? The decision is made.” Arizona, New Mexico, and the western edge of Texas vanished into the map’s creases. Wheatie reached over, brushed Cleo’s hand from the wrecked edge of the map. “I’m going to need that, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine,” Cleo said, and shoved the map off of her lap, let it drift into the well beneath her feet.

Wheatie glanced down to where the map lay—the white, frayed patches where the ink had worn away, the hairline tear along the lower edge that was now gradually creeping up the fold, steadily parting one section of the country from the other. Wheatie forced herself to look through her window. Land, just think of the land.

Out there, whipping past almost faster than she could take it all in, was the endless desert, brutal in its severity and yet beautiful somehow. To the east, ahead of her, night had arrived in a cloak of slate gray, making land and sky indistinguishable. But along the western horizon, aglow in her side mirror, the last bit of daylight remained. Bands of purple and pink sky, thin as pulled taffy, hung in layers above the pale desert floor. Tufts of sagebrush sprouted from fissures in the earth. The desert wasn’t exactly Wheatie’s idea of paradise, but she could see why people were drawn to it, why they’d want to live out their days surrounded by rocks the size of refrigerators, in a landscape that looked almost lunar in the receding light. It had something to do with breathing, being able to take in all the fresh air your lungs would allow, knowing that you could shout out and your voice would echo for miles. It had something to do with letting your eyes roam, being able to see as far as your eye could travel. And in the end, it didn’t really matter whether it was mountain or valley, desert or forest or a lonely stretch of beach. It didn’t matter whether you were trekking over rocky soil too parched to support life or sowing seeds in earth so moist and fertile it was like planting in a woman’s womb. Land, any land, meant possibility. That’s what counted.

Lightning flashed on the horizon and Wheatie stiffened. She shivered at the thought. A hard rain falling in sheets would glaze the windshield, drum on the hood, slicken the highway. She considered the Royal Coach and the four balding tires beneath them, the places where the tread showed through, and almost said a little prayer. Please God, deliver us from this desert. Just let us cross to the other side of this terrifying stretch of dry land and I’ll do anything you ask. But before she let herself whisper a word she stopped. If God was listening, He’d look at the long list of favors he’d already granted and shake His head. He’d remind her of the plea she’d made just a few weeks ago—please God, just let me get this land, let the deal go through—and say that with that last request, she’d reached her quota. This time, He’d tell her, she was on her own.

Wheatie turned to Cleo, who’d been sitting so quietly, so still and sphinxlike that she’d almost forgotten she was there. “I’m not doing this to torture you, you know. I think this can work. It’s a great opportunity for both of us.”

“But I don’t want to live on a farm.” Cleo said without turning.

“It’s not a farm, not yet anyway. Right now it’s just land.”

“I don’t want to live on just land. I want to live in a house, in a city, with sidewalks and a swimming pool.”

“We never had a pool,” Wheatie teased and poked Cleo in her side.

Cleo slumped in her seat and folded her arms. “Stop joking. It’s not funny. You know what I mean.”

“O.K., I take it back,” Wheatie said. “But just think, Cleo. Think of how good it’ll feel to get up in the morning and smell the fresh, country air. Think of how great it’ll be to eat food that we pulled right out of the ground. Food we’ve grown with our own hands, on very our own land. Just think—” as she spoke, Wheatie felt her heart quickening. She thought that her voice sounded higher, surprisingly bright.

“I just want to go home,” Cleo said.

“You’ll feel better when the house is built.”

“I liked our old house.”

“You’ll have a bigger room in the new one,” Wheatie countered. “Plenty of wall space for your drawings. Maybe even a studio in the garage.” She emphasized the word studio and winked at Cleo, hoping the promise of her own work space would appease, maybe even excite her. The idea of giving Cleo a special place of her own had occurred to Wheatie days before, but she’d held off saying anything, deciding to wait until the moment seemed right. Now, suddenly, seemed like a good time. But Cleo just sat there, acting as though she hadn’t heard a word, or worse, acting as though what she’d heard was a joke, and Wheatie began to wish she’d held on to the surprise. But instead of feeling sorry, instead of beating herself up for speaking too soon, she decided to congratulate herself for what she’d done right.

It was still hard to believe she’d done it, that she’d pulled the deal together, that she’d actually purchased the land. Two years ago, when her father, Earnest, died, he’d left her three hundred acres of fallow cane land. Since then, though she could barely afford the extra expense, Wheatie had paid the annual property taxes, but otherwise she hadn’t given the land too much thought. Her life, she told herself, was in Los Angeles.

Then, three months ago, a Mr. Simoneaux called. He said he owned the cane fields adjacent to hers and that he planned to put his land on the market. Said he was probably leaving money on the table, but he’d known her father, and thought Earnest was a good man. Figured he’d give Earnest’s only daughter a chance to get in on a good deal. Thought he’d give her first crack.

How much land are we talking about? Wheatie had asked.

Five hundred acres. You figure land goes for about $1,270 per acre. That’s a little over $600,000. It’s good land, I promise you. There’s two hundred acres of plant cane, and another three hundred of first and second-year stubble. There’s another 20 of woods that I’ll practically give you. Good for hunting ducks and whitetail deer since the WRP project began. The gravel road needs a little bit of work, but that’s easy enough to fix. Hell, you can lease it out if you don’t have a use for it right away. It’s up to you. Combined with what your daddy left you, you’d have a pretty decent spread. Folks live pretty well down here. You can build a nice home for next to nothing....