Two Feet Lower

Eleanor took the grain sack before Samuel had it fully clear of the wagon bed.

He braced the load against his hip, one hand white on the rail, and tried to wave her off with the cane. “I’m not made of glass.”

“You’re not made of much iron either,” she said, and he snorted at that.

The sack sagged against her forearms, sixty pounds of oats and cracked corn from the last thin purchase they’d managed. Her thumb rubbed the rough seam at her forefinger while she swung it to her shoulder and carried it toward the feed shed. The ground under the wagon was powder. Every step kicked up dust.

Behind the barn, the creek bed showed through the grass like a scar. Last week it had held a trickle. Today there was only a ribbon of damp stones and a few flies working the shadow under the bank. Her chestnut mare stamped by the empty hay rack, ears flat, then nosed the dust where water ought to have been.

Samuel leaned on the wagon side and rolled his bad shoulder once, jaw tight. “Well’s down another foot.”

“Two,” Eleanor said.

He looked at her, then at the cracked bucket hanging from the pump. Nobody needed to say what two feet meant when there were thirty households in the valley and a shipment promised by the government had still not shown up.

“Maybe the river road’s washed out,” he said.

“There hasn’t been water enough to wash anything.”

He huffed and started for the barn door, stopping to drag the cane through the dirt before he put weight on it again. Pride made him try to carry what his leg wouldn’t let him. It always had.

Eleanor stacked the sack beside the others and wiped her hands on her trousers. “I’m riding to Harbor Point in the morning.”

Samuel didn’t answer right off. He was staring at the creek bed now, at the last wet patch sinking into gray stones.

“You’ll get the same runaround,” he said.

“Maybe.” She lifted the empty bucket with two fingers and let it clang against the pump. “But I’m done waiting for the county to remember we’re alive.”

He turned then, slow and careful, like a wagon wheel with a bent hub. “You tell Whitmore the valley’s short?”

“I’ll tell him the date on the manifest.”

That made him go still.

A wind came up the creek, dry as flour. It carried dust under the barn door and made the hay ropes rattle. Samuel’s mouth worked once, but no words came. He just reached for the wagon rail, then let his hand drop.

Eleanor looked once more at the empty creek bed, at the mare stamping over bare dirt.

“If that shipment doesn’t come,” she said, “we won’t make the month.”