Broken Ground Read Online Free Page A

Darwin thought seven days wasn’t all it took to make the world, and Charlie wondered what I thought about that. I was thinking on what I thought, and Charlie was waiting for my answer, when snow began to fall like manna from the sky. “Look!” Charlie said. And we raised our mittened hands like hallelujah, and the white flakes dusted the wool. Charlie’s hands were big. Mine were small. Charlie’s mittens were blue. Mine were red. I remember this. We gazed at our mittened hands, at the crystals sparkling against the wool, each as unique as a human soul, shining fiercely, swiftly extinguished. “It’s a miracle,” I said, and Charlie said yes. A miracle. Our first snow together, a miracle we shared, and we promised each other we’d share many more.
    Our first snow together was when Charlie and I fell in love, I realize as I wash his clothes all through the dark, smoky night. I wash holes into the knees of his dungarees and bigger holes into the heels of his socks. I wash the cuffs and collars of his shirts to shreds. I wash my hands raw. I wash my hands bloody.
    The day Charlie and I fell in love. The day of the one and only miracle in my life.

TWO
    M other’s scuffed brown lace-ups appear in my field of vision. “It’s time, Ruth.”
    I sit on the floor in the spot where our bed used to be an island, but now I am lost at sea. The bed is gone, given to someone who needs a bed big enough for two. The room is empty. Our house is empty, and what’s left of my life.
    My parents and Charlie’s mother, Margaret, made the decisions about what to sell or give away. I saw them do so as if from a great distance while the black fog encroached from where it lurked at the corners of my eyes, the back of my mind, the outer limits of my heart that beats dully on and on. I heard the three of them talking, also as if from a great distance. Their voices rose and fell, pitched high and low with varying emotion, but their words remained indecipherable, distorted, like a gramophone played at the wrong speed.
    Days have passed since the blowout, possibly weeks—don’t know, don’t care—and all this endless, senseless time, I’ve been waiting for the black fog to cover me completely. I’ve been waiting to vanish, as Charlie did. Charlie was incinerated, Margaret told me, weeping as I have yet to weep. Tears fail me. Dry-eyed, I watched Margaret’s mouth move. “The flames consumed him.”
    Let the black fog consume me.
    Mother’s thin hand settles on my shoulder. She gives me a shake. “Your daddy has a meeting.”
    I slide down the length of her words into the back room off the sanctuary where Daddy and the other leaders of the Holy Church of the Redeemed hold their meetings. There is the cone of yellow light cast by the lamp that hangs over the table, and there are the men who keep the Covenant—Daddy and the others—heads thrust forward, shirtsleeves rolled up, fingers pointing.
    â€œOh, for heaven’s sake!” Mother’s voice shrills to anxious. “Margaret left some time ago. She wanted to reach Alba before dusk. At this rate, we’ll arrive tomorrow. He’ll miss his meeting, Ruth, and you know we don’t want that.”
    With a strength that surprises me (Mother’s strength always surprises me), she grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. Out the empty bedroom, down the empty hallway, past the empty kitchen and the empty front room, and across the threshold over which Charlie carried me, Mother drags me. Back to before, she drags me. Back to Alba.
    Shock of sunlight. Then someone says my name. “Mrs. Ruth.”
    For the first time since the blowout, a voice I want to hear. I wrench my arm from Mother’s grasp and turn to Edna Faye.
    She stands beneath the sagging laundry line, staring at me. O, her mouth makes, and her gray eyes, big as they’ve ever been, brim with dismay. And there’s