Republic of Dirt Read Online Free

is the best-looking mule I ever saw. Could probably get a fortune for him if I put him on the open market. But I’m willing to let you take him for a season. See how he works out for you. Then, if you like him, we can get a payment schedule going.”
    “How much did
you
pay for him?” Eustace asked Werner, taking off his ball cap and running a hand over his curly hair.
    “That’s not important,” said Werner. “What’s important is that Prudence should be given the support she needs to farm the way she’s always wanted to.”
    Eustace looked at me. “I would strongly advise against doing this right now,” he said.
    I ignored him.

Seth
    I was talking to the girl in the “I ♥ Pugs” T-shirt at the coffee stand (who turned out not to want my number, even though I told her I also love pugs, which I don’t, because they look fucked up), so I wasn’t around when the deal was struck. I was left thinking the big excitement of the week would be the fact that Prudence nearly killed some poor guy with her hot sauce and the poor impression we left on Sara’s parents, but Prudence had another trick up her sleeve. Mule up her dress? I can’t decide which cliché to use. Of all the livestock that could have been foisted on us, we ended up with an animal that isn’t even a single species! Correct me if I’m wrong, but a mule is one of those degenerate concoctions: half horse, half donkey. It can’t have sex or at least it can’t have babies. I don’t know what all it can’t do, but I know it’s a lot.
    Prudence is open-minded to a fault. Seriously. There are things that shouldn’t be: apples that are half pears, raspberries that are half blackberries, and mules.
    About three days after the last farmers’ market of the year, forever known as the Great Hot Sauce Debacle, Sara and I were weedingthe front beds and I was posting sarcastic comments to accompany pictures of vegetables on Instagram when a clip-clopping noise on the road caught my attention. I looked over at the road and there came Prudence leading a giant red mule with an abundance of spots on its ass. They reached our driveway and the mule came to a dead stop. Prudence started hauling on its leash for all she was worth. The mule, obviously smarter than it looked, was having none of it. My guess is that it was using its superior animal instincts to detect the incompetence rising off this place like mist off a moor.
    That was the moment the Morrisey kid chose to set a new speed record on his dirt bike. He isn’t even supposed to take it on the road because he has no license. He had the thing revved so high it looked and sounded like the space shuttle
Challenger
seconds before detonation.
    Well, that mule knew a prime excuse for a conniption fit when it saw one. It reared up. Looked fairly magnificent, actually, for a spotted red mule. When it came down, it yanked the leash out of Prudence’s hands and galloped away like a cross between Secretariat and Usain Bolt. Fast. What I’m trying to say is the mule was much faster than you would imagine.
    Thanks to dumb luck, it didn’t head back the way they’d come. Instead it pirouetted and did the fifty-yard dash across the street into my mother’s yard. The luck was mitigated by the fact that my mother’s place is probably the single most hazardous half-acre in all of Cedar, thanks to her habit of using the property to store half-finished craft projects and everything we’ve ever owned that has either broken or gone out of fashion.
    The mule jumped three pieces of decaying twig furniture, narrowly avoided crashing into my gone-and-nearly-forgotten oldman’s derelict Firebird, cleared by three feet an old sectional my mom uses to entertain outside when the three-piece
indoor
living room furniture gets too confining, darted around an old washer-dryer set, before crashing directly into and
through
the trampoline that my mom picked up years ago from a friend who works at the dump. The trampoline was part of