Strange Seed Read Online Free

countered, his enthusiasm still strong despite her remark. “But that doesn’t make it impossible, does it? No. It doesn’t. It simply makes it…difficult.”
    “You aren’t a farmer, Paul. You’re kidding yourself.”
    “Maybe not. I’ve taken some agriculture courses and such. I have a working technical knowledge of the whole thing, though it won’t really be commercial farming, of course. Just enough for us to live on, maybe a little more. And I could always get a part-time job in town, I don’t know. But you may be right. Maybe, at heart, I’m a New Yorker and nothing more. But, dammit, I’m going to find out for myself. It’s a move I’ve wanted to make for a long, long time, Rachel.”
    After a week of what Paul called discussion, and Rachel called argument, plans for the move from New York City to the farm were underway.
    Rachel set the box of matches on top of the stove, went over and peered out the kitchen’s small black window.
    Well, she thought after her eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, it was all rather pleasant, wasn’t it? Something like Central Park. Though, of course, a great deal larger. Larger, and far more colorful, and obviously   wilder. Much wilder.
    She reconsidered. There was, she sensed, a kind of order and symmetry here. It was difficult to pinpoint, almost subliminal, but present nonetheless. A curious thing.
    She frowned. Take me back , she thought. Paul come home and take me back to what I know.
    She realized—though she would not have admitted it—that the words formed a very gentle, unimpassioned plea. That she was vulnerable.
    This place, the land around the farmhouse, was moist with life. Life had been allowed to run rampant, unchecked, and it had sought its own level. There was a certain frantic harmony to it, understandably discomforting, she reasoned, to a person like herself whose only previous acquaintance with harmony had been at Carnegie Hall, at the Metropolitan Opera, and in poetry. But those were imitations. The harmony of fields and forest and color had been their model. But, understanding this—albeit in a vague, oblique way—didn’t make it any less discomforting. The frantic harmony she sensed here—had sensed, she knew, from her first moment at the house—was at odds with what she’d grown accustomed to.
    She fingered the top buttons of her blouse. Yes—she smiled—they were fastened.
    She froze. Those were footfalls, she realized, on the steep and dry-rotted back steps.
    *****
    Henry Lumas hoped that Rachel would react differently than the Newman woman had. “No, no,” the woman had repeated over and over again—either out of anguish or an unlikely embarrassment, Lumas had not been sure—and clutching stupidly at her bosom all the while, as if protecting it or denying it. A minute later, Lumas had found himself standing before a closed and locked door.
    Well, he considered, he came bearing the gift of firewood this time, and an offer of his services as a carpenter. How could the young woman refuse him?
    He studied the house. From this distance, there was little evidence of the violence it had sustained. It was a small house, some would have called it quaint. The aged green-shingled walls and gray-stone roof blended nicely with the surrounding land. Indeed, Lumas remembered, near sunset on certain nights—especially when the house was empty, as it had been for two years—it became invisible, as if the earth had taken it back into herself. It was only when you drew very close to it, day or night, that the illusion of oneness with the earth faded. People had built it and lived in it. The rough, yard-wide area between the bottom of the crude back steps and the two wooden poles twenty feet away was a place where nothing grew, not even the heartiest weeds—several generations of women had hung their just-washed clothes between those poles. And there were narrow spaces along the cobblestone cellar wall where cementing material seemed not quite as