Broken Ground
THE TOES
Anything alive in Ink Hollow avoided the Ten Mile House. Slinking foxes traced a wide perimeter around the rotting homestead, as did their prey. Every year, the sunken roof found a deeper exhale, bending under the weight of a swollen world. Settlers had erected it when they swarmed the American heartland in unprecedented numbers and still it stood, hovering like a shadow over their progeny. Occasional smoke sidled out from the stone chimney, though the hearth remained cold.
A parched creek split the sprawling yard, but only minnows swam it; no one had seen crawdads and mudpuppies in decades. Across the sparse grass, castoffs climbed towards the Missouri sky, falling well short of it: splintered doors, a cracked playset, slashed tires, and a warped thresher broken down by rough hands and left to rust. They belonged in the town dump, but hadn’t made it that far. If the Ten Mile House had a grip on the local imagination, it wasn’t on account of the scenery.
At the other end of the cluttered yard, another house stood: newer, but paid less attention than a chicken coop. Stacks of chopped wood leaned against the cracked siding, piling up like regrets. Two women occupied opposite ends of the screened-in porch like they had been sentenced to it: Whitney and her grandmother, Rose.
The elder’s hands hid beneath a faded quilt, rubbing more holes into its thin skin. The younger shivered under medical scrubs and a gray sweater, huddling in an otherwise empty loveseat. She stared into the woods she had known all her life, their gaudy fall foliage survived by skeletal limbs. She didn’t hear her children playing in the kitchen: the last two left.
As golden hour ebbed, largely masked by the solemn hillside, the kettle rattled cold and hollow on the stove. The augur widened the young woman’s eyes, and stilled her grandmother. In their silence, everything outside grew.
Cash shivered as he parked in the empty lot of Franklin’s Market, furious winds wrapping the car in crisp, dead leaves. A couple years ago, he had called this bruised sedan an old Ford to get out of Dodge. Now he was back.
Ink Hollow hadn’t changed, not an inch. The neon sign on the corner was still burned out. Only tourists needed a sign for the town’s only market anyway. The unloved building fit right in on this block of condemned houses cursed to eternal vacancy. Purple martins swerved overhead, hunting for insects in the dying light.
Lainie turned down the sorrowful crooning piped into the car from her phone like an IV. She stared at him. “We better get in there. My dad’s already home from the hospital.” Her mother had asked them to pick up chicken and pineapple for dinner on their way into town.
Cash scanned the cars parked on the street like they harbored a fugitive, trying to suppress his craving for a cigarette, which he hadn’t smoked in over a year. Lainie reached over to thread her pale fingers through his dark, unruly hair, but he pulled away. “I’ll go in,” he muttered.
“I’ll come with you.”
He zipped up his hoodie until his knuckles brushed his chin. “I need a minute, alright?”
Lainie’s face softened. She asked if he was alright, but he had already launched himself into the cold. His keys rang as she caught them before the door slammed.