Three months earlier.

Samuel Meller was nine, but he felt as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, if not the world, at least the state of Ohio. More and more, his father spoke to him about the future of their farm, and how Samuel ought to be more serious in his duties.

“I’m getting on in age, Samuel. I need you to understand that.”

“I understand.”

“It doesn’t seem that way to me, or your mother.”

Samuel’s mother looked up from her knitting in the corner, a look of irritation on her face that she had been brought into the quarrel. It was a cold night, unusually so for March, and there was a fire in the grate, though it was mostly embers as bedtime approached for the whole house. Farmhouses hit the hay early, which was always good for Samuel, as he liked the solitude of the house when his parents were asleep.

“I don’t understand. I do everything you ask.”

“You hate it. You get through them as quick as you can so you can go pretend to be pastoral, or whatever it is you do.”

“What difference does it make what I do with my own time?”

“Hell of a lot of difference to me. Takes commitment to run a farm. Can’t have your head be somewhere else when the hard years strike and it’d be easier to cut and run.”

“Why not cut and run then?”

Samuel’s mother drew in a sharp breath; her needles ceased clicking. The fire crackled ominously behind Tom Meller’s face. It was a face that had been hardened by years of labor under the sun. It did not often smile, and was perfunctory even when it did.

“Do you mean to deliberately shame me?”

“Of course not, but if it’s easier to sell then why not sell?”

Samuel would not understand men like his father for many more years, and he would eventually come to regret this exchange, but his core philosophy remained the same. He could not understand his father’s stubborn insistence on being a farmer. There were so many things a man could be, why not try on something new for size?

“Your grandfather died on this land. Your sister died on this land before she was old enough to crawl. Your mother and I have poured our own blood into this soil. This is Meller ground. Do you understand that, boy? Our blood has nourished this ground for generations, and you offer it up for nothing more than something easy? You shame me, and you shame your mother. You may be only nine, but you’re old enough to know better than this.”

Tom Meller turned away just then, and tended to the fire, though it needed no tending. Samuel could not see the tears on his father’s face, running down the hardened lines, but his mother’s were there in plain sight, easy enough to spot even in the flickering light of the fire.

Samuel mounted the stairs his grandfather had sawn with his own hands with a quietude unusual for a fourteen year old boy. He soberly made his way to his corner bedroom with the window that overlooked the south wood of the farmland. It was in those woods that Samuel first saw a creature die. His father had shot the animal, and his mother had made it into meals for many weeks. His father had not allowed him to look away as he cut the animal’s throat. The blood pooled and soaked into the ground while the young boy looked on, horrified and uncertain why such a ritual was necessary to “make him a man.” It was only another example of a disconnect between Tom and Samuel Meller that would only grow as the years went on.

Samuel did not leave home that night, but it was the first time that he gave it serious thought. Staring longingly at the homeless and the vagrants had been a child’s imaginings. For the first time, Samuel began to think of leaving home as a concrete matter, a possibility that might become a reality. He looked out at those woods that night, those woods he knew so well, and he imagined an escape route. A mile deep was an abandoned set of tracks, they’d not been used since before the Civil War, but his grandfather, when Samuel was just a boy of five, had told him the tracks still lead to a station somewhere.

“That’s the thing about tracks,” the old man had said. “They always lead somewhere.”

The old man had died only a year later, never living long enough to realize just how much he had affected his grandson’s life. For much of his young life, Samuel’s imagined escapes had always involved following the train tracks all the way past the Meller property line and down to somewhere better, bigger, wilder.

Samuel’s ninth year turned out to be a very bad year for most people. The markets crashed and there were more vagrants than ever before coming through town, lounging at store fronts, and congregating wherever it was that they could find space to sleep and be safe from the rain. There were rumors that a whole mess of them had camped out in the south woods on the Meller property.

“Sure about that, Del?” Tom Meller had said while his son stood quietly behind him.

“Just telling you what I hear, Tom.”

“Christ Jesus.”

Young Samuel immediately thought of his view of the woods from his window. He imagined it as it was when the sun was going down behind the trees. At that time of day, any creature that stood at the treeline was seen in a defining silhouette. Samuel imagined masses of men standing at the treeline, looking longingly up at his window, his warm bed, and his free standing home.

“Thanks for the heads up, Del.”

There was an argument between Samuel’s parents that night.

“He’s just a boy, Tom.”

“Blynne, he’s nearly a man. You want him to still be a boy, but that doesn’t mean he is.”

“You don’t need him to go with you.”

“No I don’t. But he needs to come with me. He needs to learn what it is to deal with a problem like an adult.”

Samuel found himself walking into the south wood with his father the following morning just after sunrise, as if they were going on a hunting trip. In a way, they were. Tom Meller had his shotgun over his shoulder with some extra shells in his bird pockets. They walked in silence at first, only the sound of their boots on the crinkling leaves and needles of the forest floor greeted them. It was too early yet for even the earliest of birds. It was not until they had been walking for an hour or more, miles into the woods, that they heard the first calls.

“Did I ever tell you how this land came into the family, Samuel?”

“No, dad.”

“It was a long time ago, and things were different.”

Your great grandfather was playing cards with his neighbors on the very covered porch on which I nap on Sunday afternoons. At the time, it wasn’t Meller land. It was owned by a negro by the name of Lancaster. Your grandfather was having a hell of a down day, nearly losing everything he had, and I don’t just mean what he showed up with that day. He had lost just about everything he and his wife had ever owned. The later into the night they played, the worse the situation became for your grandfather. He saw he and his wife living on the street, begging for food or fare on a train that might take them somewhere else. As the evening faded into night, the negro who owned the land suggested that they call it a night, that they all go to bed.

“No, I don’t think so,” another man said, a friend of your grandfather’s. “I think we ought to keep playing. We ain’t quite finished yet.”

This wasn’t a request, son. You understand me? Samuel understood. The men kept playing and your grandfather began to win. He began to win every hand and the negro man began to lose every hand. Soon enough, the tables had turned and it was your grandfather who had everything, and the negro had lost everything, including his farm of more than a hundred acres on which we walk.

“Great grandpa stole this farm?”

“Yes he did.”

“Are the...the other man’s family still around?”

“He left town pretty quickly. He was liable to get lynched otherwise.”

“Shouldn’t we give the farm back then?”

“Of course we should, but who’d we give it to? There’s no one come to claim it.”

“Then why tell me that story?”

“I thought you ought to know, Samuel. That’s all. I thought you ought to know.”

Father and son walked deep into the south woods on the Meller land, making their way towards where the rumor mill suggested the hard luck vagrants were camping out. Samuel followed his father unquestioningly, although he knew without a doubt a better, faster way to get to where they were going. It was what counted as a valley on the relatively flat Meller land. It was at the bottom of a hill, and had once been a dumping ground for railroad junk. There were rail ties and other bits of twisted iron lying about, rusted to nought by years of exposure, but with no one willing to expend the effort to rid the woods of their presence. At the bottom of this hill among the railroad refuse was a group of ten or so ragged-looking men. A few smoked home-rolled cigarettes, some slept with their hats over their faces, still others rooted around in the dirt with sticks, unable to remain still for too long. Slowly, their tired, worn faces turned up to see Samuel and his father standing in their midst. The shotgun remained on Tom’s shoulder, but its presence was felt. Some of the men stood up or pushed themselves up to sitting positions against their tree trunks. One man spit on the ground and chewed on a piece of dead sawgrass. Tom Meller spoke his piece with a dignity that aroused pride in Samuel’s heart. Samuel was not often moved to feel anything towards his father, but this was a rare occasion where Tom showed himself to be more than just a hardened farmer, worn thin by years of labor and personal loss.

“Tom Meller’s my name, and this is my son Samuel. This is my property you’re on here.”

A few men made as if to scurry, but Tom put his hand up to stop them.

“I’m not here to ask you to leave or to run you off. I’m here to offer you an opportunity. This land you're on isn’t just woods. I’ve a farm that’s doing well at the moment. In a few months time it’ll be detasseling season and I’ll need as much help as I can get. In the meantime, I can offer you my old barn as a roof over your head. It doesn’t house any animals since three years past when I built the new barn, but it still smells like hell. There’s holes in the roof and mud puddles tend to form in the middle. But there’s lofts and I can provide hay and some blankets. Anyone here who wants to take me up on it will be welcome, provided he doesn’t cause any trouble. I reckon you can find your own way. That’s about all I’ve come to say. Come on, Samuel.”

Tom lead his son by the hand back up the hill, and towards their home. Samuel was dying to ask more questions about the provenance of their farm, but it was clear that topic was finished for the day. It would be many years before Samuel was able to go down that path again.