Parade of Homes

The real estate agent in Iowa didn't farm, her husband didn't, and she was only passingly knowledgeable. She'd had the place listed for three months. The owners were growing soybeans on the land, a roly-poly tract cut from trees. Kind of a rolling part of the state in general. No irrigation, she told Amy, but a stream cut through the middle—a creek, she said, pronouncing it crick, like in the neck—and a four-acre pond stocked with fish. Trout, she thought. A tornado took the old house, a farmhouse from the '20s. They rebuilt with a fully finished basement. Great for living, a family, and great for waiting out storms. Survival. That's a risk in Iowa, she said. The sky will open and whisk you right away. Made Paul think of Dorothy, Oz. He looked at Amy and mouthed, begged, for her to get off the phone.

"Oh, honey," she told the agent. "We're in Texas. Tornado Alley. If it's done it, we've seen it."

Amy asked about crop production. She wanted to know about soil types, always heard good things about those prairie soils up north, but the agent was at a loss again. They almost could hear her shrug through the phone. There were a lot of farmers in the area, a grain elevator right in town, and they usually saw enough rain in the summer to keep things green. Their yard, she said, stayed immaculate, anyway. The agent knew more about the shopping in Des Moines, just an hour away, the churches and schools in town. Good preachers and a lot of fine teachers. Her sister was a teacher, fourth grade. Amy taught high school, but she didn't mention that.

"They're really wonderful," the agent said, "doing a great job. High test scores."

"That won't affect us," Amy said. "Our son Michael's gone now."

"Oh, empty nest. That's so exciting. But you ought to be heading south."

Amy thanked her for her time and finally, mercifully, ended the call. She looked at Paul. He stood, paced back and forth.

"Might be nice up there," she said. "People think corn, they think Iowa. Fits the price."

"It's a trash farm." Paul had seen the pictures she pulled up. The description alone was all he needed. Good land sat out in the open, wasn't hidden in the woods. And it was all beside the point. "Listen."

"I know. I know."

"We're not going up there. We're not leaving," he said. "We're right here."

"I know."

She doesn't know, Paul thought. But he didn't say so. In the last month or two it had become a hobby for her. She searched the Internet for real estate all across America. She discovered Sikeston, Missouri, the Bootheel. Farming was much the same as Texas, but it rained. Land was twice the price an acre. In Rayville, Louisiana, it was cheaper, and farmers irrigated by rows. They gently graded the earth from one side of a field to the other, planted, and channeled water downhill between the plants. Arkansas, outside Memphis, where the soil was clay and they grew the cotton Johnny Cash sang about. She talked to an agent in the Florida Panhandle who was clearing three-thousand acres in pine for thirty years. Penciled out to a hell of a deal. The area was just opening up. They could be the first big farm in the county.

"We're not leaving," Paul said again. "There's nowhere to go."

"Beg to differ."

Amy got back on her computer, searched and explored. He took his keys from the hook by the door and left her to it. He drove his pickup out of Dumas, highway east, beneath a gray, cold overcast. March, snow threatening again. He saw a couple tractors out, laying down fertilizer ahead of planting. Paul preferred getting it in in the fall, before first freeze. Run a strip-till rig to put it in rows. Sit through winter. Plant just off it come spring. Roots didn't have...