The Farm

Tom woke at six. The alarm did not go off because he had taken the batteries out of it three weeks ago. He did not need an alarm. He had been waking at six for twenty years, since the factory, since before the factory, since he was a boy in Ohio learning to get up before the sun.

He sat on the edge of the bed and put his feet on the floor. The floor was cold. It was always cold in the morning. The house was old and poorly insulated and the windows did not seal properly and the winter got in through the cracks and stayed until April.

He walked to the kitchen and poured coffee into a mug. The coffee was instant. He had been meaning to buy real coffee but kept forgetting. The kitchen was small—two rooms, really, if you counted the hallway. A table, two chairs, a stove, a refrigerator that worked most of the time.

He drank the coffee standing up. He looked out the window. The field was white with snow. It had been white with snow for three weeks. It would probably be white with snow for three more weeks. Then it would be brown with mud for two weeks. Then it would be green with something—grass, maybe, or weeds, or the potatoes he had not planted yet.

He finished the coffee. He washed the mug. He dried it and put it in the cupboard. He put on his coat and went outside.

The chicken coop was to the left of the house. He opened the door and counted the chickens. Three. They had been four, but one had died in the first snow. He had found it in the morning, frozen stiff, and he had buried it behind the shed. He had not told anybody about it. There was nobody to tell.

He scattered feed. The chickens pecked at the ground, their breath visible in the cold air. One of them was missing a toe. Another was missing half a comb. They were not pretty chickens, but they laid eggs, and that was what he needed them for.

He walked to the fence line. The fence was wooden—post and rail, six posts, three rails. Two of the posts were rotting. He would need to replace them in the spring. Or not. If he did not replace them, the fence would fall down. If the fence fell down, the chickens would get out. If the chickens got out, they would die. He had not decided if he cared.

He walked back to the house. Dave was coming. He could tell by the truck—he heard it before he saw it, the sound of an old Ford engine struggling up the gravel road. Dave lived two miles down the road, the only other person for five miles in any direction. Dave was sixty, maybe sixty-five. Tom could not tell. Dave looked sixty and acted fifty and acted sixty at the same time, which made it impossible to tell.

Dave pulled into the driveway. He got out of the truck wearing a camouflage jacket and a baseball cap and boots that had been waterproof once and were not anymore.

"Morning," Dave said.

"Morning."

"Your fence look bad this year."

"Yeah. Two posts are going."

"Need help replacing them?"

"Maybe later."

Dave nodded. He looked at the house, the field, the chicken coop. He looked at Tom. "You ever think about planting potatoes?"

"Maybe."

"Potatoes are easy. You just dig a hole, put a piece of potato in it, cover it up, and wait. That's it. That's all potatoes need. Someone and a hole and time."

"Yeah."

Dave stood in the driveway for a minute. He was waiting for Tom to say something else, but Tom did not have anything else to say. They had had this conversation before—about potatoes, about fences, about weather, about nothing—and it had gone exactly like this every time.

"Well," Dave said. "I'll see you around."

"See you."

Dave got back in his truck and drove away. Tom watched him go. Then he went back inside and sat at the table and drank his second cup of coffee and thought about nothing.

His wife had left two years ago. Her name had been Linda. She had not left him for another man. She had left him because she could not do rural anymore. She had grown up in Cleveland—city girl, buses and stores and restaurants and people everywhere. She had tried. She had really tried. She had gone to the grocery store in town once a week. She had learned to cook food that did not come from a box. She had planted a garden in the summer, and the garden had been nice—tomatoes and peppers and green beans, things she had canned and put up for winter.

But she had not liked the silence. That was what she had said. "Tom, it's too quiet here. I can hear my own thoughts and I don't like what I'm thinking." She had packed a bag. She had taken their son—Kevin, then twelve—and they had left. She had said she was going to live with her sister in Columbus. She had said maybe they could work things out. She had said maybe not.

Tom had not tried to stop her. He had not called. He had not written. He had told himself it was because he did not want to bother her. He had not told himself the truth, which was that he did not know what to say. If she wanted to leave, let her leave. If she wanted to come back, she could come back. If she did not want to come back, he would be here. The house would be here. The farm would be here.

He had bought the farm for forty thousand dollars. It was ten acres—five planted, five wild. The planted part was good soil—dark and loamy, the kind of soil that had made Ohio an agricultural state. The wild part was woods—oak and hickory and some maple, thick enough that he could not see through it, but not thick enough that he could hunt in it without getting scratched.

He had been forty when he bought it. He had worked the steel mill for eighteen years. He had liked the mill—it was honest work, heavy work, work that made your body tired in a way that made sleep easy. Then the mill had closed. They had given him a severance package—two weeks pay for every year worked, which came to forty thousand dollars, which was exactly the price of the farm.

He had not known what else to do. He had not wanted to live in the city anymore. The city was loud and crowded and full of people who did not care about you. The city was also full of people who did not care about him, but in the city, nobody cared about anybody, so it was the same thing. The country was different. In the country, people might care. Or they might not. But the silence was there either way.

He had not bought the farm to be happy. He had bought it because it was something to do. Because forty thousand dollars was sitting in a bank account and it was not going to grow if he left it there. Because he needed to do something with his hands that was not standing on a factory floor for ten hours a day.

It had been six months. The farm was not making money. It was barely making food. The vegetables had been okay in the summer—tomatoes and peppers and beans, enough to can and freeze. The winter was another matter. The winter was cold and dark and long, and the only thing growing was the woodstove fuel, and he was already behind on stacking.

He finished his coffee. He washed the mug. He put on his gloves and went outside to check the woodpile.

The woodpile was behind the shed. It was stacked neatly—cord after cord of oak and hickory, cut and split and stacked in the spring and summer. He had cut most of it himself. The rest he had bought from a man in town who cut wood for a living. The woodpile was good. The woodpile was the one thing about the farm that was going well.

He counted the cords. Eight, maybe nine. That would last him through March. If the winter stayed mild. If it did not. He would need to go into the woods and cut some more. He did not look forward to it. Cutting wood in the winter was harder than cutting it in the summer. The ground was hard, and the wood was wet, and your hands got cold even with gloves on.

He went back inside. He sat at the table. He picked up a book—something he had borrowed from Dave— and read for an hour. It was a mystery novel. He did not really care about the mystery. He liked the rhythm of reading—words on a page, turning pages, the passage of time measured in chapters rather than hours.

At noon, he made lunch—bread and cheese and an egg from one of the chickens. He ate it at the table, looking out the window at the white field. The snow had stopped. The sky was grey and low and heavy. It looked like it might snow again. It probably would.

After lunch, he walked to the shed. The shed was small—eight by ten, wooden, with a tin roof that leaked when it rained. Inside was a workbench, a few tools, a lawnmower that did not start, and a box of things he had not decided what to do with.

He opened the box. It was full of old things—tools his father had left him, a broken clock, a stack of letters he had never read, a photograph of his parents standing in front of the house he had grown up in, a house that had been sold five years ago after his father died and his mother moved in with her sister and never came back.

He closed the box. He put it back on the shelf. He would deal with it later. Later was a long time away. Later was whenever he got around to it. He might never get around to it.

He walked back to the house. The sky was darker. The wind had picked up. Snowflakes were falling again—small and sparse, disappearing into the soil before they could accumulate.

He sat at the table. He thought about planting potatoes. He thought about not planting potatoes. He thought about going into town and buying real coffee. He thought about not going into town. He thought about calling Linda. He thought about not calling Linda.

He did not do any of those things. He sat at the table and watched the snow fall and thought about nothing and let the hours pass.

When it got dark, he made dinner—canned soup from the summer, heated on the stove. He ate it at the table. He washed the bowl. He put on his pajamas. He went to bed.

He lay in the dark and listened to the wind move across the field. He listened to the house settle. He listened to the chickens in the coop. He listened to his own breathing.

He thought about tomorrow. Tomorrow he would wake at six. He would make coffee. He would check the chickens. He would look at the fence. He would think about planting potatoes. He would not decide.

He closed his eyes. He fell asleep. The snow continued to fall outside, covering the field, covering the fence, covering the world in white, and nothing changed, and everything stayed the same, and that was that.

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© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport)
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