This Parched Land / Tali Rose Treece
windows. Samuel had kissed her and brought her dancing into the rain when the wheat was green with the wetness of the spring, and she and Samuel were wet, too, laughing against the majesty of the storm. Now short, thin cuts split the skin on her fingers, and brown sun circles stood out on her forearms where she had rolled up the sleeves of her faded rose dress. Thrusting the metal bucket forward, she splashed water on the shingles and crawled back down the ladder, then went to the water pump to fill her pail again. Again. Again. Watering the roof like it was a garden and trying not to see her garden withering by the edge of the house. Before he had asked for her hand, Samuel started building this house. He finished it just days before they married, and their wedding night was the first time he brought her here. There was a four-poster bed in their room and a handmade quilt fraying at the seams, and, if they craned their necks, they could see the peaks of mountains through the window. It was in this house, with its unpainted walls and its sweet smell of pine, that they’d first made love, and they had stayed inside their new home for three days, because it felt like all the world to them. But on the fourth day, Samuel decided they should drive into the mountains; he wanted to show Alva May his favorite spot, a glacial lake in a basin of mountainous rock. As they went outside that day, blinking into the bright sunlight, Alva May brushed her fingers along the door frame of their house. The road to the mountain crossed over rolling wheat fields and wound through pastures of grazing cattle. When they got to the mountain, they followed the wide path through the gently sloping pine-needled forest, holding hands while they walked. But when the path became narrower and steeper, Alva May had to use her hands to steady herself against boulders and to pull herself along the rocky trail. 90