An Acre a Year

By Gregory Marlow

An acre a year was all they asked. I agreed. Fifty acres was too much for William to work anyway, even with my help.

The first year, William didn’t notice. I stood on the hill behind the house and surveyed the fields below. Cows, hay, alfalfa, corn, sweet potatoes. It looked the same as the day I married William. Maybe a few corners rounded off in the distance. Or was that my imagination?

What was not my imagination was how the little men delivered on their promises. Travelers willing to work for a meal and a bed for the night. Cows delivering calves effortlessly. Neighbors offering to trade a tractor for a fraction of its worth. Fields of corn yielding twice the expected amount, allowing William to sell the excess and use the money to hire help.

And William, in my bed at night again. The man I married, not the exhausted shell dragging himself in after dark with barely enough energy to eat supper, much less tend to a lonely wife. The fields had been his mistress of necessity. She provided, but not nearly as much as she took. If I had not agreed to the trade, she would have taken him forever. (Continue Reading…)