By driving herself without mercy, Emaline managed to salvage a third of her garden. By harvest time, she was thin and brown and wiry, a dozen pounds lighter than she had been in the spring. There were enormous calluses on her hands and she went to bed each night with an undefined ache that seemed to encompass every muscle and bone in her body. No matter how hard she worked, it was beginning to slip away. They wouldn’t have a crop of oats or barley so that they could put some aside for seed. They had fewer cows, so they would have fewer calves. There would be no income from the garden. For most of the summer, they had forfeited the cash she made from the creamery for her eggs and butter. Their cash reserves were thin. When those were gone, they had nowhere to turn unless the sky opened up and started raining money. Sooner or later, a gentleman from the bank would come calling, with or without the sheriff in tow, and that would be an end to it.

They did a little better in 1937. For the first time since they moved onto the farm, Emaline thought they might just squeak through, get past the drought and the depression and hang on until times improved. The garden was thriving. This time there was enough moisture for the dryland crops and Jake was less clumsy with his irrigating. They were expecting a bumper crop until a hailstorm in August destroyed half of their sugar beets. The harvest was still their best. Without the hail, they might have made it. As it was, they managed three mortgage payments but could make no more. The first snow fell. Emaline rationed the kerosene and kept them in semidarkness in the evening until Jake fell asleep around eight o’clock, then turned up a single lantern just enough so that she could read her Chekhov and Balzac as she listened to the wind howl.

32.

TEN DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS IN 1937, A BEATUP Studebaker came slipping and sliding up the muddy, half-frozen track from the county road. Jake was off at Corky Dishman’s getting some work done on the Ford Runabout and Emaline was in the house baking Christmas cookies. A petite, well-dressed woman stepped out, smoothing her red hair and adjusting her hat. Emaline put aside her rolling pin, wiped the flour off her hands, went to the door in time to see the woman coaxing a boy about five years old out of the car. Emaline opened the door and stood waiting at the top of the steps. The woman was wearing heels and the steps were slippery, so she took her time, helping the boy up with one hand and holding the crude railing Jake had rigged with the other. When she reached the top, she put out a gloved hand.

“You must be Emaline.”

“That’s right. Emaline McCloskey.”