“You think you’re the only one sick of it?” The water shut off overhead just as I was about to go on a tear. Taking a few deep breaths to tamp it down, I lowered my voice. “No matter how sick of it I get or you get, we need to remember there are six others in this house who are counting on us, and that includes Pa. We can hate what’s going on, but we cannot hate our father.” Someone had to find reason in the midst of our chaotic lives, though I was beginning to run out of it right along with patience.

Unsaid words flickered through Peg’s eyes. They were filled with anger and confusion. Moments passed, as well as a few tears, before his expression dimmed with resignation. He stood, wincing more like an eighty-year-old man than an eighteen-year-old boy.

I touched his shoulder as he limped past me. “We don’t hate him, Peg. We can’t.”

He barely tipped his head in agreement before heading upstairs to shower.

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We’d managed to replant the fields and by the mercy of God, the crops flourished, but the tobacco season ended abruptly midsummer, cut short by a Pa tornado. It didn’t level us, but it came pretty dang close.

One minute I was staring at the most bountiful tobacco crops we’d had in years. Leaves so healthy and fat that the plants hung heavily toward the ground. Then the next minute, Pa’s comatose demeanor flipped to madman rage. I can still see him rushing around, yelling that the storm was going to wipe out our entire crop. Ordering us to strip each plant of all its leaves instead of taking the bottom leaves for the first cropping of the season. We’d packed barns past full, but over half of the harvested leaves remained in trailers or on the ground. Two days of rain was what a storm system from off the coast delivered to us. Rain that would have nourished the plants and would have made the next cropping just as prosperous as the first.

After the rain subsided, the stifling heat steamed the exposed tobacco until it soured. One of our hired hands for the summer ran his mouth and somehow the paper managed to sneak photos of the mishap. The images of withered, moldy leaves piled up in ruins weren’t easily forgotten. The entire town had proof of Pa’s madness and our embarrassment displayed right on the front page of the newspaper.

Pa told me once that fighting hate with hate will only produce more hate. Ever since that morning I told Peg we couldn’t hate Pa, I’d poured as much love out as possible, but it did nothing to suppress the hate that seemed to be increasing in my brother. A resentment was beginning to reflect from each of us in various ways and times.

“Whew-ee, is the Lord good!”