Good Hope Road Read Online Free PDF

“Oh,” I heard myself say; then I started the tractor and backed it slowly onto the road. My head spun dizzily. I gripped the steering wheel hard to make my hands stop shaking as the tractor lurched toward home.
    An impractical hope kindled inside me as I came closer. I pictured Daddy’s truck in the driveway, he and Nate surveying the damage to the hay barn and discussing how they would get some fat government check to keep us afloat next winter.
    By the time I cleared the grove of trees and the house came into view, I had almost convinced myself that they were home. But, of course, they weren’t. The driveway was empty, the one-story brick house growing dim in the waning afternoon sun. No yard light, which meant the power was out.
    Bo sat motionless at the base of the tree, looking down the road in an eerie silence, as if he knew something.
    A coldness came over me as I parked the tractor in the shed. The engine died before I could kill it. Out of gas. Daddy had taken the can to refill on the way back from Kansas City.
    Climbing down, I stepped into the faded light as a gust of wind blew by, stroking the grass, rustling the papers that littered the lawn and covered the yard fence. Slowly, numbly, I picked up a scrap of paper, and another, and another.
    Scraps of other people’s lives slowly filled my arms—a newspaper clipping, a kid’s math homework half-done, a wedding photograph in black-and-white, a torn page of photos from someone’s scrapbook. The Grand Canyon it said in some kid’s handwriting, next to pictures of a family standing on the edge.
    I moved methodically through the yard, trying to bring some order to the world. In the back of my mind, I knew more papers would blow in. More pictures . . . more scraps . . .
    The sound of a vehicle coming stopped my thoughts, and I looked into the distance, squinting against the twilight. A diesel engine, like Daddy’s truck. I waited for the rattle of the cattle trailer behind it. I could almost hear it. . . .
    The truck came around the bend in the road. Red, not white like Daddy’s. A Hindsville Fire Department truck racing away from Poetry with people in the back.
    I leaned against the fence as it passed, clutched the armful of papers to my chest, and sank into the grass, suddenly exhausted. Something inside me started to crack. Closing my eyes, I hugged the bundle of papers and cried.
    Evening dimmed the light around me, and the breeze stilled as high clouds flushed crimson and amber in the sunset—just as if it were any other evening, any normal evening. Just as if today were no different from any other day.
    A vehicle came around the bend from Hindsville. A gas engine, not a diesel. Not Daddy’s truck.
    The car sped closer, then passed without slowing down. Bits of debris danced in its wake, spiraling like ghosts in the twilight. A torn paper brushed against my leg, and I laid my hand over it, looking at the even lines of handwriting—neat, careful cursive like my English teacher used to write, a poem or a song. I didn’t try to read the words. They didn’t matter now.
    A police car passed with sirens wailing. After that, there was nothing. Nothing for as long as I sat there. Not a sound, not a voice, not a vehicle passing, or a light from a nearby farm. I heard the faint sound of Bo baying somewhere out in the pasture, telling me he had escaped his chain again, slipped under the yard fence, and run off.
    The sound jolted me to life. I stood up and walked to the house, laid the pile of papers on the coffee table, lit a candle against the gathering darkness, tried the phone, cleaned the mess from the dinner that had never gotten eaten, walked from room to room looking at the pictures on the walls. Everything was just where it had been, just where it belonged.
    How can there be such destruction less than a mile down the road while we still have pictures on our walls?
    It seemed as if everything normal should cease to be.
    I sank onto the sofa, staring at