Free Republic of Dirt by Susan Juby Page A

school opening night theater audience. And as I sang, I stripped off my clothes in an effort to demonstrate my emotional condition, which was raw, because the drama teacher had just ended our affair. As I pulled off my jeans, they got caught on my runners and I ended up falling off the stage. It was a pathetic performance, but I think most people would agree it was a brave one, especially considering that I took all the consequences on myself and didn’t tell anyone that we’d been involved for months.)
    She texted me back that there was a difference between brave and foolish. And I replied that I didn’t like splitting hairs or being pressured.
    I sat on a bench near the swing set and some sort of wood-and-tires-and-ladder contraption and sent off ill-considered responses to her provocations. Restraint of tongue and pen was completely forgotten for the next half-hour as we texted back and forth.
    Fucking technology.
    Finally, the drama teacher wrote me back to tell me she’d reconsidered. She didn’t want me as a sexual partner or as an exterminator. She no longer needed my help. “Period.” She actually typed that out.
    I’m not the pushover I was at seventeen. I’m a twenty-one-year-old farmhand, which is similar to being a cowboy, but without a horse, a hat or any cows. So I fired back that I didn’t give a shit what she did and I hoped she and her bugs would be very happy together. I texted her that I had a fun life now. God help me. I did.
    To drive the point home, I decided to send her a picture to demonstrate just how fun my life was. I wanted to get a shot that showed me behaving in a provocatively carefree manner. So I sat on one of the swings and started swinging like I meant it, pumping my legs back and forth, the whole nine yards. The plan was to take a live action image of my feet way up in the air. But I had some trouble aiming the phone. It was Eustace’s old one and a cow crapped on it or a horse gave birth on it or some other medical emergency happened on it, so that it only worked about half the time.
    I needed to get some height to adequately convey my extreme level of jaunty, unaffected joyfulness, which meant full-throttle, maxed-out swinging.
    Wouldn’t you know it, while trying to get my feet into the frame I lost my grip and launched off the front of the swing like I was trying out for the lead role in Cirque du Soleil’s Lone Man Cannonball Show. One minute I was looking through the phone at my high tops, the next I was sailing into the fucking void.

Prudence
    R unning a homestead is a full-time endeavor even in the off-season. That’s why I couldn’t afford to be ill for any length of time. My wellness practitioner, Dr. Bachmeier, said my energy would come and go as the remedies she prepared for me took effect and helped my entire immune system to come into a state of balance and health. She was clear that her remedies would not be quick fixes, like those prescribed in corporate medicine, but rather complete body and mind treatments that would get at the heart of the problem.
    Her words turned out to be true. I was all over the place, energy-wise, and every time I got up, I nearly fainted at the thought of all the work that had piled up while I was resting. I did as much as I could on my good days. Well, they weren’t days exactly. They were more like hours. Sometimes half-hours.
    The most pressing concern was Lucky. It was a dereliction of duty to ask Sara to train our mule. Sure, we only had him on loan, but I wanted to get the most out of the experience. And my pride was still smarting from Eustace’s suggestion that I couldn’t handle him.Lucky was a mule, not a neutron bomb. Any farmer worth her salt should be able to come to terms with her livestock.
    On the day in question, I felt well enough in the late afternoon to get out of bed. I made my way outside to make sure that the winter crops were being tended properly. We were growing three kinds of chard—Swiss, rainbow and