Free Mudbound by Hillary Jordan Page A

shack that was larger than the others, though no less decrepit. It had a deserted air. The truck stopped in front of it, and Henry and his father got out.
    “Why are we stopping?” I called out.
    “We’re here,” Henry said.
    Here was a long, rickety house with a warped tin roof and shuttered windows that had neither glass nor screens. Herewas a porch that ran the length of the house, connecting it to a small lean-to. Here was a dirt yard with a pump in the middle of it, shaded by a large oak tree that had somehow managed to escape razing by the original steaders. Here was a barn, a pasture, a cotton house, a corncrib, a pig wallow, a chicken coop and an outhouse.
    Here was our new home.
    Amanda Leigh and Isabelle scrambled out of the car and ran around the yard, delighted with everything they saw. I followed, stepping up to my ankles in muck. It would be weeks before I learned that on a farm, you always look before you step, because you never know what you might be stepping in or on: a mud puddle, a pile of excrement, a rattlesnake.
    “Will we have chickens, Daddy? And pigs?” Amanda Leigh asked. “Will we have a cow?”
    “We sure will,” Henry said. “You know what else?” He pointed back to the line of trees that marked the river. “See that river we crossed over? I bet it’s full of catfish and craw-dads.”
    There was some kind of structure on the river, about a mile away. Even from a distance I could tell it was much larger than the house. “What’s that building?” I asked Henry.
    “An old sawmill, dates back to before the Civil War. You and the girls stay out of there, it’s liable to fall down any minute.”
    “It ain’t the only thing,” said Pappy, gesturing at the house. “That roof needs repairing, and them steps look rotten. And some of the shutters are missing, you better replace em quick or we’re liable to freeze to death.”
    “We’ll get the place fixed up,” Henry said. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
    He wasn’t speaking to Pappy, but to me. Make the best of it , his eyes urged. Don’t shame me in front of my father and the girls. I felt a stirring of anger. Of course I would make the best of it, for the children’s sake if nothing else.
    With the help of one of the tenants, a talkative light-skinned Negro named Hap Jackson, Henry unloaded the truck and moved the furniture in. I saw right away that we wouldn’t be able to bring much more from Memphis. The house had just three rooms: a large main room that encompassed the kitchen and living area, and two bedrooms barely big enough to hold a bed and a chest of drawers each. There were no closets, just pegs hammered at intervals along the walls. Like the floors, the walls were rough plank, with gaps between the boards through which the wind and all manner of insects could enter freely. Every surface was filthy. I felt another surge of anger. How could Henry have brought us to such a place?
    I wasn’t the only one displeased with the accommodations. “Where am I gonna sleep?” demanded Pappy.
    Henry looked at me. I shrugged. He had laid this egg all by himself; he could figure out how to hatch it.
    “I guess we’ll have to put you out in the lean-to,” Henry said.
    “I ain’t sleeping out there. It don’t even have a floor.”
    “I don’t know where else to put you,” Henry said. “There’s no room in the house.”
    “There would be, if you got rid of that piano,” Pappy said.
    The piano just barely fit in one corner of the main room.
    “If you got rid of that piano,” Pappy said, “we could put a bed there.”
    “We could,” Henry agreed.
    “No,” I said. “We need the piano. I’m teaching the girls to play, you know that. Besides, I don’t want a bed in the middle of the living room.”
    “We could rig a curtain around it,” Pappy said.
    “True,” Henry said.
    They were both looking at me: Henry unhappily, his father wearing a smirk. Henry was going to agree. I could see it in his face,