Chapter 1 - Get Out of My HouseMaggie Cole had expected Uncle Roy to laugh at her idea.
She had not expected him to throw her out.
It happened on a Sunday afternoon in March, at the same kitchen table where the Cole family had discussed soybeans, machinery, weather, and money for as long as Maggie could remember.
Maggie was seventeen.
Her father had died four years earlier. Her mother had been gone even longer. Since then, Roy Cole—her father’s older brother—had given her a bedroom in his farmhouse and treated her with a mixture of affection, responsibility, and the constant belief that he understood the world better than she did.
Roy believed farming had rules.
Grow what buyers already bought.
Use equipment you understood.
Never gamble money you could not replace.
Maggie believed useless land was already costing somebody something.
“There’s that low quarter acre behind Mrs. Bell’s pasture,” Maggie said.
Roy kept eating.
“What about it?”
“It floods every spring.”
“I know.”
“I want to lease it.”
Roy looked up.
“For what?”
Maggie inhaled.
“A fish pond.”
His fork stopped.
“Fish.”
“Carp.”
“On soybean ground.”
“It’s terrible soybean ground. You complain about it every year.”
“It’s farm ground.”
“It spends half of April underwater.”
“That’s my point. Maybe water belongs there.”
Roy slowly set his fork down.
Maggie pulled a spiral notebook from beside her chair.
She had spent three weeks filling it.
Pond volume.
Fingerling costs.
Feed.
Potential buyers.
Stocking estimates.
She pushed it toward him.
“I can start small.”
Roy did not open it.
“Plenty of people tried things like this and failed.”
“I know.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“I know that too.”
“You’ve never built a pond.”
“I can learn.”
“You don’t own equipment.”
“I can trade work for it.”
“And who pays for this experiment?”
Maggie hesitated.
“Dad’s savings.”
Roy’s face changed.
Her father had left a little over four thousand dollars.
Roy considered it education money.
Maggie considered it the only capital she might have for years.
“That money is for school.”
“Dad left it to me.”
“He expected you to have some sense.”
“You don’t know what Dad would think.”
Roy stood.
“I knew your father better than you did.”
The sentence hurt.
“That doesn’t mean you get to decide everything for me.”
“As long as you live under my roof, I decide what foolishness happens here.”
“The pond wouldn’t even be on your land.”
“Then don’t expect my help.”
“I didn’t ask for your money. I asked you to read the numbers.”
“I don’t need numbers to know fish don’t belong on a soybean farm.”
Maggie’s face burned.
“Then maybe I shouldn’t live in a house where nobody listens to me.”
The room went silent.
Maggie wished immediately that she could take it back.
Roy’s pride would not allow either of them to retreat.
“If you still want to raise fish,” he said, “get out of my house.”
Maggie stared.
“Uncle Roy.”
“You heard me.”
“You’re serious?”
“You want to act grown? Be grown.”
Roy grabbed the small travel bag Maggie used for school trips and threw it onto the porch.
Then he put one hand firmly on her upper arm.
Maggie resisted for half a second.
Roy pushed.
She stumbled two steps and crossed the threshold.
Both boots landed outside.
Roy remained inside.
Maggie turned.
Her eyes were wet already.
Something uncertain appeared beneath Roy’s anger.
He could have called her back.
She waited.
Instead he said:
“Plenty of people tried it and failed!”
Maggie lowered her eyes.
Then came the sentence she would remember longer than any other.
“You’re just a kid!”
The door closed.
Maggie stood alone with one bag.
No house.
No pond.
No fish.
She walked nearly half a mile before sitting beneath an oak beside the county road.
Then she cried.
When she finally stopped, she opened the notebook Roy had refused to read.
On a clean page she wrote:
Day One.
Below it:
Roy thinks I will fail.
She stared at the sentence.
Across the road, beyond a line of trees, lay Mrs. Bell’s useless flooded field.
May you like
Maggie closed the notebook.
Before sunset, she intended to ask for it.
Related Stories
