Chapter 2 - “Get Off My Land”Word traveled faster than Anna’s truck.
By the following afternoon, people were already coming past Cedar Ridge Farm to look.
Anna had placed the forty-two piglets inside a fenced area beside the dead orchard.
They were small enough that she checked the lower rails twice.
She carried feed toward the trough when she heard laughter from the road.
Harold Pike stood outside the fence.
He was sixty-two, broad through the shoulders, with a wide-brimmed hat and the confident posture of a man who had spent forty years believing experience made him correct.
Three other farmers stood nearby.
Harold pointed toward the piglets.
“You spent your husband’s last money on this worthless lot?”
The men behind him laughed.
Anna stopped walking.
Thomas had known Harold for years.
They had disagreed about crops, machinery, fencing, and nearly everything else.
Harold had once offered to buy the south slope.
Thomas had refused.
Anna looked directly at him.
“Get off my land.”
The laughter stopped.
Harold’s expression changed.
“I’m trying to save you from making a fool of yourself.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Leave.”
Harold stepped closer to the fence.
“You think because Thomas is gone, nobody should tell you the truth?”
Anna’s stomach tightened.
“Do not use my husband to talk down to me.”
His face hardened.
“Someone needs to.”
Anna moved toward the gate.
“Get off my land.”
Harold crossed the line before anyone expected it.
One quick movement.
One open hand.
His palm struck Anna across the cheek.
Her head turned slightly.
The sound cut through the afternoon.
Nobody laughed now.
Anna stood completely still.
Shock came first.
Then pain.
Then the humiliation of knowing several men had watched it happen.
Her hand rose to her cheek.
Her eyes became wet.
She refused to cry.
Harold seemed surprised by what he had done, but pride prevented him from apologizing.
Instead he pointed toward the piglets.
“By spring, none of them will be left!”
Anna slowly turned her face back toward him.
He gave a short contemptuous laugh.
Then walked away.
The other farmers followed without looking at Anna.
She remained by the fence until the road became quiet.
Her cheek burned.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted Thomas.
She wanted to run after Harold and say everything she had not said.
Instead she looked at the piglets.
Forty-two small animals stood around the trough.
One had begun pushing its nose into a patch of dirt beside the fence.
Another followed.
Then a third.
They did not know the county expected them to fail.
They did not know Anna had spent nearly everything on them.
They did not know Harold Pike had just turned them into a public test of her judgment.
They simply lowered their noses and investigated the ground.
Anna wiped her eyes.
Then she opened the low gate leading into the orchard.
The first piglet hesitated.
Then entered.
Within minutes, all forty-two were moving beneath the old gray apple trees.
Anna stood at the gate.
The pain in her cheek remained.
But humiliation was changing into something harder.
May you like
“Go on,” she whispered.
The piglets began rooting.
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