We present an extract from Dirt Pickers, the debut novel by Meath author Edie May Hand.
In a remote valley in Idaho in 1981, a man, a woman and three children stop running to wash the blood from their hands and bodies. They are the few survivors of a terrible tragedy. Their only choice now is, somehow, to become a family.
Five years earlier, Opal and her husband James arrive at a small mining community in the Silver Valley, drawn by promises of fortune and independence. There they meet Baron Rowe, the charismatic visionary who controls the community with an iron fist. Baron’s son Denny has spent his life trying, and failing, to live up to Baron’s expectations, and to protect his little sister Maude from their father’s excesses.
Soon, a tragic accident will change all their lives. And five years later, change will come again at the barrel of a gun . . .
The air is sweet and heavy in the morning. Maude did not sleep well, not with the night noises and the bodies so close to her own. She made herself as small as possible, feigned rest amid her new family. Ma tried holding her and soon learned not to.
When she wakes, she bypasses the canned breakfast, the wrongness that persists in this new life. Of the many things that have changed, the trees, the birds and the clouds in the sky are all the same at least. There is comfort to be found in that.
The porch is empty; she stands there without shoes or socks. In her hand, she holds the shotgun, drags it along the floor like Billy with his toy. Ma hates for her to have it, but Ma is feeding the baby and the boy, roughly shaking bedsheets of their dust, checking the cupboards, and desperately trying to make a home of this place. So, Maude thinks nothing of propping herself against the porch railing, the gun’s stock sitting over her shoulder, as she takes a breath and watches the world around her: the wet leaves glistening with the mist of rain that still refuses to let up, the shed across the yard whose exterior blends seamlessly into the bark of the trees that surround it. Along its walls, there are rusted tools, wheels bent out of shape, crates and sawn-off piping, a slumped sack of chip bark.
In the midst of this, a woman older than she’s ever seen emerges, rifle in hand; hair like spiderwebs in wisps around her narrow face. She wears rubber boots and a vibrant dress under her plastic raincoat. Maude eyes her down the barrel of her own gun, keeps her in sight, hollers for Da without moving an inch.
The woman stares at her. ‘You put that down!’ she barks.
She is slight, but holds her weapon with the certainty of Sarge, who was a soldier and fought in wars the world over. Maude is not afraid of her, though the thrum of her heart and the tightness in her throat make it hard to speak out, to shout back and tell her to clear off. This new home was hard-won, and Maude’s not about to let it go after traipsing up the country, across the border; not after everything she’s lost.
The door slams open. Ma hovers over her, hands shaking.
‘Maude,’ she says. ‘Put it down.’
‘You’re a damn fool,’ Maude says, ignoring her. She spits out the side of her mouth the way Sarge taught her. But Ma doesn’t scold or do any soft thing that Maude is expecting of her.
Instead, she yanks the gun from Maude’s hands, using the weight of it to her advantage. Maude tips backward, her face warm with embarrassment. The woman eyes the exchange, hikes her rifle higher. It’s too heavy for her, but lighter than Maude’s shotgun. Ma checks the safety as though it wasn’t already on and makes a grand show of leaning the barrel against the side of the cabin, right next to the front door. Like they are harmless, Maude thinks with gritted teeth.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Ma. ‘We had no idea that this was your home.’
Da comes through the door, the baby on his hip in only a diaper. She has made a mess of spit down the front of his only clean shirt. She is a ball of fat and soft joints, and will only get in the way. But at the sight of her, of Billy trotting out on Da’s heels with his thumb in his mouth, the woman drops her gun, lets it swing heavy in her bony hands.
‘It’s not.’ The soft wrinkles in her face dig deeper, cutting harsh lines. ‘It was my husband’s place. For hunting.’
‘He need it?’ Da asks. Ma pinches his arm, but it’s a sensible question. There’s no point in letting it all go to waste if nobody’s here.
‘He’s dead,’ says the woman after a moment. Eyes like marbles, near silver in the light, drift from Ma, down to Billy, whose face is still sticky from breakfast, whose mouth gapes wide like a fish. Then to Maude; with her sunken cheeks and her dirty hair, which she shoves harshly from her face only for something to do.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Ma says calmly. ‘We thought it was—’
The woman’s hand cuts through the air. ‘Forget it, just— Just put some clothes on that child.’ She walks across the yard, but keeps her distance from the porch. She appears to consider something for a moment before coming to a decision. ‘My Leroy built this all here with his own two hands – had himself all sorts of notions about coming up here with our boys. You best put it to good use.’
‘Thank you,’ Ma starts, only to be cut off again.
‘Don’t thank me yet. This place needs fixing if you want to make it habitable.’ She must not like the place very much, if her sneer means anything. ‘And if you hunt, I want half of it. I don’t want to know who you are or where you came from. The less you tell me, the better.’ Maude’s limbs vibrate with the fight that won’t come. Could it really be so simple? ‘C’mere and let me show you this generator. Leroy could never get it working right.’
Ma takes the baby, nudges Da and says something with her eyes that has him moving down the porch steps. He slumps as if to make himself smaller.
‘What’s your name?’ Maude calls after them, leaning over the rail, hair quickly dampening beyond the safety of the awning.
The woman turns back, only for a second. There is kindness in her eyes, if only Maude could see that for what it is. But Maude knows kindness like she knows long division; which is to say hardly at all.
Dirt Pickers is published by Manilla Press