Some land is sacred, even if outsiders don’t agree. It’s sacred to US.
When I was growing up on the farm, we had 2 HUGE sycamore trees out front and a half-moon driveway that sprouted off at the half-way mark, all the way up to the carport. One of my earliest memories is being 3 years old and watching from the front doorsteps with my mom as my dad chainsawed down the larger of the two huge sycamores. Both trees are gone now, but at the time, my dad blamed a travelling salesman—we used to have door-to-door salesmen out in the countryside up until probably around 15 years ago when my mom my lived alone and put up a long white fence across the front yard, but I’ll come back to that.
The travelling salesman was selling insurance or farm equipment or some such. He pulled up under the shade of the twin trees, got out of his car, and the first thing he said to Daddy was his admiration for the trees and then, “I’d give $500 for 2 trees in my front yard like that!”
Not long after he left, lightning struck the taller tree.
Strangers at the Edge of the Yard
Living on the farm, we had the occasional stranger visit. Sometimes it was the teen couple at 11 PM on a rainy Saturday night, showing up soaked to the bone at the front door to ask to use the phone because they’d miss her curfew, and could we please use the tractor to pull his car out of the muddy ditch down the road, because they’d just given “parking” yet another meaning.
Sometimes, it was someone abandoning a dog or cat and figuring we’d happily give them a home on the farm, even though we already had more than we could handle or had spayed OUR pets. They’d usually stop just at the edge of the yard, shove their unwanted pets out the door, and take off as quietly as they could.
Sometimes, it was a door-to-door salesman, something that persisted back home long after they were archaic in any place bigger. There was a time when they were legit, but by the time my mom was widowed, most came around to prey on whatever victim they could find who would pay upfront, or even half upfront, for a newly paved driveway or roof before disappearing to whatever rock they’d crawled out from under.
Sometimes, it was someone who’d gotten lost (pre-GPS days). They were just using our front yard to turn around. Those were probably the strangers that made my mom the maddest. She mowed the yard every week, and the half-moon drive and grass were distinguishable, even in heavy rain. And yet, the common thing was for someone who was lost to make a U-turn right in the middle of the lawn. Or, in one case, drive around the crescent to the front door, ask directions, and then drive directly across the lawn to the road.
And bog up to their axels after a rainstorm.
And have the nerve to be mad about it when they came back and asked her to pull them out with the tractor.
The Boundary They Made Necessary
They left deep ruts that scarred the front yard for years, and Mama complained about it every single time she mowed the front yard. After that, she decided she wanted to put up the fence, and my brother planted a cypress in the middle of the crescent, at the intersection of where every stranger plowed through her plush yard.
A Southern witch returns home. Secrets won’t stay buried. A chance to confront and heal—or face the consequences.
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