Read Online Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A

has to wait for his father. He stands silently a few feet away and busies himself looking at the horse’s hooves or stares off, chewing on a blade of grass, as if assessing the time of day by the sun’s position. Sometimes he has a sip of water, pretending to gulp back more, before passing the canteen to his father to drain. If he hurts, he never lets his father see it. To Teodor, Myron seems oblivious to the briars clawing his skin and impervious to the stings and bites welting his body. He tries to remember his own youth, when he too felt invincible and his body did his bidding without complaint, but that memory is lost.
    Teodor feels every bump and bruise. He feels his hands dry and crack, not from the sun, but from the dirt leaching the water from his skin. Dust to dust. Blisters harden into thick calluses, robbing his fingers of sensation. He no longer feels how hot the soup is in a cup. He can’t feel the softness of Maria’s skin, only his own roughness against her body. He feels the sun blaze into his neck, face, and forearms, his skin on fire, shocking him with pain at the slightest touch. His skin bubbles, peels, and itches, then finally turns a deep, rich brown, as if he has taken on the color of the earth.
    At midday, Ivan and Petro can be seen running toward them. Two small dark flecks far in the distance. Dancing in the heat waves, growing into flailing arms and legs, until finally arriving with lunch in hand. Ivan always wins the race to his father. Myron unhitches the horse and lets it graze. The men eat cold pyrohy and flatbread with lard and the last of the chokecherry jam, while theboys walk up and down the fresh furrows collecting worms, round stones, the occasional bone, and, once, an Indian arrowhead.
    Petro found the arrowhead. Ivan took it from him. Petro grabbed for it and then the boys were tumbling and rolling in the dust. When Petro started to cry and blood was dripping from Ivan’s nose, Teodor separated them by the scruff of the neck, took the arrowhead from Ivan’s clutched hand, and, in one smooth, swift movement, hurled it far into the bush. He didn’t say a word to the boys, just told Myron to hitch up the horse and slipped into the plow’s harness.
    The two boys watched the work start up again; his father didn’t say, Dopobachenia — until we see each other again . Ivan felt the urge to cry but punched Petro in the arm instead and raced home, not caring whether his cousin caught up.
    The first day, Teodor plows eighty feet. An acre is roughly two hundred and eight feet by two hundred and eight feet. It takes him four days to reach the end of the first row. When he finally pulls the plow around and starts the next furrow, Myron is ten rows ahead of him, clearing the rocks and roots. Two hundred and seven more turns to make. Teodor counts his steps as he did in prison, measuring down the distance. Myron only counts the turns. At the eightieth turn, Teodor begins closing the gap. By the one hundred and tenth turn, Myron is once again scrambling to stay ahead of his father. By the one hundred and fiftieth turn, they are working in syncopated pace. Two men and a horse crossing back and forth with the precision of a pendulum.
    When the day finally loses light, Teodor and Myron stumble home, unable to talk, their bodies one numb ache. They arrive blackened with the earth’s body. Her dirt ground so deep into their skin that only the whites of their eyes announce their arrival. They scrub her dust from their bodies outside at the metal tub thatMaria fills with hot water as the sun sets. After the first plunge of their hands, the water mires into mud. It doesn’t matter how much they scrub, the dirt never releases itself from their pores. It clings under their nails, obliterates their fingerprints, and burrows deep into their ears. It cries from their tear ducts. When they blow their noses, white handkerchiefs turn black.
    Before Teodor collapses into bed, he pulls a chair outside for one