The Garner House: A Narrative Fiction

He saw the first tree shudder and fall, far off in the distance. Then he heard his mother call out the kitchen window: "Luke! Inside. Now."
He had never disobeyed the order to hide. Even as a toddler, barely able to walk in the backyard's tall grass, he had somehow understood the fear in his mother's voice. But on this day, the day they began taking the woods away, he hesitated. He took one extra breath of the fresh air, scented with clover and honeysuckle and—coming from far away—pine smoke. He laid his hoe down gently, and savored one last moment of feeling warm soil beneath his bare feet. He reminded himself, "I will never be allowed outside again.
Maybe never again as long as I live."
He turned and walked into the house, as silently as a
shadow. …show more content…
"Why?" he asked at the supper table that night. It wasn't a common question in the Garner house. There were plenty of
"how's"—How much rain'd the backfield get? How's the planting going? Even "what's"—What'd Matthew do with the five-sixteenth wrench? What's Dad going to do about that busted tire? But "why" wasn't considered much worth asking.
Luke asked again. "Why'd you have to sell the woods?"
Luke's dad harrumphed, and paused in the midst of shoveling forkfuls of boiled potatoes into his mouth.
"Told you before. We didn't have a choice. Government wanted it. You can't tell the Government no."
Mother came over and gave Luke's shoulder a reassuring squeeze before turning back to the stove. They had defied the
Government once, with Luke. That had taken all the defiance they had in them. Maybe more.
"We wouldn't have sold the woods if we hadn't had to," she said, ladling out thick tomatoey soup. "The Government didn't ask us if we wanted houses there."
She pursed her lips as she slid the bowls of soup onto the table. "But the Government's not going to live in the