Chapter One
On a cold Sunday evening in early 1957 – the very day, in fact, that Dwight David Eisenhower took the oath of office for the second time as President of the United States of America – Sarah Dewhurst waited with her father in the parking lot of the Chevron gas station for the dragon he’d hired to help on the farm.
“He’s late,” Sarah said, quietly.
“It,” said her father, spitting on the oiled dirt, hitting the cracks of a frozen puddle. “Don’t call it by its name. Don’t tell it yours. It. Not he.”
This didn’t address the question of the dragon’s lateness. Or maybe it did, in her father’s sternness, in the spitting.
“It’s freezing out here,” she said.
“It’s winter.”
“Can I wait in the truck?”
“You’re the one who was so eager to come with me.”
“I didn’t know he’d be late. It would be late.”
“You can’t trust them.”
Then why are you hiring one? Sarah thought, though knew better than to say. She even knew the answer: they couldn’t afford to pay men to clear the two south fields. Those fields had to be planted, and if they were, then there was a chance – a small one, but a chance – that they wouldn’t lose the farm to the bank. If a dragon spent a month or so burning the trees, carrying out the ash and remnants, then maybe by the end of February, Gareth Dewhurst could be turning the charcoal over with a pair of cheaply hired horses and the plough that was thirty years out of date. Then perhaps by April, the new fields would be ready for planting. And perhaps that would be enough to hold off the creditors until harvest.
Such had been the overwhelming, exhausting thought of both Sarah and her father in the two years since the death of her mother, as the farm slid slowly beyond the ability of two people to run and further and further into debt. The worry was so strong it had shoved their grief to one side so they could work every hour her father was awake and every hour Sarah was not at school.
Sarah heard her father breathe out, long, through his nose. It was always his preamble to softening.
“You can drive home,” he said, quietly, back over his shoulder.
“What about Deputy Kelby?” she asked, her stomach tensing as it always did at the thought of Deputy Kelby.
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