by Michael Carter

Mother said we would no longer be hungry when the rain came. Rain would grow the rye, and we’d take our harvest to town. We’d sell it, buy food and medical supplies, and if there was money left over, maybe a doll for my sisters.

She baked bread for us each morning. When our stomachs shrank, a large piece of bread made us feel full most of the day. But we were still hungry. At night, I dreamed of the borscht and green-pepper soup she used to make for us.

I learned later that Mother was lying about the rain. Even if the rain came and even if we had enough energy to harvest, no one could buy it. That’s because the “suits” thousands of miles away made mistakes just before Halloween of ’29, and now nobody had any money.

Mother told us other things to keep our hopes up. “Maybe we’ll move to California, where it’s warm,” she’d say. We could pick peas year-round, she explained, and we might find gold along the way.

“We’ll stop in Helena to see if they’ve struck gold again. Then we’ll make our way to Carson City, Nevada, to see if they have gold there. We’ll buy food with the gold, and you’ll all be full.”

I said, “Maybe there’s gold here?”

Mother said, “No, sweetie, there’s no gold out here in the Plains.”

So I prayed each night for the rain. And even though Mother said there wasn’t any, I prayed for gold. I prayed that Mother would make it all work and we’d eat.

When the rain finally came, I left our sod hut and peered into the big sky, greeting the drops as they hit my face.

Mother and my sisters joined me and did the same. I looked at their faces and saw something that made me think Mother was right about hope but wrong about the gold.

I saw smiles as the raindrops glistened and rolled off their cheeks. Like tears of happiness. Like liquid gold running down their faces that would drip to the ground and make everything all right again.

We put our arms around each other, and for that moment, a moment in time that felt as long as the span between the horizons, we were no longer hungry.

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Michael Carter is a short fiction and creative nonfiction writer from the Western United States. He comes from a family of farmers and orchardists who homesteaded in Montana, also known as Big Sky Country. He’s online at michaelcarter.ink and @mcmichaelcarter.