The Crooked Row

The Crooked Row

When I first met Mara, she was selling peaches from a wooden crate at the edge of a farm market that stretched like a patchwork quilt across the valley. I was nineteen, working the fields, my back aching from the sun, and she was laughing at something an old woman said, her voice bright as the fruit she held. I remember thinking she was too good for that place, too good for the dust and the flies, but she stayed anyway, because she said the people needed her honesty.

We married in the fall, when the leaves turned red and the market closed for the season. Her family had money, old money that smelled of mothballs and leather, and they disapproved of me with a quiet, polite disdain. But Mara didn’t care. She had a heart too big for her chest, and she spent it freely on anyone who crossed her path. She’d give away the last of our groceries to a neighbor in need, or stop a regular customer from buying a ham that had turned, even if it meant losing the sale. ‘I can’t in good conscience,’ she’d say, and they’d nod, because they knew she was right.

Twenty years later, we had a little farmhouse on the edge of a town called Hollow Creek, named after the creek that ran behind our property. The creek was crooked, bending in ways that didn’t make sense, and the locals said it was cursed, but we paid no mind. Mara was still the same, though slower now, with lines around her eyes. She spent her days singing old hymns and tending to her garden, and she thanked the Great Spirit every morning, even when the pain in her joints made it hard to rise.

Then the accident happened. It was a rainy Tuesday, and Mara was driving home from the market when a deer leapt out of the trees. She swerved, and the car flipped into the ditch. The doctors said she was lucky to be alive, but she wasn’t lucky. She was in a coma for three weeks, and we thought we’d lose her. I sat by her bed, holding her hand, and I prayed to gods I didn’t believe in. When she finally opened her eyes, she looked at me as if she recognized me, but there was something different in her gaze. Something that made my skin prickle.

The doctors said she was fine, just a little memory loss, but I knew better. She started talking to herself in a low, melodic voice, not quite singing, not quite speaking, and she’d pause as if listening to something. She said she heard the Great Spirit calling her, and she smiled when she said it, but her eyes were distant. She began to spend more time in the garden, which had grown wild over the weeks, and she would stand there, staring at the crooked row of tomatoes she’d planted before the accident. She said they were growing toward the creek, and that was wrong, but she didn’t fix them.

One night, I woke to find her standing at the bedroom window, her nightgown ghostly in the moonlight. She was humming a tune I’d never heard, and she was looking toward the creek. ‘The water is moving,’ she said, though the creek was still. ‘It’s moving backwards, pulling the roots.’ I wrapped my arms around her, and she felt cold, like she’d been outside. She turned to me, and her face was calm, but her eyes were black. Not just dark, but black, like the pupils had swallowed the iris. I blinked, and they were normal again. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but her voice had a tremor.

The next day, she insisted on going to the market, even though she was still weak. I drove her, and she sat in the passenger seat, her hands folded in her lap, singing softly. At the market, she was not the same. She didn’t stop any sales. She let a man buy a bruised melon without a word, and she gave a woman the wrong change without counting. The customers noticed, and they whispered. One old man said, ‘She’s not herself,’ and he walked away, shaking his head.

On the way home, she asked me to stop at the creek. ‘I need to see the water,’ she said. I parked by the bridge, and she got out, her steps unsteady. She walked to the bank, and I followed, uneasy. The creek was low, the water clear, and I saw something strange: a line of stones, perfectly straight, cutting across the bed. They hadn’t been there before. Mara knelt and placed her hand on the water. ‘They’re crooked,’ she said. ‘The row is crooked, but I can fix it.’ She began to hum that same tune, and the water seemed to ripple in time with her voice.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I heard her in the kitchen, and when I went down, she was standing at the counter, slicing a tomato. But the tomato was wrong. It was too red, the skin shiny like wax, and the seeds were black, moving as if alive. She looked up and smiled. ‘I made a new one,’ she said. ‘From the seeds of the crooked row.’ She handed me a slice, and I took it, but I didn’t eat it. I set it on the counter, and she didn’t notice.

The next days, the garden changed. The tomatoes grew twisted, the vines curling into spirals, and the fruit had a strange, sweet smell. Mara spent every evening at the creek, singing, and the water began to run backwards, slowly at first, then faster, until it seemed to flow uphill, defying the land. The townsfolk noticed, and they stayed away, muttering about the curse. I tried to talk to her, but she’d just say, ‘The Great Spirit wants me to finish the row.’ And she’d smile, but her lips were always wet, like she’d been drinking from the creek.

One morning, I found her in the garden, kneeling on the ground, her hands buried in the soil up to her wrists. She was pulling something out, something long and pale, and I saw it was a root, but it was alive, writhing like a worm. She turned to me, and her eyes were black again. ‘It’s almost done,’ she said, and her voice was not her own. It was low, and old, and it echoed as if from a deep well. ‘The row is crooked, but I’m straightening it.’

I fled. I drove to the nearest town, to a doctor, and told him everything. He said it was stress, maybe a stroke, but I knew better. When I returned, the house was empty. The garden was gone, replaced by a patch of black soil that steamed in the cold air. The creek had turned to a gurgling mud, and the stones were arranged in a perfect line, leading from the bank to a hole in the ground, a hole that seemed to breathe. I called her name, but there was no answer. I walked to the hole and looked in, and I saw her, at the bottom, curled like a seed, her eyes open, but black, and her mouth moving, singing that song.

I don’t know how long I stood there. When I came to, the hole was gone, and the garden was back, but the tomatoes were all black, and they pulsed with a heartbeat. I moved away, but I can’t forget. Sometimes, at night, I hear her singing, floating on the wind, and I see the crooked row in my dreams. It’s growing, bending, reaching for me, and I know that one day, it will find me, and I’ll be part of the row.

I still live in Hollow Creek, but I don’t go near the creek. I stay inside, with the curtains drawn, and I pray to the Great Spirit, as she did, but I don’t know if I’m praying to the same thing. Because when I close my eyes, I see her, and she’s not praying. She’s planting, and the seeds are the people who loved her. And she’s humming that tune, and the row is growing, crooked and endless, and it’s waiting for me to join it.