Chapter 1
The pump that sucked the water from the river was the farm’s heart. Daddy always said so. That Mother would ask Tom to turn it on made him feel important, scared almost.
It was not that he didn’t know how to do it. He had watched Daddy many times. Sometimes Daddy had let him pull the string that made the motor go put-put-put-put and blew a cloud of black smoke in your face. Sometimes, Daddy had let him open the valves. Watch out for snakes, Daddy would say, because snakes liked to hide under the pipes, where it was cool and moist.
It was just that... Daddy had always been around to help him. The farm was so strange and quiet without Daddy, but that didn’t stop the rice from growing or the sun from shining or the wind from drying out the ground, so someone needed to flood the f
