Chapter 6
The meeting went on forever. When Tom and Mother finally drove back to the farm, it was late and pitch dark. Tom sat next to Mother clutching Thing on his lap, staring at the raindrops crossing the beams of the car’s headlights. Mother wasn’t talking. Not about the plans to send out an expedition of men from town, not about how the townspeople had agreed to share food they grew with families who didn’t have farms.
She had said almost nothing during the meeting and Tom didn’t like that either. Not about how, if they were to share the rice, there would have to be people coming to help with the harvest, or how Mother grew the vegetables in the garden for their own family. Or how the farm could give people in town electricity, because many didn’t have any and couldn’t run their fri
