Anna waited outside the airport terminal with a small red suitcase and a green spring jacket. She didn’t carry much with her, just several changes of clothes, a pair of running shoes, and a laptop that contained the parts of her life she still cared about. She had left the rest of her belongings—all the things she had outgrown, from clothes to toys—in boxes stacked in the corner of her old room.
Uncle Jack was easy to spot. He was driving the same rusty green pickup truck she remembered from her last visit years before. Herbie, his golden retriever, sat on the passenger side of the truck. Neither of them seemed to have changed a bit. When she hugged Uncle Jack, he smelled of wood chips and fresh-cut grass.
“You sure know how to travel light.” Uncle Jack smiled as he lifted her red suitcase with a single finger and tossed it into the back. “Or are you looking for a quick escape?”
“Hmm. Not sure yet,” Anna kidded back. “I like to keep my options open.”
She had always liked her Uncle Jack. He was tall and laughed a lot and liked to make things. His nose was slightly crooked from a momentary lapse of concentration and a line drive baseball in high school. She remembered he was a lot younger than her dad had been, like eight or ten years, and he didn’t have her dad’s always-worried expression, which made him seem even younger.
Anna sat in the middle of the bench seat so that Herbie could ride with his head out the window, his ears and tongue flapping in the wind. It was a warm day for early spring, and the air circulating through the cab of the truck felt good as they drove deeper into farm country. It smelled good too, like dirt after a rain. They talked about baseball and the Cubs’ prospects on opening day for the first half hour and science for the next. Her two favorite subjects. Uncle Jack didn’t bring up her parents’ death or give her that sympathetic look she had grown to hate—not once.
It was midafternoon when they reached the outskirts of Uncle Jack’s hometown. A faded green sign with two bullet holes and a dented bottom corner greeted them with Welcome to Smartt, Indiana—Population 2,503.
“Smartt with two t’s?”
“Yeah, I know.” Uncle Jack chuckled. “The irony is not lost on me, either.”
On the outskirts of town, there were big-box discount stores and farm equipment retailers with flapping orange flags draped across shiny green tractors. A two-lane bridge overlooking a small winding river marked the passage between the newer and older parts of Smartt. The older parts had a lot more charm. They passed by the downtown area with a white town hall surrounded by brick storefronts and an outdoor farmers market. They passed by the county fairgrounds that contained large barn-like structures and rusted carnival rides covered by tarps during the off-season. They drove by two brick buildings that looked like Lego blocks surrounded by a football field, a playground, and a large garden. Kids were playing out front. Anna figured this had to be her new school—or maybe a very nice prison. Same thing, in her mind. Four stop signs, a traffic light, and a couple of left turns later and they were on the other side of town.
“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s about it. This isn’t anything like Boston.” Uncle Jack smiled. He must have been reading her mind. “But you never have to worry about traffic, and folks are nice for the most part.”
Within minutes they were on the last leg of their journey, down a half-mile dirt road lined with trees and a long white fence winding down a sloping hill. Fields, with rows of sprouting crops, spread out like a green blanket on both sides. At the end of the lane, a row of large rectangular barns came into view. The sun reflected sharply off their tin roofs and solar panels, forcing Anna to squint. None of it looked familiar until the sun’s angle shifted and she could make out the old farmhouse her father had grown up in.
As the pickup truck rumbled closer, she noticed at least a dozen strangers standing under the shade of the old bur oak tree that covered part of the sweeping front lawn. The crowd was staring at the truck as if they had been waiting for Anna’s arrival. Next to the crowd were two picnic benches set side by side and lined with piles of food and pitchers of tea sweating in the afternoon sun.
“So how do you feel about surprise parties?” Uncle Jack asked. His mouth turned up in a crooked grin.
“They’re fine as long as they aren’t for me,” Anna said, grimacing.
“Well, too late for that.” Uncle Jack slowly rolled the truck to a stop near the front gate. “I just wanted you to meet some of the folks I work with here on the farm. I promise it will be painless.”
Anna reluctantly stepped out and fanned her hand in front of her face as the cloud of dust that had followed the truck rolled past. As the dust cleared, she could see the faces in the crowd. They were friendly and smiling and staring directly at her. Anna recoiled and wanted to get back into the truck. From her list of irrational fears—spiders, clowns, and being the center of attention—being the center of attention was the thing she feared most.
“She’s a shy one, isn’t she?” said a short, stout woman with spiked gray hair and cloudy blue eyes. She had an accent, French or Italian—Anna wasn’t sure. Somehow, that helped it sound less condescending.
Uncle Jack held his hands up.
“All right, all right. Let’s not overwhelm her. Everyone, this is Anna,” Uncle Jack said, motioning toward his niece. “Anna, uh—I guess this is everyone.”
One by one, members of Uncle Jack’s team came forward and introduced themselves. Anna didn’t like crowds, but she prided herself on being able to memorize people’s names. It was a game her mother had taught her. Anna would take a part of the person’s name and combine it with a silly image or sound. Memory tricks. And the game had the side benefit of occupying her mind and reducing stress. The woman with spiked hair, a botanist from France, became “Faye the Gray who likes to make hay.” There was “Kevin from Kenya,” an engineer, and “Gladness from Tanzania,” a veterinarian whose name was perfect just the way it was. There was a tall blond man, a seed specialist, whom Anna nicknamed “Liam from Sweden who breeds little seeds.” There was a soil specialist from China—“Li Wei or the highway”—and various other agronomists, animal scientists, craftspeople, and makers.
“And this freeloader here is Dr. Ricardo Gloria, my research partner.” Uncle Jack put his arm around the shoulders of a thin, lanky man wearing a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. Dr. Gloria was tan, with smile wrinkles that dusted the corners of his eyes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Anna,” Dr. Gloria said, shaking her hand firmly. “Your grace and intelligence must have come from your mother’s side of the family.”
Anna paused for a moment, looked around, processed the last couple of minutes, then moved close to her uncle’s side. She leaned in and said under her breath, “Uncle Jack, what kind of place are you running here?”
Uncle Jack looked puzzled for a moment, then burst out laughing. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?” Anna asked.
“Ever hear of Thomas Edison, the famous inventor?”
“Of course,” Anna said.
“And his team of inventors and craftsmen at Menlo Park?”
Anna nodded.
“We’re kind of like that, only dirtier and not nearly as smart,” Uncle Jack said. “You know this is a research farm, right?”
“I thought it was just Grandpa’s farm,” Anna said.
“Well, it was. Now it’s the Armstrong and Gloria Regenerative Farms Research Center to be exact, brought toyou by a healthy grant from Indiana University. Didn’t your aunt tell you?”
“Aunt Claire didn’t tell me anything except the time for my flight.” Anna looked around at the crowd of people who were now sitting down and eating and talking among themselves. “You guys do real science here? I thought you were just a farmer.”
“That’s Dr. Farmer to you, and yes, we do real science,” Uncle Jack said, arching his eyebrow and smiling. “I don’t want to brag or anything. But we’re kind of saving the planet here.”
Over the course of the afternoon, Anna learned about each researcher’s specialty, from dealing with a changing climate and soil erosion to drone maintenance and tool fabrication. She was taken on multiple tours, walking a network of paths that connected the barns, labs, workshops, and rolling fields that made up her uncle’s farm. She ate food with strange textures and names she had never heard of and spices from countries she had never visited. She learned to sing several songs in foreign languages, not understanding the words but having a great time making the sounds, as Dr. Gloria and Uncle Jack played their guitars well into the evening. By the time the sky had shifted from orange to purple and the temperature had dropped by a good ten degrees, the party finally began to wind down. One by one, her new friends said their goodbyes before heading out to their own dormitories on the other side of the farm or driving into town to their short-term rental homes.
It was the most social interaction Anna had experienced in almost a year, and she was exhausted. As the last truck left, she slumped down on the porch swing and let one leg hang over the side. Lazily, she rocked back and forth, feeling the slight breeze shift across her face from left to right and back again. It was quiet, but a different kind of quiet than the vacuum silence that marked her time with Aunt Claire. This was a quiet filled with life all around her. The slight creak of the swing. Uncle Jack and Dr. Gloria’s low-pitched conversation in the opposite corner of the deep-set porch. The stir of tall grass in the wind. The light chorus hum of early-spring katydids and crickets. Slowly, she closed her eyes and listened to one sound and then the other until each sound wove into a single note.
Then sleep.