Crooked Plow

by Itamar Vieira Junior

She didn’t want our innocent hands touching the source of her anguish; at the same time, she didn’t want to let go of her memories completely— they were keeping her alive. Those memories gave meaning to the days she had left to her; by the same token, they reminded her that she had never surrendered to the difficulties life had put in her way.

The Peixoto family only cared about one thing: a profitable harvest. But they didn’t live on the land, it wasn’t in their blood. They sometimes traveled to the Fazenda Água Negra from the capital just to show their faces, so we wouldn’t forget who the bosses were,

the courage I’d tried to instill in myself would drain away, the courage needed to live in that hostile land of perennial sun and occasional rain, that abusive land where people were dying constantly, denied all succor, where we lived like cattle, working and getting nothing in return, not even rest, and our sole rights were to reside on that land for as long as the owners were willing, and, if we never left Água Negra, to be buried in the grave awaiting us at Viração. But I persisted. On the paths

Severo was killed because he went into battle for his community, for their land. He fought to liberate his people. He wanted their rights to be recognized, the rights of families who’d lived for so long on that land, where children and grandchildren had been born whose umbilical cords were buried in the earth of their backyards. The land where they’d built their homes and erected their fences.