The red dirt. That’s what I remember most. Not the green rows, not the smell of rain coming (though that was good too, the way the air got thick right before), but the dirt under my fingernails. Red like rust, like old blood. Stained everything it touched. My hands always looked dirty when I was a kid. Mom would scrub them raw before supper, but it never quite came clean. (Funny, how some things just stick with you.) They’re selling it. The farm. All of it. The house my grandpa built, the barn with the crooked door that always caught in the wind. Dad called me last week, voice quiet. “Time to let it go,” he said. Like it was a sick animal. And I just listened. What was there to say? I left, didn’t I? Soon as I could. Chased something… else. Never really found it, what I was looking for. Just found myself working the same hours, for someone else’s dream. Always someone else’s dream. I saw the pictures online. Realtor put them up. Shiny new photos, everything cleaned up, staged. A vase of fake flowers on the kitchen table where Mom used to roll out pie crusts, flour dusting her elbows. It looks… small now. Not like the sprawling, endless place it felt like when I was little. The fields look flat, just dirt and stubble. Not like the ocean of green it used to be, waving in the breeze. My folks, they’re getting older. Their backs hurt, their hands shake a little. There’s no one to take it on. (That’s the hard part, isn’t it?) No next generation. No one to learn the rhythm of the seasons, the way to read the sky for rain, the feel of good soil between your fingers. It ends with them. With me, really. Because I was the one who left. I remember Dad, his face streaked with sweat, telling me one summer day, “This land, it’s in your blood, boy.” And I believed him then. I felt it. The pull. But paychecks were thin, always thin. Needed more than that. Needed to pay the bills. Needed… something else. (God, what a stupid reason.) Now I just see the pictures and it’s like a hole opening up. My parents, they’re going to move into a little house in town. A subdivision. No more red dirt. No more open sky. Just a lawn that someone else mows, maybe. And I think about those hands, always dirty, always working. And now they’re just… stopping. And it’s my fault, really. Isn't it. The last one. The only one. And I just stood by and let it happen. Couldn't stop it. Or didn't want to. I don't know which is worse.