Run for the Hills

Strange people often came to the farm, but they tended to be late risers, so Mad knew the first few hours would be easy. Starting at 7:00 a.m. every Saturday, the Running Knob Hollow Farm’s roadside stand welcomed their weekly regulars, people who lined up for the link of food that Mad and her mom, Rachel, grey and gathered and made and sourced. Since they’d been featured in magazines like Bon Appétit and Southern Living, the organic eggs sold out in less than an hour, as well as the week’s offering of produce and fruit. The cheeses, which were her mother’s domain, a few varieties that people swore by, would go next. By 10:00, the people who arrived at the farm had to make do with whatever was left, talking themselves into the possibility that, even though they’d hoped to have a dozen eggs and some escarole, maybe they actually wanted half of a lamb. Did they want half a lamb? Mad could usually talk them into it, these people slightly dazed by the sunlight, possibly hungover from the night before. It all happened without having to think much about it, money changing hands, people talking, a little community. But by 11:00, with only an hour before closing? That’s when weird things happened.

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Mad swept the floor, took stock of what was left, rearranged some garlic bulbs. “I’ve been very lonely, Carl,” she said to herself, one of the last sentences in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, a line that always occurred to her when she was the slightest bit tired or inconvenienced.

O Pioneers! was one of the few works of fiction that her father had liked, preferring the Old Farmer’s Almanac and Wendell Berry essays, and he read the book to her when she was nine years old, just before he left her and her mother twenty-three years ago, ran out on them, never to return.

Sometimes she thought if she ever met a nice guy named Carl, she’d marry him just so she could say the line to a real person. But there weren’t any Carls in this little valley in Tennessee, not many Carls left in the United States, she figured. And, honestly, she wouldn’t have married him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to marry anyone, but it would be nice to have a handsome farmhand named Carl to whom she could say this line at the end of every day. And then they’d go to their own rooms, alone, independent.

“You’re married to the earth,” her mother once said, more to herself than to Mad, as if consoling herself that she might never have grandchildren. “Do you think that’s right, Madeline? That you’re married to the earth?”

“God, Mom,” Mad had said, “no. There just aren’t many cool dudes out here.” Mad was thirty-two now, and she realized that her mom at that age was about to have her husband disappear and leave her with a young girl and a farm to run. Mad had avoided being left, she supposed, by not having anyone arrive.

“Well, you don’t have to marry anyone to be happy,” her mother finally said, “not even the earth.”

“Thanks, Mom,” she replied. After a second, she asked, “Aren’t you the one married to the earth?”

“After all that headache and heartbreak with your father, I wouldn’t want to get involved with anyone, especially not the earth. Plus, you know, the earth is a woman, and I guess it’s good just to be friends with her. I’m happy enough with that.”

“Well, I’m happy, too,” Mad told her.

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it,” her mom had said with a hint of sadness in her voice, and Mad wasn’t sure she wanted to belabor the point so she just let it drop.

 

Now she looked up to see a car driving down the dirt road, a PT Cruiser, which was not a car that you saw in this area. It was not, she considered further, a car that made much sense in pretty much any area, the absurd mixture of too-far-in-the-past and too-far-into-the-future, but dirt roads made PT Cruisers seem especially ridiculous, like the slightest bump would send it upside down like a bug.

A man got out of the car, and he was dressed appropriately for a PT Cruiser, khakis and a baby-blue oxford shirt, hiking boots, a pair of flip-up sunglasses. He looked like he was in his forties, tall and pale, not a product of this area, she guessed. He was out of place in so many ways that she started walking toward him as if prepared to offer directions back to . . . the past? The future? A city? Anywhere but this place, she figured.

He was reaching into the passenger side of the car to get a leather satchel, but when he noticed that she was approaching, he abandoned it and straightened his posture, holding up his hands like he was surrendering to her. “Hello,” he said, with his teeth showing in what she imagined was a smile. She hoped it was a smile.

“Hi,” she offered.

“Nice day?” he asked, like he wondered if, on this farm, the day would be considered nice to people like her.

“Yeah, I think so,” she replied. “Nice day.”

“Oh, good! I think so, too.”

“Are you lost?” she asked.

He smiled, embarrassed. “Yes and no?”

“Oh, okay,” Mad said. Afternoon weirdos. Then she realized that maybe it was making him nervous for her to be meeting him at his car, that he hadn’t been prepared for conversation. Was it possible that she was the weirdo?

“Are you Madeline Hill?” he blurted out.

“Madeline Hill?” she asked, making sure she’d heard him correctly. Only her mother called her Madeline. Everyone else called her Mad, an invention of her father, who loved nicknames. Not Mads, which was worse than Madeline. Mad Hill.

“I’m looking for her.”

“That’s me, yes,” she said.

“And—sorry, I’m nervous.” He fumbled for the next word but couldn’t quite get it. Mad decided she’d tell her mother that they were closing the stand at ten from now on, that the extra sales weren’t worth the awkwardness of moments like this. He was holding this smile for so long, a kind of forced jocularity, that she realized it was maybe a grimace. She was so interested in his face, the strangeness of it, something about it making her want to stare at him even longer, however uncomfortable it was. She did not like to stare at a stranger’s teeth, but here she was, an afternoon weirdo.

“Did you read about us in a magazine?” she asked, trying for anything that would, she hoped, move the conversation forward toward a resolution that did not involve someone having a nervous breakdown.

“Us?”

“Me and my mom? The farm?”

“Oh . . . yes and no? I mean, later, yes, I did read about you in a magazine.”

“You say ‘yes and no’ a lot. I mean, you’ve said it twice already.”

“Were you born on June 1, 1975?” he asked suddenly, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Yes . . . and no,” she said, shocked by the intimacy of the request but unable to stop herself from answering. She had been born, on this very farm, so close to the minute when June 1^st turned to June 2nd that her parents just made a decision to say June 1st. But they usually had two celebrations when she was growing up, one on the first and then staying up until midnight to have a second piece of cake. It was disarming to remember those times, and then she realized that she was talking to a stranger, a stranger who knew her name and date of birth.

“Who are you?” she finally asked, and the man, so pale, turned red. He was sweating in the sun, blinking rapidly.

“I’m your brother,” he answered. “My name is Reuben Hill.”

“My brother?”

“Well . . . yes and—”

“Stop doing that,” she said, her voice rising. “I want you to tell me real things, specific things, and if I ask you a question, I want answers that are either yes or no, and not both. Okay?”

“Sorry,” he replied.

“So you’re my brother?”

“Yes . . . okay, yes.”

“What the hell,” she offered. “What a bizarre thing. A dude in a PT Cruiser shows up at my farm, and he’s my brother.”

“Half brother,” he offered. “We’re half siblings.”

“Okay, this is helpful,” she said. “This is the information that I need, you understand? Like, some tangible data to make sense of this.” She thought for a second. “Dad. Of course, Dad.”

“Yes, our dad. Charles Hill.”

“Chuck.”

“That’s what he went by?”

“Yeah, Chuck Hill.”

“He was Charles when he was my dad. But I get it. He liked nicknames. I go by Rube, which is what he called me.”

“He called me Mad.”

“Mad? Like, angry?”

“No . . . and ye—Shit, sorry. Who knows, honestly? He just liked the way it sounded. But, can I tell you this? I haven’t seen our dad in over twenty years. He left us.”

“I haven’t seen him in over thirty,” he admitted. “He left us, too.” The man, Reuben or Rube or whatever, her brother or half brother or whatever, looked down at the ground. When he looked back up at her, he was crying a little, his eyes red, but still smiling.

“Jesus,” Mad replied, “I’m sorry.” She didn’t go to him, didn’t know how to comfort this person. But she was sorry. It wasn’t hard to say.

“It’s kind of made things difficult. I haven’t really let go.” It was the beginning of March in Tennessee, and though it had been in the forties just three days before, the sun was bright, and wherever Rube was from, he clearly wasn’t made for even this slight heat. He was sweating quite a bit, mixing with the tears, and it made it hard for Mad to fully look at him, to get a sense of how they were made of similar material. Half of them should look alike, right? What half? They were both tall, she could see that. But what else? She had a lot of questions.

“Do you want to come to the house?” she asked him. “Sit down? Have some iced tea or something? Have you eaten?”

“I would love to sit down,” he admitted. “Oh, I’ve got a bunch of papers in the car, just in case you think I’m making this up.”

“Why in the world would you make this up?” Mad wondered.

“Well, I have some documentation, that’s all.”

“Come on,” she told him.

“Let me get my satchel,” he said, and after a few seconds, he was beside her again, standing a little too close, like he thought she might start running into a field and disappear. Mad suddenly thought about her mom, could not imagine how she would react to this. Then she wondered if her mom already knew. Then she wondered why her mom hadn’t told her. There was too much wonder in the world, and the day wasn’t even halfway over.

This wasn’t supposed to be how a family worked. Family was just there when you appeared in the world, waiting for you. Each new addition after that, you had time to prepare, to make a place for them in your heart. The only danger was reduction, the numbers thinning out, people leaving. You weren’t supposed to suddenly get a new family at eleven o’clock on a Saturday after you’d sold out of eggs.

All she could do was stand next to this man, older than her, her brother, she supposed. Half brother, she supposed. But he wasn’t her brother yet in any discernible fraction. It would take time. They had a long walk to the house. So she started to walk, leading the way.

“I’ve never had a brother or a sister,” she remarked, looking out across the fields, the sun so bright.

“Me, either,” Rube replied. He kept a respectful distance now, walking exactly in the footsteps that she made.

“I’m gonna need some time to get used to it,” she admitted.

“Of course. I needed a lot of time,” he told her. “I’m still not sure I should have done this. But here I am!” Tonally, he was all over the place, these shifts between exclamation and seriousness. Mad, on the other hand, had one tone. It was a tone of patient acceptance with a simmering undertone of deep reticence.

“Yep. You’re here.”

“Mad?” he asked. His voice was quieter, and she realized that he had stopped walking, was just staring at her, holding so tightly to his satchel.

“What? What is it?”

“There’s more of us,” he finally said. “More kids.”

“Dad’s?”

“Yeah. We have other siblings.”

“Oh, shit.”

“It’s a lot to handle,” he admitted. “Maybe I should have told you later. I’ve been alone, you know? It’s been hard to think about this stuff. When I saw you, I just felt like I could tell you. I felt like maybe you and I could figure it out.”

“We don’t know each other. You don’t know me. I could be so awful, you know?”

“I don’t think you are,” he said.

“What was wrong with our dad? God, what an idiot.”

“You haven’t wondered where he was?”

“I haven’t. He left. He didn’t want to stay. He doesn’t deserve my thinking of him. And it sounds like he didn’t care. He just made more of us.”

“Would you want to find him?” he asked.

“Let’s just keep walking,” she said, because she wasn’t sure what she wanted at the moment. “Let’s go home and then we can talk. We can get to know each other.” She was leading her brother to her home. She was taking him home. She didn’t want to talk about her dad. He was gone. He had been gone. But here was Rube, her brother. It was enough. Maybe it would end up being too much, more than she could handle. Maybe it would all get so much worse. How could it not get worse? But for now, walking across the grass, to the only place she’d ever called home, it was enough to have someone walking alongside her.

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From Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson. Copyright © 2025 by Kevin Wilson. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.