The work boots sat there in the red Mississippi clay, caked with mud but otherwise pristine, as if their owner had simply stepped out of them moments ago. Except Daddy had been dead three weeks now, and those boots hadn’t moved from their spot on the back porch since the day we found him face-down in the cotton field.
“You gonna do somethin’ about them boots, Sarah Beth?” Mama’s voice drifted from the kitchen window, thin and reedy like wind through corn stalks. She hadn’t set foot on that porch since That Day.
“Leave ’em be,” I said, not taking my eyes off the leather that seemed to gleam despite the gathering dusk. “They ain’t hurting nothing.”
But they were. Every morning they’d be in a different spot - sometimes turned toward the house like a silent sentinel, sometimes pointing toward the field where Daddy died. Mama pretended not to notice, and I pretended not to see her watching them through the window, her fingers working her rosary beads raw.
“Your daddy,” she’d say during our silent suppers, “he always said them boots was special. Found ’em just appeared in the barn one morning, perfect fit. Said they was a gift from the land itself.” She’d laugh, but it was the kind of laugh that had terror hiding behind it.
The night it happened, I woke to the sound of boots on hardwood. Slow, deliberate steps that creaked across the floor below. Mama was beside me in an instant, her eyes wild in the darkness.
“Sarah Beth,” she whispered, “your daddy’s come home.”
But it wasn’t Daddy - not really. The boots moved on their own through our house, leaving mud prints that disappeared by morning. They stopped at the foot of our stairs, turned toward us like they were looking up.
“They want something,” Mama said, her voice cracking.
I knew what they wanted. The truth about That Day. About how Mama had found Daddy with Miss Charlotte from town. About how she’d grabbed his shotgun. About how the cotton field had swallowed her secrets.
The boots knew. And now they’d come to collect.
“I’m sorry,” Mama whispered to the empty boots at the bottom of our stairs. “I’m so sorry.”
The boots turned and walked to the front door. We heard it open - though neither of us had touched it - and the slow steps of leather on wood continued out into the night.
The next morning, they found Mama in the same spot as Daddy, face-down in the cotton field. The work boots were gone, disappeared back into the land that had given them, waiting for the next soul who needed judgment.
And me? I still hear them sometimes, on quiet nights when the Mississippi moon hangs low and heavy. Boot steps in the distance, moving through the cotton fields, patient and purposeful. Waiting. Because the land knows all our sins, and sooner or later, it sends its messengers to make things right.