kirkcurnutt.com - The Farms of Breathing Out the Ghost

Much of Breathing Out the Ghost takes place in Shelby and Johnson counties in central Indiana. Because many of the sites are readily identifiable, we decided to pay tribute to the changing landscape. The first two photos are aerial views of what Pete and Sis Pruitt's land would have looked like c. 1930, when Ethel Brandywine and Horace Hinkle lived together without benefit of marriage.

"....She imagined her feet growing through the bottoms of her shoes, her toes burrowing through the concrete of the porch to stretch deep into the layers of alluvium and shale that packed the ground, shoots and rhizomes binding her to this place, this spot. This is my Midwest, she thought. My Indiana, my life. I am just an outgrowth, a stem of something deeper...."

"....She climbed the hayloft of the old milking barn that sat across the circular gravel drive that split her and Pete's house lot in two...."

"...Truth is, you couldn’t find two men less alike. Mercer was tall, broad. Had he made it past twenty-nine he’d have grown thick and round as the silos he blocked and mortared with his own hand. Horace is a divining rod by comparison...."

"...The loft was thick with October dust and crisscrossed with the silvery filaments of cobwebs...."

"...A milk-gray haze would cover the land; it was a regular feature of the Indiana autumn. There would be rain and then snow, the earth would harden and freeze, and her days would be consumed with making meals, calling meetings, finding diversions for her kids...."

"....Without ceremony he cut the truck wheels into a broad arc and disappeared with a gasp of carbon dioxide into the stopple fields...."

"....Pete and Sis craned past a half-dam of stepping stones that caused the current to swirl and whirlpool. Just past the rocks, flopped unceremoniously in the snow, was what looked like a beached whale...."

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