The letter had been on the kitchen table since Thursday. Darlene saw it every morning when she sat down with her coffee and every morning she did not open it and every morning the letter stayed where it was, between the salt and the wooden napkin holder, with the company logo in the upper left corner, Darlene's name printed in the window of the envelope. The rubber boots were by the door, green, Muck Boot, the same ones she had been buying for fifteen years. She bought them online, always the same size, always the same model, and when they wore out she ordered a new pair and threw the old ones away. She did not know how many she had thrown away. The .22 rifle stood behind the kitchen door, unloaded, leaning against the wall with the barrel pointing up. She had not used it in two years. She kept it there because she kept it there.

The property was a hundred and twenty acres in Beauregard Parish, Louisiana. Three generations. Darlene's grandfather had bought the land in 1948 with money from the war and the purchase documents were in a tin box in the credenza drawer, the original documents with the notary's signature, the stamp, the price, four thousand six hundred dollars for a hundred and twenty acres of pine and pecan and pasture, Darlene sometimes opened the box. She looked at the documents. The documents said the land was hers. The land knew it. Darlene's father had worked it for forty years. Darlene had worked it for thirty. The artesian well gave good water and the house had a tin roof that leaked on the northwest side and that Darlene patched every fall with tar. The tar had the smell tar has when you heat it. The smell was fall. Fall was the repair. The repair was the reason the roof lasted. On the refrigerator there were photos of the grandchildren held up by national park magnets: Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Hot Springs. The grandchildren did not come to Ragley. They came at Christmas and in July and the rest of the year the magnets held the photos. The photos held the grandchildren. Darlene held the land.

The 2020 law authorized the use of eminent domain for carbon capture and sequestration projects. Darlene had read it when a man from the company came knocking, two years earlier, with an iPad and a lease agreement for the "pore space" beneath her property. Pore space was the rock under the land, the rock with pores, the pores where the company wanted to inject compressed carbon dioxide and seal it and leave it forever. The pore space was beneath Darlene's land but according to the law it did not belong to Darlene. According to the law the pore space belonged to the state and the state could grant it to whoever it wanted. The man with the iPad had said figures. Darlene had said no. The man had said that if she did not accept the offer the company could proceed with expropriation. Darlene had said they could proceed. The man had left with the iPad, the unsigned contract, the rental car parked in front of the gate. Darlene had watched him leave from the kitchen window. The man had not turned around. The neighbor, Earl, had pancreatic cancer. The company had told him the same thing. Earl did not have the strength to say no. He had signed. The pipe would pass under Earl's land then under Darlene's land. The land would not feel a thing. Darlene would feel all of it.

On March 31 the House committee had voted. The bill to block the expropriation had been defeated, twelve to seven. Darlene had learned it from her phone, in the kitchen, coffee in hand and the green boots on her feet and the letter on the table. Twelve to seven. The law stood. The pore space remained the state's. The land above the pore space remained Darlene's but beneath the land someone would pump gas. The gas would stay there. The land would hold something Darlene had not chosen to hold. Darlene set the phone down. She looked at the letter. The letter had been on the table since Thursday. Thursday was five days ago. In five days Darlene had not opened it because she knew what was inside: the new offer, higher than the first, with the same sentence at the bottom, "in the event of failure to reach an agreement the company will proceed in accordance with applicable law." The law was the law. The land was the land. The letter was the letter. Darlene left it where it was, between the salt and the napkin holder. The coffee was cold in the cup. The magnets held the grandchildren. The rifle stood behind the door, unloaded. The green boots stood by the door, with the mud from the property in their soles, the mud that was above the pore space that was beneath the mud, and the mud was hers and the pore space was not.