by Bob McGough
The other man gestured with his cane off to the east. “The Morris boy, he’s prolly about ruined at this point. Know him?”
I shook my head.
“Carl Morris’ boy. Inherited the farm from old Carl when he passed last year. Small place, can’t afford no fancy irrigator. I expect he’s about done in. Shame, place been in that family a hundred years. Reckon the bank’ll take it now.”
Red hat piped up. “Yeah, he had hired a few high school boys to help him try to water with hoses and buckets. But they quit after a couple days. Them buckets get heavy after a bit, and boys these days are just slap full of quit. All account of them participation trophies and such nonsense.” He eyed me over, no doubt trying to see if I had just such a trophy sticking out of my pocket. “If you looking to earn a few bucks, might head out that way, haul some buckets.”
“You know,” I said. “I just might be. Where did you say that farm was?”
Farm Day
A dust billowed up from behind the van, turning its white sides red, as I trundled my way down some nameless dirt road. Well, it surely had a name, but some enterprising kids seemed to have stolen all the signs off of it to decorate their rooms no doubt.
There are not that many forms of entertainment for the youth of Jubal County.
To my left was a large field packed with yellowing peanut plants, a sure sign it was getting close to time to pick them. I suspected within the week that field would be dug up, its buried wealth filling the pockets of some farmer. I could see the long, wheeled tubes of the irrigator lording over the rows like some sort of metal dinosaur.
Passing the crops, I made my way further down the narrow road, driving past a number of farms along the way. Cattle stood in drought stricken pastures, eating from hay bales since there was not enough grass to feed them. I saw a goat farm with a pond all but dried up, the goats standing in the sunbaked mud to take sips from the silty water that was left. Things had gotten woefully bad here.
You would think that word of this would be the talk of the county. But in my years, I had found that in matters like this, well, the eyes of the world seem to drift and slide right over them. Folks can tell when something just isn’t right, and their minds do their best to hide it from them. Call it a defensive mechanism. Hear no evil, see no evil.
For people like me, you could taste the wrongness of it all. Like an oil slick on water, there was a griminess to the air. A hint of sulfur filled your nostrils, and your tongue felt oily and thick. It was not at all pleasant. The air was thick and dense, and if I had a proper read on it, it was filled with an angry sadness so thick you could practically take a bite of it, though it would have been bitter and you would have spat it right back out.
I spotted a peanut field whose plants had never really reached anywhere close to full size, the bulk of which were a sickly yellow and brown. No irrigator climbed the horizon, so I knew I had reached the Morris farm.
Pulling into the drive, I guided the van up next to the farm house, an old blue painted building, gone a bit grey with dust. The yard was dead, but otherwise tidy, and I was greeted by a trio of rangy mutts who romped up to the side of the van, barking all the while. A hundred yards away, I could see what had to be the “Morris Boy,” though he was taller and broader than I was, making his way up a row and pulling a water hose behind him.
I could see that close to the house the plants had reached size, but the farther from the house you got, the worse they became. I imagined that most of the plants were dead and beyond saving, but I had to admire the man for trying, futile an effort as it was. From the looks of things, if he managed to save a fifth of his crop, I would be surprised.
Getting out of the car, I reached my hands out to the bounding mutts. Two immediately shied away still barking, but the third, a tan little thing gratefully took my offered petting. Seeing that I was no threat, and that they were not intending to rend me limb from limb, the four of us set out across the yard into the field, eyeing each other all the while.
Morris the younger just kept watering his peanuts, watching me as I walked up. “They won’t bite. But I reckon you know that by now.”
Stepping carefully over a row, I extended my hand. “I figured as much. Howard Marsh.”
He traded the hose into his off hand, and with his free hand engulfed mine in a too-firm shake. “Eric Morris. Pleasure. Now, what brings you out my way today?”
“Some gentlemen told me you was looking for folks to do a little labor, haul buckets an’ the like.”
Eric shook his head. “Maybe a bit earlier in the season I would have hired you. But at this point it’s a lost cause. I’m just trying to get enough so that I can keep the house at this point, but the rest of the land will most likely get got by the bank.”
I shook my head sadly, though inwardly I was a bit relieved. To be fair, I am not the least bit afraid of hard work, and had he offered me work I would have taken it. But I had a feeling hauling water buckets would have put a real damper on the high I was still feeling winding its way through my veins. “Sorry to hear that…wish I could help.”
Eric just nodded. “Just ain’t been my year.” He paused, opening his mouth as if to say something, but clearly he thought better of it and closed it.
That just wouldn’t do. I bent over, and took a little pinch of soil between my fingers, using the act to hide a few deft motions with my other hand. I could feel a bit of my high damper off, as that excess energy turned into something…eldritch. Eric gave his head a little shake, as if a fly had just buzzed him.
“What were you gonna say, Mr. Morris?”
A half-glazed look came over the man’s face. Something as simple as this spell wouldn’t pry a secret out, but something he had already considered saying…should work.
“Well, I was just thinking about all the things that’ve happened. First, Dad dying, then having to call off things with Ellen, now this…it’s a lot to put on a man.”
“Ellen?” I asked.
A feeling of sadness entered his eyes. “Jaspers. Ellen Jaspers. She was my fiancée. Just after Dad passed…I can’t rightly explain it. But the spark left me. So I called it off.”
Bingo.
I turned the dirt loose and the look left the man’s face. “Well, I hope things turn around for you. Gotta rain sometime.”
Morris just looked about dejectedly. “You’d think that,” he sighed. Under his breath, I heard him mutter, “You’d be wrong though.”
On that cheery note, I said my goodbyes and made my way back to the van.
A Thought, A Snack, And A Goat
I hated using cellphones. But times being what they were, life without one was a seeming impossibility, so begrudgingly I dug mine out and gave Rutherford a call. Of course, the man didn’t give me his actual number - just his office, but it sufficed. A few minutes on hold later, I learned that Ellen Jaspers cut hair in Sumpville for work, and lived with her mother on Danielsville Road.
Once I got off the phone, I sat there a moment, pondering. A lover scorned was about as common an origin for a curse as you could get. And though the drought was hurting lots of folks, it was definitely hurting Eric Morris a damn sight more than anyone else. Putting the van in drive, I weighed my options. It was getting later in the day, and my high was still crackling through my system pretty apace. I decided it might be best to track down a bite of food, kill a touch of time, and then head over to the homestead, rather than try to catch her at work.
Bouncing down the dirt road, I let my mind chew over things a bit. The only thing not really meshing to me was that Sumpville was outside the circle. The curse might be about Eric, but it wasn’t centered on him. Swearing, I stopped the car again and looked the map over. I couldn’t be sure till I got there, but it sure enough looked like where Ellen lived was damn near the center of the circle. Something didn’t quite click. Biting on the inside of my cheek pretty hard, I put the map down and set off once again.
It would sort itself out. Or it wouldn�
��t. I didn’t rightly care too much in that moment.
Right now, I just wanted some hot fries, a snickers, and a blue Gatorade. Those peanuts I had eaten earlier just didn’t do the job; I needed a meal a little better balanced. Thankfully, there was a Citgo between me and Danielsville.
And that was how thirty minutes later I found myself with a snickers in one hand/mouth, while I slipped hot fries through a fence to an eager goat. I like goats: they take life pretty easy, like me. So why not reward one with some of my cherished hot fries? If I could teach a goat to do drugs right, I prolly would never need real people for friends again.
So I passed an hour feeding a goat and dreaming of a life without people.
Ellen Back
Pulling off into someone’s driveway, I got out the other map, the one that zoomed in on the circle and showed the property lines. Up the driveway, I could see an older woman step through her screen door and out onto her porch to stare at me. I ignored her.
I was well down Danielsville Road, and figured I had to be getting fairly close. That slimy thickness was still in the air, but I could tell I was becoming quite used to it. I would have marveled at what the human mind could get used to, but I tried my damnedest to live my life without ever thinking too hard.
All around, the signs of drought were heavy on the ground. The old lady’s yard was brown with dying grass, save for a small flower bed which she had no doubt been watering. The surrounding forest, mostly pines and poison ivy from the looks of things, was likewise struggling, a sea of wilted leaves.
Looking closely at the map, I found a roughly twenty-acre plot deeded to a Rachel Jaspers, which would be where I was headed. I had the address written on the back of a receipt of course, so all I had to do was find the mailbox, but I wanted to see how it stacked up to the circle. If it was not the exact center, well, it was damn close. I slipped the car in drive and left the old woman to her wondering.
Even the kudzu was having a rough go of it, I saw. That stuff was about as hard to kill as anything, so if it was wilting, you knew things had gotten serious. Personally, I hated kudzu, having spent far too much of my youth at the edge of yards trying, and mostly failing, to kill it. So I wasn’t totally heartbroken by the sight, even as I knew it was my job to put it right.
I hadn’t even driven a mile when I saw a crude vegetable stand, with its hand-painted sign that read “Jaspers Crispers.” Jackpot.
I pulled the van up across the road where the ruts showed me most folks parked. It was level enough so I didn’t have to worry about the van getting stuck. Getting out, I glanced both ways then trotted across the pavement.
The stand was basically just a table under a big beach umbrella. The bright colors of the umbrella, a riot of pinks and blues, stood out dramatically and caught the eye better than the sign did. Stacked on the table were a few baskets and piles of veggies. I could see corn, tomatoes, squash, as well as a few large watermelons that were placed on the ground underneath. Good thing I had just eaten, or I likely would have bought a few tomatoes to munch on.
Behind the table, slowly fanning herself with a magazine was an older woman of about 50. She was rather pretty, I thought, with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, and from what I could see, a fairly shapely figure. She smiled as I walked up, with what seemed like roughly a thousand perfectly white teeth. When your teeth look like mine do, good teeth are a bit of an envy button.
“Afternoon,” she said with a voice that was smooth as silk. Words just sound better when they thread themselves through good teeth, if you ask me. No grit to get caught on and jumble the edges of words, I suppose.
I wouldn’t even dare smile back, it would just ruin the mood. “Almost evening!” I replied cheerfully, hoping that the angle of the sun would preclude her from examining my teeth too closely.
She gave a small laugh, more of a heavy loud breath than anything, but the sun caught her teeth and I was almost dazzled.
Tighten up, Marsh.
She was pointing out a few of the choicer offerings now, and I had to rein in my mind so that I could focus. “…and I picked those tomatoes this morning, and that corn there is sweet corn, that’s real popular these days. So what can I get for you?”
It occurred to me all of a sudden that it was a bit late in the year for some of these vegetables to look so good. I’ve worked a garden or two over the years, I would know. Was she trying to pass off store bought? “I have to say I am impressed, Mrs.… Jaspers?”
She nodded with a world shattering smile of perfection.
“Mighty impressed. How do you get them so big and ripe this late in the year?”
She laughed for real this time. “I can’t reveal all my secrets now, can I? Suffice it to say I have some really good soil. You can actually see my plot over there…” She turned and pointed behind her up the hill.
About halfway up the hill, which was dotted with pines, I could see a large garden plot. At this distance, it was hard to make out more than tall corn stalks, but I could clearly see a lot of green. It occurred to me that the whole hillside was green, which compared to the surrounding area stood out like a sore thumb. A sore green thumb.
“Very nice,” I said, beginning to examine some of the goods closely. I had to do something to quit staring at her teeth so that I could focus. That much green…something was up - something unexpected. Was this all a curse after all? I regretted not talking to Gran after all, but only for a split second.
“Jaspers….not kin to Ellen Jaspers by chance, are you?” I asked, knowing full well the answer.
“Yes! She’s my daughter. Why, do you know her?” The woman was nothing if not chipper.
“Not well, but she does my girlfriend Toni’s hair,” I lied. “Toni will be tickled I met you, I bet. She just thinks the world of Ellen.”
“My Elle is a sweetheart,” the woman beamed. I made the mistake of looking up just then and was almost struck dumb under the visual assault of two perfect rows of ivory.
I decided to go fishing. “Yeah, she is. Toni said it was such a shame about Eric, said the boy was just plain foolish, calling things off like that.”
Mrs. Jaspers laughed again. “He was indeed. Worked out for the best though. She met a new man about two months ago, an Air Force officer from up at Maxwell. That man is a doll, treats her like a princess.”
“Oh, that’s good,” I said, though I saw my carefully constructed theory shot right to shit before my eyes. I hunched down to take a closer look at the melons, giving them experimental thumps to test the ripeness, and buy me time to think as well.
She droned on about this officer and I made what were polite, interested noises, I hoped. Meanwhile I did some thinking. The exact center of a drought zone is green. If the curse-on-the-Morris-boy idea was out, as it looked it was, then there had to be something else at play here. I only had to dig a little deeper.
I pulled a crumpled ten from my pocket. “How many tomatoes will that get me?”
“For ten, you can have what’s left in the basket there. I was about to close up for the night anyway.”
I was unsure as to how you “close up” a table.
“Just gonna leave all this stuff sitting here?”
She chuckled. “No, I’ll carry it all back up to the house.”
There was a fair bit of items, several trips easily. I saw an opening. “I’ll make a deal with you…I can help you carry all this stuff.”
Her eye arched. “And in return?”
I winked at her. “What do you reckon, could maybe a watermelon ‘fall off the truck.’”
“You’ve got yourself a deal!” She grinned.
I scooped up a melon and the tomatoes and ran them over to my van, and then came back and helped her pick up all the veggies that were left. Arms loaded down, we set off up the driveway towards the house, making small talk all the while. It was starting to grow a touch dark as the sun began to make its way below the tree line, turning the cloudy sky a pale red.
Abou
t halfway up the drive, I saw we were pulling up even with the garden. “Mrs. Jasper, would you mind if I took just a quick peek at your garden?”
I barely managed to dodge that smile of all smiles as she happily assented. “I retired from the state in February, and decided to try my hand at gardening. I needed something to keep my time filled, you know, what with my daughter grown, and my husband passed. Turns out I had a knack for it!”
She did at that. Her plants were all about the biggest, healthiest plants I had seen in many a year. Even this late in the year they were all heavy laden with vegetables, more than any one family could hope to consume. That wasn’t what really caught my eye and chilled my blood, however.
“That’s quite a scarecrow you have there.” Right in the middle of the garden, was a fairly conventional scarecrow, until you got to the head. Where normally there would be burlap and buttons, and perhaps a straw hat, was instead a deer skull. It was painted mostly black and had a number of small stones tied in such a way as to hang from its antlers, like a primitive wind chime. I could see a few swirls of yellow-gold paint in places, though my eyes weren’t good enough at that distance to see what they might portend. Nothing good, I was sure.
“Oh that? My sister gave it to me around the same time I started my garden. She was cleaning out her garage and found it. Said her ex mother-in-law gave it to her for her garden. Which I thought was pretty odd, but then Kelly had married into a pretty strange bunch, though I don’t remember them that well. I was off at college for most of it.”
My stomach sank. H.D.’s first wife had been a Kelly. And I was pretty sure I recognized that craftsmanship. “Well, it is certainly unique.”
Goddamn it, Granny.
The Thunder Rolled
I lay on the hood of the van, my back against the windshield staring up at the night sky. Thunder was rumbling in the distance, and in the horizon I could see lightning arc from cloud to cloud. The air had chilled to the point where I could see my breath; little puffs of air that blended with the smoke of my joint.