by Sharon Sala
“Mama’s aunt Phoebe used to gather foxglove and all kinds of herbs for treating sickness,” Danny said.
“Yeah, I remember,” Porter said.
Roland’s hopes rose. Maybe this was going to work out after all.
“See? I’m not hiding anything illegal. I just believe in being careful.”
“And the five thousand still holds?” Danny asked.
“Yes, yes. Five thousand,” Roland echoed.
“Apiece?” Porter added.
“Yes! For God’s sake, yes! Five thousand apiece. Now, are we going to begin the harvest today or not?”
The brothers looked at each other, then shrugged.
“I reckon so,” Porter said.
“Just keep your skin covered and you’ll be fine,” Roland said.
Porter glared at Danny. “Yeah, we’ll be just fine.”
Danny wouldn’t look at his brother. He’d gotten them into this, but it was obvious he hadn’t asked enough questions before he’d committed them to the job. Still, five thousand dollars apiece for less than a couple of weeks’ work was too good to pass up. Danny took the gloves out of his pocket and put them on.
“Okay, Storm. Show us where you want to start.”
It was just before noon when Harold walked back into the storeroom and called out to Wes.
“Hey, Wes…I need a twenty-five pound sack of tuna-flavored cat food brought up front.”
Wes nodded, then walked past the loaded pallets of feed and seed to the corner of the storeroom where the sacks of dog and cat food were stacked. He shouldered a sack and then headed for the front.
There was a tiny old woman standing at the counter as Wes entered the room.
“Which car?” Wes asked.
“The blue Ford truck,” Harold said.
Wes walked through the store, then out the front door and put the sack in the rear of the truck. He was on his way back inside when the elderly woman came out of the store, guided by a younger woman who was very pregnant. It was then he realized the old woman was blind. Instead of speaking, he nodded cordially at the pregnant woman, then held the door for them as they passed by.
“Thank you kindly,” the young woman said.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” Wes answered.
The old woman stopped, tilted her head sideways like a little bird eyeing something new on the ground, and then spoke.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, and held out her hand. “My name is Amelia Devon, but everyone just calls me Granny, and this is my niece, Charlotte.”
When he took her hand, he was surprised by the strength in her grip, then even more surprised when she seemed to go off into a trance and began muttering some kind of rhyme.
“Man comes a cryin’, runnin’ for his life.
Lost his little boy. Lost his pretty wife.
Danger all around him. Danger up above.
Thinks his life is over. Gonna find new love.”
Wes was so stunned by what she said that he forgot to turn loose of her hand. Then, by the time she was finished, it was too late. She started sliding toward the ground.
“Help me,” Charlotte said as she grabbed at Granny’s shoulders.
Wes caught her, lifted her up, then carried her to the truck.
“Here, let me get the door for you,” Charlotte said.
“Don’t we need to call an ambulance?”
“No…that’s just Granny’s way. Never know when the visions will hit her, but they always leave her weak as a kitten.”
Wes figured this must have been how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. The only person who seemed to think this was all strange was him. He stared at the pregnant woman as if she’d just lost her mind.
“Visions?”
Charlotte nodded. “Yes. Granny was born blind, you know, but she sees more than any sighted person could.”
“She has visions?”
Charlotte smiled sympathetically. “I know. It sounds strange, but it’s true. You mind what she said to you. It always comes true.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wes said, then shut the door to the truck, putting some much-needed distance between himself and the woman who called herself Granny Devon.
He stepped up on the curb and then strode into the store.
“Granny all right?” Harold asked.
“Seems so,” Wes said shortly.
“Must have had herself a vision,” Harold added.
Wes glared at Harold as he stomped through the shop to the storeroom.
This isn’t the rabbit hole. It’s the freakin’ Twilight Zone.
He picked up a broom and started sweeping an already clean floor as Scooby the cat made a dive for calmer quarters. But the harder he swept, the more creepy he felt.
The first half of what she’d said had already happened, and he didn’t want a goddamned thing to do with the last of it. Not the danger, and for certain not another love, even though there was no denying he was attracted to Ally Monroe. But it hurt too much to lose a love. He wasn’t about to try anything that foolish again.
Still, when quitting time came and he started the walk back home, he caught himself thinking of seeing her tomorrow and began to walk faster. Even though the evening would probably wind up a disaster, he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Thirteen
The midday heat was sweltering. What air was moving was unable to get past the trees surrounding the field where Danny and Porter were working. Their clothes were wet with sweat and stuck fast to their bodies. Adding to the misery were the tiny gnats that swarmed around their heads and up their noses. Danny tied a handkerchief across the lower half of his face, while Porter lit up a cigarette, using the smoke to keep the insects at bay. In their whole lives, they’d done just about every kind of job there was to do on a working farm, but this was, without doubt, the most miserable thing they’d ever encountered. And, as if the heat and bugs weren’t enough, they kept finding small dead animals scattered throughout the field.
Porter finished cutting down a row and then stopped to help Danny load the trailer they were pulling behind the tractor. The cut ends oozed a clear, sticky sap that seemed to draw insects by the thousands. The stalks were crawling with ants and beetles, and when they loaded the trailer, the bugs crawled on them, too.
Porter flipped the cigarette he’d been smoking into the dirt, stomped it with the toe of his boot, then brushed a handful of ants from the front of his shirt.
“This is the most miserable, goddamned job I’ve ever had.”
Danny took the handkerchief from his face and used it to blow his nose, blasting it with sweat, snot and bugs.
“I’ve never seen so many insects in a field in my life,” Danny said.
“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know,” Porter snapped, and swatted at a wasp buzzing near his ear. “I don’t know what the hell kind of herb this is supposed to be, but I will lay odds it’s illegal.”
Danny sighed. “Yeah.”
Porter’s eyes narrowed. “We can walk away from this right now. Forfeit the money and leave Storm to stuff himself.”
Danny sighed. “I know.”
Porter stared at his brother. He knew him almost as well as he knew himself.
“But you’re not going to, are you?” Porter said.
Danny hesitated, then shook his head.
“I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
Porter smiled wryly. “Because you gave him your word, right?”
Danny shrugged. “Yeah.”
Porter cursed beneath his breath, then laughed softly.
“Damn it, Danny. One of these days your sense of honor is gonna get us killed.”
Danny frowned. “Don’t say that!”
Porter laughed again. “Just teasing, brother. Just teasing.”
“Well…it wasn’t funny,” Danny said, then bent down and picked up another armload of the cut stalks and laid them on the low flatbed trailer. “We’ve almost got another
load,” he said.
“I can get another half-dozen bunches on here, and then I think I’ll take it in,” Porter said.
Danny nodded. “I’ll gather up some more bunches and leave them beside the rows while you’re gone. Would you please bring me something cold to drink when you come back?”
“Will do,” Porter said, and a few minutes later, he took off to the drying sheds, leaving Danny alone in the field.
Danny continued to gather the cut stalks, then pile them up for loading. As he bent down, the scent of something dead filled his nostrils. He moved some stalks and found another dead rabbit.
That in itself wasn’t unusual, but that they kept finding them here in the field was weird. Another oddity was that they seemed to have died on their own. Normally, small animals like this fell prey to predators, such as foxes or big cats. And while this one had obviously been here for some time, Danny was still able to tell that it had died intact. Not only that, but no predators had fed from it, not even the buzzards, who never missed carrion. The first thing he thought of was rabies, so he sidestepped the small carcass.
A short while later, he heard Porter coming back and retraced his steps down the row, anxious for the cold drink and a chance to rest. In the process, he completely forgot to mention the newest carcass to Porter; then, when he thought of it again, Porter was already taking off with another load to the sheds. Danny hopped onto the back of the trailer and rode it down. When he jumped off and headed toward an outdoor water faucet, Storm came out of one of the sheds and yelled at him.
“Where are you going?” Roland yelled. “It’s not quitting time.”
Hot, tired and sick of sucking bugs up his nose, then spitting them out of his mouth, Danny turned on Roland with a vengeance.
“Look, mister! I’m only going over here to wash the fucking bugs off my face, then I’m going to help Porter unload the trailer. But if you open your pie hole and yell at me or Porter one more time, we’re going home and we’re not coming back. Do I make myself clear?”
Roland stopped. He wasn’t accustomed to having his authority questioned, but from the looks on the Monroe brothers’ faces, they meant what they said.
“You gave me your word,” he muttered.
Danny sighed. “Yes, I know, and that’s the only thing keeping us here.” Then he pointed at the load on the trailer. “I don’t know what kind of herb that is you’re growing, but if those health-food nuts you’re selling it to take to it as much as those bugs, you’re gonna make a fortune.”
Roland’s expression stilled. “Bugs? What bugs?”
Porter snorted, then pointed to the load.
“Hellsfire, man, just look. The stalks are crawling with ’em.”
The color disappeared from Roland’s face. He hadn’t taken any kind of infestation into consideration and hadn’t noticed anything like this before. He stared at the insects crawling madly among the stalks. From there, his mind hopped to their predators—birds, wasps, spiders. Then to the rodents that ate insects. At that point, fear shot his calculations straight to the end of the chain, which was man. He was fine with killing off the scum of the world and those that pandered to it, but he hadn’t counted on the destruction affecting himself, as well. Could this thing that he’d created become that deadly? He didn’t know, but until he found out, he was going to have to make some changes.
“I’m going to start some smudge pots,” he said. “We’ll put them under the drying tables and hopefully smoke out the insects. If that works, I’ll put some in the fields. That should take care of the problem.”
“Sort of like smoking bees,” Porter said.
“What?” Roland asked, thinking of at least three men he knew in the area who kept honeybees. “What about bees? There were bees in the field, too?”
“No…I mean, there could have been,” Porter said. “But I was referring to the smokers that beekeepers use so they can steal the honey from the hives.”
“Oh, yes. Of course. Smoke the bees…smoke the insects…Yes, yes, I get it,” Roland said, and then laughed.
Danny’s gut knotted. The man not only acted crazy, he sounded crazy, too. That laugh was straight out of some Hollywood horror movie.
Porter got off the tractor and began unloading the bundles while Danny stripped the gloves from his hands, then turned on the faucet and ducked his head under the running water.
Porter grabbed an armload of the stalks and carried them into the shed, then strung them out across the drying tables that Roland had indicated. Later, they would have to tie them in bundles and hang them upside down for further drying, but for now, just getting them off the ground and into the sheds was the deal.
Sap was all over Porter’s gloves, on the front of his shirt and the legs of his jeans. He hoped the stuff would wash off okay and thought of what a fit Ally would have when she saw their clothes. As he walked back for another load, something lit on the side of his face, then crawled toward his mouth. Before he thought, he swiped at it, stringing sap from his gloves all across the left side of his face.
“God Almighty,” he muttered, and then took off his gloves and headed for the spigot that Danny had just vacated.
The sap was sticky on his cheek, and before he thought about it, he’d licked his lips. Almost instantly, he panicked as he remembered Roland’s warning about toxicity, then waited to see if he was going to drop dead. When he didn’t, the relief was so great that he almost laughed.
God. What a scare! The sap wasn’t poison, but it was sweet. Porter felt the end of his tongue tingle just the least little bit, but that was all. Happy to be alive, he grinned.
“What’s so damned funny?” Danny asked.
Porter looked at his brother, then at the water running down his face and into the neck of his shirt, and laughed.
“I reckon it’s you,” he said, then bent over and stuck his own head under the flow of running water, washing away the sticky sap, as well as the sweat and bugs that were stuck to his skin.
As the day wore on, the excessive amount of bugs and the steamy heat began to wear on everyone’s nerves. Roland had smudge fires going in the drying shed that weren’t doing much good. The bugs on the plants were crawling on everything, even one another, in some kind of frenzy. Roland wondered if this was how von Braun must have felt when he realized he’d created the atomic bomb.
What bothered him most was that, not once in his research, had he seen signs of this. Yes, the need for more Triple H had been evident, and the more he’d given the rats, the more they’d needed for the next fix. But having something this addictive that could conceivably be transmitted between species was horrifying. He wasn’t sure what he should do. He’d started this harvest with one goal in mind, but now all he wanted was to make it go away.
As he stared at the tables in growing panic, his cell phone began to ring. He checked the caller ID and frowned. It was his Chicago contact calling back, but now he didn’t know what to say. It rang until voice mail picked up. He tossed the phone aside and then hurried outside.
From where he was standing, he could see the Monroe brothers bringing in another load. Then he looked past them to the field beyond. Less than a third of the crop had been cut.
What in hell was he going to do?
Porter and Danny were silent as they drove home that same day. Their faces were streaked with sweat and bugs, their clothes sticky from the sap. The muscles in Porter’s jaw ached as if he’d been punched, and Danny had a headache that just wouldn’t quit.
Porter pulled up in front of their home, parked the truck, then looked at Danny.
“Goin’ back?”
Danny sighed.
“I guess.”
“Shit.”
Danny frowned. “You don’t have to go.”
Porter sat for a moment, letting the sound of the words settle the unease he kept feeling.
“That money isn’t worth it,” he said.
“It’s not about the money,” Danny said. “It’s about b
eing a quitter.”
Then he got out of the truck and headed for the back of the house.
Porter followed.
Ally was taking loaves of fresh bread out of the oven when Danny came in the back door wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. She grinned and started to tease him, then saw the look on his face.
“Danny?”
He didn’t answer but kept on walking.
Porter came in next, just as naked, but with an old shower curtain covering his nudity.
Ally’s eyes widened.
“What on—”
“Don’t touch those clothes that we put in the washing machine,” he said shortly.
“But—”
He turned on her then, and she saw more than weariness on his face. His eyes were bloodshot, his nostrils flared, and there was a muscle twitching at the corner of his left eye.
“Don’t argue with me, goddamn it! Whatever you do, don’t touch those fucking clothes!”
Ally wadded the pot holders in her hands as she began to back up. It wasn’t until she felt the cabinets against her legs that she stopped, and still she wasn’t sure she was far enough away from Porter to be safe.
Porter heard himself talking and couldn’t believe those words were coming out of his mouth. When he saw the look on his sister’s face, he groaned, then dropped his head.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. It’s been one hell of a day.”
“It’s okay,” Ally said. She started toward him, when Porter instinctively moved away.
“I’m filthy,” he said, and headed for the bathroom behind Danny.
Ally had an overwhelming urge to cry and didn’t know why. This behavior was so out of character for both her brothers. She knew where they’d been and what they had been doing. She trusted her brothers, but she didn’t trust Roland Storm one bit.
She glanced toward the back door. From where she was standing, she could hear the sound of the washing machine filling with water. She couldn’t imagine what they’d meant by not touching their clothes.
What had they done?
Even more to the point, what had they gotten themselves involved in?