Hidden away at the end of the garden,
past the corn stalks and tomato plants tied to wooden stakes,
was a row of brown paper bags turned upside down, covering something.
Must be lettuce or cabbages, he thought. But his mother
hadn't tried either of those vegetables in years. She always defaulted
to the stores— something wasn't right with the soil. The
tomatoes were always the biggest take.
Jake snuck from the house while
his mother shuffled around the tool shed with a candle. He walked
through the dew-wet grass in his old brown slippers and airplane
pajamas. He stood under the comforting glow of the bug light for
a fleeting moment and stared at the purple death behind the wire
mesh. He looked down at the ground with his sharp brown eyes,
it was littered with hundreds of dead carcasses.
The pinwheels exploded with a gust
of wind that sounded like a thousand chattering teeth, the burnt
remains rolled across the lawn while his blonde hair whipped in
the winds. Jake stepped carefully into the moist earth of the
garden. He walked through the rows, caked mud on the edges of
his slippers, and slipped past the pinwheels, almost afraid that
the plastic blades would shred his flesh.
Jake stood in front of the bags
with trembling fingers and reached, ever careful that mother might
hear him. He couldn't hear her anymore, which meant she was inside.
Or watched him from deep within one of the shadows of the sheds
he wasn't allowed to go in. The eclipse shifted over the moon.
His fingers brushed against the paper of the bag and slid along
the brown wrinkled surface. The print on the front was lost in
the darkness. The front door squealed noisily as it shut. Even
a dragonfly caught in the light couldn't peel away his attention.
His fingers closed, paper wrinkled,
and muscles tensed both to lift and to flee. The bag slid from
the dirt, moist soil clung to the edges. Jake closed his eyes
and then squinted to see beneath. It was big and round, stuck
out from the dirt, leaves poked out at odd angles. Was it a cabbage?
He walked the rows, ignored the clatter from the pinwheels and
plucked off each bag.
Jake looked at one carefully. Do
cabbages have eyes? He leaned in closer, examined the large black
eyes that stared lifeless at the skies. The skin was peeled back
from the face and neck, and resembled leaves. The mouths were
opened and showed rows of yellowed teeth and black bloated tongues
through brown dried lips.
Jake stifled a scream, stepped
backwards, and felt the crunch of plastic under his foot. A scream
erupted from inside the house, his mother's scream. One of the
heads turned and stared at him, the mouth contorted as a foul
wind emitted from its howl. Jake turned, twisted, fell and crushed
the pinwheels. More heads swiveled. The soil churned, as rotted
hands pushed through to the surface.
He scrambled backwards, dug his
hands into the dirt, and grasped for anything that brought a grip.
The moon slipped back another small bit and bathed Jake in light.
Arms with rotted clothes erupted from the ground, brown bones
with black rot showed through the ripped sleeves.
Next
Page> Harvest Time 3
Harvet Time © 2004
Scott T. Goudsward
Illustrations ©
2004 Pam Marin-Kingsley
