Текст книги "Poisoned Soil"
Автор книги: Tim Young
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
Chapter 2
Blake Savage loved to do “the worm”. And on the first Saturday of September, Blake Savage did “the worm” all the way from Sky Valley to Mountain City as he drove his black 2010 Harley Davidson edition F-150.
Ever since he had been a child, Blake had liked to pretend his hand was an airplane wing when he held it out the car window and let the moving air hit it. As he drove south, Blake rested his left elbow on the open window frame and pointed his hand forward as he kept the palm of his hand parallel to the blurry pavement. He slanted his fingers down, allowing the relative wind to hit the back of his hand and force the worm to dive, he imagined, before raising his fingers and letting the worm rise as the air blasted against the palm of his hand. A kid on the side of the road pointed and laughed as Blake rode by with his arm moving up and down like a flying serpent. Up and down, up and down, Blake’s worm inched southbound on Route 441.
Blake put his hand back on the wheel as he banged a right on Wolf Fork Road at the sign that read Black Rock Farm – Pastured Poultry and Grassfed Beef. Wolf Fork Road divided the mountainous terrain of Black Rock to his left from the fertile valley farmland to his right. Acres of corn stood ready for the harvest, and Blake found himself wondering how the farmers would go about harvesting the endless sea of corn. Too much to do by hand, he figured, as he bit off a third of the McChicken sandwich he had just bought for a buck. He put the uneaten portion on the console and stared at the neat rows of corn and pondered. Probably a combine or a bush hog, he said to himself, or something like that. Growing up, Blake had been interested in only one thing, and it wasn’t farming.
Past the cornfield was another type of farm. Ten large houses lay side by side, each much longer than a football field. About a dozen ventilation fans larger than Blake’s truck were stuck on each house. Blake scouted the farm as he slowed his truck, but didn’t see a single person or animal, just a hauling truck that was fully loaded with crates of chickens. It looked as if it was ready to pull out. Blake read the sign at the entrance:
McReek Poultry Farms
For Bio-Security Reasons
NO UNAUTHORIZED VISITORS
Blake drove for another half mile until he reached the home of Gus Wyatt, owner of Black Rock Farm. The F-150 pulled onto the gravel drive and Blake parked next to a metal building. He got out and didn’t see anyone right away, but announcers loudly calling the Bulldogs game on the radio suggested that Gus was probably close by. In the field next to the house, Blake saw what looked like a flock of wild turkeys. Some were perched on a line of large, wooden cages that were neatly lined across the field. He walked over and was shocked that the turkeys not only didn’t flee, they came right up to him. Bending over, Blake peered into the cages and began counting the number of plump white chickens that were crammed inside one. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty—
“Blake!” Blake nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned and saw a man standing tall and leering over him, covered in blood and holding a knife. Blake exhaled deeply.
“Hey, Gus,” Blake said. “I was just looking at these chickens and wild turkeys.”
Gus laughed. “Those aren’t wild turkeys, Blake. We raise them for folks to eat on Thanksgiving. They’re called Heritage Turkeys.”
Blake eyed one of the turkeys and thought that it looked like a prehistoric creature. “Hey, I got another load of bones in the back of the truck for you to grind for me,” he said.
“Let’s take a look,” Gus said. They walked over to Blake’s truck. Blake pulled a tarp back to reveal a truck bed almost overflowing with bones.
“Well,” Gus began, “the grinder is already hooked up to the back of the tractor. Seeing as you’re parked beside it, just throw the bones in the top of the grinder and I’ll grind them into your bone meal after we finish killing chickens over here.”
Blake climbed into the back of the truck and began tossing the bones into the grinder. The radio blared loudly from the shed as announcers discussed a player injury.
“You been listening to the game in Athens, Blake? Dawgs and the Gamecocks?”
“No. Been running around doing errands.”
“Well, that Georgia quarterback got hurt pretty bad a second ago. Took him out on a stretcher.”
Blake felt his tension rise. He shrugged at Gus and kept tossing bones.
“Yeah well—hell, he ain’t half the quarterback you were, Blake. Couldn’t carry your spit bucket if you ask me.” Gus began walking over to a large walk-in freezer and looked back over his shoulder to Blake. “I’ll get the coolers of chicken and beef ready for you to take to The Federal.”
Blake clenched his jaw and looked down at the blood-stained bones. Grabbing a femur, he threw it as hard as he could into the grinder. The force of the impact shattered pieces of smaller bones.
Gus wheeled a couple of large coolers over as Blake jumped out of the truck bed.
“Let’s just put those in the back seat to keep ’em clean,” Blake said.
“Good thinking,” Gus said. Blake hoisted the coolers into the back seat of the truck, closed the door, and hopped in the front.
“I gotta hit the road, Gus. Told Nick I’d be in Athens by 3:30 or 4:00.” Blake hesitated a second. “Let me know when you need me to do any more deliveries for you.” Blake put it in reverse and began to back up.
“Sure thing, Blake. I expect in a couple of weeks.”
As Blake began to drive slowly forward Gus shouted, “Say, when you and that pretty wife of yours gonna have some young’uns?”
Blake looked back and shrugged his shoulders. He rolled up the window, gripped the steering wheel, and twisted his hands, as if he were trying to wring it out. He was in no mood to do “the worm.” Instead, he ground his teeth side to side.
As he pulled out of Black Rock Farm and onto Wolf Fork Road, the truck hauling chickens cut in front of him and began shifting gears. A foul smell slapped Blake’s nostrils open: a mixture of feces, feathers, ammonia and bedding. The heavy odor wafted forcefully into the truck as Blake rolled the windows up. As the windows closed, he grimaced and tried to decide if he had locked the smell in the truck. He rolled the windows back down, and his nostrils were pummeled once again with stench.
“Goddamit,” he exclaimed. As he fought through the vile smell, his mind drifted to the things Gus had said. Innocent remarks and questions that induced a rage to stew and burn within. “It’s none of his damned business if we’re gonna have kids or not!” Blake fumed. But it wasn’t the question about a baby that infuriated him. He just couldn’t escape the reminders about football, about the fame and fortune of the NFL that was almost his. Should have been mine!
Blake gripped the wheel tightly as he stared at the dispirited birds packed tightly in the cages on the truck in front of him. The chickens lay placidly, either unable or unmotivated to move. The truck rounded a sharp corner allowing Blake to see the McReek Trucking logo on the side. As the truck picked up speed, one of the birds was thrown out and landed in the middle of the pavement with a splat. It tasted freedom for the first time and looked around with bewilderment.
Furrowing his eyebrows at the chicken, Blake swerved his truck. He lined the chicken up with his front left tire the way he often took aim at a discarded soda can. He stepped on the gas and ran straight over the hapless chicken, first with his front tire and then with his rear as his truck bounced down the road.
“Stupid chicken,” Blake said, still fuming.
He glanced at the rearview mirror to see the bird’s flattened carcass centered in the road, and cocked his head in surprise as a raven landed swiftly and hopped to stake its claim. Blake turned south on 441 and finished off his uneaten McChicken sandwich as he headed toward Athens.
Chapter 3
Angelica Savage marveled at the delicate silk teepee in the forks of Nancy’s fig tree. Every spring the tent caterpillars emerged, just as sure as the daffodils and yellow bells, and every winter they left behind egg masses to overwinter. And each winter she failed to remove the masses, thus allowing them to hatch the following spring. She had no desire to harm them or anything else, for that matter, but she couldn’t let them damage Nancy’s Tree.
Smiling at nature’s dew-covered masterpiece, she indulged in a moment of peace as she closed her eyes and thought about Nancy. There were no distractions in the sanctuary that Angelica had created, a secret garden in a forest clearing. The only access was a winding path from the house she and Blake had bought 300 yards away that was set well back off of Hale Ridge Road. She still couldn’t believe how lucky they had been to get this piece of land three years earlier, twelve acres for themselves surrounded by almost 100,000 acres of federal land, mostly densely wooded terrain up and around Rabun Bald. Might as well say it’s all ours, Angelica reasoned. It was far too much land for her to contemplate and she desperately needed a smaller place for herself, something akin to a pastoral altar. So she had painstakingly cleared the path by hand once she stumbled on the brookside clearing, just after Nancy...
“Oh Nancy,” Angelica sighed. Her shoulders collapsed, like a brick set on top of a house of cards.
Angelica bent down with the grace befitting her name, picked up a small stick, and gently brushed aside the silky mass. Very tenderly, she placed each caterpillar in a cup. She stared into the cup realizing, at least for the moment, that she was their God, in control of their fate. She was their captor, they were her prisoners. What must they think, having been abruptly confined to something as unnatural as a cup, looking up at Angelica’s raven colored hair and eyes as green as the forest moss? Maybe they thought she was an angel; perhaps one or two worried that she was an evil monster with glowing, green eyes.
With her long, slender fingers, Angelica reached in and picked out a chosen one for inspection. “Hello, little one,” she whispered before gently scolding the creature. “Now you and your friends have to stay away from that tree, okay?” And the little fellow was returned to the cup, eager to share the word of his God. Angelica walked to the far side of the garden and softly poured the contents on the ground underneath a mountain laurel. “There you go,” she said, before strolling back to Nancy’s Tree.
It had taken over a year for Angelica to be able to stand at the tree without bursting into tears, hating herself, feeling hopeless, helpless, and searching for understanding. Even questioning God. But two years had now passed since she alone had buried tiny little Nancy here. Now, finally, she had reason to be hopeful again. Still, the memory of the miscarriage haunted her. Twelve weeks, she had that time with Nancy before the bleeding began. That fact alone was enough to strike fear into any young woman’s heart. Then the cramps arrived and prompted a panicked trip to the doctor. Angelica feared the worst all the way.
Why is it, she thought, that anytime someone wants something...needs something as badly as I wanted and needed that baby, they can’t enjoy the journey? Instead, they have to live in a state of fear that they will be denied, that somehow they’re not worthy.
The ultrasound lived up to her fears, revealing no heartbeat and showing a fetus about the size of a nine-week old, meaning that the fetus, Nancy, had probably died a few weeks earlier. It was that realization more than any other that haunted Angelica; that Nancy had died, and Angelica, her own mother, didn’t know and didn’t do anything to save her baby. The emotional toll was almost unbearable. Angelica had never felt such a stew of emotions. The self-blame, the grief and the guilt were overwhelming. Sorrow penetrated every cell of her being, for her alone to digest.
She had no choice in the matter, she had to cope with the loss, but the worst feeling was how incomplete she felt. She had failed to do the one and only thing that nature asked of her: successfully reproduce. That realization, piled atop the remorse and the physical and emotional trauma, was overpowering. And then, Angelica did the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She went home to have her miscarriage. Alone. She added the feelings of isolation and loneliness to her stew of haunting emotions.
The doctor had offered her something for the pain that he assured her would come. Something called DI-GESIC. Angelica refused. She didn’t want to hide from the pain. She wanted to feel the pain, to not hide from the suffering.
She would regret that choice.
At first it was like a bad period. Just some spotting blood and a few minor chunks of tissue resembling torn bits and pieces of chicken liver. Was that all there was to it? All there was of Nancy? A few chunks of bloody tissue? Angelica didn’t know what she was looking at, what to look for. How large could it be? Hadn’t the doctor said the fetus starts shrinking immediately after death?
Death. The word slowly reverberated in Angelica’s mind, admonishing her, denying her, haunting her. D-E-A-T-H. She just couldn’t get her mind around the surreal nightmare she was living.
When she awoke the next day there was no bleeding, a sign that Angelica took that the event was over. She remembered everything about that day and remembered nothing about that day, as if she stood outside a snow globe of misery. She saw herself on the inside, curled up on the sofa, then standing over Nancy’s crib twirling a mobile, singing softly to a baby that wasn’t there. She did all these things, remembered them all, and remembered none.
The cycle began anew on day three with more bleeding and cramps, stronger than on the first day, but tolerable. The modest pain brought Angelica back to the moment, to the reality of her loss. But there had been no loss yet, she told herself.
Nancy is still inside me, isn’t she? Maybe the doctor was wrong! Maybe Nancy is fine, just quiet!
From her deerskin pouch, Angelica removed a small, six-sided divining crystal that her grandmother had taught her to use. She prayed for insight and healing the way her Cherokee ancestors had. The fact that there were no symptoms on day four stoked Angelica’s confidence, giving her false hope.
On day five, she lamented turning down the painkillers as it felt like (she assumed) she was in labor. She staggered to the medicine cabinet, desperately grabbing for something, anything. She fumbled with the childproof lock on an Ibuprofen bottle and emptied four tablets into her palm, but it was too late for it to help. Angelica fell to the cold hard bathroom floor, and for ninety minutes endured constant pain. No cycle of contraction and relief; only contraction. No one with her to help her, to comfort her, to tell her it would all be all right. She prayed that God was with her, but if he was, why had he allowed this to happen in the first place?
And suddenly it happened.
An explosive discharge as Angelica struggled to her feet to get to the toilet, instinct driving her there. With blood dripping out of her, she finally passed the large chunk she had feared. As she did, the pain subsided just enough for her to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her forehead. She burst into tears, uncontrollable sobbing, needing to see what had just dropped out of her, but afraid to look. If it was Nancy, if she really WAS dead, then it was over. It can’t be over...it can’t be, Angelica had thought. She buried her head in her hands and allowed herself to cry for several moments before doing what she had to do for her daughter. Finally, she rose, turned around and tried to compose herself. Trembling, she overcame the fear and allowed her eyes to drop.
And there it was. An umbilical cord, clearly visible, wrapped around a thick, translucent sac. Inside the sac was Nancy. Tiny, precious, oh so precious, little Nancy, only an inch long. The doctor had told Angelica it was too early to determine the gender, but Angelica knew. It was a girl, and she had named her after Nancy Ward, one of the most respected of all Cherokee women. Now she would have to bury her, having never spoken to her. Having never kissed her. Having never nursed her.
Angelica burst out crying again, screaming hysterically and pounding her fists against the wall before sliding down in the corner of the bathroom. She wrapped her arms around her knees and wept loudly for no one to hear, immersed in her suffering.
At first she had no idea what to do with Nancy’s remains. How could she know? She carefully gathered them, placed them in a Ziploc bag and put them in the freezer until she could sort it out. This had infuriated her husband Blake when he called home from an overnight hauling job to Savannah. One that just couldn’t wait, Angelica thought, leaving me to carry this burden alone.
She said nothing more to Blake about it. Instead, she simply went to the hollow, empty nursery, sat down in the rocker and began to sew a tiny cloth bag from a yard of printed fabric she had purchased in Clayton. The fabric was intended to become Nancy’s first Easter dress. Instead, Angelica would place Nancy in the bag, bury her and plant a fig tree to remember her. A tree that Angelica would nurture and protect from the grip of winter with a blanket so that it would flourish and have the life that Nancy was denied.
Family, friends, everyone offered sympathy. They were so sorry for her loss. They said they knew what she must be going through. They really said that! And then everyone said the thing that troubled her most of all. The thing they all are trained to say from the time they begin Sunday school, the thing that she too had believed all her life but in that moment, had begun to doubt.
“God has a plan.” Or, “God works in mysterious ways.” Those were the two empirical statements that her Baptist brethren would close with, saving them as trump cards in troubling times when no other words could console, explain or comfort. God has a plan. Yep, conversation over. Can’t question that one...God has a plan.
“What plan?” Angelica recalled screaming at the time. “WHAT PLAN?”
Angelica was as much a believer as anyone, rarely missing a Sunday in the Sandy Creek Baptist Church off Warwoman Road. She was baptized there when she was a child for goodness sake! Reading the scripture, believing the scripture, consoling others in times of grief, hugging them and whispering comforting thoughts like, “He’s in a better place” or “God has a plan.” Oh, how she regretted saying that now. Did that really comfort anyone? God answers your prayer, gives you the gift of life within you, a baby, a child, and then rescinds the offer once you’ve bonded? Why? So you can pass some ridiculous test that He has for you? Angelica began to stew, partly at the maddening thoughts that ran through her mind, but mainly for allowing herself to remotely question God. At the time of the miscarriage, those emotions threatened to overwhelm her if she gave them the slightest opening. But she was spiritual, a believer in God and, at heart, eternally hopeful. No, she refused to question God’s will.
Two years had now passed, and she came here to tell Nancy that she was five-months pregnant and that a brother was on the way. Oh God, please let it be true, she prayed silently, as she knelt to work a new raised garden bed she had built a few feet from Nancy’s Tree. Angelica plowed her hands into the rich black soil that she had been nurturing since spring with grass clippings and last winter’s leaf cover. She let the soil sift through her fingers, approving of its tilth as she reached for a bag of bone meal, holding it in her lap so that she could see the label. “Black Rock Organic Bone Meal,” she mouthed softly. One perk from Blake’s work, she thought; free, organic bone meal. Pulling the string, she opened the bag and closed her eyes as she worked it into the soil with her bare hands. She rocked her head from side to side in the gentle breeze, relishing the opportunity to nurture and care for the soil.
“There we go, Nancy, all done,” Angelica whispered. “I’ll have asparagus planted in here before the end of the September, well before the first frost.” Angelica rose from the raised bed and looked over her secret garden, a place of peace, love, hope and solitude for her, but it was solitude that she didn’t want. Blake had never even stepped into the garden and wanted no part of it once she told him of her plans for Nancy. He kept his distance from her secret garden and increasingly, from her.
She didn’t know what he was going through or why, but it was obvious that Blake was changing. Every day he seemed a little more distant, a little angrier. At what, she wasn’t quite sure. They had been married for eight years, and like many marriages, the first year was the best, when Blake was so grateful for the love and support Angelica provided just after his injury and car accident.
One blessing from the accident, if you could call it that, was that the settlement from the accident helped them to pay cash for their home and to start married life without debt. Blake stayed home recovering from his injuries and unable to work dependably for three years. Once he was able to work, he was forced to find something that didn’t require him to exert himself. Even sitting more than a few hours in one position became excruciating for him so he spent another few years just doing odd jobs. As time went on, he became more anxious about what his identity would be.
Then, God had shown the way, Angelica believed, when a local winery on Lake Burton with struggling sales asked Blake to use his football ‘name’ to market and deliver their wine to restaurants in Athens, Savannah, and even Atlanta. Blake did have some connections, mainly with restaurant owners in Athens, and figured he could use them to start a small business. He contacted other wineries and farmers in the area and began selling to restaurants for a fifteen percent commission on all sales. The restaurants were happy, as were the wineries and farmers, but Blake wasn’t.
“Chump change,” he told Angelica. “This ain’t money.”
“We don’t need much money, ”Angelica told him. “The house and land are paid off, and I can grow and preserve most of the food we need. ”
“What about money for vacations?” Blake responded. “Health care? Savings? Did you think of that?”
“We’ll be saving money, sweetie,” Angelica replied softly. “I can make a lot of the other household items we need. Soaps, shampoos, lard, medicines. My grandmother taught me how to do all of that. We can live a simple life and raise a family, the way our Cherokee ancestors did for generations.”
“Hmm,” Blake snorted. “Yeah, well, look where that got them.”
Angelica longed for nothing more than her husband and a child to hold and care for, to share her life with. She had dreamed that now she would finally be blessed with the child and that it would bring Blake back to her, but he seemed to want more.
“We need some real money, Angelica. I ain’t gonna be running through the woods with a spear chasing deer! Maybe we won’t be rich, but we can’t live on nothing neither. And so far that’s what I’m making on these deliveries. Nothing.”
Blake thought the deliveries were beneath him at first, Angelica recalled, but after the first month that changed. Something inspired him. He became so enthused, even ecstatic. It was right after he began selling to Nick Vegas at The Federal. Angelica thought it must have made Blake feel important selling to such a celebrity. She liked that; she wanted her man to feel important. But lately his enthusiasm had turned into stress. As Angelica watched Blake struggle with his identity, she felt that she had to give him some space. Her father had been a devout Baptist, and Angelica remembered the lessons from the book of Timothy concerning the role of man and woman in the household. Timothy 2:12 said, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
Angelica knew how to be patient. She could be quiet. She knew that when the baby came, Blake would come back and be the husband she needed. The father that her baby needed. As Angelica stepped away from the raised bed, she felt a tiny kick in her left side, burst a huge smile, and began back down to the trail to the house.
