All The Dark Places

14. Blood & Soil

         If she dug another post hole, she would pass out. Even though the weather was mild, she had never worked this hard before. At the commune in Oregon, she had been one of the many workers who set up an irrigation system like this one only far more complicated and with proper equipment. This was medieval. The supplies were rudimentary, not the well-chosen pieces that took weeks to plan and special order in Oregon. This was PVC pipe, ropes, and buckets. Toby Bracks brought posts from the stable that he dug up to be transplanted at the head of the garden. The posts were built up into a Y shape with a bar through the middle- the center of an upside down peace sign. A wooden plank was nailed to the top of it with two feet of overhang on each side, enough to hang buckets. Later, she planned to upgrade this system to be a raised platform that would hold large water barrels, but for now, buckets would have to do. She wanted to get seeds in the ground as soon as possible. She wiped sweat from her brow and felt it trickle down her back. 

      "This is so not sexy," she said to Scott, who looked as exhausted as she did. She shoveled another load of soil and then rested against the handle of the shovel. "Why aren't more people helping?" 

      "I dunno," Scott replied. 

      "Because they're waiting for us to do all the work." Noel shot them an annoyed look. 

     To his credit, Noel was helping. In fact, he helped quite a bit. They had been building all day, digging and piecing the pipe together in long rows. The Vicar had come to help in the morning but after two hours, he was too sore to continue, not accustomed to manual labor. Toby and Ivy Bracks helped all day. They were covered in dirt and smelled of earthy soil. The soil was good, Ivy had told them, and it would be good for growing. It was close enough to the lake that pulling the water would be fairly easy. Ramona and Deka worked all day at turning the soil. Ramona knelt on her hands and knees and turned soil with a spade while Deka planted seeds according to a chart that Rosalind copied into her journal. At mid-day, they were all getting fed up with the lack of help from the other villagers. 

      "This garden is for them. Don't they understand that?" she asked no one in particular. 

      "Roz, heads up," Scott gestured behind her.She turned to see a teenage boy standing there, awkwardly folding his hands in front of him. 

      "I believe we've met," she said, brushing the dirt off of her hands. "Arnav, right?"

      "Arnav Patel. Yeah. I, uh... heard you were making a garden and that um... you made some plans for things like rabbit hutches and stuff." 

      "Yes?" 

     The boy paused then, squinting in the sun, his lip slightly curled up with the light in his face. He looked apologetic and then he spoke again. 

      "Um... the thing is, I heard people making fun of you. They were talking about you at the town meeting and... they think you're crazy for doing this kind of stuff, y'know. They say you're acting like it's the end of the world as we know it." 

      "You came out here to tell me people are making fun of me? That's not very nice, Arnav." 

     The kid couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. "No, that's not why I came. I just... people don't get me around here either." He was nervous, and he stuttered. "I think you might be the only person really taking this seriously and I don't know how to do any of this stuff. I don't even know where to start, but I need someone to follow, Mrs. Pyrne. I'm sixteen and nobody takes me seriously around here, but I need to be doing something, and I can't sit around like these people. I'd like to help. I'd make a good henchman." 

     He smiled, dimples indenting the corners of his chubby cheeks. 

      "Henchman, huh? We could use all the help we can get. You're welcome to join us. Grab a wood plank, Arnav Patel."