Taking Root (Stardew Valley - Shane)

Chapter Twelve

If there's one thing about scraping your leg open on an old, wet, iceberg of a tree stump - it's that it sucks. It's not just the actual wound either. My entire leg ached like it had been flattened by a steamroller and then re-inflated using somebodies old bicycle pump. And then there were the pins and needles - tickling my kneecap like little fairy kisses that left me uncomfortable and numb.

It didn't bleed a lot after the first night. I had given myself worse cuts and scratches over the past weeks working on the farm - whether it was a slice from a thorn or a splintered wood-chip, it seemed that the smaller the cut, the heavier the blood flow. No, after the initial night, it had stopped bleeding so heavy and began to scab up. Maybe it was down to Shane's shoddy bandage work.

When I had awoken the morning after the incident, I inspected my leg properly, in the full light of the morning sunrays that shot through the cracks of my curtain and lit the bed up in shades of honey. I carefully unravelled the makeshift wad of fabric to find it was a large t-shirt. No wonder it had felt so bulky, encasing my thigh and knee easily. It made sense. It was probably all that was in Shane's bag - other than an opened bottle of wine and, if I could take a guess, a Tupperware box of half-eaten microwaved pizza slices. 

I held the creased shirt up wide in front of me, staring at the huge circle of dark blood that obscured the middle of the fabric. Would he expect me to give this back? I couldn't decide at first why he even chose to help me. Maybe it was a way of embarrassing me, showing that he had known all along that I was hiding from him like a child among the shade of the trees. Or perhaps he actually did feel bad, just a little bit, as he heard the snap of my body falling against the ground. I guess even the town asshole must have at least a modicum of a conscience - something that tells them that it's probably not a good idea to leave somebody bleeding out alone in a ditch.

I blinked a few times as I focussed back on the shirt that hung limply from my small, grazed hands. It felt weird to have a piece of him here, in the cabin. I noticed quite clearly how Shane tried to keep himself apart from anybody else. But now there was something from his world inside of mine. And it was violently stained with my blood. I ran into the other room and flung it into the sink as quickly as I could, softly working on the stain with cold water and vinegar. Then I tossed it into the washing machine with a few socks and towels to keep it company.

I remember how, on that day, I had stepped out onto the wooden slats of the porch and stared out over grandpa's land, finally seeing the initial progress I had made come together clearly within my vision. For several weeks in the beginning of spring, I hadn't done much - living half-heartedly between two places, the farm and my old home in the city. I had worked on transferring my life over very sheepishly, moving a few possessions over in an old truck and making sure the cabin was (and I use this term rather loosely) liveable. After I had taken the plunge and moved permanently, I had started up a few spring crops - experimenting in several misshapen planters that my dad had made out of leftover pallet wood. There were green beans and strawberry seeds germinating in recycled plastic punnets, littering the window ledges of the bedroom and kitchen to eat at the scraps of sunlight so they could grow big and strong. I had thrown potatoes of all different varieties into the ground in hopes that at least a few would turn out to be profitable.

Then summer had hit, and I wanted to make sure that my work was neat, and tidy, and organised. Some of the mixed flower seeds I had sewn earlier had started to spring into life in a meadow plot around the exterior of the cabin. There were poppies, sunflowers, and roses, and they bought an entanglement of colours to the otherwise green landscape of the garden. I had erected a small fence in front of them, and nailed one of the large planters against it - a new home for the few potatoes that had grown successfully. I had managed to bring some sort of life back into the irrigation system that lay under the fertile land further down ahead of the house, but the water that sprayed out of the rusted sprinklers only covered so much of the space. Still, it was enough to set up a few plots of tomatoes and corn, and from that point the land tapered slightly towards the small frog pond where I had homed my hops starters on rows of wonky trellises.