A small crater bloomed in the sand beneath Max Fielding as he wiped his sunburnt forehead with the back of his arm, sending a shower of water droplets to the parched earth. The sandy soil greedily sucked up the moisture until only an impact ring remained as evidence of his toils.
How the grapes were supposed to survive this unexpected late-summer heat wave was incomprehensible. Even the cool waters of Lake Michigan, fed in via massive three-foot wide pipes from the pumping station in ten-mile distant Bridgman, were doing little to combat the 98-degree temperatures of the past week and a half. When the fine mist hit the leaves, Max could almost hear the plants singing as their leaves rustled in silvery tinkles, trembling and yawning to soak in as much water as possible. Afterwards, when the watering ended after an all-too-brief ten minutes, the vines screamed and groaned with a soundless clang as they curled in on themselves like a portcullis shutting out the enemy sun.
Max gingerly cradled a grape still clinging to the vine in his fingertips, marveling at its survival.
"Poor bastard," he murmured, not sure if he was talking more to the grape or to himself. "Another day like this and you'll fry."
As if agreeing with him, the grape burst its skin, erupting in a purple spray across Max's hand and face. He sighed and closed his eyes in brief mourning as he had already done a dozen other times that same day.
It was ridiculous to mourn the passing of a solitary grape when their whole purpose was to die Max knew, yet he still somehow felt responsible for the premature loss. He was a Guardian of the field. Making sure each and every fruit, vegetable, and grain reached the Processing Plant to be turned into food for his own people was as ingrained in him as his own survival. It was his survival. The fact that the Colony existed at all was a miracle, and a large part of that miracle was their unique ability to grow food in an otherwise dead world. Every life was sacred, Max believed, from plants to insects to animals to humans, and because of that, it was important to acknowledge each and every living thing's role in sustaining the tentative life the Colony had carved out for them. It was important to care for them.
It was important not to waste them with a mere brush of his hand.
Max bowed his head in prayer, but with his starving stomach mewling in protest, his prayer today was shorter than usual: Sorry for your untimely death, little guy. Sorry for the future you'll never have as wine or jam or raisins or...
Max's stomach cinched in a painful hunger spasm then, so impossible to ignore that his eyelids flew open as he was corporally reminded of his own needs for survival.
"And sorry for the joy I am going to get from your death," he finished in a rush.
All higher reflections on his stewardship skittered away as he sank into the primal needs of his body and licked the sticky, sweet juice off his fingers, his palm, his lips and chin, even the tip of his nose. He moaned with relief and pleasure as the juices salved his raspy throat, as his teeth found a seed to grind on. Grape seeds were bitter and woody, but today, Max would have given his right arm for another dozen such seeds. Something, anything to fill his belly. Death and gratitude had a strange way of mixing in Candelis Colony.
When every last bit of grape detritus had been swiped from his face, each dirty finger lapped clean down to his blunt fingernails though, Max's stomach continued to clamor for more. One grape would not be enough to sustain him until the evening meal, which was...
Max peered up into the boundless white-blue sky. The sun hung just past midday, which meant it was still a good seven hours before the food and water he'd get at Sunset Service.
The light blinked as a gull crossed in front of it, wheeling overhead to survey the vines for its own lunch. The gull cried out to two other gulls further off who were circling over the tomato fields, as if inviting them to join him, to see and partake in the hard-won bounty below.
Most people considered the gulls an annoyance, mere scavengers, but Max could only smile as he watched the bird, envying its freedom, its uncanny skill for stealing food without notice, its ability to escape away from the heat of the land and dip its feet in the cold water of the Lake. Max had never even seen the Lake. He'd never even left the Colony for that matter.
Bitterness at his limited, proscribed existence swelled in Max's chest, and in a moment of insanity, he glanced at the near-full bushel of grapes hanging off his hip.
It would be so easy to just bend over, pretend to tie my shoe, and secretly slip my hand in the basket and pull out a handful of grapes. Even five or six would do...
He knew his mind was beginning to wander in delirium from lack of water; stealing crops of any sort was a punishable crime. It was the very reason, in fact, that he had been denied Midday Service and in his hunger predicament to begin with. Still, he allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy a moment longer, until he could almost taste the crisp pop of the grape skin between his teeth, the juices staining his lips red...
A pop and red, not from the grapes but from a gun, shattered his daydream.
