Horrible Harvest

‘Fore we got back from trading out fresh chicken litter for fetid, the beatin’ I expected for failing to get the bays water come. Daddy pulled the wagons to a stop about a half mile into the return trip just to give me a smack around. It wasn’t his best work. He’d beat me fiercer for less, but he was full of drink on those occasions. Sober, he didn’t put the same skill into beatings as he did whisky’d up.

We returned home just before sunup, and Daddy set us to work first thing. Douglas was waiting for us out barn-way. We’d need to broadcast the latest load of chicken litter on the crops and tend to the horses before Momma called us in for breakfast. We’d get sleep after, but just a touch. We’d be up and about by the late afternoon to help inspect the water levels on the fields. If all was well, it would be a short day. If the water wasn’t at Daddy’s liking, we’d drain off what we could or flood what was needed. Daddy was like an artist applying paint to a canvas. Each brushstroke had a purpose. He’d built an irrigation system that controlled the comings and goings of the Ashley onto our property. Momma said he was a special kind of virtuoso in that way. Means he had him a divine talent for it. If he hadn’t been so full of the devil, Daddy woulda been a man to admire. As it was, the only good thought I spent on him is that he’d be dead some day. Don’t know how it is for girls, but a boy can wish his daddy cemetery dead and still claim to have love for’em. Especially mean daddies. You love them in a way that ain’t comforting. Feels necessary and wrong. It’s a lot like liquor in that way.

With a canvas bag full of chicken litter strapped over my shoulder and another bag of markers strapped to my back, I set off to the paddy to get to broadcasting. The now rising sun didn’t have time yet to bake off the chill of the Lowcountry morn. A small wind even give the illusion that the day was set to be a cool one.

Charles headed to the opposite end of the paddy with the same chickenshit broadcasting trimmings, and we both commenced to spreading the putrid litter. By the time we got done tossing the stuff all about, our hands would smell like they’d spent time up a chicken’s ass.

The process was slow because Daddy wanted the covering even-like. He and Douglas tended to the horses, so he was otherwise occupied, but if he looked our way and found us racing through the spread, he’d bring hell down on us.

As I slogged my way through shin-deep muck to the tree line at the back of our property, I seen what I thought was movement out of the corner of my eye. I froze in my tracks. This time of day, in this place, whatever give movement had more of a chance of being bad news than good.

Staring in the direction of where I thought the movement come, I waited with a handful of wood chips covered in chicken shit and feathers. After some time, with nothing but the wind flickering leaves about, I let out a breath and got back to broadcasting the litter. Three more handfuls in, I heard a twig snap. I stopped, scanned the tree line, and caught the glimpse of a head duck behind a tree. The head of what, I didn’t know. Whatever it was appeared smaller than me, which only give me the tiniest of comforts. Deadly ain’t gotta be big to kill you.

I waited and waited and waited. Nothing. Not a peep. Not a sign of anything from the innards of the swamped drenched forest. I looked down at my canvas bag to grab a new handful of litter and spotted the head again just as my hand reached the bag. It was a person, a small person, a girl, black. I immediately knew this was the young pup who’d escaped Miller’s coffle.