Horrible Harvest

She come up on me in the pitch-black dark, startling the fuck out of me. Old as I was, my heart struggled to beat in calm times. Sneak up on me on a rice farm long in ruins in the middle of the night, and my ol’ ticker will putter along out of step a beat or two before righting itself.

Allison give a laugh at the fright she give me. “Lord, you’re jumpy.”

“Wha-cha expect. We’re approaching the witching hour, and I’m standing in what’s basically a graveyard to me.”

“You fought a war and run with the Bunning Brothers. I expect nothing scares you.”

“The whole reason I’m easy to scare is because of the people I knew and the things I done. I earned my skittishness. I’d be a fool otherwise.”

She folded her arms over her chest and hugged herself tight to find warmth against the chill. “What’s on your mind, scaredy cat?”

I shrugged. “The dead.”

She give a chuckle. “No wonder you’re so jumpy.”

“You’ll see when the years pass you by. The dead are primary on your mind when your my age. They’ve all gone before me – Felix, Virginia, Penelope, Douglas, Evers, Yates – All of ‘em, and it don’t seem right. I shoulda found my grave long ago. Before all of ‘em.”

“And yet, you didn’t. Right or wrong, there’s no use in kicking such a notion around in that head of yours.”

“Well, another thing you’ll learn when you reach my age, about the only notion you’re left to kick around is death and all those who come to it and all those crawling closer to it.”

“That’s just the old cuss in you talking. You need to make room for new thinking.”

“What the hell’re you going on about?”

“Make yourself some plans. Give yourself something to look forward to.”

I give pause before saying, “I got plans – A plan, anyway.”

“Okay, then. Let’s hear what you got.”

I rolled my one remaining plan over in my head. It was something I couldn’t share. Much as I’d come to trust Allison, I couldn’t even tell her. “I ain’t told you about Kansas City yet, have I?”

“You think you’re slick, don’t you?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You think I can’t see what you’re doing.”

“I’m trying to tell you about Kansas City is what I’m trying to do.”

“You’re trying to change the subject is what you’re trying to do.”

“Fine, if you don’t want to hear about Kansas City, I’ll just lay out my bedroll and get  me some shuteye.”

“Shut up and tell me about Kansas City, old man.”