Jude Barion's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The marble fountain cracked down the center with a sound like breaking teeth. Jude stared at the jagged split running through the white stone. Water leaked from the fracture, turning the ground beneath it into soup. His boots sank as he stepped closer to inspect the damage. The stone hadn't been solid after all—just cheap material with a painted surface. He'd paid premium price for garbage. Worse, the saturated ground was spreading. Dark water seeped back toward his wooden platform, undermining the dry soil he'd worked so hard to create. The pump couldn't keep up with this new flood. Jude grabbed the fountain's edge and heaved, but it wouldn't budge from the mud now sucking at its base. His show of wealth had become a show of his mistake. He needed the excavator. The rusted machine sat behind his truck, hydraulic arms stiff from disuse. Jude climbed into the operator's seat and turned the key. The engine coughed twice and died. He tried again. This time it caught, sputtering black smoke. He worked the controls to swing the bucket toward the spreading water. The hydraulic arm jerked halfway through the motion and locked. He yanked the lever hard. Nothing moved. Thick mud and twisted roots clogged the bucket from his last attempt to clear the waterway. The machine was useless. Jude kicked the side panel and climbed down. The iron fence he'd installed last week told the same story of failure. Sections had toppled over where the ground couldn't hold them. Rust ate through the panels he'd thought would last for years. The metal that should have marked boundaries now lay half-buried in vegetation growing faster than he could cut it back. He'd imagined that fence around his shopping center, showing order and control. Instead it showed how quickly the swamp swallowed his efforts. Jude walked to where a twisted root sculpture rose from the mud near his truck. The gnarled branches wove together in patterns he couldn't have designed if he tried. Bark peeled away to show pale wood beneath. The swamp made art while his fountain cracked and his fence fell. He sat on the truck's tailgate and pulled out his flask. Three setbacks in one day. The water was winning, his equipment failing, his money wasted on garbage that broke. Tomorrow he'd need to rethink everything. But tonight he just sat and watched the dark water creep closer to his boots.