Cole Brennan's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The trench carried the dirty water away, but Cole's fields still held the poison. He walked the low ground and pushed a spade into the earth. The dirt smelled sour. His mare still shivered in the barn behind him. Cutting the source hadn't cured what already lived in his ground. He needed to strip the poison from the soil, and he had no tool that could do it. Ernest drove over that afternoon. He climbed down from his truck slow, one hand on the door. "I've been asking around," he said. "There's a rig for this. Pulls the bad matter right out of the dirt." He pointed to a flatbed hitched behind him. On it sat a heavy machine, rows of black tines under metal tanks. "It's mine. Use it as long as you need. Least I can do." Cole ran his hand along the cold tines. "You're sure?" "I poisoned your ground," Ernest said. His voice caught. "I won't watch it stay dead." But Cole didn't know how to run the rig, and the wrong setting could burn the soil worse. So Ernest gave him a name. Mark Tillman had farmed his whole life and knew how to heal ruined land. Cole called him that evening. Mark showed up at dawn in patched overalls, a straw hat pushed back off his face. He knelt, grabbed a fistful of dirt, and smelled it before he said a word. "Yep. It's deep," he said. "But it's not dead. We can pull it." He stood and slapped the dust from his hands. "Hitch that rig. We start now." They worked the machine across the low fields all day. The tines bit down and the tanks hissed. Mark walked behind and read the turned earth like a page. By dusk the sour smell was gone. Mark crumbled a clod between his fingers and nodded. "Give it two weeks. Then it'll grow clean feed." Cole hired him on the spot to tend the land until it healed. The fields were saved. The soil would come back. But the mare in the barn was still sick, and clean dirt couldn't cure a sick horse. Cole stood at the barn door and heard her labored breathing. A truck rolled up the drive. Ty Fleming stepped out, the vet who'd first traced the poison. He carried a small bundle wrapped in cloth—dried roots, corked bottles, a pouch of dark grains. "I finished it," Ty said. "A remedy for the sickness. It'll work on your horses and Ernest's hogs both." Cole took the bundle. "You're sure it works?" "It has to be given right," Ty said. "Too much and it stops the heart. I need to dose her myself, and I need her steady." He looked past Cole to the mare's stall. "She's weak, Cole. If she can't take it, I can't force it." Cole opened the stall. The mare's eyes rolled white. Now the cure sat in his hands, and the hardest part was still ahead.