Grampy Fernside's Arc

Chapter 2 of 16

Grampy Fernside carried the tin out of the shed and set it on the picnic table in the last blue light. The lid stuck. He worked it with his thumbs until it popped. A breath of damp air came up at him, sour and green. The tin was rusted along the corners, paint flaking off in soft chips, a fringe of moss along one seam. He bent close and sniffed. Mildew. Faint, but there. If he tipped these seeds into the ground tonight, they would rot before sunrise. He sat down on the bench and thought it through. The seeds were not lost yet. Damp seeds could be dried. He had done it with beans in a wet year, with herbs after a leaking jar. The trick was open air and steady warmth, and a surface that would not hold water against the shells. He went around the side of the shed to the flat stone he used for resting tools. It was a smooth slate dish, dark, worn round at the edges from forty years of use. He carried it to the sunniest spot near his garden and set it on a low stump where the morning light would hit first and the evening light would hold longest. He wiped it clean with the hem of his shirt. Then he tipped the tin. The seeds slid out in a small heap. There were not many. Long striped ones, pale ovals, a few round ones the color of old honey. He spread them with one finger until each seed sat alone on the stone, none touching, none stacked. He counted as he went. Nineteen. Nineteen chances at the bloom he had promised his wife. He looked past the stone to the bed he had been readying for weeks. He had built it from sturdy logs notched at the corners and filled it himself, layer by layer: peat moss, aged manure, sifted dirt from the old bean row. The soil sat dark and loose, waiting. He had not told her about the bed. He had not told her about the tin. Their anniversary was still weeks off, and he meant to keep it that way. He set the empty tin upside down beside the stone so no dew would settle inside it overnight. The seeds would need three days on the slate, maybe four, turned twice a day. He would know they were ready when they rattled instead of clicked. He stood up, brushed his knees, and started back toward the house where his wife would be pouring tea. The seeds were out of the tin. The bed was waiting. Now he only had to keep nineteen small things alive long enough to plant.