Grampy Fernside's Arc

Chapter 8 of 16

The bed was level by dusk. Grampy walked the length of it twice with a flat board and shaved the far end down until the puddle drained. He tucked the moss blanket back and stood in the cooling air. One night left. Nineteen seeds waiting on the top shelf. He had proved in his test barrel that middle depth grew the strongest sprouts. But middle depth meant the same depth every time, in every hole, and his thumb was not a ruler. He tried it on a corner of the bed to see. He pressed a hole with his thumb, then another, then another. The first felt right. The fourth went deep. The seventh barely dented the soil. He scraped them out and sat back on his heels. Nineteen seeds. Half would sit too shallow and dry. Half would sit too deep and never break the crust. He needed his hand out of it. He went to the shed. Togg sat on the doorsill washing his paws. "Need a flat board," Grampy said. "Pegs on the underside. All the same length." "Shelf behind you," Togg said. "Scrap pine. Take it." Grampy carried the pine board out and set it across the two small sawhorses his granddaughter had helped him build. He measured the bed against the board and marked nineteen points in the pattern his test had proved: wider spacing, staggered rows. He whittled nineteen short pegs from a handy stick, each one the length of his smallest fingernail. He drilled the board and tapped the pegs in from above, sanding the tips smooth so they would not tear a seed. When he flipped the board, nineteen blunt teeth stood in even rows. He carried it to the bed and pressed it down. The board sank until the flat wood met the soil. He lifted it. Nineteen clean holes, all the same depth, all the same distance apart. He pressed his thumb into one to check. Middle depth. Exactly. He grinned into his beard. A fat toad watched from under the ceramic mushroom his wife kept by the path, and a slug inched along the frame of the bed. Grampy flicked the slug into the grass and let the toad be. "Works," Togg said from the shed door. "Works," Grampy said. He set the pegged board on the sawhorses beside the bed, ready for tomorrow night. The watering pipe dripped its slow beads. The moss held. The holes would be waiting when he brought the seeds down. He turned toward the house and the tea his wife would have poured by now. One thing was left. Nineteen seeds, nineteen holes, and the planting itself — whether the bloom his wife had been promised would come up at all, he would not know until it did.