Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 12 of 33

Scarlett made the split rock by dusk and left the sack. She and the dog walked home under a low sky. The cooler rattled behind her, half full of small potatoes. She had food for tomorrow. She did not have a next crop. John was at the beds when she came through the gate. He had watered the rows. The crows sat quiet along the wall. She set the cooler down and lifted a potato in her palm. It was the size of a walnut, soft at one end. "These won't replant," she said. "Not like this. You need seed potatoes. Cured. Cut with eyes. I don't have the shed for it. I don't have the time." John crouched by the cooler. He turned one tuber in his fingers. He pressed a thumb to the soft end and frowned. "Blight starting," he said. "Two days, maybe." "So we eat them and I plant nothing." "Or we plant them now." "They'll rot in the ground." He looked at her. His eyes were steady. "Let me try." She watched him. Two weeks in her house. He had asked for nothing. He had not left when he could have. She thought of her own hands, and the price of using them, and the night the district went unwatched every time she healed a bed. "Try," she said. He pulled the gardener's bag from the porch and wheeled the barrow to the end row. He laid out a trowel, a knife, gloves. He cut each potato in quarters, fast, keeping an eye on each piece. He handed her the watering can. "Behind me," he said. "Light pass. Don't soak." She followed him down the row. He pressed each piece into the dirt with his bare hand. He did not chant. He did not close his eyes. He just held his palm flat against the soil for one breath before he moved on. The ground warmed under her boots. She felt it through the leather. By the third row, green was pushing up behind him. Not shoots. Leaves. Full leaves, dark and wide, unfolding out of loose dirt where a cut potato had gone in a minute before. The row behind him filled in as the row ahead emptied of seed. The crows lifted, circled once, and settled again. Scarlett stopped walking. The can hung at her side. Water dripped on her boot. "John." He kept going. His shoulders were tight. Sweat ran at his temple. "John. What are you." "Almost done," he said. He pressed the last piece in. He stood up slow. The bed behind him was a green wall, waist high, thriving in dirt that had held nothing an hour ago. She looked at his hands. She looked at the beds. Her own gift took two days and a night of her body. His took an afternoon and left him standing. "What are you," she said again, quieter. John wiped his palms on his pants. He did not answer.