Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 14 of 33

Scarlett woke before dawn and walked the rows in the gray light. The netting held. The crows sat along the wall. But the soil under her boots crunched wrong. She knelt and pushed her fingers in. The bed John had forced into growing was dry as ash, cracked in a pale web. The fast crop had drained it. Whatever she planted next would starve before it rooted. John came out with two cups. He saw her hand in the dirt and stopped. "It's spent," she said. "Your bed. It gave everything at once." He crouched and rubbed a pinch between his fingers. "I can push another crop. I can't push dead ground." "Then we feed it. Bones, fish guts, anything with nitrogen. The pier had gulls last time. Dead things wash up. I can be there and back before the wind." "I'll stay," he said. "Watch the ridge. Water the small ones." She looked at him. A week ago she would not have left the district in anyone's hands. She pulled the cellar key from her pocket and set it on the porch rail between them. She did not hand it to him. She left it there, where he could see she had put it down. "If they come to the split rock early, don't answer. Stay inside." "I know." She fitted the mask over her face and buckled it. She whistled once. The dog came around the house, tail sweeping left, mismatched eyes bright. She hooked the handle of the rolling cooler and pulled it after her down the broken street. The pier smelled worse than last time. Something big had died under the boards. She and the dog worked the tideline first. Two gulls, stiff and half-eaten. A skate, dry but whole. Then the dog stopped and pushed an image into her head — under the third piling, a shape in the reeds. She waded in. A young seal, days dead, its middle still soft. She gagged into the mask and cut what she could carry. She packed the cooler with the seal meat wrapped in kelp, the gulls on top, the skate laid flat. She left the worst for the crows and cut a separate bundle for them, wing meat and skin. The dog paced the boards while she worked. He showed her a clean road home. No scavengers on it. She wheeled the cooler back with an hour to spare. John was in the beds, sleeves rolled, the small rows watered dark. The key was still on the rail where she'd left it. They dug the gulls and seal into the cracked bed together. Blood and oil soaked down. She laid her hands flat on the soil and pushed. Warmth left her arms. The cracks closed under her palms. She sat back hard in the dirt. "Two days," she said. "Then you can plant again." John nodded. He tossed the crows their share along the wall.