Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 25 of 33

Scarlett woke at dusk to closed walls and the row of seed packets on the kitchen table. She sat up too fast. Her wrist answered with a hot pull under the bandage. She flexed the fingers. They moved. The grip did not close. She walked out to the healed bed past the split rock. The soil lay dark and soft where she had put her hands into it. By morning it would crust. By the next day it would harden past a seedling's reach. She tried to lift a shovel from the wheelbarrow. The handle slipped through her fingers and hit the dirt. John came up behind her with the dog at his heel. He looked at the shovel, then at her wrist. "I need you," she said. It cost her to say it plain. "I can't grip. The bed crusts tomorrow if we don't break it tonight." "Then we break it tonight," he said. He picked up the shovel. She carried the seed packets in her good hand. Beans. Squash. Turnip. Kale. Carrot. Radish. Onion sets in a jar. Twenty packets in all, the ones the woman with the bone charms had laid out on the table. Scarlett walked the row while John turned the soil. She marked the spacing with her boot. He followed and dug the trenches. Halfway down the row she stopped. "Some of these we let go to seed. Don't harvest the strongest plant in each row. We save what it drops." John nodded. "More packets for spring." "More packets for every spring." The watering can sat by the cistern. She filled it one-handed and carried it in the crook of her bad arm. John dropped seeds. She watered behind him. The dog lay across the end of the row and watched the ridge. Hammering came from the house. Steady, fast, closer to done than it should have been. When they walked back at full dark, the man with the tabby cat stepped out of the framed rooms wiping his hands. "Both rooms are closed," he said. "Doors hung. Windows in. I thought it was three more days." "How?" "I stopped sleeping." He looked at her wrist. "You planted." "Twenty packets. Some go to seed." He smiled once, small. The cat rode his shoulder inside. The woman with the gold in her hair had the stove going. Fish, onion, and something green from the surviving row. She set four plates. She set a fifth by habit and did not move it. Scarlett ate with her left hand. The wrist throbbed under the cloth. The bed was planted. The rooms were closed. The seeds on the table were gone into the ground, except for what they would keep back. She looked at John across the table. "We do the second row at first light." "First light," he said.