Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 7 of 33

Morning after the fish run, Scarlett walked the rows and knelt at the bean line. The leaves felt gritty. She rubbed one between her fingers and gray dust smeared her skin. The ash winds had been dusting the crops every afternoon, and the new growth was stunted. The tomato shoots were pale. A second cluster of seedlings had not opened at all. If the wind kept scouring them, nothing would bloom. She pulled the wheelbarrow out from the side of the house. The tool bag sat in it, shears and pruners in the front pockets, twine on the side, seed packets tucked in the flap. She wheeled it to the collapsed lots behind the district and started cutting. Willow whips, long and green. Hazel where she could find it. She stacked them across the barrow until the handles bent. Duke followed her out and back, his curly tail sweeping left. At the third load he stopped in the track and pushed a picture into her head: the ridge, empty. No scavengers today. She kept cutting. She drove stakes along the windward side of the rows, one every arm's length, and started weaving. Thick whips first, threaded through the stakes. Thinner ones over and under to lock the frame. She pulled each pass tight. Her palms went raw. She kept going. When the panel reached her hip, she wound live honeysuckle runners through the lattice and pressed the cut ends into the dirt at the base. If they took, the wall would grow into itself. The ash wind came earlier than she wanted. She pulled the mask on. The pink respirators clicked as she breathed. The wind hit the new lattice and split around it. Grit rattled through the weave but the worst of it fell short of the rows. She kept working through the storm, tying off the last section by feel, her braid whipping against her shoulder. When the wind dropped, she walked the rows behind the break. The leaves were clean. She ran a hand over the tomato shoots and left them alone. Healing them would cost her a night. The wall meant she might not have to spend it. She filled the watering can at the cistern and soaked every row twice. The soil drank it. Then she opened the seed packets from the tool bag — carrots, chard, a squash she wasn't sure would take — and pressed them into the wet dirt along the two empty beds at the end. She tamped each row flat with her palm. Duke sat by the gate while she worked. The crows dropped onto the lattice top and settled there, facing out. The new wall held them the same as the old one. She stood at the end of the rows with dirt on her hands and counted what she had planted. Two new beds. One live windbreak. A garden that might, this time, get the chance to bloom.