The Harvest
Hurley scooped up a handful of dirt and sifted it through his fingers. The soil was fine and rich and moist. This year he’d finally make a crop. The tomatoes would grow well in this. He began to plant. After an entire day in the sun he was done. His clothes were soaked through with sweat and he could feel the distant threat of a sunburn in the offing. It was worth it, though. Looking over the rows of plants he was glad that he had gone through all of the preparation over the last few months. Satisfied that he had done right, Hurley slept through the night.
When he awoke it was with a sense that he had forgotten to do something. He was halfway through his shower when it hit him: there was still one in the basement. He hadn’t processed the last of them, which meant that the garden hadn’t been ready. There should have been twelve of them, chopped up and mixed with the soil one per month for a year. Somehow he had neglected to do the last one. It had been his excitement at being ready to plant. Perhaps it wasn’t too late, he thought.
Hurley found the drugged boy in his basement and chopped off his head with the old ax. That done, he tossed the head in a steel drum with the others. They were useless. Then he dismembered the rest of the body. It took hours to get the bits small enough. He gathered all of it up into a double-layer garbage bag and carried the wet mess out to the garden. Hurley fell to his knees and began slopping handfuls of the boy into the dirt around his plants. He kneaded it into the topsoil, pushing and squeezing to get the mix right. As he worked he started to weep that it was probably too late. It would be another year without tomatoes. He was still on his knees weeping and working the remains into the rich soil when the policemen arrived.
