Corn Fields

 Cranston watched his wife slather on sunscreen and don her floppy hat. When she sprayed mosquito repellant, he protested. The droplets irritated his nose.

“Again, with that stuff?”

She blasted a second spray on her arms “Zika. Ticks with Lyme Disease. And don’t forget COVID.”

He held back any more comments. They’d already had it out once this morning. Breakfast was a disaster. How could she ruin eggs? He stepped in to salvage the morning, but his French toast burned and the coffee tasted foul. He must have left vinegar in the piping after its cleaning. He tasted again, just to make sure.

Emma saw his grimace. “I think you did that because you weren’t paying attention.”

She separated several pairs of dirty and worn gloves into a pile before finally extracting a left and right, albeit of differing colors.

Cranston lifted the cup with his scrawny fingers, then thought better. His plate looked no better. “I can’t drink the crap either, you know. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Stop swearing. It wasn’t just the coffee.”

“Yeah, well your eggs weren’t what I’d call gourmet.”

Her words bit at him. “Weren’t meant to be. Just simple and scrambled. You’re the one who insists on peppers and onions. Next time, you cook.”

She was angry, too. Neither got good sleep. A phone call at two in the morning from a distraught relative about her elderly father’s midnight diatribe kept both awake. Cranston couldn’t fall back to sleep and Emma hadn’t tried. She read under the bed lamp and turned each page with a vengeance.

Cranston touched his cup and sighed. “Want me to rustle up something else? It is my turn.”

Lousy start to a lousy day.

“No.” Her quick return jab meant she wasn’t shedding anger as fast as usual. “I’m going to spend time in the garden.”

“Yeah? Well, good.”

She watched him, then adjusted her hat. “What are you going to do? Sit around all day?”

Why was she baiting him? “Walk, maybe. I missed it yesterday because of the rain.”

“Why not walk around the barn? Clean up. Bending is good exercise and you can do something productive. Hanging around at the lake isn’t what I’d call walking.”

Both suddenly wearied of the argument.

He couldn’t help himself, knowing how much her hobby cost. “Have fun with the corn. Only six bucks for an ear this summer. Quite the bargain.”

Her jaw clenched. “It’s a hobby, Cranston. I’m a master gardener and it’s what we do. Better than your golf clubs in the hall closet. The ones you never use. At least I’m doing something.”

He laughed without humor. “Oh, yeah. You want to see the fur fly? Just let me swing a golf club around here. I can’t wait to hear what you’d say about that.”

Before she could answer, he grabbed up his cup and headed for the front porch.

Emma slammed through the backdoor and headed into a garden of young corn, tomatoes, okra, and climbing beans.

He caught a glimpse of her disappearing around the side of the barn, scattering chickens in her wake. The black liquid in his cup caught his eye. She was right. The brew really was awful. He tossed the contents of his cup over the porch rail and turned back inside to grab his truck keys and wallet. The hated mobile phone-leash stayed on the entry table. Marty’s Diner would have a newspaper, good coffee, and waffles. He was in the mood for waffles.

The morning was starting to look up. He whistled as he walked to his ten-year old pickup.

Hours later, the sun’s slanted orange rays touched the far western fields. He couldn’t figure out where the day had gone. Jacob came in just as Marty poured his first cup of coffee. His friend was hiding out, too. Over a third cup, they decided to head for the lake. Jacob’s little boat sported a new motor, and both wanted to try it out. They’d only zip around for an hour or so, and then pack it in. But Jacob had the little skiff packed with poles and the Dollar General was on the way with ice, bait, and beer.

And then, well, the day just sort of slipped away.

Cranston rounded the rusting rural mailbox and stopped. Emma usually grabbed the contents after her morning bath. But he thought, he’d check, just in case. She might still be mad. Save him the walk back if case she hadn’t bothered.

The box was full. Crap mail, he called it. One legitimate letter. A bill. The rest, garbage. He read as he climbed back into the Chevy pickup then spotted the chickens running in the front yard. The dog barked and chased flying feathers until it spotted Cranston. The black rescue mix slunk back under the porch.

“Damn dog.”

Emma left the gates open.

He gunned up the hill and could see both panels unlatched.

“Son of a bitch.”

He couldn’t swear like this around her, so he satisfied his invectives alone or in a muttering silence. Lifting his arms like a scarecrow, he herded fat guineas and Rhode Island Reds back through the opening and locked them away. The ducks scattered and didn’t pay attention to him. The big male took a run at his legs. Cranston kicked him away. Ducks could fly and besides, they bit. He didn’t like the ducks and the feeling was mutual.

Both pigs watched him expectantly. He wondered if they’d eaten and grabbed up the pail. Empty. He tossed two scoops into the trough. The cow, a youngster and intended for the freezer next winter continued to eat thick grass, enjoying the day and oblivious to its fate.

“Keep eating, Hamburger.”

He called into the garden.  “Emma?”

No answer. It was too early for her to quick gardening. He checked the empty barn.

No light in the kitchen. Monday. Chili, tonight, and his turn to cook. He’d have to hustle.

He decided to check with Emma first, just in case she decided on an apology beef roast.

The uphill trail and around the pump house were both empty.  Bees drifted among the orchard’s blossoms in the last of the daylight and the workers on the Agra farm next door already left for the day.

She sometimes talked to them over the fence but no Emma today.

Their clapboard home sat next to last winter’s tree death. A tragedy, too, because he liked the apples. At one time, the tree had been their best producer until a beetle of some sort killed off the county’s Granny Smiths. He made a mental note to check at the feed store for any news of saplings. Had to be organic, of course. Couldn’t use nasty chemicals. Emma would lose her certification.

He snorted.

He walked into the backyard. “Emma?”

Only a crow atop the barn’s peak answered. Cranston glanced up and muttered. He never had the pellet gun when he needed it.

“Get out of here, you bastard.” The bird didn’t move.

He threw a small stone but didn’t have the arm. The rock fell short. Way short. The crow cawed and eyed him. Cranston gave up and headed for the house.

“Emma?”

In the mudroom, he kicked off his boots and grabbed cans from the pantry. Not enough time to soak dry beans. One jar of diced tomatoes from last year waited on the top shelf. Emma did the preserving. He didn’t like to mess with mason jars and thought canned Heinz at ten times the price tasted just as good.

When the pot simmered, he headed for the shower and a good scrub. As always, all the fish went to Jacobs. His friend liked them and besides, Cranston hated cleaning fish. He liked drinking Jacob’s beer and sometimes catching one, maybe two.

The sunburn on the back of his neck itched a little as he wondered why Emma wasn’t home. He would check the computer calendar, but he was sure the Master Gardener meeting was on Thursdays in Portersville. Dreaded church on Wednesday and poker with the guys every Friday, unless it was Christmas or Easter.

That’s the way life had been since he took his early retirement ten years before. Emma quit, too, although she still pulled in a nice retirement check. Actually, hers was bigger than his. She had taught school for almost twenty-five years at the middle school and then transferred to the high school.

He avoided too much responsibility. When he “pulled the pin”, Cranston had risen to be the assistant manager at the IGA in town. He never liked the job and applied only when the produce guy talked about the opening. There was no way he’d work for that jerk. Cranston preferred to be the lead warehouseman although he didn’t mind the assistant manager’s bump in the wallet.

Now with his little pension and hers, they had enough to get by, especially when social security kicked in last year. There was plenty of money to put gas in Jacobs’ boat and even buy the beer once in a while. He did think about selling the golf clubs, though. A little extra for him that Emma wouldn’t know about never hurt.

Besides, the clubs were a present from the store he’d never liked anyway.

By nine, he’d eaten alone and made a half dozen phone calls to her friends. He finally closed up the barn and checked for the umpteenth time to make sure her little Toyota still sat in the driveway. The trucks hood remained cold, and the pigs were hungry again.

The demanding creatures could wait until morning.

At ten-thirty, he put the pot of chili in the refrigerator and grabbed up the flashlight. The steer snuffled as he walked both paddocks and the pens.

“Emma?”

The garden wasn’t all that big, maybe a quarter-acre in five or six plots, except for the corn. She predicted a banner year and planted a full half-acre of Silver Crown. He walked those, too. Up and down the rows avoiding her new irrigation.

Nothing.

Finally, he headed to the pond, a tail pit, really. He didn’t like the place or the insects. A corner of bulldozed dirt with sunken mud and two feet of thick brown water in the rainy season. An odorous runoff came from the next-door farm’s stagnated brew of excrement. The Agra group ranged cattle in multiple paddocks throughout the year. He heard their bellowing all hours of the day and night. The cattle was especially noisy when they migrated to the shade from his elm and poplars and fouled the rain runoff. He complained to the county, but they would do nothing about it.

Cranston’s stomach rolled just thinking about the stink.

But Emma? She loved it. In the dry season, she chopped bales out of the ground, then added the odorous witches’ brew to her already rich, black dirt. Her friends clamored around for her secret, but she wouldn’t tell. Her vegetables won prizes in three counties.

Where the hell is she?

“Emma!”

His flashlight scanned her abandoned wheelbarrow and shovel, and the vacant fields all around. No water lingered in the pit. The mud hardened and awaited the summer rain storms.

He sighed and headed back for the house. He’d done what he could, and it was nearly midnight.

It was time to make the phone call.

The last sheriff’s cruiser pulled away at two-thirty. He kicked off his galoshes and sat on one of the porch rockers watching the black horizon. It was too late or early to call the rest of the people in her gardening group, although he was sure the word would be out.

The legendary county’s gossips yearned for drama like this. Wife runs off with fellow gardening guru.

He couldn’t wait for that. But no one else had been reported missing, though. Only Emma.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

Cranston had no idea.

For days, scores of searchers combed the farm, the nearby woods, and creek. They brought in a helicopter and even called experts from the state police. They dug pits wherever their machinery found disturbed soil.

They found a lot of soil to dig.

For nearly three weeks he waited, mostly sitting on the porch drinking coffee until they finally called it quits.

The following spring, the paddocks stood fallow. Grass grew tall and waved in the wind. The steer fed him through the second winter with many months of dinners in the freezer. One of the pigs sat in the freezer, too. He sold the other one to Jacob. The ducks left in the spring when he stopped feeding them, and he ate all but two of the chickens.

He wouldn’t replace any of them until Emma came home. They were just too much trouble for him. Besides, there was always the IGA and his employee discount.

And the weeds. They grew like crazy. How in the hell had she kept all this going? Between feeding, cutting hay, trying to keep up with a lawn and two chickens about killed him. And that did account for the chicken’s damn eggs, marauding raccoons, opossums, and rats who conspired to stop him from fishing with Jacobs. He barely got done in a week, half of what she’d do in a day.

The talk of a traveling salesman made the rounds in town. She supposedly grew tired of him and pulled up stakes for a better deal. He saw the looks and watched the whispered words traded whenever he went to town. Even Jacobs asked him if he’d ever beaten Emma.

He laughed, then grew angry. They didn’t have troubles like that. He pointed out there wasn’t any such thing as traveling salesman anymore. Not with the internet. She was out there trying to come home. He just didn’t know where, and he was tired of her being gone.

By the third winter, the talk had dried up. Now, Cranston and Emma were just rural legends. Him living alone? No one knew what to make of that.

A realtor came by in the spring of the fourth year to see if he wanted to sell. Seems a younger couple from the city wanted a hobby farm. They would create a boutique vineyard, but Cranston wasn’t sure. Where would Emma put her garden when she came back if they had grapes in all the best places?

He’d told the guy to get the hell out and leave him alone.

Boutique farm.

What will they think of next?

The realtor didn’t seem offended, just laughed, and left behind a business card and phone number. Just in case Cranston changed his mind.

That night, he chopped an ear of corn for the microwave. The new fields were not like the ones Emma had planted. He just ran the tiller through a couple of times and threw seed over the dirt. Beans and tomatoes were too much work, but sweet potatoes and squash grew on their own. Only the strong survived, and not many at that. He ate what grew and what sat on the IGA shelves.

He left the last layer of husk for a quick two-minute nuke as the store-bought pork chop finished in the frying pan. With a wave at the smoke over the stove, he grabbed a handful of paper towels and his plate and sat in the living room. Emma didn’t like eating in front of the television, but who else was he supposed to talk to?

He set up a tray, turned on the news with a quick glance toward her end of the couch. She didn’t like the news, either. He took a swig of beer and thought maybe he’d have a soak in her tub later. His back muscles were killing him.

Why the hell would she do this kind of work for a six-dollar ear of corn?

He ate the porkchop in three bites, then pulled at the last layer of husk, feeling a circular indentation. Expecting a worm or another such garden delight, he yanked the final steaming leaves away and prepared to drop on the butter, only to yowl and throw the ear across the room. The corn slammed against the wall, hit the floor, and rolled back to his feet.

His breath came in quick gulps. Skin prickled on his arms as hair stood on its ends. This could not be.

Strangling the rows of luscious white kernels was a thin, gold band deforming and choking the vegetable into a curved corn coke-bottle.

Cranston forced himself to slow his breathing but could not force his eyes away. He knew as sure as he sat there what this meant.

He touched the corn with the toe of his shoe. Shaking fingers picked it from the rug. The wedding band stared back at him. He broke the ear of corn in half and let the ring drop to his plate.

He read the inscription: Forever yours, C.

He made it to the downstairs bathroom just in time.

Five years later, nine years since Emma’s disappearance, the sporty, red coupe rounded the mailbox. The passenger door opened and a young woman wearing tight, designer jeans with fashionable tears stepped out. Her blonde ponytail bounced as she retrieved the mail.

The driver called out. “Is he still there?”

She shaded her eyes looking at the side of the hill where they had wanted to plant vines. “Oh yeah. He’s there. Every day, every hour.”

The husband’s law offices sat on the third floor of Grand Rapid’s most prominent high-rise.

“Do you ever talk to him”

She snorted. “No. He only talks to Jacob, the honey-wagon driver. And that’s only when they empty his holding tank.”

The husband watched the silhouette of the man, sitting in a lawn chair, stunted corn growing around his legs while a miniature travel trailer sat nearby.

“How can anyone live in a camper like that? He must freeze in the winter. What is it, now, six years since he sold us his place? The guy has got to be a hundred years old, for Christ’s sake.”

She shuffled the envelopes and junk mail. “Eight years and he’s seventy-six according to county records.”

” I’m still ticked off he wrote that nonsense into the sales contract. We should have never bought this place.”

She tossed her style blond hair. “Kick him off the land, why don’t you? You’re supposed to be the big shot lawyer. At least that’s what you keep telling me.”

“Yeah, yeah. I tried that, remember? He gets a quarter-acre for their family cemetery under his sole jurisdiction until he dies. Then, in the dead of night, he and that deadbeat friend pull in a broken-down piece of junk trailer. I can’t believe the judge sided with him.”

“They say he’s waiting for his wife’s ghost.”

He grew angry. “Let him wait somewhere else but not in an illegal trailer park.”

“You should be able to break that deal.”

“You should be the judge.”

“Maybe I should have been the one to go to law school.”

He stopped himself recognizing the bait. “It’s the cops who give me a pain in the ass. Every year, like clockwork, some bozo attorney comes out here and searches with electronic gizmos. As if we’re a crime scene. I swear, I’m going to tell them to get a warrant next time.”

“Yeah. You do that, big man.”

The husband breathed deeply and shifted for the uphill driveway. The arguments grew worse all the time. For a moment, it looked like he would drive up the hill alone, but that’d ruin an already shaky weekend. And he wanted his Saturday night.”

He waited but not quietly. “Just keep in mind we got this place dirt cheap and he’s an old man.”

“A damn healthy old man from eating out of an organic garden all his life.”

The silence stretched and she touched his forearm. “Sorry. I know he can’t live forever, but where is the graveyard? There’re no headstones out there. Never has been, and probably never will be. He lied to us. That should break his contract. He probably buried that poor old woman right there.”

“I know, hon. I know. But like you said, he can’t live forever. Maybe we should get an apartment in town and wait him out.”

He shifted the sport car and spun the wheels up the drive. He liked the idea of a man-pad in the city. Possibilities for later when the old fart actually did die.

The man in the lawn chair never turned or looked around as the sports car made its way up the gravel drive. The old house was long gone and a modern stone edifice sat in its place.

The husband tried a smile for his wife as he set the brake. “One day, you’ll plow it all up and we’ll plant grapes.”.

She wasn’t buying and watched Cranston, now a profile on the hillside. “The thing that really creeps me out is the laughing and talking late at night. You never wake up, but I swear he’s talking to the wife that ran away. Sometimes when the wind is out of the north, I can almost hear her answering. When she’s with him, it’s the only time he seems happy.”

He harrumphed. “Happy? No one here is happy. Least of all him.”

The End

A note to the reader:

If you feel I’ve left something out, believe me, I haven’t. You may want to ask a Master Gardener sometime about the philosophy of being one with the dirt.

Best wishes,
Ollie

Gris-Gris*

Walter LoPresti backed the throttle of the Cessna 185 and reduced the propeller by a couple hundred turns. The cabin noise grew noticeably quieter as the airplane settled into a long glide. As he broke through the gray mist several hundred feet above the earth, a little more throttle brought the nose up to skim scant feet under the cloud bottoms above.

The dark green of the Cypress and Black Gum, and the lack of ripples on the long, spokes of cleared swamp became his landing instructions. The late Louisiana afternoon calmed in anticipation of the evening’s repertory of heat-driven thunderstorms. White, towering, cumulonimbus clouds stayed hidden at this altitude but threatened in the west. 

This was good, he decided, and reminded himself to make the airplane especially secure in its hiding spot. Storms were coming, deafening assaults of nature’s most powerful evil. Excitement tightened his muscle-hardened stomach.

Twenty minutes of low-level cruising, and a familiar island of russet-gold Sawgrass and overhanging trees broke the monotony of the swamp lowlands. He banked the airplane, lining up on the lengthening shadows. Wispy Water Ash lined the canals cut decades before by petrochemical companies. He left power to the engine and touched the dark water, the caress of twin pontoons as gentle as a lover’s. No prehistoric swamp creature dared to spoiled his near-perfect approach and silky splashdown.   

As the Cessna slowed to a taxi speed, a twenty-three foot, open fisherman with a 200 horsepower Johnson roared from reeds. Its bow jumped high and menacing, like a snapping guard dog roused from sleep.  Three men stood in the boat, two with rifles giving chase to the slowing airplane.

LoPresti laughed as he swung the airplane into cut and taxied under a cypress stand. A second path, narrower that the oil canal, lead deeper into the American jungle. The airplane turned, its wingtip brushing the overhanging vines. The rudder and engine worked expertly and after ten minutes bumped against an outcropping of moist soil. Near the spit, a dark man stood upright in a small pirogue waiting in the shade, a long pole in his hands. 

The pilot pulled the mixture knob to kill the power. The drift took him to the black man who deftly tied a line at the forward cleat. Neither guard in the speed boat relaxed their vigilance. In this part of the Zydeco south swamps, few people were paid cash-money for anything. 

“What’s your business, you?” one questioned in the inflection of the two hundred-year-old Acadian dialect. They bumped hard against the pontoon.  

“Johns Marque,” the pilot answered, opening the small window. His soft-pitched voice like a Southern breeze. “Just like the letter in your pocket.”  The boat driver glanced down as if he’d forgotten the blue envelope. “M-a-r-q-u-e,” LoPresti spelled out the name, enjoying the French. He liked the touch of local color.  

The boatman looked down at the script he’d received a week before. “Mr. John,” he repeated. “That you?”

“Johns,” corrected LoPresti. He laughed and pushed open the door. He was perched well above the three men in the cockpit. “But that’s close enough. Yes.” Just like the false, little goatee on his chin, he used an indifferent Southern accent that was as foreign to these men as if the man was from Boston. “Y’all tie up. Get one of your boys to get the cargo door.”  

One of the rifle bearers smirked. LoPresti saw the gesture and was pleased. If these people were ever asked about Johns Marque, they would describe him far differently from his everyday persona. Of course, LoPresti would murder them long before that ever happened.

The more stout of the two placed his weapon on the boat deck, leaning the barrel skyward. The pilot called out as he placed a foot on high step. “Ya’ll be careful. There’s stuff back there that can’t be jostled. If you bang it again, we’ll all be chunks of gator bait. Know what I mean?”

The big man’s face drained of color. A glance inside the airplane’s hold told them everything they needed to know. LoPresti laughed to himself. So macho and so frightened, as if their pathetic lives meant anything.

When neither of the two powerboat men moved, the older mulatto climbed on the pontoon without comment. His sweat-slick skin was coffee colored and his head, bald. He wore no hat and didn’t bother slapping at the biting mosquitoes and flies. Without a word, he opened the cargo bay and quietly went about unloading. No one else rushed to help him as he stacked each parcel in the bow and returned for another. The boxes were marked in Russian Cyrillic, Vietnamese chu nom characters, and the English letters PETN and RDX.  LoPresti brought with him nearly two hundred and sixty kilos of the compound. Seven hundred pounds of a high-explosive purchased from a Southeast Asian arms dealer. Very effective stuff.  He liked the Asian explosive better than the European. A bit more bang and a bit less stable.  He thought it ironic that the two, largest importers of the explosive were the newly capitalistic Czech Republic and America’s old foe − Vietnam. Capitalist and Communistic. How ironic. And of course, the US was one of their biggest customers right alongside of Afghanistan.

“What is your name?” LoPresti called to the Black man.

“Rudy, Mr. Johns,” he answered and did not looked up. Probably in his sixties, though he seemed ageless. His strong back and cabled muscles made quick work of the cargo.

 If Rudy worked out, the man might be useful. “Rudy,” LoPresti repeated. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. 

“Yes, sir, Mr. Johns.” 

When the load was transferred, LoPresti flipped a toggle in the engine compartment that killed his emergency locator beacon. He didn’t want to chance malfunctions during the night that might inadvertently alert authorities. The sulfurous and humid canal lay squarely in the protected wildlife sanctuary around Marsh Island. Pilots were restricted from flights any closer than 2,000 feet above the deserted swamp of herons, egrets, Sand Cranes and alligators. Stupid, wonderful law, he thought to himself. Except for poachers, he would not be bothered by gawkers or low-flyers.

The boat rocked against the pontoon’s side as the men tossed and secured a tarp over the last of the boxes. Each carefully avoided touching the boxes. Evening mosquitoes buzzed everywhere, thick and demanding. The occasional vampire landed on LoPresti’s skin but quickly lost interest, as if the man had no vitality worth stealing. He popped the top of a Diet Coke and relaxed in a padded seat. The electric blasting caps were secured in a cut wood box beside him.

“Let’s be quick, ya’ll,” he called with a sharp clap of his hands. The boat driver jumped at the unexpected noise and glanced around in irritation. LoPresti’s clear, blue eyes were truly frightening, like a cottonmouth leisurely selecting a spot to sink his fangs. “Time’s a-wasting,” he said with a paced menace to the boat driver. “The sooner you can get me there and back, the sooner you’ll have your money.” He loved playing the role.

“Yes, sir,” answered the man, frightened to his most secret inner being. 

LoPresti wore a shoulder holster with a snub nose .38 pistol, but didn’t need the gun to be scary. When necessary in his career, he’d been a face-to-face killer with self-injecting hypodermics or .44 magnum gut gun. He’d practiced many weeks with Saudi and Yemen masters, using a twenty thousand-dollar, long-range sniper rifle. With maturity, however, came understanding of his true place in the world. Nothing replaced rending flesh, fiery stone, and violent wind ripping apart brick and steel. LoPresti loved to watch and imagine those caught inside. He loved to slip from dark shadows to invisible sunlight with befuddled authorities never close to catching him. He loved hearing newspapers calling him more gris gris and ghost than human. Walter LoPresti wanted a reputation and to have others to fear him. It was good for business. This job involved a Louisiana city attorney and a couple of his cronies. The men would be shredded in pieces too small to bother with caskets. That they were crooked and general blights on the face of humanity meant nothing to him. They could be fathers of the year for all he cared. LoPresti only wanted the money that was his. All his stars were in the right place.

When the explosives were finally transferred and the last man took up his position, the driver cranked the engine and spun the wheel. Rudy stood in his pirogue and silently watched. A single-lens, electric lantern perched in the bow, waiting the noisy boat to be gone. Rudy was the exception and didn’t seem impressed by the closeness of death. LoPresti decided he had plans for Rudy.

Walter LoPresti, aka Johns Marque, fluffed a pad on his back and relaxed. His high-pitched, falsetto laugh sent chills crawling the backs of the guards. From his position near the console, he enjoyed the damp breeze, liking very much the isolation of this swamp. 

Pronounced without the ‘s’ , Gris Gris refers to an African or Caribbean amulet. Spanning the charms of Louisiana swamps and folktales, this voodoo foretells only horror, bloody death, and chaos. Welcome to my world.