Tombstone grains
He rubbed the wheat head between his finger and thumb, grains fell too easily onto his boots, and the air stung with must. The farmer told the boy this yield would be nothing more than animal feed, the lot of it was rotting.
Away from the drainage ditches and into the heart of his crop, the wheat sagged and a bleached sea circled them. Tips of skeletal white swayed with the gentle wind. Too quiet. Too still. The sky was birdless and the soil motionless.
The farmer needed advice and the neighbour had a few more decades on him. He strapped into his truck and spotted him in the middle of his wheat field, hands on hips. He muttered something about tombstone grains. Said it didn’t taste right. When he turned, soil clung to his grey beard, packed into the crease of his chin. The grooves of his teeth were filled with pristine white kernels. His lips were split. Bloody. Something white and pale trickled out between them.
He fell away from his good neighbour. Sprawled on his back, pushing against the soil with his heels. Thick sludge ran down from his collar to his spine. A prayer escaped his mouth. His legs wobbled like blighted stalks as he ran. Breath only came once he was inside the car.
Through the tramlines, he glimpsed the neighbour on all fours. Teeth like daggers. Fingers bloodied. His mouth crammed with wheat roots. He beeped the horn in his jeep, and his old friend stared back with pupils that swallowed the light.
He pulled over with locked doors. His voice crackled and broke as he called the ambulance for his neighbour, and his wife for him.
The harvester crunched a hum in the autumnal golden hour. In the distance dust rippled off the horizon. Other farmers with the same idea. Dry brittle stalks snapped to a rhythm which set him right. Blades sliced the base of the stems and dragged them into the churning machine. Rows disappeared in fleeting moments. The sun hid behind the hills.
A sharp metallic crack. The combine lurched forward. He begged the machine to move and tugged at the reverse gear again and again. No movement. With a torch in his shaking hands he stepped out into the night.
If he had let his fear hold him still for longer, he would have heard his wife’s phone call.
Kneeling by the harvester’s reel, the torchlight reflected off the thick white roots tangled in its frame. Ooze dripped. With the torch end he prodded the seaweed like fibres. Shifting like adder snakes in unison they retreated from his combine. A milky residue left. It looked soft and crystallised in the torchlight.
It was like a wind pushed him forward and onto his knees. He ran his hands over the soil that he had reaped many times before, and began to dig. The arthritis in his left wrist vanished in his frenzy. Worms and ants scurried over his knuckles, as he picked up the root of the crop and took a bite. And another.
Syrup-like, it trickled down his throat and made its way to his gut. Roots tangled like hair in his mouth and his jaw locked. Just one more bite. Baring his teeth, his jaw cracked and broke. Ears popped and blood poured. Lowering his head to the soil he indulged.
Muffled screams, heavy footsteps and a claw-like hand pulled him back. His wife sobbed as she dragged him to her car. His jaw swung loosely as the roots entered up his nose and out his eyes. She threw him into her car.
He watched slumped in the front seat, his face pressed to the window as she threw the petrol bomb over their land. An orange blaze squinted his eyes. The farmer convulsed, heaved and his body and neck contorted like a twisted vine. His wife didn’t hear his neck crack but saw her husband’s eyes stop still.
Every crop was burned, destroyed or contained. The virus killed, tortured and stained further than the crop fields it stemmed from. His wife always kept her petrol can close.