inspection.”
She heard the heavy thudding of bare feet on hardwood floors, then the door swung wide. Merek wasn’t wearing anything, unless Dagney counted children's tube socks with blown out elastic or a pair of too-small boxer shorts clinging for life to one ankle- which, on a moment's reflection, she did not. More disturbing, he seemed to be covered in a sticky, green semi-transparent fluid from the middle of his chest to his knees.
“I’m with the Department of Agriculture, here for an inspection.”
“Got all my permits,” he said, and started scratching himself. Vigorously.
“That’s correct, but this is a surprise inspection.”
He eyed her suspiciously, then looked down at his own nudity. “I like to be naked,” he said, matter of factly.
“I need to see where you store your FIFRA applicable chemicals,” she said firmly.
He squinted hard at her, and his entire face scrunched up. He took a big, deep breath, and his eyes closed; Dagney began to wonder if she was going to have to resuscitate him. His eyes burst open with the speed of a frightened rabbit, and they had that kind of panic in them, too. His mouth hung open and his tongue moved spastically around, until he asked, too loud: “Why can’t you people let me be naked?”
“Sir, I’m not the police. But I do need to inspect your fertilizers and pesticides. You certainly have the option to put on pants- I’d consider it a personal kindness if you did- but the decency of your exposure is kind of beyond my purview.”
“You’re purty,” he said, and put his hands in a grabby motion and started pushing them towards her chest; she seized his wrist, and twisted it up and back, forcing him down to one knee.
“Now that I won't tolerate,” she said. She'd carried cuffs ever since that pot farmer nearly broke her wrist the year before, and she retrieved them from her belt. “For my safety, I’m going to cuff you.” She clipped the cuff around the wrist she had hostage. “You’re not under arrest, but given the state of things I think we’ll both be safer this way. Would you like to at least pull up your underpants before I put on the other cuff?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, chastened. He stood up into a squat, and with his free hand wriggled the boxer shorts around his tube-socked foot, then around his bowed legs.
She tried to focus away from the sausage stuffing that was him pulling on those boxer shorts- they must have belonged to the same child as his socks- and asked, “You still storing your pesticides in the little red barn on the south side of the property?”
“Yes,” he said, but realized too late maybe he shouldn’t have, and followed it with “ma’am,” as calmly as he could.
“Are you on anything right now?”
“No ma’am,” he said. But his eyes flicked quickly from the extreme left to the right, and his pupils were so wide they reminded her of a mosquito overfeeding until it burst.
“I’m not DEA- I don’t give a crap,” she said. “But unless you’re on something, then that miosis- the dilation of your pupils- might mean organophosphate exposure. And you’ve been salivating. Maybe you’re hungry, maybe you’re just a drooler- I don’t know you well enough to judge- but that also hints at organophosphates. When we’re done here, you should get yourself to a doctor, just to be sure. Now if you'd be so kind as to lead the way.”
He hobbled past her. “How much do you know about the history of organophosphates?” she asked, and he shrugged and gave a noncommittal grunt. “They come from World War 2 Germany. They were being researched as pesticides, but the Nazis diverted them into nerve agents instead. VX has a similar pedigree, actually.”
Dagney stopped as they got closer to the barn. “See, I already have a problem here. There’s 350 feet from this barn to the aquitard- see that marker there? And it’s supposed to be down slope, which clearly it is not. That's how captan flowed into it last time.” Merek fell in behind her as she berated him. “But what really irritates me, is that these are all things noted in the assessment after your spill last year. It really is like you’re looking for reasons for me to kick your ass- with paperwork, obviously, and not my dainty little girl feet.”
She stopped when they got to the barn. The door was already open a sliver, and Dagney reached for the handle to pull it open enough for them to enter. Suddenly Merek kicked at her, only managing to throw himself off balance; he fell hard into the mud, soiling his off white underpants. “Don’t touch her! You can’t touch her! She’s mine!”
Dagney noticed several leafy vines trailing out of the open door; they had kept it from closing all the way. They ended at the corner of the barn in a dome of leaves, propped up with chicken wire and sticks. She could make out several different varieties of plants by the leaves: pumpkin, cucumber, squash.
Dagney opened the barn door, and felt for a switch in the dark. The lights were on a dimmer, which had apparently last been set to mood lighting, and as she turned around she understood why, and gave up on wanting to see better.
Strewn about the floor were a woman’s clothes: red stiletto pumps, a red miniskirt and an even mini-er top.
There was a “woman” lying on a pink flannel blanket, mostly stained the same deep green as Merek's groin. A pair of red silk stockings were stuffed with vines, torn under vinyl, crotchless panties; a matching bra was filled with hefty green winter squashes. Between them a still-growing pumpkin torso made her almost look pregnant. Her arms were cucumbers tied together by their vines. Her head was a turban squash turned on its side. Its lumpy top almost resembled a face, and there was a heavy lathering of eye shadow and smeared lipstick painted over it. Green tendrils mixed with an auburn wig, giving it the appearance of dreadlocked hair.
The vegetable doll lay peacefully back with its legs splayed; there were dents from a pair of big knees in the flannel between them.
Dagney put the doll out of her mind, but focused on the green sludge it was soaked in. The oily gel was pooling in various places on the ground inside the shed. It seemed to be leaking from a variety of different canisters: poisons, pesticides and chemicals.
At that moment, Merek burst into the room. In stumbling to his feet, he’d managed to drag his boxers back around his right ankle. “I love her!” he bellowed, and the words seemed to jiggle with his bare belly and engorged member as he ran towards Dagney. She moved to the side and Merek smacked straight into a post and collapsed to the ground.
“Those pesticides are leaking into the groundwater. We think they’ve made some kids at McLoughlin Middle School sick,” she said. She was angry, as much about him possibly poisoning kids, as him charging at her like a pissed off green unicorn.
His tears formed a river with the blood flowing from his lip. “You don’t have to tell me about my land. I worked this land my whole life. I know my land. Biblically.”
Dagney sighed. “No person shall transport, store, dispose of, display, or distribute any pesticide or pesticide container in such a manner as to have unreasonable adverse effects on the environment. I’m pretty sure that was an attempted assault, too. Now you are going to be arrested- or fined, at least.” Dagney put a hand under his sweaty arm and pulled him up. He stumbled groggily, and she led him outside. “Sit,” she said, and set him flat against the side of the barn. With his hands cuffed behind him, unless the big man was a contortionist, he wasn’t getting up without help.
She called hazmat and the sheriff’s office, and was about to dial Nelson when she heard a cracking sound from inside the barn. She thought it might be one of the aging pesticide containers rupturing. “Crap,” she said, “exactly what I need.”
She hurried inside and scanned the chemical drums that lined the barn. While several were in disrepair, and a couple were even leaking from pinholes, none had broken open. Her eyes scanned the room for movement, and she listened for the sound of fluid running. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the vegetable doll shaking.
She winced, at the thought that Merek had shoved a vibrating sex toy into it, and couldn’t d
ecide if that was better or worse than just burrowing out a little hole. But there wasn't that telltale rumble coming from it. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she could make out a wide fracture split down the center of the pumpkin belly, like tangerine lightning. A hunk of the orange skin surrounding the crack swelled outward rhythmically, then receded, each pulse distending the fruit further. It broke open.
An infant tumbled out of the pumpkin womb. It was entirely human save for a green complexion and soft tufts of clover on its head instead of hair. It gurgled at her, spitting out seeds and stringy pumpkin flesh. It propped itself up on chubby arms to take in the world, and crawled out of the pumpkin shrapnel to get a better view. Then its hands slipped out from under it, and the baby fell onto the dirt. It regarded her curiously a moment, and began to wail.
Instinct grabbed hold of Dagney, and she rushed over to the infant, and took it up in her arms. The child stopped crying as soon as she started to bounce it against her shoulder. She could feel pumpkin juices soaking through her clothes- at least, she hoped it was just pumpkin juices. It didn't feel warm, anyway. She made a scrunched up face, and the child scrunched its face, too.
Dagney didn’t know much about babies, but she knew that that kind of mimicry usually took months to develop. The child was heavy,