was our secret. I; I never told, only-” Jamie stops and empties his chuck at his feet; after a minute he sits back up, spitting, wiping at his mouth. “He stopped visiting me, started visiting my little brother. I couldn’t let him- not to him.” Jamie holds the shotgun out; “It has to be this way. Like Jesus, dying for the weak, and defenseless.”
“You’ve the look on you of a boy I met passing through Virginia. I found he killed his pa and his ma, two sisters, little brother. Killed his neighbors. Killed until he got bored and killed himself. Like a bear tasted the flesh of men, or a foaming dog- he gets that flavor, it don’t go away til he’s in the dirt.”
Jamie whimpered, wiping at tears coming down his cheeks. “You man up, now. Life ain’t easy, or just. You’re fit for killing, do everyone the favor of dying alone; if you care at all, care enough to leave 'em behind.”
Jamie blinks hard, armed with his reasons and words, needing none of them. He balances the butt of the gun on the hay, and set his chin on the barrels. He reaches for the trigger, but the distance and the angle are awkward, and he couldn’t get his finger round it. “I can’t,” he swallowed; “help me, please.”
Lee takes his hand, and stretches his finger over Jamie’s, and they pull the trigger together. Jamie’s blood runs down the barrel as his fingers slip away, leaving Lee holding the shotgun.
Lee climbs down, each step of that ladder longer than the last. He could feel James Harper’s warm breath on his neck before he heard him. “You didn’t stop him. You didn’t even try to save my boy.”
Lee doesn’t make a move to tell it's coming, but the fist comes hard and fast, so much so Simple John doesn’t understand at first why Harper’s on the ground, or why his mouth had gone soft and red. Harper touches his lips, and his fingers come back wet and sticky with his own ochre. “I may be the one killed your boy, James, but we all got blood on our hands tonight.”
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Green Thumb
Dagney Morgan nursed her third coffee of the morning, though her first still hadn't kicked in. She didn’t like being up this early, let alone at work, but her upstairs neighbor’s cat had been hunting a rat in the wall all night. She figured if she was going to be miserable, she had more practice at that in the office.
That didn't mean she disliked her job. She actually had a knack for doing paperwork, and her inner anal retentive got a thrill from filing reports away in the office cabinet. And she loved her boss, even though sometimes his voice set her on edge, particularly on mornings like this one. “Dagney?” he asked from behind her, and her shoulder tightened.
Her parents named her for Dagny Lind, a Swedish actress her father said looked exactly like her mother in Ingmar Bergman’s Crisis. She hated it, because people always assumed she was named after Dabney Coleman- or worse, started to imagine a physical resemblance.
“Dag?” Her boss, Martin Sharpe, asked again. He was older, and had a dour nature, as though he'd just stepped out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. He reminded her of Vincent Price- though maybe that was just the pencil mustache.
“Sir,” she said, her mind still on the reports she’d been trying to read.
“I keep getting pissy messages from McLoughlin’s superintendent. Have you and Nelson checked into that?”
“Uh,” she stalled, but even with the necessary caffeinated fuel, her brain engine was having trouble turning over, “refresh my memory.”
“Merek’s farm. Sits on land adjacent to the aquifer that services the district where the middle school is. If he’s abiding by the regulations, nothing should be getting past the aquitard.”
“I think he prefers to be called Aquaman, or maybe King of Atlantis- I mean, either would be more politically correct than 'aquitard'- even if we suspect he’s falling down on the job.” He had a dry, almost British sense of humor, but he didn’t even give her a smile; maybe his coffee hadn’t kicked in, either.
“Nelson swung by there last Thursday, but Merek wasn’t in,” she said, and pretended to look at the calendar on her desk, to confirm what she’d just made up. Nelson had been face down in her sofa cushions last Thursday- sleeping off a night of binge drinking that made him reek of goat cheese- which at least meant she knew she wasn’t likely to be called out on the lie.
“I need the both of you to head out there today. We can’t have that idiot spilling captan into the drinking water again- or heaven forbid something worse.”
Dagney stood up and wrapped her coat around her shoulders, while she watched him walk back to his office. She grabbed her keys and the bagel she still hadn’t started eating, then lingered a moment to look at Nelson’s empty desk, and sighed.
She called him from her car, but didn’t have the energy to feign surprise when she got no response. She put in a call to Merek, too; her father always told her showing up unannounced out past the suburbs was just asking to get shot at. It was almost another hour before her partner finally called back, and by then she was nearly to Merek’s. “What the fuck, man?” she asked.
“I fell asleep on the couch- passed out. Muriel wouldn’t let me into bed.”
“Can’t say I blame her- I can smell the booze-sweat through the phone. You never made it out to Merek’s, did you?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I’ve been on this dirt-ass road to his farm for forty-five minutes now- and Sharpe thinks you’re in the seat next to me.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did it was a little wounded puppy whimper: “… sorry.”
Her grip tightened around the steering wheel, since he wasn’t in throttling distance. “Is there anything I should know here?” she asked, straining not to raise her voice.
“Merek’s been dodging inspections, but he’s not a bad guy. Going back ten years, nothing worse than a couple fines for improper chem disposal.”
“And the captan incident last year.”
“Shit, yeah, that, too.”
“How did you forget it? They traced fungicide from the toilets in the VA hospital to his farm.”
“So? The EPA downgraded captan to ‘not likely’ a carcinogen. The sweetener in my coffee’s worse. Our veterans might be a little worse for wear, but I don’t think any of them drink from the toilets. Though I guess maybe one of their dogs… okay now I feel sad.”
“Even so, the most recent complaint comes from some kids at the middle school who were hospitalized.”
“God.”
“Yeah. And while he might have cleaned up his captan storage, his permits say he’s also got a metric shit-tonne of fertilizers,” she paused. “Heh.” Then she ramped back up, “But if any kids come down with organophosphate poisoning, no amount of me covering your ass will help.”
“Dag- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. And you should dwell on that while I’m cleaning up your mess.” She was being cruel, but it wasn’t anywhere near the first time he’d left her in the lurch; in fact, she had a hard time remembering the last time he hadn’t. His continuous fuck-ups were easily the most consistent thing in her life.
Rob Merek’s land was one of the few family owned farms left in the county. It wasn’t well kept; Merek’s father was a decent businessman but a lousy farmer, and managed to pass only the latter skill set to his son. The younger Merek had learned how to avoid scrutiny, and he made sure his pesticide license was up to date, since that was an obvious way to call attention to himself, but Dagney saw a half-dozen potential violations just driving by his grain warehouse.
She pulled up to his modest house, at least half of which looked like it was patched with old fence boards. There was no ringer, so she knocked with the flat of her palm. No response. She knocked again, louder this time. “Department of Agriculture. You’ve got an 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