Harvest of Contraventions

From where Imogen sat, she had a clear view through the glassless window out over the darkening plains. When she left for school the sun had been in the middle of a cloudless sky, simmering the drying plains with a vindictive eye. As she neared the schoolhouse a cold wind began to blow. Harvest season inched near. She could smell the wheat, the bean fields, the stink of cow pastures, and the stalks that bounded on for miles and rolled like waves. Out the window she could see the hamlet of Mortonbrooke. The stores, the silos, the church, the gated cemetery and the administration building. Along the road to the west, she see could see the Kreifel family property. Thier barn higher than any building she had seen, a white castle, belonging to the wealthiest family in the county. 1,500 acres of land. A pasture for their cattle, a stable for their horses, a pen for their pigs, and a coope for their chickens . Not to mention Mr. Kriefel had recently bought a tractor and an automobile. To the east lived a family of German immigrants. Strange folk. They had a farm of 300 acres. They didn’t go to school as often as Imogen.. She saw them work in the fields when she walked to town with her father. She believed they must be catholic, because there would be dozens from too young to walk to full grown, each working in the field.

Cold wind distracted her as it blew the papers from the desk of Father O’Llyle. a curtain of gray cast across the sky, and in the distance beyond the village and farmlands, black and purple clouds gathered. She could hear the rust of the weathervane on top of the building twist as the wind whined like a constable's whistle. The entire northern horizon bruised and herded towards them. The few kids that went to school noticed the sudden transition in climate too. Thier faces grew white when bolts of lightning whipped around the clouds. Moments later, muffled thunder rumbled. The wind shook the crops. They flowed like a river of green and brown. The sunlight that had beamed through the window faded away. Birds lifted from trees and from tall grass, abandoning their search for bugs to eat to escape for shelter.

O’Llyle, an old man, limped whenever a storm approached. He set the chalk down on the board, and took hold of his knee and rubbed it. His white hair blew over the top of his balding head, and taking one look at the storm bolstering its force, dismissed the class. Imogen couldn’t see her farm, but her muscles tensed when she thought of it. She had broad shoulders from working in the field with her father, and the labor had sunburned her skin until it freckled up her arms, shoulders, neck, and down her face. Her home, the Altgarten farm, was two miles to the south.

Of the 300 hundred acres her family farmed, only half produced any crop. Holland Altgarten worked hard with his daughter to get the crops to grow. Year after year, there had been droughts, locusts, pests, floods. They had no barn, and lived in a house of sod. Holland persisted. He had no sons. Each boy born died of fever before a year.

The first born child they named Hubbard. He lived to be eight months before he caught the flu. They sent for the doctor east in Omaha, but the disease claimed the baby before the doctor could make his way down.

Second born they named Willis. He had bright eyes, and his mother's red hair. He cried day and night without pause. Disease stuffed his nose with mucus, and his hindered his limbs with aches. He died in two months.

Imogen came third. As a baby, she caught the same disease. Holland and Cassidy feared that their newborn daughter would join her brothers, but she recovered. A year went by. Then two. Imogen had her father's build, and his resilience. Three years went on. She would get sick, then recover the next day.

They had a third boy when Imogen turned eight. The boy got caught in Cassidy’s birth canal and suffocated. He joined the others in the backyard. Imogen turned ten. By then, she had taken responsibilities that had been reserved for her brothers. The plow along side her father, as well as laundry and cooking with her mother. She developed the habit of taking things, and losing them. She would leave tools out in the field and come back for them to discover they had vanished from the dirt. Money blew from her hands. Trinkets fell from her pockets. She began to place valued things with objects she couldn’t lose.

Soon after, they had another boy, who they didn’t bother naming, and buried him behind the house with the others. Cassidy grew sick with herself. Grief struck dark circles around her eyes. She quit embroidering, quit singing, seldom said grace before eating. Only when Holland asked them to do it, and even he gave it up after a long winter. The crops stopped growing the following season. Sometimes they would sprout healthy, but turn black and die. Other times locusts or other pests would devour them. They didn’t have much to eat, and for this, Holland blamed himself. Imogen never told a soul, but some mornings she woke up before sunrise and heard her father weep, damning himself over and over. His own melancholy after the death of so many children, failure after failure, affected his health. He began to smoke, and drink. Both parents however took pride in their daughter. Imogen showed promise, and learned fast about how jobs around their humble farm needed to be done.

When she turned twelve, they had another boy. This one grew ill, and they all wept for him. Holland dug a grave. Cassidy never let him leave her embrace. Yet he beat the illness.He lived for one year. Than two. Than three. Imogen turned fifteen, and the little boy had began to walk, climb over everything, put everything into his mouth, turn over every rock and shake it to see if it did anything, and try his hardest to speak to them. He talked more than anyone Imogen had ever met, even as a newborn. He had a name for everything. Imogen worked with him with delight. She read to him from a book of medieval legends. His face lit up at the stories of knights on horseback fighting fierce dragons. She started to teach him his letters, and he learned fast. By the planting season of that year, he knew his colors, and could read simple words. Jack. Dog. Horse. Even better, the rain came. For years it had been scarce. When it did rain, it fell briefly. A few times, it stormed enough to drown their crop.

This year however turned out to be a good year. The rain nourished the land, and their crops began to grow. The whole clan said their prayers, and didn’t curse under their breath. When hard winds blew they held their breaths. When the land frosted over, they only worked harder. The crops still lived. In addition, Cassidy finally decided on a name for their youngest boy. Thadeus, after her grandfather who first left Ireland to come to a new country. Holland taught him the names of plants and animals, and promised to get him a horse one day. Not even owning a mule, Holland carved a horse from a log and gave it to his son. That's what Imogen always thought of when she thought of her baby brother.

As Imogen left the school building, father O’Llyle took her by the shoulder. Cold air blending with warm air cycloned around them both blowing reeds and blades of grass into the air. The black clouds swelled and forced forward like a siege tower.

“Walking home, Imogen?”

“Yes, father.”

“Do you have the book I lent to you?”

“Sorry father, I lost it… I set it down before I went to bed, and when I woke up I took it with me to read… and I must of left it outside. I’m honest sorry.”

“I understand, Imogen, but lets not worry about it. Be sure to find cover. I hear your family doesn’t have a cellar.”

“We will go to our neighbors house. They have a cellar we can use.”

“Good. This storm…” He drifted over her, gazing towards the storm as if it were fiery ash, his eyes rolling around his head as he reconstructed his words. “A storm this late in the year is driven by something supernatural. Even God’s protection has limits. How is little Thadeus?”

“He’s fine. Very alive, that boy.”

“Glad to hear. How old is he?”

“He turns four this January.”

“Good. It’s strange having a storm like this so late in the year. My father tried to farm. He wasn’t very good at it. I had a little brother too, Patrick. He was about Thad’s age. One day I was supposed to watch him, but I didn’t. He got away, crawled into the corn field and we never found him. Got the whole community together and searched, and searched. Nothing.”

“I’m… sorry to hear that.’

“I’ve leaving. For good. Listen to me. Be sure to get away from this storm… It’s not natural.” He took both shoulders and squeezed, silently standing above her with a stone white expression and trembling eyes.

Imogen lifted his hands from her shoulders, and turned away to leave with no words but a swelling disgust in her stomach. Down the path through the grass she walked, wiping the white powder from the old man’s hands from her shoulders, but finding that he had also stained her dress with black oil in the shape of his hands. Turning back to where the pastor stood she found only the vacant porch of the small prairie school and a black coat blowing from the iron railing.

The sky south of the gathering storm gleamed with golden rays. The light strangled from the sky dripped down like holy water onto a grave. Warmth flushed between flashes of cold air. Imogen’s legs chilled. The flaps of her gown blew in the wind. Dust from the road swallowed her, getting into her hair and eyes. She rubbed the dust out and looked back at the storm with a scowl. Lighting stabbed across the sky like javelins and moments later quiet thunder growled. It felt closer. She could feel the thunder shake the ground. Bits of moisture fell from the sky and kissed her freckled face. The eclipsing skyline flashed with a bolt striking a tree three miles down plain. Smoke arose like a flock of crows. Imogen looked away and decided not to follow the road, but to instead take a shortcut across the grassy plain. The grass rose to her waist, but she wore thick shoes, and her flesh had toughened. Muscles defined her short legs. She could push her way through the fullest bush. She stepped over the fence and crossed into the field. She kicked her way through tangles, and leaped over dry ravines. She wondered why she had never taken this way before. She estimated getting home in half the time. After all, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

The grass grew higher as she hiked. Thicker, and rougher. The long blades wrapped around her ankles, bit into her stockings and tore them. Beads of blood blossomed. She rubbed them away with the back of her hand, and then stuck the flesh into her mouth and sucked the blood from her skin. The grass rose to her waist. Grasshoppers danced on the high weeds. One here and there, Imogen paid them no notice but for their size. They flew from weed to weed, the length of her index finger with throbbing eyes big enough for her to see the green film over them twitch and fold. Thier teeth grinded and chewed away at smaller grasshoppers. Winged locusts flew past her head like bullets. On their back, three or four smaller grasshoppers. Imogen kept on her way, looking back to see the road and the schoolhouse shrink away. The storm clouds kept coming. More cold wind, then a break of warm air that sank and chilled before another gust of wet air blew across the plains. Her feet sank into what she hoped was mud. She had to pull her leg from one puddle buried in the high grass. With one heavy step her leg dipped in. Ice cold numbed her leg. She screamed, unable to retract her foot. The cold substance had hold of her and began to tighten like a vice. It swallowed her ankle. She reached into the mud, took hold of her shoe, and pulled it out. It couldn’t be mud. Yellow and red chunks of sediment coated her leg and arms. She felt it pull her hairs, hardening into a shell.

She tore grass from the dirt, using handfuls of it to wipe away the heavy substance, but red and yellow stains marked her skin. Thunder rose in the distance. The sky darkened. The eclipsing light from condensing clouds dripped like evaporating water droplets. Her hair blew over her face, so she rolled it back, and crudely tied it in a crude knot. Sweat trickled down her hairline, down her neck, where it cooled under her clothes. Her body began to shiver. She crossed her arms, and caressed the pimpled flesh, but it did did little to provide her with warmth. Her teeth began to chatter. Dust and pieces of grass flew into her eyes. The wind whistled, and another clasp of thunder caught her by surprise. She trotted like a horse. As far she she could. As fast she she could. The land began to elevate. She felt warmer tearing through the high weeds, but her lungs began to constrict. Wheezing, she stopped at the peak of the hill, leaning on her knees, her gown catching the wind. She looked behind her. The road, the schoolhouse, Mortonbrooke all gone. Only an ocean of flowing yellow and red grass under the collapsing daylight. She looked in front of her. More weeds. Brown, and dry, yet interrupted by one building erected on top of an adjacent hill. At first she thought of horses and hay. Anything too far became blurry to her, so she squinted and made her way towards it. The warm air sank beneath the earth. Only cold air swirled around the plains. Cracks broke in the sky, and lightning whipped from the opening across the west. Imogen jumped, but still moved through the grass. Only as the wind blew harder and harder, a path separated before her, creating a trail to the structure that she could see was no barn. Instead, a small concrete building in the middle of a nest of long weeds and overgrowth.

Dilapidating, the shingles had blown from the roof. Only nails and jutting boards sealed the top. Vines of ivy covered the walls, crumbling the layers of concrete, revealing patches of brick beneath. She heard her name in the wind growing louder as she came nearer. The door bent inwards, and swung open and shut in the wind, prying from its hinges. The wind came from all directions, but it forced at her back like a pair of hands. She came closer, following the locusts, until she could see through the darkened doorway. Cracks ran along the discolored patches of the interior walls. Dust and concrete paved the floor. Broken chunks of cement laying in mounds of white dust gathered around rectangle slabs of various size on the floor. As she passed through the doorway the wind pressed at her back. The cold air rode up her gown and tingled her spine. Hollow moans escaped through the doorway. Her shadow broke the beam of dim light. Shadows filled each corner. Imogen crossed her arms. Her heart still raced from exertion. She brushed a grasshopper from her hairy forearm. It didn’t fly but instead landed on a slab of white cement. She bent down to inspect the slab, seeing marking across in the middle. A name, and a date. 1830-1905. An inscription read: Beloved father, and husband.

Imogen rose to her feet, the same disgust as when O’Llyle had his writhing hands on her. She felt ashamed of that she hadn't recognized sooner, but at the same time intrigue intinced her attention. She never knew a crypt had been here. No one ever mentioned it. The family name, Verxseric, was one she had never heard of. She counted the tombs. Six adult sized ones, and four child sized ones. The last one caught her attention. The grasshoppers crowded against each other around it. Portions of the lid lay before an open tomb, and the insects crawled over eacher to get inside. The wind called her name. It blew from the open space. She could see nothing but darkness, so she reached in. She felt cold, rough cement scrape against her palm. Then her fingers found something wet, and thick. She reached in further until the insects began to bite her hand. She pulled her arm out, and saw that white powder cast over her palm, and black oil, still warm against her cold flesh, tipped her fingers. The wind blew harder and screeched through the chamber. She didn’t hear footsteps behind her. She bent back over the tomb, curious to know how the lid had broken open as two heavy, long fingered hands fell over her shoulders, and no matter how hard she pushed back, the mouth of the tomb opened wider. .

Back home, Holland Altgarten waited for his daughter. He tugged on the rope, propelling the bucket from the well, and taking it to Cassidy. She sat with Thadeus on a stump watching him play with the small horse carved by Holland. His broad and blue eyes had no interests in the gathering clouds, only his toy which he stuck in his mouth. Cassidy took it from his gums and but didn’t scold him. She pretended with him until a strike of thunder crashed to remind them. The flash of lightning lit up the day. Holland brought the bucket to them, and with a ladle, offered Thadeus water, then Cassidy, then drank some himself.

“There’s a tornada on way. Where’s that girl?” He asked as if Cassidy would know the answer. “We need to get to shelter now ways.”

“We’ve never had a tornado, haven’t we little Thadeus?”

“At least the drought’s at its end. God be praised.” Holland took another drink of water.

Down the road, a family lived. The Salomonsson clan had a house no bigger, but it was made of wood. They had a barn, and most importantly a cellar. “I’m loading our tools into the wagon.”

“Holland, we can take no wagon. We must move as fast as we’re able.”

“Imogen’s taken shelter at the school. We need these tools. If something happens to the house, or to the crops, at least we’ll have them.” He galloped to the wagon sitting behind their home. Stacks of firewood wavered. Hay blew from the roof. The tree which headed their garden of graves twisted and swayed. The leaves turned brown. Some already dropped from the branches. The limbs bent and cracked. Holland couldn’t hear anything over the racing wind. He saw the tree, but took no notice of the branches swooping downward. A bolt of lightning slashed through the sky. Blue fire lit up the world for a moment, and in the next the tree broke and toppled. Holland had his hands on the cart, and tried to jump backwards but his body failed him. His feet caught the dirt, and he fell back. The tree came down onto the house, smashing through the layers of sod and buttress, smashing the wagon, and missing his body but pinning his legs into the dirt.

Cassidy rushed over, leaving Thadeus by himself on the stump. The wind concealed his parent's angstful cries. He began to follow his mom, but something shiny caught his attention. He turned his head to the rows of corn. They swayed, and bent, flowing like tides, but in the heart of one row he saw a glimmer. Something silver, like a suit of armor. He waddled to it, the wooden horse in his hand. He smiled at what he saw. A pony with silver eyes, sticking its head out from the corn. Thadeus giggled, fell over trying to rush to it, but climbed up and made his way towards the creature. The pony had a red and yellow coat and a mane like a lion's. Thadeus felt its breath on his cheek. He reached up and touched its nose, the moisture kissing his flesh. It let out a snort. Mucus spittle the boy’s face. He wiped it off, and looked to resume his interests, but the horse had turned its tail and moved back into the rows. Taking the wooden horse with him, Thadeus followed it into the corn.

Cassidy couldn't see where Holland’s leg ended and where the pieces of wagon began. Splinters, carnage, and soil foamed together into a mass she couldn’t medicate. She took him by the shoulders and pulled. He screamed like a cow so she dropped him. Running around into the house, she found that the wall holding all the tools had collapsed over them. She ran back out to comfort Holland, but noticed the stump, the waving crops, and no Thadeus. Mortified, she froze, looking every which way, finding no one. Thunder struck like an anvil, and lightning sparked over head. The clouds seemed to boil, dropping lower and lower. In between the flashes of lightning, Cassidy thought she saw an army of furious faces forming in the clouds. She began to weep, and shake. The small pieces of moisture became fat droplets splashing against her, running down her face, and streaming down the crumbling walls of their house. She rushed to Holland, took him by head, and yelled over the wind into his ear as the thunder roared through the concocting clouds.

“Thadeus is gone. I must find him and I’ll come back.”

“No! Please!” Holland didn’t understand. He shook his head begging her, but Cassidy didn’t take time to explain. She had already made off.

Cassidy ran across the yard to the stump where she had last seen him. The rain fell like iron rods. Water ran down her body as if she had just pulled herself from a pool. Lightning flashed a hateful scorn down at her. She wiped the streaming rainfall from his eyes as a glacial cold encompassed her body. She didn’t bother calling. No one could hear her over the wind. Cassidy made her way to the rows of crop. She didn’t want it to be, but in horror she picked up one of his socks from the mouth of the corn. She didn’t think, but rushed into the rows, crying the boys name. She hoped Imogen had shelter, a safe place. Her feet sank into mud. The crops blow over and smacked her in the face. She could taste the blood dripping from her lips. One stalk flew around and struck her in the back of the neck. The blow fell like a club, and knocked her to her knees. Cassidy took handfuls of mud and squeezed them, grinding her teeth, blood and tears mixing together. She tough she saw figures beyond the row she knelt in. She cried for their help, but they turned to mist and blew away. She cursed, climbing back up and pushing her way onward, slower, covering her face from flying stalks.

In a puddle of darkness her foot sank and something bit her heel. She kicked her foot away thinking she had stepped on an animal, but she cried in delight. The wooden horse standing upright in the mud. She took it, looked around, calling her son's name. Everything looked the same. Every row a haze of green and brown chaos. Though something stood in the corn. She stopped when she saw it. Her jaw dropped, but she didn’t believe it. The leaves had cut her eyes. The rain had blinded her. Anything. But the figure limped closer to her, it's peeling flesh and broken bones contorting and bending, projecting it through the corn towards her. Cassidy turned and fled in the opposite direction. She cut through stalks of corn, disconcerning herself with direction or personal safety. With no idea of which direction she headed towards, she looked up to the sky to find a fury of hateful clouds beating against one another, clashing and falling as lightning and thunder tore them apart. Black horses galloped across the sky impaling full plates of black armour with bolts of lightning. Thunder hammered onto the plains, beating on them without hesitation, without mercy, casting fist sized rocks of hale down at the world below. She ran, covering her head, screaming in agony, blind to the flood ditch she approached. Rushing water roared down it, and her foot slide inside, and took her body down with it. She heard the crack of her ankle, but the frosty rainwater numbed hr body.

Cassidy began to cry, sinking into the ravine. The mist reformed into white figures before her. She struck at them, and they vanished for a time, only to reappear a little farther away. She fell over the side of the ditch. Frost form in her hair, and along the mud she crawled through. The cold conquered her. She shivered, unable to feet her feet, hands, eras, dropping face first into the mud, but pulling herself out and pressing further. She thought she saw Thadeus just sitting and waiting up a small mound. Closer she same, until at last she saw the figure taking shape of her boy was only a skull rising from the mud. She pressed it back in, cursing at it, until it went back under. A nail fell from the sky and struck her in the forehead. Blood blinded her, but she crawled on until at the top of the mound where she finally gave up.

Laying still, she watched as the blackest clouds funneled into an onyx tower away from her, and steadily ate through the crops. At the mound, she was at the highest peak of an otherwise flat land. She could see everything. Her own farm, their neighbors, the Kreifels, Mortonbrooke, the schoolhouse. The onyx tower could fit an entire town inside. The horizon became a gold ring pressed by the black clouds. A mist of debris floated over the world. Pieces of ice striking her back, and her cranium. She covered her head, and watched as the tornado devoured the crops field by field, then enveloped the schoolhouse, waved around to the kreifel farm, devouring their barn and house before turning back and enclosing Mortonbrooke. The last thing she saw was Mr. Kriefel's car spinning through the air. First the size of an insect, than it grew larger before her eyes. In the final moments before it smashed her into the dirt, she apologized to Holland for smothering the babies...

Imogen woke up feeling refreshed. Water dripped from the rafters above her head, light beamed through the holes in the ceiling, and a garden of icy and dandelions grew along the floor and walls. She herself felt warm, and dry. She rose from her bed and rubbed her eyes, unable to remember where she had been. A purple blanket draped across her shoulders comforted her like summer. Soft, and thick, She burried her face into it, breathing in, and exhaling with satisfaction. Rising to her feet, she walked to the door and leaned out. The afternoon sun burned in the autumn sky, and the waning crescent moon shined along with it. The smell of harvest and rain filled the air. Best yet, a silence pressed onto the land like she had never experienced. She walked out, and felt sincere enjoyment at the world she awoke to. All the fields had been torn asunder. Nothing stood, only heaps of mulch.

She came to the schoolhouse. Only one wall stood before the stone foundation. She smiled, and giggled. Father O'Llyle, his clothing torn to pieces and his white hair hanging loose, pinned to the wall by an iron rod through the heart. His head slacked to the side, one eye popped out and hung from a tendon. Down further she saw the wreckage that once was Mortonbrooke, now just a road to nowhere and piles of rubble. She looked over the plain. No tall stalks, no high grass. She could see for miles. Than something broke the silence. A muffled cry came from beneath a wreckage of iron and wood. Imogen stood before it, listening to the insistant crying before acting, pulling the large pieces of wood away. It sounded like a billy goat, but the further she dug, the more voices joined in. One just one or two, but three, four. She worked faster, her large muscular hands lifting and heaving metal beams until the sound became clear. She remember that she had a baby brother, and within a purple blanket, there sat Thadeus, frightened, but unharmed. Something rustled in the blanket. Imogen held her breath and pulled away the blanket, revealing a steel cuirras around the chest of Thadeus, shared with four babies huddled together crying for their mother.