“Listen to me carefully,” he said. “By morning, this field will be finished. The chemical will move through enough of it that no company in its right mind will touch your seed. You’ll miss the bank deadline. Morley will foreclose. I’ll buy this place cheap, clean it up, and Mercer County will thank me.”
Rainless lightning flashed behind him.
For a moment, his face looked carved out of something older and meaner than flesh.
“You should’ve sold,” he said.
Then he took his boot off my shoulder, climbed into his truck, and left me in the poisoned rows.
I lay there until the engines faded.
The redroot around me rustled in the unsettled wind. Leaves curled at the edges. The field smelled sharp, bitter, chemical.
I crawled to the truck, pulled myself inside, and sat with my forehead against the steering wheel.
Everything hurt.
My ribs. My shoulder. My pride. My hope.
At dawn, the damage showed itself fully.
The east field was blackening. Stalks that had stood strong the evening before drooped like burned paper. Leaves twisted inward. The red color dulled to rust and brown. The chemical had drifted farther than I thought. Maybe through the low places, maybe through contact, maybe because Boyd had sprayed more than the east line.
I walked row after row until I could not stand straight.
Three months of work dying around me.
My grandfather’s secret dying.
My last chance dying.
At eight-thirty, Helena Voss’s rental SUV turned into the driveway.
I almost laughed at the cruelty of timing.
She stepped out with her steel case and stopped when she saw my face.
“What happened?”
“Boyd happened.”
She looked past me at the fields.
Her expression changed, but not the way I expected. Not horror. Not pity.
Focus.
“What did he spray?”
“I don’t know. Some herbicide mix. Defoliant. Something strong.”
She was already pulling gloves from her pocket.
“Show me.”
“There’s nothing to show. It’s dead.”
“Show me.”
I led her into the field because I was too tired to argue.
She clipped seed heads from a blackened plant. Then another. Then five more. She carried them back to her SUV, opened the case, and began testing with a speed that made me feel like I had vanished from the scene.
I sat on the tailgate of my truck, one arm wrapped around my ribs.
Ten minutes passed.
Then fifteen.
Helena went very still.
She checked the sample again.
Then she looked at me.
“Caleb.”
I hated the softness in her voice.
“What?”
“Come here.”
I limped over.
She turned the small screen toward me. Numbers blinked in columns I did not understand.
“What am I looking at?”
“The compound density.”
“Is it ruined?”
“No.”
I stared at her.
She swallowed.
“It’s concentrated.”
“That doesn’t sound bad.”
“It isn’t bad.” Her voice shook now. “It’s extraordinary.”
I thought pain had made me stupid.
“Helena.”
She set the device down carefully, like it was suddenly holy.
“Under normal conditions, the plant allocates the alkaloid gradually into the seed as it matures. But catastrophic stress appears to trigger a survival response. The plant is dying, so it is moving everything it can into reproduction. Into the seed.”
I looked out at the blackened field.
“You’re saying Boyd helped it?”
“I’m saying he may have increased the concentration beyond anything Marlowe has ever seen.”