Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

That corded neck turns from green to brown as it roots in the heavy globe. Fresh growth scabs over with dark, rough bark. Vines and leaves rustle within the Boy’s coat as he takes his first deep breath. The Boy raises his head as the cool evening air fills him. He holds that breath for a long moment, and then it leaves him in a spiced exhalation.

A feeble tongue of flame follows it… and what most certainly is a word.

But the man with the knife will not acknowledge a word from the thing that stands before him. He has not come to listen to words. No. He has come to do a job that must be done, and that is what he will do. No more, no less. So he turns away with the knife still in his hands, and he walks to the road. The October Boy’s scrabbled footfalls follow the man’s even steps as he crosses the cornfield. But the man does not turn around, and it is only when he hears the rhythm of his own boot heels on hard pavement that his mind returns to the next task this night requires.

The man’s car is barely a year old. It’s black and sleek — not at all like the other cars you see around here. He sets the butcher knife on the hood and opens the door. There’s a grocery bag on the front seat, waiting there on expensive upholstery. The bag is heavy with candy. The man grabs a couple Big Hunks and stuffs them into one of the Boy’s coat pockets. He digs deep in the grocery bag and fills the other pocket with Clark bars. Next he unfastens the front button of the October Boy’s coat, and he shoves candy through those ropes of vines. Oh Henry!s; Hershey’s bars; Abba-Zaba’s.

Handfuls of Candy Corn nestle between leaves like secrets wedged into green envelopes. Red Vines and Bit-O-Honeys fill the gaps. The October Boy staggers a bit, for the man’s hand is as cold as the coming night, and the load is heavier than one might think.

And so he totters, but he will not fall. The Boy is not made that way. His severed-root feet scrape as he backpedals a few steps across the black road, and he leans against the car for support. The man closes on him and shoves one last fistful of candy against the gnarled vine of his backbone, and the Boy’s sawtoothed smile becomes a grimace. Perhaps another word waits within, in his mouth, ready to travel another tongue of flame. But before either thing can leave him, the man who has given him a face fills the Boy’s sliced grin with a handful of Atomic Fireballs, and then another, and another.

The light grows dimmer in the October Boy’s mouth.

The light grows brighter behind his eyes.

Soon the grocery bag is empty. The man balls it up and tosses it into the field. Now there is only one thing left to do. He retrieves the knife from the hood of the car. It only takes a second to do this, but in that second the man stares at the dead field and the indigo blanket of sky that has now grown very dark, and he sees the cold stars glimmering above him and the bright empty dome of the rising moon, and as he turns his gaze travels from the things that hang in the sky to the ribbon of asphalt that waits at his feet — the black road that carves a midnight path toward the cold white glow marking the town.

The man stares at the October Boy. He does not say a word. His actions speak for him. He extends the butcher knife. Thick tendril fingers vine around the hilt as the Boy takes it. And now the man’s hand is empty, and his white fingers stiffen as they stretch through the darkness, tracing the path of the road.

Every finger but one curls into a fist.

The man points toward the town.

The Boy with the knife starts toward it.

Pete hears them in the street. He turns out the bedroom light and parts the threadbare drapes so he can see what’s going on out there. Yeah. It’s just like everyone said. The town’s teenage male population is on the move. They’re running in packs, like dogs turned loose for the hunt.

The old oak in Pete’s front yard chokes off the moonlight, but he recognizes three guys from his gym class as they pass beneath the dull glow cast by the streetlight on the corner. They’re loping down the middle of the street, hooting at shadows as if calling down a dare. One of them has a baseball bat, another a ball-peen hammer, the last a two-by-four bristling with nails —

A car horn blares behind them as a rust-pocked heap runs a stop sign and makes the corner. The boys scatter, and the gap between two of them is just wide enough to accommodate a beat-up Chrysler hardtop with a pair of headlights that blaze like a Gorgon’s eyeballs. At least that’s the way those headlights seem to Pete, and he freezes behind his bedroom window as the twin beams hit the glass.

For a brief moment, the headlights frame him like a portrait nailed to a wall. The Chrysler completes its turn and roars up the street. Just that fast it’s gone, and Pete’s standing there all alone in the darkness. Outside, two of the guys from his gym class peel their skinny asses off the asphalt and dust themselves off while their buddy needles them from Pete’s front yard. “Crenshaw and his rattletrap,” the guy laughs. “Your sweet little asses nearly got chopped, girls. You almost greased that shitheap’s gearbox but good.”

The guy goes on like that for a while. He’s got a mouth on him, all right. His chatter seems pretty funny, considering, and Pete almost laughs until the other guys bark down the Mouth with a few choice insults of their own.

Those guys pick up the things they dropped when they scattered — that ball-peen hammer, and that two-by-four studded with nails. And then there’s nothing left to laugh about. Suddenly, it’s like that car was never there at all. The two kids take a few cuts at the shadows and move on, and their friend the Mouth silently cocks his baseball bat over his shoulder and follows them PDQ, as if the last thing he wants in the world is to be left alone.

Seeing the last kid do that, Pete feels a hole open up inside him. Not that he needed anyone to paint him a picture, but that little incident just did the job, because there’s no way he can ignore the score when it comes to this game. Pete’s alone right now, locked up in his room, and he’s going to be alone when he hits the streets. No friends, no car, no backup. And that’s not a feeling with a whole lot of good in it, even if you’re used to going solo. Fact is, Pete’s pretty sure that he’d be hiding under his bed right now if he had any sense at all.

But Pete knows he’d never turn chicken like that. Not as long as he has a reason to stand on his own two feet. He might not be able to put a name to that reason, but he knows he’s got it. It’s somewhere down deep inside him, in a quiet place his father could never understand… or maybe it’s somewhere just down the hall, behind another bedroom door marked with a little girl’s handprint in pink paint. And just as he’s thinking that, his bedroom door swings open. A hard slab of light fills the space, and a dull yellow carpet stitched by a single Westinghouse bulb stretches from the doorway to his bed.

His old man stands there in the hallway. Pete can’t see him clearly with the exposed bulb dangling behind his father’s head, but he can see enough. The old man’s hardly weaving at all, but Pete knows that he’s drunk. And when his father follows his shadow into the room, Pete notices that the old man’s got something in his hand.

Pete can’t see what it is yet. Neither can he see his father’s face. And then the old man turns on the bedroom light, and right off Pete sees everything real clearly. All the broken things that lie buried behind the old man’s eyes, and the honed thing gripped in his fist.

The old man hands the machete to his son.

“This saw me through the Run when I was your age. I figure it’ll do the same for you tonight.”