The Harvest

‘FINAL NOTICE’. The large red letters stamped on the outside of the envelope made it easy for Eddie McBride to deduce what it contained. The bank was going to foreclose on his farm. He had been struggling to keep the farm afloat ever since his wife developed cancer. As the disease had taken a larger and larger toll on the love of his life’s body, so too had it taken its toll on the life of his farm. He was dedicating more and more of his time to caring for her and more and more of their savings was going to pay for the medical bills. By the time she lost her battle, he was all but destitute and it had forced him to let his farm hands go long before. To make matters worse, the growing season for the past few years had been awful. What little time he had dedicated to tending to the corn had not been enough to counter the effects of drought and blight. He missed payments. From there it was a relentless downhill path to this moment. Looking at this envelope.

He shoved the envelope in his back pocket and walked away from the mailbox towards his house, head hanging in hopelessness. If his head had not been down, he would not have seen it. There in the ditch was a bag. A canvas messenger bag. He climbed down and grabbed it out of the weeds. He looked inside. It was full of $100 bills. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His head jerked up and whipped back and forth to see if anyone had seen. Then he laughed, realizing how irrational that was. There was no one else for a half mile, the distance to his closest neighbor. He would have heard any cars approaching down the gravel road. He climbed out of the ditch and hurried to the house.

Inside, he sat down at the desk where he kept his computer and started pulling the bills out of the bag, counting them into stacks. When finished, he was looking at four stacks. Each stack contained fifty $100 bills. He was looking at $20,000. It stunned him, this amount of money was enough to give him at least one more season to save his farm. Of course, the right thing to do would be to turn it in to the police.

His thoughts whirled. He knew what he should do. But it also seemed like he should save his farm. It had been his and Emily’s home for twenty years. How could he let that go? He sat staring at the piles of bills tortured by the choice between what he knew was right and what felt right. He sighed and reached for the bag to put the cash back away. Staring at it was not helping him to think.

When he picked up the bag, he realized there was something else in it. It was a little black notebook. His stomach sank. It would have the owner’s name and address in it, and he’d feel compelled to take the bag back to them. He opened it. The first page had a name and address. Below that in red letters it said “harvested $30,000”. He sat and puzzled over that for a moment. What could that mean?

Eddie leaned forward and wiggled the mouse of his computer to wake it up. Eddie typed a web search for the name and address. For several minutes he sat at the computer in shock. He looked at the name and address in the book again. There was no mistake. The name in the book was the same as the one in the news article with the headline ‘Body Found Missing Lungs’. He leafed through the book. There were quite a few pages with names and addresses. Only the first four had the word harvested and an accompanying dollar amount. He typed the next name and address into the search bar. The first result read ‘Murdered man missing liver.’ He typed in the next two names and addresses in quick succession. The results were similar. An article featuring a murder victim by that name that lived at that address. A murder victim missing one or more internal organs.

The last page that said ‘harvested’ had the notation $20,000. That would seem to explain the cash in the bag. It was hard to avoid what now seemed obvious. Someone had been killing people and making money by doing something unspeakable with their organs. Eddie forgot his moral dilemma. What he had discovered made him sick.

If the names that said harvested and had a dollar amount were previous victims, the names on the next pages were victims the killer had not yet gotten to. Maybe he could save someone.

He turned to the next page. It did not say harvested, nor did it have a cash amount. Heart-shattering fear overwhelmed the sickness in his stomach. It had his name and address. He was the next person scheduled for ‘harvest’.

It seemed like he could not be any more frightened. Then there was a creak of the loose floorboard behind him. A low, rough voice spoke in the darkness.

“You have my book.”