Organic Farming

It lay on the ground, a dot of red exposing where it was shot. The subtle breeze would stroll through and move the feathers of the white chest, adding some animation to the lifeless bird- as if taunting it with the life it lost.

“It hasn’t been here too long,” grunted Hap, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “The real question is, who the fuck was on my property?”

For someone who bore the reputation of an astute organic farmer, Hap always seemed to mingle with unhealthy vices. His farm had become one of the top-producing organic farms in Montana.

The smoke danced up ranch hand Macy’s nose, causing her to back away out of discomfort.

It was then that something caught her eye. A glimmer of gold. She stepped back and forth and studied the way it appeared and reappeared.

“What the fuck are you doing? Have you lost your mind?” Hap looked at her up and down, his gaze shooting through his cloud of smoke like a laser.

Her mind became preoccupied by realization and she was too stunned to speak. She fumbled to get words out as she pointed at the watch, continuing to step back and forth to secure the reality of what was happening.

“Watch! Watch! It’s a watch!,” Macy blurted. “It’s…HER watch!”

Hap’s gaze shifted from Macy back over to the bird. His face transitioned from hard to an expressionless ghostly pale. The cigarette dropped from his mouth into the grass.

“Fuck…” he said. A blanket of silence fell over the two as they proceeded to stare at the watch. Hap appeared to snap back into reality as he shook his head and stepped on the butt of his cigarette.

“Oh my GOD,” Macy moaned, putting her hands over her eyes, disrupting the silence.

It was her mother’s watch. She died two months ago. Hap was a family friend and was housing Macy and her mother as the home they were renting was sold. With a crashed housing market, there was nowhere for them to go. As she got sick, Hap became even more helpful with the situation.

Hap’s hard demeanor came back into his face, bringing him back to life. “You know she loved the outdoors. Maybe…maybe it was dropped as she was enjoying the property.”

“No. No…she was wearing it the day she died. I remember.” Images of that day flooded her mind. Her mom’s arms and hands still looked too youthful to go. She remembered watching the clock on her wrist keep ticking as her heart stopped beating. “I remember,” she reconfirmed as if second-guessing her confidence in her memory.

Her mother had slowly become ill with kidney disease. Her health was improving at one point, and it gave Macy hope, but then it plummeted downhill. Her Blood Urea Levels were abnormally high. Every day her health receded more and more. Her breaths became more and more labored until one day, it stopped altogether.

“It’s just that, with everything going on…I don’t know. It seems fishy,” she said as she wiped an escaped tear from her eye. “Yeah…yeah,” Hap nodded as his gaze rested on the ground. “But, that’s not around here. Those missing person cases have been happening away from my farm. I’m sure of it,” he said hardily. “Maybe we should turn the watch into the cops?”

“No,” Macy said curtly, and she snatched up the watch and put it on her wrist. It fit perfectly. “It was probably hospice. They probably dropped it. Everything is fine.”

She spun on one heel, leaving an indent in the ground, and walked off.

Her ranch hand bedroom was humble and she liked it that way. One small colorful braided woven rug lay next to her bed on the old wood floor. The floor had so many gaps and cracks it drove her crazy trying to clean things up from it. The helplessness of it all reminded her of her own life. She had always felt like she had a lack of control. After the death of her mom those feelings intensified into the most gut-wrenching pain.

She decided to get back to her chores to distract her mind.

As she walked out into the kitchen, she noticed cherry pits lodged in the cracks of the floor. Damn Hap, why can’t you just try and get that shit out of there? The sight of the mess soured her mood even more.

Walking towards the door with a slight stomp of frustration in her step, she put on her long rubber brown boots and tan button-up chore coat. She was on her way to scoop the horse stalls.

She was then out the door, walking through the crisp air. As she came up on the slaughterhouse, something in her gut made her stop in her tracks. She never usually went in there. It was her least favorite spot on the property and Hap didn’t like her snooping around. “I’m a private man,” he curtly would say to her.

With the emotional roller coaster this day had brought her, she felt drawn to disobey and go into the barn.

With a quick look around, deciding the coast is clear, she started towards the building. Her hand on splintery paint-chipped wood, the door creaked and rattled as she struggled to open it over the dirt ground.

“I’m a private man,” she mimicked out loud in a comically deep voice with a sassy shake of the head.

His blood meal gathered from the slaughters were stacked on top of each other in various packaging. He claimed his homemade blood meal contributed to his major success with his crops.

She saw another barn owl.

Two today, huh?

It swooped down through the ventilation chimney and right into a little hole in the barn up by the loft.

I wonder what’s in there.

She climbed up to the loft and peaked in the crack.

"The fuck is that smell?" she said out loud.

As she pressed against the wood, it gave in and opened.

She tumbled in clumsily. Her stomach dropped as she realized she made a fair amount of noise.

Wait a second…what is that?

Her hand was touching something. It felt strangely familiar. She wiggled her fingers around it and could barely make out the object in the shadows.

One, two, three, four, five, she counted in her head.

“Shit!” she gasped out in horror and pedaled backwards on her hands.

She was touching a human hand. A cold, lifeless, human hand. Not only were the owls nesting in there, but bodies upon bodies were stacked inside the barn.

That was when she felt it. A hand over her mouth. Hap.

“It’s for the best,” he said. “It helps with the crops. Your mother, though…now, she was a real help. Her high nitrogen levels would make the perfect blood meal for the crops.”

Macy started to cry and let out stifled yelps. She frantically raised her eyebrows as if that could lift her head out of his grasp.

“I am not a bad man,” he said. “The world needs to be fucking fed, dammit! The Farming Association, heck, even the doctor, hospice, they all knew about it.”

He then became distracted by rustling happening in the barn.

“Fucking owl! Git!” he yelled.

He reached into his holster, pointed his gun and shot it dead. Its landing was softened by the bodies beneath it. As Macy heard the faintest hint of a thud, she knew the owl was dead.

All of a sudden she could feel the watch thumping on her wrist with every passing second. Her heart raced as Hap raised the barrel of his gun to her head. Everything went black.

Hap’s Organic Produce will be selling apples half-off through the first week of October.