The Fiends in the Furrows

by David Neal

  Peter knew for decency’s sake he simply needed to cover up the raw stump. That would quell his beating conscience at least—the wound in his wife: he felt it watching him.

  Peter had an idea then.

  He picked up the scooped out hollow husk of pumpkin shell, turned it over and then set it over the stump atop the shoulders experimentally as if he were a ladies haberdasher or window-dresser fitting a display mannequin.

  It was missing something.

  It was then and only then that Peter remembered where he’d left the dirty carving knife. The storage shed’s sink. That was also where Peter kept the unspeakable things he’d been hiding and working on—not pumpkins—but they would certainly have looked that way to any onlooker. Unless they looked inside.

  In any case, he would have to leave Lumina to get it.

  Peter told Lumina he would be back. He squeezed her hand and hoped she would understand this. He did not know how she still walked, much less how she avoided bumping into things, how she’d known to step up onto the porch or even thread a needle—her being without eyes or ears, but, for this reason, he trusted she would be there when he returned.

  PART THE SECOND

  Peter went out into his prizewinning pumpkin patch. It was where he raised his trophy winners. Each year at the State Fair he took home the award for bringing the largest, healthiest, most perfectly shaped pumpkin. A few years of this and Lumina’s family—the Campbells—had been more than impressed both at the prize money and the profit he turned from his annual roadside sale. They were not impressed, however, with the couple’s inability to produce an heir.

  Peter continued to sell his pumpkins, year after year. Some bought his pumpkins for money, others traded whatever they had. He met all kinds there—even a man who called himself an alchemist. A man who said he knew the mysteries of life. A man with the scrap of paper containing information he’d traded to Peter—the young man being desperate for a solution for the one thing he couldn’t seem to cultivate—no matter how he tried.

  That had been almost—one year ago—when Peter was convinced his trouble had really begun.

  In the afternoon light, a scarecrow lay violently battered by last night’s storm—by something stronger than the wind. Its frame had been broken. Its head lay in the dust some feet away.

  Peter’s shed was a tiny, ramshackle, one-room house with a naked hanging bulb out it the field where the tools were kept. He trudged in muck-boots out to it across the field stopping before he got to it to peer down into an open pit where the dirt had been pushed away like a great big worm had wiggled, writhed, and crawled its way out of the ground. Peter’s wife’s body had unearthed itself from six feet down. What of Lumina’s head—her real head—was it still down there? Why hadn’t the body brought it up with the rest? Peter wondered. Why had it brought the pumpkin with it instead? Digging one’s way out from so many tons of dirt, that would have taken some strength. Peter had heard of sheer feats of adrenaline performed in times of stress, a tractor lifted off a child’s body perhaps, or someone taking the plunge to save another who’d fallen through the thin ice, but nothing like this. He wondered what else Lumina’s body was capable of.

  Inside the shack, pumpkins lined the dank, musty walls. Each day Peter checked on their progress. Opening them up to peer at what was growing inside. So far, he’d had no success with Stage One of the process, even with so many attempts. Because of that he hadn’t even considered moving to Stage Two.

  The carving knife was there in the sink where he’d left it. The blood was still on it. He carefully picked it up, turned it over, and inspected it. Why had he left it there? Did he doubt even for a second what had happened really had happened? That it was his wife’s blood on the knife and his prints were all over the handle?

  Peter knew a good person turned themselves into the police when they did something wrong—a smart person did not, because a smart person knows good people are stupid. That’s what his father had told him, when Peter had, as a boy, visited his old man in prison. Peter didn’t want not go to prison. His father had died there.

  Peter couldn’t read or write, but he was going to be smart about this. He knew from his mother that talking was how they’d gotten his father for bootlegging washtub vodka. Peter knew that the police only showed up to catch a bad guy, not listen to a story. Not about how a family needed money or how in their home country it had been traditional. That was how he had learned to keep quiet—explanations didn’t mean anything or at least that they wouldn’t save him.

  Excuses are just stepping stones before someone accepted some harsh reality they couldn’t yet fathom. Like a corpse that had unburied itself and was walking around. It was human to make up excuses—to rationalize a reason for why we should not have to be punished for our crimes. People are hardwired that way.

  Peter had killed his wife, yes, but it wasn’t fair. It was she who had been holding the knife when they’d been arguing. She was supposed to be chopping up winter squash for a warm soup. It had been a cold night. Both needed something warm for their bellies.

  Instead, she’d cornered him with the knife and Peter, fearing for his life, had two options—to run or to—he picked up the carving knife. The very one she’d been using to—Chop. Chop. Chop.

  He turned the valve and as mud-colored water burst forth from the toolshed’s faucet. He waited until the steam was steady and clear before he began to wash it, running his fingers along the flat of the blade as the water splashed down to rewet and wash off the sticky, dried blood.

  PART THE THIRD

  Lumina’s body had woken from her deep dream. Inside the body was the Will. The Will knew in life its name had been Lumina, because that was what the meek voice had called her. That was all it had taken—bits were coming back to her now. The Will remembered.

  In her dream last night she’d been a tiny woman buried beneath the soil like a seed. She imagined herself bursting from her pod and beginning to grow and flower. As her head ballooned, swelling in size, she’d pushed through to the surface, and felt the sun on her limbs at last. She’d picked up a pumpkin and started for the house.

  Without her head, Lumina’s body could still see or you could call it seeing—which is to say the Will had some idea of her surroundings mostly from familiarity and repetition of navigating them. A kind of awareness floated just above the stump where what remained of her neck had been inserted into the hollow pumpkin. It floated like a light in the dark there. Lumina’s hands reached up and felt its skin—the ridged grooves in the vegetable flesh of her new head.

  She tried to lift her heavy head now and failed—instead having to content herself with merely turning it from side to side. It was dark, cave-like inside the pumpkinhead. She could feel her thoughts echoing around in the total blindness. She tried to speak, but discovered only silence. It was moist inside the pumpkinhead. It felt warm by the fire but Lumina wanted light—just as she had when she crawled out of the ground.

  She’d awoken with a heavy head many times before, in life, but it had been one of a different kind—a hangover. Many a morning toward the end in her last year of life she’d awoken lying in the pumpkin patch after a night drinking with Jack. Perhaps that had been what she’d done last night—after all, she had no recollection of the night before.

  It was then Lumina felt a hand squeeze hers. The large-yet-meek-man hand of her husband. Peter’s. Only when he touched her could she remember her full name had been Lumina Piotrowsky.

  Lumina Campbell Piotrowsky. That had been—was her full name. The name Piotrowsky, however, did not belong to her, she remembered. No. According to the law, she had belonged to it.

  Lumina Campbell’s family had once been poor Scots-Irish and had since patiently acquired and eventually come to own a lot of land. The Lumina Campbell’s Lot, for example, was several dozen acres of flat grazing earth fenced in with post and rail to keep intruders out and horses in. It was in the middle of everywhere, but nothing was a short drive awa
y. Horizontal beams of wood formed three-tier barriers then connected to the individual poles beaten at intervals into the ground. Besides that, it was some fields gone to seed, a few copses of trees, and a row of pines dividing property lines.

  In those days a woman’s true value to her husband wasn’t her beauty; it was her what her father had to give to a potential suitor. Lumina had been blessed with both of those, but an enormous amount of debt as well. Though Lumina’s family had nice things and had educated their daughters—they couldn’t have fallen into financial decline at a worse time—having no sons to inherit or work their properties. The Campbell’s could not care for their various acquisitions and had expected their daughters to marry men who would. For Lumina it meant the only man who would marry her would have to be willing to live in the middle of nowhere and undissuaded by the idea of getting his hands dirty. Peter was already accustomed to both. It was not an uncommon thing for poor men to marry up—transcending the class they’d been born into—their lives a Cinderella story. Lumina’s family had given their house, their furnishings, and a mare. This ornate furniture was out of harmony with the modest accommodations of the Campbell cabin and made things cramped. Peter had brought little more than the shirt on his back, and could do little more than write his name, but he promised Lumina’s family a return on their investment in him. All he needed was a year.

  With a simple ceremony, Lumina and Peter Piotrowsky had been wed, and in that moment, her Lumina’s husband became the owner of the several dozen acres of land that were supposedly her inheritance. The land was still called The Campbell Lot, but a Piotrowsky effectively owned the plot and was the decider of what was to be grown on it.

  “Pumpkins,” Peter said, “We’re going to have a pumpkin patch.”

  “Why pumpkins?” Lumina said.

  “Because they’re easy to grow,” was his answer and he gave his best attempt at a smile—seemingly to comfort her. A kind of determination radiated constantly from Peter. He wasn’t educated, her father told her, but then again, he’d bothered to speak English and thus wasn’t just another dumb Polack—not like the rest of his folks. Peter was determined to use what he knew to get ahead. It was probably why her father had taken a shine to him.

  When she saw her family next, Lumina asked her mother for advice.

  “What do you know about pumpkins?”

  “They used to grow wild right out of our compost pile, dear. Like weeds. Don’t you remember?” Mrs. Campbell said, tending to her roses with shears and garden gloves. A gramophone playing was playing nearby. Mrs. Campbell played music for her flowers.

  Lumina did not remember. As a girl she’d cared little for chores and had an active imagination, much to her parents’ dismay, Lumina had been unprepared for her family’s sudden change in prospects. She’d spent little time in the garden—more on horseback or otherwise playing imaginary games with faerie folk in the woods distracting her from chores. She never imagined herself married to a poor farmer.

  “They’ll thrive, dear—really—all they need are the months of summer rain and sun to get fat—round and wide,” her mother said, patting her daughter’s belly.

  Lumina could tell her mother wasn’t just talking about pumpkins.

  As far as her family was concerned, it seemed they were mostly glad to be rid of Lumina at last—she was to become the farmer’s wife to have and to hold from that day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do they part.

  Till death do they part.

  Till death.

  It hadn’t been that way at first, not entirely bad, but after six years together, when Peter came in from his work in the field, he’d expected her to have his food made. When they went upstairs, he expected her to lie back with little in the way of coaxing or caresses and accept his seed. Then it was assumed she would to go to bed early with him, rise with the sun, and begin it all again.

  Eventually, instead of joining Peter in bed at night Lumina sat up—awake. She roamed the house all hours. Then the fields of crops. Then the forest of pines. She went for restless night walks—and night rides on the mare. Peter never knew. She was always back in her bed by the morrow—at least, at first.

  Peter rose early and gave her little so much as a nod and stare watching her from this—his prizewinning pumpkin patch. It was only then she began to resent him. How rigid he was.

  This was the man to whom she’d been lawfully betrothed and wedded to. A man with dust-bowl eyes. Quiet Peter—who said very little even on the subject of growing things. Warty-fingered Peter—his hands like a bumpy, gnarled gourd from having them in deep in manure. Peter the good, god-fearing Catholic—and yet, could not even read his copy of the Bible. Peter with his pumpkins. What was he doing with them? What was he up to in that shed?

  Lumina had no clue—nor a key, but she’d found a page torn out of an old book once—sticking out of Peter’s overalls. It was yellowed and folded up. She knew it couldn’t be his, Peter never read and Lumina didn’t know how else he’d come by it. She read over it and cringed, then again, then she put it back right away, her heart thudding in her chest as Peter came back from preparing for bed. From then on she suspected what Peter had been up to in the shed and wished that she hadn’t. The thought of it kept her up at night—among other things.

  PART THE FOURTH

  It was while going for a night ride that Lumina had met Stingy Jack. Wry-mouthed Jack—handsome, but with a crooked smile. He tipped his hat to the lady on her high horse, patted the creature’s nose, and asked her if she too was having trouble sleeping. Both like a gentleman and a link-boy, he offered to lead her and her horse and light the remainder of her way.

  His name was Stingy Jack, but despite the name, Jack was anything but careful with money. His name, like everything else in Jack’s life, was a joke. Jack spent every penny on the drink. Jack drank like a fish out of water, like a racehorse, like a drowned sailor, like an Irishman.

  When he did have work, Jack claimed to have been a blacksmith. That was until he’d let his shop burn down to everything but the anvil and smoldering hearth. As he told it, that was why Jack had turned to drinking. To drown out his sorrows. Since then he’d “worked the corners” and played people’s heartstrings, knowing all the old tricks for eliciting pity and when rejected, for acting the highwayman. He was a drifter, a grifter, and the rambling kind. He looked a little like he’d taken the hat coat and pants off a scarecrow.

  There was one more thing about Jack. He had a lantern. Every night, he always had it with him. It glowed from within as Jack’s eyes did—lighting their path as they walked through the woods on late summer nights. Every few nights, Jack and Lumina, night owls both, would rendezvous in secret.

  As the harvest season approached Jack told her stories of how he’d tricked even the Devil into buying him a drink—on more than one occasion. How he’d taken the Devil by the horns and worked out a deal so he’d belonged neither to heaven nor hell. How he’d lived so long a time and yet, his body had refused to rot. He called it the Will.

  Was Jack real? Lumina wondered. His hand felt warm in hers—it felt real.

  When Peter awoke, Jack was nowhere to be found. He was always gone before daybreak. He took his lantern with him. And the rest of the bottle.

  Peter said nothing of finding Lumina lying drunk under the scarecrow in the mornings that followed—he only continued to tend the farm and pumpkin patch by day, just as also he said nothing of the times Lumina disappeared into the night to go moon gandering with Jack. He simply did not speak of it. Nor did Lumina’s affair with Jack end. Each dared the other to acknowledge what had happen and neither would.

  Lucky Peter Piotrowsky, Jack had called him—because he had the most beautiful wife in all the land, and yet knew nothing about keeping a woman—showing a girl a good time. We could be rid of him, you know, Jack whispered in her ear. His snaggle-smile seeming to grow even wider. Lumina hushed him, reac
hing into his britches, taking hold of him and making his flesh grow in her hand. It too, felt warm and real.

  Lumina knew Jack didn’t want a woman. At least, not really. He’d been dead too long to care about a thing like that. He wanted a good, stiff drink. Still, a good stiff anything would take his mind off his weeping and troubles. When Jack wasn’t too drunk he could still get hard. That was how she liked him.

  There had been many nights in the pumpkin patch with Jack. On her back with her skirts around her waist. Her thighs around Jack’s bony ribs. Her knees in the air, propped back on her elbows, and bare bottom in the dirt of the pumpkin patch. Jack burying himself inside her furrow—a ploughshare deep in a field allowed too long to lie fallow by the neglectful farmer. Lying on her back, Lumina could see the scarecrow watching them. She pretended it was Peter. A shovel was leaned against the pole that had been left out from earlier from when Peter’s brow had been sweating—giving something for the thirsty ground to drink. Jack whispered unspeakable things in her ear as she sighed in his. How she could take the shovel now and use it to bludgeon sleeping Peter. How she and Jack might have lived happily ever after.

  In the months that came, Jack talked more and more of being rid of Peter. He would set it up, but he always wanted for her to do it, for Lumina to deal the killing blow. Instead, she contented herself to closing her eyes and moaning over the Jack’s shoulder,

  “Oh Jack, oh Jack, oh Jack…”

  It was then Lumina remembered with horror her last memory of Stingy Jack.

  It had been raining that night. The rain had made it cold. Dirt in the pumpkin patch had turned to sloppy mud. The scarecrow was peering down at the three like a judge now—willing the executioner on. Peter had come out of the house shouting—calling to his wife, “Slut! Harlot! WHORE OF BABYLON!”