Snakes in Eden (Cumberland Saga)

Blain was boggled by the sheer “social” nature of work being done by the people shoveling chicken-shit.

It was an unquestioned article-of-fact among the groups he had hung-out with after leaving college that all work was coercive and exploitive, that it was impossible for the working class to know “joy”.

And yet nearly everybody was chatting up a storm. Boys and girls were flirting. Nobody was working THAT hard...except for Sig. It was more like a three-legged-race at a picnic or watching the girl’s, high-school track-team yucking-it-up at practice.

Of course every family sent volunteers to shovel shit when the trailer was traveling over their garden plots, but each family also seemed to send plenty of volunteers to help the owners of adjoining plots.

Blain had no clue of how they did it. How did they know when to show up?

He wasn’t complaining. Even a 4th grader could toss the light, fluffy chicken-shit and bedding off the back end of the trailer.

Over the course of the morning and early afternoon it occurred to him that the swirl of “manpower” was like a paisley pattern of blues, reds and greens where each color was a different age-group. Adults, teens and pre-teens were like swarms of tadpoles. It seemed like most people had a best-friend who Blain always saw them with. Sometimes the "besties" showed up in a swirl of others their age-group. Other times they were embedded in a family group, nearly as many besties as actual family members.

The extravagant surplus of labor made the long turn-around times particularly vexing to Blain. He hated losing 20 minutes of productive time for every 60 minutes of clock-time but he had no way of fixing that. At least he wasn’t losing 30 minutes!

And then something totally unexpected happened in the mid-afternoon. Sig had just finished drinking some sweet tea his wife brought him and then climbed into the back of the trailer. As he climbed back in, the swarms of tadpoles simply evaporated. The ones who had been shoveling hopped out of the trailer and walked away as the wheels of the trailer bumped across the footpath that separated one garden-plot from the next. And the “reserves” who had been following along chattering like a mob of starlings melted away, too.

Sarah started to get up into the trailer to help Sig shovel when Sig gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head, waving her off.

Out of the corner of his eye, Blain saw a woman dressed in Sunday-go-to-Meeting clothing heading toward Sig like a heat-seeking missile. He vaguely remembered her from Sunday worship and dredged through his memory to retrieve her name….Connie...Constance...no, Constanze. The other vague memory is that Sarah did not seem to have much affection for her.

Constanze started remonstrating with Sig. He mournfully shook his head and pointed at Blain. “Talk to him. He is running the operation.”

Constanze spun in place and fixed her sights on Blain.

Blain saw Sig give Lliam a small gesture...a slight lifting of the chin and a look toward the distance.

Lliam didn't need to be told twice. He goosed the tractor's gas-pedal and let out the clutch. It lurched forward.

And then Constanze was on him like the clouds of mosquitoes that descend upon anglers from willows beside a northern trout stream.

“You need” she said, jabbing him in the chest with her index finger “to make them” she said, pointing up the two-track at the young people joyfully shoveling shit from the trailer Peggy was pulling “come over here and fertilize MY garden!!!”

Blain may have been a babe-in-the-woods in the skills important in Copperhead Cove but he had earned his chops arguing in a hundred, boozy bull-session back in Michigan. It was going to take far more than hackneyed "dominance" moves to cow him.

The best defense is an attack and the best attack is a question.

“Where were you twenty minutes ago? Everybody else has been helping their neighbors” Blain demanded.

He felt Sarah tuck in behind him. For whatever reason, Sarah was afraid of this harpy.

“How dare you question where I was?” Constanze snarled. "It is not your place to question your betters."

“For that matter, why aren’t you on that trailer shoveling your own shit” Blain challenged. Never let initiative starve for lack of follow-up. Momentum is a "thing".

Glancing to his side, Blain noticed that Lliam was scooting along, two, maybe three times times faster than he normally drove. Sig was still shoveling like a metronome, no faster or slower than he had shoveled on any other plot.

But unlike every other plot, there were not four people shoveling...just Sig, and the tractor was moving markedly faster.

Constanze, because she had not helped on any of the other plots was oblivious to the fact that Lliam was fleeing the scene of the conflict as quickly as he could without dumping Uncle Sig onto his dupa.

“Don’t be an idiot” Constanze shot back. “You cannot expect somebody wearing their nice clothes to shove shit.”

Blain wasn’t going to accept her deflection. “Only an idiot would wear nice clothes on a day when they knew they would have to shovel shit!"

Constanze was incapable of comprehending that her will was being defied. Especially by a drifter, a hired-hand of no consequence, scum, white-trash.

Fifty yards closer to the compound and thirty to the side, Peggy could see by their body language that the two adults were arguing. She depressed the clutch and turned off the motor to hear what they were saying. The four girls who were shoveling in the back felt the tractor coast to a stop and heard the motor stop. They stopped shoveling and looked up to see what was the matter. They saw Peggy looking intently ahead of them and they followed her line-of-sight.

They saw Blain shielding Sarah from Constanze with his back toward them.

All five of the young ladies adored Sarah.

They saw Constanze’s face twisting in rage and they heard her shriek “...and that UGLY BITCH you are f*cking!”

Then they saw the most amazing transformation. Blain body flared like the hood of a cobra about to strike. He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet and his entire body expanded as his shoulders rolled back and outward while his arms flexed outward into a grappling position.

They saw Blain suddenly grow to three times his natural size, an illusion reinforced by Constanze’s sudden shrinking back as she suddenly realized she had stepped WAY over the line and she had absolutely NO idea of Blain’s history or what he was capable of doing.

“Don’t! You! Ever! Talk that way about Sarah again or I will break you in two like a rotten stick!” Blain exploded, all of the self-control he had been exercising the last four months totally depleted. Gone. Vaporized.

His index finger snaked out lightning fast and thumped her squarely in her chest driving her back a full nine-inches. He started to pursue her.

Only the sensation of Sarah's hand pulled him back from the brink of the mayhem he was within a heartbeat of unleashing.

Constanze fled.

Blain turned and held Sarah. He could feel her shaking like a leaf.

Noting the silence, Blain looked up and saw the five girls staring at the two of them with eyes the size of saucers. Blain made a small motion with his hand indicating “Move along. Nothing to see here”

Blain buried his face in Sarah’s hair as Peggy started Sally’s tractor and the girls started industriously spreading manure on the garden plot they were fertilizing.

Blain and Sarah stood there until Sarah stopped sobbing. For a while, the world would have to spin on its own without Blain’s help.

To be continued...

 

Note to commenter Anonymous Feb 17, 12:56 PM: Please ask your wife if she approves of the heating up of the romance angle. Apologies for the F-bomb but the story required it. I am still pretty new at writing.