The Stone Harvest - Chapter One
A view across the road from where the story begins.
In anticipation of the upcoming release of my first novel, and perhaps with a hint of shameless self-promotion, I’m trying something new. I’ve already released the first four chapters of the book, The Stone Harvest, as a preview on Amazon, and as a follow-up, I’d like to share each of those four chapters with a bit of commentary on my personal attachment to them.
This book began as a way for me to parse through the memories of my past life as a soldier and police officer to divide fact from fiction. My time in those fields provided me plenty of opportunities to see and experience the bad things that humans do to each other. Writing it was at times a tough journey as I had to wade through all that mental filth but I don’t regret it for an instant.
So many of my fellow Vets live the remainder of their lives never knowing or acknowledging how much their past experiences have affected them and their personal lives. Me, well, it took me several years and several failed relationships for me to figure out that PTSD had taken a toll on the quality of my life.
The Stone Harvest has been my way of bringing light and sunshine to the dark past. After the chapter below, I’ll share my thoughts and a bit of the history that I brought into that chapter.
Dan
Chapter 1 — Today, Early Spring
The stones came up every year, like mushrooms. They crept up bit by bit with the annual frost heaves as the earth chilled and thawed. Left alone long enough, perhaps the field would end up being littered in the type of stones that would elsewhere cost a couple of hundred dollars per ton at a landscape supplier.
This field had been left alone long enough, though. For the second time in as many springs, Karl Warren used his antique, red and grey tractor to ride over every square inch of the field dragging a harrow rake.
Last year, his first on the property, he paid a neighbor to use their more extensive variety of tractor implements to disc up his field and broadcast a native wildflower/fescue seed mix Having been ignored for nearly twenty years, the twenty-acre patch had turned mainly to knapweed, vetch, tansy, and oxeye daisy. It hadn’t been grazed or mowed or burned or sprayed. Nothing. Perfect! An excellent, five-year project.
After that seed broadcast was the first time he had harrowed this lonely field. Harrowing knocked down any furrows caused by the discs, filled any low spots, and gave the seeds a good covering of earth in which to take root. It also educated Warren on just how many stones there were in this soil. On all the other properties nearby, he had seen huge piles or long rows of the stones dumped after they were gathered from the fields. A farmer would work the soil then send his son or daughter out with a pick-up or 4-wheeler and trailer to collect them. The rock harvest would usually take longer than any other aspect of the farming cycle. Nothing was growing yet, and the kids needed a chore to keep them out of trouble. Hence, this part of the country had lots of fields with four foot tall stone boundaries.
It was during this, his second season of stone harvesting that the problems began. In this same spot the year before, he had noticed an unusually large collection of stones, or rather, so many in one tight place. It didn’t seem like the rest of the field, but he didn’t give it too much thought. Plenty of stones to deal with so no use getting worked up over these few. The second year, this year, the same problem in the same area. The harrow grabbed just enough of one or two of the buried nuggets that they dislodged the others, exposing ten or twelve to the grey sky.
Warren didn’t return to that spot for two days. He had been harvesting from other parts of his field and had started an impressive collection for the stone wall he was planning to build. By the time he returned, oddly enough, the rocks hadn’t moved on their own. One by one, they went into the back of the truck.
BAM!
BAM!
The low clouds and the closeness of the mountains made the din of granite on metal echo loudly. A rich, satisfying tone.
As he cleared the first few stones, he could see that there were several more just below the surface. “Might as well.”, he thought. By the twenty-third stone (he was odd about counting things) he began to ignore his suspicion that the rocks were in an unnaturally neat, elongated shape. “Nope. Perfectly natural. “he half-whispered to no one in particular.
It was rock number 37 that did the trick. Nothing special about it. Mostly grey, a few specks of black, and two ribbons of white going through the center. Its uniqueness was what lay beneath it. Warren saw the cuff of a sleeve from the remnants of what was probably a grey hoodie or sweater. And with it, a small, desiccated hand.
Though not a surprise at this point, Warren did have to take a step back to collect his thoughts. It’s not every day that you find a dead body. Rarer still to find an old one buried on your property; property you bought and moved to for the express purpose of not finding dead bodies anymore.
Despite the apparent age of the body and its long-term exposure to the elements, it still had traces of that smell, that goddamn smell of death and decay. Warren uttered his first clear words of the day, “Well … Fuck!”
Karl Gustav Warren was going to have to alter some expectations of his new life in Westwood, Idaho.
Karl Warren is a better man than me in many ways. Then again, he also acts out on negative impulses that I wouldn’t. In my civilian life, I gravitated towards gardening as a calming tool, but soon I began to see the art of it. Eventually, it became a way for me to salvage an ugly space, to remove blight, or to heal the soil. I was doing these things subconsciously for years before I recognized that it was an effort to treat myself using nature as a proxy. Heal the soil, heal the soul. There are so many aspects of Idaho that are idyllic and perfect for this mindset, and my move there gave me ample ground in which to invest my energies. Much Like Karl Warren, I enjoyed long hours working on the soil around my home.
To this day, twenty-plus years removed from my past life, the smell of human decay is unforgettable, and that scent stays with me. When I encounter roadkill or an animal that has passed, I can always smell it before I see it. That scent is akin to a hammer on my brain, shocking me and taking me out of whatever mood or moment I’m in. Though I can move through these moments more easily now, it takes conscious effort to process the “assault” and to get back to where I was in the previous moments.
When Karl finally sees and acknowledges the body, he acts as I might now; calm and collected by with an awareness that a big, bad thing has occurred. His slowness in accepting what he knew to be was his way of slowing the shock to his brain and psyche.
Chapter Two will be here in a few days. Be well and thanks for reading.