Earth's Child

Dave Markson looked up at the sky with a cloudy sort of gloom which the sky did not hold. Nature seemed to disagree with Markson in the most literal of ways when she did disagree at all. Dave frowned upon the birds. They responded by soaring higher into the blue and gave a laugh as hollow as their bones.

Markson's large fields are golden seas surrounded by wide stretches of green. Each stalk quaked in the breeze awaiting the mechanical reaper's sickle. Soon the wheat will be stacked in picture perfect sheaves. Soon, but not until Markson had one last pleasant stroll among the fearful shafts, and that would be at least one more week away.

Today Markson will work on his private garden that stocked his pantry. None of these vegetables will see the local farmer's market but, instead, will go straight to his table and canning preserves.

Swish, swish, swish went Markson's hoe over the soft earth as he cleared the weeds away from the crops. He worked for an hour on this small plot of land keeping his pace. Swish, swish, swish, clank! Markson stopped short, uncertain if he had really heard anything at all. With a shrug he resumed his work. Clank! This time he dropped to his knees and rooted around in the dirt so that he may curse the debris face to face.

Plucked out of the ground, like some foul weed, was a translucent stone that glowed a soft azure with the first shafts of light that struck it. There was no doubt in Markson's mind that this gleaming blue stone was worth more than the whole of his farm [including land value and equipment assets]. This certainly was the single most valuable crop he ever harvested.

Being a man of little words, at least when he talked to himself, Markson could only muster an, "I'll be..." from his lips. He began rolling the cool stone between his hands while contemplating what to do with this new find. After rolling the thought around in his mind as tentatively as the stone in his hands, Markson came to the conclusion that it would be best to simply keep the curious object and tell no one, not that he had anyone to tell. It would be exceedingly difficult to sell the stone and who would believe his story? After all, how many times had he rotated the garden into this very spot over the years and never discovered the oddity?

When evening came Markson nestled his new jewel upon his deceased wife's old oversized pin cushion and placed it on a little table near the house plants which she had, in life, insisted upon. He rested his own head on a pillow embroidered by his late wife and dreamed about the stone all night. The dreams were vivid and frightening but Markson could only recall a woman weeping bitterly over her lost child.

The next morning Markson's small living room was a jungle.

"Eh? What's this? Has someone come to play a prank on me?" It was no trick and Markson knew it. He lived alone and his friends had moved away during the last drought which had also driven away top soil like a summer version of wind swept sleet and snow. Since the loss of his wife he had not sought out new company. Making new friends had ever been her job. No one knew him here anymore.

He stepped outside to try to figure out what had transpired.

"Of course! That has to be it!" he excitedly said out loud.

Markson had heard tales of old west travelers selling babbles plundered from a conquistador's abandoned stores which, in their turn, had been forcefully plucked from the ancient South Americas. Images of scientists of Inca, Maya and Aztec held fast the translucent gem in Markson's mind. Surely this object was a sacred relic which rivals even Demeter's powers in her Greek domain. To Markson it seemed no stretch of imagination to attribute the control of nature to these mysterious builders of pyramids, possessing the repertoire to perform brain surgery and the first to realized the value of the zero.

A month went by and the fields and garden turned into Eden. A cornucopia of edibles issued from Markson's patch of land like some never ceasing fresh water spring. Nature was bountiful. God was gracious.

Then it happened. To its credit it did rival the loss of Persephone to Demeter. Oh winter, from whence have you come?

There was a brilliant blue flash that Markson swore emanated from his wild living room. A wave of radiation swept the fertile ground laying waste to everything in a frighteningly large radius. Whatever was left mutated into low creeping things that no parasite dare infest.

Almost simultaneously with that bolt Markson's life flashed before his eyes. It was then he pieced together the cause in his imagination.

Sunlight had hit the stone upon its pedestal once per day and that sparse energy had built up thus giving it its eerie glow. One month's accumulation of the few precious minutes of the sun's direct rays struck forth in one devastating bolt out of the blue. No wonder why the stone was forsaken in the dust so long.

"Earth's unborn child torn from her womb,
and the nuclear winter that now ensues."

Markson grabbed a thick garment and cloaked his treasure. His strength was flagging with every strand of hair that fell from his head just like Sampson. Painfully he dragged himself to the farm's only well and into its depths he tossed the swaddled bundle of once joy to make a wish. Markson sighed one last time and fell into a sleep as deep and dark as that well.

A day passed and the deadly wind still bellowed its awful death. The hair of its victims were either tossed as thick as tumble weeds or coiled along in snaky strands. Each roved on as if they sought fresh ground to take root within and seed new despair. The sparse farm structures stood reverently silent in their new role as headstones and tombs.

One mile from Markson's living room lay the wreckage of a metal bird with its cargo's heart split wide open. One slab of metal held a depiction of a man with mighty pinions spread as a canopy and in one angelic hand was a flaming sword. It was a military bomber with a small nuclear payload which had the misfortune to falter from the sky and break like an egg. Now all the king's horses and all the king's men try to scrape Humpty Dumpty from new Eden's floor.

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