Field 46 by Ashley S Hattle

Field 46

An excerpt from the novel Head Count

by Ashley S Hattle

Finch tightened his belt to silence his belly. He waited at the end of a line of boys and girls in front of the high school and peered at the dark entrance doors, longing for Mr. Gomez’s raspberry scones warm with icing on a cafeteria tray. The squeal of an old axle pulled Finch from his breakfast daydream. He stood straighter and held his chin high.

The others stopped their fidgeting too, and the crickets ceased singing when the bus door hissed open. They weren’t going to school today. They were going to work the corn fields.

“All aboard,” Coach Sully rang out. He trundled down the steps with too much pep in his step for 4:00 a.m.

Finch shuffled his feet behind the others. This was his last year detasseling corn before college or the military—whichever will take him—next year. Five grueling summers and now he was mere weeks away from the last field.

"Morning," chirped Sully when Finch rounded the bus steps. He tossed a yogurt and banana his way, then turned to the rest of the young crew. "We have four fields, and eighteen hands today."

"Thirty-six," snickered a tousle-haired blonde boy with a face full of freckles from mid-way back.

"Quit your smart-assing, Curry," griped Sully. He tapped his clipboard on the back of the front seat like a judge calling for order. "First field is an hour out. Get some shut eye."

Finch walked down the rows of kids to his spot at the back, a perk of his seniority. They all needed this job—the farm kids in long-sleeves or plaid no matter the heat, poor kids in clothes two sizes too big or small, kids escaping whatever was worse at home. They were Finch. And he felt responsible for every one of them.

The bus rumbled to a start as he plopped in the backseat. Finch drank the yogurt in three loud gulps and stuffed the banana in his pocket, saving it for his sister sick at home. His twisted stomach eased. He crumpled his sweatshirt and leaned against it on the window but couldn’t sleep.

Sully swerved to miss a few deer, getting a rise out of the newbies. A tanned girl with braided brown pig tails named Evie heckled a ginger-haired boy named Reuben for screaming. The sudden jolts even got Caster, the tough guy from a dairy farm, to yelp. Their ribbing died down as a strange dawn rose.

They came to a dense, black forest that cloaked them in night. Sully flicked back on the headlights, illuminating a rickety wooden bridge. Their chatter stopped, as if they were all holding their breath to make the bridge hold. Sighs and laughter broke out when the back wheels hit gravel again.

The bus skidded to a stop on the other side of the dark forest. Finch and the others lurched forward. An “ouch” rang out after a loud thud on a window. They filed out and lined up against the yellow siding. Evie rubbed a bump on her forehead and fought tears huddled at the front.

Finch and Sully walked the line of kids. They were leaner than a month ago, long and thin like the stalks in front of them. The whipping wind rattled the bus but not their knees. They were seasoned, focused—at least on this side of the field.

“How’s Neveah?” Sully asked.

“Better.” Finch pursed his lips. Sharing was a risk. One phone call from Sully could tear his world apart, but Sully was the closest thing he had to a parent these days. “Fever’s gone.”

“Good.” Sully tapped the metal clipboard with his pencil and pointed to the corn rows at the tree line. “You start there.”

Finch trudged through the thick ditch to his assigned lot. Sully called out names and rows behind him, his booming voice turning to a whisper a half mile away.

Something felt wrong with field 46 from the start—the red haze over the stalks in the piercing morning sun, the trees shadows’ stretching over Finch’s rows like bared teeth, and a low buzzing that prickled his arms with goosebumps.

Finch’s boots sank in the soft soil in front of the first two rows as he waited for the whistle. He stared down the rippling green leaves. Hundreds of wispy tassels, waiting to be plucked by his calloused hands. He cracked his knuckles. Then he stretched his neck and drew in the sweet morning air. Finch coughed on a rancid smell instead—like the rotting possum he and Caster found on day two.

Sully’s whistle blew through the wind. The field shivered as their detasseling team pressed in. Each child pulled the heads off stalks and tossed them to the ground with a steady thudding beat, giving rhythm to the field.

The green blades whipped Finch’s arms, leaving morning dew drops behind like afternoon sweat. He paused in the crack of sunshine between tree shadows, halfway down the field. That’s when he sensed them.

Eyes.

Finch froze, the same way the deer locked up in Sully’s headlights. Leaves swished. Birds trilled. But under those sounds was the buzzing. Growing louder.

A deep hum came up from the ground, vibrating the topsoil. Dirt clumps shook suspended in the air. Finch cupped his ears and bit his tongue as a piercing ring ran up his spine, like he’d stepped on a spitting electric wire. The tang of iron filled his mouth. Then—

Silence.

No birds. No wind. Not even a skittering field mouse.

Finch stood in the still stalks with crackling ears and hair standing on end. He pinched his nose and lips and blew. His hearing popped and the volume turned up. Birds screeching. Wind whirring.

He grabbed his water jug from his belt loop and wet his face, smacking his cheeks a few times. But everything appeared slightly askew, as if an earthquake had tilted the field.

Finch shook off the strange experience as a trick of the sun and rising heat. He pulled on his baseball cap, clipped his bottle to his belt, and got back to work but didn’t make it more than six stalks before Reuben burst into the field from the forest and fell at his feet.

Reuben’s glasses cracked on a rock. The small, gangly boy jumped back up, shoving the frames with splintering glass back over his bleeding nose. His wild eyes met Finch’s, and he dashed into the next row before Finch could utter a syllable.

The tall evergreen trees shuddered over Finch as if their branches were arms reaching to snag Reuben by the ankles and drag him back inside. Finch squinted into the shadowy canopy. Some leaves twisted together, creating monsters from jagged blades and hanging branches. Something was there, watching.

Finch finished the row and emerged into chaos. The younger kids laughed and darted between stalks, using the torn feathers of tassels to tag one another. Caster and an older girl named Sarah huddled together, blushing at one another. Finch sauntered over and plopped on a tree stump next to the couple.

“You seen Reuben?” He asked Sarah.

“Who?” She laughed and pulled away from Caster. “Is that the quiet one?”

“Yeah, he never does say much. He turned back a few minutes ago,” Caster said, then grabbed Sarah’s hand and resumed making eyes at her.

The two could be real nauseating, but Finch wasn’t sure if he felt that way only because Sarah was the most effortlessly beautiful girl ever to ride the bus, with loose brown curls, a brilliant smile, and a laugh he heard in dreams sometimes.

“Was he okay? He broke his glasses.” Finch wrung his hat in his hands and looked into the dense green maze.

“Seemed fine to me,” Sarah said mid-kiss with Caster.

Finch shifted his weight from foot to foot. His face burned red, and he wished to be anywhere but here—even with the monster in the forest next door. “Tell him I’m looking for him, yeah?”

Caster grunted and waved Finch off. Finch gathered the kids playing tag and told them to get back to work but not before Curry got him good with the flick of a stray tassel that welted his arm. Curry ran off faster than Reuben had, with a wicked grin and rotten laugh.

The orange sky turned a static blue as morning dragged on. A blazing sun. No clouds in sight. Finch trudged up and down the field, spying a dozen spotted caterpillars but never Reuben. The shadow teeth stretching over his rows shrank to stubs as noon approached, and Finch felt like he could breathe again when Sully called them in for head count. Torn tassels crunched under their feet as Finch and his team emerged from the cornfield.

Sully passed out the usual—apples, chips, sandwiches, and stale cookies—as they boarded the bus bound for the next field. Finch relaxed his shoulders when he saw Reuben’s hair sticking up above the crowd. The red twirl bobbed talking to another kid and disappeared inside.

“18.” Sully tapped Finch’s back and handed him lunch.

The door hissed shut, the motor revved, and the wheels spat gravel before Finch could reach the back. He swayed down the aisle, pushing off one cushioned seat to reach the next.

The jerking bus took a sharp corner, pushing Finch’s shoulder into the emergency hatch. He bounced off the aluminum and nearly fell on top of…

“Reuben?” The sensation returned, like something creeping into Finch’s thoughts and nibbling at his nightmares.

“Yes, sir?” Reuben’s voice cracked as his head swiveled from the window to Finch. His smile was too wide for his thin face. His eyes too narrow, too black, and too menacing for the quiet boy scared of his own shadow. And the glasses? Not a scratch on ‘em.

“G-get out of my seat,” Finch stuttered and stood straighter, trying to be the imposing seventeen-year-old he’d been building on in the gym and in the mirror.

Sully pressed on the gas, pushing Finch face first against the glass. Dust billowed behind their bus, but beyond the brown cloud was someone else chasing after them—a redhead with crooked glasses reflecting off the mid-day sun.

“Reuben.” Finch drew a sharp breath and turned around to call for Sully to stop.

A clammy hand shot out and pulled Finch into the backseat with surprising strength. Reuben tightened his grip and looked into Finch’s eyes with a soulless stare.

“Our secret,” the boy whispered and winked, closing one eye from the side like a serpent.