27
• Silo 18 •
IT WOULD’VE MADE more sense and been kinder on Mission’s back to drop off the pump before visiting his father, but the whole point of hauling it up was so that his old man would see him with the load. And so he headed into the planting halls and towards the same growing station his grandfather had worked and supposedly his great-grandfather too. Past the beans and the blueberry vines, beyond the squash and the potatoes. In a spot of corn that appeared ready for harvest, he found his old man on his hands and knees looking how Mission would always remember him: with a small spade working the soil, his hands picking at weeds like a habit, the way a girl might curl her fingers in her hair over and over without even knowing she was doing it.
‘Father.’
His old man turned his head to the side, sweat glistening on his brow under the heat of the grow lights. There was a flash of a smile before it melted. Mission’s half-brother Riley appeared behind a back row of corn, a little twelve-year-old mimic of his dad, hands covered in dirt. He was quicker to call out a greeting, shouting ‘Mission!’ as he hurried to his feet.
‘The corn looks good,’ Mission said. He rested a hand on the railing, the weight of the pump settling against his back, and reached out to bend a leaf with his thumb. Moist. The ears were a few weeks from harvest, and the smell took him right back. He saw a midge running up the stalk and killed the parasite with a deft pinch.
‘Wadya bring me?’ his little brother squealed.
Mission laughed and tussled his brother’s dark hair, a gift from the boy’s mother. ‘Sorry, bro. They loaded me down this time.’ He turned slightly so that Riley – and his father – could see. His brother stepped onto the lowest rail and leaned over for a better look.
‘Why dontcha set that down for a while?’ his father asked. He slapped his hands together to keep the precious dirt on the proper side of the fence, then reached out and shook Mission’s hand. ‘You’re looking good.’
‘You too, Dad.’ Mission would’ve thrust his chest out and stood taller if it hadn’t meant toppling back on his rear from the weight of the pump. ‘So what’s this I hear about the cafeteria starting in their own sprouts?’
His father grumbled and shook his head. ‘Corn, too, from what I hear. More goddamn up-sourcing.’ He jabbed a finger at Mission’s chest. ‘This affects you lads, you know.’
His father meant the porters, and there was a tone of having told him so. There was always that tone.
Riley tugged on Mission’s overalls and asked to hold his knife. Mission slid the blade from its sheath and handed it over while he studied his father, a silence brewing between them. His dad looked older. His skin was the colour of oiled wood, an unhealthy darkness from working too long under the grow lights. It was called a ‘tan’, and you could spot a farmer two landings away because of it.
An intense heat radiated from the bulbs overhead, and the anger Mission carried when he was away from home melted into a hollow sadness. The space his mother had left empty could be felt. It was a reminder to Mission of what his being born had cost. More was the pity he felt for his old man with his damaged skin and dark spots on his nose from years of abuse. These were the signs of all those in green who worked the soil, toiling among the silo’s dead.
Mission flashed back to his first solid memory as a boy: wielding a small spade that in those days had seemed to him a giant shovel. He had been playing between the rows of corn, turning over scoops of soil, mimicking his father, when without warning his old man had grabbed his wrist.
‘Don’t dig there,’ his father had said with an edge to his voice. This was back before Mission had witnessed his first funeral, before he had seen for himself what was laid beneath the seeds. After that day, he learned to spot the mounds where the soil was darker from having been disturbed.
‘They’ve got you doing the heavy lifting, I see,’ his father said, breaking the quiet. He assumed the load Mission had carried had been assigned by Dispatch. Mission didn’t correct him.
‘They let us carry what we can handle,’ he said. ‘The older porters get mail delivery. We each haul what we can.’
‘I remember when I first stepped out of the shadows,’ his dad said. He squinted and wiped his brow, nodded down the line. ‘Got stuck with potatoes while my caster went back to plucking blueberries. Two for the basket and one for him.’
Not this again. Mission watched as Riley tested the tip of the knife with the pad of his finger. He reached to take back the blade, but his brother twisted away from him.
‘The older porters get mail duty because they can get mail duty,’ his father explained.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mission said, the sadness gone, the anger back. ‘The old ports have bad knees is why we get the heavy loads. Besides, my bonus pay is judged by the pound and the time I make, so I don’t mind.’
‘Oh, yes.’ His father waved at Mission’s feet. ‘They pay you in bonuses and you pay them with your knees.’
Mission could feel his cheeks tighten, could sense the burn of the whelp around his neck.
‘All I’m saying, son, is that the older you get and the more seniority you have, you’ll earn your own choice of rows to hoe. That’s all. I want you to watch out for yourself.’
‘I’m watching out for myself, Dad.’
Riley climbed up, sat on the top rail and flashed his teeth at his reflection in the knife. The kid already had a freckled band of spots across his nose, the start of a farmer’s tan. Damaged flesh from damaged flesh, father like son. And Mission could easily picture Riley years hence, on the other side of that rail, all grown up with a kid of his own. It made him thankful that he’d wormed his way out of the farms and into a job he didn’t take home every night beneath his fingernails.
‘Are you joining us for lunch?’ his father asked, sensing perhaps that he was pushing Mission away.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Mission said. He felt a twinge of guilt that his father expected to feed him, but he appreciated not having to ask. And it would hurt his stepmom’s feelings if he didn’t pay her a visit. ‘I’ll have to run afterward, though. I’ve got a . . . delivery tonight.’
His father frowned. ‘You’ll have time to see Allie though, right? She’s forever asking about you. The boys here are lined up to marry that girl if you keep her waiting.’
Mission wiped his face to hide his expression. Allie was a great friend – his first and briefest romance – but to marry her would be to marry the farms, to return home, to live among the buried dead. ‘Probably not this time,’ he said. He felt bad for admitting it.
‘Okay. Well, go drop that off. Don’t squander your bonus sitting here jawing with us.’ The disappointment in the old man’s voice was hotter than the lights and not so easy to shade. ‘We’ll see you in the feeding hall in half an hour?’ He reached out, took his son’s hand one more time and gave it a squeeze. ‘It’s good to see you, son.’
‘Same.’ Mission shook his father’s hand, then clapped his palms together over the grow pit to knock loose any dirt. Riley reluctantly gave the knife back and Mission slipped it into its sheath. He fastened the clasp around the handle, thinking on how he might need to use it that night. He pondered for a moment if he should warn his father, thought of telling him and Riley both to stay inside until morning, not to dare go out.
But he held his tongue, patted his brother on the shoulder and made his way to the pump room down the hall. As he walked through rows of planters and pickers, he thought about farmers selling their own vegetables in makeshift stalls and grinding their own flour. He thought about the cafeteria growing its own sprouts and corn. And he thought of the recently discovered plans to move something heavy from one landing to another without involving the porters.
Everyone was trying to look after themselves in case the violence returned. Mission could feel it brewing, the suspicion and the distrust, the walls being built. Everyone was trying to get a little less reliant on the others, preparing for the inevitable, hunkering down.
He loosened the straps on his pack as he approached the pump room, and a dangerous thought occurred to him, a revelation: if everyone was trying to get to where they didn’t need one another, how exactly was that supposed to help them all get along?