EMP Aftermath Series (Book 3): Retribution Page 16

  With his mother around, they were under constant supervision, but it was fine with him. Things had slowed down between them. Sarah needed to work through losing her parents, and Kenny knew she needed time to heal before she was ready to move on. If it took ten years, he'd wait for her, and she was worth every minute of waiting.

  Kenny made his way downstairs and went into the kitchen, where his mother, Sarah, Andrew, and Danny all sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast.

  "Good morning. We weren't sure if you were going to wake up again," Amy said.

  "Fortunately I have a good alarm clock, otherwise I might have slept all day."

  Danny gave an evil chuckle, glancing around the table.

  Kenny sat down and made himself a plate of food. There was cornbread in the breadbasket, sliced ripe tomatoes, and a bowl full of scrambled eggs. He scooped a large helping of eggs onto his plate. It still seemed strange to him that everything they ate was grown right there on the farm.

  "I'm going over to my folk's place to pick the ripe veggies and check on the house. I should be back by the afternoon," Andrew said.

  Danny snorted, then looked over at Kenny and smirked. Danny's face turned beet red and he turned away with a smile. They both knew that Andrew was going to see his girlfriend a few miles away, and that if Andrew even made it to his parent's farm, there would be very little to show for his vegetable picking expedition. Kenny bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. His mother still didn't know, but it wasn't his job to fill her in on all of Andrew’s business.

  "I'll be down in the new field today with the mules, I've got some plowing to do," Kenny said.

  Danny snickered, and clapped his hand over his mouth to contain his laughter.

  "I'll go with you and keep you company while you plow the field," Sarah said.

  Danny stomped his foot underneath the table, his red face showing behind the hand clamped over his mouth.

  "Danny! What's gotten into you?" Amy asked.

  Danny pushed his chair back from the table, and excused himself from breakfast.

  Kenny looked up from his plate of food, feeling his mother's gaze on him. Her eyes were narrow slits under a furrowed brow. She shook her head and sat down. Kenny spread his hands apologetically. "What? What did I do?"

  His mother made a plate of food, as red faced as Danny had been. "Anyway. I'll be working with the chickens this morning. A few of those hens are broody. I'm going to swap out some fertile eggs and let the ladies hatch some chicks. We've lost a few to foxes, so we need to bump up our numbers anyway. Take a basket lunch along if you think you two will be down there all day," his mother said.

  "I'll pack one," Sarah said.

  Kenny finished his breakfast, put on his work boots, and went to the pasture where the mules greeted him at the fence. A lot of people thought mules were stubborn animals, but he knew they just had a longer memory and were less forgiving than horses. If you mistreated them, they would never forget it. It worked the other way as well. He always had an apple or some other treat ready for them in his pocket, so they were always happy to see him.

  He grabbed the tack from the stable and after a few moments of tacking their harnesses, he led the mules through the gate over to the house. Sarah was waiting there for him, a picnic basket in her hand. She smiled at him. It was the first time she'd smiled in a week. Kenny's pulse quickened.

  They walked in silence over the crest of a hill and down to the new section of field Kenny had cleared. Sarah set the lunch basket down in the shade of a tall oak tree near a small creek that ran through the narrow valley. A work table sat under the tree, and Sarah picked up an unfinished hand woven basket. She took a slender switch from a tall stack of willow branches on the table and wove it into the basket. She was a natural at weaving, completely self-taught. Everybody in town wanted her baskets. Each one was a work of art and had a different pattern of light and dark branches woven together into intricate patterns.

  "Have fun. Don't work too hard," Sarah said.

  Kenny smiled and led the mules over to the field. He hitched the mules up to the plow and set the blade into the earth. He looked over every minute or two, checking on her, but the mules drew his attention away.

  The animals were antsy, stomping about nervously, their ears pulled back tight against their heads. Kenny wondered what the issue was, but pushed the thought aside. About to command the mules to pull the plow, he paused. Something itched at the corner of his mind, a nagging nuisance that bugged him.

  Absently scratching at the nearly healed wounds on his arm, Kenny looked down and realized what it was bothering the mules. Wasps. The stings on his arms had nearly healed, and after the larger misadventures of the past week, he'd nearly forgotten about the wasp nest he and the mules had unearthed. The mules hadn't forgotten a thing.

  He looped their lead on a nearby stump, and walked up and down the field, looking for any signs of the insects. As he walked across the freshly turned soil, he thought back to when he walked the field years ago with Wyatt, listening to his stories. Every field, glen, and winding path through the woods on the old homestead held some memory of Wyatt. During the short time he'd been with the family, he'd become like a second father to Kenny, teaching him everything he knew about hunting, fishing, nature, self-reliance, and the human condition. Kenny missed him greatly and wished that Wyatt could see the results of the hard work his family had done around the farm, how productive and full of life it was.

  Three years of hard work had turned it into a true homestead, capable of sustaining the family. It hardly seemed fair that Wyatt wasn't here to witness it and enjoy the results. Without him, Kenny couldn't imagine what would have happened to his father or the rest of his family. It wasn't fair that they were here and Wyatt was gone, but he knew that very little in life was fair. People who deserved to live died, and people who deserved death lived.

  He'd been bitter about Wyatt's death for a long time, but it was time to let it go. It’s what Wyatt would have wanted him to do. Floating in the Ohio River after he'd jumped overboard to avoid being beaten to death by Tweed's men, he'd had been in a dark place, bitter about human nature. After Captain O'Donnell and her crew had plucked him out of the river, he'd half wanted to jump back in, suspicious and untrusting.

  But working together with Captain O'Donnell, Tweed got what was coming to him. Self-reliance had its place, but trusting in others and having faith in the goodness of humanity, most of them at least, had allowed them to stop Tweed. Without each other, Kenny and O’Donnell might never have succeeded in killing Tweed and saving his prisoners.

  Satisfied that there were no more wasp nests in the field, Kenny took up the lead and set the mules to work. The plow left a mound of dirt behind it as it furrowed a path in the field, turning the black bottomland soil over as it went. The smell of the dark soil was earthy and rich. Every few feet the plow would kick over a large stone before continuing on, jarring his arms up to the elbows. By the end of the day his arms would be numb, but the effort would be well worth it. Wyatt had been right about the field. More than once he'd said that the real treasure was in the black soil of this field. It was rocky, but once Kenny plowed it and removed all the fieldstones, it would by far be the most productive land on the homestead.

  A few hours later, he finished plowing a quarter of the field and then unhooked the mules from the plow. It was nearing midday and the animals deserved some water and a break. He brought them down to the creek and let them drink from cool flow, and then lashed them in the shade of a tall tree so they could graze the green grass there.

  Kenny picked up his shovel and crowbar and went back to the field to clear the large fieldstones. Sweat poured down his face and his body as he toiled in the hot sun. He went down each row, dropping his crowbar down into the soil a few inches, listening for the sound of metal hitting stone. When he found a stone, he pried up the offending rock, and hauled it off to the edge of the field and added it to a growing pile of rocks there
.

  Lost in his work, Kenny lifted the crowbar and dropped it down into the earth in search of more stones.

  Clink!

  The bar hit something solid a few inches under the soil, and a hollow metallic noise rang out that was quite unlike the gentle rapping it made against a stone. Curious, Kenny sank the crowbar down again and again, feeling out the edges of the object. He stuck the crowbar underneath the object, and pushed down hard.

  A small metal box with rust covered hinges popped out of the soil. Kenny brushed the loose soil off of the box and picked it up. There was a small lock on the box, its keyhole stuffed with soil and rust. Wondering what could be inside, he set the box on one of the large fieldstones he'd uncovered and used the crowbar to hammer at the lock.

  The lock, rusty as it was, disintegrated under the first blow. Kenny opened the box and found a cloth sack inside. The sack was heavy, and when he opened the drawstrings and dumped the contents into his hands, thirty large gold coins spilled into his palm, shining bright in the sunlight.

  Kenny's mouth went dry and he felt lightness in his chest. Memories of Danny and him digging holes all over the homestead the year they arrived came back to him. Wyatt had teased them about buried treasure on the homestead. After Kenny grew bored with digging the holes, he assumed it was a game devised by Wyatt to keep him and his brother distracted from their hunger during that first hard winter. He never imagined it could be true. Wyatt had always said the real treasure was here in the rich soil of this field, and in typical Wyatt fashion, there was more than one layer of meaning to his words. He could almost hear Wyatt chuckling at the discovery.

  The coins were worth a fortune, a small treasure. There was way more than enough here to buy the plot of for his and Sarah's farm. With this, he and his family could purchase cows, pigs, a few more horses and mules, and still have enough left over to buy land for Danny when he married... if any woman would have him.

  Sarah waved at him from the shade, lifting the lunch basket high for him to see. Kenny wrapped the coins back up and stuck them in his pocket. He waved back at her and walked over to meet her. He would wait until after their picnic lunch and a long break with her in the shade to tell her about the find. If he shared the surprise with Sarah now, she would want to walk up to the house and tell his mother, who would be overjoyed to hear of it. To him, the news could wait. His time with Sarah was worth more than its weight in gold.

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