The Farmer

She tipped the bottle and listened as a stream of liquid fell into the bath, the steam unlocking base notes of ginger and menthol and eucalyptus from the tincture. The room was dim, lit by a single, thick candle that gave off the faintest sound of a burning wick, the only reason she liked it. She turned off the tap and undressed, throwing her dirty clothes in a pile, then dragged the old bathmat to the edge of the tub. The water glistened as the tincture’s oils gathered into pools on the surface, pools that were broken as she stepped one foot in, then the other, letting the heat of the water sting her cold toes.

She stood still for a moment, shin deep, and breathed it in. The tincture’s scent began subtle and inanimate, floating around on the periphery of her nose. But then it hit. It morphed into an entity with a form and mind of its own. It became something that could home in on targets like a fly to a wound. The ginger could singe nose hairs, the eucalyptus cut through sinuses, and, if required, the menthol scraped the throat like a chisel on a dirty pan. And they all stung the eyes just a little. The bottle was a good remedy for sickness, although she wasn’t the regular kind of sick.

She lowered herself down and rested in the humid darkness. She breathed in, then out, then in again, deeper and deeper. The water was too hot and yet just right. It flushed her cheeks but kneaded her muscles and let her skeleton stretch. She allowed herself to slowly sink, the weight of her head inching down against the porcelain until the tops of her shoulders were under. Without a thought, her hands began to run over herself, mindlessly picking at dry skin or feeling for sore spots. Like every day, this one had been long, and sore spots were expected.

…

Short, winter days where the skies were grey and the air was ice gave her a deeper meaning in her work. The world matched the mood of her tasks and it felt right. The stench of summer and its gruelling heat had a similar effect, its difficult manner mimicking that of her days. Spring and autumn were harder to bear. They were easy and pleasant by nature, with sunny days and cooler nights; they left no room for the wretched to breathe in harmony with its surroundings. This made the work feel slightly odd, like wearing jeans to a funeral.

In these latter times she liked to do things differently, to blur and roughen the loveliness of the world and make it bleaker, more like her work. She couldn’t stand the smell of a flower bloom, and so she spread an ointment above her top lip that reminded her of spoiled oysters. She knew she could wear a t-shirt comfortably in the spring sunshine, yet always put on more or less, keeping discomfort rubbing at her skin all day. No rest for some.

Her farm was not particularly large, not compared to the properties on either side, but it was more than what she needed. She grew a steady crop of plums, and had done so for the past thirteen years. A small, domestic supply, usually to semi-local grocers who were willing to pay slightly more for the better soil quality she promised. Before that it was her father who had grown them, and she had helped and learned and taken over when he died. She had also taken over his other task, the one less lovely but more important, and the one which, in this beautiful spring, made her pull out her nose ointment once more.

James came to help her with the work of the plums. He was a nineteen-year-old from town with not much else to do. He worked alongside her, picking up any slack. He was quiet but a steady worker and seemed not to mind the monotony. He came four days a week, skipping Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday. On these days, she did her real work, and this Sunday was no different. She walked out of her house that morning in a thick, black flannel shirt and with a fresh slather of oyster ointment under her nose, and a good thing because it was a perfect spring day outside. Her farm shed was out in the open, a poor place really because its roller doors faced the full force of the north-easterly winds, and the slight slant of the land meant the metal walls were susceptible to shifting in heavy, ground-bogging rain. But still it stood, and so she used it.

The front of the shed was full of farm equipment for the plums. James did well to keep it tidy, putting everything back in its place just as she had asked him to on his first day. That morning she navigated it all swiftly until she found herself right up the back, moving the old, broken mower that hadn’t worked since the first year she took over from her father. When it first broke she was going to discard it, but then, when she realised she would need to hire somebody to help her with the plum farming, she thought it would be a good idea to keep something large back there, something to cover the hatch that sat below.

The hatch door was a heavy metal plate, the kind found leading to sewer drains in the street. She was strong but it took all her efforts to lift it, and she knew one day, hopefully still far away, she would need to find an alternative. She descended a ladder that was inside, careful to have a firm grip under her boots. When she was a young teenager, and her father had first shown all of this to her, she had been so eager that she had slipped and badly scraped both of her legs on the metal steps. A small scar could still be felt above her right knee, and she had yet to stand on that top rung without thinking of it.

The smell is what found her first. It was always the same: a bleached sourness that was strong enough to cut through her ointment. This didn’t bother her at all; afterall, it was the sweetness of the spring outdoors that she was trying to mask. Here, it was ok to take it all in.

The room was always dark, and she felt her way around with ease. She had made minor changes since taking over, trying to make the most of the space. Benches ran along each wall, and left the centre free for the experiments. A long, low bench sat there with several leads and cords attached, all running to various machines. There was a crate of plums sitting beside it, most of which would be gone come the end of the day. She would be re-testing a protein today, one that was supposed to target and treat the thickened cells of the eyelids.

Beside the centre bench there was another hatch, leading to another level below this one, where she stored every test subject. Every plum was freeze dried in case she needed to return to it. She tests on the plums regularly because of her ample supply; her father switched their farm from cauliflowers shortly after she was born, after he realised she had the same unnamed disease that her mother had, a disease that he became sure had killed her mother a few years later, even though the cause of her death was listed as unknown. She also stores the other subjects down that second hatch. The plums handle most of the work, but if a treatment appears promising, then her father told her to always test further before trying anything on herself. Sometimes these tests were done on small creatures, sometimes large creatures, and occasionally some very large ones, although they were harder to come by.

But today, it was just plums. They had a textural similarity to the human eye, and given the right chemical shifts were perfect for experimentation. They were also easy enough to grow in their climate. Her father had always wondered if grapes would have been the better option, and even tried to grow a few crops over the years, but none took.

She felt a heightened sense of pressure that morning as she mounted a plum on its testing stand, syringe in hand. Whatever the disease was that had caused her eyelids to thicken since birth and left her almost completely blind, was worsening, just as her mothers had right before she passed away. She feared her other organ systems were also worsening, and thought that a few days ago she had tasted a trace of blood in her mouth on waking.

The last few attempts with this protein were positive, and given the timeline that she now feared she was working with, she would have to find one of those larger creatures sooner than she initially thought. Possibly that afternoon. She made a mental note to prepare the equipment for that once the plum test was on its way.

…

Late in the evening of that same spring day, she was back in her bathroom. It had indeed been a long stretch of work, and she wouldn’t know the results of either subject until the next morning. She ran her bath as she did every night, pouring in a slosh of the homemade tincture that her father had taught her to make. He had first crafted it for her when she was young, to help combat the chest infections she seemed prone to.

She undressed, placing her dirty clothes in the same spot as always. The heat of the water gave a nice burn that night, and she poured probably too much of the tincture in so that the menthol stung worse than usual. She laid back and rested her head on the tub’s cool, white lip. She breathed in deeply, imagining the tincture cleaning her lungs, cleaning her blood, cleaning her soul. She breathed out, and wondered what results the subjects would give tomorrow.