The Reject Pile: Split-Pea

The slow chirp of rabbit-sized crickets carried far on the dusty cough of wind. It stumbled like a dying man over the barren landscape, kicking up dust that glowed in the sick yellow light of a cancerous half-moon. The breeze broke on the base of the gently rolled hill that rose above the rest of the flatland around it. It was crowned by a ragged copse of trees. 

These pine corpses sheltered the two men. Though there was a chill, they tended no fire. One slept. The cookware strapped all over his wiry, old body clattered with each ragged snore. The other man lay on the edge of the treeline, close by. His good eye was jammed into a spyglass. The index finger of the hand that did not hold the spyglass was jammed into his good ear to muffle his brother’s snores. Far below, just visible in the anemic light, was a single, huge square of green life. He intended to plot, but the snoring drowned his machinations.

TING!

With a deft flick of his bony wrist, Lum brought his hand down with a satisfying smack on Abner’s pot helmet, startling the wrinkled little man awake with a sudden snort.

“Hey! What was that for?” Abner asked.

 “Your damn pots were clanking again, dunderhead! We need to be quiet or they’ll hear us down there,” Lum hissed.

Abner glared at Lum, rubbing his pan with the palm of one leathery hand. Lum paid his brother’s evil eye no mind. He returned to squinting through the rusted spyglass, careful to keep his own cookware quiet. The fields and orchards of food stretched out below him, making his stomach rumble. It was all destined for the surrounding villages and Big City’s marketplace. The edges of the Green Acre were fenced in by storage containers stacked two high. Lum’s vantage point let him see over them. Border guards paced the edges of the square, four to a side outside the fence, two to a side inside. In the center of the vegetation stood the squat, shadowy structures of the bunkhouses and outbuildings, which housed the workers and equipment. The bunkhouses’ windows were lit with a warm amber light that spread across the vegetables and foliage.

“Looks like nobody heard you,” Lum whispered.

“Well, that’s nice, I suppose,” Abner grumbled, sitting up. “Have they turned out the lights yet?”

“Not yet.” Lum shuffled roughly through the deep pocket of his tattered trousers. He produced a dented pocket watch. Snapping it open, he took his eye from the bunkhouses to check the time. 12:30.

 “Christmas Jimminy, they should be out by now,” he said, shoving his eye back in the spyglass. “Every Green Acre I’ve ever seen shuts down early. Farmers like that early to bed, early to rise business. What’s happening down there?”

 Abner crawled his way up next to Lum and looked down at the Green Acre. He had never seen one before. The green glimmered, alive and thriving in a world that knew only rot for miles and miles.

 “Shoot, that’s a lot of food,” Abner mumbled. As if to reply, his stomach let out a lurching rumble. His purple tongue licked at his few remaining teeth.

 “Lum, let’s have supper,” he said. 

His brother scoffed without looking up from the spyglass.

“We can’t light a fire, dunderhead; they’ll see it,” Lum hissed.

“We can eat it cold; I’m gonna starve if we have to wait much longer.”

 Abner scooted back over to his bedroll and reached into the knapsack that served as his pillow. The cans inside tinkled lightly as he fingered through them, pulling each one out and looking at it before furrowing his brow and placing it in the dirt at his side.

 “Would you be quiet?” Lum spat.

“I know, I know,” Abner grumbled. He pulled out another can. His face lit up when he turned the label up to the moonlight.

 “Lum, we got Split-Pea!”

“What?” Lum said.

   “Split Pea!”

     “What’s that?”

    “Soup!”

     “Made out of peas?”

    “Split Peas!”

     Lum snorted. “How do you split a pea, dunderhead?”

     “I don’t know. They used to be able to split an atom. Why can’t they split a pea?”

     “Well, look what happened when they did that,” said Lum, waving his hand at the barren wasteland around them. “Nothing but radioactive rubble! Now we just got these little squares o’green, barely enough to feed anyone! Nu-uh, split stuff ain’t no good for nobody, I don’t want it.”

   “Shoot, Lum, fine, but I’m having it,” Abner said, producing a rusted can opener from his can bag.

 “Don’t you open that, Abner, it’ll be loud and they might hear us!” Lum said.

   “You’re nuts,” Abner replied. He wiped the can opener on the leg of his trousers and prepared to bite into the lid of the split pea soup.

   “Abner, I’m warning you, quit it!” 

   There was heat behind Lum’s words, and Abner stopped and looked up. Lum had turned away from the spyglass now and was staring at his brother with a bladed look, the few teeth he had gritted tight in his swollen gums. Abner looked back, the can opener hovering just above the rusty, dented container of Split Pea soup. For a moment, it seemed as though Abner was going to put it away. Just for a moment, and then it passed.

 “I’m hungry, you rat bastard,” Abner said instead, and bit the opener into the tin of the can, eliciting a wet popping sound along with the light crinkle of thin aluminum. It was the loudest noise Lum had ever heard.

“You weak little crickle, I’ll kill you!” Lum thundered, lunging at Abner. He crashed into his brother with a cacaphony of pans. Both men fell in a puff of dust as they struggled. 

TING!

CLANG!

POP!

POW!

Each blow was a wild rimshot. The two men were freakish percussionists, putting on a bastardized jazz show for the wasteland. Lum managed to scramble on top of his brother. The soup flew from Abner’s hand as Lum pinned him. It rolled away, dribbling its sticky green contents into the sand.

   “You never was a good brother, Lum!” Abner bellowed. He broke an arm free and swung, landing a sucker punch to Lum’s jaw that sent him into the dust. Abner picked himself up off the ground and stood over his brother. Lum was face down in the dirt, his leg twitching like a dying cricket.

   “Mama always said you’d leads me nowhere good,” he panted, picking up the can opener from where it had skittered a few feet away in the struggle.

 “She was right,” Abner continued, “Can’t even eat without your say-so. That’s no way for a man to live, and I ain’t gonna do it no more.” 

Abner raised the can opener, its jagged blade gleaming through the specks of rust in the moonlight.

“Now, Abner’s gonna have his way,” Abner whispered, “Abner’s gonna have-“ 

Before he could get the last words out, Lum sprang to his knees and threw himself into Abner’s legs, toppling him. In his fist, he clutched the can of split-pea soup, its viscous green filling dripping over his fingers. He body-slammed Abner, who tried to buck his brother off. Lum whipped the can of soup across Abner’s chin, and his brother went limp. The can opener fell from Abner’s hand as he looked up at his brother in dazed confusion.

“You want the soup, Abner?” Lum asked, holding the can high above his head. It was still mostly full, and heavy.

“You want some split-pea? Well, you can have it!”

    Lum brought the can down on Abner’s face with a solid clunk. Then he raised it, and did so again. The clunk became a crunch. Lum raised the can and brought it down again, and again. Each one came faster and faster. Each crunching clunk became more and more moist.

   “Split pea!” Lum screamed, his pitch crackling into higher and higher registers as he pulverized Abner’s skull with the can. Red and green and pink sprayed into the wasted night. Lum’s screams echoed in the ether. When he finally stopped, the can was a dented, contorted mess, and Abner’s face was an indented purée– soup in a bowl. Lum was sweating, breathing so hard he thought he might pass out. He gripped the can of soup tight enough that his fist shook.

Rocks being kicked loose behind him pricked Lum’s ears. His head twitched around on his neck, and he saw that he was no longer alone.

   “Who are you?” 

   The Silhouette said nothing. Lum noticed that it gripped a shovel in its hands. 

“It was self-defense,” Lum said. He waved the can around wildly. The silhouette said nothing.

“I ain’t no sickbrain, he tried to kill me,” Lum continued.

The silhouette raised the shovel above its head.

“Hold on now, I said I ain’t no sickbrain,” Lum said, his voice unraveling. He was frozen, straddling his brother’s corpse and too frightened to move. 

“It was self-defense! I’ll come peaceable! I ain’t no Sickbrain!”

The silhouette stood with the light. Lum could make out no discernible features. Yet, he knew that it was grinning at him. The wind crawled up the hill. Lum was downwind of the silhouette. The scent it carried was death.

“W- would you like some Split Pea Soup?” Lum whispered, holding the can toward the silhouette.

   The shovel came down hard on Lum’s skull. It made a noise like a wet nut being cracked. Lum’s leg twitched in the dust for real this time. The silhouette brought the shovel down again, and it stopped. 

The crickets trilled. A dry death rattle of a wind pulled itself over the rocky hills. Under the feverish moon, the silhouette dragged Lum and then Abner to the wagon waiting at the bottom of the hill.