I’ve lived in the same farming town for my whole life. In fact my family has lived here for generations, with my 3 times great grandfather on my mother’s side being the first settler in the area back in the early 1800’s. The soil in the area is said to be unusually fertile for the climate (the dry Southwestern states). The valley, surrounded by rocky hills and green mountains, is large but the population is well under 1,000. Mostly because the older families, mine included, bought up all the land years ago and won’t sell to anybody else. New families or corporations have been unable to break through, no matter how much money they offer. It’s an unspoken and unwritten rule that the land will stay in the hands of the original families. So the same families have lived in this area since it was first settled.
We take pride in our livelihood, which includes a rich mix of nourishing crops and livestock that are shipped all over the world. Our crops are greatly desired; they’re said to be the best in the world because of the fertile soil. We can get 4 crops out of our fields, where average fields yield 1-2 and lay fallow for the remainder of the year. This has made my family, and other families around us, unusually rich for farming families. We have a large, multimillion dollar home and more than enough money to go around. We frequently visit our vacation homes during the slower growing seasons and are members of several high society country clubs in the valley.
Scientists and botanists alike have taken hundreds of samples of our soil to try and find out what makes it so fertile and crop-sustaining. They think if they can unlock the secret ingredient in our soil, they can apply it to other soil and end world hunger. But no matter how many samples they take, they never can find out what makes our soil so special. I, however, don’t need samples to know why the ground can grow 4 times the average amount of crops. I know why the crops are so desired and sought after. But it’s not something that can be replicated. It’s also something I’m not supposed to share with anybody outside of the valley.
The fields that make up our almost 2,000 square mile valley are connected by a closed network of irrigation ditches that line the perimeter. These ditches are approximately 5 feet deep and 4 feet wide and are simple dirt ditches. At the corner of each property are metal gates that can be closed so as to water the fields and sustain the crops. As I said before, the ditch system is closed, meaning there is no opening besides the one that gushes water from the lake to fill the ditches. The water slowly seeps into the dirt sides of the ditches in order to water the fields.
Once a week, usually on Saturdays, the ditches are filled with water for an entire day. On these days, the children in the area go swimming in the ditches to cool off while their crops are being watered. The water is fast moving and dangerous, but mid-western farm kids are tough. Usually. But sometimes, once in a while, a kid who isn’t as large as the others, or maybe one who isn’t a strong swimmer, goes missing. It’s assumed that they drowned. But it can never be proven. You see, not a single body of the 400 children that have drowned in these ditches over the last 100 years has ever been found.
These incidences happen quite frequently, at least one per growing season. Making the count 4 per year, every year. But parents keep letting their children swim in the ditches. My mom never let me swim in the ditches, though. My family is the only family in the whole valley that doesn’t swim in the ditches on Saturdays. I was bitter about it for my entire childhood. The neighbor kids could always be seen happily swimming in the ditches, throwing mud at each other and sunbathing afterwards. The neighbors to our right, the Hansens, had 15 children. To you, this amount might seem strange, but that’s how all the families in the area are. More children meant more help with harvesting. We do not allow outsiders to help us harvest and process the crops, we do all the work ourselves.
I was 14 at this time and was the youngest child in my family. One of my only friends was one of the Hansen boys. He was 15. I don’t want to tell you his name. But he was small for his age. He was weak and feeble and his dad was determined to toughen him up. He would often beat on his son, more than a father ought to if you asked me.
He had bad teeth, something about being diabetic and his teeth being the consistency of clay. So they got his teeth capped in gold, so that he could eat and hopefully gain some weight. The expense was no problem, though. The Hansen’s were almost as rich as my family. His hair was gold too. The color of summer wheat, ready to be reaped, threshed, and winnowed.
Me and the Hansen boy were friends, but like I said, my mom didn’t let me swim in the ditches with the other children. So instead, me and the boy would roam the corn and potato fields together. It was nice then. I think he was what you would call a “first love.” He was kind to me, and often watched out for me even though I was stronger than him. I look back with fondness on those times, but as I’ve gotten older, I think I’ve begun to understand the dark truth that surrounds our families, and more importantly, this valley and the crops we grow.
Sometime time a couple summers ago, about two months after the neighbor boy that had gold crowned teeth and golden hair had drowned in the ditches, his body (unsurprisingly) still hadn’t been found. The frenzy to find him had ended after only a few days, and the community returned to their normal lives. I cried only once, and was scolded by my mother afterwards. “It’s the circle of life,” she told me. “His life force now uplifts and sustains us.” I never understood that phrase. But that’s what we said when anybody went missing in the ditches. “Their life force now uplifts and sustains us.”
One night that same summer, my mom had fixed some sweet corn from our crop and a pork loin from our stock house for dinner on a cool evening. Sweet corn was my favorite, and when dinner time came I greedily dug in with the rest of my family gathered around the dinner table. But when I bit into the corn, my tooth fell on something hard as a rock! I spit out a golden kernel and began to examine it, but my mom snatched it from my palm and threw it down the drain. I was confused at her sudden movement and brashness, but said nothing. We weren’t allowed to speak at the dinner table.
Later that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the hard, golden kernel. The way my mother reacted made me think it was something more than just a corn kernel. So, I disassembled the sink at 2 in the morning to retrieve the thing she had thrown down there. After a few hours, I found it among food waste and mildew.
I pulled out a gold crowned tooth and stared at the shiny thing in shock. I remember it had been growing straight from the cob. It had looked exactly like a sweet, golden kernel, but it was in fact a gold capped tooth. It was the neighbor boy’s tooth. My mother had thrown away the only discovered piece of a drowned child in community history. And she had known what she was doing.
“Shouldn’t we tell somebody? Like the Sheriff or something?” I asked her frantically the next morning at the breakfast table when I confronted her with the tooth. She, as well as all of my older siblings and my father, looked back at me with a twinge of regret.
They knew something that I didn’t, and being the youngest in the family, I had never liked being out of the loop. If I had known what I would learn that night I would have left the tooth in the sink drain. I wish they had left me out of it.
She went on to apologize to me. When she was preparing the food, she hadn’t noticed the golden tooth that grew from the cob, or else she would’ve removed it. She told me that usually, families wait until their children turn 18 to tell them the secrets of the valley we inhabited. But because I had found what she called an “undissolved portion,” I would get to learn a little early.
She explained that when our ancestors discovered this land, it was not as fertile as it is now. The founder of this town, who is a member of my own family tree, brought the first irrigation system in the territory. Before the system was initiated, the land was dry and arid. When he dug the ditches with his neighbors and irrigated the land, things began to grow. But even then, it wasn’t as fertile as it is now. This phenomenon of fast growing crops that allowed for 4 season of harvesting began when my 3 times great grandfather’s own daughter drowned in the irrigation ditch a few years after they had been dug. But my family had pressed forward, through their sadness.
The next season’s crops grew tall and strong and faster than usual though. They thought it was a blessing from God; apologizing for taking their child. But my ancestors soon found out it wasn’t an apology. It was thanks for their sacrifice. They found their dead daughters pinky toe in a pea pod from their field, just like the neighbor boy’s tooth I had found. The disassembled body parts had grown apart of the crop.
The drowned children were a sacrifice for the abundance in crops. And even after all of that, my family had stayed in this valley. And so did all the rest of the families. Swimming in the ditches became a tradition that all families followed except the founders family. Except for my family.
Families in the valley let their children swim because it’s just what is done. Families in the valley let their children drown because their dissolved bodies nourish the crops and create soil that can sustain 4 seasons of rich fruits and vegetables. They sacrifice their children for the abundance.
There’s something in the water.
Author: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/973ibc/theres_something_in_the_water/
Image: https://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=13537
