The Whole Shebang

Some succulents sounded like an old chair being sat on, other plants like a finger-popped cheek, others like bubbling water, and still others like an echoing Geiger counter. Each distinct — an aural fingerprint of individual being. Joyce and I sat in the kitchen with her laptop open, listening. She clicked and re-clicked the audio links in an article about plants communicating.

“Couldn’t it just be the sound initiated by the human?” I asked.

“No!” Joyce squinted, shook her head, took a deep breath. “The author is sure. Plants make sounds in response.” My skepticism just seemed like callousness to her. I’d always envied her passion. “Or to each other,” Joyce added. “Which means, Stanley, that they communicate. Which means plants are aware. Sentient, maybe. Intelligent. Which means” — Joyce paused, sat back in her chair — “I can’t eat them.”

“And listen to this.” She read aloud, “‘On a quiet night, farmers say they can hear corn grow.’”

Her hands were shaking. I held my breath. She’d only called me “Stanley” twice before: in our wedding vows and when her father died.

“Why has no one told me this?” she whispered. Joyce stopped eating veal at five. On our first date, she vividly described the pictures of calves confined in pens. We’d met at a PETA fur protest. I was a journalist. She was protesting — front and center, naked with “Wear Your Own Skin” written across her chest in black marker. I interviewed her, bailed her out, lent her the sweats from my trunk, and took her to dinner. “My elementary school notebooks were covered with pictures and ‘No veal this meal!’ Must have terrified my teachers.”

I fell in love with her zeal. About everything. Especially animals. After ten years with The Tribune, I felt like journalistic objectivity had turned me into a spectator of life. Joyce told me about lamb (“Slaughtered for an Easter feast!”) and pigs fenced so tightly they couldn’t turn around.

Our wedding cake was vegan, and the reception offered three different tofu entrées.

Over dessert, she told me about chickens cooped in their own poop. Over drinks at the bar, she described fish farmed in cages. Or netted and left gasping to die on sunbaked boat decks. I proposed a month later. We just celebrated twenty-two years.

And now vegetables.

“Maybe you could just eat the ones that fall to the ground?” I suggested. I’d switched from reporting to the Op/Ed page years ago so I could feel something — but always reined in.

“Has anyone put a mic to them, Stanley?” Joyce said. “They could still be alive. We don’t eat people when they fall down!”

“But you have to eat something,” I said. She was already so thin. So pale. I thought it was just the shock of turning fifty, but I wondered now if it was the waning of passion — the fuel she needed to survive.

“What makes me more important than them?” Joyce asked. “Why should they die so I can live?”

“Aren’t they stealing the sun from the sky and nutrients from the earth?” I clutched her hand and squeezed. “Everything takes something from somewhere else.” I argued without hope. I’d never been able to change her mind. But this seemed dangerous. Like a final argument.

“Everything has to be zero-sum with you,” she said and pulled her hand away.

“Well, yes,” I say. “It’s not just me. It’s…” I waved my hand to take in the world. I was ready to give up, but when she made her you’re-just-one-of-the-murderers face, I went on. “That corn doesn’t get planted if it’s not going to be eaten. That wheat doesn’t get watered and fertilized. Isn’t some life better than no life?” Wasn’t her life better than no life?

“Not necessarily,” she said.

“It’s the food chain,” I said. “We didn't invent it.”

“Well, I don't like it,” she said. “And I’m going to organize a protest.”

“For corn?” I put my head in my hands. I was afraid for her. And at the same time, aroused. “Asparagus? Collard greens?”

She nodded. “The whole shebang.”

*

Joyce wasn’t alone. Her Facebook post went viral. Groups formed. Money raised. I had to admit, she’d never looked happier. Or more beautiful. Consuming nothing but air, sun, and soil. A date was set. A sympathetic farmer found in Iowa. Cars descended from every direction. Some walked, refusing to pollute. Some rode bikes. Traffic jammed. And soon everyone was walking. Most clutching the elbow of a friend or spouse. Thin, frail airatarians lined the edges of the cornfield. Clothing hung off skeletal shoulders. They glowed with righteousness. I held Joyce’s elbow as she hobbled to the microphone. Her skin was grey, almost translucent. I wondered if she’d survive the afternoon. If she’d just flutter off in the wind. Disappear into the acres of corn.

“Thank you,” Joyce whispered, her voice cracking. The crowd quieted and leaned forward. “Listen,” she said. The people were silent. Ears turned. Eyes closed. Her final words: “Listen… to… the corn… grow.”

I swore I could hear something. A hum. An electric motor softly droning. Water bubbles. Maybe I just wanted to hear it. Wanted to believe this was all for something.

Like fireflies flickering, then flicking off, the air-atarians died slowly — one by one. I caught Joyce as her knees buckled, hugged her, felt the life float out of her, kissed her forehead, and laid her down in a furrow between the corn. Around me, friends and spouses knelt over crumpled bodies. The farmer emerged from the barn.

“Can you bury them here?” I asked. “I think they’d like to help something else grow.” The friends and spouses nodded. A field was cleared, rows dug, words spoken, bodies laid to rest. By sunset, it was all just smooth, brown earth. Friends and spouses lowered heads. In the silence, I could hear the corn keening.

Jack Powers is the author of two poetry collections: Everybody's Vaguely Familiar (2018) and Still Love (2023). His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Salamander, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. His fiction has appeared in Inkwell, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Point Science, and elsewhere.