The Futility of Food and Fulfillment
Author's note: I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit. T for some language. This is for the LJ 60 prompts in 60 days: food.
Rachel bit her lip and blinked rapidly. It didn't count as crying unless the tears left her eyes; her eyes were just watery. Damn. She felt a tear roll down a not-so-clean cheek, and brushed it away with a swipe of her upper arm. Hopefully her sleeve was cleanish.
Rachel rocked back on her heels and surveyed the destruction in front of her. Her zucchini bushes, the seeds she had traded a pre-Blackout six-pack for months ago; the seedlings she had tended throughout the dreary, rainy spring in their little Dixie-cup planters; the sprouts she had dutifully planted after the chance for frost had past. The bushes that were supposed to yield a bumper-crop over the summer – a bumper-crop that would feed her children through the summer and she was going to learn to can, to feed them throughout the winter too. Her zucchini bushes were dead.
Her zucchini bushes were dead. Some nasty beetles had gnawed their way through the main stalk of all of her zucchini bushes, leaving the leaves and the first small crop of green summer squash to wither and die. Now how was she supposed to feed Charlie and Danny? She had never grown a garden before, how was she supposed to know that there were squash-killing beetles around. What could she do to prevent this from happening in the future?
After The Blackout, they had gone as far from Chicago as their little red wagons could take them, and settled in a nice little town. Rachel and Ben had helped the townsfolk and Farmer Johnson harvest as much of his corn as they possibly could – a backbreaking, tedious endeavor, one that Rachel knew would not be easily replicated. For Farmer Johnson had grown Monsanto corn.
Rachel wasn't against GMOs, or the progress of science in general, by any stretch of the imagination, but at times, when looking at the scrawny, dirty stranger in the mirror, or at her children in their worn and ill-fitting clothes, she really wished she had been a Luddite. Rachel knew that Charlie and Danny weren't going to starve this winter. Ben had been an Eagle Scout, and pulled some trap-making skills out of the deep recesses of his mind. And over the winter Ben – and Grace via Ben's homebrew computer – had learned medieval irrigation. Ben had spearheaded the town's search for heirloom seeds and built an irrigation system to support their growth. He was a town hero, and they wouldn't let a hero's children starve.
Rachel sat up from her heels and started attacking the straggly weeds invading her garden-plot. Mostly they were the most insidious of the post-Blackout plant pests – grass, Kentucky Bluegrass, lawn grass. Rachel ripped handful after handful of useless blades from her garden-plot. Her squash might be toast, but her beans might still yield. And she needed to do something to support her family. To feed her babies.
Rachel had gone on scavenging missions with some of the townsfolk to larger mostly-deserted towns in the area, but they had stopped notifying her of when they were going. Rachel strongly suspected Ben had told the townsfolk that the missions were 'too much for her,' and if the town hero requested his wife be pampered, then pampered she would be.
By the time Rachel had worked out her useless rage in a useful manner, she had accumulated a large pile of grass, noxious weeds, and foreign seedlings. Rachel gathered an armful of the vegetation and carried it through the small town to the community compost-bin. On her way, she passed Charlie and Danny, and the other children of the town, gathered on the front porch of Ms. Susan. Ms. Susan was telling the children an evening story. The town supported Ms. Susan and her childcare, with the parents in the town bearing the onus of said support. Ben made sure to give her a sizable fraction of his traps' catch, guilty for the added burden of Danny's ill health. Danny wasn't as frail as Before, but his constitution was never as robust as the other children's or Charlie's. This conscientious support couldn't help but further boost Ben's saintly reputation in the community. If only they knew what he had done…
Maybe that's what Rachel could do to feel useful. She could get more involved in the crèche system. Rachel discarded the idea. She had had little enough patience for the college students she TA'ed, and she doubted she'd have more for toddlers who weren't hers. Even her own daughter got on her nerves frequently. Like the time Charlie spilled her milk, and instead of asking for grown-up help, had made an even bigger mess trying to clean it up "all by herself." Rachel had to work hard to restrain herself from shouting at her daughter. That milk was precious – organic, BGH-free, antibiotic-free, local, nutritionally-dense and un-pasteurized – the first four qualities would have made Rachel shell out the big bucks pre-Blackout, the last, run screaming, but they were now all functionally irrelevant. How things changed.
Rachel deposited her grass on the community compost-bin and walked back to her garden, eyeing a neighbor's dandelion patch with jealously. Dandelion greens could be bitter, but, if picked young enough, the leaves weren't dissimilar to arugula. Maybe she should try her hand at something easy, like dandelions. Yeah, sure, dandelion leaves, borrowed "glory", and a totally fucked up world; just what she wanted to bequeath to her children.
As Rachel carried the last armful of weeds across town, she saw the oblivious fireflies come out and begin their courtship lightshow. She wanted to shout at them, to warn them about the futility of it all, but alas, she spoke no firefly, and she didn't want the townsfolk to think she was even more cracked than Ben made her out to be. She plopped the last load onto the bin and turned the compost with the pitchfork. She brushed one stray blade of grass off of her shirt and walked back to Ms. Susan's, it was time for bed.
After minimal fussing, Charlie skipped off in front of Rachel, trying to catch a firefly, and Rachel walked 'home', Danny's little hand in hers. Growing enough food to feel useful was a futile endeavor. She'd never be useful again.
Author's Note: Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated :)