The day was overcast, with the sunlight occasionally breaking through the gray clouds. The breeze still carried the scent of the morning's rain. I thought it was perfect, a good omen that even Mother Earth had wanted to help me clean away the blood.
The sunlight touched my cheeks and I felt in it Mother's caress, her praise at a plan beautifully executed. It had been several days since I had been planting new vegetable seeds in my garden when I heard Mother's voice in the rustling leaves,
"Weeds! Weeds will destroy the gardens!"
It was then that my nephew, in all his wretchedness came crashing into the flower beds, crushing the roses, mutilating their soft heads with his brutal stomping feet. I remained kneeling in the damp earth, horrorstruck, then a moment later shot across the yard to grab Nathan by his shirt collar, dragging him inside, yelling all the while, immune to his frightened tears.
I understood Mother Nature was calling me to defend her children; my fury at the boy could only be a fraction of hers. The rage did not abate when my sister made the three-year-old mutter
"I'm sorry Auntie Pam,"
it did not change even when she bought me new flowers in apology. Didn't she understand there was no replacement for the buds I had pruned since their seeding? These pathetic acts only reinforced the knowledge of my duty that I had to rid the place of weeds to ensure the success of the gardens.
My sister would be thankful that I was ridding her of her little weed and if she felt a bit sorrowful I would just get her a new child as easily as she replaced Mother Nature's. It wasn't the first time I had killed to protect the gardens, many times I was forced to shoot a squirrel, or trap rabbits sneaking under the wood fences all trying to harvest what was not theirs. The scent of their dead must have lingered because no more animals strayed into the yard.
Mother felt the loss of these creatures because they too are a part of nature, but it is the way of things, to protect what cannot protect itself and Mother understood that. The boy she felt no regret for. The animals had at least come to feed themselves; he had come to destroy, so when I trapped him as good as any stupid animal she did not protest.
She did not even moan in the wind as I slit his throat. His eyes remained open, a scream etched on his face even in death. I carried his body back to the house from the forest, hidden in the dark of a moonless night, guided only by the faint light of stars and then to the side of the yard where I had dug a grave.
After covering him with dirt, I wet down the earth with the garden house and tilled the grave reading it for its planting. I thought it very fitting Nathan should end up fertilizer to the new roses his mother had bought me. The authorities didn't know what to make of the ragged blood stained clothes that the search teams found in the forest, only that a three year old boy could not loose as much blood as was evident at the scene of the crime and survive.
All they knew was he was dead and that any evidence had been washed away in the storm. The funeral was a week later. The tiny, empty coffin was slowly lowered into the Earth, and my sister with a rose she had cut this morning, gently laid the bloom on the casket. Mother laughed at this, her thunderous amusement at the irony encouraging a few giggles from myself, but I covered my mouth and everyone assumed I was sobbing.