The Everglades Drainage District sold twenty thousand acres of drained peat as the richest farmland in America. They were not wrong about the soil. They just didn't mention what happened when peat dries out and meets air for the first time in five thousand years.

It burns. Underground. Without flame. Without sound. Without any visible sign that would satisfy a man who required fire to look like fire.

The canal crews who dug those channels lived on the spoil banks above them. The company sent letters when they died. The letters said what letters say.

"The Spoil Bank"

by Roz Stevens