by Sophie Moss
When he’d purchased this property to expand his father’s bare-bones operation six months ago, along with a bunch of used equipment from another farmer whose operation had folded, he’d known it was a risk. Most oyster farms failed within a few years. It took a considerable amount of upfront capital, the stamina to endure long hours working outside in extreme temperatures, and the stomach to roll with the mistakes you would inevitably make by growing a crop in an environment that was constantly changing.
But most farms didn’t have what he had. His father’s resistance to change might drive him crazy, but he was a hell of a waterman. He knew how to run a boat, how to manage a crew, how to navigate these waters, and how to protect the crop that was down there. And, despite what he said, he cared about what he did.
“Go easy on the two guys going out with you today,” Ryan said, as the van pulled to a stop in front of the shed. “It’s their first day and neither of them have much boating experience.”
“Better be fast learners,” Coop said.
Ryan gave his father a sideways look.
“I’ll go easy on ’em.” Coop offered his son a craggy smile. “As long as they pull their weight.”
Ryan shook his head. His father wasn’t going to go easy on any of these veterans. He would push them, push them hard, and probably forget to thank them for it at the end of the day. But for some reason they would show up the next day, determined to impress the leathery old man of few words who led by example. He knew, because he’d grown up desperately trying to do the same thing.
Watching the veterans file out of the van, he hoped he’d chosen the right two guys to go out on the boat. He’d given a lot of thought to each person and which job they would be taking on. He’d poured over every application and consulted his decisions with Will and Colin. He was fairly certain he’d made the right decision about everyone.
Everyone except for one.
Izzy was the last to get out of the van. Something inside him twisted at the sight of her. Even in an oversized T-shirt and running shorts, she was stunning. Her golden eyes were guarded, wary, as they swept over the property.
He knew she didn’t want to be here. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to work on the farm—and he still didn’t know what that was about—she was the only one who hadn’t applied to this program. The only reason she was here was because she’d gotten into some trouble with the law recently, and the judge who’d presided over her sentencing hearing had granted her probation in exchange for her enrollment in this program.
Ryan had some misgivings about the arrangement, but Izzy’s lawyers must have made a pretty compelling argument on her behalf for Colin and Will to pass over hundreds of other applications to let her in.
He hoped his friends knew what they were doing. He had to trust that they did. Seven of the eleven veterans in this program were working for him, which meant that this farm and his nonprofit were the backbone of the employment structure. He might not know how to help these veterans heal, but he did know how to get people excited about working on the Bay. His friends were counting on him. His father was counting on him. He wasn’t going to let them down.
He walked out and smiled. “Welcome to Pearl Cove Oysters.”
Three
This doesn’t look like any kind of farm I’ve ever been to,” one of the guys said, looking around.
No, Izzy thought, it didn’t. A rustic shed with faded, chipping green paint led to a wooden pier, where a few workboats were tied to the pilings. Another larger structure—white with a red tin roof—lay to the left. Between the two structures was a smattering of picnic tables, and beyond them, one of the most beautiful views she’d ever seen.
“Most of the actual farming takes place out on the water,” Ryan explained. “We lease acreage from the state, where our oysters grow in cages that sit on the bottom. We pull the cages up periodically to wash and re-sort the oysters until they’re big enough to sell. Harvest starts at daybreak, as soon as the sun crests the horizon.” He glanced over his shoulder at the sky, where the faintest hint of gold was beginning to melt through the blue. “Matt and Wesley, the two of you will be going out on the boat with my father. Dad?”
The crusty, middle-aged man leaning against the shed eyed the two men who stepped forward. He looked them each up and down, then nodded toward the bed of a beat-up Ford truck parked a few yards away. “Find a pair of boots and bibs that fit, and meet me on the dock.” Without another word, he turned and left.
The two men scrambled over to the truck, as if they’d been given an order by a four–star general.
“My father’s not one for small talk,” Ryan explained. “Most people call him Coop. He’ll answer to that, or Cooper, or Captain. Just don’t ask him too many questions until he’s finished his second cup of coffee or he might push you over the side of the boat and say it was an accident.”
Izzy watched Matt and Wesley each grab what looked to be a pair of orange rubber overalls from the bed of the truck, pull them on over their clothes, and awkwardly adjust the stretchy shoulder straps until they were snug.
She wished she were going out on the boat. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to ask any questions. She just wanted to put her head down, do her work, and get through the rest of the week without drawing any more attention to herself.
“Everyone will get a chance to go out on the water at some point,” Ryan said, as if reading her thoughts, “but Matt and Wesley will be the main boat crew.”
The two men traded their sneakers for a pair of rubber boots and then disappeared into the shed, leaving the remaining five vets in the driveway.
“I thought you were only supposed to eat oysters in the fall and winter,” one of the guys said.
“That’s true for wild oysters,” Ryan said. “Wild oysters spawn when the water temperature warms and they use up most of their energy to reproduce, so they’re stringy and not very tasty in the spring and summer. Most farmed oysters are selectively bred to have an extra set of chromosomes, which makes them infertile. Since they don’t have to waste any energy on reproduction, they grow faster than wild oysters and you can eat them all year round.”
“Which means you can sell them all year round,” the guy standing beside Izzy said.
“That’s right,” Ryan said, meeting the eyes of the man in his late-twenties with two prosthetic legs who’d just spoken. “Unfortunately, right now, we only have one client—another oyster farmer who runs a much bigger operation a few miles south of here. He’s been buying our oysters and passing them off as his own when he can’t meet the demands of his orders. But I’m hoping that you, Paul, can help us change that.”
Paul looked back at him, surprised.
“My father’s been”—he paused, searching for the right word—“resistant to the idea of building a brand and marketing himself. But he says he’ll go along with it as long as he doesn’t have to do any of the actual self-promotion. I understand that you studied marketing in college.”
“That’s right,” Paul said slowly.
“And you have some experience in website and graphic design?”
He nodded.
“You’re familiar with all the latest social media platforms and how to use them?”
“Of course.”
“Good. We’ll talk more later, but you’re head of marketing.”
Paul blinked. “Seriously?”
Ryan nodded.
“Wow.” Paul grinned. “Cool.”
Ryan turned to face the rest of the group. “We’ll head out to the dock in a few minutes, but just to give you a sense of what you’re looking at now…” He patted the side of the shed behind him. “Most of the cleaning, sorting, bagging and processing of the oysters gets done in here. Over there,” he said, pointing toward the larger, newer structure on the other side of the picnic tables, “is the environmental center where Hailey and Ethan will be working.”
Hailey and Ethan nodded, eyeing the building with interest.
<
br /> “And behind us,” Ryan finished, pointing across the yard, “is the office.”
Everyone turned, taking in the simple but inviting two-story house with a screened-in porch that hugged a thin grove of pine trees.
“The inside could use a paint job and we don’t have much furniture, but there’s a full-sized kitchen, two bathrooms, Wi-Fi, and the best part—it’s air conditioned.”
“Beats a cubicle in a city,” a redheaded man who looked to be in his early-thirties commented.
Ryan smiled. “I’m glad you think so, Jeff.” He waited until the man had turned around to face him. “As our operations manager, you’ll be spending most of your time in there.”
Jeff’s eyebrows shot up. “Operations manager?”
Ryan nodded. “Organization is not my strong suit—or my father’s. I’m counting on you to set up a system for every aspect of how this farm functions. I need you to analyze the day-to-day operations, from the biggest picture to the smallest detail. Anything you see that’s not operating efficiently, fix it. I’ve already set up a meeting for you with our bookkeeper for this afternoon. I want you to sit down with her and take a good, hard look at our finances. See what we’re spending our money on and how we can better manage our resources.”
Jeff puffed out his chest. “I know how to get things in order.”
“That’s what I heard,” Ryan said, smiling. “You and Paul each have an office on the first floor. There’s not much in either of them yet but a desk and a laptop, but what we lack in furniture, we make up for with the view.”
Nodding for everyone to follow him into the shed, he led them straight through a dark, mostly empty room, which housed a large metal machine in the shape of a cylinder with holes in it that emptied onto a conveyer belt, a rudimentary washing system with hoses that hung down from the ceiling, and two large white boards on the walls filled with markings and numbers that looked like some kind of complex tracking system.
Izzy was the last to step out of the shed and onto the dock. The sun had crested the horizon, revealing a clear, cloudless blue sky. The larger workboat holding the three men had already pulled away and was cutting a slow path toward the marshy shoreline across the channel.
There were a few other workboats out on the water, filled with cages she imagined would be used to catch different kinds of seafood. She wondered if the men behind the wheels all looked like Ryan’s father—weathered and salt-crusted, their faces lined and leathery from decades of working in the sun.
Or if any of them looked like Ryan.
Ryan was definitely not leathery.
Tucking that observation away, because she didn’t want to think about her boss in that way—she didn’t want to think about any man in that way ever again—she trailed after the others to where two aboveground troughs sat at the edge of the pier. Both were hooked up to a sophisticated system of PVC piping, and she could hear the sound of running water as she made her way closer. It looked like some kind of elaborate science experiment.
“As I mentioned last night, we purchase our oysters as seeds from a hatchery,” Ryan said, reaching into one of the troughs and scooping up a handful of creatures that were barely the size of a pinky nail. “These are our newest crop of baby oysters.”
Hailey leaned closer, her eyes widening. “Those are oysters?”
Ryan nodded. “Go ahead. You can touch them.”
Hailey reached in hesitantly, pulled out a handful of baby oysters, and marveled at how small they were in her palm.
“Oysters are filter feeders,” Ryan explained. “They purify the water while they’re eating it, filtering out any pollutants or harmful nutrients from their food source—which is mostly algae and phytoplankton—before releasing it back out into the Bay. It’s estimated that a single adult oyster can filter about fifty gallons of water a day.”
“Fifty gallons?” Hailey echoed, gazing down at the specks on her fingers in awe.
Ryan nodded. “The Chesapeake Bay used to be filled with so many oysters that they could filter the entire body of water in a matter of days. Now, these waters are so polluted and the oyster population is so depleted, it would take over a year to complete that process.”
Izzy looked over his shoulder, at the tilted pilings at the end of the pier where several cormorants and seagulls were drying their wings. Beyond them, there was nothing but open water, the glittering sunlit surface stretching on for miles. It was hard to believe there could be anything dirty or damaged about this place. But she should know, better than anyone, that surfaces could lie. The truth was always a few layers deeper, hidden from sight.
“Every oyster we put into the Bay is purifying it of toxins, making the water cleaner and safer for fish, crabs, and other underwater life.” Ryan set the handful of baby oysters back into the trough. “Once they go out to the lease, we can’t track their growth and check for signs of mortality like we can when they’re in the nursery, which is why caring for the baby oysters is one of the most important jobs at the farm.”
Walking across the pier to a small wooden box, he switched off the electricity, cutting off the flow of water to the tanks. “Izzy, could you hand me that hose?” He nodded toward the hose lying by her feet.
She picked it up and handed it to him.
Walking over to the tank, Ryan opened a valve, letting the water drain out. “We drain and clean the tanks twice a day,” he explained, spraying at the brown and green gunk congealed to the inside walls. “They can take a pretty heavy blast, just don’t spray so hard that the oysters bounce out of the buckets. We don’t want to lose any of them.”
He released the nozzle and looked up at her. “Think you’ve got the hang of it?”
Izzy stared back at him. Got the hang of what…how to use a hose?
“You’ll be spending most of the summer helping me with the nursery,” Ryan clarified. “Could you finish up while I get everyone else settled into their jobs?”
Izzy looked down at the brown gunk congealed to the oysters as a sinking feeling formed in the pit of her stomach. “What exactly is this that I’m cleaning?”
“Well, like I said, oysters are filter feeders, so they have to let out what they filter in.”
“So…it’s crap.”
“Yes,” he admitted, giving her another one of those sheepish smiles. “Basically.”
Fantastic, she thought. Paul got to be the head of marketing. Jeff got to be the operations manager. Hailey and Ethan got to play around in the environmental center, because, really, how much work could that be? And she got to spend her time washing oyster poop out of a tank.
Reaching for the hose, she gritted her teeth. “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Ryan walked back out to the pier to check on Izzy. He found her looping the hose around one of the pilings. “All finished?”
She glanced up and nodded.
He walked over to the tanks and inspected her work. He made a few minor adjustments to some of the pipes, then motioned for her to come closer. Unscrewing the L-shaped portion of one of the PVC pipes, he held it up so she could see the small screen still filled with algae. “Next time, take these off and give the screens a really good scrub.”
“Okay.”
Ryan waited for her to ask a question or make a comment about the process, but she just stood there, staring back at him, as if she were awaiting her next order. He felt a prick of disappointment. He hadn’t expected her to jump for joy at the task of cleaning the upwellers, but most people thought the baby oysters were pretty cool. He’d given her one of the most interesting jobs at the farm and she didn’t seem to care at all.
He wasn’t used to people not caring.
Fitting the pipe back into place, he tried not to let it bother him. Logically, he knew he wouldn’t be able to convert every new employee into a glorified oyster nerd, but he’d hoped they’d be able to get into it, at least a little bit.
Maybe he just needed t
o give her some time.
“Ready to see the next step in the process?” he asked, doing his best to stay upbeat.
“Sure,” she said, without an ounce of enthusiasm.
He nodded for her to follow him to the end of the pier, where the rest of the oysters were growing in a larger upwelling system suspended beneath a floating dock. The tide was still relatively low and the floating dock was a few feet below the pier. He stepped down and turned, offering her a hand. She ignored it, jumping down on her own, and immediately took a step in the opposite direction.
Ryan frowned, studying her across the small platform. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this effect on a woman. Maybe he’d gotten a little spoiled over the years, but most women had a tendency to gravitate toward him, rather than away.
Was it something about him, specifically, that turned her off? Or was it men in general?
Lifting the wooden cover to expose the first row of submerged buckets, he gave her a quick run down of the system. “This is basically a larger version of what’s happening in the tanks on the pier. We’re still pumping water up, through the oysters, and back out again, but the force of the tide and the current increases the pressure of the water.”
He knelt down and pulled out a handful of oysters that were twice the size of the ones in the tanks on the pier. “It’s all about maximizing the rate of water flow, so they grow as fast as possible. The sooner we can get them to about a half inch in size, the sooner we can get them out to the lease.”
Izzy nodded, and Ryan dropped the oysters back into the water.
“Could you hand me those hooks?” he asked, pointing to the two metal hooks he’d set on the end of the pier.
She handed them over.
He showed her how to feed each hook through the sides of the bucket, then handed one to her. “We’re going to pull it up together,” he said. “It’ll be heavy. Are you ready?”
