Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09

by Susan Wittig Albert

  About two miles from the corner, on the left, we passed a rusty mailbox on which the name Swenson had once been painted. Nearby, along the old barbed wire fence that edged the road, stood a row of hackberry trees heavy with berry-laden mistletoe clumps. The plant grows from seeds that stick to the feet or beaks of birds. Under natural conditions, mistletoe germinates almost anywhere, but the parasite is successful only if the germinating seed can penetrate thin, tender bark. Its roots, or haustoria, eventually insinuate themselves into the tissue of the tree and suck out its nutrients. Mistletoe loves hackberry because the bark is rough and loose, and the seeds find a good purchase until they have grown securely into the tree. If Brian and I hadn't been pushed for time, I would have hopped out and harvested a couple of buckets of the stuff. As it was, I made a mental note. If Swenson didn't bring the promised order to the shop, Laurel and I would come out here to gather it. The land behind the fence might be his, but the right-of-way is public property, and these hackberry trees were fan-game.

  The Fletcher sisters' flower farm is located on a small patch of arable land along both sides of Mistletoe Creek, which eventually flows into the Pecan River west of New Braunfels. The soil in this bottomland is relatively deep, a silty loam that has to be amended with lots of organic matter before most flowering plants—other than our Texas natives—can tolerate its alkalinity. Decades ago, some optimistic farmer had aimed his mule and walking plow up and across the hillside, probably hoping to expand his precious few acres of arable land to plant cotton, the chief cash crop in those days. But cotton is long gone from Adams County, and the soil that was plowed along those rocky terraces quickly washed downhill. In the little valley along the creek, the Fletcher sisters are left with just space for their wood-frame house, a red barn, a couple of greenhouses and a long row of cold frames, and two narrow five-acre fields.

  That's room enough, though, to produce a glorious three-season harvest of cut flowers—snapdragon, larkspur, delphiniums, phlox, sweet William, dianthus, painted daisies, sunflowers—which the sisters sell to the florist trade in Austin and San Antonio. Terry, Donna, Aunt Velda, and the two or three local teens who come to pick during the busiest month of the growing season have been known to pack and ship a thousand mixed bouquets in a week, hanging what doesn't sell in the barn to dry for the wreaths the sisters make during the autumn and winter. It's hot, hard, demanding work, but when the flowers are blooming, the customers are waiting, and you have bills to pay, the work is welcome. The Fletcher sisters have been doing it for six or seven years, since they bought the land from Carl Swenson, and they seem to be making a success out of a high-risk, long-odds venture. Personally, I admire their courage and stubborness. You have to be gutsy to grow flowers for a living in Central Texas, where summer sizzles for six months and winter temperatures dive below zero just long enough to wipe out your best cash crop while scarcely inconveniencing the weeds.

  We crossed the wooden bridge over Mistletoe Creek, and I pulled the truck to a stop in front of the house. As Brian and I climbed out, we were greeted by Max, who came bouncing down the path on a bandaged right front leg. The black-and-white Border collie was followed by a sturdy-looking woman in jeans, sweatshirt, and green down vest, a muffler around her neck and a yellow baseball cap pulled over her taffy-colored hair. Donna, the younger and more likable of the two sisters, is pushing thirty-five. She manages the sales and deals with the public while Terry handles production, but there's enough work on both sides so that they occasionally have to swap off. And after Aunt Velda came back from her tour around the galaxy and required more supervision, Donna has taken care of her, as well. She has her hands full.

  "Hey, Max," I said, as Brian got down on his knees to pet the dog. "I heard you'd been eaten by a possum trap. What are you doing out and about?"

  "Border collies don't know the meaning of the word bed-rest," Donna said. Her nose was red with the cold, and she swiped it on her sleeve. "Sorry you had to drive out all this way just to pick up those wreaths." She nodded ruefully at the brown van parked beside the barn, its innards spread over the ground and covered by a tarp. "Looks like we won't be driving Lizzie until Terry gets her repaired. We can use Aunt Velda's old Ford truck around the place, but we can't drive it on the highway. It doesn't have a current license plate."

  I understood. Around here, people with big ranches hang onto their junky old pickups and use them to check on the cows, monitor fences, and haul hay and firewood. "No problem," I said. "Brian is spending the weekend with his grandparents in Seguin, and this stop was on our way."

  Brian turned to me. "Is it okay if me 'n' Max go down to the creek and look for frogs?" He looked up at the sky, anticipating my objection. "It's stopped raining—almost."

  "The creek's only a trickle along here," Donna said. "It's not deep enough for him to get into any trouble."

  "Okay—but your grandmother won't be very happy if you show up at her house with wet shoes," I told Brian. "Stay out of the water." I watched as boy and dog trotted off toward the creek, thinking that it's a funny thing about boys. If you put a rake in their hands and shove them outdoors on a cold, drizzly day, they'll howl as if you're engaging in child abuse. But put them within fifty yards of a creek and they'll want to be in the water, no matter how cold it is.

  "The wreaths are in the barn, boxed and ready to go," Donna said as we started up the path. "I'm sorry Terry isn't here. She borrowed a friend's car and went to San Antonio for parts for Lizzie. But there's coffee and pecan pie— pecans from our very own trees. We had a great crop this year." She gave me a sidelong glance. "I hope you've got time for a slice before we load your truck."

  "Pecan pie?" I said warmly. "You bet! I don't have to get Brian to his grandparents' until six."

  The Fletchers' house is a small, tin-roofed Texas cottage, its board-and-batten wood siding painted gray, the window frames and trim a cheerful red. In the summer the walls are covered with moonflowers and morning glories and cardinal climber, but the first frost had killed the vines and nothing was left but a sinister brown tangle. We followed the gravel path around the corner of the house, sending three or four Rhode Island Reds scrambling out from under a waist-high rosemary bush. Lavender and sage grew along the wall, and the path was bordered by bright green curly parsley, which survives all but our hardest freezes. From the ragged look of the foliage, though, I guessed that it might not survive the chickens. I wondered if they were laying eggs with chlorophyll-colored yolks.

  Donna opened the door and we went into the kitchen. A gas stove, sink, and refrigerator were arranged along one wall, and the room was heated by a cast-iron woodstove, which radiated a welcoming warmth. A gray tabby was curled on a blue braided rug beside the woodbox, which was piled high with split cedar. A pot of soup simmered on the back of the woodstove—pea soup with ham, judging from the rich, savory fragrance. Somebody had put out a few holiday decorations: a dried-flower swag over one doorway; a ribbon-tied bunch of mistletoe over another; a bowl of oranges, apples, and pine cones in the middle of the table, garnished with sprigs of fresh green rosemary.

  "It's cold out there," Donna said, closing the door against the chill wind and unwinding her muffler. "Bet it'll drop into the twenties tonight."

  Of course, cold is relative. To a Yankee, today might seem like Indian summer. But our average December temperature is 50 degrees and we seldom have more than a couple of dozen days below freezing. In this part of Texas, that's cold enough—especially for those who have to keep their greenhouses warm.

  I shrugged out of my denim jacket and Donna hung it on a peg beside her down vest and yellow cap. "Cream or sugar?" she asked.

  "Both, please." I glanced around the room while Donna poured coffee and cut two generous slices of pie. The windows were curtained in red-checked gingham, there was a red-painted rocking chair beside the woodstove, and several of Donna's watercolors—she's a talented artist, among other things—hung on one wall.

  I sat down at the table and Donna
brought the coffee and pie. "Hey, this is super," I said, when I had tasted it.

  The supreme test of a Texas cook is her pecan pie, and we all have a favorite recipe that we swear by. But the real secret is the nuts themselves, the fruit of the state tree of Texas. Fossilized remains of pecan trees have been found in lower Cretaceous formations to the north of Adams County, so it's safe to say that the trees and their nuts have been around for a lot longer than people. Indians gathered and ground them into a seasoning flour for their gruel and bread, or fermented them as a ceremonial intoxicant called powcohicoria. With an eye to future celebrations, they planted pecan groves around their campsites along creeks and rivers and near springs. By the late 1800's, pecans were worth five times as much as cotton, and after modern breeding techniques began to improve the size and quality of the nuts, they became a cash crop worth cultivating.

  I savored the first bites of pie, then said, "Are you growing pecans for sale?" If they were, it could be a lucrative sideline business.

  "We're not, but from the size of this year's harvest, we think we could," Donna said. "These nuts came from the trees above Mistletoe Spring." She pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. "The trees must be sixty or seventy years old, but you'd never believe how many nuts they produce. A couple of hundred pounds a tree."

  Now that she was sitting at the table, under the overhead lamp, I could see that her tanned skin had a sallow cast and her brown eyes were shadowed.

  "Is everything going okay?" I asked casually.

  Donna looked relieved, as if she were glad that I had opened a difficult subject. "The business is going well," she said, "but we've got a problem we don't know how to handle." She shifted uncomfortably. "I wish Terry were here, because she's the one who—" She stopped. "But I guess I'd better ask you about it. With the holiday coming up, there might not be another chance."

  "Ask me what?"

  "Terry and I need some legal advice. The problem is getting out of hand. Every new day brings a—"

  "I keep tellin' you," said a cracked voice, "it ain't our problem. It's Carlos's."

  With those words, Aunt Velda stumped into the room and lowered herself into a chair at the table. She was wearing the same thing she'd had on the last time I was at the Fletchers': patched Army pants and an old field jacket with corporal's stripes on the sleeve. But today she had added a rainbow-hued crocheted shawl and a green-and-purple knit cap, pulled down to her ears so that her straggly gray hair hung down beneath it like a dirty floor mop. A purple plastic badge was pinned to the cap, with / Am a Klingon emblazoned on it in silver letters. "Hello, Aunt Velda," I said.

  "What you doin' out today, China?" the old lady asked. "Colder'n a witch's tit out there." She fished in several pockets and pulled out a crumpled brown-paper cigarette, hand-rolled. She lit it and peered at me through the smoke. "You ain't seen Carlos hangin' around, have you?"

  "His name isn't Carlos, Aunt Velda," Donna said patiently. "It's Carl. Carl Swenson. And I wish you wouldn't smoke in the kitchen." She got up and poured a cup of black coffee for her aunt.

  "Pie, too," the old lady said imperiously, ignoring Donna's request. "Cut me a piece o' that pie, girl. Tastes better to me, remember'n' how mad Carlos got over them pecans." While Donna was cutting another piece, Aunt Velda leaned toward me and giggled, like a teenager sharing secrets. "Shoulda seen him, stompin' around an' wavin' his arms and yellin' 'bout them pecans. Boy howdy, that was funny! Made me bust out laughin' right to his face." She narrowed her pale blue eyes, blew out a stream of smoke, and sat back. "But that boy ain't long for this earth. I beamed his vectors up to the ship and they're fixin' to set a trap for him, like they did for Max. Only Carlos ain't as smart as Max. He won't git away. Where's that ashtray, Donna?"

  "It wasn't the pecans he was yelling about, exactly," Donna said to me. With a resigned look, she put a metal ashtray in front of her aunt and sat down. "It was the land where the trees are located. Which is what Terry and I wanted to talk to you about."

  "Too bad," I replied. "Nothing makes for hard feelings like a land dispute." I sipped my coffee, thinking that Carl Swenson wasn't someone I'd like to provoke. He had a taut, tense look, like a man riding a nasty, reined-in temper. "How did the misunderstanding come about?"

  Donna didn't answer right away, and Aunt Velda spoke up. "Reason Carlos has gotta go," she said grumpily, "is that he poisoned poor old Lizzie. Like this." She dumped three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her cup and began to stir it with a violent motion, slopping the coffee onto the tablecloth.

  "Carl Swenson put sugar in your gas tank?" I wasn't exactly surprised. There was something furtive about Swenson. He struck me as the kind of man who'd prefer to come at your back, rather than take you on face to face.

  Donna put her hand over the old lady's. "We don't know for sure Carl did that," she said quickly. "We have no evidence."

  "They saw him," Aunt Velda replied, still stirring, still slopping. "From the ship. When they re'lized how much trouble he wuz causin' down here, they decided to take him up there." She glanced pointedly toward the ceiling, chuckling slyly. "They got uses for dimwits like Carlos Swinberg, y'see. They put 'em to work scrubbin' decks and washin' dishes, stuff like that. Them big ships, they take a lot of housekeepin', which Klingons don't much cotton to." "Aunt Velda," Donna said, "please don't—" "Hey, China," the old lady said. "Did I ever tell you 'bout my trip across the galaxy? Eight years, two months, and sixteen days I wuz gone, and when I got back I wasn't one second older'n when I left. Didn't do no dishes, neither. They treated me like I wuz a queen. Had a window seat the whole trip, champagne, movies, even a pair of them little felt booties to keep m' tootsies warm."

  Donna gave up trying to reason with her aunt and turned to me. "To answer your question, the disagreement came about because we didn't have the money for a land survey when we first bought this place from Carl."

  "Had he owned it for a long time?"

  "It was part of his family's ranch. This house used to be the ranch manager's house. We bought it and two hundred acres, on a contract of sale. Only a small part of the land is arable, though."

  "Two hundred acres?" I was surprised. Their farm was bigger than I had thought. "How much did that leave Swen-son?"

  "Oh, five or six hundred acres, I guess. The way I understand it, the land had been in his family since before the First World War. They used to run cows, but that was a long while ago. Carl doesn't do any ranching. Just those goats."

  "Goats." Aunt Velda made a rude noise. "All them goats is good for is to—"

  "At the time we bought," Donna said, "we didn't have a lot of money. Terry had just—" She stopped, coloring, and looked away. "Aunt Velda loaned us the down payment. But there wasn't enough for the survey. We put it off until we could afford it."

  I nodded. In a settled area, where every foot counts, the first thing a potential home buyer does is to get a professional survey to check out the boundary markers. It's not that formal in the country, where surveying is expensive. People tend to go by landmarks and old fences, and spend the money on a survey only when it becomes a problem.

  "But we did really well last year, financially speaking," Donna went on. "We added anemones and Ranunculus as a winter cash crop, and that brought us some new accounts—a couple of big florists in San Antonio. We also tried painted daisies and scabiosa and Ammi bisnaga, which got to be over six feet tall, with really pretty lacy green foliage which is perfect for bouquets. We got the idea from Pamela and Frank Arnosky at Texas Specialty Cut Flowers, over in Blanco. They've been a big help, even though we're competitors." She stopped, and brought herself back to her subject. "Anyway, we did well enough to be able to pay off the note in a few months." She smiled dryly. "That was a big surprise for Carl. He probably figured all along we'd go broke and quit."

  "Which would leave him with everything you'd already paid on the note, and the land to boot," I said. It was an old trick. Sell a few acres of marginal land to an unpromising bu
yer; then, when he fails to make the payments, call the note and take back the land. It doesn't happen so much anymore because banks and other lending institutions have gotten into the act, but there are parcels of land around Pecan Springs that have been sold a half-dozen times and still belong to the same guy. Swenson had probably needed money, and when the Fletcher sisters came along with their goofy idea of growing and selling flowers, he'd seen an easy mark.

  Donna stirred her coffee. "But what jolted him even more was what happened when we got the property surveyed, three months ago. When we bought the place, he told us that the boundary line was twenty yards below Mistletoe Spring, along the old fence. Well, it turns out to be forty yards above the spring, which takes in the whole top of the ridge, including the pecan grove. Of course, he didn't believe it, so he hired his own surveyor, who put the line in the same place." She bit her lip, remembering his reaction. "He was really mad about it. He swore he was going to get the whole farm back—which of course he can't do, as long as we're making our payments."