“I uh … where do we drop these off?” Dante asked, looking at the buckets.
“At your stall, silly,” Kerry said, then saw the looks they gave her, her smile fading. “He didn’t tell you much, did he?”
“No, ma’am,” Dante said. “We’ve been the owners on paper for about three weeks now. We’re really new at this and, to be honest, we didn’t get much time with the old guy.”
“Let me show you then,” Kerry said, hooking her arm through Leah’s, and leading her to a space in the middle between the two entrance doors.
The stall was a long stainless-steel counter with three short refrigerators underneath. A cash register sat at the end, and a three-tub stainless steel sink sat next to that. A box sat underneath next to the fridges and cleaning supplies. Dante pulled it out and saw it was filled with brand new egg crates, all clear plastic. There had to be hundreds in there, Leah thought.
“Ok, so Dewey comes in on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Hours are 10 to 3. He sells his eggs $5 a dozen. Sometimes he’ll get with his butcher, and they’ll have mutual deals on smoked meats.”
Leah had pulled out a notepad. “Who does he use as a butcher? We have a ton of meat birds in the chicken barn, and although we know how to do the deed, with that many…”
“It’d take us forever,” Dante finished for her.
“Big game we’re fine handling…” Leah started.
“But cows and pigs are something else entirely,” Dante finished, and both of them grinned when they realized that Kerry was almost getting whiplash.
“You two are something else,” she said with a grin.
“Live and work together,” Leah explained.
“How long have you two been married?” Kerry asked.
“Going on fifteen years, right out of med school,” Dante said, putting an arm around his wife.
“Med school? You two are doctors?” Her voice rose in surprise, and the hubbub around them fell silent.
“Yeah, along with our friend Andrea; she’s still at the farm with the rest of our group,” Leah said, wondering if she was breaking some sort of protocol by mentioning all of this. She reasoned that it was a small, sparsely populated area, so she wasn’t too concerned.
“Are you going to set up a practice around here by chance?” Kerry asked.
“Maybe someday,” Dante said. “My specialty is Cardiology, so I generally would need to be working near a larger hospital.”
“Oh my,” Kerry said as people started lining up behind her.
“Do you have any eggs for sale today?” a man behind Kerry asked.
“Sure, just as soon as we get them rinsed off,” Leah said with a smile.
“Want some help?” Kerry asked.
“We hate to be so needy, but…” Dante trailed off.
“That is ok; it’s your first day. Look at it on the bright side—when you sell out, you’re done. Don’t forget the eggs in the fridge, though; you can sell those first.”
They looked under the counter and smiled. There was a fridge and a half full of the clear cartons.
“Let’s sell some eggs,” Leah said, clapping her hands together.
Everything was sold out of the small fridge first, and they also sold most of the eggs they had brought in. Kerry came over at 3pm as they were spraying the stainless steel down with cleaner and wiping it off.
“How was it?” she asked, a nervous look on her face.
“I had no idea eggs would sell like that,” Dante said.
“And for so much!” Leah said. “I bet you we made good bank today!” She was excited.
“Do you think y'all are going to want to continue here?” Kerry asked.
“It’s fun, but eventually we’ll all have to head back to our day jobs,” Leah told her. “We bought the farm as a retirement place and, with Dewey dying, we’re really not sure how things are going to go.”
“What you need is a farm boss,” Kerry said with a grin.
“Or they could just sell the whole thing to me,” a loud, gruff voice said.
It wasn’t a shout, but the voice echoed in the nearly empty market.
Six
Kerry winced at the voice behind her. “Lyle, this is Dante and Leah, two of the new owners of the Langtry farm.”
“Lyle Owens,” a big man said, walking up with his hand out.
Dante took it and shook hands, noting how hard the guy’s hands were.
“Ma’am,” Lyle said, tipping his hat to Leah. “Miss Kerry,” he said, repeating the gesture.
“Hi,” Leah said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“I heard about Dewayne. Sorry. I hadn’t heard him mentioning you all before. Friends?” Lyle asked.
“New ones, yes,” Dante said.
“Well, sorry for your loss. Reason I’m here asking is because I’d like to buy that land,” he said simply.
“We just bought it,” Leah said, but Lyle made a shushing motion by putting a finger to his lips and turned to Dante.
“What do you think?” he asked him, ignoring the furious shade of red Leah was turning.
Dante looked from his wife to Kerry then back to Lyle. “I don’t think it’s for sale,” he said simply, “but I’ll take any offer to the other five owners. I can tell you that you just pissed off two of them, so I have a pretty good idea how the vote will go.”
“I’ll offer you city slickers some good money. Say, $500,000?”
Kerry looked at Leah who was finally turning back to a normal color when the woman burst out into laughter, big, deep guffaws that came from the bottom of her stomach. Dante joined in as well and pointed at the big rancher. “You’re on drugs,” he said, wiping at his eyes.
“That is good money; it’s only 240 acres. The only reason I want it is to increase the range for my herd.”
“You know it’s worth almost five times that when you include the structures and equipment; not to mention the livestock we already have?” Dante said, trying to get serious.
“I doubt that,” Lyle said, mollified.
“We know what it’s worth; bless your heart,” Leah said, a hint of amusement still in her voice, but her eyes were not laughing any more.
“What’s your reasonable for sale price then?” Lyle asked, ignoring Leah’s words, and looking at Lyle again.
“Ten million dollars. That’d convince me to change my mind.”
This time it was Lyle who was chuckling, “You’re all crazy, you know that? What do you know about farming, ranching? I felt your hands, city boy. You’re as soft as a newborn's bare ass.”
“Sorry, I don’t build up calluses when doing multiple bypass surgery or the occasional heart transplant,” Dante said, taking a deep breath and standing to his full height, making his shirt pull tight.
“Heart doc, huh? Figures. Fucking hippies moving out here. Pretty soon all y'all be asking the township to enact some sort of gun control and wanting color parades and shit. Am I right?”
Dante and Leah pulled their shirts up, giving Lyle a glimpse of their guns. After a moment, Kerry did the same, grinning.
“Gun control, really?” Leah asked, keeping her hand away from the grip of her Baby Desert Eagle.
“I don’t know if they’re city slickers or not,” Kerry said, turning to the rancher, “but I can tell you unless you have business with me, the market is closed, Lyle.”
“You don’t want to make an enemy of me,” Lyle said.
Nobody knew who it was directed at because he said it as he had started walking away.
“I hate that asshole,” Kerry hissed as the door swung behind him. “Thinks a woman’s place is barefoot and pregnant…”
“Fetching him beers and making sandwiches,” Leah said.
“Now you two are doing it,” Dante said, clapping.
“Better watch it, bare assed baby hands,” Leah said. “I might bless your heart too.”
Dante ran out of the market, cackling.
“You really do need a farm manager or an experi
enced farmhand,” Kerry told Leah.
“I know; we talked about it. We’re going to need a ton of help, though. We have construction projects going on, and only two of the six will be here at any given time except the weekends…”
“If I’m not overstepping my bounds, I have a nephew. He’s about you and your husband’s age. He’s good at all kinds of farm and ranching work. Used to work for Lyle, actually.”
“That sort of makes me leery,” Leah admitted. “Why doesn’t he still work there?”
“Two reasons,” Kerry said. “One, Lyle is a fucking douche nozzle the size of the Mississippi River, and two, Lyle fired him when his unit was called up, and he had to deploy two years ago.”
“He’s looking for work, and he hates Lyle?”
“Yeah, he has his twenty in with the military now, but he isn’t collecting his retirement yet. He’s got a little way to go. Little Robert enlisted when he was seventeen and was active duty for sixteen years and in the reserves the rest of the time. Grew up on a ranch not too far from here a couple of towns away.”
“Married, kids?” Leah asked.
“Actually, yes,” Kerry said. “His wife is Angelica, but everybody calls her Angel. She is about five foot nothing compared to Little Robert’s six and a half feet. They have a son named Harry who is six or seven now.”
“Hm…”
“You want me to set something up so y’all can meet them, or do you want me to butt out?”
“I think I’d like to learn more…”
“Are you coming or what? I want to see how far they got!” Dante called excitedly.
“Boys are so funny sometimes,” Kerry said. “How about I call you in a little bit on Dewey’s phone line?”
“That sounds good! Maybe we can get together later on for dinner?”
“Unless you love burgers and pizza, there’s not much else around here,” Kerry said, “unless you want to go into Oklahoma.”
“Not really. Burgers and pizza sounds good to me, but I have to ask the others. Let me corral my wayward husband, and I’ll talk with the group.”
“Sounds good!”
The vote not to sell the farm, for any price, was unanimous. After hearing how Lyle had treated Kerry and Leah, nobody wanted to deal with him if they didn’t have to. Then they discussed the day’s sales and how selling almost thirty dozen eggs sounded great, but that was only about $150, three times a week. All of them made a lot more than that, but they needed the local connections, and it was only five hours, three days a week, unless they went with Kerry’s idea.
“A full-time farm hand and manager?” Steven asked.
“I mean, I like the idea, especially with everything we could learn from them, but don’t they make like big money?” Anna asked.
“I can get on Indeed and look it up,” Curt told them, whipping his phone out.
“We need to get internet service out here,” Dante moaned.
“Probably satellite. Might cost us a fortune to get cable or fiber ran out here,” Leah said. “Dewey already has one for T.V.”
“Back to the discussion,” Dante said. “If it isn’t horribly expensive, hiring a full-time ranch manager would be a great call.”
“You want to set up a meet with Kerry’s nephew and see what the going rate is?” Andrea asked.
“Yes,” they all more or less answered at once.
“Ok, here it is,” Curt said. “For our area, the median wage for a similar position is about $48,000 a year.”
Doing math in her head quickly, Anna said, “That’s just under a thousand dollars a week. Split that three ways it’s about three hundred dollars and some change for each couple.”
“We can do that easy,” Curt said as Andrea nodded.
“Same here,” Dante told them.
“Not a problem,” Steven said, “but you guys are forgetting; the ranch does make a positive cash flow. How about we loan the corporation enough for wages and the farm pays us back when the harvests come in and when we send the cows and pigs off to slaughter?”
“You’re assuming that we’ll find a ranch boss, that we can afford him, and that he’ll want to work with a bunch of us crazy ass unprepared preppers, right?”
“Hm…”
The phone rang, and Leah took off running.
Seven
The Gaines Bar was something special, none of them had ever seen or expected what they found. A baker's dozen bar stools sat in front of a wooden bar, then there were a dozen tables that could seat four. Behind the bar was an impressive amount of alcohol and the bar was proud of the four beers they had on tap and a dozen different bottled kinds. Wine came out of a box, but what really impressed them was the pizza oven. You fed pizzas in one end, and they came out the other, cooked.
The entire bar smelled of old cigarette smoke, spoiled beer, burgers, and pizza. The group actually loved that, and on a Saturday night, it was packed. A dozen men and women sat at the bar. The six had pushed three sets of tables together and could immediately tell when “Little Robert” walked in. As advertised, he was a human tree. Kerry had said he was six and a half feet tall and she had not been lying. A petite woman came in as he held the door, followed by Kerry, who was holding a little boy’s hand.
Leah stood up and waved excitedly.
“So much for being objective,” Dante muttered.
Leah smacked him in the back of the head and hissed back, “I was waving at Kerry, dumbass.”
Kerry waved back and everyone came over. Introductions were made and Andrea’s eyes focused on little Harry for a moment, and she smiled. He smiled back shyly and waved.
“Your party all here now, Hun?” the bartender slash waitress Charlotte asked, seeing everybody sitting down.
“Yes ma’am,” Curt told her. “Hey folks, how does some pitchers of beer sound?”
Everybody agreed that sounded good, except little Harry who requested root beer. Leah and Dante were watching Robert and Angelica.
“Ma’am, my auntie said you were looking for a farm hand?” he said, his voice surprisingly deep.
“Not only that,” Leah said, “we are sort of complete noobs here, we need somebody who knows what they’re doing and can run the farm operation. We were wanting the farm for a getaway and a retirement place. Part of our deal with Dewayne was he would live out the rest of his life there, teaching us as we went.”
“And he surprised everybody, didn’t he?” Angelica said with a wry smile. “I always liked the crazy old coot. Wish Lil’ Rob would have gone to work for him instead.”
“I was between deployments,” he said, kissing the top of his wife’s head, “and I wasn’t sure Dewey could really afford me full time. Gotta remember, you were pregnant with Harry.”
“How about you?” Anna asked. “Are you working right now?”
Angelica looked like she was miffed at the question at first, but then saw how the ladies were all looking at little Harry.
“No, maybe when the spawn of Satan is a little older,” Angelica told them as she ran her fingers through her son’s hair. “I used to be a vet tech.”
“I am not Satan,” Harry said promptly, making everybody smile more.
Harry was a shy kid, but he was warming up to the group of new grownups in front of him. He understood they were wanting to hire his daddy, but they kept talking about everything but work. They seemed really interested in how his daddy killed bad guys in the war. Harry knew the bad guys could not be hard to find, because they humped goats. What they did to their backs to make the hump he did not know, but he figured it was bad.
“What do you think?” the grownup who insisted Harry call him Curt asked.
“Definitely hamburgers AND pizza!” Harry said, hoping his mom would not bop him in the back of the head and call him a pig.
“Sure,” the pretty lady called Anna said, “but what do you think about your Daddy coming to work at our farm?”
“Oh,” Harry said, realizing it was a simpler question than pizza versus
hamburgers. “I think he’d like that. He’s been nervous lately and he’s been worried Grandma, Momma and I would have to move.”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhh,” Kerry said, smoothing his hair down in a way Harry hated.
“What?” Harry asked. “If Dad did not like you guys, he would have smooshed your faces and walked away. I think he likes you. Why ask me though? I’m only six.”
“You’re a very intelligent and perceptive six-year-old,” Dante said, “and you probably know more about the situation than your parents realize. Probably not fair of us to put you on the spot, but there is a platter of hamburgers and a couple of pizzas headed out our way…”
Harry turned and saw Charlotte and another woman carrying three large serving trays. He clapped in excitement and turned and saw his dad was smiling at him, giving him a nod. Rob reached across the table and took his son’s hand for a moment.
“Don’t worry, I wanted to know what you’d think about this too,” Rob told his son. “We might have to be moving anyway,” he almost whispered, letting Harry’s hand go so a pizza could be put down.
“Really? I like the apartment,” he whispered back.
“What about having your own room someday?” Angelica asked him.
“Why? Doesn’t Grandma like sharing my room with me? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”
Harry said that just loud enough that everyone at the table heard him and they fell quiet. The bar was full, but not rowdy, and nobody had fed the jukebox.
“You sleep on the floor, buddy?” Leah asked him.
“I don’t mind, she needs a bed more than me,” he said with a grin. “It’s like camping!”
Right away Curt felt confident that the group was going to offer Rob the job. Not only was there a quiet confidence about the man, he talked as if he knew exactly what needed to be done, including mixing the grain in the wintertime for the cattle to supplement the hay. He could run all the farm machinery and knew when to bring in the harvests and all about the local planting seasons. To top it off, he had more than just farming skills that Curt was interested in learning more about.
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 1 | The Farm Page 4
