Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 1 | The Farm

by Craven III, Boyd

  Little Harry had given him an idea, one Curt hoped the rest of the group would agree with. Each couple had planned on building their own cabin anyways, which would eventually leave the farmhouse empty now that Dewayne was dead. Once they got him buried and family all notified and arrangements settled, maybe they could…

  “You sleep on the floor buddy?” Leah had asked.

  They had all gone silent as the little man had explained how sleeping on the floor was like camping and that his Grandma needed the bed. Revising things in his head he decided he wanted to share his thoughts with the group later on. It was a deal that would be hard to refuse and would greatly help both the group and the Little’s entire family… if everybody agreed.

  “Harry, you want to say grace?” Angelica asked, breaking the thoughtful silence as Charlotte walked back to her spot behind the bar.

  Harry held out his hands to have his mom and dad take them. Not used to it, the others held their hands out and the whole table bowed their heads as one.

  “Dear Jesus, thank you for all the good things in life. Hamburgers with extra fries, ketchup, and pickles. Thank you, Jesus, for pizza, it is about my favorite food ever and I also want to thank you for Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Aunt Kerry, and all the new friends. Please bless my doggy Ranger and I hope someone will let me bring some of this deliciousness home so he can share too. Amen.”

  “Amen,” everybody said as one.

  There were more than a few smiles as the beers were poured and food consumed in mass quantities.

  “Harry, do you think you could talk to your mom and dad and grandma into coming to the farm tomorrow morning to have breakfast with us?” Leah asked, seeing where the conversation had been going, and Curt and Andrea were whispering ideas back and forth to both her and Dante.

  “I don’t know. Tomorrow is church,” he said honestly. “But maybe I could ask them to go to the lunch service?”

  “You want to talk things over tonight, and let me know?” Rob asked, giving them an out in case they wanted one.

  “Actually…” Steven held up a hand, cutting Curt off, “Curt, I think I know where your mind is going, and I know you’ve shared it with the other two yahoos… You’re thinking about the farmhouse, right?”

  Curt grinned, knowing Steven was being vague enough that he showed he was definitely on the right track, but without giving away everything.

  “Do any of you guys object to the idea?” Anna asked, also having figured it out.

  “No objections,” Dante told them, smiling at Leah who was beaming. “The only question is, what kind of salary?”

  “That’s true,” Leah picked up where he left off. “What are you asking for, salary wise?”

  Little Rob, who was anything but little except in name, stammered for a second. Angelica reached behind Harry and put her arm on his shoulder. “It’s ok, just talk.”

  He stammered another second, looking uncomfortable. “I was making $35,000 a year at Lyle’s ranch. I always thought I was a bit underpaid there, but I know I’m a new element for you folk, and I don’t want to scare ya…”

  Anna burst into laughter and the rest of the group smiled. Angelica and Harry looked confused and Rob looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was sitting.

  Anna reached over and patted Angelica’s arm. “Please join us for breakfast or lunch tomorrow. We are not laughing at what he said, but how he said it. It was almost like he was waiting for somebody to smack him in the back of the head.”

  “You mean like this?” she bopped him with her palm.

  “Hey, what’d I do?” Rob asked, smiling.

  “Nothing. Let’s dig in and tomorrow we will talk about money. If you are interested, that is,” Anna said.

  “I’m interested, if that figure didn’t scare you guys off,” Rob said more seriously, realizing they were not laughing at him.

  “You definitely didn’t scare us off,” Curt said.

  They were finishing off their food when the door to the bar opened and everybody turned to see three men walk in, with two women behind them. Lyle walked up to a spot at the bar and put in an order, as did the others. He turned and looked around the bar for seating and stiffened when he saw the new farm owners, along with Kerry and his former foreman Rob.

  “Here’s your beer, Hun. Might have to wait for some tables to clear if you all want to sit together, but you’re welcome to sit at the bar tonight.”

  “I think I might just go join up with some new friends,” he said, tossing a big bill on the counter. “Let me know when we run through that.”

  “Will do,” Charlotte said with a smile. “Going to order food?”

  “Not sure yet,” Lyle said, taking his drink and approaching the three tables pushed together at the back of the bar by the pool table.

  Curt saw the big rancher coming; he could not put a name to the face, but figured it was Lyle by the way Leah stiffened up. Rob stood up, as did Angelica, waiting.

  “That’s Lyle,” Leah said loudly, filling the rest of them in.

  “Doesn’t look happy to see us,” Steven noted.

  “He’s not going to start something here,” Dante said. “He’s hugely outnumbered.”

  “I doubt he’ll try something,” Rob said as they got closer. “His daughters Steff and Jennifer though…”

  “I’ll monkey stomp those bitches if they do,” Angelica hissed, her hands flexing.

  “I like her,” Anna whispered to Steven, who just grinned at the tiny woman’s fierceness.

  “Robert, good to see you,” Lyle said, stopping a foot from him.

  “Good to see you too,” Rob lied. “Howdy Don and Chuck,” he said with a nod to the men beside him. “Steff, Jennifer.”

  “So that’s your plan, is it?” Lyle asked Dante. “Poach one of my foremen and try to keep going? The will hasn’t even been read, yet here you folks are, going full steam ahead.”

  “What do you think would be in the will?” Curt asked, curious but not worried.

  “The acreage he promised me, twenty years ago,” Lyle said as the two behind him just nodded like bobble heads.

  “Lyle, you know he was being sarcastic,” Angelica said. “That old man hated your guts, he wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.”

  “Oh really?” Lyle asked with a sarcastic hint in his tone, then turned to Rob. “Your cunt of a lady has a mouth on her.”

  “Yeah she does,” Don said with a snicker, making Chuck and Lyle grin.

  Rob’s face turned a furious shade of red and the group stood up as one. Rob’s hands turned to fists and the sound of his knuckles cracking was audible to everybody.

  “Really,” Rob said in a growl, making patrons around them turn their heads. “Lyle and Don, one more comment about my wife, and we’re going to have an issue.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Steff asked, stamping her foot, and smiling wickedly.

  Angelica looked her straight in the eyes. “I’ll monkey stomp your ass, tie your tits together and tell your husband where you really were last Tuesday.”

  “Where were you last Tuesday?” Don asked her.

  “At the church,” she said a little too quickly, “putting the new hymnals out.”

  “Knock it off,” Lyle said to his side.

  “You weren’t sucking the chrome off of Lance and Luke’s side by side?”

  “You shut your mouth, bitch!” Steff screamed.

  “What?” Don yelled.

  “Come over here and I will,” Angelica said, blinking her eyes prettily, ignoring Steff’s husband.

  “No fighting inside, or I call the cops,” Charlotte said mildly, opening a side door.

  Curt looked out and saw a partially finished outdoor patio behind the building.

  “Let’s have this conversation outside,” Rob said quietly, though the menace in his voice was audible.

  “Keep an eye on Harry for me for a sec, would you Hun?” Angelica asked Leah and left before she could get an answer. />
  “What’s going on?” Andrea asked.

  “Sounds to me like these folks have some serious history, all of it ugly,” Curt said, moving to the door as Lyle’s group headed outside.

  “Should we go help?” Dante asked.

  “Do you know what a monkey stomped ass looks like?” Anna asked.

  “No, but I want to learn,” Steven said as everybody piled outside.

  “Looks like it’s you and me kiddo,” Leah said to Harry who was just grinning at the door, still devouring a large slice of pizza.

  “Oh, it won’t be long. I betcha Daddy knocks Mr. Lyle on his backside again and Momma tears the hair out of one of Lyle’s daughters.”

  “Do they fight much?” Leah asked.

  “Almost as often as we go to church,” Harry told her.

  The shouting outside got louder and a woman screamed. “You sit here a sec Hun,” Leah said to Harry, and ran to the doorway.

  The entire group had formed a semicircle with Rob facing off with Don and Lyle, his other son in law standing on the side with a scared look on his face. Jennifer had been knocked to the ground and there was a stringer of blood coming out of her nose, her hair in a rat’s nest. Don moved in close to Rob throwing a quick jab towards the big man’s throat. Rob turned slightly, letting the fist graze the side of his neck, and then devastated Don. He threw a punch into Don’s exposed side where he had overextended. That had lifted the man off his feet, and then jumped back as Lyle tried sucker punching him in the left ear.

  The fist missed by a mile, but now Lyle’s right side was open and exposed for half a second. Rob threw a left punch into the ribs under his armpit, but with nowhere near the strength that he had hit Don. As Lyle flinched back in pain, Rob threw a right cross that connected with his chin. Lyle fell on his ass, dazed.

  “I told you to keep your whore mouth shut,” Steff said, charging at Angelica.

  The little woman had some serious training, and despite being half a head shorter than Steff and forty pounds lighter, she put a beat down on Steff that the guys would talk about in wonder, for years to come. Angelica dodged to the left, but as Steff would have rushed past, she kneed her in the thigh. Steff got a handful of hair at the same moment she got kneed and gasped as her whole leg went numb and she lost her grip, falling to the ground.

  “Stop,” Steff screamed.

  “I done warned you last time,” Angelica drawled, punching the woman in the stomach, then in the nose.

  For a second, everything was quiet, but the crunch of Steff’s nose was almost as loud as a gunshot. Steff grabbed her face, holding her nose, so Angelica grabbed both shoulders and kicked off on the ground, almost looking like she was going to do a handstand on the other woman’s shoulders. Instead, she let her knees drop into the guts of the screaming woman.

  “Holy shit,” Anna said. “If that’s a monkey stomping, I want to learn how to do that.”

  Eight

  “Lyle, I cashed you out,” Charlotte said as they walked back in.

  “Not sure I had a chance to have my drink,” Lyle said, rubbing his ribs and picking up the drink he had put down before going outside.

  “Then down it, and y'all get,” she said, neither anger nor remorse in her voice.

  “Too late,” a guy at the bar called as red and blue flashers lit out the windows near the front.

  “Shit,” Rob said, and sat down in his seat. “Sorry guys,” he said to the group, “I didn’t mean to…”

  “I can’t fight like you,” Dante said, “but if somebody called my wife a cunt, I would damn sure whoop their ass, or get a good beatdown trying.”

  “You were amazing,” Leah told Angelica, who was still a furious shade of red.

  “I’ve never seen somebody fight like that before,” Anna said, grinning.

  Angelica was about to say something when the door of the bar opened and three officers came in, two wearing state police uniforms. Seeing no active brawl happening, they walked towards the tables where Lyle and his group were sitting. The ladies were holding tissues to their noses, heads tilted up.

  “Rob,” the officer with the local township patch on his shirt said, “are we having an issue here?”

  “No sir,” Rob told him. “There was one earlier, but I think it came to an agreeable ending for all involved.”

  “These four look beat pretty badly,” one of the state troopers said, a man who was near the height of Rob, but thicker in the middle and jowls.

  “You want to tell us what was going on?” the second state police officer asked, a woman in her early thirties with raven black hair pulled into a severe bun behind her head.

  Rob sat silent, then looked over at Lyle and shrugged. Lyle shrugged back and took a long drink of his beer.

  “I got reports of a riot going on here, right outside. Two of the ladies are bloody, and I want to know what happened,” the Statie said, almost like he wanted to stomp his foot.

  “Pizza?” Harry asked, pointing to the platter with two half eaten pizzas.

  “No thanks, Harry,” the lady State Police Officer said. “Did your momma and papa get into a tussle?”

  “No ma’am, I saw it from the door. Both my momma and papa waited until there was two on one against them and they let the others attack first. It was self-defense.”

  “You’re telling me that your mom and dad were attacked on two to one odds, and it’s the others who look like they got the worst of it?” the bigger Statie said.

  Harry nodded between bites of pizza. All three cops turned to Rob, who just shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t want no trouble,” he said. “We good, Lyle?”

  “For now,” Lyle said, though to everybody around it was obvious that talking hurt his ribs.

  “Let me call somebody to come check you out,” the lady officer said.

  “If they’ll let us, I’ll do it,” Dante said, standing up. “I’m a doctor.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Andrea said. “Also, a doctor.”

  “Damn, y'all making me feel bad,” Leah said, standing up. “I’ll go get the medical bag out of the back.”

  “Let me guess, you’re a nurse?” the officer who looked like Favre from Super Troopers asked.

  “No, I’m a doctor too,” she said, “and we were just trying to have a quiet evening with some new friends. I’d like to get this over with so Lyle and his crew can go and we can finish our supper and beers.”

  “New in town, ma’am?” the local officer asked.

  “Yeah, we bought the Langtry farm a few weeks back,” Leah answered.

  “Now I understand,” he said thoughtfully. “Anybody here pressing charges or need an ambulance?”

  Everybody including Harry shook their heads no.

  “Good, I think we’re done here. Y'all have a good evening, and if I get a call that this incident got repeated, I’m tossing all of y'all in the clink until Monday when the judge comes in.”

  “Understood,” Curt told him.

  “Doctors,” the local said, walking out of the door shaking his head. The two state police looked a little confused, then turned to follow him out.

  The six of them and Roscoe were waiting when the Little family drove down the farm road. They could see a quad cab Ford rolling in, pulling to a stop. It was after lunch time and the guys had dragged a fairly new propane barbecue grill from the barn. They were grilling chicken and the rest had made side dishes in anticipation.

  “Hope they like the offer,” Curt said to Andrea as Dante and Steven worked the grill.

  “I do too. Even though last night was crazy, it did not change anything in my eyes,” she said, hugging him tight.

  “It didn’t change mine either. If anything, I like the fact they are a bit country, have a strong faith and are a bit rough and tumble. Makes me like them more.”

  Rob and Angelica got out of the side doors, and Rob held his hand out as his mother got out. Then they opened the back door and Harry let out a shout as a German Shepherd bounded out ove
r him and came to a heel at Angelica’s side. Harry got out last, arguing with his dad about who got to close the door. They both played paper rock scissors, Harry let out a happy cry and pushed it closed.

  “Good afternoon,” Dante called.

  “Howdy!” Rob’s mother called. “Need a hand with the fixings?” She got a basket out of the front seat, before letting Harry close the driver’s side door.

  “We would love some,” Leah said, though in truth everything but the chicken was done cooking.

  Introductions were made, and Grandma Goldie as she told everybody to call her, was especially taken aback when Anna was introduced.

  “I saw you shoot not three months ago,” she said, holding Anna’s forearms with her weathered hands.

  “You did?” she asked, surprised.

  “Rob and Angel were doing a three gun, in Texarkana. You took first in ladies, if I remember right.”

  Anna blushed and Grandma Goldie pushed up the long sleeve on her right arm showing the colorful tattoos.

  “Yeah, it’s you,” she said with a grin. “I always wanted some when I was younger. You’re a pretty one, and when I first saw you, I thought to myself, now that lady don’t need to color herself up none, but you got some pretty inkwork done!”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t know you guys shot competitively,” she said shyly to Rob and Angelica.

  “When we can afford time and ammo,” he said with a shrug.

  “Can we eat? I’m hungry,” Harry said loudly.

  “Sure thing, little man. Who’s your furry buddy?” Andrea asked.

  “This is Ranger. He could have been a police or soldier dog, but my Momma says his job is to keep us safe, so he’s kind of overkill, but I love him.”

  Ranger, hearing his name, let out a happy bark. Roscoe was sleeping on the porch throughout all of that, but when he heard the bark, he sat up and let out a few barks of his own, almost blowing out eardrums. Ranger immediately went stiff legged, barking more.