Alice's Farm

by Maryrose Wood

  “We don’t want to freak them out, basically,” Zane added. “Carl’s an awesome dude, though!”

  On that the Harveys all agreed, Marie and Foxy included: Carl was an awesome dude. His parents didn’t question his version of events, but they didn’t prod him to say much more about it, either. Carl soon grew weary of how nice they were being, and how careful, like maybe they thought there was something wrong with him.

  Finally, one night when they’d invited Janis over for a friendly game of Monopoly, he asked them outright: “Mom. Dad. Do you believe the stuff I told Tallulah and Zane? About the rabbits?”

  “I bleev,” said Marie, who was sitting in her mother’s lap. She was in charge of the bank.

  “I bleev, too,” said Sally, rolling the dice. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re my mom.” He turned to Brad. “What about you, Dad?”

  Brad stroked his chin. “Champ, I neither believe nor disbelieve. That’s called being agnostic.”

  Sally moved her token along the board. She was the wheelbarrow. Brad was the boat, Janis was the horse, and Carl was the dog.

  “Pay up, Applesauce! Your mom passed Go.” Janis assisted by removing two hundred-dollar bills from Marie’s mouth.

  “Thank you.” Sally took the damp moolah and poked Brad with her foot. “How can you be agnostic in the face of a miracle?”

  “Wait. You think the rabbits were a miracle?” Carl was dumbfounded. He’d spent plenty of time with Alice and Little Guy. They were just nice, ordinary cottontails who liked to farm. It was unusual, maybe, but nothing more than that.

  Brad leaned back. “I think your mom is speaking poetically, champ. Everything in nature is a miracle. This farm is a miracle. You and your sister, both miracles!”

  “I’m not being poetic, and I’m not talking about the rabbits.” Sally traded in some houses for a hotel. “I’m talking about the way those onions disappeared overnight.” So far, about half the onions the Fleischmans had given them had been carted away with no sign of human activity to explain it, just a great many paw prints of various sizes and shapes, leading to and from the root cellar. She looked at Carl meaningfully. “Whoever took them is welcome to take the rest.”

  “That would be a real miracle,” Brad remarked. “This farm is making my eyes water!”

  “This farm is weird,” Janis said, taking the dice from Sally. “Weird, but nice. Oh, I almost forgot. I have a message for you. Here, hold these dice, Applesauce. You can blow on them for luck but no drool, got it?” She fiddled with her phone. “It’s a voicemail; hang on.”

  She put the phone on the middle of the board and they all leaned forward to listen. A tinny voice emerged, gruff and creaky, like a robot version of a very old man. “Uh, hello there. Brad, Sally, Kid, Applesauce—I hope I got your names right, I’m just going by what Janis told me. My name’s Art Crenshaw.”

  Carl scooted back and nearly knocked over the game board. “It’s Old Man Crenshaw!”

  “Let’s listen,” Brad said, and put his arm around Sally.

  The old man cleared his robot throat. “Janis told me that you folks have done a bang-up job with the farm. Especially you, Kid.” His voice grew muffled. “That can’t be his real name.”

  “Just talk, Pops,” a woman’s voice replied from the background.

  Art Crenshaw’s voice returned to a normal volume. “All right. Kid, Janis says you’ve got the knack. That’s good. It takes time to get to know your land, so it’s good to start young. Okay, now I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Tell them how you’re doing,” the woman suggested.

  “That’s Sarah, my daughter,” Art Crenshaw said. “Well, I’m doing fine. Florida’s humid and there’s too many skeeters. I like being with my daughter and her family. My golf game has improved but I’m using the cart more than I should. Still can’t keep my hands out of the dirt. I turned part of the yard into a vegetable garden, so the grandkids can learn a few things about how food gets on the table. That’s enough about me.”

  The woman’s voice was full of mischief. “Tell them what you said to Tom Rowes.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake—okay. When I heard what happened I couldn’t stop myself. I called Tom Rowes. I just meant to leave a message but the dang salesman picked up. Well, I gave him a piece of my mind. ‘Back off, Art, I’m a businessman,’ he says. I tell him, ‘Oh, you’re a businessman, all right. How’s this one for you: Mankind is your business!’”

  Sally turned to Brad and whispered, “Isn’t that from A Christmas Carol?”

  “What’s A Christmas Carol?” Carl asked. “It sounds familiar.”

  “It’s the one about the mean old miser and the three ghosts and Tiny Tim,” Brad whispered back.

  Art Crenshaw was on a roll now. “Tom Rowes thinks we need more places to buy stuff we don’t need and more mini storage to hold the stuff folks shouldn’t have bought in the first place. I say we need clean food and clean air and clean water. ‘Get yourself in that business and I’ll be the first to support you,’ I said. Then I hung up on him. Ha, hah!”

  Art Crenshaw proceeded to have a coughing fit. His daughter’s voice got closer to the phone. “Okay, Pops, that’s enough. You’re getting all worked up. Come in the kitchen where it’s cool.”

  “All right, I’m coming.” He took an audible slurp. “My daughter just gave me some lemonade. The lemons grow like crazy down here, it’s really something. Anyway, from what Janis says, it sounds like I sold the place to the right family. That’s the main thing I wanted to tell you folks. I’d have called you myself, but my daughter got me one of these new ‘smartphones’ and now I can’t find my numbers anymore. Okay, I’m going to take a nap. Naps and prune juice and golf; that’s retirement for you. Getting old’s not for weaklings. I always liked prunes, though. Guess that’s obvious. Bye-bye, now.”

  That was the end of the voicemail.

  “Wow,” Brad said, hand on his heart. “That’s amazing. Janis, thanks for this, and for giving such a glowing report to Mr. Crenshaw. It means a lot.” His face fell. “We can’t disappoint him. We have to make this work. I wish I knew what to do…”

  “Janis, why is it called Prune Street Farm?” Sally interrupted. “It’s mostly apples.”

  “Now it’s apples. It used to be plums.” Janis took the dice back from Marie and tossed them hand to hand. “Art told me the story years ago. It wasn’t long after he bought this place, after he got home from the service. It was all plum orchards, as far as the eye could see. And then, one extra rainy springtime, there was a fungus.”

  “A plum fungus?” Carl asked, intrigued. Attack of the Plum Fungus would truly be the worst horror movie ever. He couldn’t wait to tell Emmanuel.

  “Yup. It got some of the cherries, too, but the plum trees were hit hard. The Farm Bureau told everyone to replant with apples to put an end to it. Art switched over and never looked back. Never changed the name of the farm, either, since the town never changed the name of the street.”

  “So that’s why we grow apples on Prune Street…” Sally had an alert, focused look about her; she was on the scent of something for sure. She turned to Carl. “You used to hate prunes. Remember?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said, making a grossed-out face.

  “What changed your mind?”

  Carl shrugged. “I started pretending they were gummy bears.”

  “That’s it.” Sally sat up on her knees. “Pruney Bears. Farmer Sally’s Pruney Bears! A tasty, healthy treat for all ages.”

  “Don’t say healthy,” Carl suggested. “Say, chewy and sweet.”

  Brad sat up, too. “The kid’s right. Farmer Sally’s Pruney Bears. A chewy, sweet treat. Made with care on Prune Street Farm.”

  “Made with love,” Sally amended.

  Janis chuckled. “I thought they were made with prunes?”

  “Made with prunes and love.” All at once Sally was full of pep, like it was her first day on the farm
and everything was a seed of pure possibility. “I like it. Let’s do it.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Brad, only slightly less excited. “We’ll need a logo. And a website.”

  “And a lot of prunes,” Carl noted.

  “And bears!” Marie threw all the Monopoly money in the air. “Yay, bears!”

  Sally stood up and went straight for her apron. “Game over. Okay, people. Let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  By now Sally was a whiz at that dehydrator. It didn’t take her long to figure out how to make prunes into tiny, chewy, bearlike treats. They weren’t exactly bear-shaped, but that’s the power of branding for you. Call a prune a Pruney Bear and you’d swear the thing looked just like a bear.

  But what should they put on the label? A bear? A prune? How about John Glenn? Sally noted that the big bird’s picture would soon be on the cover of Hipster Farmer magazine and they might benefit from the connection, but Brad nixed the idea. The Eagle Tractor company might be defunct, but images of eagles were still used to advertise everything from chewing tobacco to sports teams. An American bald eagle just didn’t suggest dried fruit to the average person, and dried fruit was what they were selling, after all.

  Sally didn’t disagree, but noted that a prune wasn’t very photogenic.

  Carl was the one who settled it, by insisting they use a picture of a rabbit on the labels. As he pointed out, there’s nothing cuter than a bunny rabbit. Everybody loved them. And they did have rabbits on Prune Street Farm, so why not?

  Brad grabbed his pencil. It only took him a few minutes to sketch it.

  “Rabbits don’t really wear overalls, Dad,” Carl commented.

  “Well, farmers often do,” said Brad. “They’re practical.”

  “A farmer-rabbit!” Sally teased. “So you’re not agnostic anymore?”

  Brad put a few finishing touches on the straw hat the little rabbit wore, and added a neckerchief and a tractor in the background, too. It looked like Janis, if Janis had long ears and a fluffy tail. “All I’m saying is that, as far as we know, no rabbit in history has ever been a farmer.”

  “Until now,” Sally said, smiling at Carl.

  “Until now, possibly.” Brad smiled, too. “But there’s a lot we humans don’t know about rabbits, either.”

  When the December issue of Hipster Farmer magazine came out, with a spectacular photo of the Harveys and John Glenn on the cover, Farmer Sally’s Pruney Bears were ready to launch. They got a big batch of orders from the publicity, and the rest was chewy, sweet history. People liked Pruney Bears a lot. By the time the family gathered in front of the fire for their annual reading of A Christmas Carol (it was the first annual reading in the big red farmhouse, but it wouldn’t be the last), Prune Street Farm was actually turning a profit.

  Boxes of plums arrived weekly—they were shipped east from California and other, warmer places with a year-round growing season—and the cartons of packaged Pruney Bears went out twice a week to stores and distributors nationwide. The Harveys got to know the truck drivers by name. Sally often packed them bag lunches of coffee and fresh hummus-on-sourdough sandwiches, which were deeply appreciated.

  To the rare naysayers who opined that bears and prunes had nothing to do with each other, Brad merely scoffed, “So what? Neither do goldfish and crackers. Would you like to know how many Goldfish crackers are sold and consumed every year?” He pointed skyward. “It’s a number greater than all the stars in the firmament, figuratively speaking.”

  “If Pruney Bears get one-tenth as popular as Goldfish crackers, we’re going to do just fine,” Sally would observe, whenever Brad made the comparison. “Now, somebody help me with these plums!”

  Janis liked dried fruit to begin with, and was a fan of Pruney Bears from the start. “I know that’s supposed to be me,” she said to Carl, the first time she saw the finished label. “I’m flattered to pieces about it, kid. I wouldn’t be offended if you decided to name that rabbit Janis. I’m just saying.”

  “Thanks,” Carl replied, “but she already has a name.”

  * * *

  The trucks that now came and went with regularity caused a minor commotion at Burrow. Alice and Thistle hadn’t seen the trucks for themselves, as the barren winter landscape was too wide-open for the cottontails to venture that far into the meadow. Grayish-brown rabbits were easily spotted against the snow, never mind the footprints they left everywhere.

  But the blue jays told them all about it. Trucks in the driveway three days out of the week! Boxes going in the house and boxes coming out!

  “You don’t suppose the boy and his humans are leaving, do you?” Thistle asked, quite concerned. “How awful! It was so much work to teach one boy how to farm. Imagine if we had to do it all over again.”

  “Well, if we have to, we have to,” Alice replied, although she, too, hoped the boy was staying. It was a special and unusual thing for a wild animal to have a human know her real name, and naturally it made her feel quite attached to Carl, never mind all that they’d been through together. “The blue jays haven’t seen an Arm Waahr come out of the house, so I think they must be staying,” she added. “If only we could ask Foxy!”

  Asking Foxy anything was not easy at present. Between the weather and the fact that hunting season would continue for months yet, Foxy was confined to the leash and house once more.

  Foxy didn’t mind, though. Her big personality didn’t change the fact that she was a smallish dog, and these unplowed country snowdrifts were way above her head. She’d discovered that the hard way, by bounding into one and sinking so deep into the powdery fluff that only the tips of her pert orange ears were visible.

  Carl had lifted her right out, but she got chilled to the bone and had to spend a few cozy hours recovering in her fancy dog bed near the fire. Marie tended to her sweetly the whole time, offering spoonfuls of warm chicken broth in between bites of Foxy’s usual prescription food.

  “Personally, I wouldn’t think less of you if you became a vegetarian, too, Marie,” Foxy had remarked. “It’s not for me, though, obviously. Give me another taste of that fantastic soup, would you?”

  “Obveeslee,” she agreed, and dribbled more soup into Foxy’s mouth. “Yum, soup!”

  “You’re quite right; chicken is my absolute favorite. I suppose that poor weasel and I had that in common. I do think of him sometimes. He couldn’t help his nature and I can’t help mine, but that’s just the way of us wild creatures. Semi-wild in my case, I suppose! Humans are different. You get to make up your own minds about so many things. It must be”—the dog yawned—“very tiring, having to do so much thinking all the time.”

  “Sheepy Shiba,” Marie said, and laughed, for she was trying to say sleepy. But “sleepy Shiba” would be a tongue twister even for a highly experienced talker, and Marie was still spreading her wings in that arena, so to speak.

  She rubbed Foxy’s belly. “Sheepy, sheepy Shiba,” the girl repeated, on purpose this time. It was as if to say, “Now rest and enjoy your soup, dear Foxy, and never mind the cold. Come springtime you’ll be herding sheep once more, like the noble and hardworking farm dog you are. The snow will melt and the meadow grass will turn green, and the tender new leaves will rustle on the trees. We’ll see the bun-buns again and plant the garden and care for it, and watch it sprout and blossom and grow until harvest time comes—and then it happens all over again; the seasons will keep changing and the earth will go ’round and ’round, forever and ever, amen.”

  “You cute thing.” Foxy was enjoying the belly rub immensely. “I’ll miss these conversations, Applesauce.”

  “Why miss?” asked Marie, who didn’t yet know that seasons change for children, too.

  “You’ll see,” said Foxy. “Now, a little to the left, if you don’t mind. Ahhh!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Plenty of credit to go around.

  Prune Street Farm became a pretty well-known farm after all that. It wasn’t a household name aroun
d the globe, like a chain of fast-food restaurants, or a temperamental chef with his own television cooking show, but there was always a steady stream of customers. The Harveys ran a bustling farm stand at a few different markets, all season long (for this they had to hire full-time help, as they couldn’t be everywhere at once). And the annual Harvest Festival grew to a two-day, then three-day affair, and became a much-looked-forward-to celebration in the valley that all the local farmers benefited from.

  When it came to giving credit for this wonderful success, most would have ballparked about twenty-five percent as being due to the popularity and wide distribution of Farmer Sally’s Pruney Bears. Brad’s spiderlike way with a website meant that the farm could market and sell the chewy sweet treats to people and stores all over the country.

  Another twenty percent would have to go to Hipster Farmer magazine for providing free and eye-catching publicity at just the right time. But to most onlookers (the human onlookers, anyway), the lion’s share—that is to say, the apex predator’s share—of the credit obviously belonged to John Glenn, genus Haliaeetus, species leucocephalus, who’d kept the crows and Tom Rowes away, just by being a faithful and honorable friend, and by being both symbolic and photogenic enough to make a good story great.

  “Eagle Saves the Farm” was the angle taken by Hipster Farmer magazine, and the story got picked up far and wide. Headline writers had a field day: “Keeping an Eagle Eye on Small Farmers,” “Are Farmers America’s New Endangered Species?” and so on. It wasn’t anything like the whole story of what happened at Prune Street Farm, but it helped sell Pruney Bears, so nobody complained.

  Here’s a sweet thought to chew on: If Tom Rowes hadn’t been mean-spirited enough to suggest a hunter might mistake Foxy for a fox, Sally never would have insisted on making the dog wear a yellow vest, and eagle-eyed John Glenn never would have spotted the golden Shiba from afar and visited Prune Street Farm in the first place.

  Some folks might call that irony, or even poetic justice. Others might shrug and say, what goes around, comes around. That’s the scientific explanation. After all, the world is always spinning, so what goes around is always coming back around, and sometimes it doesn’t take long at all. When John Glenn the astronaut became the first American to orbit Earth, he flew around this pretty planet so fast, he saw the sun rise and set four times in one day!