“Want me to load up the rest of the stuff for the ‘vegetables’?” Alejandro asked.
“If you’d do it, I’d appreciate it,” he said with a grin.
Alejandro got up on the ladder and started pulling things down from the attic in the garage, while Luis made a phone call.
“Hey Luis,” Steven said.
“Hey boss, I ran back to my place for some stuff. That aquaponics project?”
“Yeah? I love the idea, so did the group. You getting supplies?”
“Si,” Luis said. “I have most of what we need for one of the smaller greenhouses, but Alajandro Garcia showed up looking for work. I was wondering…”
“They’re looking for something to keep them busy for a few days?” Steven asked. “Because I honestly don’t think it’ll take that long even.”
“Yes, things are tight for them and their wives. If you don’t need the extra help, I haven’t really told him anything other than I had to make a private call and ask.”
“I’m sure he figured out who you were calling,” Steven said. “Even though I think we can do it all ourselves, how about you go ahead and have them come on out. Give them the protocols for going through the gates and stuff.”
“Ok. Thanks,” Luis said. “See you by dark.”
“Bye Luis, be safe.”
“I will, thank you.”
He hung up and went out to the garage where Alejandro was pulling down the rest of the supplies, including some old pond pumps that ran on 110. Luis was almost going to tell him not to bother, but decided not to. He might have to run a hybrid system if he could not get all the parts in the beginning.
“So?” Alejandro said.
“Get your idiot brother and meet us at Steven’s farm tomorrow,” Luis said with a grin. “Plan on two to three days of work. I wish there were more, but that’s all we got. Building one, maybe two, smaller greenhouses and putting in this.” Luis pointed to the buckets and spaghetti network of tubes and pipes.
“So, we’re helping you set up a marijuana farm. Cool.” He grinned.
“No,” Luis said, “we’re growing vegetables.”
“Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow,” Alejandro said, putting the last of the supplies in the back of the truck.
“See you then, shithead.”
“I love you too old man,” Alejandro said waving, then walking out of the garage.
“Kids,” Luis muttered, closing up his truck.
Getting the mail before he left, Luis was back on the road before supper time. He was just listening to the radio, not paying a lot of attention when flashing lights ahead of him caught his eye. He slowed down with everybody else, shutting his radio off. State police had two of three lanes closed down. An accident? He doubted that, because some of the cars that were forced into the far-right lane ended up taking a hard left and using the official vehicles only to turn around to head back into the West Memphis area.
“Probably an accident,” Luis said, then turned the radio back on softly.
Waiting was slow work, but he made it to the front of the line and saw two troopers on either side of the lane motioning for him to pull up and stop. Luis did.
“License and registration?” the trooper on his left asked.
“Gentlemen, I have a concealed pistol license, and I have it on me, at about five o’clock under my shirt.”
“Well, don’t touch yours and we won’t touch ours,” the trooper said, deadpan.
Luis could not help it, the sudden nerves, the answer… he snickered.
“Sorry sir, but I want to also tell you, my wallet and ID are in my back right pocket at the six o’clock position. If I get that out, I don’t want you to think I’m going for my pistol.”
“Not a problem. Keep your hands forward, and when I open your door, I want you to swing your legs out and exit the vehicle with your hands in front of you.”
Luis had done this before, it took longer than if he had not had his gun on him, but he did not want these guys nervous. It was the polite way to handle a stop when you were armed, and he wanted everybody to go home this night.
“Easy. Ok, please face the truck and put your hands up on the door frame.”
Luis did, and told them, “If you’d like to remove my firearm for temporary safekeeping, I give my permission.”
“It sounds like you’ve been stopped a couple of times before,” the other trooper said, though there was nothing in his tone that suggested he was anything but curious.
“Si, a time or two. When you get as old as me…”
The trooper pulled his pistol out and handed it to the second trooper.
“Ok, you can turn around,” the trooper told him.
Luis turned, and then reached for his wallet, pulling out the documents he always kept in there, and handing them over. The trooper scanned them quickly and gave the wallet back.
“Where are you headed, sir?” the second trooper asked.
Luis did not want to give the address out, but he did.
“To the farm, it’s out of the way in the boonies near Oklahoma.”
“Is it your farm, sir?” the first trooper asked.
“Yes,” Luis lied, not knowing why, just that he had a sneaking suspicion he was going to get turned around and sent back home if he admitted it was a friend and employers.
“Your address is in the city,” the first trooper said. “Is this a secondary or vacation home?”
“I split my time,” Luis lied again. “But right now it’s almost harvest season, and the livestock goes to the slaughterhouse soon, so I’m there more.”
The trooper wrote something down on his pad of paper. “Ok good. We are turning people around who are doing leisure travel right now. If it is work related, and this is, you’re free to keep on going.”
“Thank you,” Luis said, accepting the pistol back from the second trooper and holstering it. “Can I ask why?”
“Something to do with orders coming from the FEMA districts. I’m guessing they’re anticipating unrest with the president’s proclamation last night.”
“That makes sense. Keep people in one area. Listen fellas, you be safe out there.”
“You too,” they chorused.
Luis got in the truck and left, mindful of the speed. After a mile he saw two other troopers on the side of the road. Further on, he saw a car pulled over and a trooper handcuffing a woman who did not seem to enjoy it.
“They must be waiting for the people who ran. I wonder if they just radio ahead who has permission to pass?”
He was going to call the Garcia Brothers and let them know about this. If they went in Alejandro’s work truck with their tool bags, there would be little doubt and no lies that they were both going to a jobsite somewhere.
Twenty-Two
Harry and Angel were fascinated by the idea that Luis had come up with. The farm had a few IBC totes that Dewie had used for feed transport from back when he’d had to buy it. Harry and Angel were small enough to get in the hole on top and really scrub them out with soap and water, then rinsed.
Angel loved running the equipment, and Anna soon joined her as they scraped an area flat. Luis ran the smaller backhoe, cutting flat spots in the hillside further down from where they were going to place the greenhouses. He explained to her that the totes would be used to sort of be a cistern for the water. The reason for using multiple ones was to give the heavy solids a chance to settle near the bottom instead of plugging the irrigation systems up top and it gave the pumps less distance to lift, which was a limitation and another reason why there were three IBC totes ready to be installed.
“This is so cool,” Angelica said, hopping off the tractor.
“I’m having fun watching this come together. The idea… it’s crazy right?” Anna asked.
“Not really,” Angelica said. “This is essentially how some folks grow pot without soil.”
“What’s pot?” Harry asked, making Angelica’s face turn a beet red.
“It’s...
um… that stuff—”
“People call it a left-handed cigarette, or wacky tobacky,” Anna explained. “Stuff that you should stay away from.”
“Oh, ok,” Harry replied. “I’m going to go help Mr. Luis and the Garcia brothers.”
“Ok,” Angelica said.
“I can’t believe he rode up there the whole time,” Anna told Angelica.
“I can’t either. I think my leg was going numb from him sitting on my lap, but he wanted to learn how to do the handles.”
“He’s got to learn sometime. I’m sort of worried,” Anna said quietly.
“What do you mean?” Angelica asked.
“Leah and Dante went with Steven and Curt into the city. I know that leaves us plenty of people here, but I heard things were getting crazier… and Luis almost got turned around yesterday.”
“They said they would call if they got turned around. Hopefully, the banks will honor the transfers that we all put in for. Lord knows the small bank out here probably didn’t have enough cash on hand.”
“It’s not like they were taking a ton out, was it?” Angelica asked, surprised.
“We talked last night,” Anna told her, “With how scary things are looking, we wanted to make sure we had what we needed to pay you and Rob, cash in hand. Then we got some extra to see if we can find someplace to buy gold and silver.”
“But… that’s not allowed right now is it?” Angelica asked her, watching as the work crew started pounding stakes in and running strings.
“I don’t know, but when has that ever stopped any of us?” Anna asked, with a grin.
“How’s the nightmares?” Angelica asked suddenly.
“Honestly, it’s the firebombs that I dream about. When they were shot out of the sky? Maybe we should have handled that differently. Who knows if there were innocent people hurt?”
“Oh, I’m sure there were innocent people hurt. There were over seventy people treated for burns. The thing is, Hun, it wasn’t your fault, even for shooting the bottles out of the sky. The fault lies with the bastards who brought the fire and threw it.”
“I know that here,” she pointed to her head, “and here,” she pointed to her heart, “but when I sleep, that’s what keeps playing over. Human torches and the screams.”
“Mom, can we go fishing today?” Harry asked, suddenly returning, and being used to tuning out the grownups when they talked about feelings.
“I don’t mind, how about you go get your pole?” Angelica said. “We have some worms in the fridge.”
“Oh yeah!” he said, and took off like only kids with boundless energy can, running so hard his feet were almost hitting him in the butt.
“Want to help them build the greenhouse after we drop off the equipment?”
“Sure, but Luis said to leave the backhoe, so he can get the totes in place without having to manhandle them.”
“Ok, let’s get these tractors put up.”
The ground where they were going to put the greenhouse was rocky. When they scraped a flat area to put their hydroponic system in, they saw not much topsoil was left and decided to just level it with what they had and skip the gravel. They could weed by hand and still put the plastic down.
The greenhouse went up quickly. They used a tubing bender from Johnny’s Select Seeds and top rail fence posts from the farm store. With a tractor to work the ground and five sets of hands, they had almost everything pre-bent by the time Luis had made sure the area they were installing it in was squared off and had the areas for the poles to go in marked off.
Luis had said construction might take two or three days once the site was scraped clean, but they had the poles up and the plumbing in place by the end of the first day. Harry had a stringer full of catfish he had been catching off and on all day. Andrea had joined them with the Kawasaki Mule, moving around the flat area with her crutches.
“You know, with very little weeding and bending over, this might be… I don’t know… really cool.” Andrea admitted.
“It might be. But the veggies, they might taste like fish too for all I know. I have little experience growing food this way.”
“If you weren’t growing food, what were you growing?” Angelica teased.
“I’m a good catholic man,” Luis said, making the Garcia brothers snicker. “I know not of this devil’s lettuce you’re alluding to.”
The ladies and the Garcia brothers cracked up. Harry looked up to see what the grownups were laughing about, but decided to let it go. He carried the bucket up to the UTV.
“Can you give me a ride back to my dad? I can’t clean these myself yet,” he said, indicating the bucket.
“Sure thing,” Andrea said. “Anybody else want a ride up?”
“I’ll walk,” Anna said with a grin. “I need to work on my cardio more.”
“I’ll ride up,” Angelica said.
“Boys?” Andrea asked.
“No thank you. We’ll walk with Miss Anna.”
Andrea and the Littles drove to the main house. There, they found Rob looking over a notebook full of hand drawn notes and an almanac. He was leaning against the porch railing when they drove up.
“Hey Dad! Look what I caught for dinner?!”
“Let me see… Oh wow, those are some big ones. Do you think we need that many?” he asked, giving Angelica a wink.
“I told him to catch a few more because of Luis and the Garcia brothers,” Angel said with a smirk.
Rob smacked himself in the forehead. “Doh,” he said in a Homer impression. “Yeah, the reason why you two have been running heavy equipment today. By the way, I was able to find some greenhouse plastic at a satellite store of our farm stores. I put the order in and it is going to ship to our store tomorrow. I used the company credit card,” he said taking it out of his breast pocket, and walking it over to Andrea.
“Thanks,” Andrea said. “We actually got this done a whole day sooner than we thought we would. With a ton of hands, it went fast.”
“Hope that didn’t upset the Garcia brothers,” Andrea said from the buggy.
Angelica winced. “I forgot about that…”
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll make it worth their while. If they can get the plastic stretched tomorrow and get the water running in the first greenhouse, maybe we’ll see if they want to stay on for the second one.”
“But we don’t have the hydroponics stuff for that yet,” Rob said, scratching his head.
“Buckets, pipes, irrigation equipment. Things a farm usually has,” Andrea told him.
“You know, it’s almost like this was already planned…” Angelica said with a grin.
“We’ve talked about it…” Andrea admitted. “But I like Luis’s idea much better than what we had originally been talking about. And I hope it takes the guesswork out of things. The little greenhouse here has got a ton of plant starts going already…”
“Like I said, it’s almost like this was already planned out…” Angelica said with a snicker this time.
“You need help with those cats?” Rob asked his son, changing the subject.
“Yes sir,” he admitted. “I’m still afraid of getting poked by them.”
“Good, I’ll do these up and you can watch. I might let you try one out if you’re not too afraid.”
“Mom, can I?” Harry asked.
“If your father is right there. Remember, his fillet knife is sharp as Satan’s tongue,” Angel told him.
“Kind of like Miss Steff’s?” Harry asked innocently, having overheard something at some point.
Rob snorted, and grabbed the bucket from his son and went into the kitchen, where Grandma Goldie promptly screamed at him to get out of her way. Harry hesitated. “Maybe I should wait a second. So, you know…”
“It’s safe,” Angelica said. “Come on, I’ll protect you. Thanks for the ride Andrea!”
“Any time. What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Goldie knew about the cat fishing, so she’s probably got some oil and
hush puppies going already. Maybe a veggie dish if you really want to cook?”
“Let me see what I have handy!”
“If not, come over here and raid the pantry. The farm buys most of it anyways. You’ve only let us buy groceries once since we’ve moved in.”
“I… we do?” Andrea asked.
“Go talk to the guys when they get back. Dante was going on about write offs… besides, y'all almost always eat here in the big house anyways.”
“I noticed that Luis and Goldie have been taking their morning and evening coffee together on the porch.”
“Ewwwwwwwww,” Harry said, throwing caution to the wind, and rushing inside the house.
“I noticed that too,” Angelica told her. “I’m going to go rinse off this dust and sweat. Circle the wagons just before supper time and pray the men are home so we don’t have to eat all this fish ourselves.”
“Sounds like a plan to me! I’ll let Luis and the crew know to show up for dinner.”
“You know Luis,” Angelica said. “I think he shows up for Goldie more than the cooking.”
“The cooking is pretty amazing, I’m just saying,” Andrea said. “As soon as these casts come off, I’m going to eat with both hands so I can put some weight back on.”
“I hear ya. Ok Hun, see you.”
Twenty-Three
Kerry had not been having a good time of things lately. The USDA had dropped off their suggested price list, and how much of each product could be sold to a family. That left the vendors with overages, and some food was starting to go bad. Customers on the sly had contacted them and often met them to ‘help’ them load and unload their trucks, paying cash. The government program to buy any excess to ‘redistribute’ had not happened, until today.
Agents showed up in refrigerated trucks and SUVs as the market was closing. There was almost a riot as customers and vendors tried to stop the agents from taking the produce. More than one had shouted, where is my pay? At the end, once everything was loaded, and the state police had been called in to settle things down, the agents produced vouchers for the vendors to mail in. Their counts and products would be examined against what the agents had brought in, and weighed out to an exact amount for them to be repaid.
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 2 | The Farm Page 14
