“You know this is bullshit, it’s a public event—”
“It’s a member’s only event, on private property. Now, you can petition the membership committee, but I’m pretty sure you’re in front of half or more of them right now and didn’t you pull a gun on these guys and get your balls handed to you?”
Ed huffed and he puffed, but in the end, Anna burst into very feminine giggles which made him turn back to them.
“No, but I did have them firmly in hand when you were led away by… drumroll please, the state police!” Anna mimed crushing her left fist, making the officer cringe.
“Listen,” Dante said, “are you looking for something personally, or are you just trying to be a pain?”
“It’s… personal,” he told him.
Dante indicated to the side and Ed followed him along with Angel and Anna. Ed did not look happy about it, but it got the line coming into the new market going, and folks were able to leave who had made purchases.
“Look Ed, we’ve had our differences, but if you need something, just ask. You really don’t have to do what you were doing. I know it’s infantile of me to do it, but when somebody pushes, my first reaction is to push back. So… What can I get you?”
“I… Listen, I appreciate this,” he said. “I wanted to check out what you guys were up to, but I really do want to see if I can buy some stuff. Mostly eggs, maybe a cabbage and some potatoes.”
“Are things really that bad out there?” Angel asked him.
“You guys don’t get out much, do you?” he asked, without a trace of sarcasm or menace for once.
“No, all things considered, this farm has somewhat become our reluctant prison,” Anna admitted. “The two protests that went sideways here at the farm, the agents trying to raid us… To top that off, it’s 2020 and that’s not mentioning what Andrea went through, or the pandemic.”
“Well, what they aren’t telling folks on the news is getting pretty common knowledge. The grocery shelves are starting to empty. The protests all over the highways are slowing or stopping traffic. Some truckers are refusing to deliver to certain cities right now. Things are getting hard to come by, including fuel.”
“Really?” Rob asked, surprised, overhearing that part.
“Yes. And listen, about the last time I tried to arrest you guys…”
“Listen, everyone was hot that night, even us,” Anna said trying to make a peace offering.
“Tell you what, I’ll go see what we can get. I’ll bring it to you here, or if you want to stop by later, I’ll have it bagged up for you?” Dante offered.
“That’s… probably more than I deserve. Thanks.”
They watched as Ed took off in the direction of his cruiser. The road was full of cars, a sight that was pretty unusual for this time of the year. Anna stayed behind to watch his car fade out of sight. The rest went back to mingling with folks in the driveway and at the stalls on either side. Anna noted that Lyle’s pickup drove past slowly, Lyle himself looking on curiously.
Leah had remembered something nobody else had. They had almost two weeks worth of eggs to handle, and nobody had set up a stall for them. She decided to fix that and found Harry and got him washing eggs. Goldie pitched in and, when she had nearly two dozen, she took the Kawasaki and opened the bed up, so it resembled a flatbed pickup truck. Slowly and carefully she loaded the back with cartons of eggs.
With nearly two weeks worth of eggs to crate up, it did not take long with three of them using the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink. In no time she had the entire back filled, at least one or two cartons deep. The bed of the Kawasaki was not huge, but the UTV looked full.
“Hey, you want a table?” Steven called, seeing what she was doing from across the drive where the cabins had been set up a hundred yards away.
“Yeah, we forgot to set one out for us, and we’ve got like fourteen baskillion eggs here!”
“Ok, I’ll be right over with it,” he yelled.
“You know what? I’ll just sell out of the Kawasaki!”
“That sounds like a better plan!”
Anna had been about to radio the house to see if anybody was going to be selling eggs when she saw Leah driving up. She pulled into the grass next to a table before closing the gate behind her. People, being curious, looked. When the word went out that the Langtry farm had eggs again, Anna rushed over, thinking Leah was about to get ransacked. Rob had done the same, but she could not see Angel in the crowd. Instead, when she got there, she found Leah sitting on the tailgate, taking money, and making change.
It was not unusual at the market to have had twenty dozen or more eggs sold during the day. The farm had not been there in a while though, and the eggs had built up bucket by bucket. The oldest they boiled and fed to the pigs. Goldie and Andrea had been doing experiments in using eggs with every meal, but even for a family of 10 plus two fur faces, sixty to seventy eggs a day was way beyond their consumption.
“Oh wow,” Anna said, seeing all of the cartons stacked up. “No wonder we were running behind.”
“If I run out here, I can always call up to the house. They’re washing and crating three more bucketfuls. The only thing I might run out of is cartons.”
“Oh crap,” Anna said. “They’re at the market, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, but we can always wait and get them for the next market,” Leah told her.
“Hey Anna, LeBaron is here,” Kerry called. “He has a question for you.”
“Ok,” Anna said, then gave a little wave to Leah, then looked, making sure she had a radio on. They all had them now, and on a 240-acre farm, they didn’t need them to be fancy, but they had invested good money to have good communications gear. Anna wondered if she would be able to get signals beyond the farm though.
“Mr. LeBaron!” Anna said, rushing to the front table. “How are you doing?” Anna gave him a hug, her vest bristling with spare magazines and a knife. Despite that, she made the lawyer blush at the attention she was giving him.
“Good lord young lady, is that really Anna?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said grinning. “Dewie told you about me.” She laughed. “But this is how I dress up for photoshoots too.”
“That he did, I just never… GI Jane doesn’t sound good enough. You must be the new Apocalypse Barbie model, yes?”
Anna laughed louder, but Kerry was just giving her a funny look.
“You should tell her,” Kerry said, poking him in the side, making him look over seriously for a moment.
“Oh yes. I was contacted by an agent who claimed he was with Homeland Security, working with the USDA and FEMA. Since I’ve already been on record as the farm’s former and current litigator, they wanted me to give you this.” A packet of papers came out from a leather satchel he had hanging under his left arm.
“Do I want to take possession of those?” Anna asked. “Like, am I being served? Are we?”
“No, it’s a request for information. Most of it is pertaining to farming in general. There are provisions where they are asking for a list of animals, proposed yields etc. I know with what happened before you might be reluctant to even take these papers.”
“Yeah, I really don’t want to,” she said quietly.
“Some of this is normal. Give them to Little Rob. He’ll know what he’s required to fill out, and what is the government just fishing for.”
“Ok, that sounds good.” She took the stack of paperwork. “At least they’re asking this time,” she said with a grin.
“I don’t think they want another incident. I hear they’ve been going to other farms…”
“That’s how this whole thing was birthed,” Anna said, spinning and pointing to the twenty odd vendors set up along the driveway.
“Indeed. I have a couple of clients who were not part of the market family who had their milk cows confiscated, along with the calves. I drove out there two days ago to check in with them, since they hadn’t been returning my calls, and they were just gone.”
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“Maybe they went on vacation?” Anna asked.
“You know the police are turning people away, on the highways, yes?”
“Luis had told me something like that. With the virus restrictions, they’re trying to reduce travel?”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” LeBaron said. “None of that tripe is legal either, but people seem to be going about it. See here? Folks are using masks and not really piling on top of each other for the most part.”
“I know, listen, I’ll give this to Rob. You want to come in and see if Grandma Goldie has anything cooking?”
“Actually, I have to get running,” he said. “Good to see so many of our community come out here. I thought this was a silly idea at first,” he almost whispered, “but I’ve been listening to people chatting. Food is running out and people in the cities are just up and disappearing.”
“But the police are keeping people in place, right?” she asked.
“We don’t know, but it’s starting to get reported, and I’ve got a law school buddy in Fort Smith who said the media suppression there is unprecedented. A coalition of his law partners tried filing a suit, but no judge would hear it. Things are scary.”
“Tell me about it. How would you like to come over for dinner one night? We’re starved for company and we don’t hardly ever leave the farm any more.”
“I would be delighted. Give me a ring and we’ll pick out the day and time!”
Anna said her goodbyes and then walked back to the table where Kerry was checking people in and out of the gate. Anna and LeBaron had drifted when they talked and her eyes found Dante next to Rob, people watching.
“Hey Kerry, I have a question.”
“Go ahead,” she said, taking a dollar from an older woman and a little girl, nearly Harry’s age.
“Next time you’re at the market, can you grab the egg cartons for us?”
“Sure, that’ll be easy,” Kerry said. “Just text me and remind me. I’ve sort of got a date later on, so I might forget,” she giggled.
Anna followed Kerry’s gaze and saw the older State Trooper. He probably had a decade on Kerry, but was younger than Luis and Goldie. He kind of had a Robert Redford look. Anna could see what Kerry was interested in.
“I will,” Anna said, “Thanks!”
Leah had started stuffing cash in her pockets after stacking and rolling it up. The customers had not been getting eggs elsewhere, as evidenced with the nearly empty trailer bed. She had radioed Andrea to see if she could drive some more out.
“Hey,” Dante said to her, “we need to save two or three cartons aside,” he said quietly.
“Oh yeah?” she asked. “Who for?”
“Officer Buckley,” Dante said.
Leah’s eyebrows went up, almost touching her bangs.
“He tried to bully his way in here and we shot him down cold. I got him talking a little bit, and it seems like he’s wanting to buy stuff. He’s having a hard time finding food too.”
“So, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to be getting along with him. Sort of make peace?” Leah asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Dante admitted.
“Ok,” Leah said, taking a ten from a customer and watching as they took their two cartons of eggs, smiling widely.
“Ma’am, how much are the eggs?” a little voice startled Dante and he spun around and saw he had almost backed up over a girl who was around six years old.
“They’re five dollars a dozen, Hun,” Leah said.
“Ok, thanks!” The little girl seemed happy and rushed off to an older woman.
“Her grandma maybe, looks like she’s having a hard time getting around,” Dante said.
“How about you go talk to her?” Leah said. “We don’t want somebody falling down and getting hurt.”
“That sounds good to me,” Dante said.
“Need a hand?” Angel asked, popping out of thin air.
“Sure,” Dante said. “But if she goes over, you might hurt her trying to stop her fall.”
They had moved away from the UTV in a hurry. Dante saw Andrea driving up to the inner gate in the other Kawasaki and he gave her a quick wave and beelined it for the woman and the little girl.
“Ma’am,” Dante said as he got closer.
The lady turned and looked at him blankly for a moment, “Help you with something officer?”
“Sorry ma’am, I’m not the police, I’m Doctor Weaver. I just noticed you were having a hard time getting around. Are you feeling ok?”
“My feet hurt mostly, but I do sort of feel dizzy.”
“How about you come over to where your granddaughter just was. My wife is a doctor as well. We can get you a bottle of water, some place to sit down…?”
“Grandma, you said those eggs were too expensive,” the little girl piped up.
“Hush Stella,” she said, turning a little red in the face.
“Ok, but I’d like to sit too. All this walking has my feets hurting as well!”
“Do you want a superman?” Anna asked her suddenly.
The little girl suddenly got a case of the shies and hid behind her grandmother, who started shuffling slowly towards the UTV. By the time they had made it there, Andrea was pulled in next to her. She had a cooler on the passenger seat and half a full bed of eggs. Leah had started moving what eggs were left in her bed to Andrea’s, and made room for the woman.
“Just sit back on this ma’am, and let me or my husband look at you,” Leah told her.
The woman sat on the edge. Andrea had already been filled in by Leah, so she started hustling eggs. While Dante went through some routine questions, Leah checked her pulse and blood pressure.
“How much walking have you done today?” Dante asked her.
“About a mile or so,” the woman admitted.
“Is that a normal amount of walking for you?” Dante asked her as Leah let go of the woman’s wrist and went to the cooler Andrea had brought up.
Leah fished a couple of bottles of water out of the cooler, then handed them to the woman and the little girl.
“Thank you,” she said simply. “I’m Evangeline, but folks call me Eva. This sprat is my granddaughter, Stella.”
“Hi Stella,” Leah said, then tapped the little girl on the nose.
She giggled and Leah picked her up and put her on the tailgate next to her Grandma.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’m doing pretty good. My feet hurt though.”
Leah went through the basics with Stella, but found nothing more than a worn-out little girl. A little on the thin side.
“Are you hungry?” Dante asked the both of them.
“Oh, yes sir,” Stella said immediately.
“No, we’re not,” Grandma shot back, giving the girl the stink eye.
“But Grandma, you said we were going to trade and get some food,” the last bit almost sounded defiant.
“Trade?” Dante asked her.
“I have my late husband’s pocket watch,” Eva said, pulling it from a pocket.
Dante whistled. It was an antique and if it weren’t gold, he would be fooled.
“Why would you want to sell this?” he asked her.
“I can’t go to the store and stock up. They really don’t have anything and, until I know there’s going to be more gas, I can’t really afford a trip there. My social security check didn’t make it in. Damn post office is running late again, and I might not make it home if they don’t have any gas.”
“So, the stores don’t have food and the gas station is out of gas?” Dante asked.
She nodded. “I figured if I offered something more valuable I could…”
“Ma’am,” Leah whispered, “put that away, please.”
The woman did slowly, a look of puzzlement on her face. Leah had three cartons of eggs set aside, she put three more back.
“How about you sit here with me for a few and cool off and rest up. The market is almost done, and we wi
ll give you a ride home. I don’t want to see you falling.”
“But I’ve got to get some—”
“My husband will get some shopping in for you while you rest. What do you need?”
“Honestly, a little bit of everything,” she said.
“Except for milk!” Stella said brightly. “Ole miss Jones is putting out so much that Grandma and I can’t drink it all.”
“But I didn’t give your husband any money,” she said, noticing Dante had moved on already.
“How about we make a trade?” Leah asked.
Thirty
Ed Buckley had gotten busy. A traffic accident between two elderly members of the community and an ambulance ride had taken up his time. Now that he was off duty and back in his own vehicle, he decided he would drive back to the farm. His head was confused. First, they make fun of him, belittle him in front of the crowd there, and then offer to let him come back and buy food from them. Was this a setup to further humiliate him?
He was still getting flack from the township supervisor for having been briefly arrested and released without being charged. He did not want another incident. Slowing, Ed Noticed Leah and Dante on a side by side UTV, headed in the direction of the farm. He slowed down and rolled down a window. Leah noticed who it was, and she slowed to a stop.
“Hey Officer Buckley, we’re headed back that way now. Sorry if nobody was at the gate, we had a little bit of a medical emergency and had to take somebody to their house.”
“Oh uh... I… I just got off work, I was hoping I wasn’t too late.
“Not at all! Meet us at the gate,” she said.
He followed along behind them, his headlights illuminating everything. The gate started opening automatically and he had to wait a little longer than they did to get through. He was surprised when the gate did not start shutting behind him. He thought the group was a little security crazy, but considering what had happened there, he did not blame them. He parked next to them at the second gate, but saw he needn’t have. There was a big white cooler near where they had parked.
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 2 | The Farm Page 19
