by Alan Black
Larry said, “I’m okay, Dad. The emergency isn’t mine, but some friends of mine. They need help and I volunteered to give them a hand. It’ll be fine, Dad. It’s nothing illegal or immoral, or even fattening for that matter.”
“Did these friends of yours come help you last spring with your round up or when you needed to medicate every last breeding cow you have on the place?”
Larry sighed. “No. They did not. Dad, being a friend is not about how they treat you, but about how you treat them. You know who taught me that?”
Larry stretched the receiver cord across the kitchen to give the washer a swift kick, hoping it would quiet down enough so he could hear his father better. It didn’t, but then washers were known to be that way when confronted by corporal punishment.
Dad said, “I know it wasn’t me that taught that. I’ve never said such foolishness in my life.”
“No. It wasn’t you. It was Grandpa and he raised you the same way you taught me, so don’t you go all twitchy on me. Now, I don’t have much time since I have to leave in the morning, but what can I help you with?
“Serendipity, son,” Dad said.
Larry’s father liked to find the good in things. He loved it when things came together of their own accord. Mom always said it was God’s willing hand, but Dad was fond of serendipity. It was serendipity when you wanted apple pie for supper and Grandma made pies for the church bake sale with one pie left over for you. It was serendipity when the neighbor’s bull got loose just as your cow went into heat. It was serendipity when your car broke down just as the corn crop came in and your mechanic had a hankering for a mess of corn on the cob.
Dad continued, “Your cousin Gary Junior is in a jam.”
Larry wanted to say something. Everything with Aunt Nola and her kids went into the crapper the day they found out about Uncle Gary’s other wife and family. He held his tongue. Dad was extremely protective of his baby sister Nola and her brood. Mom literally sat on him to keep him from hunting down Gary Senior with his shotgun. Not figuratively, she actually sat on his chest for an hour until he calmed down.
“Of course I’ll do what I can in the time I have left,” Larry said.
“That is the serendipitous thing, son. You don’t need to be here to help. Did you know that Gary Senior gave Gary Junior his house and some acreage as a wedding gift last year? No wait, that doesn’t matter. Anyway, it seems Gary Senior named another of his sons from his other wife after himself, too. So there are two Gary Juniors running around. The other one filed a suit against your cousin, claiming Gary Junior’s place is his since the names all match. A judge issued an injunction against Gary Junior’s place. Lock, stock, and barrel are all held in a receivership until the matter can be settled. He isn’t even allowed to do the hay cutting, and it’s ready to be cut. The court is going to hire someone to cut and sell it. Then they’re going to put the money in a bank and give it to whoever they decide has it coming after this is all settled. And dang his hide if Gary Senior is nowhere to be found to settle it. All he would have to say is which son he gave that place to. I’ll bet you a dollar to a fart in a windstorm that he’s off with wife number three and another Gary Junior.”
Larry wanted to laugh, but his father was upset. Larry could hear people in the background at Dad’s house. Mom was yelling at Dad to watch his language. Grandma was yelling that someone had better come help her with the dishes. Grandpa was yelling because — well, that was just what Grandpa did these days.
“Dad, you couldn’t write this stuff in a novel. People just wouldn’t believe it.”
“Danged if that ain’t the God’s honest truth.”
“So, what do you need?”
“I don’t need a thing, son. But Nola doesn’t have room at her little place for Gary Junior with all of her other kids running around. He came here, but we don’t have room either. I know that we have a three-bedroom place, but your Grandpa can’t sleep in a room with anyone else anymore. So, you see where this is going?
“Yes, sir. Gary Junior is more than welcome to stay at my place. He and his wife…”
“Marcy,” Dad supplied.
“Yeah, my apologies to Marcy. They would be welcome in my home even if I didn’t have to go out of town.”
“I know that, son. So does Gary Junior. He should be able to look after your place while you’re gone. And even tho’ he’s an ignorant dirt farmer like your old man, he does know stock enough to look after your critters. Speaking of that, Ol’ Bucky is here. He was down at the McDonald’s place again. That poodle of theirs is in heat — again. They called me to come get him. You might try to tie him up for a while, or at least keep him in the house a bit. I’ll have Gary and Marcy bring him back when they come over tonight.”
“Tonight?” Larry thought quickly. “Um, tonight might not be good, Dad. Can they stay there until after I leave in the morning?”
“Son, I’m not going to let a pregnant woman sleep on the fold out couch. You have an extra bedroom they can use.” It wasn’t a question, nor did his father phrase it that way.
“Pregnant? You got Mom pregnant again!”
“I should hope to hell not. Marcy is pregnant.”
“Okay, Dad. Send ‘em along. I’ll make do somehow. I gotta go, Dad. I love you and give my love to Mom and Grandma.”
“Grandpa too?”
“Goes without saying, Dad.”
Larry hung up the phone and wondered what to do about Gary and Marcy. No one could see the spacecraft from the house, but a person could probably see the spacecraft if they climbed into the hayloft in the barn and stretched their neck. Not like Bud Wilkins stretched his neck when he hung himself in his barn last winter, but more like a crane or just standing on tippy-toes.
Anyone looking was sure going to see them take off for outer space tomorrow morning. Maybe he would just have to figure something out. Once he was gone, it wouldn’t really matter since any fuss raised would be exactly like buying insurance after the barn burned down, or using a condom after she got pregnant, or for that matter telling the FBI you were going to rob a bank after you got away clean and hid the loot. Done deal and nothing no one could do about it!
He decided not to fix his steak until he knew whether Gary and Marcy had eaten. There was no sense in cooking two meals, although he doubted Mom or Grandma would let anyone out of their house without being so stuffed they had to waddle to their car. He went about straightening up as fast as he could. Not that hurrying made the job any less perfectly done. He wouldn’t have done a better job of vacuuming even if he’d been going slow. He wouldn’t have dusted the corners any more precisely even if he’d been creeping along. He wouldn’t have sorted the rest of his laundry with any more regard to fabric or color than if he had all day to do it.
He was just putting the vacuum away in the hall closet when he heard a car door slam. He looked at his watch and wondered what had taken them so long in coming from his parent’s place. Grandma had probably insisted they stay for another piece of pie. He hoped Grandma had insisted they bring a piece along for him.
“Hello?” a hesitant female voice called through the screen door. Marcy was a short, dark haired young girl barely out of her teens and heavy around the hips like a bowling pin or rather exactly like seventy-five percent of all women over nineteen in farm country. Being pregnant enough to show, just balanced her belly to her hips, giving her a wonderful rounded look, ripe like a peach.
“Hello yourself, Marcy. Come on, girl. Get in the house.” They hugged tentatively like most people recently related by marriage: shoulders in, hips back, with quick pats on the back. Larry commented on how nice she looked; being all pregnant and everything. He mentioned how good it was to see her; how long has it been, not since the wedding, we shouldn’t wait that long, how were her parents, when is she due, blah, blah blah. It was everything that Larry was expected to say, but nothing he wanted to talk about.
He finally said. “Where’s Gary?”
Marcy nod
ded at her husband’s name. She looked around as if surprised he wasn’t right behind her. “Um, Gary, well he said he was going to bring in our luggage, but he wanted to try and tie up your dog for the night.”
“Oh, hell,” Larry said. “Ol’ Bucky will be running circles round him in the dark.” He walked to the screen door, kicked it open, and called for Ol’ Bucky. The dog loped out of the dark, past Larry and flopped down under the kitchen table. “Let me go help Gary.”
“Never mind,” Gary said, coming out of the dark with a suitcase in each hand. Gary was thin and average height, but strong across the back and arms with big hands calloused from hard work. His head was covered by a gimme cap from the feedstore over in Lyons, Kansas. “The courts didn’t allow us to take but one bag of personals each. The rest has to be “adjudicated”.” He spat out the legal term as if it was something that dropped out the south end of a northbound diseased rodent of uncertain parentage.
“Bastages,” Larry sympathized. “Don’t worry about tying up Ol’ Bucky. He hasn’t met a rope he couldn’t chew through or a chain he can’t break and drag behind him.” He pointed at his bedroom. “You can carry those suitcases right into the big bedroom up front.”
“We don’t want to put you out. That’s your bedroom. We can take the other,” Gary said. Even though he said it, he didn’t move toward the guest bedroom, waiting like all guests for his host to insist that he take the nicer of the two rooms.
“Nope,” Larry said. “I’m sure Dad told you I was leaving for a while tomorrow. So, no sense in letting the big queen-sized bed sit empty. The guest room has twin beds, so that isn’t good for a married couple. Did you two eat yet?”
“We’re stuffed to the gills,” Gary said. “We have a huge chunk of your mom’s peach cobbler in the car for you.”
“Good. I hope you don’t mind but I’m about ready to burn me a steak, so we can talk while I eat.”
Marcy shook her head, “No. You men folk talk about business and what not. I’ll go cook your steak. Gary, please go get the cobbler and put it in the refrigerator before it goes bad. How do you like your steak, Larry?”
Since Larry liked his steaks rare, it didn’t take them long to be arranged around the kitchen table. In between bites, Larry told his cousin and new wife about his farm, the cattle, the barn, where the keys were to everything that took keys, and what to do with Ol’ Bucky when he rolled in and ate skunk roadkill. He told them to help themselves to anything and everything in the chest freezer out on the back porch. He told them to ride Dollar anytime they could catch him. He told them to go through the clothes in the closet Nancy left behind to see if any fit Marcy. He doubted anything would fit as Nancy prided herself on being tall and model thin. Marcy obviously prided herself of being happy and healthy, eating another piece of cobbler while Larry attacked his slice of dead cow meat.
No matter what Larry’d told Nancy, she’d left a closet full of old clothes in the guest bedroom closet while cleaning out the master bedroom closet. He told them to use any of his clothes he left behind, not that he had that much worth borrowing and he doubted Gary wanted anything to do with his old used boxers. He even told them who to call if the septic tank backed up and where to go for a cold beer, if they’d a mind to go out for a bit.
Gary stopped him when he pulled up the bank records on his laptop and started writing down the passwords. “What are you doing? I’m grateful for the help and we’re flat broke, but you can’t just open up everything and give it to us like that. You sound like you aren’t planning on coming back.”
Larry chuckled. “I’m trusting you to keep all of this—” he waved his arms around indicating what he meant when he said all “—everything on my place, under your hat. I’m excited about going. I’ve never been where I’m going and I’m looking forward to getting there like you wouldn’t believe. But, I’m planning on coming back. For that matter, every time I go into town I plan on coming back, but you just never know. It doesn’t take but one small step in the wrong direction and you can’t go home. Just like you and Marcy, it isn’t even your fault, but you can’t go home.
“Both of you listen up. You’re doing me a bigger service than I’m doing for you. Besides, you’re family. If you’re going to be taking care of my place, you’ll take care of it all. Treat it like your own. Do your banking on-line and they won’t know you aren’t me. There isn’t that much in my banking account. There’s only about $40,000. Help yourself to what you need to keep things running and for—well, anything you need, baby stuff and all. Just remember, that’s all we have coming in until early spring next year and then we can sell off the two-year-old steers. So use what you need but try to make it last until then. Don’t hold any bills waiting for me to get back, just pay them through the on-line account.
“Lastly, if you need something legal, you go to my dad. He has a complete power of attorney on everything. One big request, keep what you see here and what we do a secret.”
Marcy said, “I don’t mind secrets. I can do that, but I don’t like this whole thing. You’re giving us too much and you’re making it sound too final.”
Larry shrugged, “Marcy, I’m sure your parents would do the same.” He stood up, stretched his back, and slid another piece of Grandma’s cobbler on his plate. He had to reach over a salad that Marcy had put on the table by mistake, but he managed to reach.
Gary shook his head, “No. They don’t really care much for me. They said Marcy married beneath her.”
Larry laughed, plopping back down in his chair. “Oh, hell. I can tell by looking at this pretty, young thing that they’re right. No girl ever marries a man that’s good enough for her. It’s up to you to prove you deserve the woman you won.”
He looked pointedly at the two. “So, at the risk of sounding a bit self-serving, you run this place like it was your own. You make it a success. Then, when you get your place back, you make that successful too. Marcy’s folks’ll come around.”
He pulled the clean sheets from the dryer, sent the two off to bed, cleaned up the supper dishes, tossed the bone from his steak to Ol’ Bucky, and stuffed some clothes straight from the dryer into a backpack.
—*—
He was still downloading books into his e-reader when the sun started peeking over the horizon. He was more than glad he’d found a whole section of classic novels for free on the internet. There were plenty of free books he wanted to read, and a few that he was supposed to have read in school already.
Gary and Marcy made their way into the kitchen at the same time, making Larry smile. Getting up early without being called or using an alarm clock was a good sign that the young couple was farm folk.
Sleeping past daylight was exactly like taking a vacation, only on a farm you weren’t on vacation. You woke up already at work. There wasn’t any getting ready to go to work, you were already there. It was simply “go to work” and work started at the back screen door, or half that distance if a fellow lived alone. An average farmer knew he had more on his schedule to do than he could get done before the day was out and a good farmer knew he would add to his to-do list more things than he got done.
Gary smiled. “I’m glad that you didn’t sneak out on us in the middle of the night. I hope you have time to show me around the place before you go.”
“Not much need to do a complete walk around. I’m leaving my laptop here for you. Go to the icon marked HOMESTEAD. Yep, the one in all caps. It has an online map of the whole place. Each pasture is clearly delineated. There are associated spreadsheets listing every piece of equipment and every animal on the place. It’s easy to manage. We can take a walk back through the cow pasture here in a few minutes.”
“Can I fix breakfast first?” Marcy asked.
Larry shook his head. “I’m sure you could whip up something better than I could, but I want to get an early start if I can. I promised my friends I’d be ready to go by sunrise and I don’t want to make them wait. Would you mind holding off on your breakfast unt
il after I’ve gone?”
Marcy shook her finger at him. “You shouldn’t go traipsing off to God knows where on an empty stomach.”
Larry patted his stomach. It was flatter and better muscled than most men his age. “It wouldn’t hurt for me to miss a meal or two. Besides, I just wolfed down about half of that cobbler you brought over. Grandma would throw a fit if she knew that was what I had for breakfast, so let’s just keep that a secret, shall we?”
Gary laughed, “Far be it from me to tattle on the guy who is fast becoming my favorite cousin.”
Larry smiled, “Thanks for that, but I’m serious about secrets. I don’t do anything illegal or immoral on this place, but you will see things here that you’ll want to talk about. Don’t. You can talk to each other, but no one else. And I mean no one else. Not my folks, not yours, and certainly not Grandma. As to my trip, you cannot mention when, where, or how I am going,”
Marcy gave a small shiver, “Now you’re scaring me, Larry.” The shiver wasn’t at all like Ol’ Bucky’s wet dog shake, but more of a simple head and shoulders wiggle; the end result was a shimmy and a jiggle that would have been a winner at Racine’s: weekday, weeknight, or anytime on the weekend.
Larry smiled, “I’m getting scared myself now that it’s almost time to go.” He unplugged his e-reader, shoved it and its charger into his backpack. He hadn’t thought to ask Scooter, but he assumed that any civilization with the ability to cross light years could figure out how to convert electricity to 110 volts.
Larry said, “You both have to promise to keep my secrets, okay? And don’t worry, it’s not like I’m going into witness protection, or converting to Islam, or that I’m being arrested and sent to prison. But, keeping the secret is as much for your protection as mine. Promise?”