Fatal Harvest

by Catherine Palmer

  “It’s probably in his truck,” Billy said. “It has a newer version of his term paper on it. Matt was showing me yesterday. He learned all about these food companies on the Internet, you know? And he went to see that guy who ranches near Hope—what’s his name? Who retired from Agrimax?”

  “Jim Banyon?”

  “Yeah, him. And Matt interviewed Miss Pruitt about her work with famine relief.”

  “What does famine relief have to do with Agrimax?”

  “See, what happened is this. Matt’s doing his research, and he gets this big idea that his term paper can be more than just a school assignment. It’s a plan for Agrimax to help feed the hungry. So he starts crunching all these numbers on his computer, and he’s e-mailing everybody—completely obsessed, you know? He can’t talk about anything else. Anyway, the other day he tells me he was wrong about Agrimax helping feed the hungry. He says they’re only gonna sell their food to the highest bidders, and they don’t even want to hear his ideas. Basically they told him to back off.”

  A prickle ran down Cole’s spine. “Back off? What was Matt doing?”

  “Writing to them and bugging them—stuff like that.” Billy straightened. “I told him to chill out. Just forget the whole thing. Write the term paper and get the usual A, and then drop it. But you know how Matt is. He gets these—”

  “Obsessions. Yes, I know.” Cole raked a hand back through his hair, damp from being under his hat all day. “Do you think Matt is in trouble, Billy? Legal trouble?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Strong. He said they were threatening him.”

  “Threatening him! Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “I told him he should, but Mr. Strong, you’re always out plowing, or on the road to Albuquerque to see your girlfriend. Matt doesn’t much talk to anyone but me.”

  “You and Miss Pruitt.” Cole left his son’s bedroom and took the long hall in five strides, as Billy followed. “Where’s the phone? Why does he always move the blasted phone?”

  “Use mine. But I already tried calling him, Mr. Strong. He’s got his turned off.”

  Cole took Billy’s cell phone and began searching down the list of numbers Josefina had written on the chalkboard near the refrigerator.

  “You don’t know Matt’s cell number?” Billy asked, a tinge of disbelief in his voice. “Here, give me the phone.”

  Billy punched a couple of buttons—clearly he had his best friend’s number programmed into his phone. “Hey, Mattman, where are you? You said we’d go to DQ after Spanish. I’m out at your place, and your dad’s semi-freaking about you. So call me, okay?” He pressed another button. “I left him a message.”

  Cole hurled his apple core into the trash can. He did have to plow. The ranch took most of his time. And yes, since meeting Penny Ames, he had spent what spare time he had in Albuquerque. Now that they were engaged, she required a lot of his attention in planning the details of their fall wedding. She had chosen Tahiti for the honeymoon, and she insisted that Cole go ahead and get his passport, their tickets and a new set of luggage.

  Having a woman in his life again took time and energy, but Cole held every hope that Penny would bond them into the family he wanted—for himself and for his son. He felt more than a little guilty about the lousy job he had done as a father. But Matt had never been an easy kid to parent—wandering in a strange world of his own making. Cole had tried to understand the boy, but the older Matt got, the more distant their relationship grew. With the purchase of his first computer, Matt retreated almost completely into a realm of information, entertainment, and communication. Cole had left him alone, grateful his son was occupied and apparently happy.

  He sighed. “I’ve got to finish that field. We plant next week.”

  “Yeah, sure, Mr. Strong.” Billy’s brown eyes registered disappointment. “Tell Matt to call me tonight if he shows up.”

  “What do you mean ‘if he shows up’? Of course he’ll show up.” Suspicion gnawed at Cole. “Where do you think he is, Billy? Tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he had a wreck. He’s not that good of a driver, you know.”

  Cole clenched his teeth at the image of his son trapped inside a mangled truck in an irrigation ditch somewhere. For years, he had tried to get Matt out in the fields to practice his driving. The boy wasn’t interested. But the minute he turned sixteen, of course, he insisted on getting his license. Cole had given his son the use of one of the ranch pickups—an old green Chevy with a rusty bed and balding tires.

  “The only road he drives is the one between the high school and the house,” he told Billy. “And you just got here. You’d have seen the pickup if he’d wrecked it.”

  “Yeah.” Billy thought for a moment. “He might have gone out to see Mr. Banyon in Hope. The whole Agrimax thing, you know.”

  Cole grabbed the phone book from the counter and leafed through the Hope directory. Billy handed him the cell phone, and he dialed.

  “Banyon,” a voice said on the other end.

  “Jim, this is Cole Strong—Matt’s dad.”

  “Oh. Uh-huh.”

  “Listen, Matt didn’t come home from school today, and I was wondering if he might be out there visiting with you.”

  “No.” Banyon breathed heavily into the phone. “Uh, no. Tell him not to come out. Not to do that.”

  Cole paused, concern working its way up his spine. “You okay, Jim?”

  “Uh.” There was another pause and more labored breathing. “No. Not…not really.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need a doctor?”

  Another silence. “Just…uh…tell Matt not to come. Definitely not to—”

  The phone went dead. Cole stared at Billy.

  “What’s with Mr. Banyon?” the boy asked. “Is he sick?”

  “I’m not sure.” Cole tapped the phone book, weighing the idea of asking the sheriff to look in on the man. Banyon was in his sixties, but he appeared to be in robust health—not the type to have a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he was struggling with his farm. On retiring from a white-collar job at Agrimax, Jim Banyon had bought land in New Mexico and was trying to grow cotton on it. Many local farmers had gone belly-up in recent years, and Cole had not predicted great success for his new neighbor. The depression and despair these men felt at the loss of their land and livelihood had led some to alcohol and others to the brink of suicide.

  Uneasy over his son’s whereabouts, Cole found his thoughts drawn to his work. It was the one thing that had seen him through his wife’s illness and death, the growing estrangement from Matt, and the surge of emotion he had felt on meeting Penny.

  “Well, I’m gonna head out and look for Matt,” Billy said, grabbing the last tamale from the plate. “He might have gone to the library and forgotten what time it was.”

  “That would be like Matt.”

  “Yeah.” The boy picked up an apple and dropped it into the pocket of his baggy jeans. “If he’s not there, I guess I’ll check the computer store. He’s been eyeing this tiny USB key he wants to buy. Sometimes he just goes over there and stares at it. Or maybe—”

  “Wait. A US…B…what?”

  “It’s a gizmo that stores information.” He paused. “Mr. Strong, Matt’s the one who can tell you about computer stuff. Don’t you ever ask?”

  “I’m asking now. I’m asking you.”

  “A USB key is a piece of computer hardware, but it’s cool because it’s so tiny you can hang it on a key chain. Like the size of a pack of gum or something.” He held his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart. “You plug it into your computer’s USB port—” Billy paused, regarded the obviously inept adult before him, and then rolled his eyes “—Universal Serial Bus. A USB port uses hubs to let you attach stuff like printers, digital cameras, game pads, joysticks, keyboards, and mice to your computer. And USB keys.”

  “All right,” Cole said, trying to envision these electronic gadgets that were so commonplace to Matt and Billy.
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  “So you plug the flash drive, or USB key it’s called, into your USB port, and then you can load tons of data onto it—two or three gigabytes of information. Matt wants it because he’s got so many programs. I think he’s going to ask for it for his birthday.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe Matt’s over at the school talking to Miss Pruitt about his paper. He does that a lot. And I guess I could drive out to Hope and see what’s up with Mr. Banyon. Or you could go.”

  Cole considered this option. Surely Matt hadn’t gone far. He’d be home soon. “I’d better get back to that field,” he said. “Call me when you find him, okay, Billy?”

  Resentment flickered in the boy’s eyes. “Mr. Strong, you don’t even know where your phone is.”

  As Billy stalked out of the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him, Cole sucked down a deep breath. He thought of the field, half-plowed. The ranch hands waiting for his return. The cows ready to calve. The seed that needed planting. The afternoon sun dipping toward the horizon.

  Grabbing his Stetson, he headed out the door. “Billy, wait up!” he shouted. The boy braked his pickup.

  “I’ll check the library,” Cole said. “You go to the computer store.”

  Billy grinned. “I’ll meet you at Miss Pruitt’s classroom in an hour—207 in the main building. She’ll be there—she always works late.”

  Cole climbed into the car he kept for town trips. “An hour,” he muttered. “That shoots this day.”

  “Please feed me.” The small boy, his dirty face streaked with tears, held up a bowl made from an empty gourd. “Give me food, sir.”

  Josiah Karume could not resist laying his hand on the child’s tiny head. How old would this boy be, he wondered. Five…or ten? Malnutrition had so withered and stunted his body it was impossible to tell. His dark skin stretched over the bones of his skull, and his parched lips—ringed with flies—were pulled back from his small white teeth. With a head of sparse orange hair and a swollen abdomen, the boy looked like so many other walking skeletons in the long line of refugees that snaked out behind him.

  As Josiah scooped up a dollop of cornmeal mush fortified with protein powder and vitamins, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He poured the mush into the boy’s bowl before turning to see who wanted him now.

  “A phone call for you, Dr. Karume,” his aide said.

  Josiah handed his ladle to the man and hurried across the dry, sandy ground toward the makeshift Somalian headquarters of the International Federation for Environmental and Economic Development. As chairman-elect of the organization, he was forced to spend most of his time dealing with mountains of red tape in the African bureau of I-FEED in Khartoum, Sudan. But Josiah relished the rare opportunity to visit the camps where his hard work actually paid off.

  “Karume here,” he said into the phone that sat on a rickety card table inside the office.

  “Josiah, this is Vince Grant.”

  “Vince! How good of you to phone. What news do you have for me today?”

  “I’m just returning your call from Tuesday. Wanted you to know I’m still working on transportation. We’ve got the cornmeal at our Kansas facility, but the logistics are sticky.”

  Josiah’s heartbeat faltered. “The paperwork in Khartoum is complete, Vince. I’m certain I shall have no trouble with the Sudanese authorities.”

  “I hear you, Josiah, but I just can’t move the product without having all my ducks in a row.”

  “Ducks?” Though he’d obtained his undergraduate degree in London and had completed his doctoral work in Texas, Josiah still found American idioms confusing.

  “I can’t do anything until I’ve got the official papers in my hand,” Grant clarified. “You understand the risk I’m taking with my stockholders. If I move this cornmeal, and it gets stuck in Khartoum…”

  “Yes, yes. Of course I understand. Let’s see, today is Thursday. I leave tomorrow morning for a conference in Paris, but I shall do all in my power to see that you receive official copies of the documents by the first of next week.”

  “Great. That’s terrific. Well, I’ve got a meeting here in about five minutes. So how’s the family?”

  “They are doing well, thank you. And yours?” Josiah stared out the window at the blowing sand. As the sun beat down on the refugees, a young woman suddenly let out a wail and staggered out of line. Falling to her knees, she clasped her baby to her breast.

  “Well, both girls are off at college, and my son’s polo team won—”

  “Excuse me, Vince,” Josiah cut in. “I have an emergency here. I shall be in touch.”

  Setting down the receiver, he shook his head. As he left the office, he could hear the other women begin to keen. But they would not leave their places in line to lend comfort to their comrade. They were hungry, after all, and it had become commonplace to mourn the death of yet another child.

  “I’m famished.” Jill Pruitt bit into the Big Mac her colleague had carried in from the fast-food strip near the high school. “Mmm. Hey, pass the fries.”

  “Fries? Jill, I’m surprised at you!” Marianne laughed. “I thought you were strictly a broccoli-and-turnip-greens girl.”

  “I can go for the occasional lard-soaked French fry,” Jill said, giving the math teacher a sly grin. Jill’s fellow instructors at Artesia High School knew all about her dedication to famine relief and her interest in computers and technology. But there was a lot they didn’t know, and she enjoyed throwing them off-kilter once in a while.

  She scanned the row of grades in her ledger, enjoying the symmetry of the numbers. “You realize most of what we’re eating in these burgers was grown outside the United States,” she spoke up. “Including the beef.”

  “Not again, Jill. Could we just finish figuring these midterm grades and go home? It’s Thursday. My favorite show is on tonight, and I refuse to miss it.”

  Jill took another fry. “When you grill a burger, the only part that’s American is the fat that drips onto the coals. The rest comes from who-knows where.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You told me before.” Marianne sipped a soda as she punched grades into her calculator. “You won’t be eating any burgers when you get to Pakistan, you know. Holy cows, and all that.”

  “Pakistanis are Muslims, girl. It’s Hindus who don’t eat beef.”

  “Whatever. So when do you leave? Aren’t you going to take a break after school lets out?”

  “A week, and then I’m outta here.” Jill thought about her battered old suitcase—already packed with cool cotton dresses and a pair of sandals. Unmarried at thirty-six—a long-term relationship had ended the year before—she had set aside her longing for a husband and children to concentrate on other interests. Seven years ago a short mission trip to Honduras had lit a fire inside her. She had seen poverty, hunger, homelessness. She had felt the suffering of the people.

  From then on, her life had been different. Everything became centered on obeying Christ—on putting her faith in action. The coming trip to Pakistan particularly excited her. As a volunteer with the International Federation for Environmental and Economic Development, she would go to the very heart of the country’s most desperate area. She had renewed her passport, gotten her vaccinations, and was champing at the bit to get on with the adventure.

  “I’m so pumped about this trip, Marianne,” she said. “I can hardly wait. Six weeks in Pakistan! I’ll be right across the border from Afghanistan. Can you imagine?”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to go there. I can’t believe you spend your hard-earned salary to volunteer in places like that. I admire your dedication, Jill, but frankly, I’d be too scared.”

  “I love it. Did I tell you a group of my computer tech kids signed up to take care of my garden the whole time I’m away? They are so good. It’s like they’re doing their part, you know?”

  Jill tucked a blond corkscrew curl behind her ear and frowned at a row of grades. Matthew Strong was falling behind in website design cl
ass again. Matt had so much raw talent, but he typically failed to turn in several assignments each term. She had watched this pattern for two years, and she worried that this time he might bottom out altogether.

  “Have you ever had Matthew Strong in class?” she asked Marianne.

  “I’ve got him in trig right now. Weird kid. But brilliant. He could do anything he wanted—if he’d bother to turn in his homework.”

  “Same thing with me. I hope he hangs in till the end of the year.”

  “Did you hear about his ACT score? Good grief, he could go to MIT today if he wanted. A couple of college recruiters showed up at my classroom this afternoon to talk with him, and he never came back. So there goes another homework assignment.”

  “Matt’s only a sophomore, for goodness’ sake.” Jill took another bite of her burger. “These colleges need to back off and let him be a normal teenager.”

  “Matthew Strong will never be a normal teenager.”

  “If his father paid more attention to him, he might learn some social skills. His mom died of cancer, you know. The dad is hardly ever around.”

  “Lots of kids have absentee parents, but they don’t turn out like Matt. What about that tie he wears all the time?”

  Jill tucked the ringlet behind her ear for the hundredth time that hour. Even as she reached for one last fry, the curl popped back out and bounced around her chin. “It’s just Matt’s style, I guess.”

  “Style? That tie is gross beyond belief.” Marianne snapped her grade book shut. “Done! I’m taking off. You’ll be okay here, I guess.”

  “No problem. I’m almost through.”

  As Marianne grabbed her purse, she paused near Jill’s chair and leaned down. “Uh-oh. Speak of the devil,” she murmured. “I hope this is for you, Miss Pruitt, because I’m gone.”