Weekends in Carolina

by Jennifer Lohmann

  Her head jerked up and her pale eyes were questioning. “Sure, I guess. Planting’s not that hard.” She demonstrated, filling the flat with soil, adding a seed to each cell and topping it with a little more soil. “It’s basically your same seed-starting process as in a garden, only on a larger scale.” She gestured to the table of flats. “I’ll need 2600 feet of broccoli in the field. Makes for a lot of little transplants.”

  “You don’t have help?” Trey didn’t know what he’d pictured winter on a vegetable farm to be like, but he’d expected more people.

  “No.” She stopped, putting her hands down on top of the flat. “I have three interns March through September, otherwise I’m the only one. It’s a lot of work, but not more than I can handle.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply...”

  “The winter’s slow, spent mostly planning the coming summer. I’ve thought of starting a winter CSA. Or maybe selling at the market in the winter. I already grow a winter garden for myself. But selling means I’d need another person and I’ve never been willing to risk the cost, especially since I wouldn’t be able to provide housing. If I’m living in the farmhouse, the second person can live in the barn and a winter CSA might be feasible.”

  As she was talking, he realized he’d opened his hand out in offering to her. All of her dreams depended on him and his willingness to keep leasing her the land. But she didn’t appear to notice that the land wasn’t resting like a gift on his proffered palm. Once she had stopped talking, she had started planting again. Trey followed her movements until he’d gotten the hang of them enough to find his own rhythm. Ignorance of the farm and Max had been preferable to this...whatever their relationship was now. He’d rather think of the farm as his personal trap than as soil for dreams. But he still couldn’t help asking, “What other plans do you have for the farm?”

  She glanced up from her planting and her uncertainty looked tinged with fear. But that was ridiculous. A woman with her forthright gaze couldn’t be afraid of anything. Yet it was written on her face.

  When she didn’t answer, he clarified his question. “If money was no object, what would Max’s Vegetable Patch look like?”

  “I’ve toyed with the idea of raising animals, but—” she stalled and he could see the objections to her grand plans piling up in her brain “—they’re expensive and unless you’ve got the staff you can’t ever go on vacation.”

  He raised a brow at her. “Money is no object.”

  “What about time?” she retorted.

  “If you have money, you can hire extra people to cover the time.”

  “Right.” She went back to planting and Trey gave her some space to organize her thoughts. What he’d meant to be a simple question asked out of curiosity clearly was not.

  “Right now I’d like to own the land I farm. Renovate the second tobacco barn so I can offer housing to two interns. Past that, I have no plans.”

  When she stepped away from her finished tray of broccoli to begin another, he thought their conversation was over. Max didn’t hum to herself. She didn’t whistle or mutter. The only noise she made was the brushing of her clothing against itself as her hands busily planted seeds and the occasional shuffling of a seeding tray against the wooden tables. Outside the greenhouse the rain pounded—on the ground, on the sides of the greenhouse, on the trees. But even with all the noise Mother Nature could muster in the storm, Max was so centered in her thoughts and her work that the greenhouse felt silent. Trey knew it wasn’t. When he stopped working to listen, the rain buffeted about outside and Ashes panted at Max’s feet. So long as he didn’t resist, Max and the work pulled him into a meditative state.

  It wasn’t until Max checked her watch that Trey noticed how the light had faded. He’d spent several hours in contemplative, comfortable peace with a woman on his dad’s farm. No anger, no frustration, no resentment, just the repetitive movements of planting seeds.

  “Finish up your tray and then we’re done. I got far more finished today than I’d hoped. Thank you for your help.”

  Trey stretched his hands out in front of him and rolled the stiffness out of his neck. “You’re welcome. Thank you for the tour and conversation.” Now that he was moving, anger poured back into the empty space left from his meditation. The tightness that had been in his shoulders from stillness morphed into the restrictive straitjacket he was familiar with. He tilted his head from the left to the right, hoping to add ease back into his muscles.

  Max directed him through cleaning up and they walked out of the greenhouse into the drizzle together. Only the noise of the rain, the shuffling of their steps and the rustle of their clothing accompanied them, leaving Trey to concentrate on Max walking next to him. Even Ashes seemed contemplative. As they were passing the chicken coop, Max spoke again. “I thought a lot about your question.”

  “My question?” After the absorbing quiet of the greenhouse, his question now felt intrusive. His idea of bigger, better and flashier was out of sync with the peace of the farm.

  “There are so many things I could do with this farm that would make a splash in the organic farming world. There’s this guy in upstate New York with a complete CSA. People pay him a yearly fee and once a week they pick up all their food, meat, cheese, bread, preserves, vegetables, everything. His wife wrote a book about it. Closer to home, there’s a farm in Orange County with a complete rotation of their animals and vegetables. They do things with organic farming I could only dream about.”

  “But?” Just because he felt like he was intruding, didn’t mean he was going to stop.

  “I’m pretty simple. My dreams for the farm are modest: a winter CSA, a renovated tobacco barn and land I can count as mine.”

  “What’s wrong with saying that?”

  “What are your dreams, Trey?”

  Trey stopped and stared at the farmhouse. His mouth opened to speak but drizzle dripped off his nose into the emptiness of what he couldn’t say and he had to shut his mouth before he drowned. He either said what he didn’t even want to admit to himself or never speak again. “All I ever wanted was to get away from my father and this farm.”

  “And after you moved away, how did you decide what to do next if you didn’t have dreams?”

  Max’s eyes were clear and bright, even through the fading light and the spit coming down from the heavens. Trey started walking again, to the farmhouse. He’d never imagined wanting to enter those doors, but the house was dry. And warm.

  When Max and Ashes caught up with him on the enclosed porch, he could feel the cowardly way he hadn’t answered her question in the prickle in his spine. The drips off the metal roof were louder now than the sound of the rain, but neither noise was loud enough to drown out the truth he didn’t want to admit to himself.

  “Since I packed up my car and left North Carolina, I haven’t had a single dream for my life. I’ve taken logical and practical steps to further my career and the agendas of my employers, but nothing I’ve done has been my dream.”

  Ashes’s wet tail made a squishing noise as it swept back and forth on the concrete floor. Max was silent.

  “Kelly’s coming over soon so we can do more packing. I should go inside.” Trey hadn’t looked at her during his confession. He didn’t want to see pity in her eyes.

  The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him as he watched Max and Ashes shuffle down the steps and around the back of the house. Max had one very simple dream, and he owned it. He had had one simple dream, too, and owning Max’s dream meant he hadn’t fully realized his.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “ARE YOU SURE you don’t want to drive?” Max asked with a smile in her voice as Trey opened the passenger door to the truck late the next morning.

  “No, I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to let you drive.”

  Trey had looked in the cab while they were filling the be
d with his dad’s crap. The rust around the gearshift hadn’t given him much hope that the transmission actually worked, though he’d seen Max drive the beast around the farm. This would be the first time he’d seen her drive the truck—instead of her small sedan—off the property. When Max hopped up into the seat and caught him eyeing the stick shift with suspicion, he knew his answer hadn’t fooled her.

  “Your car is a standard, so I know you can drive one.”

  “My car also doesn’t have rust.” Or a thick layer of dirt and torn seats, but he didn’t say any of that. This was a working farm truck and it wasn’t meant to be beautiful.

  “Well, make sure you have your cell phone,” she said as the engine cranked, “in case we need to be rescued.” She seemed to be using all of her arm strength to shift the truck into Reverse, though the mischief in her voice made him wonder if this, including her asking if he wanted to drive, was all an act. Another side to his farmer?

  “You’re not helping. One of your dreams for the farm should be a new truck.” He was guessing this hunk of metal was from the eighties.

  “Bertha is from one of Ford’s greatest ever truck years.” Her struggle with the gearshift had clearly been an act. She had easily shifted into first gear, too busy defending her truck to fake difficulty this time. “She’s a collector’s item.”

  “Does that include the price archeologists would pay to carbon date the dirt they scrape from the floor?” He said the words lightly, so she would know he was teasing. And she laughed.

  Everyone’s mood was lighter today, it seemed. The clouds from the day before had evaporated, though the water it had left behind still gave everything a sparkle in the bright winter sun. The birds seemed to chirp a little louder this morning, as if they knew that this load of junk would mean the farmhouse was almost completely cleared out.

  Important-looking papers had been sorted and shoved into boxes that went up into the attic, along with the family pictures Kelly hadn’t wanted. Anything that Kelly had felt a sentimental twinge for also went in a box and into the attic. They’d already made several trips to the Goodwill with anything that still had a use, and this should be the only trip they had to make to the dump.

  Trey rolled down the window enough to let a little breeze in then settled into the torn seats and the dust for the novelty of being driven into town.

  Max was apparently an experienced dump-goer, because she knew where to pull in to unload their hazardous materials, where to unload the boxes of broken electronics and where to dump the trash bags. Trey was just along for the ride because it was his father’s crap—and because spending his time with Max yesterday had been surprisingly relaxing. He wanted to see what she could do with a trip to the dump.

  Lightened of its load, the truck seemed to drive better and Trey was settling in for the drive back when Max pulled into the small parking lot of a corner grocery store. “Do you mind?” she asked, though not until turning off the engine and engaging the parking brake.

  The trip to the dump meant he was one chore closer to being back in D.C., so Trey said, “Of course not.” Given how old the store looked, complete with handwritten signs in the windows advertising the week’s specials, he must have passed this store a thousand times in his life as he drove up and down Roxboro Road. “What are we getting?”

  “King’s has good local bread and milk, plus dried peaches for my oatmeal in the mornings,” Max said as she exited the truck and walked into the store, with Trey right behind her.

  “Hey, sug,” the clerk called as Max grabbed a shopping basket. “How’s the farm?”

  “Slow right now, but it’ll pick up soon.”

  Trey trailed after Max through the aisles of the small store, content to play tourist and look around. The store had some items he expected, like bags of frozen chitterlings and other things that he didn’t know existed, like molasses in what had to be a ten-gallon bucket, and some things he’d never expected to see at a small grocery store in Durham, like bags of organic and fair-trade coffee.

  Trey stopped in front of a packaged-meat case and stared at the small tubs of pimento cheese. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a pimento cheese sandwich, though they had been a staple of his childhood. Max came up behind him. “You should buy some. They make it fresh in the store.”

  Her breath was soft and intimate in his ear, and suddenly the entire stop had a casually familiar feel. Stopping in for a few groceries was something couples did together. “Are you a regular here?” he asked, reaching forward to grab a tub, more to put some distance between them than because he actually wanted it.

  “Anyone who comes here more than once is a regular.” She reached past him to grab her own tub, the movement defeating his desire for space. “Plus, they support local farms and businesses, so it’s hard not to return the favor.

  “Do you sell here?”

  Max waved at the butcher behind the counter before answering. “No, but I know the baker for some of the bread they sell here and the brewer of some of the Durham beer. If I gave up on the diversity of my farm and specialized in one product, maybe I would. Right now I don’t produce enough of any one thing to sell at a store.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “I’m not sure I would want to.”

  Here in the store, Max wasn’t just the farmer on his dad’s land, but a real person—related to the farm and his past but not of the farm and his past. It was like realizing your parents had a life before you were born. The thought made him laugh and realize how self-centered he’d been this entire week.

  Trey followed Max to the front of the store, put his tub of pimento cheese on the conveyor belt and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He no more knew what to do with his tub of pimento cheese than his newfound realization.

  * * *

  THOUGH TREY AND Kelly had packed up enough of their dad’s stuff that he could’ve driven back to D.C. Friday morning, Trey kept to his original plan of leaving Saturday. He had made a tentative date with Max for another basketball game and he wanted to keep it. He drove to Chapel Hill for a late lunch with Jerome, took a side trip through Orange County for Maple View Farms ice cream and stopped for more barbecue takeout for dinner with Max. He didn’t plan on returning to North Carolina until Kelly got married—which probably depended more on politics than Kelly—so the memory of this barbecue would have to last him a while.

  When he opened the door to Max’s knock, he was surprised to see her in jeans. “Does access to your own washing machine starting tomorrow mean no bunny-print pajama bottoms?”

  When she turned from hanging her coat up, a flush rose up her neck, turning the pale parts of her skin bright red and her freckles a deep oak.

  “The pajamas were cute, but the jeans look nice, too,” he offered as a lame apology for whatever he had said to make her blush. Nice was a weak description of how Max looked.

  The long sleeves of her dark purple T-shirt covered her arms, but his eyes followed the trail of freckles down into the deep V of the fitted shirt’s neck, and his hands wanted to accompany them. Her hair was pulled back into a long, tangled braid that looked like a fraying piece of rope with strands and ringlets sticking out every which way, giving her otherwise tidy look a wild quality. Max hadn’t lost the unsullied glow he’d discovered in her yesterday, even back on this contaminated soil. A pleasant, but uncomfortable realization.

  “Mama would say I know how to treat a girl right,” Trey said as they walked into the living room with their plates of barbecue. “TV trays.” He gestured to the room he’d set up for their evening. “No low-class eating with the plate on your lap tonight.” She laughed, as he had known she would. “I think these were my grandmother’s and I didn’t know they were still around until I found them in the attic. Mama always insisted we eat at the table. Dad would use these trays sometimes, but after Mama died, I guess he didn’t feel the need to p
ut his beer anywhere other than his mouth.”

  “I don’t remember Hank drinking.”

  “Maybe he learned to hide it better. Anyway, let’s leave my parents to their resting places and talk basketball.” Talking about his father left a sour, hungover taste in his mouth that the vinegar in the barbecue couldn’t overpower.

  “I can’t talk basketball, so you talk basketball and I’ll eat my dinner.”

  “That ‘I’m still a Fighting Illini’ wasn’t a sign you could debate the finer points of fast-break ACC-style basketball versus slooow Big Ten style?”

  “No.” He looked over to see her smile dancing over her raised fork piled high with barbecue. “It was just a sign that I didn’t want to yell out ‘heel.’”

  “Well, I’ll be crushed and deceived. You owe me something, then.”

  “I owe you something?” A chuckle came out on the tail end of her words.

  “Sure. I’m feeding you barbecue as payment for having someone to talk basketball with. If you can’t talk basketball, what am I feeding you for?”

  “Company? Enlightened conversation? A thank-you for the tour?”

  Trey pretended to think over her response. “Nope. None of those are good enough.”

  In the dim light of the lamps and the television, he could barely tell the difference between her pale raised eyebrow and her pale skin, so he didn’t back down. He was certain Max was the kind of person who enjoyed being pushed, and who liked pushing back.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll give you something, but if you tell a soul I will wallpaper your apartment in D.C. with pictures of the farmhouse.”

  He’d been right about the pushing back part. Max knew how to make a good threat. “Deal.”

  “My mother’s family is from the Winston-Salem area. My grandparents used to come to Illinois for visits, but I didn’t visit North Carolina until I was ten or so, when my parents divorced and my brother and I were shipped out of town for the process.” She grimaced at the memory. “My grandfather took us to Stamey’s in Greensboro for my first taste of barbecue. I didn’t know any better so I asked the waitress, ‘What kind of meat is this?’”