Weekends in Carolina

by Jennifer Lohmann

  “I’m not thinking too much and I wasn’t worried about that.” Even though the last part was a lie, the words came more confidently now that she had clothes on. “I’m thinking about what to eat for dinner.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Eggs. The only fresh veggies I’ve got now are greens and sweet potatoes. I was thinking that tomorrow we could go downtown to talk with some of the other food folks in Durham who’ve done a Kickstarter. Then we could get some ice cream and a nice steak for dinner. Maybe a loaf of polenta bread.”

  “Since when did downtown Durham have places to buy ice cream, steak and polenta bread?”

  “Your hometown has changed a lot since you’ve been gone. It’s changed a lot since I’ve been here.” When she’d moved to Durham, the downtown area was mostly boarded-up buildings with good bones and attractive facades, and the farmers’ market had been in a parking lot. Now the downtown area was bustling with bars and restaurants. There was a new performing arts center and pedestrians were out at all hours of the day and night. More important for her, the farmers’ market had a permanent home. Summer Saturdays at the market were a social occasion with people chatting up their favorite farmer, browsing art at the market across the street and eating their favorite items off the food trucks.

  “Hmm...” and a slight cloud passing over his face was Trey’s only response. “If you put the sweet potatoes in the oven, I’ll start washing the greens. We can fry some eggs for the top and call it dinner.”

  Two male voices yelling outside interrupted her reply. As was her new usual, Max closed her ears to the noises. Instead of trying to be heard over the squabbling beyond the walls, she nodded her agreement and headed to the bathroom to wash up, tossing her panties in the hamper on her way.

  When she came out of the bathroom, Trey was standing on the enclosed porch. Without the thicker walls of the house, the argument happening in the driveway was clearer.

  “Fuck you and this entire silent act you’ve got going” rang loud and clear through the drafty wood. “And don’t think I can’t smell the booze just because it’s vodka.” A car door slammed. Tires peeled out, gravel pinging in all directions as the rubber spit the small rocks out like rotten food.

  “Was that my brother?” Trey asked, a confused look on his face as he stared in the direction of Chicken Bridge Road.

  Max sighed. Sean had never once been late or shirked any of his work, but he also drank more than he should. And was sleeping with her landlord’s brother.

  A frustrated yell reverberated off the porch walls, followed closely by the sound of something hard being kicked. The noise woke up Ashes and he yelped in the living room.

  “Yes, that was Kelly.” She’d been pleased when Kelly and Sean had struck up a romantic relationship until she’d noticed Sean’s pile of beer cans. Now she wasn’t so sure what she thought. “Didn’t you see his car when you drove up?”

  “Yes, I...” Trey stopped talking, a sheepish look on his face. “I thought I’d find him in the kitchen. Then I found only you and I forgot all about Kelly.”

  “Yes, well...” She would be upset that he’d had sex with her thinking his brother could walk in, but she’d been the one to shove him onto the chair and strip off his pants. And she’d known Kelly was around and liable to walk in the door at any moment. Of course all coherent thought had fled her mind for higher ground when Trey had looked at her with desire hot in his eyes.

  “Kelly and Sean are...” Another sentence she didn’t know how to finish. “Involved,” she said, picking the best word she could find. The word dating implied that they went out together, which Max had never seen. And Kelly seemed more infatuated than Sean, which, when added to the drinking, meant Max worried about him. How do you tell a grown man not to give away the milk because then men won’t buy the cow? Especially when she was involved in a relationship of questionable sanity herself.

  Trey had been looking at her while she’d been talking, but his gaze eased back to the direction of the main road, where his brother had gone. “As far as I know, Kelly hasn’t been in a serious relationship since Mom died.”

  “Would you know?”

  Instead of looking insulted, Trey appeared to be honestly considering her question. “If any of his boyfriends had gotten serious? I think so. His last serious relationship ended at my mother’s funeral. Dad was drunk and spouting shit. Kelly’s boyfriend—hell, I don’t even remember his name—made some crack about choosing that homophobic bastard over him. Kelly told him to leave and never come back.”

  Trey rubbed his hands over his face as if he were trying to scrub away the memory. “I emailed him a couple weeks after the funeral to ask about the boyfriend. Kelly said they were through.” He shook his head. “I told him that I agreed with the guy but Kelly insisted Dad was coming around. He always manages to see the best in someone, and I don’t know if that’s his gift or his curse.”

  The kitchen was silent for several seconds while Trey looked in the direction of the intern barn. “What was that about the vodka?” he finally asked.

  “Sean drinks. Probably too much.”

  “And you don’t do anything about it?”

  “I don’t...” Max stopped. Trey had asked the same question she’d been asking herself for a couple weeks. “Sean deserves his privacy and it’s not affected his work.”

  “Yet. What about when it’s ninety-five degrees outside and he collapses in your fields because he’s dehydrated?”

  She sighed and internally cursed both Kelly and Sean for ruining her afterglow with reality. “I know. There’s a line somewhere between micromanaging Sean’s every movement and granting him the same privacy he would get if he lived in town. I’m not sure where that line is.”

  Trey’s raised brow made it clear he didn’t buy her argument. “He’s a drunk. He’ll push and push and push until you fall over. Give him a line in the sand and fire him if he crosses it.”

  “He’s my employee, and I’ll manage him how I see fit,” she replied, piqued that Trey would question her management style and annoyed that he was right.

  “Okay. You’re right.” His face contradicted his words. “You know both Sean and the farm better than I do. And when I sell you the land, none of this will be my responsibility. If Kelly’s dating a drunk or you’re hiring one, I won’t have to be down here to see it.”

  His words hurt, even though they shouldn’t. She’d agreed to their time-limited relationship and his desire to get rid of the land was in her best interest.

  “Sorry for snapping.” If he could make a gesture of peace, she could, too. “Hank... Well, Hank was good at discipline, but he had trouble remembering that I was the boss of the interns, not him.”

  “I am not my father.”

  “I know that.” She rubbed at her eyes with the palms of her hands then shook her head. “I’ve given Sean an ultimatum, but I doubt my will to enforce it. It would be easier if he didn’t have such an expression of peace on his face when working, and I worry that the ultimatum did more harm than good. It’s not fair to Kelly, but I’m hoping the relationship gives Sean a reason to cut back.”

  “You’re right. It’s not fair to my brother.” Trey’s words were softened by the warmth and pressure of his hand on her back. “But Kelly isn’t a child. He can take care of himself.”

  Max turned away from Trey to look in the direction of the intern barn. Could Kelly find the good in Sean before Max had to fire him, they killed each other or both? “Wash up. I’ll go start dinner,” she said.

  Trey nodded but didn’t move from his stand by the door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, Trey rolled over in Max’s bed, pushed his toes out to meet hers, and met only empty space. He sighed—with contentment instead of mild frustration like the last time he’d woken up alone in Max’s bed. Though he
did wish she was still under the covers with him. But the life of the farmer was up with the chickens.

  In the kitchen were Max’s ancient coffeepot and a nearly full pot of her awful coffee. He ignored them for a trip out to his car. Back inside, Trey set up his own coffeepot, grinder and coffee next to hers. While he waited for his coffee to brew, he set out his legal pad and began to make notes for Max’s fund-raising. The coffeepot ding interrupted his work, which was fine since he’d prefer to do the planning with Max. He poured himself a cup, put on shoes and a sweater and headed out the door in search of the farmer.

  He found her looking over the field closest to the pond. The rising sun bouncing off her hair made it glow in a halo around her head. She was drinking out of a thermos mug, her feet wide apart and her back straight. Ashes sat next to her. She looked like a warrior queen of all she surveyed, needing only a staff to complete her Boudicca impression. He smiled at the thought.

  She caught sight of him and smiled in invitation. Ashes’s tail kicked up dust as it wagged across the ground.

  “I like to come out in the mornings, when it’s just me and the birds,” she said when he reached hearing distance. A chickadee whistled a greeting, then a cardinal. Off in the distance, a mockingbird topped them both.

  He took the hand she offered to him as he approached. “Isn’t it always just you and the birds?” He said the words with a smile so she would know it was a gentle tease. Seeing the farm through her eyes was a different, wonderful experience. The farm was a place of promise and growth, with none of the hard-edged disappointment it had when he blinked and the view changed back. He blinked again, but Max’s magical farm was out of his sightline.

  “The interns are here now and, while we’re not yet far enough into the season to work on Saturdays, Sean lives here. Before Sean, there was Hank.”

  “And now me.”

  “And now you. But you’re okay.” He grunted, not trusting the light in her eyes or his reaction to them. “I’ll even invite you to finish my walk with me.”

  Their hands pulled apart when she reached down to pick up her thermos. Would he be able to see the magic in the farm if they weren’t holding hands? In the tilled fields and small seedlings not yet recognizable as vegetables, he still saw the waste of his childhood. But out of the corner of his eye, if he didn’t try too hard, the picture morphed into the fecundity of Max’s Vegetable Patch.

  As they walked together, Max pointed out what was growing in which field and where she would begin planting summer crops soon. Trey listened with half an ear. Mostly he took in deep breaths of the crisp, spring-morning air and sipped his coffee.

  As they passed the packing shed, Trey noticed a small house on wheels. “What’s that?”

  Max stopped her musings about planting more peas next year and her gaze followed the line of his pointing. She snickered. “That is a chicken coop Hank designed. It was supposed to be pulled behind a tractor and moved from field to field. ‘A chicken tractor for the tractor,’ your dad said.”

  “A chicken tractor?”

  “Sure. Chickens are good at picking bugs out of fields. They also both fertilize and dig their fertilizer in. If you have a movable coop—a chicken tractor—you can move the chickens to fresh patches of earth. The run doesn’t get fouled, the fields get extra nutrients and the chickens produce tastier eggs.” She smiled. “Hank read about the idea in some magazine and wanted to try it.”

  The short moment of seeing his father through Max’s smile instead of his own memories was nice, but disorienting. “Did it not work?”

  She shrugged. “Because the chicken wire isn’t dug into the ground, it’s not as secure as the coop, so we had a lot of loss to coyotes, foxes and who knows what else. Hank was going to make repairs, but some of the newly proposed farm rules would make chickens in the fields a violation, so it doesn’t seem worth it.”

  “I’m not sure I want chicken poop on my vegetables.”

  “But petroleum-based fertilizer doesn’t bother you?”

  He grunted. Max had a way of upsetting his worldview that he appreciated, even when it wasn’t comfortable.

  They walked along the tall grasses and brush between the last field and the deer fence. Ashes had been plodding along, but something caught his eye and he woke up with a bound for the end of the field. Standing outside the renovated tobacco barn was Sean.

  Max introduced them. Even through what Trey was guessing had to be a wicked hangover, Sean had a tough army look. His hair was still in a buzz cut and his choice of T-shirt was fatigue-green. More disturbing, though, was the anger lurking behind his bloodshot eyes. Trey recognized the look. His father had worn a similar expression—hangover included—all of Trey’s childhood. Another twenty years, poor diet choices and chain smoking would turn Sean into his father.

  Trey offered his hand and shook Sean’s firmly. After years of working in Congress and then as a lobbyist, Trey was good at reading handshakes. Sean wanted to be alone with his sins. He wanted everyone to pretend they didn’t notice his bloodshot eyes and the puffiness of his face. Sean was fit enough that, probably, in two hours, no one would be able to tell he’d spent the night participating in a home embalming experiment.

  In his college partying days, Trey had seen his ability to rally as a sign he wasn’t his father. Until the day he’d woken up, stumbled to the toilet for a piss and seen his old man looking back at him in the mirror.

  Trey looked at Sean and saw his father at the same age—the weight of service in an unpopular war on his shoulders included. Sean was trying to find a goal for himself outside the bottle, so Trey gave him credit for that. On the other hand, the intern had spent the previous night yelling at Trey’s younger brother while standing on their family land. Loss of points there. But Sean didn’t try to win a handshake contest—the shake was confident, if not inviting—so Trey called the exchange even and decided he’d talk with his brother about it.

  * * *

  “YOU GRADUATE FROM college and flee North Carolina like you’re selling ’shine and the feds are on your tail and now you’re daring to play big brother and tell me that I should be careful who I spend the night with?” Kelly’s face was mottled with rage, though he was hissing, rather than yelling, the words. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  Trey had seen Kelly turn into the driveway after breakfast and told Max he was going out to talk with his brother about Sean. Max had informed him that they were grown men and so long as Sean didn’t endanger himself or the farm, she was going to stay out of their business. When she’d first seen the beer cans, she’d told Sean where she would draw the line and kick him out of the program. Being drunk for work was over the line. Being in a romantic relationship with her landlord’s brother wasn’t even on the page.

  But Max wasn’t Kelly’s older brother. Max hadn’t grown up in the same household, hiding from the same father. She couldn’t see how right Trey was, and that irritated him. Kelly couldn’t see how he was reliving their childhood and that made his blood boil. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Mama?”

  Kelly stared at him, his mouth gaping open and then shut like a bass caught on a line. When his brother finally found a reply, Trey wished his brother had kept silent. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’d throw away my education and youth on some angry, drunken fool to pop out two kids who’ll one day ignore me because they think I’m weak. But it still means I’m not our daddy. And I’ll take being Mama any day.”

  Kelly flipped Trey the finger and stalked off away from the farmhouse, in the direction of the drunken, angry man he was currently obsessed with. Leaving Trey stuck in the driveway wondering what the hell the crack about being their father was about. Trey had a good job. He had an education. Hell, he didn’t even drink. He was nothing like his father.

  * * *

  MAX CLIMBED INTO the passenger seat of Trey’s car, strapped
on her seat belt and pointed in the direction of town. The farm and its boozy past and present were wearing on him, so he was ready to shift into gear and drive away, even if it was just into town. But if he was headed back to D.C., Max wouldn’t be sitting next to him talking excitedly about their plans for the afternoon and all the people they would talk to.

  He followed her instructions, content to let her direct him, even though he’d grown up in this town. Since he’d moved away, some of the traffic patterns had changed and his mother had never let them come downtown when they were kids anyway.

  The brick mill buildings looked much the same from the outside, but the city was missing the sweet, almost grassy smell of tobacco that had been its hallmark. The tobacco mills had smelled good enough to make him forget smoking was bad for him, no matter how many antismoking campaigns had been aimed at him. But his dad had smoked, so that had been reason enough to never pick up the habit. Near the Durham School for the Arts, Max had him pull into a small parking lot by what looked to be a day spa and a butcher shop that also sold pastries.

  Max knocked on the door and they were let into the shop by a young man with a beard and glasses. The woman he introduced them to was his wife and the pastry chef. Max knew them from the farmers’ market and she apparently regularly bought their caramels when she was in town. She started in with her questions about their Kickstarter campaign.

  The couple talked about collecting videos of support from other local Durham food ventures, including some farmers, chefs and a local brewery. A lot of what they said echoed the instructions on the Kickstarter website: Be specific with what you will spend the money on and know your budget. Sell your venture and your creativity. The video is important. Be clever in the rewards you choose. Your network is important.

  The information wasn’t new, but Trey could see how the idea of success was overtaking Max’s fears. Her eyes got brighter, a true spring-green, and excitement flushed her freckles darker. The slope of her shoulders lowered and her face softened. The serious-sounding Max Backstrom and the lighter Maxine Patch was a woman with many interesting facets and freckles.