Warm Front

by Patricia McLinn

  So, keeping his distance, he followed her. A few times other viewers greeted her and there’d be animated discussion clearly devoted to the points of the closest mechanical giant.

  Having finished examining the last one, she squared her shoulders and walked through the opening to a smaller, dingier tent with a worn sign over the entrance that read, “Parts.”

  “She should’ve gone right there first. Shouldn’t’ve tortured herself with what she can’t have.”

  He turned his head and saw Ned Benzil perched on the extension of one of the farm machines that looked like a giant set of teeth attached to a cockpit.

  He hadn’t been aware of the other man at all. That wasn’t good.

  Potentially worse, he had the feeling Ned had been watching him watch Anne for a while. It was worse, because from poker night he knew Ned loved to gossip.

  “Small tent,” Ned added. “You go back there and she’ll spot you right off.”

  Ignoring that aspect, Quince asked, “Is that what she was doing? Torturing herself with what she can’t have?”

  “Yup.” Ned slanted a look at him. “Lusting after machinery. Curse of a farmer.”

  …you haven’t met any woman in those years who could use your help… who you respected because they were working hard and fighting hard? … why Anne Hooper?

  He wished he’d had this answer to give Vanessa: Because she lusted after farm equipment and never, ever gave up.

  “So you accept her as a farmer?”

  The older man looked at him like he was nuts. “She’s farming, ain’t she?”

  Quince squelched a grin. He should get Anne a bumper sticker saying that.

  Its prosaic good sense would soothe frustration instilled by jackasses like Chitmell.

  On second thought, not a bumper sticker. Mud on the back of her truck would hide it six days out of seven.

  Just then she moved into the view between tent flaps.

  She might have been lusting after the machinery in the main tent, but now she was completely focused on what was in front of her. She ran her hand over the base of a part that even from this distance looked more grimy than sleek.

  That touch was as possessive and caressing as a lover’s—

  He cleared his throat. “How does this sale compare to other years, Ned?”

  “Worse.”

  That brought Quince’s head around. It didn’t hurt that Anne had moved out of sight again.

  “Worse?”

  “Yup. A lot more for sale this year.”

  “How’s that worse? Isn’t it good for the buyers?”

  He snorted. “Maybe for the few who can buy. There’s more for sale because of folks selling out.”

  There was such sorrow beneath the unemotional acceptance that Quince didn’t know what to say.

  “Macklins over the other side of the county — that’ll be one that hits hard if they go the way the rumors’re saying. That family’s farmed that land longest of anybody. Built it up to a real good-sized place. Real good-sized. But the next generation doesn’t want to pick it up. Can’t blame them. They’re younger than me and I watched them growing up. Not a one of ’em has the touch. Not them and not their kids, either.”

  “The touch?”

  He nodded, as if confirming what Quince had said, instead of leaving him in the dark. “Some have the touch. Some don’t. Some that don’t have it can still make it with the right situation — meaning the land and money and weather don’t all turn against them at the same time several years in a row. But even those that have the touch have a real uphill battle if the land and money and weather aren’t right.”

  “So land and money and weather’s more important than the touch.”

  Ned stared off for a moment. Then he spit on the ground. “Hate to say it, but that’s probably a true statement. Those with the touch can get the most out of the land, but money and weather can still swamp ’em.”

  “What about you, Ned?”

  “Me? I’ve got enough to get by on. My dad, now he was one with the touch. Everett was probably closest to him when Everett was in his prime and Dad was starting to fail.”

  “What about Chris’ father?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice, though he was a hard worker. Same with Chris. Difference was Chris thought he was better than he was. Took chances he shouldn’t have. A lot of chances. No, in this generation … well, my older boy, Ned Junior, never wanted farming. Works in an office in the city. My younger boy, Kevin, is good. Definitely has the touch. Thought he was the best until—” His gaze slid toward the parts tent. “—Anne. My Kevin was the best of the young’uns, until she stepped in and took on the mess Chris left.”

  “Mess?”

  “Yeah, he started in to no-till, then got caught in a wet spring and tilled and lost whatever he’d gained, along with being way behind.”

  Quince had no idea what that meant. Until he did, he’d follow the thread of something he did know.

  “When you say money, you mean loans?”

  “The loans, sure, but money in farmin’s a lot more than that. It’s how it all comes together. The prices you can get, the cost of seed, equipment breaking down and needing to be replaced or repaired, rents if you’re working acres you don’t own, taxes, hired help, crop insurance, storage, trucking … all of it. And it’s all gone against her these past years. Worst of all last harvest.” He sighed. “Her and the rest of us. Which is why my Kevin is gettin’ the front end loader attachment for the tractor he’s fixin’ instead of a brand new tractor we could really use.”

  And why Anne wasn’t even looking at attachments, but instead was eyeing old parts like a sugar addict in front of a candy counter.

  He needed to find out exactly how much trouble Hooper Farm was in.

  But Ned was not the one to tell him, not with that tendency to gossip.

  Contemplating the best way to gather information, Quince started out.

  But he stopped at the sight of Bob Chitmell smirking down the main aisle with an expression like a cat not only toying with a mouse, but finding a way to make a profit at it.

  Quince looked back over his shoulder to see what Chitmell was looking at.

  Not what.

  Who.

  Ned.

  And Anne.

  He fought down the urge to pummel the guy.

  Use his skills. Do what he did best.

  *

  Josh Kincannon suggested they meet for lunch at the café when Quince called. “Topher and I are on our own. All the girls went to shop at some outlets up I-88.”

  When Quince joined their table, Topher looked up from his book with a shy smile and a quiet hello then resumed reading.

  Josh shrugged, while his expression blended pride and love. “Vanessa says he’s brilliant.”

  “Da-ad,” Topher protested without looking up.

  “She would know,” Quince said.

  While they waited for their meals, they chatted about the cold, Zeke-Tech, the basketball team, and Josh’s concern about funding the Chem Lab repairs.

  “Zeke—” Quince started.

  “Offered. I think Darcie guilted him into it, saying he set the bad example. But we can’t rely on him for everything. It won’t be the same place — or the same people — if we do that.” After they’d started on their food, he added, “So, what can I help you with, Quince?”

  “Tell me about farming around here.”

  The other man’s eyebrows went up. “History or current?”

  Quince considered. “History first.”

  When Josh finished telling how a very colorful start had calmed under the influence of farming, he added, “Drago wouldn’t exist as it is now without farming. Possibly as the Las Vegas of the prairies, but I doubt it. Those early crooks, con men, and counterfeiters were too far ahead of their time.”

  “What about farming and Drago more recently?”

  “Before Zeke returned to town last spring, the town and surrounding farms were experie
ncing different but equal difficulties. Since then, the town has seen improvement with the prospect for a lot more. The farms haven’t shared in that.”

  “The software Zeke—”

  “Yeah, that’s helped farmers growing direct-to-consumer crops. But most of our farmers are crop farmers, corn and soybeans, Large part of the corn goes to livestock feed. Companies also use corn and soybeans to produce medicine, paint, clothing, soap, wax, furniture, and more. And of course there’s ethanol and biodiesel.”

  “You know that off the top of your head?”

  “Do you have any idea how many class projects I’ve seen on what corn and soybeans can be turned into?”

  Quince chuckled. “Point taken.”

  “Farming has a big impact on our students. Not only the ones living on farms. Most businesses in town have their fortunes tied to how the farmers are doing. Though that might change with Zeke-Tech here.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  Josh lifted a shoulder. “Probably some of both. Though I suspect more good for Drago and more bad for farmers. Especially—” He gave Quince a significant look. “—those between town and where Zeke-Tech is building. You know the housing situation. That’s the logical spot to build houses. The value of that land’s going up. So taxes will, too. Everybody in that swath is worried. And wait until construction starts. Don’t get me wrong — Zeke-Tech is saving Drago. Pure and simple. Saving it. It’s just not saving the farmers in its path.”

  Like Ned and others he’d met at Everett’s poker games.

  Like Hooper Farm.

  As they paid, Josh said, “The person you need next is Darcie.”

  Quince stifled a groan. Josh patted him on the back.

  “I know. But she keeps her fingers on the pulse of the county, and the county wouldn’t have a pulse without farming.”

  *

  After supper Saturday, Everett disappeared, destination unknown, though now guessable.

  Quince headed directly to the high school gymnasium through snow squalls. Since Drago High was playing a home game, that’s where just about everyone in the county would be.

  Except Anne. Who was home. Working.

  Quince found Darcie near the doors to the parking lot. She was in uniform, which was why there’d be no gathering tonight, and talking to two boys.

  She waved them off and they scooted past like they’d been reprieved from prison.

  “Friends from birth and they were going to go out — in this cold — to fight over a girl who’s ga-ga for another boy who doesn’t know she’s alive. Thank God I’m not in high school anymore. What’s up, Quince?”

  “Have any time to talk — when you’re off-duty?”

  “About?”

  “Farming around here.”

  “Huh. Come by the house tomorrow afternoon, stay for dinner.”

  *

  Sunday’s sunrise was slow and cold as Anne turned the farm truck off the highway.

  She’d gotten up in the deepest dark to check the fairgrounds.

  Sometimes the sellers left parts or even complete equipment behind that they hadn’t managed to sell. Never much. But Chris had picked up a gem one year…

  Not this year. There’d been nothing left.

  In the low light she almost missed a figure leaning against the snow-limned fence, looking toward the east.

  Her heart stuttered, then resumed its normal rhythm when recognition hit.

  What on earth was Zeke Zeekowsky doing out here at this hour?

  She stopped, reached across the seat to roll down the passenger window.

  “Zeke? Everything okay?”

  He raised a hand, called hello, and started toward her. At the truck, he leaned down to look in the open window. “What a surprise to see you here.”

  “I live here,” she said with a small smile.

  “But you’re driving toward the house, not away from it.”

  Okay, Zeke wasn’t as absentminded as she might have thought. “Ran an errand. What are you doing here, Zeke? Are you okay?”

  “Sure, I’m just thinking. Darcie goes running, I go thinking.”

  She smiled again. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Quince.”

  She looked toward the house, automatically assuring herself it still stood intact, a shelter, not a place of danger for their boarder.

  “He’s okay.” Then she added, “Isn’t he?”

  “No, he’s not. He’s worried.”

  “Abou—”

  She didn’t bite it off quite fast enough.

  “You,” he said.

  His dark, intelligent eyes were fixed on her, making it impossible to follow her instinct to deny, deny, deny.

  “I know he means well.” She should leave it at that. The End. Not another word. Instead, she burst out. “He’s just so damned irritating. He thinks he can solve everything. That all he has to do is put his mind to it, and everything will turn out okay.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  She opened her mouth to dispute that, then closed it in face of the absolute certainty in his voice and his eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  Zeke looked away, down the track ahead of her truck. “I’m not much good at this sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing.”

  He gestured vaguely. “People things. Love.”

  “This has absolutely nothing to do with— It has nothing to do with that sort of thing. It’s—”

  “Yes, it does. Quince loved her.”

  A hot poker slammed into Anne’s chest. “What? No. Forget I said that. It’s none of my business. This is all—” She gestured as if trying to shoo away flies. “—irrelevant.”

  “Is it?”

  Zeke’s question had no probing intonation. He was simply asking.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “I have to go now. Sun’s up and it’s past time to start my work.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Anne looked tired at Sunday breakfast.

  It didn’t stop her from cooking a meal fit for a stevedore.

  Breaking a silence as they ate, Quince told her he wouldn’t be in for dinner because he was going in to town in the late afternoon and staying for dinner at Zeke and Darcie’s.

  “Thank you for letting me know,” she said, distant and polite.

  “Hey, I’ll ride with you in and back if you’ll drop me at Peggy’s,” Everett said. “She’s been wanting me to come to supper, but I don’t like taking the farm truck and leaving Anne with no vehicle while her car’s still being worked on.”

  That might have been some of it, but Quince had also been aware that the man had been bent over and hobbling more the past two days. Perhaps he’d overdone it at the auction. Whatever the cause, it couldn’t make driving the truck’s stick shift any more comfortable.

  “Sure, but that will leave Anne alone for dinner.”

  “I don’t need anyone here to hold my hand.” The instant the words were out, faint color rose in her cheeks, as if she’d belatedly recognized hand-holding could have a romantic application. “I’ll get a lot more work done on the taxes not needing to stop to feed you two.”

  “Or stopping to eat?”

  “Not your worry,” Everett growled.

  So much for breakfast conversation.

  *

  That afternoon, though, Everett began talking up a storm as they put on their outerwear in the mudroom.

  As if reverting to the previous week, he told stories about the farm’s history.

  When he ran out of steam as they neared town, Quince nudged. “You said your brother’s son came to farm with you. Because you never had kids of your own?”

  “Never did that I know of.” He cackled a bit, which turned into a cough. “So Chris’ daddy and his wife came here. We farmed here and another place that had a house on it. That’s where they lived and raised Chris. Up until he was seventeen. That’s when his folks died in a highway accident. It was hard on the boy, real hard.”
<
br />   “Must not have been easy on you, either.”

  “Whaddya mean, has somebody said I couldn’t pull my weight, because I could. He moved in with me to finish out high school and I ran the place by myself, with help from him. Leg or no leg. And then we had the worst fight we ever had, that boy and me. He said he wasn’t going to college and I said he was. Told him he needed to get some polish, a taste of living off the farm. When he came back to farm, it was his own doing. His decision. Because this place was in his blood just like all the Hoopers.”

  Like Anne, even though she hadn’t been born a Hooper?

  “We’d had a patch of bad years and with just me working alone, we’d had to let go of some of the leased land. But Chris worked hard. And the couple years after he met Anne and they married, those were good years. Real good years.”

  So had those couple real good years been followed by not good years? How many?

  Asking would end the conversation right here.

  “Did you have help with Chris at the end?”

  “Help?”

  “Hospice can—”

  “Hospice?” Everett eyes went blank. “No. I’m not talking about this.”

  So the conversation ended anyway.

  Quince let it go. Though he couldn’t help but speculate about how much of the burden — time, energy, and emotion — of easing Chris Hooper’s last days had rested on Everett’s shoulders, and how much on Anne’s.

  They’d reached Mrs. Richard’s house.

  “Thanks,” Everett said. “Call me when you’re leaving, like we said.”

  “Wait a minute, there’s something I want to say…”

  “Spit it out, boy. I’m not sittin’ here all day jawin’ with you.”

  “I think you saw me kissing Anne the other day.”

  “You kissing her,” the older man repeated without inflection.

  “A week ago, the day the visitors—”

  “I know what day was a week ago.”

  “Well, I owe you an apology, Everett. I told you at the start that anything between Anne and me was nowhere on the agenda. So you might be wondering—”

  “Not wondering. Knew you were lying at the time.” He pushed open the car door.