by Various
Did she still use that lavender soap? Did she still know how to keep chickens? Was her condo zoned for poultry?
As I dressed in some of Dad’s old clothes, I heard the front door bang open, and Mom and a woman begin to talk in excited tones. Stepping into the hall, I caught a whiff of meatloaf, spinach, cobbler, lavender—
And then I heard her voice and my gut twisted on itself as I peeked around the corner.
Mom and Marisol stood in the front hallway, both laughing, Mari’s hand on Mom’s arm. She wore a black suit that looked tailored and expensive. I took a step out of the room, toward the back door, but the floorboards squeaked, and they both looked at me. “Brewster!” called Mari, her big, brown eyes lighting up as she walked toward me, heels clicking on the hardwood.
I waved, backing away as she tried to reach in for a hug. “How are you?” I said, holding out my right hand.
She gave me a sideways smile, then took my hand to shake it. Hers was still a little rough, and, when she smiled, I could see the chip on one of her front teeth. Her hair was long and loose, her face tanned without looking weatherbeaten. God, she looked good. “I’m doing well,” she said. “And you?”
I removed my hand, took a breath, trying my best to remain calm and failing. “Okay, considering the love note you sent me.”
“Ah,” said Mari, nodding to herself. “You should have gotten that a while ago.”
“Been busy,” I said. “Plus, I’ve got Leggo doing my mail runs, and punctuality isn’t one of his strong suits.”
She nodded again, but didn’t say anything.
Mom had gone into the dining room. “Wine, anyone?”
“Yes,” we both said, then trooped in.
A third setting was out, the fork and knife askew. The wineglasses were full, so I took a healthy sip. It was a solid pinot. I looked at the bottle and smiled. “I know these guys,” I said, tapping the label. “They sponsored the lab next to mine at Davis.”
“Here’s to science,” said Mom, raising her glass. “Let’s eat.”
We tucked into dinner: smashed potatoes, wild spinach, and meatloaf. “Good stuff, Kathy,” said Mari. “Homegrown?”
“Of course,” she said. “We started working with Manny Gamboa for butchering. He just got his mobile outfit licensed, so he can do everything in the field, even packaging and flash freezing. This is from today.”
“I’ll have to call him soon, then,” I said. “A few dozen of mine are about ready for market.”
Mom hmmed, then poured more wine. “Not sure he’ll want to work with you. He’s already turned down working for the Storeys, and—”
“The Storeys raise Amagco cattle.” I picked up my glass and gave Mari a glare. “We raise heritage bison—”
“No, I do,” said Mom, banging the bottle on the table. A little wine dribbled on the tabletop. “What you raise.…”
“I raise what Dad would have wanted.”
“Oh, he most certainly would not have wanted this,” she said, gulping her wine. “He spent his entire working life keeping the herd alive and thriving and free from any kind of interference. He had to fight off cattle ranchers and developers, and every slick salesman pitching their modified feed or genes or whatever would have kept our bison from being bison. What you did.…”
“I did what I had to do to make sure our herd survived,” I said. “We had to compete with cattle? Fine, we raised something that’s tastier and healthier than cattle. We couldn’t keep our land? Fine, I bred bison that needed less land and don’t need any modified feed.”
“And how does that make you different from Amagco?” Mom said, her eyes narrowing.
“My license fees are cheap.”
“But you still charge them,” she said.
“How is that different from hiring out a bull to stud?”
Mom shook her head, her mouth a hard, thin line. “They’re not widgets, Bruce. God, all those years at Davis, and what did you learn?”
“That nature isn’t always enough,” I said.
“Well, that’s not what we taught you.”
The kitchen timer dinged, and Mom got up, taking my plate even though I wasn’t finished eating. At least she’d done me the courtesy of leaving my glass. Mari and I gave each other tight smiles.
“Actually, it’s a good thing you’re here, Brewster,” said Mari. “I’d hoped we could talk.”
I sipped my wine. “Okay.”
“I want you to know that the lawsuit was not my idea. In fact, I went to the mat with the Board to try and stop it.” Mari reached into her suit pocket and pulled out a slim white envelope. She set it down in front of me.
Another sip. “What’s that?”
“A settlement offer,” said Mari. “Four times market price per head.”
“You want to buy my bison, you can do it at auction like everyone else.” This time, I gulped the pinot.
“I wasn’t finished.” Mari leaned back and took a breath. “There’s also half a million dollars for your research and licensing rights.”
I set my wine down, then opened the envelope. Inside was a cashier’s check for a very, very large amount of money. There was also a paper that, if I signed it, meant Amagco would own my minis, horn, hoof, genome, everything. “What would happen to everyone who’s already bought licenses?”
“That wouldn’t be your problem,” said Mari.
“That’s not what I asked.” I put the papers down. “What would happen to them, Mari?”
She shrugged. “We’d have to figure that out when the licenses expired.”
“You’re going to kill them off, aren’t you?”
“Brewster, there aren’t many options—”
I laughed. “God, you really think I’d accept this? You cut me off at the knees, and then you’re going to do the same to everyone who ranches minis, ’cause, what? They eat into your profit margin too much? They don’t use any of Amagco’s licensed feeds or licensed antibiotics or licensed genes?”
“Brewster, this is a good offer—”
“You want to kill my minis!” I yelled. “Just like you do with every breed of heritage animals! It wasn’t enough for you to buy the rights to wild turkeys and Berkshire hogs, now you’re going to take my bison, just like you wanted to take Mom and Dad’s!”
“That wasn’t me!” Mari yelled back. “I was still in law school when that happened, or did you forget me helping Gus when he took up your dad’s case?”
“No, but I also haven’t forgotten that you went to work for the same people who just about killed him—”
“Brewster Carlston Higley!” Mom came in the dining room, holding a baking dish full of peach cobbler. “Just because you sleep in the fields doesn’t mean you get to talk like that in this house!”
I sat back in my chair.
“So, you’re going to side with her?” I said, jabbing a finger at Mari.
“I’m going to have dinner with an old family friend who helped us when we needed it,” said Mom. “If your father were here—”
“My father would have thrown her out of this house.”
I’ve testified in front of the state Supreme Court, defended my thesis against professors who thought I was insane, faced down countless bulls and animal rights protestors and pissed-off rednecks. None of them gave me the same amount of pure anger as Mom’s stare. She put the cobbler on the table and pointed at the front door. When she didn’t move, I took the hint. I made sure to bang the screen extra hard.
Of course, as soon as I got outside, I realized I’d left my boots out back. I considered returning, then climbed into my truck. I could retrieve them later.
“Brewster!”
Mari walked out of the house, pulling on her jacket. I tried grinding the Chevy to life, but, of course, it refused to start. I leaned on the steering wheel.
“Brewster?”
“You know, you are the only person who calls me by my full name,” I said. “Except Mom, when she gets mad, of course.”
/> “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Please leave me to swear at my truck in peace.”
“Never worked before.”
“I’m an optimist.”
She pushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “Could we talk about this?”
“I’m not that optimistic.” I sagged against the seat back. “Unless this is the moment you tell me you’re going to quit your job.”
She snorted. “What, and go back to pushing eggs?”
“Eggs are honest.”
“Eggs are a pain.” She hugged herself. “Chickens are a pain, as are cattle, hogs, and every other form of livestock. If I could do it all over again, I would’ve grown flowers.”
I snorted. “What, like, begonias?”
“Oh, God, you sound like Leggo. Where is he?”
“On the range, minding the herd.”
She took in a deep breath. “I forgot what the air’s like here. Good and dry. St. Louis is so muggy.”
“Yeah.” I ground the starter again. “Well, it’s been great, Mari, but I need to go plan a legal defense against your evil corporate overlords, so if you’ll excuse me.”
“Of course.” She stepped away from the truck. “You know, you really remind me of your dad now. He’d be proud of you.”
I just about tore the door off its hinges. “That is it.” I jumped out of the cab. “That is the absolute limit. You can help out Mom, pretend it’s just like old times, but you do not get to bring up my father. Not so long as you’re working for the same outfit that tried to crush him.”
“And who sent you to college.”
“For one semester!” I yelled. “One semester’s worth of scholarship, and then I had to bust my hump for the next ten years, all because Amagco was busy suing Dad over grass licenses.”
“Well, if he’d only paid them—”
I got in Mari’s face. “That’s not the point! Those weeds drifted onto our land, and all of our bison were too smart to eat it, yet Amagco thought Dad was pirating their proprietary grass, like he was downloading a movie! I mean,” I started to laugh, then climbed back into the truck,“doesn’t that strike you as insane? What you’re doing now? Licensing livestock? Suing farmers who can’t pay fees for seed they never wanted to buy in the first place? Good God, Mari, your bosses realize that people have to eat, right?”
Mari gave a weary chuckle, then pushed a stray bit of hair behind her ear. “Do you have any idea how many people get to eat because of what we do? How many extra tons of rice and wheat and soy we ship overseas every day because of our research?”
“All because you decided you could be smarter than nature.” I shook my head. “Engineering cows to digest corn, engineering corn that digests easier, when all you have to do is just let cows eat grass, like they evolved to do.”
“Which is what you did, right?” said Mari, pointing at me. “You just let those minis of yours evolve to get smaller and more nutritious. It was all God’s work!”
“I didn’t go mixing genes from multiple species to make another.”
“Semantics.” Her face was dark with anger. “You still had to manipulate your bison genes, just like our food scientists do to our products. Your minis are every bit as artificial as our cattle.”
“My minis are healthier and better for the environment and don’t come with an end-user license agreement like those vegetables with legs you call cows.”
“Whatever.” She tossed the settlement offer through the window. “I can see I wasted my time coming here.”
“I could’ve told you that before dinner.”
She shook her head. “Keep laughing, Brewster. It’s not going to help you. You realize you’re the precedent case, right?”
“You won’t win,” I said. “And, even if you do, you think you can buy up every species on the planet?”
“Just the ones that compete with ours.” She gave me the once-over. “Bye, Brewster. See you in court.” She walked back to the house.
The front door lock clacked shut like a gunshot, and the front porch light flicked off. So much for getting my boots. I hunkered down in the front seat and closed my eyes. I’d see Gus tomorrow and all of this would go away.
• • •
Gus slurped his peach nectar as he showed me the complaint. “It doesn’t look good, Bruce.”
We sat on a bench next to Sue Del Rios’s fruit stand, right on the edge of the Third Street farmers market. I took a sample slice of pluot from a tray by my shoulder. “That’s not what I pay you to say.” My mouth tingled from the fruit.
“You haven’t paid me at all.” Gus shook his bottle to loosen some of the pulp. “And even if you do, I’m not sure we can win this.”
I snagged another slice of pluot, rolling the bitter skin between my teeth while I swallowed the sweet flesh. “So, what’s their beef this time?”
“Cute.” Gus put the bottle into a paper bag at his feet. “Amagco’s claiming that your minis violate their intellectual property rights.”
“How? I didn’t use any of their stuff.”
“Not according to them.” He flipped through the complaint, now marked up with a rainbow array of Post-its. Gus stopped at the only red one, then cleared his throat. “‘Plaintiff charges that Defendant’s product utilizes six DNA sequences identical to those found in Plaintiff’s proprietary Genetically Modified Bovine Genome, Model 23.’”
“Seriously? That’s their case?” I waved my hand. “No wonder they want to try and settle. This is pure garbage.”
“Wait, so you know about this?” He slapped the complaint. “And yet you harassed me anyway?”
“I’m still buying you breakfast, aren’t I?”
“I have enough professional pride to demand actual money for a retainer.” Gus reached into the bag and pulled out a steaming hot tamale.
“Then get ready to earn it when we whip them in court.” I pointed to the page with the red Post-it. “These sequences are common for every bovine. It’s like the way humans and gorillas share DNA.”
Gus sucked in a breath to cool his mouth; he always chomped into his tamales too soon and burned his tongue. “Regardless, Amagco has the patents on the genes, and they’re claiming your minis are unlicensed derivative works.”
I laughed. “Are you serious? We’re talking about livestock, not a mashup album.”
He shook his head as he chewed. “Doesn’t matter. They’re claiming that your research used their patented genes, and that you owe them many millions of dollars in back license fees.”
“This is insane! The bison genome is public domain. All heritage animals are.”
“So what are you doing charging for your minis?”
“They’re derived from public domain works, and that’s still kosher. Isn’t it?”
“Depends on how they’re killed.” I didn’t give him the satisfaction of laughing.
I tapped the papers and leaned in to Gus. “They can’t do this, can they?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, they can’t kill you, but they can bleed you dry while you defend yourself.”
I slumped against the bench back. “So I’m on my own, huh?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Gus. “I’ll make some calls, get this C & D quashed, which will kick off a whole new mess.” He looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. “This is gonna cost you, Bruce. It could be another run to the Supreme Court, and that’s going to mean hiring a staff, getting clerks, the whole shebang. Remember the last time we did this?”
“Yeah. We won.”
Gus chuckled, his eyes lightening. “We sure did.” His face grew stony. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy doing it.” Gus chomped the last bits of tamale. “Your minis may be a giant pain in my backside, Bruce, but they do make for a tasty breakfast.”
“You can thank the Ocampos for that.” I nodded toward their tamale stand. “I just raise the meat.”
“Then raise more of them, kid, ’cause you’re gonna need the money.” Gus gro
aned as he stood up. “You might want to think about increasing your license fees—”
“Hey, you’re my attorney, not my financial advisor.”
He shook his head. “Fine, you hippie. Keep undercharging, see how far that gets you.”
“Far enough.”
He snorted. “Unless you give me another heart attack.”
“Just wait until we go to court. Might get us sympathy.”
He waved and shuffled off into the maze of pavilion tents and fold-out tables. There were giant pyramids of plums, pluots, and other stone fruit; coolers of fresh cheese and yogurt from the Kinsella goat farm; tomatoes, broccoli, chard, kale, and other greens everywhere else. All of them were heritage species, grown without paying licensing fees or buying special fertilizer or any of that Amagco filth. Normally, I would have wandered around, talking about harvests and weather and everything else, but it was too perfect a day to do anything but sit. I took one last slice of pluot and closed my eyes, feeling good and warm from the sun.
“Dude! Wake up!”
I opened my eyes and there was Leggo, sweaty and panting, leaning over on his mountain bike.
“Leggo, I told you, I gotta take care of this—”
“Never mind that, Brew, we gotta go!”
“Calm down.” I stood up next to him, then wished I hadn’t. He smelled like the bottom of a Phish revival concert.
Leggo caught his breath. “They’re taking them!”
“Who’s taking who?”
“The cops, man! The sheriff! They’re taking the herd!”
“What?”
Leggo handed me a crinkled slip of paper: a warrant. The Modoc County Sheriff had come to enforce the C & D, and were permitted to gather up any specimens of Bison bison minimus for immediate confiscation, quarantine, and disposal—