by Tim Downs
“What is it with you?” Kathryn asked. “Your farm surrounds mine on all four sides—you’ve got one of the biggest corn farms in North Carolina. How many acres do you have, Tully? Do you even know? Why do you need my five? I’ll tell you why: because it bugs you, that’s why. You can’t stand to see my little tomato farm smack-dab in the middle of yours, like a little bleeding scab right between your eyes. You want my five acres just so you can plow them under and plant five more acres of corn—just so you won’t have to turn the steering wheel on that John Deere when you drive it across your fields.”
“Kathryn, you need to listen to reason.”
“You really want to help me, Tully? I’ll tell you how you can help: You can plow up those extra rows you planted right up to my property. That land should lie fallow—you know that. It’s supposed to be a habitat for wildlife, but you plowed it under just to put in a few extra rows of corn.”
“It’s just business, Kathryn. Last June corn was up to almost eight bucks a bushel—I can’t let land lie fallow in a market like that.”
“Sure you can—it’s just money.”
“Just money? Listen to yourself. Isn’t your whole problem ‘just money’? That’s your problem, Kathryn—you don’t think like a businessman.”
“Well, thank God somebody doesn’t. Corn takes more fertilizer than any other crop, and some of those chemical fertilizers you use are so soluble that they start to run off in the first hard rain. Where do you think all that nitrogen goes? Into the creeks and rivers, that’s where, then right out into the ocean. The nitrogen feeds the algae; the algae consume all the oxygen—then the fish start to die. Look at the Gulf of Mexico: Last year the runoff from the Mississippi caused the biggest algae bloom in history.”
“Oh, c’mon—I plant a few extra rows of corn and I personally destroy the fishing industry?”
“That land should have been rotated to soybeans or just left alone.”
“Land is money, Kathryn.”
“Land is land, Tully. We’ve got to take care of it, not just use it.”
“I’ve got a family to provide for.”
“Your family’s doing fine. I’ve seen your house and your cars and that boat you haul down to Topsail Beach every weekend. Your teenage son drives a better truck than I do.”
“That’s because I’m a businessman. Look, we can stand here and argue about the wonders of nature all day, but sooner or later you’ve got to face facts. You can’t run that place all by yourself—you tried it with Michael and the two of you couldn’t do it together. You can sell it to me now or you can sell it to me later, but sooner or later you’re gonna have to sell it to somebody and you might as well sell it to me. Now, I’ve made you a very fair offer. I’m trying to be nice about this.”
Kathryn narrowed her eyes. “Nice—is that what you’re trying to be? You know what you should have done with those extra rows, Tully—the ones that back right up against my property? If you were being nice you would have planted a windscreen—maybe a nice row of cottonwoods to stop your pesticide overspray from drifting onto my fields. But you didn’t want to do that, did you? You know my place is certified organic, and you know I have to be recertified every year. You know they test my tomatoes, and if they find your pesticides on my tomatoes I’ll lose my certification. That would shut me down for good, wouldn’t it? Then I’d have to sell.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have to spray and I don’t control the wind.”
“Why? So your few extra rows will produce a few extra bushels? What’s the matter, Tully, do you need a bigger boat?”
Tully threw up his hands in frustration. “I’ve tried to be patient with you, Kathryn, but I can see you’re intent on running that miserable place of yours into the ground—and when you do I’ll buy it at auction for pennies on the dollar. I don’t see why you have to be so pigheaded about this. You can ruin your own life if you want to, but you’ve got a little girl you need to think about.”
Kathryn’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. She jerked the paring knife from the summer squash, looked at the blade, then jammed it back in again. She grabbed a tomato instead and cocked her arm. “Run.”
“What?”
“I’ll count to five.”
“Don’t be silly—you’re not gonna throw that.”
“You don’t think I can throw, do you? You think I throw like a girl. Let me tell you something, I grew up chucking turds at boys like you and I can hit your sorry butt on the run at twenty paces. Go on, give it a try.”
Tully didn’t move.
Kathryn slowly lowered the tomato. “You’re right, Tully. I’m not going to throw this at you because this is my living. I’m a farmer, and one day I plan to pass that farm on to my little girl—and that will never happen if I throw my profits away at idiots like you. Now get out of here. I’ve got a living to make.”
8
Nick sat at the table and watched Kathryn as she prepared dinner. Her manner seemed mechanical and brusque—she’d barely said five words to him since he arrived. He wondered if it was something he had said or done. Based on his experience with women, it probably was—so he didn’t ask.
She set a plate down in front of him with a clunk.
Nick looked at the plate. “I hear the food is good here, but the waitress can be kind of cranky.”
Kathryn stopped. “I’m sorry, Nick, I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s not your fault.”
“Really? There’s a first.”
“I was at the farmers’ market in Wilmington today. There was this man—a neighbor of mine. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Nick picked up his fork.
“Tully is just so—arrogant. He keeps trying to buy my farm. He’s offered half a dozen times. Those endless cornfields you see when you drive in? That’s his land—all of it, as far as the eye can see, but that’s not enough for him. Oh, no, he wants more—he wants my place too.”
Nick set down his fork.
“But I’m not going to let him ruin our dinner. I told him no, and that’s that, and I don’t intend to spend the whole evening talking about him.”
Nick picked up his fork.
“It’s just that he’s so condescending. It’s bad enough that he pretends to be sorry about Michael, but when he reminds me that I have a daughter to look out for, that’s more than I can stomach. Doesn’t he think I know that? If he’s so concerned about Callie, why does he keep trying to put me out of business?”
Nick set down his fork. “Your neighbor wants to put you out of business?”
“This is an organic farm, Nick. I have to be recertified once a year to keep my ‘organic’ label. That label allows me to sell my produce at a premium; without it I’m just another dirt farmer, and you can’t compete with just five acres. I sell a lot of my produce directly—mostly at farmers’ markets and at my roadside stand.”
“I saw that stand—I passed it on the way in.”
“Did you see the sign? Severenson Farm Organics: From God’s Table to Yours.”
“Good strategy,” Nick said. “Eliminate the middleman.”
“Organic produce is expensive, but a lot of people think it’s worth it and that’s what keeps me in business. Without that organic label, I’m finished.”
“Who’s this neighbor of yours?”
“His name is Tully Truett. He’s an old-school corn farmer. The fertilizers, the fungicides, the pesticides—he’s like my evil twin. He oversprays and he lets his poison drift onto my fields. I think he does it on purpose. It’s like my farm is the last jewel missing from his crown or something. I think he’d do anything to get this place.”
Nick paused. “Anything?”
Kathryn stared at him. “I didn’t mean Michael.”
Nick shrugged. “Why not? Money’s as good a motive as any.”
Kathryn shook her head in disbelief. “No, that would be . . . unthinkable.”
“Trust me, nothing’s unthinkable when it comes to your speci
es.”
“Even Tully wouldn’t do that.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“But Michael was no help around here for years. Why kill him now? What good would that do?”
“It might make you sell the place. Your husband died in your own fields; every time you walk out there you’ll remember that. People sell their house and move away after a death in the family all the time—especially if the death was a tragic one.”
“I can’t believe that,” she said. “Tully may be arrogant, but he’s not a murderer.”
“He’s human—that’s close enough for me. Let’s just keep Tully in mind for now. Once I get the PMI, we’ll find out if he has an alibi for that time period.”
“Fair enough.”
“So he offered to buy this place?”
“For the umpteenth time.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him I used to chuck turds at boys like him.”
Nick blinked. “Did you actually say that?”
“I sure did. Why?”
“I don’t know . . . I just didn’t take you for a turd-chucking kind of girl. I’ve met a few; I’ve had dates with a couple of them. I just didn’t think you were one of them.”
“Well, I am, so don’t forget to duck.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Kathryn turned to the bedrooms and shouted, “Callie! Dinner!” She pulled out a chair across from Nick and said, “I may have to go get her—she doesn’t always hear.”
But a moment later Callie scrambled into her chair and set a stack of books beside her on the table.
“Uh-uh,” Kathryn said. “You know the rule, Callie: no books at the table.” She slid off the stack and set them on the floor. “Dinner is when we talk.”
Nick began eating without a word.
Kathryn cleared her throat.
He glanced up.
“Nick—dinner is when we talk.” She nodded at Callie.
“Oh.” Nick sat in silence, staring at his plate and thinking.
“It’s not that hard, Nick,” Kathryn whispered.
“For you, maybe. You’ve had practice.”
She rolled her eyes. “How is it possible that a man with a PhD can’t think of a single thing to say to a four-year-old girl?”
“Maybe I’m overspecialized. What’s she interested in?”
“What were you interested in when you were four?”
“Bugs,” he said with a shrug.
“Well, it just so happens that Callie is interested in bugs too.”
Nick looked at Callie as though he had just discovered a third person sitting at the table. “Really?”
Callie didn’t reply.
Nick rapped his knuckles on the table and the little girl looked up from her plate. “You like bugs?”
“You like bugs,” she said.
“She even has a collection,” Kathryn said.
Nick smiled at Callie. “Can I see your bugs?”
“After dinner,” Kathryn said. “First we need to—”
But before she could finish her sentence, both of them were out of their chairs and headed for the front door.
Kathryn winced as the screen door banged shut behind them. “Just what I needed,” she mumbled. “Two four-year-olds.”
Nick followed Callie to the barn. With his long legs he could walk almost as fast as the little girl could run. And she did run—wildly, crazily, throwing herself forward like a stumbling drunk—but she never fell once. Nick couldn’t tell if she was really off-balance or if the little girl just liked living on the edge. Whichever it was, she seemed to be enjoying herself. She was grinning from ear to ear.
Callie headed directly into the barn and squeezed between an old tiller and a wooden flatbed wagon with rubber tires. Nick followed after her—the squeeze was a lot tighter for him. On the back wall of the barn there were three low wooden shelves; the tallest came right to Callie’s chin. On each of the shelves was a series of objects arranged in perfect rows. The bottom shelf held pieces of rock: a white river rock rounded perfectly smooth, a piece of yellow-orange quartz with translucent facets, and a small chunk of fool’s gold with patches of metallic crystals clustered on the sides.
“Nice rocks,” Nick said.
“Nice rocks,” Callie replied.
The middle shelf held broken shards of glass—some from bottles or jars, some from old glass insulators, and some so small and so jagged that their origin could only be guessed. Each piece of glass was its own brilliant color—deep turquoise, golden amber, creamy white, or bloodred. Nick picked up an aqua-colored chunk from an old insulator and held it up to the light. When he returned it to the shelf, Callie carefully repositioned it so that it was exactly as it was before.
The top shelf was filled with dead insects—dozens of them, with their desiccated bodies lined up in perfect rows.
“This is a very good collection,” Nick said. “Do you know what they are?”
Callie didn’t answer.
He pointed to one—an enormous black fly with eyes like dots of ink. “Tabanid,” he said. “That’s a horsefly. Watch out for those—they can bite through horsehide.”
“Horsehide,” she repeated.
Nick pointed to another—a chunky little beetle with a pearlescent yellow-and-green shell. “That’s a Japanese beetle—and that spindly thing’s a crane fly. They’re very fragile; you did a good job collecting him. That red guy over there, he’s a velvet ant—I like those. And see that fuzzy yellow one—the one that looks like a bumblebee? He’s not a bee at all—that’s called a robber fly.”
“Robber fly,” she said.
“I’m impressed,” Nick said. “You’ve got way more bugs than I had at your age. I see Hymenoptera, and Coleoptera, and Blattodea—those are the cockroaches. You’ve even got an Ephemeroptera—good for you.”
“Callie loves to organize.”
Nick turned.
Kathryn was standing in the doorway, watching them. “You kids having fun?”
“She’s quite the collector,” Nick said.
Kathryn worked her way toward them across the crowded barn. “It’s almost an obsession with autistics. They like to collect things and line them all up. It’s a way of creating order for them. It’s how they structure their world, only they don’t organize the way we do. You might group those pieces of glass by color; she might do it by the way they feel when she touches them. That’s how she organizes her socks—by the way they feel.”
“Makes sense to me,” Nick said.
“It’s funny, but if you think about it, everybody is a little autistic.” She looked into Nick’s eyes. “We’re withdrawn, or we don’t pick up on social cues, or we find it hard to connect with other people . . .”
“I like the way she groups her insects,” Nick said. “Here, look closer.”
“No, thanks,” Kathryn said. “This is close enough.”
Nick looked at her; she was standing a few feet away with her arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders. “I almost forgot,” he said. “How’s that little problem?”
“You mean my paralyzing fear of insects—that ‘little problem’?”
“That’s the one.”
“It’s a little better. You can’t avoid insects when you work on a farm—the despicable things are everywhere.”
Nick looked at the shelf and nodded in admiration. “You know, your daughter could be a systematist someday.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s an entomologist who specializes in classifying insects and identifying their relationship to other organisms.”
Kathryn smiled at her daughter. “Did you hear that, honey? Someday you can be a geek just like Nick.”
A voice behind them grumbled, “Nick is not a geek.”
They both turned and looked.
A young woman was standing in the barn doorway with three dogs seated at her side. The first was a tiny, hairless creature with a little t
uft of white fur projecting from its head. Its eyes bulged out like pearl onions and its little pink tongue stuck out through missing teeth. The second dog was of medium size, lean in build with mottled gray fur. This dog had only three legs; its right-front foreleg had been severed at the shoulder. The third dog was enormous. It was as black as night—a gigantic thick-furred creature with drooping jowls and a sagging brow that gave it a woeful look.
“Alena,” Nick said.
The woman beamed. “Hi, Nick. It’s good to see you.”
The woman had silken black hair that ended at her waist; it was parted just off-center and hung down on either side of her face. She held her head down a little so that her hair hung in front of her like a curtain, and she peeked out from behind it through the tops of her almond-shaped eyes. She looked about the same age as Kathryn, but her skin looked younger. She wore a knee-length cerulean dress that made her beautiful emerald eyes look ever-so-slightly blue.
Nick worked his way over to her, and Kathryn took Callie by the hand and followed.
“This is your dog team,” Nick said to Kathryn. “Kathryn Guilford, this is Alena Savard.”
When Kathryn extended her hand, all three dogs began to growl. She drew back.
Alena snapped her fingers once and the dogs fell silent.
Kathryn forced a smile. “I used to have a dog. What kind are they?”
“What kind of person are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“It doesn’t matter what ‘kind’ they are—the only thing that matters is what’s inside of you.” She smoothed the front of her dress and smiled at Nick. “I’m really glad you called.”
Nick looked down at her dress. “Can you work in that?”
Her face dropped. “If I have to. Why? What’s the hurry?”
“Nick is always in a hurry,” Kathryn explained.
“I know that,” Alena said. “I’ve worked with Nick before.”
Kathryn turned to Nick. “You two know each other?”
“Alena has a place up in northern Virginia,” he said. “She trains dogs there—cadaver dogs, narcotics dogs, search-and-rescue dogs . . . She’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
Alena grinned. “And Nick is the best bug man there is.”