‘Name me an insurance policy that covers anything else,’ demanded Senator Jones. ‘You could be Cartier-Bresson, and every photograph you ever took could make you ten thousand dollars, but if the laboratory fogs one of your films, what can you claim? The price of the film, that’s all. And it’s the same with crops.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ said Ed. ‘But since this blight is so damaging, and so completely unknown, I was wondering if there might be a possibility of further aid from the Department of Agriculture.’
‘No,’ said Senator Jones.
‘Is that a refusal to help, or an admission that you don’t have the clout to help?’
‘That’s a refusal to help. What’s the matter with you farmers? You get deficiency payments, you get guaranteed floor prices, you get nationwide federal insurance. What more do you want? You want me to come out there and harvest your crop for you? You want me to ride a tractor?’
‘Senator Jones, the way this blight is spreading, there isn’t going be any crop.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to grin and bear it. I’m sorry, Mr Hardesty, but farming’s tough, and there’s nothing that you or I can do about it.’
Ed drew a breath. ‘Listen, Senator Jones, my daddy may have been a tough and wily old turkey, and he may have built up one of the most successful wheat farms in south Kansas, but he was heavily overstretched on his spending. When I took over this farm, it was right on the verge of financial collapse. Sure – we were harvesting a regular, high-quality crop, and we had all the latest techniques. But we were overmanned, and we’d relied too much on credit, and too much on favours, and the simple fact was that we had a super-efficient farm that wasn’t quite super-efficient enough to meet its interest payments.’
‘I hope you realise you’re breaking my heart,’ said Senator Jones.
‘I hope you realise I was lying when I said I wasn’t a blackmailer.’
Senator Jones sniffed. ‘This doesn’t sound like a Hardesty talking. Your daddy was one of those men who always stood on his own two feet. He’d expect a favour from his friends, sure. But he never crawled for anything.’
‘I’m not crawling, Senator Jones. I’m asking. My daddy did you a favour, and now I want you to do him a favour in return. Because if this farm goes bankrupt, which it surely will if we don’t get more than a federal insurance payment, then my daddy’s name is going to be dragged all over the Kansas papers like dirt.’
‘Hunh,’ said Senator Jones.
‘You can “hunh” all you like,’ said Ed. ‘I know you’re thinking that I don’t sound like my daddy, but the reason for that is that I’m not my daddy. He was a farmer, but I’m a businessman, and the way this farm was falling to pieces when I took over, that’s probably just as well. My daddy was very good at what he did, but when it came to the financial jiggery-pokery, he relied too much on people like you. He didn’t know a floor price from a floor mop.’
‘Mr Hardesty,’ said Senator Jones, with exaggerated patience, ‘I have to tell you that I’m very sorry for you, and that I’d really like to help. But the truth of the matter is, I’m very busy right now on this soybean problem in Iowa, and I really can’t see that I’m going to be able to spend the time on one single disgruntled wheat farmer from Kansas.’
‘All right,’ said Ed. ‘If that’s the way you feel, I’m going straight to the papers with the facts on the wheat-dumping scandal.’
‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ snarled Senator Jones. ‘Nancy Drew? Don’t come at me with that going-to-the-papers shit.’
‘You think it’s shit?’ asked Ed, although he was trembling with the tension of what he was doing. ‘You read it in print in the Washington Post, and then tell me it’s shit.’ There was silence. Fifteen seconds, thirty seconds of utter silence. Then Senator Jones said, ‘This is a state-wide problem, right? As I understand it.’
‘Kansas and North Dakota. That’s what I heard on the news.’
‘Well – if it’s a state-wide problem – I may be able to pressure for federal emergency aid. I may be able to arrange a special financial allocation to help farmers wiped out by the blight.’
‘That sounds more like it.’
‘I can’t promise anything, and I think we ought to meet. I’ll have to get my assistant to do some digging on the background, too. You have to understand that I’m coming into this cold.’
‘So am I,’ said Ed. ‘I only found the first traces of blight yesterday evening.’
‘All right,’ said Senator Jones. ‘Is there any chance you can get down to Fall River at the week-end? I have a cabin there, by the lake.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Then let me call you tomorrow, or maybe Thursday, and I’ll be more in the picture by then.’
‘Good,’ said Ed.’
‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Senator Jones, ‘you certainly inherited one of your father’s most important qualities.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Oh, yes. You can bluster like hell. Now, give me your number so that I can call you back.’
At last, Ed put the phone down. On the scribble pad beside him, he saw that he’d written the word ‘Compensation’ in elaborate, illuminated letters, and sketched a picture of an ear of wheat.
He sat back in his creaking sheriff’s chair, and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. Then he looked around him at the leather-bound books on the bookshelves – The Farmer’s Frontier, by Gilbert White, The Great Plains, by Walter Prescott Webb – and at the pipe-rack his father had left and at the bronze statue of plough horses from the early days of dry farming. Stacked on the corner of his desk were the accounts books for the past five years at South Burlington, and as Ed had come to learn since he moved into the farmhouse last fall, these books told the whole story of his father’s greatest successes and his greatest failures.
He heard a slight noise at the door, and he swivelled around in his chair. His mother was standing there, in her white bathrobe, her hair done up in curlers.
‘Mother,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d gone to bed.’
‘I heard you talking,’ she said. ‘I came along to say good night.’
‘All right,’ he said, nodding. ‘Good night, then.’
She remained where she was, her face shadowed by the half-open door. ‘Was that true, what you said to Senator Jones?’ she asked him.
‘Was what true?’
‘You know what I mean, Edward. Was the farm really on the edge of ruin?’
He stood up, and ripped the doodles off his notepad. ‘Sometimes you have to say things just to put pressure on people,’ he said. ‘Whatever happened, it’s all past, and Daddy’s dead, and that’s all you have to worry about.’
‘But I want to know.’
He turned around and looked at her. ‘You didn’t know when Daddy was alive. He kept it all hidden from you. Why should you want to know now?’
‘Because he was my husband. Because I want to understand some of the problems he had to face.’
Ed picked up one of the accounts books, and flicked through it. ‘You can look if you want to. You may not understand what it all means, if you don’t have any training in reading accounts. Henry Pollock will tell you what went on, because Henry was Daddy’s right-hand man. But what it all amounts to is over-spending, under-capitalisation, arbitrary investment and near-sighted financial planning.’ Ursula Hardesty slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t understand it. He was such a good farmer.’
‘Oh, yes. No doubt about it. His irrigation system is still one of the finest in the country. Y ou know what people said about him – he could grow wheat on a parking lot. But he relied too much on his personality, and on scratching people’s backs, and having his own back scratched in return. The day he died, the financial future of this farm was hanging by a thread. That’s why the bank needed to talk to Michael the night before his funeral.’