Overwork, he had told her instead; that, and concern now that the harvest wasn’t too far off. Storage bins had to be completely emptied, the last remnants of the grain sold on the spot market to the local elevators. The dryers on the old Emporium farms had to be overhauled now that they were switching to natural gas. And he’d have to get down to Des Moines to speak with Lon Harvey at the employment office about his seasonal help.
“You’ll manage, Will, you always do,” Catherine had said this morning, her voice soft, her eyes innocent.
She knew that something was wrong. She knew! Christ, maybe he talked in his sleep.
Above the farmyard the road turned into nothing more than a heavily rutted track through a narrow stand of oak and box elder, where they went squirrel hunting, before merging, on the far side of the hill, with the access road from the highway.
He stopped at the crest and looked out across the largest of his fields. The corn was already topping twelve feet, the tassels waving in the breeze another eighteen inches above that. The ear size and moisture content were definitely up to standard, and there had been very little damage from corn borers or other pests this season. The county extension agency forecast a bumper crop. And Bormett was frightened.
In the distance, beyond his fields, he could see the highway that came up from Des Moines, the link with the outside world over which his entire crop would flow to the railhead.
“A small favor, that is all,” the little man had said, perched on the edge of the desk in Moscow, holding out the photographs. What in God’s name had he gotten himself into? “Go home. Go back to work. You will be contacted with instructions.”
The trip home had gone by in a blur, and so had his little chat with Secretary Lundgren, who was pleased at how much Bormett had evidently learned on the trip. “Go home and get back to work, Mr. Bormett,” Lundgren had said at the end, and it had severely startled Bormett that his words had so nearly echoed those of the little man in Moscow.
A white truck came into view out on the highway, slowing for the access road. Bormett stiffened.
The contact had come ten days after he and Catherine returned home. His nerves had finally begun to settle down, and way at the back of his mind he had begun to entertain the slight hope that everything that had happened to him in Moscow was nothing more than a bad dream. He was home now; they wouldn’t dare try anything here in Iowa.
Several times each week, year round, farm-equipment and chemical salesmen would show up with their catalogs and their pitches, and Bormett never refused to see them. Many of his farm innovations had come from such salesmen; they represented companies that were deep into agricultural research.
“Allied Farm Chemicals, Inc., New Orleans, Louisiana,” the man’s card read. It was a company new to Bormett, and he said so to the tall, husky salesman.
“Yes, sir, we’re brand new in the agricultural business. Started out as a chemical research company and we just began hitting on some new pesticides and blight inhibitors that seemed to be so much better than the competition we just had to market them.” The salesman had a southern accent, and he was very jolly. He had the look of success about him. Bormett liked that. Too many of the drummers who called on him were on their last legs, fighting for anything they could get, and they’d tell any lie for just one sale.
“I took the liberty of looking over your fields, sir,” the salesman began as they went into Bormett’s study.
“What’d you say your name was?” Bormett asked. It wasn’t on the card.
“Bud’s the name. I want to tell you that you’ve got some of the finest acres to corn out there that I’ve seen in my born days. Lovely. Really good, and I want to help you keep them that way.” He pulled out a thick looseleaf notebook from his briefcase and laid it down on the desk in front of Bormett.
“CeptCat 1-3-4 is what you’ll be needing, sir. A combination blight inhibitor and pesticide.” The salesman flipped the notebook open to a full-color photograph of Raya lying on the bed nude, her legs spread, while he stood over her, his trousers and underwear off, taking off his shirt.
Bormett gasped, and looked over his shoulder toward the study door. It was open. Catherine was just down the hall in the kitchen.
“For an operation this size, I’d say you’ll be needing fifteen thousand gallons,” the salesman continued as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.
He flipped the page to a photograph of Bormett lying on his back, his eyes half closed. Raya, curled up between his legs, had him in her mouth. There was a half-smile on his lips.
“Oh, God,” he said under his breath.
“If you order today, you will get a generous discount, Mr. Bormett, and we can have your chemical out here first thing in the morning.” The salesman flipped the notebook closed.
“Seven o’clock,” Bormett said. “The tank farm on the east five thousand. The access road is just off Highway 6.”
“I know the road, sir,” Bud said. “It works best as an evening spray, with a sixty-to-one mixture, a gallon of concentrate per acre, as I said.” He got to his feet and smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Bormett. Thanks very much.”
And now the truck was here. Bormett drove down to where the tanks clustered at the edge of the fields. Some of the tanks were marked anhydrous ammonia, a common fertilizer, while others had no labels other than numbers, and were used to mix whatever pesticide needed spraying.
Bud was driving the truck, and he had a huge grin on his face as he stepped down from the cab. “Which tank do you want this in, sir?” he asked.
“I can’t do this,” Bormett said, looking the man in the eye.
The salesman’s expression didn’t change. “Sure enough,” he said, and he turned to climb back into his truck. “The package to your wife will be delivered at the same time it’ll be sent to the Des Moines Register and to Secretary of Agriculture Lundgren. I’m sure they’ll understand when you explain to them what happened.”
“Wait,” Bormett shouted. He wanted to grab the man and throttle him. He wanted to pound his head into the ground.
The salesman turned back. “Yes, sir?”
“You son of a bitch,” Bormett said.
The salesman stepped forward, his grin fading. “You will be watched. Every moment of the day and night. We will expect you to do what you are told. Immedidately. Beginning this evening.”
Bormett stepped back.
“What tank shall I fill?”
Bormett motioned toward the largest of his mixing tanks, then turned and went back to his pickup truck and climbed in behind the wheel.
The salesman was pulling a hose from the truck over to the mixing tank as Bormett started his pickup, turned around, and headed back the way he had come.
At the top of the hill, he stopped again and looked down toward the tank farm. The truck was still there, its hose snaked over to the tank.
He put the truck in gear, went over the crest of the hill, and desperately tried to think of some way out of his dilemma. But there was no way. No way at all, for him.
There was little doubt in Bormett’s mind about the chemical they had sent. It wasn’t a simple pesticide. He knew that. It contained something that would most likely attack his corn, either killing it outright or seriously stunting it. The question was, why had they picked on his farm? Why did they want to ruin his crop?
He could see the stage at the university in Moscow, with the students arranged out in front of him and the newspaper correspondent Kedrov next to him. They were arguing hybrids.
Our only salvation against certain worldwide famine is varietal planting, Kedrov had said.
But surely the ruin of one farm, even a farm so large as this one, would not prove Kedrov’s position that the use of hybrids was inviting disaster. Surely such an act would be little more than an embarrassment.