So what then? What else were Kedrov and the little man trying to prove? Whatever it was had evidently been planned for some time. They had selected him as their guest, and had set up his talks with the State Department and the Department of Agriculture. Oh, they had set him up all the way, making sure that he would be receptive to Raya, making sure that Catherine would be too tired to go to the party that night. God in heaven, they had set him up, and like a randy old fool he had fallen hook, line, and sinker for the oldest gambit in the world.
He parked his truck in front of the barn and sat there a moment, his large hands tightly gripping the wheel.
Yesterday, after the salesman had left, Bormett had telephoned Bob Hodges over at the county extension office and asked him if he had heard of the chemical CeptCat 1-3-4. Hodges had been enthusiastic.
“Sure thing, Mr. Bormett. It’s one hell of a fine pesticide. Has a built-in blight inhibitor, and best of all it’s moisture resistant for those first critical eight or ten hours. Are you thinking of using it?”
“I heard something about it, thought I might give it a try.”
“It’s on the expensive side, from what I understand, but the FDA and USDA both give it a fine recommendation. I’ve got the circulars on it. Want to see them?”
“You might as well mail them out,” Bormett had said, but of course it didn’t make any difference what the circulars said. The chemical that he’d have to spray on his fields tonight might or might not be CeptCat 1-3-4, and, if it was, almost anything could have been added to it.
But why? He kept coming back to the same question. Why had they selected him?
He finally got out of the truck and went over to the operations office attached to the big machine building. Inside, Cindy Horton, the farm secretary and girl Friday, had just poured herself a cup of coffee and was sitting down at her littered desk. She was in her early fifties and grossly overweight. But she had a lovely face. She looked up and smiled.
“Good morning, Will…” she started, but she let it trail off, a look of concern coming over her features.
“What’s wrong, Cindy? Cat got your tongue this morning?” he asked.
“I was just going to ask you the same thing. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
He forced a smile. “You tell me the same thing every year about this time, and every year I tell you that I always worry around harvest time.”
She nodded, but said nothing. She and her husband Joseph, who was the general field foreman, had worked for the farm for nearly twenty years, she running the scheduling, payroll, and maintenance programs, and Joseph handling the machinery and every aspect of the field work. Between the two of them, they knew the farm as well as, if not better than, anyone, Bormett included.
“Where’s Joseph?” Bormett asked. He was going to have to be more careful in the future; Catherine used to tell him that he wore his heart on his sleeve.
“In the combine shed. There’s some trouble with the impellers on number seven.”
“I’ve got to talk to him. We have some pesticide to lay down.”
“Do you want to schedule it?”
Bormett nodded. “Let’s do the east field tonight, if Smitty can get free. We can do the north tomorrow, the south on Friday, and the west in a couple of hours Saturday.”
“Albert’s crew is free as well,” Cindy said, looking at the scheduling board. “He could work on the west and south fields all day tomorrow.”
“Has to be evening. We’re spraying CeptCat. Start about four I’d say. But don’t go beyond ten.”
She nodded. “Have we got it in stock?”
“In the main mixing tank on the east field. Sixty to one. But I’ll set that up with Joseph.”
“Are you sure everything is okay, Will?” she asked.
He forced another smile. “You’re getting to be quite a nag. Think I’ll have to talk to Joseph about you one of these days.
“Get out of here, William Bormett, or I’ll tell Catherine you’ve been flirting with me again.”
He left the office and went around the building over to the combine shed where they kept their ten corn harvesters. His knees felt a little shaky, and his mouth was sour.
Joseph Horton stood atop one of the combines, wiping his hands with a greasy rag.
“You have it fixed yet?” Bormett called up to him.
“I’m going to have to run in to John Deere this afternoon. We’ve got a gear-box problem.” Horton stuffed the rag in the back pocket of his coveralls and climbed down.
“How about the others?” Bormett asked.
“They’re looking pretty good. Four is going to have to be scrapped at the end of this season. W’e’ve just had a hell of a time with it, and I sure don’t want a repeat of last year.”
Bormett was only half-listening to him now. Another thought had suddenly come to him. It wouldn’t really do much good, but at least he’d know what was in the mixing tank.
“I’m going into town this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll order the parts. I have another job for you.”
Albert Straub, one of the shift foremen, came in. “Cindy says we’ve got some spraying to do,” he said as he joined Bormett and Horton.
“That’s right,” Bormett said. “Starting this afternoon.” He turned back to Horton. “We just got the chemical this morning. I’ll want it in the fields no later than Saturday evening. It’s a late-afternoon blight inhibitor and pesticide. CeptCat 1-3-4.”
Horton’s face lit up. “Charlie Parker was talking about it last week. I didn’t think you’d be ordering it, though.”
“Well, it’s here, and I want it out, starting with the east field this afternoon. Cindy is scheduling the crew right now.”
“What brought all this up, Will?” Horton asked reasonably.
Bormett started to flare up. His nerves were on the raw edge, but he held himself in check. “It’s a little experiment. I think we might be able to coax out another two, maybe two and a half percent in our yield.”
Horton had a strange look on his face, but he nodded. “Sure thing, Will,” he said. “I’ll get the gear-box number for you. I already called Stew. Said he had it in stock.”
For most of the morning Bormett lost himself in work, overhauling the dryers on the old Emporium farm across the highway. It wasn’t until a few minutes before eleven that he came back to the farmyard. He parked behind the main chemical-storage shed, away from the house.
Inside the shed, his heart pounding, he quickly gathered up half a dozen nearly empty pesticide and fertilizer containers, and took them out to his pickup truck. He then rinsed out an old plastic gallon milk container and put it on the truck as well. Driving around to the other side of the farmyard, he stopped at the combine shed for the old gear box, then went on to the office. Cindy was eating her lunch alone.
“I’m going into Des Moines with the gear box from number seven. Tell Joseph that I’ll be back around suppertime. I’ll come out to see how the spraying is going. Oh, and tell Katy that I went into town.”
“I’ve got the crew scheduled. We can double up tomorrow after all, if you want, and finish before Saturday.”
“Sounds okay to me,” Bormett said.
Instead of heading over to the highway, he drove down to the tank farm and pulled up by the main mixing tank. He took the empty gallon jug and went around to the tank’s inspection valve, where he carefully filled it and replaced the cap.
The chemical smelled like rotten eggs and made Bormett’s eyes water. Whatever it was, he would know within a few days. The university agricultural laboratories in Des Moines would analyze it. The chemical would already have been sprayed on the fields. And it would be too late to do anything about it. But at least he would know.