He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his seat. While the rest of the family, including me, stared at him with looks of confusion or fear plastered over our faces, Beth smiled and let out a single condescending laugh.
Mister, she said, I don’t know how long you’ve been working or where you got your information from, but this is San Joaquin. We’re on parcel land. That means we can’t sell the farm to anybody, except back to the government. Anything else is against the law.
The contractor smiled and raised an index finger in front of his face. Actually, he said, this property is registered as a cooperative. And according to the policies set forth by the national agriculture bureau, any piece of land registered as a cooperative may be transferred from its current occupants to any individual or organization willing to buy them out under the terms of the original agreement. That means the Russert Growers Company is perfectly within its legal rights to assume tenantship of the farm provided that they compensate you for the full amount of your deposit. Now, seeing as how you all have put a lot of work into these orchards over the past several months, the company has authorized me to offer you compensation over and above your initial investment. One and a half times, in fact. For a fifty percent return on what you paid in. No one else is going to give you that kind of deal, I assure you.
I can’t see what a big company from the coast would want with our place, Anthony said. Or how they even found out about us.
I alerted them to your situation myself, the contractor said. As to their reasons for making an offer, I believe they see this place as a means of getting in on the ground floor here in the Central Valley. You see, folks, whether you want to accept it or not, the parcel system is a thing of the past, a relic of a more desperate time. Perhaps it was useful in the early days of the Republic, but since then it’s become an inefficient boondoggle that keeps the land from being developed to its fullest potential. Our nation has grown up, and agriculture must grow with it. A handful of corporations could do more with this valley than all the tenant farmers and state laborers in the country put together. That’s the way the wind is blowing now, and anyone with any sense at all should cash out while they still can.
Even if what you’re telling us is true, Mama said, I don’t see why we should be in any hurry to sell. Those trees out there didn’t bloom by themselves. We deserve to see through our first harvest. Or else all the time and money we’ve put in will be for nothing.
The contractor smiled, showing a mouth full of perfectly straight teeth unlike anything you ever saw east of the Pacheco Pass. Mark my words, he said. The government is starting to catch on to the untapped potential here in San Joaquin. When the laws change and privatization takes effect, you might end up having to pay a whole lot more than a deposit to hold on to a piece of property this size.
That may be so, Katie said. If and when that day comes, we’ll deal with it the best we can. In the meantime, you thank the Russert Growers Company for taking the trouble to approach us, but I’m afraid the answer is no. This farm means more to us than a return on an investment. We’re building a home here on this land, for ourselves and for our children. And we don’t intend to give it up after less than a year.
I thought you might respond like that, the contractor said. In which case, I’m sorry to say, you’ve forced me to play my trump card. You understand, it’s just business.
I’d finally had it. Even before he started talking, this cocky interloper had irked me something bad, and now that he was being openly threatening, it was too much for me to hold my tongue any longer. You’re dancing around something, I said. Go ahead and tell us whatever it is you think you know. We don’t deserve to be strung along.
Fair enough, he said, and laid his knuckles down on the tabletop. You purchased the rights to this farm with money attained through fraud and deceit. When he was alive, Elliot Temple was married to five women at the same time. He used each of his wives to apply for a different parcel in a different county, in direct violation of the limits established by the bureau of agriculture. After his death, you used the deposits from his parcels to set up a cooperative farm in your own names. Ergo, this entire enterprise is founded on ill-gotten money. Which, as it happens, is the sort of offense the authorities would be very interested in hearing about.
When he’d finished speaking, I closed my eyes and let out a slow stream of breath. Everyone else at the table appeared similarly stunned, with the possible exception of Dawn, who sat with her head down and a hand over her eyes, feeling whatever reaction is possible when you’re proven right about your own vulnerability. And she was right, after all. Without even stepping off the property, the danger had found us once again. Even after all the precautions we’d taken, even after our betrayal of Beth, the life we’d worked to build up for ourselves all these months was on the verge of coming undone. I wanted to run outside screaming and tear every last blossom off every last tree in the orchard. They were as much to blame as any of us—the bright and pretty things in this world always invite disaster.
Claudia held her hands out imploringly. We have two houses full of children on this land, she said. How could you live with yourself if you cast them out of their homes?
The contractor titled his head to the side, looking around at us with an annoyed intensity in his eyes. He pushed his chair out from the table. I can see you need some time to process this, he said. That’s why I’m going to give you a week to think it through. I’ll be back next Sunday at the same time. For your children’s sake, I hope you come to your senses between now and then. Here. Let me give you my business card.
He pulled a stack of cards from his coat pocket and divided it into two even halves like a magician preparing a trick. Go ahead and pass them out, he said. I’ve got plenty.
The two halves went around opposite sides of the table before converging on Anthony at the end. Each person who took a card paused for a moment before passing off the rest of the stack. They were cream-colored and tastefully understated, with the lettering sunk-in so it felt like the words were trying to evade your touch.
I let the card fall and settle face-down against the table. I felt Mama touch my arm in a way that was somehow different from her usual expressions of anxiety. It took me a while to realize that she, in her own imperfect way, was trying to comfort me this time.
In case there’s any more confusion, my newest brother said, let me make myself clear. Don’t ever try to assume the limits of what I’m capable of. You’ll be unpleasantly surprised.
ELLIOT
I was eighteen years old the summer my father took me on the road with him to the San Joaquin Valley. Dad was in the fruit business and spent most of his time traveling around between the Bay Area and Yosemite. Before that trip I had never been east of the Diablo range in my life, nor had I spent more than a few hours alone with Dad at one time. The car radio died out halfway over the Pacheco Pass, and after driving through miles and miles of pure nothing from Los Banos to Fresno, we suddenly came upon a pastoral landscape where trees outnumbered men by a wide margin. You live all your life on the coast and you forget there are places so different just over the mountains, places without any of the things you’ve come to expect from a civilized community. No traffic, no sea walls, no gated housing tracts. Nothing but trees and grass and livestock, and tiny, old-fashioned houses with entire families of people with unwashed hair congregating on their porches like Okies from a social studies textbook. I had plenty of time to take it all in on the drive down; Dad was never one to converse behind the wheel, and after four years without seeing him, my own awkwardness kept me similarly silent right up to the moment we crossed the town line into Porterville. I don’t know if it was awkwardness, boredom, or a need to make myself heard, but I turned to him then and said with the eagerness of a younger boy, “The land’s so beautiful. It must be nice living here.”