Dad backed away panting. He tucked one foot behind the other and wiped my blood off on his pant leg. He said, “Don’t call me. Don’t try to get in touch. I know I sound calm right now, but believe me, I’m shattered on the inside. You did that to me, son. You broke my heart into a million pieces. And for what? For what?”
I watched the Charger’s taillights recede and then disappear into the night, two red pinpoints converging in the distance. The taste of blood was stuck in my mouth. So, too, was the taste of dirt. After a while, it became hard to distinguish one from the other.
I had given Jennifer three days to get the other women on board, but I assumed the worst when I didn’t hear from her by the end of the second day. By then I had run out of vodka, and with nothing but supermarket beer and wine to even me out, a variety of doubts cropped up to keep me awake at night. I began to wonder if they were preparing to call my bluff, if they realized that reporting them to the Ag Bureau would screw me over just as much as them. If a faction had risen up to silence Jennifer, or worse, if she had found it more pragmatic to go over to their side, then my only recourse would be to find other means of securing their cooperation, even to the point of leaving me culpable if and when the authorities got involved. There were times in the course of those two nights when I would be lying awake in the early morning hours, half-sober and bloated from the watery supermarket beer, and find myself counting heads and taking inventory, as if preparing for the terrible culling that would have to take place if the women couldn’t be made to go along. But then, on the morning of the third day, the satellite phone vibrated, and I put the thought out of mind for the time being.
Jennifer’s message read, Good to go see you sunday, and nothing more. Immediately I called Russert and laid out the specifics of the deal. He remained silent on the issue of Jennifer’s double-share. In fact, he didn’t say a word until after I had finished explaining the details of the contract and emphasizing how soon I would need to have the faxed copies in my hands. I imagined him sitting alone in his office with the sunlight coming in and reflecting breathlessly on how wrong he had been to underestimate me when we first met.
He said, “You’ve done a good job for me, Mr. Temple. You came through just like you said. All the same, I don’t appreciate the communication blackout you’ve kept me in all this time. If you want to make deals on my behalf, you need to keep me in the loop. At this level of business, you’re expected to keep the boss up to speed with your progress, even if it seems like there’s nothing significant to report. Anything else is unprofessional.”
I was glad he couldn’t see me through the phone line; my smile must have looked pretty boyish and goofy. I asked him, “Is that what you are to me now? My boss?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Close up this deal and we’ll take it from there.”
“Yes, sir.”
He had the contracts ready before the end of the same business day. I hightailed it to the nearest fax machine, which was also at the supermarket (I was beginning to see a pattern with these small valley towns). I sat in the parking lot with the Lexus idling and went over the contract line by line, serving as lawyer for myself to make sure I was getting everything I wanted. My hands were trembling as I reached the end. It was all airtight. In a matter of days, Russert would be the legal tenant of the farm in Orosi, and I would finally have enough money to get my start in life.
Understandably, I celebrated too hard through Friday night and most of Saturday; on my orders, Kylee bought out most of her associates’ remaining vodka stock and brought over some of her Porterville colleagues for a two day-long rager at the Blossom Road. By the time Sunday morning arrived, I had to shower with the bathroom light off just to keep my brains from oozing down the drain. Nothing was going to keep me from my meeting with the widows, though. Had I awoken blind from alcohol poisoning, I would have searched out a doctor only after the contracts had been signed.
I was on the road before noon with my sunglasses on and a stomach full of aspirin and coffee. The roads in the valley were always horrendous when it came to dust, to say nothing of the dirt and gravel trails leading into the interiors of the parcels. By the time I reached the co-op and parked beside one of the houses, the whole lower section of the Lexus was as filthy as it had ever been. I got out and slammed the door so they could hear it; the meeting would have to begin with someone coming out to receive me. A fairly obvious power play, but good enough for the hicks, as Dad would say. I waited much longer than I expected until finally one of the girls came out onto the porch. I recognized her from the first time I came calling. She had the same contemptuous look on her face that she had been wearing then.
I said, “It’s Ellie, right? Sandra’s daughter?”
She slapped her palms onto the wood railing and leaned her weight against it. She said, “That’s right. Sandra’s girl. And Elliot’s.”
“Right. Nice to see you again. Can you go inside and fetch your mother? It’s time for the adults to sit down and iron things out.”
“I don’t see any adults around here.”
I showed her a friendly yet firm smile as a measure of my patience. The sun was behind the house, just a few degrees below its zenith, and even with my sunglasses on my head was beset by a nauseating ache that made the present situation all the more unacceptable. I said, “That’s fine. You’ve had your turn at playing cute. Now go tell them I’m ready to deal.”
She let go of the railing. Walking slowly toward the steps at the base of the porch, she didn’t resemble Dad so much as she captured perfectly the essence of his strutting gait. How she thought she could intimidate me, only she knew. But regardless of whatever logic or illogic was driving her, she placed her hands on her hips and said, “You deal with me. Or you deal with no one. Those are the only options you’re gonna get. So I suggest you fix your attitude pronto.”
I laughed. Even though it worsened the pain in my skull, I laughed. “I don’t have to take this. I really don’t. I know I sound calm right now, but in another couple seconds I’m going to be walking through that door, whether you invite me in or not. Because it’s your mother’s name on the lease, not yours. She’s the one I should be talking to.”
“My mother tried to commit suicide two days ago.” Her voice didn’t crack, nor even waver, and yet I could tell all the same that it hurt her to talk about it. “She’s alive, in case you were wondering. But she’s in no state to negotiate with anyone. That’s why you’re gonna have to deal with me, or else fuck off. I’m the oldest of her three daughters. The responsibility for her share of the farm passes to me.”
The more I heard from this girl, the more intrigued I became. She wasn’t like her mother, or most of the valley women I had met, for that matter; she had confidence, and didn’t seem to view it as a liability to be suppressed and outgrown like most country girls her age were taught. Under different circumstances, I might have been impressed. But if she thought I was going to shrink in the face of her mother’s madness and her own half-cocked notions of primogeniture, then she clearly didn’t realize who she was talking to.
I said, “Even if you do have the authority to speak on your mother’s behalf, which is debatable, your mother’s share only counts for a fifth of the total cooperative. So before any kind of agreement can be reached, I’ll have to speak with the other women involved.”