The Litter of the Law (18 page)

“I hear you.” Harry studied the midsized John Deere tractor parked fifty yards off, boom on the back. “Mind if I look? I’d love to get a boom and I’d sure love to get a drill seeder, too.”

“I’ll tell you if I see anything used that’s in good shape. Stuff new costs as much as a car or a house these days.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They reached the green and yellow tractor. It had a tank affixed to the back, with a long boom off that. “I used to rely on a gravity feed, but now I’ve got a small pump to suck out any stuff on the bottom,” Buddy told her.

“You thought of everything.” Harry admired practical solutions.

He smiled. “Try. I need to flush this baby out and take her back to the shed for the winter. You know, Harry, I kind of lost heart. Since I pulled down that first husk and saw the damage, I haven’t done much in here.”

Tucker, right under the machine’s tank, called out,
“No chemicals. Can’t smell a one. What’s he spraying with?”

The two cats joined her.

Pewter sniffed.
“Smells, though.”

“Does,”
Mrs. Murphy agreed, then jumped on the back of the boom hitch and up onto the tank, where she balanced herself and tapped at the screw-on cap.

Harry laughed. “Looks like we’ve got a Future Farmer of America here.”

“Open it up. Come on. There’s no chemicals in here. We’d know,”
the cat pleaded.

Smiling, Harry did untwist the cap as Mrs. Murphy jumped off. Harry peered into the tank. “Buddy,” she said, sniffing, “Buddy, look at this.”

He dutifully did and immediately became enraged at the sight. “Goddammit to hell!” Then he apologized. “Sorry.”

“Buddy, I’d have said worse.”

The tank had smut in the bottom. With his own system, Buddy had infected his crop.

“Harry, I calibrated the gallons per acre. I flushed the system clean, I checked every screw, nozzle, everything. And I refilled this tank each morning.”

“Well, Buddy, someone drained your tank halfway, put a smut slurry in, then refilled it. How would you know? And I bet they
cleaned it after you left the day’s work. Someone who knows farming also knows your schedule. And smut spores are easy to grow. You can do it in your kitchen.”

His face blanched, then turned scarlet. “Why? Who would do such a thing?” He paused, color deepening. “I’ll kill the S.O.B.”

Harry said nothing. Any talk of killing right now gave her a chill.

A
djustable wrench in hand, Fair frowned as he worked in the big red shed near the barn. “That’s strange,” he said, squinting at the dismantled ATV in front of him.

“Honey, there’s so much weird stuff going on around here, this is just one more thing, but to deliberately put smut in a spray tank …” Harry shook her head. “Why?”

“You don’t think it could have occurred naturally?”

“No.”

“Well, it will all come out in the wash.” He checked the sun, now low in the sky above the fields. “I’d better start putting this back together.”

“Did you find the problem?”

“The first problem was the fuel line clogged. The second problem—I’m not sure but this generator isn’t going off.”

Harry peered down into the ATV’s engine. “It’s a bitty thing.”

“Anything compared to the engine in your ’78 Ford is a bitty thing. Well, let me put this back together. We need it.”

“If we can’t get it back working, I’ll call Wayne’s Cycle.” She mentioned the place where they had bought the ATV years back in Waynesboro, then realized her husband didn’t want to hear that.

“It will run,” he loudly announced.

As she walked back to the house, Tucker beside her, she looked over her fields, the sunflowers all harvested. “Time to plow stuff under,” she said to the corgi.

“If you leave it alone, rabbits will come in,”
Tucker said. She liked to chase rabbits.

Pushing open the screen door, Harry heard a frantic scramble on the kitchen countertops.

“You forgot to completely close the toaster oven,”
said the corgi.
“I smell the corn bread.”

Stepping into the kitchen, no cats in sight, Harry noticed corn bread crumbs strewn across the counter in front of the toaster oven.

“Those boogers!”

The cats had hooked the corn bread inside the toaster oven, tearing pieces off, pulling them out of the oven and onto the counter, where they ate them. However, they had been interrupted in their thievery, so crumbles—golden evidence—lay scattered on the counter and on the floor.

Since some was on the floor, Tucker ate it. No point in letting food go to waste.

Before Harry could cuss, the phone rang.

“Susan,” Harry greeted her.

“I got a job,” came her enthusiastic voice.

“Where?”

“At Ivy Nurseries. I’ll be making arrangements and stuff like that.”

“Wonderful.”

“Well, I learned a lot from you.”

“You learned more from Miranda.”

Miranda Hogendobber, a passionate gardener and former co-worker at the post office, possessed a gift for arranging height,
color, breadth. If it involved a flower, Miranda could grow it, then display it.

Susan replied warmly, “How about I give you both credit? I need to do more than I’ve been doing.”

Harry then told her about the corn smut and Buddy. “Never saw him so mad.”

“Remind me, what’s corn smut?”

“It’s a fungus. It can survive during the winter if it finds the right place to hide. It can survive in old cornstalks, but usually the wind has blown spores all over the place after the swollen infected kernels explode. Not a lot left in the stalks. You and I could grow smut ourselves in corn. The later-maturing corn varieties are more susceptible to it. Has a lot to do with the change in nighttime temperature from midsummer. And when kernels explode, you can see the stuff. It’s actually not that hard to control if you spray before you get it. Once you get it, though, you might as well forget it, and sweet corn is pretty vulnerable.”

“Doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Before I forget, when do you start your job?”

“Monday.”

“I’ll drop by the nursery around quitting time.”

“Great.”

They hung up. Harry looked out the window over the sink. She could tell from her husband’s walk that he hadn’t fixed the ATV. She wouldn’t bring it up but she would make sure the magnetic card for Wayne’s Cycle was moved to the front of the refrigerator.

Given the scowl on his face, she thought she’d better distract him. She disappeared into the small workroom and turned on the computer.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter smelled the computer. Humans couldn’t detect the smell computers gave off when they were working, but for the cats the odor was coppery, distinctive.

“She gets wrapped up with that nonsense,”
Pewter gloated.
“She’ll forget what we did.”

“She won’t forget but she will be occupied. That corn bread, oh, full of butter.”
Mrs. Murphy smiled.

The two cats wiggled out from under the bed where they’d been hiding and silently made their way into Fair’s small office, where Harry peered at the screen.

Fair, calmer now, stuck his head in. “What’s cooking?”

“Lasagna,” answered Harry.

“No, I mean, what’s cooking here?” He pointed to the computer.

“Lasagna,”
Pewter said, sounding crushed.
“Not my favorite but it’s okay.”

“You’ll eat. You’ll eat anything,”
said Mrs. Murphy.

The culprits tiptoed to one side of the desk, sitting to listen.

“I’m looking up corn stuff,” Harry explained to her husband. “Like, did you know that people living in what is now Mexico domesticated corn fourteen thousand years ago?”

“Isn’t corn basically a grass crop?”

“Yeah, but says here that the original plant didn’t look anything like modern corn. They called it
teosinte
.”

He stood next to her now. “Fourteen thousand years ago. Imagine if you got a toothache back then. Ouch.”

“Hurts enough now.” She looked up at him, then back at the screen.

“Says here that what we call sweet corn was first grown in Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s. The first commercial variety was introduced in 1779.” She scrolled up more stuff. “Hey, hey, honey, how about this?”

He leaned down and read along with her. “Corn invaded by corn smut is considered a delicacy in Mexico. Infested corn was cooked even before Columbus.”

“Guess every culture enjoys its delicacies.” She touched his hand. “But maybe Buddy can make a little money. I’m going to call him.”

“Okay. I’ll shower.”

“Thirty minutes to supper at the most.”

He kissed her on the cheek.

She dialed Buddy Janss, launched right in with her discovery.

“They eat that stuff?” replied an incredulous Buddy.

“Buddy, if you go to your computer, Metapathogen.com has a little section on corn smut, under its Latin name, Ustilago maydis. Yeah, Mexican restaurants think it’s terrific.”

“Well, I already walked the insurance agent through.”

“You did, but if you call around to some really fancy Mexican restaurants, maybe you can figure prices. Obviously, if they’ll pay more than the crop insurance, that’s an easy decision.”

“You bet.” His voice picked up energy.

“Before it slips my mind, when Cooper and I walked through Hester’s library looking at her beautiful books, we found some on fishing, and a picture of her with a friend fishing. She ever talk about this with you?” Harry pointedly did not mention the friend was scarecrow Josh Hill.

“Oh, well now, over the years maybe once or twice. Hester and I mostly stuck to business.” He chuckled. “Her version of business.”

“Had you ever been in her house before the reception?”

“No. What about you?”

“Me neither. I was surprised at how lovely it was. And the expensive things she owned.”

“Life is full of surprises.”

S
aturdays Harry and Fair liked to join their friends for foxhunting. As the fox was chased, not killed, they especially enjoyed riding behind hounds, land rolling before them like green waves, Blue Ridge Mountains behind, a splendid theatrical backdrop.

Today’s hunt lasted three hours. Once back at their trailers, people wiped down horses and threw sweat sheets over them, since it was warm, in the mid-fifties. After putting out buckets of water, they hurried to join everyone else at the tailgate. Literally it was a tailgate: The tailgates on trucks were dropped, a few card tables were put out and little oil tablecloths were tossed over them.

The talk always began with the day’s sport before rapidly moving to other subjects. Many of today’s hunters had also attended Hester’s service.

Big Mim, hot coffee in hand, mentioned, “I believe Sarah Price will take over Hester’s house.”

“Wonderful,” Wesley said, nodding.

“I’d think you’d feel otherwise,” said Neil with a hint of sarcasm. He was a non-rider who’d come to join the group, as did others, food and drink being a reliable magnet.

“Why? It’s a piece of old Virginia, and better that such places stay in the family.”

“Ah.” Neil swilled his scotch. “You’re right. I was thinking of the commission on a sale. Would sell for a lot, that place.”