Weekends in Carolina (9 page)

The accusation pierced through his gut, leaving a weeping wound. Trey glanced down to make certain he wasn’t bleeding. “You’re nuts.”

“Maybe, but I’m dead-on.”

“We’re never going to get out of this filthy attic if you don’t shut your mouth and look through those papers. This is the most promising box we’ve seen. If it’s not here, he destroyed it.”

“
All
the boxes have to be looked through. You can’t throw Max’s life away based on a half-assed search.”

No. Trey was going to throw Max’s life away even if they found the will; it would just cost him more. But he was pretending not to be a slimeball, so he stuck his hand out for the next piece of junk from his father’s box.

* * *

M
AX
CLEANED
HERSELF
up enough to meet with another intern candidate. This one was a college student from North Carolina State University over in Raleigh. Much like Max, the girl had grown up on a large farm and was interested in spending a summer learning about small-scale farming. She had a place to stay locally and she seemed chipper over the phone.

She met Sidney at the end of the drive. “Welcome to Max’s Vegetable Patch,” she said to the girl as she stuck out her hand. Despite looking like she was barely a teenager, the girl had a firm grip and thick calluses on her hand. Max sneaked a peek at the girl’s fingers. Her nails were cut short and her hands were clean, but also well used.

Sidney’s smile was infectious. “Thank you. I’m glad to have a chance to see your farm. My second cousin gets your CSA and loves it.” The girl was both cheerful and confident.

“It’s always nice to hear when my members enjoy the food they get. Let’s start with a tour and then we’ll sit in the pack house and talk.” Max walked away from the house, making her stride purposefully long to see if the girl could keep up.

She pointed out field four and the compost pile, answering the girl’s various questions about what they used in their compost, Max’s record keeping and the inspection process. By the time they arrived at the next field, Max realized that she probably shouldn’t call the woman a girl. Sidney may look younger than she appeared, but she asked smart questions and had clearly done her homework. She knew what varieties Max grew and what new vegetables she had advertised growing next year. All this information was available online, though Max was surprised how few of her intern candidates thought to look around her website. Or check out her Facebook page for farm pictures and updates. Running Max’s Vegetable Patch may be a philosophical statement, but it was also a business and had to make money like any other.

Max pointed out where she’d seeded carrots earlier that day. Sidney talked excitedly about different carrot varieties and which ones her mom grew in their garden and how she’d been trying to talk her mom into planting some heirloom varieties. And there were also some varieties of eggplant she wanted to try. All in all, Sidney had many bright ideas about the future of the farm—her farm, Max’s farm, any farm. But Max didn’t know if her farm had a future. And interviewing both Sidney and Sean with Trey’s plans hanging over her head felt like offering false promises.

But she couldn’t
not
interview interns, just like she couldn’t
not
plant carrots. The farm had to move along like always, in case the best happened.

Together they moved up to the pond, and Max talked about their irrigation, laying drip lines and the water pump. Sidney brought up the many droughts they’d had in the previous years and how hard that must have been for the farmers. She wanted to know if the pond had ever run dry and did they have a contingency plan.

Max listened with half an ear on the intern candidate and most of her mind on the search process in the house. What was the best that could happen out of all of this?

Ashes barked and chased after some geese that were getting a little too comfortable walking around the fields. Leaving Ashes to his business, they moved on. Max answered all of Sidney’s questions, leaving her own flashing in her mind.

Her goal had always been to buy the farm. She had a plan laid out for when she would be able to afford the property and, according to the plan, she was right on target. Trey’s goal was to get rid of the farm as soon as possible, which meant selling it now. And she couldn’t buy it, not yet.... Suddenly her dad’s words about going to the bank, hat in hand and hoping for the best popped into her mind.

They walked past the packing shed so Max could show Sidney the greenhouse. As they talked about what Max had seeded and when it would go into the fields, the idea that Max could offer to buy the farm from Trey now grew in her head. Could she work her arrangement with Hank into a contract and make her obligated to buy the farm at the end of her next lease or lose everything completely? Then Trey would have what he wanted. The farm would be sold in everything but actuality.

Ashes bounded up to them as they backtracked to the table and chairs set up in the packing shed. Now the interview would actually start and Max had to focus on what Sidney said. In truth, what Sidney said wasn’t as important as whether or not they could get along. Max could teach farming principles—or reteach what the girl had learned at State—but you couldn’t teach the ability to get along. Long, hot days spent working outside with only the four of them meant there couldn’t be petty disagreements and short tempers. Max needed hustle and likeability. If someone wanted to be crotchety and bad tempered, they could do it on their own farm.

Max got some water out of the cooler for them to share and they each took a seat. Ashes lay down on the concrete floor.

Sidney seemed friendly enough. Once the girl stopped trying to impress Max with all her farming knowledge, she came across as intelligent and curious and very chatty. Max could see working long hours with her. They’d never be at a loss for conversation, making a contrast with Sean, who had been silent unless directly answering or asking a question. Sidney’s passion for the land was in her words; Sean’s was in his face.

On the walk back to Sidney’s car, Max’s thoughts returned to her idea of writing buying the farm into her lease. Tying herself to a future without actually owning the land made her heart flutter, though Max couldn’t decide if it was fear or excitement. Probably both. If, in three years, she didn’t have her money together to buy the farm, then she’d be out of a future and have lost everything.

If she didn’t get another chance at a lease, she’d lose everything anyway. She balanced the options in her head. When she talked to Sidney about how much she loved the farmwork and the farm, what a pleasure it was to get her hands dirty, she was talking about her true self, the self she’d discovered years ago in college.

What was the worry, then? She’d be committing herself in a contract to something she’d committed herself to in her mind years ago. The difference was negligible—a signature was all. She’d still be on the same path she’d promised Noreen she would take.

She shook hands with Sidney one more time and promised the girl that she’d have an answer about the position in a week or so. Then Max headed to the greenhouse to do a little more seeding and prepare her sales pitch to Trey. She could do this. It wasn’t much different than shooting cans—find your target, aim and fire. The rest was in fate’s hands.

* * *

M
AX
INTERRUPTED
T
REY
when he was walking to his car. “Did you find it?”

She was shifting her weight from one foot to another and worrying the edge of her flannel shirt. Trey wasn’t surprised she was worried—he knew what he was doing to her future—but he was surprised to see her showing it. This was the woman who hadn’t needed to be holding a rifle in her hand to stop him in his tracks—her eyes had done it for her.

“No, we didn’t find it.” He stepped up to his car and put his hand on the driver’s-side handle. The car beeped to unlock. He blinked when she slipped in to the passenger’s seat, her clothes covered in dust. Ashes sat outside, barking at the backseat. “That dog isn’t coming in the car.”

“I’m not inviting him. Drive up to the top of the hill. Ashes can meet us there.”

Trey didn’t want to. He wanted to get the hell out of here. But he wasn’t going to physically pull her out of the seat, and he’d be gone tomorrow, whether or not they found the will. She could have this. He started the car and slowly headed up the hill.

When they got to the top, Max hopped out to the excitement of her dog. Trey debated driving away, but whatever she had to say to him wouldn’t change his mind—he was going to sell the land and she would have to find a new farm. To show he wasn’t a total jerk, he’d even help her find one. There had to be thousands of dead tobacco farms in the Piedmont. He didn’t care if Max stayed a farmer; he just didn’t want her farming this land.

Ashes sat next to her, his tail kicking up dust as Trey approached. The fields looked much as he’d seen them a couple weeks ago, only one field had been completely tilled.

“Do you know what I did today?”

“Farmed.” If his brother’s earlier words over the box of papers hadn’t killed him, the look Max gave him might. He ran his hand through his hair, giving the ends a short tug before putting his hand back in his pocket. “I’m sorry. That was rude. My mother would’ve made me eat soap for that as surely as I had to eat soap for swearing.”

She acknowledged his apology with a nod, which was probably as good as he was going to get. “I planted carrots. I’ve already planted radishes, and both garlic and strawberries went into the ground in the fall.”

Trey looked a second time at the brown earth, trying to imagine the plants growing under the surface. He failed. “I hope they all turn out okay.”

“What did Hank do to you that could possibly justify destroying that?”

There was the problem. His father hadn’t beaten him. There was always food on the table, even if it was cheap shit-on-a-shingle for five nights in a row or grits and greens for a month. They also had health insurance because his mother had a decent job.

Trey stopped to pick up some of the gravel from the road. “He drank. When Kelly fell and broke his leg, my dad was too drunk to drive us to the emergency room. I drove. I was twelve.” He hurled a rock into the falling dusk. “When I was eight, my mom got some award at church. My dad hooted and hollered for her—not because he was proud of her, but because he was drunk.” Another rock, this one thrown with enough force to hurt his shoulder. “Every time he lost a job because he showed up to work smelling of moonshine one too many times, he blamed my mom. Or his ‘gay-ass son,’ Kelly. Or me. Or the Jews. Or the blacks. For all I know he blamed Jesus. Never once did he put down the bottle and blame himself.”

Fuck it. Trey didn’t need to half-ass throw rock after rock. He transferred the handful of gravel from his right to his left hand and chucked the whole lot of it into the sunset.

“Why blame the land? Your dad wasn’t growing anything. It had no part in your childhood.”

Trey reached down to pick up another handful of rocks, but Max’s hand on his arm stilled him. “Don’t. I don’t want to have to make you pick rocks out of my fields tomorrow. I’d rather you spend your time looking for that will.” The strength of her grip through his sweater emphasized her words. Her energy ricocheted through his body. Longing screamed through him, nearly stretching him to the breaking point before he was able to rein it in and focus.

“Once, my mom found a buyer for the farm. Not a farmer, like you, or a developer. Just some rich guy who liked the idea of being a gentleman farmer and had the money to back up his desires. It would have been enough to buy a nice house in town, with some left over. We could’ve even paid for the help Dad needed to stop drinking. He said no. Because as much as he hated this land, he couldn’t let go of it. ‘Heritage,’ he said. Like that meant anything more than shit.”

With nothing to throw, Trey put his hand on top of hers and squeezed, crushing her hand and her arm and not caring. “But you know what? I’m not my father. This land has no hold on me. I freed myself and I’m not letting it pull me back.”

Before she could respond to his confession, Trey released his grip on her arm and walked to his car. Driving her back to the farmhouse was the polite, Southern-gentleman thing to do. Instead, Trey left her there to walk to the farmhouse in the dark.

CHAPTER TEN

A
FTER
THE
FUSS
Trey had made about walking her from the farmhouse to the barn those two nights—nights that felt like they’d happened a lifetime ago—Max was surprised to be left alone in the dust and the falling night. Fear wasn’t the emotion making her eyes go wide—shock was. She whistled for Ashes and walked down the road to the farmhouse.

With the last of the sun disappearing into the horizon, winter chill fell fast. Humidity in the air meant it didn’t much matter how warm the day had been because the damp sank through Max’s shirt into her bones, spreading through her body like the dark was spreading across the sky.

Gravel crunched as she took steps in her heavy boots. Ashes’s darting about made the little rocks skitter. None of the noises drowned out the irritation that had welled up over her fear. Why couldn’t Trey think of his mother and what
her
dream for the farm had been instead of concentrating on Hank and his drunkenness? Or at the very least Trey could have come down to the farm
once
and seen his father sober. Hank had still been an asshole, but he’d been trying to make amends for the mistakes of his life.

Kelly was still at the farmhouse when she returned, waiting in the kitchen for her with a cup of tea. “Despite me fancying boys and Trey fancying girls, my brother was always the dramatic one.”

Ashes sank down next to the heater, the bouts of youth he’d displayed outside gone for the night. Max took Kelly’s unsaid apology along with the cup of tea. The mug was warm, burning the cold skin on her hands through the crockery. She welcomed the pain because tingles were a sign her hands would defrost and her fingers would soon not be numb. She shouldn’t have gotten into Trey’s car without gloves and a coat, but she hadn’t expected to have to walk back to the farmhouse. Tonight’s temperatures would be bitter and there’d be frost in the morning.

Kelly waited while she sipped her tea. The burn slid down her throat until it lit a fire in her belly and she was pissed. Pissed at Hank for squirreling away the will, pissed at Trey for his hatred of the land and pissed at herself for not taking better care of her future.

She doubted Trey would accept an offer to buy the land tomorrow, even if she could make one. There were too many strikes against her. He wanted the memory of the Harris farm blasted from the earth and buried under housing.

But she wasn’t going down without a fight. Asking Kelly to contest the will and trying to show Trey what the land really meant were only the first shots fired. Trey had control of the land, but she was the one standing on it, and that had to count for something. Possession was nine-tenths of the law, as the saying went.

When the tea and the heat had warmed her, she asked Kelly the question she’d wondered as she’d walked home. “Why don’t you share the same level of hate for the land as your brother?”

He shrugged. “Once puberty hit, the secret of my gayness wasn’t so secret anymore. My dad caught me with a
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit edition—but it wasn’t the actual swimsuit edition, and I was... Well, I was only
interested
in the pictures of male swimmers and divers.” His voice got nostalgic and Max smiled. “Anyway, after that moment Dad made it clear I wasn’t going to get any piece of the farm.”

Kelly paused to pour more hot water into his cup and held out the kettle for Max. She shook her head, more interested in understanding the Harris family than in more tea.

“So I never got the chance to care or hope for something better out of this piece of land. Dad would always be disappointed in my choices. He would always find failure with me. I was always going to be the gay son. High school was hard, but home life was relatively easy because Dad ignored me. I knew I would never hear praise from his mouth, so the scorn hurt less.” Kelly took a long slurp of his tea and Max was wondering if he was done with his story when he continued.

“It was different for Trey. Dad promised Trey things. Like if Trey spent a summer learning farming from Uncle Garner, Dad would quit drinking. If Trey made the football team, Dad would quit drinking. If Trey went to State for college instead of Carolina, Dad would quit drinking. The promise of approval was always there, but the actuality of it was further away for Trey than it probably was even for me.”

“Different expectations of Hank.” Kelly and Trey’s father had been a different person during Max’s years on the farm, but not a
completely
different person. He could be mean, spiteful and judgmental. He’d even tried to withhold his approval of her farming methods until it became clear to both of them that he was an ignorant fool about farming anything but tobacco. And unless they went back in time to farm tobacco in the 1960s, he probably didn’t know anything about that, either.

But those bad qualities had always been tempered by a work ethic, a pleasure in seeing the land rise from the dead and a curiosity about the new breed of small farmer.

Alcohol would certainly kill all of Hank’s good qualities, leaving him only the bad with which to torture his sons.

“We had different expectations of our father and he had different expectations of us.” Kelly’s eyes were sad as he said the words, mourning a lost childhood that could never be recovered.

Max digested what Kelly had said, especially in light of the relationship Kelly had had with his father before Hank’s death and Trey’s complete absence. “Knowing what I know about Hank sober, it’s hard for me to believe life for you in this house was easier than it was for Trey.”

“Being ignored left its own scars. I spent my college years pretending I was an escaped stereotype from San Francisco in the 1970s.” Kelly shrugged. “Later, the novelty of hearing from Dad meant I was more willing to take his phone call. I guess we fit perfectly into the roles assigned us. The ignored kid runs back at the slightest hint of attention from the father figure, while the kid on whom all attention was paid turns a deaf ear to the ringing phone.”

Max considered her mostly happy childhood. Her parents had divorced when she was in middle school. She’d stayed with her dad and she liked her stepmother okay, but her mom had also been around and taken an active part in her childhood. Her father was disappointed that she hadn’t taken the path he’d chosen for her, but he wasn’t angry. No one was an alcoholic and she wasn’t in competition with her brother for attention. She should call them and thank them for being
normal
. And despite her anger at Trey, learning about his childhood gave her more respect and understanding for the man he was now.

“Do you think Trey would sell me the land if I asked?” The man Kelly described didn’t give her much hope.

Kelly shook his head. “I don’t know, honestly. There’s more going on under his fancy clothes than just his anger at our father. He’s jealous of you.”

His words surprised Max enough that she had to catch her cup before it fell after setting it too close to the edge of the counter. By the time “Why would he be jealous?” left her mouth, she had her answer. “He’s mad because Hank made promises to me, and at least made the attempt at keeping them.” If he’d really kept his promise, the Harris brothers wouldn’t be looking for the will, but Hank had probably come closer to keeping a promise to her than he’d ever come to keeping his word to Trey.

“Yes. I doubt you can offer him enough money to make up for Dad being a better father to you than he was to his own kids.”

The truth of the words pushed Max against the counter, the edge digging into her back.

“I don’t mean to discourage you,” Kelly said, “and I’m happy to help convince him, but I don’t know if it’s possible. Trey and I were always jealous of what the other got from our father and we were never really able to be friends. My words might not have much effect.”

She nodded, because really, what else could she do? “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“No. I have a date tonight.” Kelly gave her a wry smile. “Always on the hunt for love.”

“I hope you find it.”

Despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, Max skipped dinner in favor of opening her laptop and making calculations about her finances. She had to believe that Trey could make the right decision.

* * *

M
AX
WAS
WAITING
for Trey when he drove up, Ashes at her side. Her dog could always read her mood, and he didn’t greet Trey with a wag of his tail, but neither did he growl. They were both nervous and didn’t want to piss off an already angry man.

“I’m sorry for driving off in anger,” he said, by way of greeting, his hand out in offering.

“Um, good morning.” She didn’t tell him it wasn’t a big deal, even though she was perfectly capable of walking around the farm in the dark. Trey had talked enough about his mother’s views on how a gentleman treated a lady that she knew driving off had been a big deal to him. She slipped her hand in his. He had nice hands. With few calluses, they were the hands of a banker or a lawyer, but he had a firm grip that tingled her toes. “Apology accepted.” She pulled her hand away before his touch overwhelmed her senses.

“I’m glad you’re out waiting for me, though I didn’t expect you to be.”

“After last night? I’m not a sulker.” He blinked, but otherwise didn’t respond. “Besides, I have a question for you.” After she’d gone over her finances and decided it would be possible, she’d debated how to approach Trey with her proposal. Eventually, she’d decided it would be better to ask early in the morning, before she lost her courage. “Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee?”

“Sure.” His manner was open and curious, so Max upped the odds of her success a bit.

Once in the kitchen, she poured him a cup. He turned down milk and sugar. As he sat, his dark eyes scanned the financial calculations on the table. He didn’t say a word, just watched her with a steady gaze as she sat down.

“If you want to sell the farm, let me be the one to buy it from you.”

“Do you have the money?”

This was the sticking point. “No. In three years I will. That’s why Hank was going to add in the condition of the lease to his will, because I’ve always planned to buy the farm. I just need that extra time.”

Mentioning Hank and his promises was a strategic error on her part. His face darkened to match his eyes and the curiosity was gone. “Your offer today is no different from what you said last night. I don’t want to sell the farm in three years. I want to sell it now.”

“We can write the lease so that I either buy the farm in three years or lose it to someone else. It will be sold in all but actuality.”

“No.” The word was frosty, like the tips of the grasses outside her kitchen window.

“If you’re worried I won’t be able to afford the land in three years, I have the figures here on the table.”

Max watched the muscles of Trey’s throat move as he drained the entire cup of coffee then looked at her with a sour face. “I’m not sure I can make this clearer. I want the land out of my hands. If you can make me the same offer as the developer, I’ll take it. Otherwise, I’m selling. Even if we find the will, I’ll pay whatever it costs to break the lease. I didn’t want this land yesterday. I’m not going to want this land tomorrow and I sure as hell don’t still want to be holding on to it in three years.”

“Even if we...” Trey’s words hung in midair for several seconds before crashing, like Wile E. Coyote dropping off a cliff, only not funny. The farm was gone. All her work washed away in the torrent of his anger.

Five years ago, she’d agreed to move across the country to farm land sight unseen, and her worst-case scenario was now her reality.

Max took a drink of coffee, but the acid burned down her stomach until she was afraid she would vomit. She looked across the table at Trey, part of her thinking it would serve him right if she ralphed her breakfast on his shiny shoes, part of her worried about showing weakness in front of him.

He sat there looking at her as if he hadn’t just jerked the rug out from under her after backing her up to the edge of a cliff. The slight scruff of his beard she’d found attractive over Hank’s funeral now looked like the dark smoke of the devil, but calling him the devil gave him more power than he had. Max gritted her teeth at the truth. Under his collared shirt and sweater vest was an angry little boy who’d never forgive Hank for being a terrible father.

It took Kelly opening the door and walking into the kitchen for Max to realize the pounding hadn’t been in her head but footsteps on the back porch. “Oh, good, coffee’s made. I’d like a cup before we continue looking for the will.”

She only had the energy to nod at Kelly before tossing her mug into the sink and calling for Ashes. Working the ground would be the only solace she’d find right now, even if the land wouldn’t be hers after December.

* * *

T
REY
WATCHED
M
AX
storm out of the kitchen, her shoulder blades sharp against the thin cotton of her T-shirt as she rolled her shoulders against the truth. Better to be honest with her. Promising to care about what the new, probably nonexistent, will said would only make the truth hurt more later. Much like “I’ll quit drinking,” saying “I’ll think about selling you the farm” would be offering a promise he never intended to keep.

The cabinet door banged shut and Trey turned to see Kelly pour himself a cup of coffee. His brother hadn’t bothered to knock on the back door but had walked in like he owned the place. Trey thought back to yesterday, when Kelly had also been comfortable in the house. Maybe not like an owner, but like an old family friend. Which was odd, because he’d never been comfortable in the house when they were kids. Neither of them had, but while Trey escaped to the fields to avoid tirades, Kelly had lurked around the rooms in corners, like a dog expecting to be kicked. Trey didn’t know what was more tragic—that Kelly would have taken a strike from their father if it meant he got attention or that their father couldn’t even find his son worthy of abuse.