Page 22 of The Auction
If we went an entire season without a crop, no income at all over the next winter, he might start to realize how unglamourous farming was. He’d watch his fifty K stake, which I imagined was his entire life savings, dwindle away.
Then maybe he would decide he wanted out and would finally agree to the divorce.
But how long did that take?
What I’d learned these past few weeks sincescotchbonnetgate, (as I liked to call it), was that he was motherfucking stubborn.
So, while I hadn’t conceded the war, or my end goal of divorce and ultimately a cash payout, thus securing my freedom and future…trashing the crops just didn’t seem feasible.
Whatever caused him to break was going to have to be more sudden and dramatic.
Besides, I still had an ace in my back pocket. He hadn’t lived in Montana for sixteen years. That was a long time to forget what winter in Montana could be.
“Look,” I said, turning to him. “Anything I say, you can do an internet search to double check all of my information. We plant now and I think our risk of a hard frost this late in the season is limited. We also get to harvest before the chances of a hard freeze hitting us in the fall. I say we buy the seeds now and go for it. The soil’s ready. We’re ready.”
“I did some research into the commercial seed business. Herb said he liked Betaseed best.”
“Yeah, he did, but I think we might do better with some of the ag co-ops around here. They’re just better at knowing the local soil. The Craigs have been farmers in this area for years and have a germination program for sugar beets.They’ve been pitching their hybrid variants for years. Herb would hear none of it, but Herb would also cut off his arm before he changed anything.”
“And you think these hybrid variants might improve the quality?”
I nodded.
“What does that mean?”
“Sweeter beets,” I said simply. “More sugar. More better.”
“You fuck me with this, you fuck yourself, too,” he said, ominously. “We run out of money, that means you eat less and no more TV.”
“Oh, no, whatever will I do without the seven hundredth season of Survivor?” I said, clasping my chest.
“Smart ass,” he quipped. “Okay. Let’s talk to the Craigs. See what they can do for us. You better be right, Jules, or I swear there will be hell to pay.”
“Wait? You mean this isn’t hell?”
He did his scowling thing and there were times I couldn’t help but think that someone else in my shoes – a young, vulnerable, twenty-year old virgin - might actually be scared when he made that face.
But he didn’t scare me.
Until he did.
“Creed,”I called over to him, later that night, after the show we were watching together ended. He was laid out on the couch and snoozing pretty hard. Definitely out for the count.
It made sense, I suppose.
We’d driven over an hour to get to the Craigs’ placewhere they operated their co-op business. Martha handled marketing and sales, while Dave was the brains behind the hybrid seed variants.
I’d let Martha make her pitch to Creed so he could hear it for himself and know that if this was some elaborate scheme to tank the crops, I had to get a whole lot of people invested in it. At the end of the day, he’d agreed to their ideas and had purchased our seeds to be delivered the next day.
When we got home, he went out to the barn to start working on the tractor. Making sure it was ready for plowing. He’d come in at six for dinner, because that was a thing he still demanded, although he’d learned to start trusting my cooking again. But then he’d gone right back out to the barn, not happy, apparently, with the condition of the tractor’s engine.
And it occurred to me as I got up from my chair and walked silently over to where he was snoring, maybe he’d been right about a few things.
In the past few months, life hadn’t been the worst.
What he’d said that day, when he finally got me to break my silence, had been true.
I had more freedom, more space to do my thing, and overall, more amenities.
