Page 42 of Bringing Home the Bacon
She registers the scenery flying past our window. “Ahhh. We’re set to arrive in Climax in approximately… fifteen minutes.”
“We plan to climax while we’re on this bus?” I whisper, then peer over the seats at our fellow passengers.
“No!” She swats my arm. “The closest sizeable town near Fork Lick is called Climax. That’s where our bus is stopping. FYI, my twin brother’s girlfriend, Diane, will pick us up from the station.”
“Sounds good.” I laugh, then give her a little nudge. “Nervous?”
“Beyond nervous, yeah. You?”
“Meeting your four disapproving brothers? You bet I’m nervous.”
“If it helps, you’ll only meet three disapproving brothers today. My younger brother Jackson is a musician, and he’s in LA.”
“That’s very cool.”
“Yeah, it is. We’re super proud of him.”
I gesture to my bag. “I’m suddenly realizing I might not have packed appropriate clothing for a farm. Will you have me milking cows and chasing chickens? I can always hit the mall if I need something good for rolling around in dung.”
“Rolling around in dung?” She laughs.
“I’m a city guy. What do I know?”
“We don’t even have a mall,” Colleen says. “But you should be fine with what you brought. It’s the offseason, and we’re mostly a soybean farm anyway. If you have your heart set on rolling in dung, though, we can always visit Alex’s creamery and find you a cowpie or two.”
“I appreciate you being so accommodating,” I joke.
“You’re very welcome,” she says with a smirk, then turns more serious. “And I appreciate you making this trip with me. I know I was skittish when you first suggested it. But I agree. It’s the right thing to do.”
“You mentioned the farm is in trouble. How much debt are we talking about?
“Uhhhhh,” she hesitates.
“I don’t mean to pry. I know money can be a sensitive subject to talk about, but I was thinking… maybe I can help.”
“You would do that?”
“Colleen, you’re carrying my baby.” He pauses. “That sounded a little patriarchal, didn’t it?”
She laughs. “Maybe a little bit.”
“Our baby sounds better, right?”
“It does.”
“Okay. You’re carrying our baby. Of course I will help your family however I can. Are you comfortable talking about how much debt the place is in?”
“I guess so?” She sighs. “When my grandad died and we first got the bad news, we were looking at around three-quarters of a million.”
“Ouch,” I say. “Not pretty.”
“Yeah, it was downright ugly. But we’ve made some incredible progress over the past year. We used to be exclusively a soybean farm, but we’ve diversified our offerings a bit. Strawberries are a big thing for us now. We actually have a surplus in the freezer that we’re looking to utilize somehow. We’ve spiffed up the farm stand on my brother Alex’s dairy farm down the road, and that’s been a new support for Bedd Fellows.” She scans my face. “We’ve made other improvements and started other initiatives too, but I don’t want to bore you.”
“Colleen, you could never bore me.”
“Long story short, we’re getting there. But wintertime is hard for farmers, and there’s still quite a way to go before we’re out of the woods. I just want to make things better for my gran. She’s been through so much. I mean, can you imagine losing your only son and then having to raise his five children? And then after all that, right when you’re supposed to be entering your golden years, your husband dies and leaves you deep in a surprise mountain of debt?”
“Yeah, that’s incredibly rough. Your grandfather doesn’t sound like a great guy.”
