Chapter 8 #2
The path wound through Douglas firs and western red cedars, the understory thick with sword ferns. The afternoon light came through the canopy in broken patterns, gold and green, and the air smelled like damp earth and growing things. Wendell's tail waved ahead of me like a flag marking the route.
The farm revealed itself gradually. First the change in the light as the forest thinned, then glimpses of cultivated land appeared through the trees.
"What the heck?"
I stopped at the edge of the treeline and looked.
Long rows of waist-high shrubs ran across the field behind the house. Maybe nine or ten acres? The shrubs were beautiful, dense and healthy, their leaves glossy in the afternoon sun. The rows were immaculately maintained, the soil between them dark and recently turned.
I didn't know what the shrubs were, but whoever was caring for these plants knew what they were doing. The whole operation spoke of patience and attention.
Wendell looked back at me, waiting.
I followed him across the fields toward the farmhouse.
The house was old and well-maintained, a two-story structure with a wraparound porch that had been added sometime after the original construction.
White paint, green trim. Outbuildings were clustered nearby.
A barn with its doors open, a chicken coop with birds visible in the yard, an equipment shed with a tractor parked beside it.
Wendell trotted up the porch steps and sat by the front door, looking at me expectantly.
I climbed the steps and knocked.
The woman who answered was in her late-sixties, gray-haired, wearing a yellow sundress. Her smile was warm and welcoming.
"Good afternoon," I said.
"Well, hello there. You must be Tomás."
I blinked. "Thomas. Thomas Harmon."
"I know who you are. Claire told me about you." She pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch. "I'm Bessie Anne James. Claire's mother. And I see you've met our wanderer."
Wendell's tail thumped against the porch boards.
"He showed up at my place this afternoon. I thought I should bring him back."
"That's very kind of you, but Wendell knows his way home just fine. He likes to visit the neighbors. We've given up trying to keep him contained." She looked at the dog with fond frustration. "He has opinions about where he should be allowed to go and they don't match ours."
"He seems like a good dog."
"He's an exasperating dog who happens to be extremely lovable. Come in, come in. I just made iced tea and you look like you could use a glass."
"I don't want to impose--"
"Nonsense. Claire's not here and I'm starving for conversation that isn't about homework or dinosaurs. Come in."
She had already turned and walked into the house. I followed because refusing seemed both rude and pointless. Some people make hospitality feel like an obligation. Bessie Anne James made it feel like the only sensible option.
The kitchen was large and bright, with flowered curtains on the windows and copper pots hanging from a rack above the stove.
A boy sat at the table with a Chromebook open in front of him, his blond head bent over the screen.
"DJ, we have a visitor. This is Tomás Harmon. He bought the cabin and land from your mother. Tomás, this is my grandson."
The boy looked up. His eyes found mine and stayed there. Not a brief glance, but a measuring look. It was the careful evaluation of someone who has learned to read adults accurately.
"Hello," I said.
"Hi."
He did not smile. He did not look away. He watched me the way you watch something that might be dangerous or might be useful and you cannot tell yet which.
Bessie Anne poured iced tea from a pitcher into a tall glass. The ice crackled as the liquid hit it. She handed me the glass and I took it, grateful for something to do with my hands.
"Thank you."
"Sit, sit. DJ, close that thing for five minutes and be social."
The boy closed the Chromebook with the slow reluctance of someone obeying against his better judgment. I sat down across from him at the table. The chair creaked under my weight.
"Is your name really Tomás?" he asked me.
"Uh, it's actually Thomas."
"Why do you call him Tomás?" DJ asked his grandmother.
"Because a boy named Thomas broke my heart in high school," Bessie said seriously. "And besides, I like saying Tomás better. You don't mind, do you Mr. Harmon?"
"Uh, not at all. Call me whatever you like."
"I most certainly will."
"Do you like using the Chromebook?" I asked DJ.
DJ considered the question. "It works good. But it can't play games."
"The school makes them use those for homework," Bessie said. "Something about security and not letting children access inappropriate content."
"That's why they make us use them," DJ said. "So we can't play games and do fun stuff."
"My parents switched to Chromebooks last year," I said. "They had a Windows computer that kept giving them trouble. Updates every other day, programs crashing. They love the Chromebooks. They say they're simple."
DJ absorbed this information. He did not comment.
I did not try to impress him. I did not make jokes or ask enthusiastic questions about school or attempt any of the performance that adults usually deploy when they want children to like them.
I could tell he was a kid who wouldn't like that stuff.
So I just sat there and drank my iced tea and let him watch me if that was what he needed to do.
Bessie Anne sat down at the head of the table.
"So how are you settling in? Claire said you planned to live in that cabin full-time."
"That's the plan. I have some work to do first. The roof needs attention."
"That whole place needs attention. My husband used to care for it so well, but... Well, life gets in the way, doesn't it?"
"It does," I agreed. "I'm sorry for your loss. About Mr. James."
"Thank you, Mr. Harmon. It's been a year but feels much shorter." She took a steadying breath, DJ watching her. "So. How do you like living up there? Have you explored the property?"
"Twenty-two acres is big," I said. "I walked it last week. Tried to anyway. The back section is pretty overgrown."
"Grandpa used to take me for hikes out there all the time," DJ said.
"It was all part of this farm originally. My husband's grandfather homesteaded the whole parcel back in the twenties. Sold off pieces over the years when money got tight." She sipped her tea. "That's how farming works. You sell a little land to keep the rest."
"I saw the crop you have going. Those hedges? What are they?"
Bessie Anne's face softened, pride and grief and determination all moving through her features in the space of a breath.
"Camellia sinensis. Tea. We're growing tea."
I blinked in surprise. "Wow. I didn't know you could grow tea up here."
"It surprises most people. No one else grows tea on the Olympic Peninsula. It was Mark's dream. My husband."
She said it simply, the way you say things that are too heavy to dress up with extra words.
"We were a goat dairy for almost thirty years," she continued. "A small operation, just enough to get by. Then the market dropped out in 2008 and the debt started piling up. County taxes, equipment repairs, feed costs. Everything adding up faster than the income could cover."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's a farmer's life. Mark decided that if we were going to go broke anyway, we might as well go broke doing something bold. So he got rid of the dairy and planted tea. Camellia sinensis. The same plant grown in China, India, and Japan."
She gestured toward the window, toward the rows of shrubs I had walked past. I looked at them with fresh interest, now knowing what they were.
"Everyone thought he was crazy," Bessie went on.
"The banks wouldn't touch us. Friends told him he was throwing good money after bad.
But Mark had done his research. He knew the soil was right, the climate was right, the rainfall was right.
He knew it would work if he could just keep going long enough. It would take years."
"How long does tea take to establish?"
"Three years minimum before you can harvest. Five or six before you get real production.
" She looked out the window at the fields.
"Mark planted those shrubs two years before he died.
Two years into his dream, he had a heart attack and fell right out there among the rows.
The rows he planted with his own hands."
I did not say anything. There was nothing to say that would not sound hollow.
"This year will be our first real harvest," Bessie Anne said. "His crazy dream is finally ready to pay off. And he's not here to see it."
She picked up her glass and drank. The ice clinked softly.
"This tea you're drinking," she said. "It's from Mark's first plants. The ones he started in pots in the barn before he put them in the ground. We've been drinking our own tea for a year now. Best tea I've ever had, and I'm not just saying that because I'm biased."
I took a sip. It was good. Light and clean, with a sweetness underneath that had nothing to do with sugar. The kind of tea you could drink all day without getting tired of it.
"It's delicious."
"My husband knew what he was doing. He just didn't get to do it long enough."
DJ had been listening in silence. Now he opened his Chromebook again, not typing, just looking at the screen. The conversation had gone somewhere he did not want to follow.
"Abner helps us with the farm," Bessie Anne said, changing the subject. "Have you met him? Him and his daughter, Liberty?"
"His daughter's name is Liberty?"
"Yes it is. They tend a plot of fodder beets for their goats over by the tree line. In exchange, they give us manure for fertilizer. One hundred percent organic tea. No chemicals, no pesticides. Just good soil and good manure and good care."
"I met Abner yesterday. He came by the cabin with some raccoons. We talked, working some things out. I hope to be a good neighbor to him. And to you, of course."
"Good. This place needs more people who intend to stay.
" Bessie refilled my glass from the pitcher without asking.
"If you're ever looking for a little extra money and a good meal, there's always work here.
We can't pay much, but we feed well and the company's decent.
We'll especially need help with the first harvest."
"I'll keep it in mind." I finished my tea and stood. "Thank you for the tea. I should get back. I've got more work to do before dark."
"Of course. Thank you for bringing Wendell home, even though he didn't need it."
I looked at the dog, who had settled on a rug by the door and appeared to be sleeping.
"He's good company. I enjoyed the walk."
"He'll probably visit you again. He likes people. Good people, at least. Can always tell the difference between someone worth knowing and someone who's not. You seem to be the latter.
"I hope to live up to Wendell's evaluation," I grinned. "Goodbye, DJ. Good meeting you."
The boy looked up from his Chromebook. His face was serious, his eyes still measuring. Whatever calculation he was running, he had not finished it yet.
"Bye."
I walked to the door. Wendell lifted his head, watching me. When I stepped onto the porch, he stood and followed.
"It's all right," Bessie Anne said from behind me. "He knows what he's doing. Let him walk you to the property line. He'll come back when he's ready."
The dog and I walked across the porch and down the steps. The afternoon was fading toward evening, the light going gold and soft. The tea shrubs cast long shadows across the turned earth.
Wendell led me back past the rows, past the outbuildings, toward the tree line where the path began. He moved with the same unhurried confidence as before, glancing back occasionally to make sure I was following.
At the property line, he stopped.
I stopped too. I looked down at the dog then looked back at the farm, the farmhouse small now in the distance, the tea fields spreading green and orderly toward the horizon.
Wendell sat down. His tail swept the dirt once.
"Thanks for the company," I told him. "I'll see you around, Wendell."
I turned and walked into the trees. When I looked back from the first bend in the path, he was still sitting there at the property line, watching me go with those patient eyes.
A gentle breeze rustled the branches. The light through the canopy was green and cool.
I walked home.