Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
J enny walked the grove after Wyatt and the plant inspectors left. Sure enough, the tiny brown spots were just barely forming on a handful of trees scattered throughout the grove. The law was unforgiving. All citrus trees within a third of a mile of an infected tree had to be destroyed. Given the dispersal of infected trees, the entire grove would be plowed down.
She called Kenneth Tolland, the agricultural lawyer her family had used for years, and he confirmed her worst fears. Citrus was too important to the state’s economy to risk an outbreak of disease.
“But the nearest citrus grove is three miles away,” Jenny said. “My grove is no danger to them. Why can’t I spot-treat the grove by taking out the infected trees and monitoring the rest?”
“The state is playing hardball on this one,” Mr. Tolland said, regret heavy in his voice. “I know it’s tough, but they will replace your trees.”
“With saplings!” she said. “It takes four years for saplings to bear fruit. What am I supposed to do for income during those years?”
“Saplings won’t require much of your time,” her lawyer replied. “You could get a job in town. Try something new and exciting.”
Jenny’s shoulders sagged. Where could she get a job? Waiting tables wouldn’t pay the 1.2-million-dollar mortgage she’d taken out in order to pay the McAllisters. Where could she earn that kind of money? The only thing she knew how to do was grow oranges, which wasn’t exactly a transferrable skill. Just thinking about leaving the security of Summerlin Groves triggered a shaky feeling. This was where she belonged, and she would fight for it.
The next day she got a written confirmation from Wyatt that her entire grove would be quarantined, uprooted, and burned. The process would begin on Friday, a mere two days away.
She wouldn’t give up. Her lawyer wouldn’t take the case and the local agricultural extension office advised she become reconciled to starting over. She registered an appeal with the Governor of Florida but didn’t have great hopes there. Her best hope was Senator Wakefield, who was back in Washington and had yet to return any of her frantic telephone calls.
The day before demolition she walked through the grove, the chilly breeze rustling the leaves. Sunlight dappled familiar patterns on the grass, but the peace Jenny normally found in the grove was absent, replaced by escalating fear with each passing hour. Her trees were going to be destroyed tomorrow, and Senator Wakefield hadn’t even bothered to return her calls. She could only assume he hadn’t gotten her messages. It was inconceivable he would have ignored her if he knew she was in trouble.
Jenny returned to the house, where sunshine filtered through the slatted wood blinds of the living room, illuminating glossy hardwood floors and character built into every line of the house. Four generations of Summerlins had lived here, and if she didn’t figure out something soon, she would be the last.
A rude buzz broke the silence. Jenny’s gut plummeted, wondering if she could be imagining this latest catastrophe, but after a thirty-second pause, the terrible alarm buzzed again.
It was a frost warning.
Exhaustion pulled on every muscle of her body as she logged in to the weather forecast. Temperatures were predicted to dip down to the lower twenties tonight, with frost warnings throughout the listening area.
She braced her hands on the table, sucking in gulps of air. She was either on the verge of laughing or crying but didn’t know which. If a miracle didn’t happen, this time tomorrow the tractors would be here ripping up her trees. Did she really want to spend the night filling smudge pots for trees that would be destroyed a few hours later?
There was still a possibility Senator Wakefield might come through for her. Or maybe the governor would order a stay. If she didn’t light the smudge pots tonight, this year’s orange crop would die. She couldn’t let $300,000 of oranges freeze in exchange for a couple hours of fitful sleep.
She took a sobering breath and shrugged into her coat, then headed out to find Hemingway. The chickens pecking in the scrub outside his trailer didn’t seem to mind the cold, and grudgingly moved aside as she strode toward the weathered wooden planks before his trailer.
She had to knock several times to rouse him from a late-afternoon nap, but his pale blue eyes crinkled with sad understanding when she asked for his help manning the smudge pots.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” he asked.
She barely had the energy to nod. “I still think there’s a chance we can save the grove. I’d like your help overnight.”
He stepped away from the door and beckoned her inside. He cracked open a beer before joining her at the dinette table. Several cans were already scattered on the countertop . . . a sad reminder that Hemingway was under stress, too.
He drew a long swallow of beer before speaking. “If the senator was going to help, you would have heard from him by now.”
“I don’t know what else to do,” Jenny said. “Quitting isn’t an option.”
“Then we will fire up the smudge pots.”
It was two hours after midnight when the temperature dropped to the critical level requiring the smudge pots to be lit. Jenny and Hemingway had already established a routine from the other night, but this time there was no joking, no banter. Light the pots, inspect the smoke, check the oil levels.
A faint breeze rustled the leaves, the sound both comforting and familiar. If this was to be her trees’ last night, at least they would have a warm blanket of smoke to ward off the frost.
It was silly to imagine the trees appreciated the warmth. Trees were inanimate objects that didn’t actually feel the cold. The cold was piercing her gloves, her flesh, but the trees were made of xylem cells and didn’t actually feel anything. Her brain knew this, and yet she still wanted to provide a warming smoke for her trees. Surely on some level the trees sensed the care she lavished on them. She had played beneath these trees as a child and started tending them as a teenager. She sometimes even talked to these trees when she got lonely enough. She wouldn’t abandon them now.
They began extinguishing the pots at seven o’clock in the morning. Cap the smokestack, fasten the latch, move on to the next pot. Maybe the senator will call. Maybe the governor will intervene.
They capped the last smudge pot at eight-thirty. Nine o’clock was the deadline, the time the state would arrive with their tractors. She couldn’t face it alone.
“Will you come up to the house with me?” she asked Hemingway.
His face was streaked with oily, black smoke, and she probably looked the same. He nodded, the pale blue of his eyes the only color on his exhausted face.
They sat on the porch steps and Jenny checked her cell phone for messages. Nothing. She’d left a dozen messages for the senator, but he clearly wasn’t going to intervene. She dropped the phone onto the ground and put her face in her hands. In the distance, a rumble of approaching diesel engines and tractors sounded as workers from the state neared the grove. Hemingway slung an arm around her and pulled her against his shoulder.
“I don’t know if I can face this,” she whispered.
His arm tightened. “You can handle it, Sunshine Girl. You have more courage than any woman I know.”
The ground beneath her feet blurred as she stared at it. “I’m a coward. I can’t even look at those tractors.” She could feel them, though. The ground was vibrating as the massive tractors turned onto her property. The tears pooling in her eyes spilled over.
Hemingway passed her a handkerchief. “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”
She pressed the cloth to her eyes and sniffled. “Is that Ernest Hemingway?”
“John Wayne,” he said. “The other great American.”
If she weren’t so shattered, she would have laughed. Leave it to Hemingway to define America in terms of John Wayne and Ernest Hemingway. She wanted to say something funny to prove she wasn’t collapsing, but all she could hear was the ghastly rumbling of those tractors rolling closer.
The tractors stalled midway up her drive. It was ten minutes until nine o’clock. Her eyes strayed to the grove and its orderly rows of trees looking healthy and vibrant . Please God , she prayed.
Wyatt’s cruiser arrived, navigating around the tractors and work vans that perched like vultures on her drive. He parked his car, then strode toward her, stone-faced.
“Jenny, I’m here to ensure the proper procedures are observed. These are the official papers to begin the eradication process.”
The papers fluttered in the breeze, but she wouldn’t touch them and Wyatt didn’t push it. He lifted an empty geranium pot and slipped the papers underneath. “I’m sorry about this, Jenny. We’re ready to begin.”
Footsteps thudded as he walked down the porch steps and gave a thumbs-up to the tractor drivers. The roar of engines increased as half a dozen oversized tractors peeled away and headed toward designated sections of the grove. They all had big, fork-like attachments that could dig straight under the shallow roots of an orange tree. She watched the closest driver, the one who was positioned on the highest crest of the hill, where her most valuable trees swayed in the morning breeze. The driver tugged at the levers and carefully positioned the fork at the base of a tree. The tines sank into the earth and pushed through the roots with an audible ripping sound.
She couldn’t take this. She rose to her feet and shot down the stairs toward the tractor, but Hemingway’s arm closed around her like a steel band. “Don’t let them see you sweat, Jenny. Head up. Shoulders back. We’re going to get through this.”
The revving of the tractor engine increased and the metal fork lifted the entire tree from the soil, its roots looking like pale strands of rope that flailed as they broke free of the soil.
“Let’s go inside,” Hemingway urged. “You don’t have to watch.”
She stayed motionless. “I won’t run away from what’s happening.”
“Then come sit with me on the porch,” Hemingway said. “It’s going to be a long day.”
She didn’t resist as Hemingway tugged her toward the porch. She wished she could be anywhere else on the planet, but she wouldn’t abandon her trees. She would stand vigil until the end.
The tractors didn’t leave until sunset. Her ears were numb after hours of rumbling engines and the awful sound of tree limbs crashing to the ground.
Now everything was strangely silent. The grove was usually alive with evening sounds as the rustle of leaves mingled with the drone of crickets. Tonight, everything was brutally silent, with only the echo of the tractors ringing in her ears. She’d be hearing that sound for days. Years, probably.
What happened here wasn’t her fault. Citrus canker was completely outside of her control. It had probably arrived on the feet of a bird or speck of dust on the wind.
It didn’t matter how it got here, the trees were dead and she’d have no income for at least four years. She wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage and would lose everything. All because the state had an irrational law with no chance for appeal. How could she pay a million-dollar mortgage on her grove without a crop this year?
A Fabergé egg could do it.
Her eyes narrowed in determination. She was finished being polite and obeying the rules. She had meekly complied with the sheriff’s request to keep silent about the egg, but her cooperation was over.
A faint smile hovered. It didn’t matter what Wyatt or the sheriff wanted. She had solid legal grounds to claim that egg and was mad enough to do it.