Chapter 2
Chapter Two
BECK
Dust settles around me when I set the hand brake and kill the tractor’s engine.
We’ve reached the end of the last row in today’s final acre.
The tractor’s rattling rumble dies, and I hear the whistle of wind and the excited squawks of cattle egrets.
I pocket the key before blowing the horn with three short blasts, letting the team know it’s safe to climb down from the platform.
As soon as his boots hit the ground, Javier flashes me his goofy-ass smile. “I don’t care if she’s nine tons. She’s as gentle as a lamb.” He pats the new harvester’s chassis with something like affection.
“She’d better be with what we’re paying for her.” I’m grinning back at him, but it’s no joke. The Standen TSP 1900 harvester is the newest piece of equipment at Olivier Family Farms. It’s also the most expensive thing we’ve ever bought.
Correction: the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought.
I’m two payments in, and I lose my appetite every time I think about making the next one.
But when Javiar and I mount the orange frame to peer down into the box filler, I let out yet another slow breath of relief.
This is our second round of harvesting this season, and the Covington sweet potatoes look like they were sweet-talked out of the earth.
Not scraped out of the ground with disc coulters and share blades.
There’s hardly a bruise or a scratch in sight. Nothing a week in the cure barn can’t fix, anyway.
We’ve harvested five acres this morning, and, judging by the full bins in the box filler, a safe estimate is about $23K worth of sweet potatoes. Fingers crossed there’s not more than a little black rot or crop loss to weevils.
I’ll know better when we get the yield spread out on the flats in the curing shed.
I’m about to say as much to Javier when I notice him squinting over my shoulder in the direction of the farmhouse.
Gripping the harvester’s frame so I don’t bust my ass, I look over my shoulder. And there’s Pop. Teetering on the top porch step, waving his straw hat.
His walker is nowhere in sight.
“Crap,” I mutter. Javier and I climb down at the same time.
“We can take it from here, Beck,” Javier says in a rush. “You go see to him.”
Neither of us looks away from the house. I’m pretty sure we’re both willing Pop not to take a header off the porch.
“Shit. Yeah. Appreciate it.” I’m already walking backward in the direction of my truck that’s parked under two live oaks at the edge of the field. “I’ll come join y’all in the shed as soon as I can.”
I take off at a jog, spooking two egrets who screech their annoyance. My Tundra rumbles to life and I’m gunning it back to the house.
And why the hell is he still standing there waving his hat? Why doesn’t he have the damn walker?
“Calm down, old man,” I mutter. It’s not like there’s smoke billowing out of the house.
Right?
I scan the windows and the roofline just to be sure, but it’s all clear. The gravel path that leads from the fields to the outbuildings and the farmhouse bends around a pecan grove, and I lose sight of Pop for all of five seconds.
But when the house comes back into view, he’s sprawled face-down on the ground.
“Fuck me—” I’m not even sure the truck stops rolling before I skid out of it. “POP! POP!”
I’m running full tilt, and for an awful second, my father doesn’t move.
But then his shoulders shift. He gets his shaking hands under him, and he’s up on all fours, his scowling face a mess of dirt and blood.
The tremors shake his whole frame, a frame that—in spite of everything—still looks lean and fit.
“Goddammit—” He spits a slug of bloody mud as I drop beside him and grip an elbow. “Don’t make a fuss,” he snarls.
“Pop, you just—ate dirt. Literally.” I try to help him up, but he knocks my hand away, that wiry strength of his setting me on my heels.
“Lost my balance is all,” Pop grumbles, his face still turned from me. He’s embarrassed. I can’t blame him.
I bite down on my frustration as he struggles to push up to his knees.
“Anything broken?”
“‘Course not.” He turns his glare on me, and that’s when I see the right side of his face. “Fuck.”
“It’s nothing.”
Now I’m glaring right back at him. “You gotta mirror?”
The brush burn on his cheek is angry and red, but it’s the clean slice on his jaw—the one that’s steadily dribbling blood—that’s got my attention.
“That needs stitches.”
His scowl hardens. “Like hell it does.” Then he plants a hand on my shoulder and pushes himself to his feet.
I follow him up and grip his arm as he sways. The cut on his jaw is officially ruining his shirt.
“You need to see a doctor.”
“I’m fine. I just need to clean up.” He holds the heel of his hand against the gash.
“You went down hard. You might have a concussion.”
“Goddammit, Beckett. It’s a scratch. I didn’t brain myself.”
I wonder if he realizes that blood is now trickling down his arm.
“It’s a scratch that needs stitches. Let’s go get it checked out.”
The man’s baseball mitt of a hand clamps down on my shoulder, squeezing hard despite its tremors, and damn if I’m not nine years old again.
“No.” The word is low and slow. Final. “We have butterfly bandages inside. Don’t need to pay $250 for something that costs twelve cents.”
Jesus Christ.
Still, he’s going to wear himself out before I can even get him inside.
“It’ll scar,” I warn.
His skin is leathery after a lifetime in the fields. What’s left of his once blond hair—including his eyebrows—is now a downy white. He cocks one of those feathery brows and eyeballs me.
“Not entering any beauty contests, Beckett,” he growls.
“You sure aren’t,” I growl back.
And for once, the old man cracks a smile. A blood-stained, grit-caked smile, but still a smile.
“C’mon. Let me help you inside.”
“Don’t need help.” But he doesn’t shake me off when I grab him by the elbow and steer him up the three porch steps.
I fight the urge to shake my head. He’s lucky he didn’t fracture a wrist or collar bone. Or break his neck. Then again, the man is so stubborn, he could have his femur sticking out of his skin and into the ground and he’d still refuse to see a doctor.
He lets go of his jaw and leaves a bloody handprint on the porch railing as he hoists himself up the steps. Even with my help, it’s a challenge.
I open the screen door for him. “What were you even doing out here without your walker?”
He braces against the doorsill and halts. “Hell and damn, I clean near forgot. Ernie at Champagne’s Grocery called the house. Says he’s been tryin’ to reach you the last two days.”
Shit.
I pull off my baseball cap and scrub a hand through my hair. “Sorry, Pop. I got his voicemail last night and I forgot—”
“You forgot?!” Those white brows fly to the ceiling. “One of our most loyal customers?!”
“I would’ve gotten back to him this afternoon—”
“You’ll get back to him now.”
“I will. Right after I get you cleaned—”
“I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF!” he booms, the words rattling throughout the two-story house.
“Pop, I—”
“No, son.” Instead of reaching for the walker that is literally right there, he plants the bloody hand against the white wall and shuffle-steps past me. “You call Ernie Fletcher back right the hell now before we lose one of our best customers.”
Then he swings the door of the hall bathroom open so hard it slams against the wall.
Pop doesn’t shut it behind him. Probably because he wants to hear me make the call as ordered.
I rake my fingers into my too-long hair, grabbing it by the roots, willing myself not to swear. I’m clenching it so tight it aches.
“Sonofabitch.” I hear Pop mutter. He probably just got a good look at his “scratch” in the mirror.
Surely, the man has never cut his face open falling off a porch. I’ve never seen him drink enough to even stagger much less fall down.
Until two years ago, I doubt he’d ever fallen in his life.
Now, we can’t seem to go two weeks without him dropping like a felled tree.
“Shit,” I hiss, willing my jaw to unclench.
Castor Olivier has a lot to be pissed about. Between his body, his brother, and his two sons, something is always letting him down.
The least I can do is keep our customers happy.
I tap Ernie Fletcher’s contact and wait for the call to connect.
Champagne’s Grocery is not, in fact, one of our best customers.
They are a mid-range buyer. Nothing close to what the cannery in Opelousas takes, but Pop is right.
They’ve been a customer forever. My grandfather supplied them back in the 1970s.
The call is not as quick as I’d like, but Ernie lets me go when I promise the delivery of two crates of sweet potatoes by end of day.
When I disconnect, Pop hollers from the bathroom. “Ernie doin’ alright?”
He doesn’t sound pissed anymore. More washed out. I approach slowly on the pretense of answering.
“Sounded good. Said he’s thinking about retiring.”
Silence.
Then. “Why would he wanna do that?” The question is barely audible.
I don’t have an answer. But then again, Ernie isn’t a sixty-seven-year-old widower with Parkinson’s and a farm that’s struggling to stay afloat without him.
If he’d had it his way, my father would’ve ridden that tractor off into the proverbial sunset with Mom on his lap.
He didn’t have it his way.
I glance back at the fresh handprint on the wall. She would’ve lost her mind at that. Even when we had to move her hospital bed down here to the living room, she would threaten holy vengeance if we didn’t leave our boots on the front porch.
As soon as I make sure Pop’s okay, I’ll grab the OxiClean and a sponge.
Sensing it’s safe enough, I poke my head into the bathroom and find Pop practically listing against the vanity. He’s almost as white as the original hall paint, and the tremors are full strength.
“Pop, grab some porcelain,” I demand, stepping in and pointing to the edge of the tub.