Chapter 6 – Juliette
SIX
JULIETTE
Pausing my plans to get my husband to divorce me: Planting Edition
There were two schools of thought when it came to planting season.
Early planting in April, a few weeks before what would most likely be the last frost of spring, which could happen as late as the end of May or early June.
Or late planting in July, but you had to harvest before the first hard freeze, which could happen at any time, really, in September or early October.
“Herb said to wait.” Creed and I stood at the edge of the unplowed rows.
“Herb never once thought about improving the quality of the yield.” I said.
The sun was high in the sky but it wasn’t hot in late April. The temperature barely hitting sixty degrees.
Still, I could feel it. The smell of the dirt, the buzz of insects flying around us. Spring was here and the land was coming alive.
The soil was a perfect forty-five degrees.
The ground was ready.
It’s what I’d said to Creed this morning when he finally came out from under the tractor hood. It had been giving him fits, stalling out randomly, and he was trying to diagnose the problem.
I’d told him to follow me to the fields, wondering if he could smell it, too, the coming of spring, the wakening. But he just looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
Until I’d said the words. “It’s time to plant.”
He was in jeans, boots and a t-shirt that hugged his chest and biceps. I wore my planting clothes. Which happened to be the same as my harvesting clothes, which were a pair of overalls over a long sleeved shirt and mucking boots.
With a wide hat on my head to cover my face.
Given his native brown complexion, Creed probably didn’t get as worried about sunburn as I did. But I always tried to limit sun exposure so as not to turn into some of the withered old grandmothers I’d grown up with around town.
Although, I had to remind myself, if I had my way, I wouldn’t be a farmer for much longer. But, there was still this season to get through.
“Explain how planting now helps the quality,” he said.
I opened my mouth to do just that, when he cut me off with a raised hand.
“Before you do that, please explain why I should believe a word out of your mouth.”
“Oh. You shouldn’t,” I admitted.
There was no point in lying.
As part of my mutually destructive war campaign, my first thought had been the crops. I knew exactly how much pesticide would destroy the harvest.
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 since scotchbonnetgate, (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’ place where 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.
We had no fewer than three streaming channels that he paid for. Although I wasn’t sure why he bothered, since he mostly did this exact same thing every night.
Normally, I would kick the couch a few times to startle him awake. Then urge him to go on back to his bedroom, which he always did. Probably because he knew he’d get a better night’s sleep stretched out on his king sized mattress than on the couch that was too small for his big ass body.
It wasn’t all out of the goodness of my heart. Because that was something he’d been right about, too. He was capable of significantly more work than Herb had been. Even before Herb got sick.
Tonight, however, I didn’t have the heart to wake him up. He wasn’t dozing, he was full on asleep. If he woke up in the middle of the night, he could take himself to bed, or just roll over on the couch.
His choice.
I dropped a quilt, one I used to pretend my mother handmade before she left, but was pretty sure Herb picked up at a craft fair in town, on top of him and went upstairs to my room.
The first thing I felt when I woke up was a large hand over my face. Covering my mouth and nose so I could barely breathe.
“Shhh,” Creed whispered above me in the dark.
Fuck. Me.
Seriously? He’d waited weeks to kill me? Why now? Why hadn’t he done it the night of Herb’s funeral and put me out of my misery?
Instead, just when I’d started to let my guard down, he attacked.
I clawed at his hands with my nails. That’s when I heard his voice in my ear. The smallest sound, like it was barely air.
“We’re under attack. Follow me.”
He pulled his hand away from my mouth, but shoved it in the collar of the t-shirt I’d worn to bed. He dragged me off the mattress and I barely had a chance to find my feet, before he had me plastered up against his bare back with one arm. My hands had no other place to go than to his shoulders.
His other arm was straight out in front of him with a gun, I didn’t know he owned, in his hand.
As if what he’d said had been true, and we were under some kind of attack, he moved to the doorway of my bedroom in a low crouch and scanned the second floor landing. He turned to look at me and made a gesture with his hand that I had absolutely no fucking clue what it meant.
Was this a joke? Some delayed payback for the taco casserole?
But then he was moving again, down the stairs in this snake like way that was almost fluid. Wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, so he must have gotten up from the couch at some point to undress. I could see how each muscle in his body was tensed and ready for some type of threat.
Of the two of us, I was the only one making any sound. The creak of my footsteps on the stairs. The harsh breathing behind his back.
He was absolutely silent.
Who the fuck did he think was out there?
We were on a farm in the middle of nowheresville Montana. There hadn’t been a reported burglary in these parts in probably decades, mostly because we all knew each other. So it would be real easy to spot a stolen item if it showed up at one of our neighbors.
Creed just continued to move through each room of the house.
Gun first, us second.
But there was nothing. No light. No sound. No intruder.
“Creed,” I whispered. “Are you-”
He whirled around and made a cut motion over his throat.
Okay. Even I knew what that meant.
Again he bent down low, his hand cupping my ear. “They come for what’s mine and I’ll kill all of them.”
I nodded. Sure. Sounds cool. There was only one problem with that.
“Whose they?”