Jennifer Lohmann - Weekends in Carolina

Their plates each made different clinks when they touched her small table and Trey noticed they were mismatched. So were the mugs. Max got back up to get them some water and returned with mason jars, rather than regular water glasses. He took another look around the barn. There was not a doodad or tchotchke in sight. Judging by her residence, Max had no patience for pretense and no interest in owning things that didn’t have a use. Everything was well cared for, but nothing was fussy. Even the dog, who had been fixin’ to get up from his bed before a look from Max settled him back down, probably had a job.

“Thank you for the reassurance about the house,” Max said before taking a bite of her sandwich. “Clearly, I had expected to live in the barn this summer, but having it to offer for housing will make finding seasonal help easier.”

“I have no interest in ever living back on the farm and I’m sure Kelly doesn’t, either. And the house does us no good standing empty. Kelly and I will take a week to pack up and store anything personal, then you can move in.”

He took a bite of his sandwich. The egg salad was rich with mayonnaise and the yolks were the bright orange of the eggs he remembered eating as a child, when his mother had raised hens. “Do you have chickens?” he asked, a little embarrassed that he didn’t know what Max grew, other than vegetables.

“They were Hank’s. After we finished renovating the barn, he had some leftover wood. There’s a little chicken coop on the other side of the house, built to look like a tobacco barn.” Her smile must be at the thought of the chickens; it couldn’t be at the memory of his father. “It’s cute.”

Trey tried to imagine his father designing a cute chicken coop and got a headache. He also couldn’t imagine his father wanting chickens. Trey, Kelly and his mother had built the original chicken coop after his father’s response to his mother wanting hens had been, “You want ’em, you gotta work for ’em.” Kelly and Trey had gone with their mother to pick up the chicks from a nearby farm, and though Trey had pretended to be too old and too manly at thirteen for anything cute, he still remembered having to repress a giggle at the sight of the cheeping biddies. His father, however, had never once referred to the chickens without the adjectives “smelly” or “dirty.” He’d also never once turned down fried eggs or a slice from one of his mother’s delicious sour-cream pound cakes.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Max said. Her tone held the same sharp honesty of her stare and Trey wondered if she meant it or was the best liar on the planet. He decided to give her credit for honesty.

“I’m only sorry he didn’t sell you the land before he killed himself. Seems like that’s the only thing you should be sorry about, too.”

It was eerie, watching those short, pale lashes lower over her light eyes. Trey almost felt like he’d said something he shouldn’t have. Almost.

They finished the rest of their meal in silence.

* * *

MAX APPRECIATED BOTH Trey’s help carrying the dishes to the sink and his quick exit. She didn’t know how to respond to the anger simmering under the surface of his skin. Hank hadn’t been a paragon of anything, but he at least deserved for his children to be sad at his death.

She scrubbed the plates and stacked them in the small dish drainer. The winter season was slow on the farm, but she had to finish plotting out her fields before the spring vegetables went into the ground. And she must make sure she had enough wax boxes in stock for when the Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, began. And arrange for the intern candidates to visit. She’d been about to send those email invitations when Hank had died, then she’d wanted to wait until she’d met Trey.

Of course, she thought as she folded the kitchen towel and hung it off the oven, she could still lose the farm for the summer. She didn’t think Trey’s promises could to be trusted. She would have to go on with her work as though everything was normal and be prepared to stand tall when everything came crashing down about her feet.

But starting the broccoli in the greenhouse would have to wait until tomorrow, since she’d wasted the morning in useless, irritated shooting and would need to spend some of the precious daylight picking up shell casings. Her irritation with herself for wasted hours would last until she turned the week in her calendar and didn’t have to look at “shot Pepsi cans” as her record for daily farm duties. Maybe if she added “made lunch for new landlord” to it, the day wouldn’t look so wasted on paper.

When she’d asked Hank what happened to the will and he’d said, “I’ve taken care of it, sugar,” she should’ve pressed him for more details. Her morning spent in target practice had been as much a reaction to her own stupidity as to not knowing what Hank had meant by taken care of it.

She whistled and Ashes eased his old bones out of his bed, stretched, then finally wagged his tail. The old dog wasn’t ready to retire from farmwork yet, but this might be his last season. The geese were starting to get the best of the old dog. She wished he could live out the rest of his days in a farmhouse with central heat rather than the often too-cold barn. She opened the door and together they set out for their respective jobs in the fields.

* * *

“SO YOU MET MAX, huh?” Kelly had let himself into the house without bothering to knock. Which was fair, Trey supposed, since their father should have left the house and all the land to both of them, though Trey would bet the farm that the old man hadn’t. The old man’s prejudices coming in strong, even in the end.

Kelly set bags of Bullock’s barbecue on the counter and the smell of vinegar, smoke and pork filled the kitchen. Trey was happy to see the food, even though he had no idea what they were going to do with all the leftover barbecue, especially with whatever food would be brought by the house tomorrow. “She’s pretty neat.”

When Trey opened the containers, it was the first moment since arriving that he was happy to be in North Carolina. Kelly had brought over barbecue, slaw, Brunswick stew, collards, butterbeans and a greasy bag of hush puppies. As Trey loaded his plate until his wrist nearly collapsed from the weight, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so well.

“She—” Trey put the emphasis on the pronoun “—is not what I expected. I mean, Dad couldn’t find a man to lease the land to?”

“What, you leave the big city and all of a sudden women have their proper place and it ain’t anywhere outside the kitchen?”

“No, but Dad...”

“Calm down, Trey. I’m mostly just funnin’ you. Everyone but Dad was surprised when Max the farmer turned out to be Maxine the farmer. Max was Mom’s choice.”

That Mom would pick a woman to lease the farm to made sense. However... “I didn’t know they had been planning this since before Mom died.”

“What you don’t know about the farm could fill the Dean Dome. Mom has always been on Dad’s case to do something useful with the land. He finally said he’d agree to whatever her plan was if she did the legwork.” He’d probably capitulated so his wife would shut up and just bring him another beer—much the same way he’d agreed to the first chicken coop. “When she was diagnosed, she sped up her plans a little. The lease with Max was signed two weeks before Mom died.

“That’s gross, you know.”

“What?” Trey asked as Kelly pointed to his plate, where he’d mixed his slaw and barbecue into one sloppy, hot-sauce–topped mess. “I’ve been eating my barbecue this way since we were kids.”

“It was gross then and it’s gross now.” There might as well be force fields separating the food on Kelly’s plate. Even the pot likker from the collards didn’t dare seep across the expanse of white into the slaw.