Page 8 of Spicy Ever After
Outside.
I feel like a stray dog taking his chances crossing the interstate. Curious eyes clock me as I barrel into the kitchen, but I move too fast. Dodging a bus boy with a crate of dirty dishes. Weaving around a woman in white carrying a vat of battered fish.
Then a “Miss, you can’t—” and I’m outside, shutting my eyes against the blazing sun, gulping huge, ragged sobs in the restaurant’s back alley.
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.
