now... they might or might not see Harry Potter, Kim calling it another kid flick.
II.
Ben took 56 out of town, west, up and around Okmulgee Lake to the bottomland of the Deep Fork, the river that ran through his property to water the groves and keep out the pecan weevils. They still had to spray all summer for fungus and casebearer larva. You had to have the right kind of weather for pecans. Carl used to pray for a spring flood. It got too dry the trees'd start throwing off pecans before they were ready to harvest.
Lydell, his caretaker-foreman, had worked here all his life, first for Carl, and now looked after the property for Ben, who'd transfer money to the bank in Okmulgee and Lydell would draw from it with power of attorney to run the pecan business, pay taxes, hire the spraying done and the work crews, keep production records, make deals with brokers to sell the harvest to a sheller in Texas. Lydell, now in his seventies, would send handwritten reports to Ben. 'That tornada come thru and took out 4000 trees. It don't look like we will make our nut this year.' Was he being funny? It was hard to tell. If they sorted and bagged a thousand pounds an acre, they'd load eight to ten semis and make money. With last year's freeze they loaded three trucks. The tornado was the year before.
Now, if there hadn't been too much rain Lydell would have already mowed the orchards with a brush hog and raked up the sticks. Ben hoped to see a crew using the shaker today on the trees: mechanical arms gripping the trunk, giving each tree a good shake for half a minute or so, then bringing in the Nut Hustler to gather the pecans from the ground.
Ben turned onto the road that edged along his property and pretty soon there they were off to the left: fifty- and sixty-foot trees on the average looking bare this time of year, a tangle of limbs reaching up to stand dark against the sky, some of the trees growing here seventy years or more.
But no crews in there working, none he could see, only a park of black trees, spiderwebs of limbs and branches, clusters of pecans, untouched. Either the crew started on the other side of the river... Wait a minute. Ben raised his foot from the gas pedal to let the SUV coast and slow down. He saw shapes, movement, deep in the trees.
Cattle. A dozen or so cross-Brahmas grazing on papershell pecans.
But there were no cows on the property. Not a one since Carl died.
His great-granddad's original house stood on this road, where Virgil lived till he made his oil money and built a new one in the 1920s, a big California bungalow that was back in the property, the house where Lydell was now living.
Except Lydell was sitting on the porch of the original house, now weathered gray, its porch roof sagging to one side.
Ben turned in past a sign that said NO TRESPASSING, one he'd never seen before, and stopped in the yard next to Lydell's pickup, Lydell watching him, the old man's expression taking time to change and now he seemed to be smiling as Ben approached.
'Well, Carl, I'll be God damn. When'd you get in?'
Ben stepped up on the porch.
'Tell me you're being funny.'
The old man looked puzzled now. How long had it been since they'd spoken on the phone? Jesus, last Christmas, almost a year. 'Lydell, how come you're not up at the other house?'
'What for? This is where I live.'
'You used to,' Ben said. 'Carl died, I said go on live in the new house.' The new house as old as some of the oldest pecan trees. Lydell looked puzzled again. Ben said, 'Lydell, I'm Ben.' And saw the old man's face begin to change again, light coming into his eyes, and Ben heard himself say oh shit.
'Yeah, hell, you're Ben. But you sure look like your daddy.'
Ben let that one go. 'How're you feeling?'
'Well... I don't know. I seen the doctor. He said I'm as good as can be expected.'
'Why'd you go see him?'
'I get dizzy at times and have to sit down. I think from the chemicals, that spraying every year as long as I can remember. I know a boy that did the spraying had to have all his blood drained out and new blood pumped in and he was fine. Went up to Tulsa to work as a gardener.'
'But why're you living in this house again?'
'They's only one of me and they's three of them. Four when they have a woman there with 'em. They said they ought a have the house and wrote it into the deal, the lease.'
'Lydell, these people leased my house?'
'They leased the property. I musta told you of it in my report. Carl, you can't hire the labor you used to. These fellas come along, offer to work shares on the pe-cans and their cattle both.'
'Their cows are in the orchard.'
'Again? Goddamn it, I keep telling 'em about that.'
'And nobody's working.' Ben stepped off the porch to the ruts in the drive to look toward a closed-up barn, a shaker power - hooked to a tractor with a covered cab and a Nut Hustler sitting outside in the weeds and brush. The house where Lydell should be living was a quarter of a mile up this farm road that cut through a grove of pecan trees, the house not in sight from here.
'Lydell, they haven't touched the equipment.'
'I'll get on 'em, Carl, don't worry. The one they call Brother? He'll go into town and bring me back my supper if I ask him nice. Get it from the Sirloin Stockade or a TV dinner from Git 'n' Go.'
'Lydell, they walk up and say they want to lease the place?'
'Their name's Grooms. A daddy name of Avery and the two boys. Hazen about your age and the younger one they call Brother. Carl, it's so God damn hard to get labor - Hazen says they'll work the pe-cans, I won't have to lift a hand.'
'And they stick you in this shack.'
'Hell, it was my home for years and years.'
'How'd they come to pick this place?'
'We's related, what they tell me, on my mama's side. They stop by and we's talking, I believe they come from Texarkana.'
'Lydell, you have a copy of the lease?'
The old man touched his shirt pocket. 'Yeah, it's somewheres. I have to remember now where I put it.'
'How long they been here?'
'They come by the first time,' Lydell said, 'I believe was toward the end of spring, with a real estate woman. Then they come back again and moved in.'
'They've been here most of the year,' Ben said, 'and you never told me?'
'I thought I did, Carl.'
Ben drove toward the house, a quarter mile up the farm road, creeping the SUV through the orchard to look at the trees. None of the grounds had been brush-hogged. He angled off the road to get closer to the trees. None had been picked, some with fungus growing on the limbs.
Now the house was straight ahead past cleared land: the house, the structure back of it where pecans were sorted and bagged, an old red barn, a tractor with a rake attached standing outside. The road continued on to a gate that closed off pasture, where a few cows that weren't supposed to be here were grazing. A pickup truck and a Cadillac with a good ten years on it stood at the side of the house, stucco with green trim that needed paint.
Carl had called it a California bungalow design, the kind that didn't look too big till you got up close: the porch in shade, sun shining on bare windows coming out of the steep pitch of the roof. Ben stopped behind the Cadillac and pressed down on the horn to give it a blast. He waited.
Now the screen door swung open and a man in his sixties wearing new bib overalls came out on the porch, his dark hair slicked back, a bottle of beer in his hand. Ben was out of the SUV now walking toward the house. The
