“Another week, I’d guess.”
“That’s exciting!” I sat next to him.
He didn’t share my enthusiasm. “A very scary week.”
“How so?”
“Number one, they have to mature just right to develop the flavor components, and I don’t really know jack shit about when exactly they’re ready. Number two, rain could delay harvest or make them too wet so that they rot rather than dry when we get them inside. Number three, I don’t know how long it’ll take to clip off six acres in whatever weather the good Lord chooses to inflict on us. And on and on.” He fingered another cone, frowned, and passed it to me. “And then there’s this.”
The one he handed me had slight blackening on its lower scales, and at the base some were peeling back from the core.
“What is it?”
“Hell if I know. But if it takes over, I’m dead.” He unsheathed his knife and carefully sliced through the darkening cone, then held it close to his face to inspect it. “Leaf and bine development have been good all summer, so it’s not a soil issue. I don’t see any aphids. I don’t know. It might be bacterial. I just don’t know enough about this!”
I wanted to console him but had no advice to offer. I suggested that he eat his forgotten sandwiches, and he complied.
Here it was again: Farm, and you live in suspense. You can’t predict the vicissitudes of weather, pests, crop yield, or morale. You can’t anticipate market conditions half a year ahead, when your crop will be ready. You don’t get unemployment compensation if your operation crashes. And what happens if you get sick and miss a few days of work at a crucial moment in the cycle of growing and harvesting that nature, not you, decrees?
My brother finished eating and then flopped onto his back, spread his legs and arms, and stared at the sky, breathing in and out deliberately as he tried to relax. I settled back, too, so that we lay like two kids making snow angels, except that it was August and we lay on cut-over weeds and grass. I was thrilled when he reached and linked his little finger with mine, the way he would when we were kids and two years’ age difference was a long time and I could be a comforting big sister. A murther of three crows flew over, and I imagined that from their vantage we looked like Hansel and Gretel, innocents lost in the wide, labyrinthine world and trying to comfort each other.
“I guess what I’m saying,” he said after a while, shyly, “is I’m feeling really fucked up right now.” An honest request for reassurance.
I said, “You’re going to be fine. Okay? You’re not alone in this.” I tried to say it with confidence, but in fact I’d been feeling the rising pressure, too. The uncertainty was wearing on me.
I had by default taken over banking for the operation—Erik said he was too impatient for accounting, he was a “bigger-picture entrepreneur”—so I knew that he had badly underestimated the amount of labor he’d have to pay for. And that Aunt Theresa’s inheritance—his “initial capitalization”—was almost gone. But I had never gotten a clear idea of how much money he might earn from the yard.
As we lay there, he told me that if nothing went wrong, the acres grown from the crowns would produce a thousand pounds or more per acre, when dried. He expected less from the rhizome-planted acres this year, but from the whole yard he had been hoping for about five thousand pounds. If nothing went wrong. If he got a decent price for them, he might make seventy grand this first year. That would mean he’d cover his out-of-pocket expenses and have a little more to live on and to improve the yard for the next harvest. That would be a bigger crop, and the brewers would know what good stuff he was peddling, and he would make some serious money.
If nothing went wrong.
My brain was calculating the other side of the equation: the impact on Brassard’s farm. If this year was a disaster for the hops, if Erik fled from the project in exhaustion and despair and loneliness for female company, Brassard would lose the lease income and the other money Erik was paying. That slender path to the farm’s renewal would be gone.
How much tension can be transmitted through lovingly linked little fingers? I began to feel a little ill.
Chores were calling almost audibly in my head. I got up and brushed myself off; Erik stood and shook himself all over, like a dog. He would be exhausted tonight, and I knew he had been living off microwaved popcorn and canned soup, so I invited him up to my camp for dinner. I had made a grocery run and set aside some solid fare for the purpose.
I did want to make sure he was well fed, but I had ulterior motives for my invitation. Whatever happened with the hops, I had felt for some time that his real difficulties came from another source: his intimate relationships. Love is an irresistible tide, I had decided, lifting all things regardless of other vagaries of circumstance, so I planned to ask him about it, prod him to think about it a bit. He needed more than a big sister’s love and devotion. I worried about his well-being, especially after having endured almost six months of unrelenting labor to the exclusion of every other life activity, including romance. He wasn’t happy with the situation, and between overwork and that absence he had become increasingly irritable and, I knew, existentially overwhelmed.
I had thought I would deliver a wise, sisterly sermon about finding “a good woman,” and probably every other cliché about the stabilizing and affirming benefits of longer-term partnership. Look at Perry and James,
