'Okay, I'll check out Hilal.'
'Good.' Jane rose, gave Tuck a peck on the cheek and a hug.
As she walked toward Sean, she said, 'I appreciate your continued cooperation on this.'
'Right.' He ignored her outstretched hand and walked out of the room.
CHAPTER 24
SAM QUARRY WIPED the streaks of sweat from his brow, angled his aching back just so and received a gratifying pop as pressure was released from his overworked spine. He was surveying his farmland from the highest point at Atlee, an anomalous rock mound that jutted about fifty feet in the air with access gained to the top by a series of stone steps worn smooth by the boots of his ancestors. It had been known, at least for as long as Quarry could remember, as Angel Rock. As though it were the stepping-off place to heaven and ostensibly a better life than the one granted to the Quarry family on plain earth. He wasn't a gambling man, but Quarry would've bet a few bucks that almost none of his male ancestors had successfully made the journey.
Atlee, for all its historical significance was, at bottom, a working farm. The only things that had changed over the last two hundred years were what was grown and how it was grown. Diesel engines had replaced mules and plows and a variety of crops had taken the place of cotton and tobacco. Quarry was not wedded to any particular crop and would try something different so long as it could be profitable with small farms like Atlee had become. Like most efficient farmers he obsessed over every detail, from the soil composition, to rainfall, to harvest times down to the minute, to predicted frost levels to yield per acre in relation to expected market prices, to the precise number of hands to do the picking, tractors to do the hauling, and bankers to extend the credit.
He was too far north in Alabama to grow kiwifruit but he had taken a stab at raising canola because a milling plant had finally opened not too far away that could turn the collard-like plant into 'value-added' canola oil. It was a good winter crop and produced more income per acre than the staple winter wheat. He also grew traditional produce like cabbage, pole and snap beans, corn, okra, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, turnip greens, and watermelons.
Some of it fed the people who lived at Atlee with him, but most was sold to local companies and stores for income that was desperately needed. He also carried twenty hogs and two dozen head of forage-fed cattle and had found willing markets in Atlanta and Chicago that used the beef in churrasco cooking. They also kept some for their own consumption.
Farming was a risky proposition under even the best of circumstances. Folks who toiled in the dirt could do everything right and a drought or an early freeze could come and wipe them out. Mother Nature never apologized for her divine and sometimes disastrous intervention. He'd had his share of good and bad years. While it was clear that Quarry would never become rich doing any of this, money just as clearly wasn't the point. He paid his bills, he held his head up, and he was fairly certain a man shouldn't expect more than that out of life unless he was corrupt, overly ambitious, or both.
He spent the next several hours toiling with rented help in the fields. He did this for at least two reasons. First, he liked to work the land. He'd been doing it since he was a boy and saw no reason to stop simply because he was fast becoming an old man. Second, his workers always seemed to put a little more back into their labor when el jefe was around.
Gabriel joined him in the afternoon after walking a mile from the bus stop. The young boy was strong and focused and wielded a tool and drove the machinery with a steady, practiced hand. Later, over dinner, Quarry let Gabriel say the blessing while his mother, Ruth Ann, and Daryl looked on. Then they ate the simple meal, almost all of which had been canned or made from previous harvests. Quarry also listened to Gabriel expound on what he'd learned in school that day.
He looked admiringly at the boy's mother. 'He's smart, Ruth Ann. Like a sponge.'
Ruth Ann smiled appreciatively. She was rail thin and always would be due to an intestinal disorder that she didn't have the money to treat properly and in about ten years would probably kill her. 'Don't get that from me,' she said. 'Cooking and cleaning, that's all what's in my head.'
'You do that real good.' This came from Daryl, who sat opposite Gabriel and had been busily shoving cornbread into his mouth before taking a huge gulp of lukewarm well water to wash it down.
'Where's Carlos?' asked Gabriel. 'He didn't go off too, like Kurt, did he?'
Daryl shot his father an anxious look, but Quarry calmly finished sopping up some tomato gravy with his cornbread before answering. 'He's just doing some things for me out of town. Be back soon.'
After dinner, Quarry ventured to the attic where he sat amid the cobwebbed detritus of his family's history, mostly in the form of furniture, clothing, books, and papers. He was not up here for nostalgic purposes, however. He spread the plans out over an old side table that had belonged to his maternal great-grandmother, who'd ended up killing her husband via shotgun blast over-at least the family legend held-a lady with a pretty face, nice manners, and very dark skin.
Quarry studied the road, the building, access points, and potential problem areas detailed on the plans. Then his attention turned to a set of drawings he'd prepared of a more mechanical nature. He had earned a scholarship to college in mechanical engineering, but the war in Vietnam sent those plans awry when his father demanded he enlist to help fight the communist plague. When he'd gotten back home years later his father was dead, Atlee was his, and attending college just wasn't in the cards.
Yet Quarry could fix anything that had either a motor or moving parts. The guts of any machine, no matter how complicated, easily revealed themselves to his mind in startling simplicity. It had paid dividends at Atlee, for while other farmers had to send out for costly help when equipment broke down, Quarry just fixed it himself, mostly lying on his back, a big wrench in his muscled grip.
Thus he pored over the plans and drawings with an expert's eye, seeing where improvements could be made and disaster avoided. Afterward he ventured downstairs and found Daryl cleaning rifles in the small gunroom off the kitchen.
'Ain't no smell better than gun grease,' Daryl said, looking up at his father as he walked in the room.
'So you say.'
Daryl's sudden smile faded, perhaps because of the memory of a Patriot pistol being leveled against the base of his skull by the man now standing a few feet from him in a room filled with weapons of singular destruction.
Quarry closed and locked the door and then sat down next to his son and unrolled the set of plans on the floor.
'I've already gone over this with Carlos, but I want you to understand it too, just in case.'
'I know,' his son said, as he wiped down the barrel of his favorite deer rifle.
Quarry rattled the papers at him. 'Now this is important, Daryl, no room for screwing up. Pay attention.'
After thirty minutes of back-and-forth, a satisfied Quarry rose and folded up the plans. As he patted them back into a long tube he kept them in he said, 'Almost crashed the damn plane I was so broke up about Kurt.'
'I know,' Daryl replied, a tinge of fear in his voice, for he knew his father was an unpredictable man.
'Would've probably cried if it'd been you. Just wanted you to know that.'
'You a good man, Daddy.'
'No, I don't think I am,' said Quarry as he left the room.
He went up to Gabriel's room and called through the door, 'You want to go along with me to see Tippi? I got to stop on the way to visit Fred.'
'Yes sir, I will.' Gabriel put down his book, slipped on his tennis shoes, and spun his baseball cap backward on his head.
A bit later Quarry and Gabriel edged up in front of the Airstream in Quarry's old Dodge. On the seat between them was a box with a few bottles of Jim Beam and three cartons of unfiltered Camels. After setting the box on the wooden steps going up to the Airstream, Quarry and Gabriel lifted from the bed of the truck two crates containing some kitchen-preserved vegetables, ten ears of plump corn, and twenty apples.
Quarry rapped on the door of the old, dented trailer while the cat-quick Gabriel chased a lizard through the dust until it disappeared underneath the Airstream. The old, wrinkled man opened the door and helped Quarry and Gabriel carry in the provisions.
