Hard Row dk-13 Page 5
yield a few thousand an acre but was pretty much a one-
time sale, given how long it takes to grow a pine to
market size. Daddy still mourned the longleaf pines that
had to be cut to pay the bills when he was a boy and
“Y’all can do what you like about what’s your’n,” he
said firmly, “but I ain’t interested in selling any more
of mine,” which pretty much scotched that possibility
since none of us wanted to go against him.
“Too bad we can’t grow hemp,” Seth said and my
brothers nodded in gloomy agreement. Hemp is a
wonderful source material of paper and cloth and our
soil and climate would make it a perfect alternative to
tobacco. If it had first been called the paper weed or
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something equally innocuous, North Carolina would
be a huge producer. With a name like hemp though,
our legislators are scared to death to promote it even
though you’d have to smoke a ton of the stuff to get a
decent buzz.
Zach and Barbara’s kids had been all over the Internet
scouting out alternatives and they had brought print-
outs to share with us.
“What about shiitakes?” Emma said now, passing out
diagrams of stacked logs.
“She-whatys?” asked her Uncle Robert.
“Shiitake mushrooms. You take oak logs, drill holes
in them, put the spores in the holes and plug the holes
with wax. They grow pretty good here because they like
a warm, moist climate and that’s our summers, right?”
Her brother Lee added, “We could convert the
bulk barns to mini greenhouses and grow them year
’round.”
“Right now, a cord of wood can produce about two
thousand dollars’ worth of mushrooms,” said Emma.
“Two thousand?” That got Haywood’s attention.
Andrew frowned as he looked at the diagrams. “But
what’s the cost of growing ’em?”
“According to the info put out by State’s forestry ser-
vice, the net return is anywhere from five hundred to a
thousand a cord. But they do warn that the profit may
go down if a lot of people get into growing them.”
“That’s going to be the case with anything,” said
Seth. “What else you find?”
“Ostriches,” Lee said.
Across the room, Dwight winked at me and sat back
to enjoy the fun.
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MARGARET MARON
“Ostriches?” Robert’s wife Doris and Haywood were
both predictably taken aback by the suggestion.
Andrew’s son A.K. laughed and said, “Big as they are,
we could let Jessie here put saddles on them and give
kiddie rides.”
Isabel said, “Ostriches? What kind of outlandish fool-
ery is that?”
“Some of the restaurants and grocery stores are
starting to sell the meat over in Cary,” said Seth and
Minnie’s son John, a teenager who hadn’t yet com-
mitted to farming, but was taking surveying classes at
Colleton Community College.
“Oh, well, Cary.” Doris’s voice dripped sarcasm. For
most of my family, the name of that upscale, manicured
town just west of Raleigh was an acronym: Containment
Area for Relocated Yankees, although Clayton, over in
Johnston County, was fast becoming a Cary clone with
even better acronymic possibilities.
Isabel said, “If y’all’re thinking about raising animals,
what’s wrong with hogs?”
“Ostriches are easier,” said Lee. “They don’t need
routine shots, there’s a strong market for their hide and
they’re a red meat that’s lower in fat and cholesterol
than pork.”
“Plus their waste is not a problem,” said Emma,
wrinkling her pretty little nose. “They don’t stink like
hogs.”
“Yeah, but hogs is more natural,” said Isabel.
“Think of the pretty feather dusters,” I said, playing
devil’s advocate.
“You laugh,” said Lee, “but did you know that some
manufacturers use ostrich feathers to dust their com-
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puter chips? They attract microscopic dust particles yet
they don’t have any oils like other birds.”
“You can even sell the blown egg shells at craft fairs,”
said Emma.
As they touted the bird’s good points, Isabel kept
shaking her head. “I’d be plumb embarrassed to tell
folks we was raising ostriches.”
“But it’s something we can think about,” Seth
said and added them to the list he was making on his
notepad.
“What about cotton or peanuts?” asked Andrew.
“We’d maybe have to invest in a picker or harvester,
but neither one of ’em would be all that different from
tobacco.”
Robert’s youngest son Bobby had been listening qui-
etly. Now he said, “Don’t y’all think it’d be good if
we could switch over to something that doesn’t require
tons of pesticides on every acre?”
“Everything’s got pests that you gotta poison,” said
his father.
“Not if we went organic.”
The other kids nodded enthusiastically. “The way the
area’s growing, the market’s only going to get stronger
for organic foods.”
“You young’uns act like we’re some sort of crimi-
nals ’cause we didn’t sit around and let the crops get
eat up with worms and bugs and wilts and nematodes,”
Haywood huffed. “Every time we find something that
works, the government comes and takes it away.”
“Because it doesn’t really work,” said Bobby. “All
we’re doing is breeding more resistant pests and endan-
gering our own health.”
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MARGARET MARON
Haywood’s broad face turned red. “There you go
again. Like our generation poisoned the world.”
“Some of your generation has,” said Jessie. “Crop
dusters filling the air we breathe. PCBs causing can-
cer. Look at the way some farmers still sneak and use
methyl bromide even though it’s supposed to be illegal
now. And then they make their guest workers go in right
away.”
Her indignant young voice italicized the word
“guest.” She knows as well as any of my brothers that
migrant workers are but the newest batch of labor-
ers to be exploited. I remember my own school days
when I first learned that expendable Irish immigrants
were used to drain the malaria-ridden swamps down in
South Carolina because slaves were too valuable to be
risked. To claim that undocumented aliens do the work
Americans are unwilling to do ignores the unspoken
corollary—“unwilling to do it for that kind of money.”
Hey, the balance sheet can look real good when you
don’t have to pay minimum wage.
But if Haywood was unwilling to be lectured by
Zach, no way was he going to be lectured by nieces or
nephews.
/>
Or by me either, for that matter.
“We ain’t here to argue about what other people are
doing on their land,” he said hotly. “We’re here to talk
about what we’re gonna do on ours.”
Robert sighed. “I just wish we didn’t have to quit
raising tobacco.”
Andrew and Haywood nodded in gloomy agreement.
“We don’t,” Seth said. “At least not right away. We
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won’t really lose money if we sign contracts for another
couple of years.”
Andrew brightened. “At least get a little more return
outten them bulk barns.”
My nieces and nephews looked at each other in dis-
may at the prospect of sweating out tobacco crops for
another two or three years.
“But it wouldn’t hurt to start cleansing some of our
land,” I said. “It takes about five years of chemical-free
use to get certified, right?”
Lee shook his head. “Only thirty-six months.”
“Well, if you guys want to do the paperwork, you
can start with my seven acres on the other side of the
creek.”
“The Grimes piece?” asked Seth.
I nodded.
“I’ve got eight acres that touch her piece that you can
use,” he told the kids, and he and I looked expectantly
at Daddy, who held title to the rest of the Grimes land.
The field under discussion was isolated by woods on
two sides and wetlands on the other, so it would be a
good candidate for organic management.
“Yeah, all right,” he said. “You can have mine, too.
That’ll give y’all about twenty-two acres to play with.”
Some of the cousins still wanted to grumble, but Lee,
Bobby and Emma thanked us with glowing faces. “Wait’ll
you see what we can do with twenty-two acres!”
Haywood, Robert, and Andrew were still looking
skeptical.
“Have some cookies,” I said and passed them the
cake box.
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C H A P T E R
6
It is a wonder that everybody don’t go to farming. Lawyers
and doctors have to sit about town and play checkers and
talk politics, and wait for somebody to quarrel or fight or
get sick.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
% On Wednesday morning, the first day of March,
I was in the middle of a civil case that involved
dogs and garbage cans when my clerk leaned over dur-
ing a lull and whispered, “Talking about dogs, Faye
Myers just IM’d me. The Wards’ dog found a hand
this morning.”
News and gossip usually flies around the courthouse
with the speed of sound but these days, with one of the
dispatchers in the sheriff ’s department now armed with
instant messaging, it’s more like the speed of light.
“A what?”
“A man’s hand,” the clerk repeated.
“Phyllis Ward’s Taffy?” The Wards were good friends
of my Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash, and I’ve known Taffy
since she was a pup. They live a couple of miles out from
Dobbs in a section that is still semirural and I drive by
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their house whenever I hold court here, so I often see
one of them out with Taffy when I pass.
“I don’t know the dog’s name. All Faye said was that
a Mr. Frank Ward called in to report that their dog came
home just now with a man’s hand in its mouth.”
Taffy’s a white-and-tan mixed breed with enough re-
triever in her that Mr. Frank had once taken her duck
hunting in the hope that she would turn out to be a
worker as well as a pet. She loved the thirty-mile drive
to his favorite marshland, she loved being in the marsh,
she loved splashing in the water, but as soon as he fired
the first shot, she took off like a rocket. He called and
whistled for hours.
No Taffy.
Eventually, he had to drive the thirty miles back and
face Miss Phyllis, who hadn’t wanted him to take their
house pet hunting in the first place. It was a miserable
eternity for him until Taffy finally dragged herself home
a week later, footsore and muddy.
Even though he never again took her hunting, the
dog did prove to be an excellent retriever. A rutted sandy
lane bisects the farm. Locals call it the Ward Turnpike
and use it as a shortcut between two paved highways.
According to Aunt Zell, Taffy’s always coming back
from her morning runs with drink cups or greasy ham-
burger papers that litterbugs throw out. Over the years,
she’s brought home golf balls, disposable diapers, mit-
tens and ballcaps, a large rubber squeaky frog, a plastic
flamingo, the bottom half of a red bikini, and a paper-
back mystery novel titled Murder on the Iditarod Trail.
“Phyllis said it was a right interesting book,” Aunt
Zell reported.
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MARGARET MARON
But a man’s hand?
Even though the Wards’ place was five or six miles
east of Bethel Baptist, surely that hand had to go with
those legs that had been found Friday night. Unless
we’ve suddenly thrown up a serial butcher?
Dwight was probably already out there and it would
be unprofessional of me to bother him, but I was sup-
posed to be having lunch with Aunt Zell and nobody
could fault me for calling her during the morning break
to let her know when I’d be there, right? Burning curi-
osity had nothing to do with it.
(“Yeah and I’ve got twenty million in a Nigerian bank
I’d like to split with you, ” said the disapproving preacher
who lives in the back of my skull. “Just send me your
social security number and the number of your own bank
account. ”)
“Deborah? Oh, good!” Aunt Zell exclaimed. “Did
you hear about Phyllis and Taffy? Is this not the most
gruesome thing you’ve ever heard? First those legs and
now this hand? Cold as it is, Phyllis said she had to give
Taffy a bath in the garage before she could let her back
in the house. I hope you don’t mind, but I told her I’d
bring them lunch if I could get you to carry me out
there? Ash is still up in the mountains and the roads are
icy all the way east to Burlington so I made him promise
not to drive till it melts.”
“Of course I’ll take you,” I said.
“Thanks, honey. I do appreciate it.”
(“It’s always nice to get extra credit for something you
want to do anyhow, ” my interior pragmatist said, happily
thumbing his nose at the preacher.)
When the clock approached noon, I told the warring
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attorneys to try to work out a compromise during lunch
and recessed fifteen minutes earlier than usual. I called
Aunt Zell again from my car and she opened the door
as soon as I turned into her drive. The rain had slacked
to a light drizzle. Nevertheless, I grabbed
my umbrella
to shelter her back to the car.
Aunt Zell is my mother without Mother’s streak of
recklessness or that tart wry humor that kept Daddy off
balance from the day he met her till the day she died.
Although she never had children, Aunt Zell was the duti-
ful daughter who did everything else that was expected of
her. She finished college. She married a respectable man
in her own social rank. She joined the town’s usual ser-
vice organizations and volunteers wherever an extra pair
of hands are needed. She not only lives by the rules, she
agrees with those rules. Never in a million years would she
have shocked the rest of the family and half the county
by marrying a bootlegger with a houseful of motherless
sons. But she adored my mother and she had immedi-
ately embraced those boys as if they were blood nephews.
Furthermore, she’s always treated Daddy as if he was the
same upright pillar of the community as Uncle Ash.
When my wheels fell off after Mother died, she was
the one family member I kept in touch with and she was
the one who took me in without reproach or questions
when I was finally ready to come home.
So, yes, I would drive her to Alaska if she asked me
to, whether or not I had ulterior reasons for going to
Alaska.
Like me, Aunt Zell wore black wool slacks and boots
today, but my car coat was bright red while her parka
was a hunter green. She had the hood up against the
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MARGARET MARON
arctic wind and a halo of soft white curls blew around
her pretty face.
“March sure didn’t come in like a lamb, did it?” she
asked by way of greeting.
I held the rear door for her and she carefully set a gal-
lon jug of tea and an insulated bag on the floor before
getting into the front seat. Even though the bag was
zipped shut, the entrancing aroma of a bubbling hot
chicken casserole filled my car and reminded me that I’d
only had a piece of dry toast and coffee for breakfast.
The Ward place was a much-remodeled farmhouse
that had been built by Mr. Frank’s grandfather when
this was a dairy farm. There had once been a smaller
house over by the road that took its name from the
farm, but when a tree fell on it during a hurricane, the
grandfather had sited a larger house on the opposite
side of the farm, away from the bustling dairy. The cows
and the dairy were long gone, but the hay pastures re-
mained and so did the Wards, who valued heritage over