His face changed.
“You know them.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“They approached me last year.”
“What did they want?”
“Land.”
“Yours?”
“Mine.”
“Then everybody around it.”
The Young Farmer looked toward the valley.
“How much?”
“All of it eventually.”
She looked at him.
“And you said no?”
“Of course.”
That surprised her.
He saw.
“You think because I wanted your eighteen acres, I want to hand six hundred to people who’ll tear it up for warehouses?”
“What do they want with the valley?”
“Not warehouses.”
“What?”
“Control.”
He wiped grease from his hands.
“Packing.”
“Storage.”
“Distribution.”
“Land leases.”
“Water rights where they can get them.”
“Own enough pieces and every grower who remains eventually pays them somewhere.”
The Young Farmer thought about the businessman’s clean boots.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because most of us turned them down.”
“Until now.”
The Older Farmer nodded.
“The freeze changed things.”
Damaged orchards meant weak balance sheets.
Weak balance sheets meant farmers needed cash.
The investment company knew it.
The Young Farmer suddenly understood something worse.
“They’re offering after the frost.”
“Yes.”
“They knew which farms were damaged?”
“Probably.”
“How?”
“Everybody knows.”
“No.”
She looked toward him.
“They knew my debt.”
“That’s different.”
The Older Farmer became quiet.
The Young Farmer remembered the men who had mocked her.
One operated a struggling orchard east of the river.
Another recently refinanced.
One had medical bills.
Another had two years left before retirement.
A severe freeze could force any one of them to sell.
Within a week, three farmers received offers.
Within two weeks, seven.
The amounts were carefully calculated.
Enough to look generous.
Not enough to reflect what control of the valley might eventually be worth.
The Young Farmer attended the next growers meeting.
The mood was different.
No laughing.
No boasting.
Farmers sat with notebooks and damaged crop reports.
The Older Farmer stood.
“We have a problem.”
One man immediately replied:
“We already had a problem.”
“My crop is down sixty percent.”
Another said:
“Forty here.”
A third:
“I don’t have enough fruit to cover labor.”
The Older Farmer raised his hand.
“I know.”
The Young Farmer watched.
A man near the back pointed at her.
“Easy for her.”
“She still has a crop.”
Several heads turned.
The old instinct returned immediately.
Resent the survivor.
The Young Farmer stood.