Chapter 11

Steve and Rosa Winters lived in a modest but well-kept two-story frame house set back a hundred feet from the highway. There was the expected barn and farm equipment building behind the house. A late model Tacoma pickup and an older Honda Civic sat in the drive.

As I stepped out of my pickup, a black and white Border Collie barked a few times to fulfill his duty as a watchdog to the household, then trotted toward me with tail in full wag hoping for a pat on the head and a good ear scratch. I obliged and made a friend. Steve stepped out onto the well-lit porch and laughed, “He’s a good pup, but I’m afraid he wouldn’t be much of a deterrent to any bad guys.”

He shook my hand as I climbed the steps and said, “Come on in and meet the lady of the house. She’s in the kitchen doing her magic on a big, gooey lasagna.”

“Lasagna? Awesome! It’s been ages since I’ve had good Italian food!”

“Well, you came to the right place. Rosa’s second generation and thoroughly schooled in the art of Italian cooking.”

I stopped inside the door and took a big whiff. Heaven! Steve took my jacket and ushered me into the kitchen to meet his little woman... little being the operative term. The very pretty, black-haired, rosy-cheeked, olive-skinned woman couldn’t have been a millimeter over five feet tall, if that.

“Honey,” Steve announced, “This is Jesse, our neighbor and benefactor. Jesse, meet the love of my life, Rosa.”

She hit me with a dazzling smile and took my offered hand. “Jesse, it’s a pleasure. Thank you so much for letting us buy that property. Steve couldn’t believe the deal you made him.”

“I was happy to do it because I’m sure you’ll make better use of it than I ever would.” I took another sniff and added, “Your lasagna smells amazing. Do I detect a hint of anise in the sauce?”

“Why, thank you, Jesse, and I’m impressed with your discerning nose. Now you two park it in the living room while I finish up in here. Dinner’s in about fifteen minutes. I hope you came hungry.”

“No problem there, Rosa.”

Steve opened beers for the two of us and we got settled in the living room. The place was the picture of comfort with big, overstuffed chairs and couch. A couple of oil landscapes hanging on the wall looked like they might be originals.

We chatted away for a few minutes about nothing in particular, just feeling around to get to know each other.

As I took a sip of my beer, Steve asked, “Don’t you kind of rattle around in that big house by yourself?”

“I’m used to it, now. I can’t imagine why Uncle Sam replaced the old place with such a big one, but I’m not complaining. I love it.”

“Sam was his name? We only bought this place two years ago, so we really haven’t met too many of the locals. They seem to be a little standoffish, if you know what I mean. When we leased the fields we just bought, it was your uncle’s attorney we dealt with. He seems like a pretty nice guy, for a lawyer. I’m glad it was him handling the sale.”

“Yeah, he’s a decent sort. Actually, you’re the only neighbors I’ve met, so far.”

Steve looked at me curiously for a few seconds. “Um, would you mind if I asked you a question, Jesse? It’s none of my business and I won’t feel slighted if you’d rather not.”

I couldn’t guess where he was going, but I didn’t want to appear to be hiding anything. “Shoot!”

“Well, that day I helped you unload the freezer, I saw all those boxes of wrapped meat and the hundred-pound sack of whole grain flour in the back of your truck. And then there were the cases of wine. That seems like an awful lot of food and drink for a guy who lives alone.”

I had to think fast on that one. “Uh, well I like to cook and I’m on a fixed income. It just makes sense to me to buy stuff in bulk when I can because it saves me a lot of money. I got the meat for about half of what I’d have paid if I bought it a pound at a time in the grocery store. The flour was probably a third of the super market price. I guess I’ve always been tight with money. As for the wine, I picked it up for some friends.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he said, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I was just curious.”

Rosa sidetracked that topic by calling us in for dinner. The lasagna came with extra marinara sauce and a nice salad on the side. It was as good as any I’d ever had. As I made a pig of myself with the wonderful meal, I made a stab at turning the conversation to my purpose.

“Steve tells me you might be planting more trees on that property. I’m happy to hear that, but don’t you need the land for crops?”

Rosa answered, “With just the two of us, we can barely manage the land we’ve got. Organic farming is a lot of hard work. Trees don’t need much care and they look good.”

“What kinds of crops do you guys grow organically?”

Steve took the question. “You name it. We rotate our crops year to year so we don’t deplete the soil. Next spring, we plan on putting in beans, corn, onions, some melons and sunflowers. There’s an independent supermarket in Springdale that says they can use a lot of what we grow, then there’s a farmer’s market on the edge of town during the summer. Rosa wants to put up a roadside stand by the driveway to sell the rest.”

“I’m glad you’re farming organic. From what I hear and read, those chemical fertilizers and pesticides are killing the waterways and wiping out a lot of marine life. I’m glad I’m not the only eco-nut in the neighborhood.”

Rosa reached over and patted my hand. “You’re among like minds in this house, Jesse. I just hope we of the human persuasion can get our act together before we do so much damage we can’t fix it.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.

Grandfather Jakoby found Gilleena and I in the kitchen the next morning. “Ah, there you are! Jesse, I want to let you know that pretty much everybody has already expressed their general agreement with your plan, so I don’t see any need for another conference. Why don’t you go ahead with your introductory blog and I’ll begin writing my abbreviated history of the Ennahai. I have to warn you though, I’m going to need at least a half dozen weekly slots to manage even a cursory history of our past.”

I was ecstatic! “That’s great, Grandfather! I’m ready to post the first installment right now. Well, I suppose I should ask someone to proof it one last time for errors and typos first. So, if I post it tomorrow, you’ll have your first part ready in a week?”

“Absolutely.”

“Can I come down to your room and take a photo to post along with your history?”

“If you think it will help.”

“Oh, it’ll definitely help.”

So, it was underway. The only thing I was missing was some kind of guarantee that my deception would work, but nobody could offer that.

Gilleena and I went over the copy line by line to pick out any errors in spelling, syntax, and grammar. I might have a good vocabulary but I’m no Hemingway when it comes to writing prose. When it was as clean as we could make it, I went online to the blog site and uploaded it. It would probably be a while before we could access it on the Tumblr site. All we could do now was wait and see how it would be received. I was fairly certain Grandfather’s history and photograph would be what really grabbed people’s attention.

I closed the lid on the computer and said, “How about we take my digital camera, walk around and get some photos of everyone. We can take several shots and give them a choice of which ones will accompany their contributions.”

Gilleena agreed and suggested, “But I don’t think we should pose them. Candid shots of them going about their normal activities might be more effective, don’t you think? They’ll add some realism to the image we’re trying to create.”

I checked the batteries in the camera. “That’s a good idea. I think you have a bit of the journalist in you. How about this: We’ll take one really good posed shot, then post three or four candid shots under it, alongside the text. Then, each time they write something new, we can reuse the facial shot and add some additional activity shots. From time to time, we can toss in some group shots to give the reader a sense of our clan life. What do you think?”

“I think you’re a bit of a journalist, yourself. Let’s go!”

The week of the first posting, we got a lot of hits and a few comments, mostly positive. There was one guy who asked why we were wasting time and energy on creating fantasies of no value or consequence. It bugged me a little for a while, but I got over it. No matter what you write or how well, some people just won’t get it. I figured it was their problem, not mine.

But the week after Grandfather’s first installment of “A Brief History of the Ennahai” was published with his picture, we were flooded with comments, nearly all raves. Gilleena and I sat at my computer and answered all of them that seemed to need an answer. Fortunately, most didn’t because they were just kudos.

By the time we published the sixth of his six-part history, Grandfather had one hell of a following. I’d been adding commentary before and after each piece and got tons of requests for more info and pictures. That meant the rest of the clan’s contributions were pretty much a guaranteed success. In fact, answering the reader’s questions got to be so time-consuming, I went out and bought another laptop so Gilleena and I could work side by side, doubling our productivity.

In the next six months, every single clan member had made several contributions to the blog and each had their own list of avid followers. From the comments we received, I was beginning to think the public was buying the existence of the Ennahai lock, stock and barrel. There was a constant demand for more detailed and intimate information on each clan member as well as the Ennahai in general. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have hoped for such a successful blog.