Chapter 5

I followed Malena past two bedrooms to the last one in back of the house. “This is the man and wife bedroom. It is your bedroom now.”

“Where do you make your bed?”

“On the back porch, there is a small room. That is where I’ve stayed since coming here when Señora Sisemore was alive.”

“Move your belongings into one of the other bedrooms up front. From now on, you are the boss of this house. I expect you to keep it clean, keep my clothes washed and my meals on the table. Other than that, you make this your home as long as you want to stay here. You are a beautiful young woman and one day when you meet a good man, you need to be the boss of his house. He will want to be the boss of everything else in his world. Tell him that you run things inside the house.”

“Will you still let me work for you if I happen to meet such a man?”

“No, you’ll want to be with him and you’ll want to care for him. Your place will be with your man. He’ll want children and you will too. I’ll find a wife soon enough and she will take over as boss of my house.”

“Thank you, Les Savage. Already, I feel like I am a woman and not a girl any longer. I’ll have your coffee ready when you come to the kitchen in the mornings.”

“Goodnight, Malena.”

“Goodnight, Les.”

I heard her laughter as she went into one of the other rooms. There is something to be said for a woman who can laugh at little things only she thinks is funny. There is only one reason for that ... she’s happy.

The next morning, I awakened to the smell of coffee brewing. The smell brought back memories of home – when I was a boy – drinking coffee with my father before daylight so as to have a few minutes with him before he left for work.

I smelled bacon frying before I entered the kitchen. Malena turned to place a tall coffee mug of hot, black coffee on the table. “Good morning, Boss. I have biscuits in the stove and bacon fried. Tell me how you like your eggs and how many.”

“Make it three eggs and cook them once over fast. You’re going to spoil me like this. You’ll get me used to it and then you’ll meet a man who will make you his wife and take you away from me.”

“When I do, I hope he will awaken happy in the mornings, like my new Boss.”

“Make him happy, Malena and he will wake up with a smile.”

“Has someone made my Boss happy? You were smiling last night and then again this morning before daylight.”

“Yes ... For the first time in my life, I can say yes to a question like that and mean it. I hope she sees me the same way, one day.”

“She already does. She told us in the kitchen last night that she hopes you will fall in love with her and want to marry. She is a beautiful woman and she is so happy right now.”

“I’m not sure what love is, Malena. But if what I feel right now is love, then I’m already there.”

“I’m not sure what love is either, but I am ready to find out.”

“Do you have someone waiting across the border?”

“OH NO... I have just recently met someone here and I think he likes me already.”

“He likes you, Girl. He wanted to know if it was alright with me if he asked your permission to court you. He is a good, honest man, Malena and he is ready to have a wife and family. He is older than you by a few years, but he is solid as the base of those mountains back to the east of here.”

I heard Tom stomping on the porch and told her...

“He’s here now, Malena. Have his coffee in your hand when he comes through the door. Meet him with his coffee and – smile, Girl, smile.”

When Tom banged on the kitchen door, I shouted, “Come on in, Tom.”

He came through the door with a smile on his fresh shaven face and his hat in his hand. He was met by Malena with a mug of hot coffee.

“Thank you, Malena. Breakfast smells good and the cook looks lovely this morning.

“Good morning, Les.”

“Morning, Tom. Malena and I have been waiting for you to arrive...

“ ... Now tell her how you like your eggs and how many, I hear Lucia and Juan Carlos coming into the yard and Joaquin and Alejandro will be over here soon.”

“Once over easy and make me two, Malena.”

Malena handed me a tall mug of coffee and nodded toward the door. I was leaning against the door frame waiting for the door to open when they knocked. “It’s open, come on in,” I said and held the mug out as soon as she stepped through the doorway first.

“Good morning, Lucia.

“Good morning, Juan Carlos.

“Good morning, Les. Thank you for the coffee.”

“Good morning, Les ... Never mind – I’ll get my own coffee,” Juan Carlos told me, cutting his eyes at me, but he was grinning.

Alejandro and Joaquin knocked on the door and Malena let them in. She already had a mug of coffee on the table waiting for them. I noticed that she had their coffee across from Juan Carlos and me, with an empty chair next to Tom.

Lucia had a pencil and tablet with her, and while Malena finished cooking breakfast, we began planning. The first thing we did was make a list of all the different seed we’d need. Then we went back over the list and tried to guess as close as we could the amount it would take of each seed – They did, anyway. I knew nothing about seed, acres, or planting ... so I stayed out of it until they had come up with a number they all agreed on.

When we finished breakfast, Juan Carlos told us, “Now, we’re going to need machinery.”

Tom seemed to be anxious about something as he looked over at me and grinned. Then he tossed a folded newspaper over in front of me. I picked it up and looked it over, then on the back page where he had it folded over to hide it, I saw what he was already grinning about. There was a half page advertisement.

“Ford Automobile Dealer in Tucson has Five New Fordson Model F Farm Tractors For Sale.” I read aloud from the advertisement in the paper.

“Look down at the very bottom,” Tom told me and I pulled the paper closer to see the small figures. “Three hundred, ninety-five dollars each, with thirty dollars freight added per tractor, anywhere in the USA. Must move them now.”

“What’s the deal with this?”

“I read in the paper not long ago that Henry Ford himself, of Ford Motor Company, declared a war on his competitors in the farm tractor sector. This is the third time he’s cut the prices.”

“Who has a phone?” I asked.

“You do,” Malena responded and they laughed at me.

“Tom, you call them and tell them if they haven’t sold them by now, we’ll take all five if they can ship them by train to Yuma as soon as they can.”

“They probably won’t be open for another hour, but it won’t cost anything to try this early. Who knows, the man may be there early, drinking coffee like we are.

“Malena, where is that phone?” Tom asked.

“In the Les’ bedroom. I will show you.”

She wasn’t gone three minutes until she came running back into the kitchen. “Les, Tom said to tell you that he needs you. He’s talking to a man about the tractors.”

I nearly tripped as I ran around the table and down the hallway. Tom was sitting on the side of my bed, talking to someone. He waved for me to sit down, then he turned to me, “He wants to know if we can go to our bank this morning make arrangements for the money to be transferred from our bank to his bank. If we can, he’ll have them on a train before dark today and he’ll pay the freight.”

“Tell him that I’ll be at our bank in Yuma when it opens and have Mr. Thompkins call him there at his office and arrange for payment. Tell him we want all five of them.”

“Hello ... Yes sir, we want all five of them and my partner, Les Savage, will be at the Bank of Yuma when they open to have our banker call you at your office and arrange for payment in full. Yes Sir, that’s right. We want all five of them shipped to Les Savage, at the depot in Yuma, Arizona. Yes Sir and thank you for being there early.”

“HOT DAMN, Les. You just bought the last five tractors on that deal.”

“WE, bought them, Partner. We need to get a lawyer to draw up some papers for us to make this legal. We’re in business together now and we’ll get Lucia to order the seeds and plant sets as soon as we get that order together. We need to see if they will ship them COD too, so we can pay for them when we see the sets are healthy.”

“Les, you may not know a lot about farming, but you’re one hell of a business partner.”

When we looked up, Lucia, Malena, Juan Carlos, Alejandro and Joaquin were standing just inside the bedroom door.

“Did we buy them?” Lucia asked.

“We sure did and I’ll need to be at the bank when Mr. Tompkins gets there this morning so he can arrange payment for us. We need you to order the seeds and plant sets too, Lucia, since you know all about them.”

“Then we need to leave now, Les. He will be there before 8:00 and it’s almost 7:00 now,” she told me.

“What tools will we need to plant the seed and set out the cabbage and onions?” I asked.

“We will have to do everything by hand this time, Les,” Juan Carlos told me.

“Do we have what it takes? I want to be ready to plant as soon as we have seed and labor.”

“We have hoes and rakes. We will need water buckets to carry water, and water the sets by hand until they take roots,” Joaquin told us.

“We have five buckets in the barn,” Alejandro added.

“I have five at my place too,” Tom told us.

“We have that many also, maybe more,” Juan Carlos told us, then added, “Lucia, you and Les should check at the hardware store for table-corn, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, string-bean, butterbean, cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon seed ... they have those seed in the bulk bins. They may have lettuce and cabbage sets too and the onion bulbs, at least enough of each one, for us to get started.”

“We will, Grandfather. I remember seeing the lettuce and cabbage sets last week, but I hope they will have some fresh sets by now.

“Les, you’re spending your money to get us started. We need to keep up with every dollar each of us spends and what we spent it for. If all of you agree, I’ll keep the books on our purchases and our expenses as we start up our business,” Lucia told us.

Tom spoke up about that, “I have a few hundred stuck back I can bring the next time we meet. We don’t need to start out broke, but we need to get this first crop in the ground or we’ll miss a whole crop season before fall.”

I agreed with Tom, then told them, “Tom is right. But, we should buy only what we need to start this first crop of vegetables. Finding the five tractors will be the best thing that could’ve happened to our investment. If we find we don’t need all of them, we can sell one and probably get more than our money back.

“Lucia, you will need to contact your Professor Forbes in Tucson and tell him we’re planting crops now and see if he can help you get the papers on the grants started. We have many things we need to plan ahead for now, before we get too busy in the fields.

“All of you will have to think about what we’ll need, before we need it, so we can plan for it. I know nothing about farming, but if you tell me how to do it, and what we’ll need, I can help by making sure we have the tools and equipment here before they’re needed.”

Lucia and I left for Yuma right away. The others were still sitting at the table, making plans and thinking of the things we’ll need and the things we’ll have to do before we start planting.

We had just started out when Lucia told me, “Les, I never dreamed this would take off so fast. You have already made the deal for tractors and that was the one big tool we did not have. Grandfather has planters and plows, but they are built for mules and horses. We will need those implements before we become too big to do everything by hand, don’t you think?”

“You’ll have to help me with this Lucia, because I have never been near a tractor, or farm implements for mules and horses. If a horse can pull an implement, why can’t a tractor pull that same implement?”

“The team of horses, or mules, are hitched to an implement with a long wooden tongue, like a wagon tongue – with harnesses and trace chains. I don’t see how that will work with a tractor.”

“If you see a mule plow or planter on the way to Yuma, show it to me. I need to see what you’re talking about before I can help with the implements.”

“We will pass by Tom’s spread up here soon. He has his implements lined up in a row, and we can ride past them. I’ll point out the different ones to you ... Les, Grandfather and I have a few hundred dollars put back for emergency. We can add that to the company funds to help with these start-up expenses.”

“Lucia, I’ve already thought of starting a bank account in our business name so we can pay for the tractors and what seed we may find today at the hardware store. I have enough cash money in my pockets to deposit three thousand dollars in that account today. That will cover yours and Juan Carlos’ part, Tom’s part, and my part too. The tractors will cost almost two thousand dollars and we’ll need fuel to run them. That alone will take two of the three thousand dollars. Then we’ll need to buy as much of the seed as we can at the hardware store while we’re in town.”

“Les, will we have enough money to make it until we can get the grants? What if we can’t get the grants now? It has been a year since I talked to Professor Forbes.”

“Lucia, the first thing we need to do – is believe in what we are doing. We’ve made some fast plans and we’ve already started putting those plans to work. We will make it. Even if we don’t get the grants until next year, we will make it. We will raise what we eat and we will not spend money unless it’s for the company.”

“Les Savage, I have faith in you and your ability to plan and make this dream – this idea – come true, of raising vegetables and shipping them by the trainloads to market. I was only a dreamer until I met you. Now, I am part of small company with big plans and it scares me that it may have only been a dream and I may have been wrong.”

“Remember what the professor told you, Lucia... People will have to eat. We will raise the food people in the cities will buy to feed their families. If the canneries cannot handle all we grow, we will ship our fresh vegetables back east in refrigerated cars to sell at the produce markets in the big cities.”

“Les Savage, you dream even bigger than I do and I have always been a dreamer.”

“I have never been a dreamer. I learned the hard way that to make something work, you need plans and you need to think of everything that can go wrong, and plan for them, because something will always go wrong.”