Chapter 89

I was ready to take Calleen, Shirelle and Lisette back to the shop to get their tractors when Rondo drove up beside me.

“Josey, I never thought we’d get this much done in a few days time. If you’re headed over to the Lunsford Farm, I’ll head that way too, and meet you down on the county line from the Montague Farm.”

“Good deal. I’ll see you there as soon as we can make the trip. I’d like you to ride with me over to see the Lunsford Farm too. Just wait until you see the Old Southern Mansion on that farm, and all the guns in the collection, they left for me.”

Now that we’re having some good weather, and we’re traveling back and forth on these dirt roads, I’m more glad than ever, that we stayed off the roads back in the winter, and didn’t rut them up.

With the three Caparelli sisters following, we made it over to the Montague Farm House in forty minutes from the house. I could see Rondo’s truck ahead of me, parked over to the side, down close to the County Line, and I drove on to pick him up, so we wouldn’t make the tractors slow down.

As soon as he got in my truck he asked, “Josey, when do you think we’ll start planting cotton?”

“If we don’t get a lot of rain this next week and it stays warm, we could start in ten days. That will be the last week of April, and we’ve always started around the first of May. That was back when we had small tractors and four-row equipment. It took longer to get the fields ready to plant than it’s taken us so far. Just like those two sections we bought from Judge Skelley on the other side of the levee. That would have taken us two weeks, with all the equipment we had back then, to get where we are now.”

“I saw those three tractors still parked back there. Are the Stevens twins coming back today?”

“They’re supposed to, and I hope they do. Those girls love to flirt and carry on a bunch of shit, with their teasing and talking, but they can drive tractors as well as anyone on this farm.”

“I don’t see how in the hell, you can sit and look at those two when they’re in your office wearing nothing but panties and a t-shirt. Damn, those two and those three behind us, are enough to make a man wish he had a pair of dark glasses.”

“Open my glove compartment and get those two pair of glasses, Bailey brought us. One pair is for you anyway.”

“I’ve always wanted a pair of these. Tell her thank you, for me.”

“You really do look like a bad-ass with those dark glasses and your white hat.”

“Put yours on. Hell, you’ll come up with a couple new women next time you go to town wearing those glasses and your hat.”

“We need to make another call on Mira Dooley and Phyllis Morris. Those two women came close to getting the best of us.”

“Hell Yeah! We need to make that run, before we get covered up planting cotton...

“DAMN, Josey! Who is that walking across the front yard of that big house?”

“That’s Brenda Clarke. She’s married to the manager of the Tri-County Co-op, and the mother of the two Farm Bureau Insurance agents we’re getting our farm and ranch insurance through.”

“How old are her two daughters? She doesn’t look old enough to have two daughters in the insurance business.”

“One is twenty-three and one is twenty-two. They look just like their Mom and all three are tall, slender and sexy as hell, as you can tell by Brenda. I’ll stop and introduce you, and we’ll stop again on our way back.

“I see the three Caparelli sisters back on the County Line Road, hammering this way.”

I drove out on the side of the yard and stopped near where she stood smiling. She walked around on my side of the truck and I stuck my left arm out to take her hand.

“Brenda, this is Rondo Billy Parker, my right-hand man and farm manager.

“Rondo, this is Brenda Clarke. Her husband is the manager of the Co-op out on the highway toward Stewart.” She was looking past me, across to where Rondo sat.

“Hi, Rondo. Good to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, Brenda.”

She was still holding my hand - and hell, I really didn’t want to let go of hers.

“I see our tractors coming. We need to show them the field, then we’ll come back by.”

She squeezed my fingers and smiled, “You need to come have a look inside. We’ve really been cleaning this place, and now we’re getting ready to do some painting.”

“See you in a few minutes.”

I drove on ahead just as our tractors came up behind us.

We drove past the first three cotton fields and though all the stalks have been cut, none of the fields have had the old rows ripped out.

Rondo told me, “These fields look just like the ones on the Montague Farm, where we were working yesterday.”

“This farm has a total of six hundred and forty acres of cotton ground, all of it just like these three fields.

“Bill Clarke - Brenda’s husband, told me this farm averages three and a half bales per acre. That’s right up there with the Donavan Farm, where the average is just under four bales per acre.”

“How much cotton does it take to make a bale?”

“Four hundred and eighty pounds of lint cotton. Which usually takes about twelve to fourteen hundred pounds of picked-cotton to make a bale.”

“What’s the price for cotton now? Does it change with the markets?”

“Yes, cotton is like wheat and soybeans. The price goes up and down, according to supply and demand. The weather affects the markets too. Mostly at planting time and at harvest, if we get a lot of rain. The last price I saw in the paper, was around thirty cents a pound on the current markets. The futures were a little lower, but if we can catch the futures up around thirty-five cents, I’ll call and book a few hundred bales.”

“Thirty cents a pound, and you get four bales weighing four hundred and eighty pounds. That’s what? Five hundred and seventy-five dollars an acre - and you’re talking about eight thousand acres?”

“Yeah, that’s over four and a half million, but look at all the input costs, and the markets may go down too. I say we’ll be lucky to see a forty percent profit, if all goes well and we have a fair crop, with a fair harvest season. We could pay off some of the land, and not take a profit this first year, then next year, we would make even more.”

He told me, “But, we have all that money stacked up in every corner of our world. Wouldn’t it be better to use that money to pay off the land?”

“Yeah, but we can’t spend all of that money at once like that. Uncle Sam would be after our asses.”

“OH I SEE! Said the blind man.”

“We’ll get there, but we have to go slow and make it look legit. That’s the reason we’re financing some of our land and some of our equipment.”

“That reminds me, how did your investment meeting go?”

“Really good and we’ll make a lot of money off that too. I think the key there, will be letting the money stay in there, in hopes it will double-down, like they’re projecting...

“Look out here at these cotton fields, Rondo. This must be the best part of the farm.”

“The fields we just passed, look damn good to me.”

“I agree and I’m happy with this farm too, like the others we’ve picked up. Let’s get the girls started and we’ll go take a look at the Glendale Farm.”

“Okay, Girls, are you familiar with the markers on these plows?”

“We are, and we’ve used markers like these before,” Lisette told me.

“Have you laid-off rows in a field where you start in the middle and work out toward the sides?”

Shirelle said, “No, but if you tell us how, we can do this. We’ve made straight rows before, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“One of you start off, with both markers down. Pick out something on the far end, like a tree or a light pole, and drive straight to it without one wobble, when you get to the other end, you’ll just turn around and follow your marks back each time.”

“We have done that, Josey. I didn’t understand what you mean at first. We’ll make some pretty rows, you’ll see.”

“No wobbles and I’ll kiss all three of you on your naked butts.”

Calleen yelped, “OH WOW! We’ll make them straight as an arrow and we want to be paid double, too.”

“I may send the Stevens sisters over here with the five-row middle busters, to start ripping out the old beds back in those first fields we passed by. I’ll call Sheila on the radio and have Shelly or Bailey come pick y’all up in a Jeep at quitting time.”

I drove down the turn-row a little further and turned around. When I started back, I pointed across the field. “Look over there at those girls, Rondo.”

“SONOFABITCH! They’re naked to their waist, already. How in the hell you’re still alive, I’ll never know. That’s enough pussy going there on those three tractors to kill a man twice your size.”

“I may die happy the next time it rains.”

“Don’t kill yourself and leave me to look out for all of this shit by myself. I’ll have a mess made of it.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll play dead if they gang up on me too bad.”

“Shit! You love it and you know it.”

“I sure do. I can’t get enough.”

We saw Brenda Clarke sweeping the back steps off, and Rondo told me, “That woman right there, wants to give you some pussy.”

“I’ll have to be careful with that. I’m depending on her husband to help us with our crops, and I don’t need him shooting at me.”

“She’s got her sights set on your ass, just wait and see.”

“She better be careful, because I don’t shoot blanks when I shoot back and if she corners me, I’ll pull my gun on her...

“Come inside with me for a few minutes, I want to show you a real gun collection like you won’t believe. We may need to move these guns over to our house, before someone breaks in and steals them.

“Brenda, I wanted to come back and show Rondo the guns in these cabinets. We’ll be out of your way in just a few minutes.”

“You’re not in my way. I’ve just been cleaning and scraping paint in the places I can reach. Tammy and Sandra will be out after work. We’ve been working out here until dark each day.”

“Did they have the electricity put in their names?”

“Yes, and the phone too.”

“We need to be on our way. We’ll have two more girls come through here later ... and I think you may know them.”

“Are Diedra and Haley coming over to work on this farm? I’m so happy for them. I’m sure they will learn a lot from you.”

“They’re really good tractor drivers and they work hard too. They’ll be working all summer for us. Tell Sandra and Tammy I’ll see them in a few days. I have more land that I’m looking at, and I’ll need more insurance too.”

“I sure will.

“Rondo, it was nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you too, Brenda...

“Josey, you’re in trouble, Son.”

“No I’m not. I’m not going to let that happen. I have too much at stake to fuck it up now.”

I knew where the Glendale farm headquarters was, and where Mrs. Harris Glenn used to live. When we drove up, the place looked deserted and I didn’t want to snoop around too much without permission.