Merriton

“We need a favor.” Sierra spoke to Elvis after he answered his door. He said nothing, just opened the door and shut it behind them quickly to stop the freezing snow from entering the house. He led Sierra and Randy to the kitchen, where Vesta sat with a pile of yarn. She smiled at the two and asked Elvis, “Do you need privacy?” Elvis shook his head.

All four chairs at the kitchen table were filled. Elvis was the first to talk, “Been wonderin’ when you’d come to me. The only thing holdin’ that barn together are the termites holdin’ hands. You done a good job o’ keepin’ out the snow, but eventually, you gotta build a new one. I shoulda warned you ’bout that barn before the snow started flyin’ but I got a little caught up. Forgot you folks were from California. Probably never lived through a winter like this before. And this one’s an easy one.” He nodded at Vesta and she nodded back.

Randy and Sierra just sat at the table, blinking. Sierra recovered first. “You’re right. I never had to deal with goats in the winter in San Francisco. I talked to a contractor about the barn in late October, but he wouldn’t break ground on the new barn until spring, so we had him make the current one good enough to last.” Randy was aghast. They hadn’t come there to talk about Sierra’s goats. He had learned long ago to let Sierra handle the talking in business situations, however.

“You don’t want me to build ya a barn?” Elvis was surprised and Vesta smiled to herself. Sierra gracefully answered, “If I had known you would have helped us, I wouldn’t have called a contractor. I’m sorry.” Elvis picked up a mesh of yarn and fiddled with it and then self-consciously put it back on the table. “What sort of favor, then?”

Both Randy and Sierra took a deep breath. Randy looked to Sierra and nodded. She said, “We’ve decided to buy the Thunder Brothers Ranch.” She waited to see Elvis’ reaction. He had been leaning back in his chair, but when Sierra made her revelation, he sat up. He looked to Vesta and she shrugged. Then he looked at Sierra. She gave him a stone-cold serious look. Finally he turned to Randy and railed into him, “This ain’t no goat farm, boy. The Thunder Brothers Ranch is 7,000 acres of corn land. You don’t know first thing ’bout corn!”

Randy kept quiet and Sierra opened her brief that she brought with her. “After looking at the documents, it appears that John and James Sebastian were excellent corn farmers, yielding an average of 200 bushels an acre for the last four years.” She presented Elvis with the first of many papers Sierra had compiled from her research of the farm. “Unfortunately, they sold them at less than two dollars a bushel, which according to my research is approximately half the going rate for those years.” She handed him another paper. Elvis didn’t look at her research. He self-consciously held the papers and occasionally looked to Vesta for help. Vesta tended to her yarn and avoided Elvis’ gaze.

“The worst the Thunder Brothers could be accused of is being poor businessmen. Fortunately…” Sierra paused for dramatic effect, “we are EXCELLENT businessmen.” She pulled out another paper, “We intend to continue growing corn. John and James sold their corn to Tate and Lyle, who made high fructose corn syrup out of it. Instead, we will sell our corn to ethanol distilleries, where we can get almost five dollars a bushel. Ethanol is very trendy right now and it’s driving the prices up a bit.” She paused to see if Elvis had any objections. He mumbled, “The Thunder Brothers ARE good farmers…”

Sierra pulled out another page. “We also intend to invest in no-till farming equipment so we can get certified under the green certificate program and sell our carbon credits to companies in California. It appears John and James were using traditional farming methods, so they were unable to take advantage of that program.” Elvis looked at her with a blank face. “Carbon credits?” Randy and Sierra had assumed that Elvis would know about the carbon credit program. If Sierra was surprised, she showed no indication and gracefully explained the program. “Farmers who use no-till methods of farming pollute less because the carbon isn’t released from the earth in tilling. They earn carbon credits from the state of California, which can be sold to companies who need them.” Elvis shook his head, “So companies who pollute the air more than they should can get away with it by buying your credits? That ain’t fair.”

Sierra patiently explained, “It works out to be less pollution.” Elvis shook his head. “It ain’t that easy. I’m not a corn farmer, but tilling gets rid of the weeds. No tilling means more weeds, so you gotta kill ‘em somehow. You end up using herbicides to kill the weeds, so you’re polluting your own farm instead of the air. Plus, you’ll probably spend all the money ya woulda earned on the carbon credits on the weed sprays.” Sierra pulled a sheet from the back of her list, “We’ve accounted for the increased herbicide costs here and they are offset greatly by the carbon credits here. Of course, this is based on last seasons’ prices. If California has a carbon credit collapse like Europe did, then this section,” she circled part of the profits, “will be out of the equation.”

Elvis pointed to the last section, “What’s that?” Sierra smiled. “Oh yes, in September and October, we will have a Corn Field Maze to attract tourism from Up North. This estimate is entirely guess work, but even without it and the carbon credits, we will earn back the investment of the equipment in five years and the farm in an additional ten to fifteen, depending on the initial investment cost.” Elvis looked at Vesta. She looked back at him with love and devotion. Randy couldn’t tell what was going on between them, but something was decided.

“Looks like ya been thinkin’ ’bout this. What’d ya want from me?” Sierra looked at Randy and continued with a smile, “Two things: firstly, we were hoping you would help us hire the Thunder Brothers. We don’t want to offend them by offering a job on their own farm.” Sierra indicated on the final spreadsheet, “Here is the amount we intended to pay them. Is it fair?” Elvis looked at the spreadsheet. “For a year?” Sierra nodded. Elvis shook his head, “This for both o’ them or do they each get this much?” Sierra pointed at the amounts, “They each get this much, see, here and here. There are only two of them, correct? There were only two names on the title.” Elvis nodded. “If they don’t take the jobs, they’re damn fools. What else do you need?”

“We need you to help us with the bidding at the auction. We’ve never done it before, but Randy says you’ve bought many of your sheep at auctions.” Elvis threw an angry look at Randy, “How’d you know that, boy?” Randy wasn’t supposed to talk. Sierra was supposed to do all the talking. He panicked, “When I was converting your data, there was the genealogy field, remember?” Elvis squinted and nodded. Randy continued, “Well, it took me a long time to figure out that ‘A’ meant that you had bought the sheep at an auction.” Elvis squinted and then relaxed. “How much are ya goin’ to spend on this farm?”

That was the one question that Randy was supposed to answer. He took his turn and said exactly what Sierra had told him to say, “Whatever it takes to get it.”

Elvis leaned back. “You two have been livin’ here for only a few months. You haven’t even touched that back room o’ the house. You are still sleepin’ in Arbitus’ bed. Seems to me like you’re ready to move back to San Francisco at any time and now you’re tellin’ me that you wanna buy another farm? Hell, boy, you ain’t used the one you got! Why don’t you see if you can make it through the winter and then decide whether you want a bigger farm?”

Randy was supposed to let Sierra deal with any objections Elvis might have, but he couldn’t keep it inside. “I’m sorry, Elvis. I can’t let the farm get into the hands of housing developers. I know houses need to be built and people need places to live, but not here, okay? Merriton is my place to escape all those people. I need Merriton to stay small, even if I lose my shirt doing it. Have you looked at Emigration?” Elvis said nothing, so Randy continued, “Along the north side of town, it’s just huge chunks of houses that all look the same. I can tell, Elvis. I can tell that Emigration used to be like Merriton, but because it’s closer to Up North, it’s grown. I don’t want that. Let it happen after I’m dead, but if I’m alive, I don’t want it to happen and I’m in a position to stop it. Luckily, Sierra’s smart enough to make it almost profitable.” He turned toward Sierra and her eyes were big and almost full of tears.

Just like when he sold off Zerbitz, Randy opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have. They had rehearsed this, but Randy had to add his passionate desires to the business. When he sold off Zerbitz, Sierra estimated that the outburst lost him approximately six million dollars, but earned him the lenient contract that allowed him to escape when it became unbearable. This time, it had earned the devotion of Elvis and she couldn’t begin to measure how valuable that was in this tiny town.

A special thank you to Matthew Reinbold for explaining carbon credits to me.