Merriton

“What’s this I hear about you buying another farm?” Kevin was stuck at home because of a nasty storm. It was the first time that Sierra had seen him since Roscoe had brought him home in shame. Sierra answered, “What’s this I hear about you going out on the mountain with Roscoe?” A guilty silence encompassed the house. Randy was with Elvis trying to hire the Thunder Brothers. They had won the auction last week and paid less for the farm than Sierra’s worst case scenario. She smiled to herself at the thought of the rep from Kaufman and Broad telling Elvis that they had paid too much and now land prices in the area were “too high.” It all had been worth it to hear the contempt in his voice.

Since Randy was out, Sierra was going to find out what Kevin had been doing with Roscoe, but Kevin said nothing. “Seriously, what are you doing?” Kevin shook his head. “You first. Why did you buy that farm?” Sierra shrugged. “We didn’t want it to be turned into a bunch of tract houses.” Kevin shook his head. “You’re not going to build a huge warehouse of computers to compete with Zaunter?” Sierra scanned her brain for the name. “Saunter?” Kevin sighed, “You know, Zaunter with a ‘Z.’ They provide backups for big companies.” Sierra shook her head. “Kevin, we’re buying a farm to keep it a farm. Don’t you remember all the ethanol research I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks?” No, of course he wouldn’t remember that, he hadn’t been home. He had been doing God knows what with Roscoe.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kevin pulled out his phone and held it up to her. “You know how my phone doesn’t work here? Well, two days ago, I went to Emigration and it works there and I had about fifteen messages from Jerry at Zaunter. You know who he is?” Sierra shook her head. “Well, he’s big. Not Random McCain big, but big, and he is all in a panic, so I agreed to go to lunch with him yesterday. You know what he’s in a panic about? Random! Yeah, Random!” Kevin pointed toward the door leading outside as if Randy was in the room with them or had just stepped out that door.

“Random went to lunch with him a while back sniffing around about how Jerry can store so much data securely. Jerry told him more than he probably should have trying to recruit Random and now you guys are buying a huge fucking farm in the middle of nowhere. Jerry is about ready to sue your ass off!” Sierra was dumbstruck. She could hardly think of what to say, but Kevin kept on ranting, “The worst, the absolute WORST is that you didn’t let me in on it! You KNOW I have a degree in Mathematics! I would be just the guy to work on a data storage algorithm, but not a word from you! I can’t believe you’d cut me out of this! Zerbitz! Zerbitz I understood! They never trusted me and they really just considered me a cheap replacement for Random, but YOU! I’ve known you since we were kids! I never thought you guys’d betray me like this!”

Suddenly it was obvious that Kevin was letting it all out. Everything that had happened over the last few months was all coming out in one huge rant. Kevin waited for Sierra to say something. She had no idea what to say, but she tried, “Kevin, I PROMISE you. We are buying a corn farm to sell corn to ethanol distilleries. We would NEVER keep a secret from you.”

“Oh! Never keep a secret from me! What about this?!” He stalked up the stairs. Sierra followed him as he headed to her bedroom. A cold chill went down her spine when she saw him grab her iPod. He held it up to her face. “I heard you tell Random that this is the receiver for your wireless headphones. That’s total BULLSHIT! It’s a Nike+ and you’re running again!” She wanted to retreat, but he held the iPod close to her face. “You’re running again!”

Sierra tried to justify herself, “Randy knows I’m running. We agreed that I wouldn’t get a treadmill. He said if I’m willing to run in this snow that it was okay.” Kevin shook his head and kept ranting, “No, that WASN’T the agreement. The agreement was that as long as you couldn’t measure it, he was okay with that.” Kevin scrolled through her iPod. “This looks like a lot of measuring to me! Does he know you did seven miles yesterday? Does he know you did twelve last Saturday? So much for no secrets in this house!” He threw her iPod Nano at the bed and it bounced roughly smacking into the nightstand. With a sickening crunch the two of them heard the screen break.

For a split second, they looked at each other. The house was silent. “Roscoe is teaching me how to be a park ranger. He said he’d try to get me a job next winter, but only if I work with him and keep my ass out of the back woods.”