Junior Year Box Set полностью

“Oh, joy,” she said in a deadpan voice, then turned to my dad. “You’re coming with us to help.”

I just raised my eyebrows when he was about to object. He was the one who called Mom old. He decided it best to ignore us and go make breakfast.

◊◊◊

Mom was in heaven. It turned out that bringing Little David and Coby to church was a bigger deal than my winning state. That was when I realized that Greg had never brought his kids to church, and this was the first time she had a grandchild there to show off. I was glad Dad came because he helped me keep the crowd back a little.

Reverend Jackson came out to the lobby to see what the commotion was all about.

“I wondered why no one was in their seats,” he said with a smile. He looked at our little guys and asked, “Who might you be?”

“These are the newest members of your congregation: Jacob Jeffrey Dawson—we call him ‘Coby’—and this is David Pratt, Peggy Pratt’s son,” Mom said, making the introductions.

Reverend Jackson held out his hands and took Coby. He had four children, so he was comfortable with my son. I shook my head when he turned and took Coby into the church with him. I had Little David, and Dad carried the two baby carriers. Reverend Jackson indicated that we were to sit in the first row that was usually empty.

“Come on, David. Let’s introduce our newest members.”

I followed Reverend Jackson up on stage. The choir sang Beautiful One as everyone made their way to their seats. When the song ended, Reverend Jackson stepped up to the podium.

“Welcome. The choir is right; we have two new members of our congregation who are beautiful ones. Let me introduce you to David Pratt and Jacob Dawson, who they are calling ‘Coby.’”

He handed me Coby so I could take him to our seats. We were lucky there wasn’t any crying during the service. I think the boys liked the singing.

◊◊◊

After lunch, Dad and I drove to Caryn’s office. Dad was great about letting me bring the boys. They’d both eaten, so it was now nap time. Watching them made me sleepy.

Caryn and Megan came in and sat across from us.

“The first thing I want to talk to you about is the local farm. I talked to John and Mrs. Dawson, and they discovered that the acreage across the river has been in corn for the last several years. They plan to rotate crops and plant soybeans this year,” Caryn said.

“I thought we were going to lease that out until we built the bridge to move equipment across the river,” Dad said.

“We were, but I found a company that will plant and harvest. They’ll also spray for bugs and have the beans walked, whatever that means.”

I laughed. Sometimes I forgot that Caryn was a city girl. I think almost every kid I knew from Lincoln had walked beans and/or detasseled corn for some extra cash at one time or another.

“It’s where you hand-weed the rows of soybeans. There was a time when they would just spray for weeds, but some weeds are becoming resistant, so walking them is the better solution,” Dad said.

Caryn showed the numbers for leasing the land versus planting it ourselves. There were risks either way. There was more of a risk with planting because if something happened and we had a bad crop, we could lose money. The lease option seemed to guarantee at least some positive cash flow. Then Dad pointed out that if it flooded, the renter would just skip out. That decided it for me.

For the farm on this side of the river, the orchards and walnut trees had to be looked at by someone knowledgeable about tree health. Caryn had arranged for a professor from State to come out and look at them. Grandma was also preparing the fields to supply our produce stand. She had plans for several different vegetables. She already had some early lettuce started that we were enjoying. Grandma was getting help from her Mennonite farmhands, who had grown up helping with family gardens. She also had a surprise employee: Yuri’s grandmother. My grandma said she was a huge help. It didn’t hurt that the two women liked each other.

Halfway through our meeting, Coby woke up fussing. Megan got up, grabbed his diaper bag, and took him out of the room.

“She has five younger brothers,” Caryn said.

“She might be the solution to one of my problems,” I said. “Peggy is getting into crunch time at college and needs a break. Do you think Megan would be willing to sleep over for a couple of weeks? We have daycare during the day if both Mom and Peggy are tied up and can’t watch them. The problem is that Coby’s waking up every couple of hours,” I explained.

“We could just put them in your apartment, and you could take care of them,” Dad suggested.

“So could you,” I shot back.

“Let’s ask Megan,” Dad said, warming to my idea.

Megan was a champ and agreed so long as it wasn’t more than through Peggy’s finals. I planned to give her some sort of bonus for bailing us out. Heck, I still owed her for pointing out what Brandon had done. It would have to be something special.