They sort of did, honestly. Carrots are hard.
This was thinner, sandier soil than the heavy clay she’d had back in the city. Maybe the carrots would be happier here.
Mostly, though, they were planting beans and peppers and hills of squash. There were wooden tripods all along the rock wall, and Grandma Billy had her placing a bean at the base of every leg.
“Can I pay you for the seeds?”
“Lord, hon, seeds are cheap. I been saving. Amelia gave me so many seeds out of this garden over the years, least I can do is put them back.”
“But you started these squash already ... they’ve got leaves on them ...”
Grandma Billy waved her hand. “There’s always too many. You start a couple extra in case some of them die, and then they all grow like gangbusters.”
Selena sighed. “I’m not sure how I’d pay you anyhow,” she confessed. “I was hoping there’d be a restaurant or something in town I could wash dishes at ... clean at a motel ... something. But I didn’t see anything like that in town.”
“Oh, well,” said Grandma. “When tourist season starts up, Lupé lets rooms over the café, and she can use a cleaner then. Or out at Rivendell, they’ve got guest cabins and they always need extra hands. Stick around till then, maybe. It’s not long.”
“What kind of tourists do you get out here?” Selena asked. She was finding the desert interesting, even in some lights oddly beautiful, but they were a long way from the big tourist hubs like Sedona and Jerome. There weren’t any big red-rock mesas looming over Quartz Creek.
“Mostly rich white folks who don’t want to live like this, but like to know that somebody is. They come out, do a little tour of Sally’s ranch with the sheep, go to Rivendell, eat a couple fancy local meals, then go away again. They can be a pain in the ass, but they’re the reason historic zones exist and aren’t all snapped up by developers.” She thought for a minute. “Bird-watchers too. Gordon does tours for ’em. And sometimes you get a couple half dozen college students who want to talk to you about dry farming.”
Selena pushed the last of the beans into place. “I suppose dry farming’s the only kind you can do here.”
“Pretty much. Most of us get by on it, though. There’s stuff you can’t grow in the city. Remind me, we’ll plant you some corn for smut.”
“Smut,” said Selena blankly.Err ... is this some kind of vegetable pornography?
“Corn smut!” said Grandma. “Not as fun as it sounds.” She winked. “It’s a mold thing, grows on corn. Looks like hell, and you can’t grow it on that fancy corn they grow in Iowa. And corn breeds by the wind, so you don’t get it within ten miles of those cornfields.”
“Why do youwantto grow mold?”
Grandma grinned like an elderly shark. “’Cause there’s fancy restaurants in the city that’ll pay a goddamn fortune for the stuff. Most of us grow it out here and take it in to Connor. He’s got a flash freezer and ships it back to the city, and we get paid. Couple other things too—there’s a market for young prickly pear pads in another month, and Jenny grows some wicked-ass peppers that fetch a good price. I’ll bring you some seeds for those if you like. And you’ve got some fine chiltepin bushes alongside the house, and those are good money too. But corn smut’s the biggest bang for your buck.”
“The town runs on gourmet corn fungus?” said Selena.
“Pretty much, pretty much. Oh, the weaver sells her rugs, brings in cash, and she buys plenty of veggies from us, since her land ain’t good for nothing but sheep, and people make carvings or sell beaded necklaces or whatnot. I’ll show you how to make genuine heritage wild-crafted sachets if you want. Ain’t nothin’ to it. But mostly it’s little fancy things you can’t grow in the city. We sell ’em and then people feel virtuous ’cause it comes with a story about how it’s all grown by little homestead farmers in a tiny historic town, all organic, farm-to-table stuff. Real nice boy with a cute ass comes out twice a year or so, represents some kind of fair-trade deal, makes sure the doctor’s comin’ through regular, makes sure we don’t feel exploited.” Grandma Billy managed to look wistful and dirty at the same time. “I’d exploithimif I was twenty years younger.”
In a desperate attempt to change the subject, Selena asked, “Grandma Billy? Are there any animals around here that scream at night?”
“Sure,” Grandma said. “You hear one?” Selena nodded. “Did it sound like somebody bein’ murdered or the torments of the damned?”
“Err ...” This was not something she’d ever had to quantify before. “More like someone being murdered, I think?”
“Probably a fox.” Grandma nodded sagely. “They start going at it, sounds like babies in a blender.”
Selena contemplated this distressingly vivid image and said, weakly, “I think I need a drink.” She cleared her throat. “Ah, will you have some? I found some tea in a cupboard.”
“Believe I will,” said Grandma. “And if we check in my bag, I might have a drop of something to go with it.”
When Grandma Billy left that evening, Selena found herself tired but not sleepy. She made another cup of tea—which admittedly was more like brown water, given how many times the tea bag had been used, but tea still felt like an extravagance—and flopped down on the couch to read some of Aunt Amelia’s travel journals. The one about traveling in Tibet was interesting, although the first ten pages were mostly complaints about the airport in Beijing and white-knuckle driving in various Chinese cities. There were photos of the Great Wall with half a dozen people in front of it, four women and two men, all of them dressed like tourists and grinning like fools. Selena picked out her aunt and was struck by how young she looked. Middle-aged, definitely, but her hair was salt and pepper instead of white. The writing was just how she remembered her aunt, though, the same snappy wit and bright-eyed interest in everything from yaks to hot pot.
Selena had just finished a lengthy but hilarious diatribe about altitude sickness, accompanied by a stick figure begging for oxygen, when she became aware of the feeling that she was being watched.
She looked up, thinking that maybe Copper was doing her patented Stare Hard Enough and the Human Will Give Me a Treat trick. But Copper had had a long day chasing after lizards and lay on her side, sleeping the sleep of the just.
Just my imagination,Selena thought, and went back to the journal.
The feeling didn’t go away. It persisted through Tibetan Buddhist temples and ancient ruins and military checkpoints.
