A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [45]
Cici took a breath. “Lenny,” she said, very calmly, “this is not your fault. I think what we have here is a simple misunderstanding, so let me see if I can clear it up. First of all, I am not a young lady. I am a big-city woman who’s low on hormones and low on patience and you don’t have any idea how much I want air-conditioning right now.” His grin began to fade. She took a step forward. “So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go out to your truck and you’re going to get some wire and some tools and you’re going to hook up a 220-volt circuit for my new air conditioner, and you’re not going to worry about new outlets or pulling wires until I tell you to, okay?”
He shifted his sullen gaze from Cici to his crew, and then back again. He muttered, “Got to go into town to get the parts.”
Cici said, staring him down, “Then you’d better get started.”
As one, they shuffled past her out of the room. When they were gone, Cici pulled up her T-shirt and wiped her face, then followed them. She reached the front of the house just as four truck doors were slamming, and Lindsay came in from the kitchen. She looked as hot and sweaty as Cici felt, and her face was spattered with grass clippings. She tugged off her baseball cap, lifting one shoulder toward the front door. “Where’s the electrician going?”
Cici sighed. “Who knows? But I’ll bet you ten dollars that’s the last we’ll ever see of him.”
“Unless his crew comes back to murder us in our sleep. Did you get a good look at those guys? I swear I’ve seen some of them on the bulletin board at the post office.”
“Oh.” Cici scrubbed another film of sweat off her face with the hem of her shirt. “Maybe I’d better be more careful who I piss off from now on.”
“Cici! Lindsay!” Bridget’s voice, shrill and imperious, came through the window. “Will you come out here please?”
They started toward the back door. “Why didn’t you just call Farley?” Lindsay asked.
“I guess I’ll have to. I just hate to ask the man to rewire the house for ten dollars.”
“Well, when you do, tell him to bring his tractor.”
Cici pushed open the back door. “What for?”
“To pull our lawn mower out of the swamp.”
“What swamp?”
“The one in our backyard. There’s an inch of standing water and a bog over my ankles.” She pointed to her bare feet. “I lost a tennis shoe.”
Cici stared at her, but Bridget’s insistent voice came again. “Cici! Lindsay! I’m not kidding!”
Far more concerned about the sudden appearance of a bog in the backyard than with either the electrician or whatever was on Bridget’s mind, Cici opened her mouth to question, but Lindsay just shrugged and hurried off after Bridget.
They found her, as expected, in the garden. The ten-by-ten spot she had originally cleared for vegetables had quickly grown to twenty-by-thirty as repeated trips to Family Hardware yielded flat after flat of seedlings. It had all begun when she went out one morning to check on the progress of her three tomato plants, and discovered they were gone. Rabbits, she was certain. She went into town for replacement plants and tomato cages, and returned with not only the tomatoes, but a six-pack of yellow squash—and each pack contained three plants. Squash takes an enormous amount of room, but the ground was soft and easily tillable, so Bridget simply enlarged the garden spot, planted eight new tomato plants and all the squash. The next day half the squash plants had been plucked out of the ground. Bridget went into town for deer repellent and returned with a packet of seed corn, a flat of bell pepper plants and another of cucumbers. Once again she enlarged the vegetable plot to accommodate three rows of corn, two hills of cucumbers, and a row of bell peppers.
She accused moles of making off with the cucumbers, but replanted them and enhanced the garden with eight climbing bean plants, three pumpkin vines, and a selection of zucchini and winter squash. Barring any more mysterious disappearances, they would soon be harvesting enough produce to supply a town twice the size of Blue Valley.