The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [13]
"Oh, I almost forgot," she continued. "I showed our contract to Tommy today. You should have seen his face. It was priceless. Didn't think I'd do it, huh?" She chuckled to herself smugly.
"I hope he doesn't get mad at me," I said, wondering if she'd explained it was her idea.
"Don't you worry about Tommy. I told him how happy I am to have you out in that orchard. You just need to concentrate on apples."
I was tempted at that point to forget the whole thing. It was pretty easy to see she was using me to make some kind of point with her son and expecting me to do the work of a whole team of people. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of explaining the situation to my dad. He'd probably sign me to a lifetime contract with Slim.
If things had any hope of working out, I needed to find some cheap labor fast. Specifically, I needed employees who didn't require me to pay them, at least not immediately, and were available whenever I needed them. They would also need to be understanding, or at least not vengeful, if the operation fell apart in the end. Oh, and used to being in the cold. I decided this was the type of employee I had to be related to.
Between my immediate family and my uncle's family, there were plenty of relatives to choose from. My dad and uncle were brothers and had built houses next to each other before I was even old enough to remember. I had mentally crossed off my dad and uncle from the list of potential employees. They both were always complaining about how tired they were and how much they had to do around the house already. I was never sure why they were so tired or what they did all day. My dad worked at some place that sold bolts. He almost never talked about his job at home, but when he did it was about missing bolt orders, "worthless salesmen," and "Old Man Scott," who I think was his boss. Uncle David worked at the power plant like a lot of other men where we lived. It was hard to say exactly what he did there, but the place used a lot of coal and produced electricity, so it had to be something to do with one of those things.
My mom didn't have a job, but she made it clear that she was always worn out by the time she put her kids to bed. To tell the truth, I never really knew what she did during the day either. Mom did like working outside, however, and would plant flowers every spring that wouldn't survive the summer. I considered her a faint possibility for the orchard. My aunt Sandy was kind of like a second mom, only funnier. Of the four adults, I would probably have confided in her first about Mrs. Nelson's contract. I knew she would have thought it was funny and not just the kind of funny where she was laughing at me. I couldn't see asking her for help with the work, though.
My only real hope rested with my two younger sisters and three cousins. Common sense said to find someone with a little farming experience, but I actually liked the fact that they would know even less about raising apples than I did. If I was going to be making a lot of mistakes and bad decisions, at least they wouldn't know any better. Besides, if this was going to be my orchard, I didn't want anyone else acting like they ran the place.
Talking them into helping wasn't going to be easy. My sisters had stopped listening to me years before, and my cousins were usually devoted to watching whatever was on TV It was critical for me to first convince my cousin Amy, who was the oldest of the group. My sisters wanted to be like her and her two younger brothers respected her. She was much more persuasive than I was. All in all, I'd feel more confident with her around.
Amy was only four months older than me but a grade ahead. Growing up, we mostly had each other to play with since anyone else our age lived too far away. Most games involved