He didn’t think Ryan was my dad’s son. Unfortunately, I had come to the same conclusion.
19.CROWDED HOUSE
BIGFOOT
Sammy wasoff on one side of the clubhouse playing a game with her brother and my son. The boys were only about a year apart in age and, thankfully, got along well. I was trying to do some online research about what might be wrong with our mushrooms, but I if there was one thing I sucked at worse than growing the fucking things, it was research.
“Have I mentioned lately how fucking much it sucks that Twitch went on that ski trip and ended up dead?” I growled.
“There has to be someone who knows something about mushrooms.” Baffle was just as exhausted as I was. We had been pulled in several different directions all at once non-stop lately and it was getting old and wearing us all down fast.
“Why do you need to know about mushrooms?”
I turned to see Sammy’s Uncle Josh standing there.
“You guys made good time getting back,” I announced to change the subject.
“Yeah, not playing around with Lis’s safety, and if I’m in danger because I’m a Morton, that puts her in danger by being with me.”
I nodded my head. If he’d put his woman ahead of himself like that, then there was hope for them and for me not killing him for being an asshole stepfather to my son.
“So, what was it you needed to know about mushrooms?”
“Say you have a bunch of mushrooms growing in an enclosed space, and a batch of them has either a weird web-like substance growing around them or there’s a fine powdery substance and the fuckers are starting to turn pink and brown in spots. What do you think that could be?”
“Sounds like Cobweb Disease, but I’d have to see it to know for sure.”
“Cobweb Disease?” Baffle asked. “That’s a real thing?”
“You can look it up.” Josh nodded to the phone in my hand. I did just that and turned my phone to show Baffle a picture that looked a lot like what was going on with our shrooms.
“You need to come with me,” I ordered as I stood up. “And keep in mind that this shit does not get back to Lis. If I find out she knows, it will be your ass on the line.”
“Whatever you say, Bigfoot,” Josh tossed out on a defeated sounding sigh.
“Anything else, we’ll come to a compromise on. This is club business and I’m trusting you with it solely based on your connection to my woman.”
“Melissa isn’t your woman!” he growled it out like the threat it was meant to be.
I laughed at him. “Nope, she sure the fuck is not. Your niece, however, is my woman.”
“Since when?” Josh asked.
“Since the moment she saved my bacon on the side of the road.”
“Dammit, Lis is not going to like that shit.”
“Don’t really give a damn what she likes. She can get over it.”
As soon as we got Josh downstairs and he saw what I did, he grinned. “Looks like you already took the right steps. Air-tight isolation until you can get this shit cleaned out. Be sure you don’t unseal the plastic until you have this whole section cleaned properly though, the spores, or whatever the fuck they are linger on everything.”
“The problem is that the next section looks to be infected too. It was just a little behind this one, so we didn’t notice the webbing in the soil.”
“Damn. Let me through to see, then. We’ll see what we can salvage and how much needs to be culled.”
“There’s no saving them once they’re infected?”
“Nope. As you have learned, the shit spreads fairly easily, especially in an enclosed space where the powdery shit has nowhere to blow but to the next section. Every time someone walked by one section to the next, some of that powder probably went with them either on the smallest breeze kicked up by walking by, or it may have clung to their clothing.”
