“I don’t want to antagonize them.”
“Maybe if you antagonized them some, they’d stop coming here and making you upset.”
The truck stopped in front of the house. Across the yard, Lyla stepped out from the barn, and Ellen waved her back in. She didn’t need her daughter in the middle of this; sometimes, Verdacorp didn’t play nice, and she didn’t want Lyla to get scared or worried. Penny, irritated, turned and went back into the house, muttering under her breath.
“I swear, those Robinson brothers need a good whooping and—” then the closing door cut her off.
Ellen walked to the edge of the porch, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked down at the two men in the truck.
Clive Robinson stepped out from behind the wheel. She pointed down the driveway and said, “You can turn your truck around and go. I have a lot of work today.”
“Ellen, we just want to talk for a few minutes.”
“Clive, we’ve known each other for how long? Twenty years? And have I ever changed my mind on anything I’ve set it on?”
“Ellie—”
“Don’t call me Ellie.” Only her husband and family were allowed to use that nickname.
“Ellen, I have some numbers for you to look at. We can make a deal today, and you can have a check on Monday.”
“I don’t want Verdacorp money.”
“It’ll help.” Clive reached the steps.
“Do not,” she said with a glance to his feet. He stopped walking.
“I know it’s been tough for you here since John died.”
“I’m tired of this, Clive,” she said. “You’ve known John since high school. You know my family. And you’re part of a company that is destroying farms throughout the valley.”
“We’re not—”
“Cut the bullcrap. I’m not buying what you’re selling. Off my property, I mean it. I have work to do before the storm, and you’re just wasting my time.”
Tom Garza, who had come with Clive and had the finesse of a steer on roller skates, said, “We know you’re struggling, and with these storms, you’re gonna lose your crops and it’s too late in the season to replant. You’re barely holding on; we can save you.”
“I don’t need you, or Verdacorp, to save my family.”
“Come now,” Tom said. “The Coulters signed the land lease. You’re the last holdout. You don’t want to stop progress.”
The Coulters? Millie and George told her just last week that they would never sign with Verdacorp.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
But she worried. If the Coulters sold the right-of-way, that meant her land was in Verdacorp’s way. They needed her to lease to them to connect the properties they already owned.
And it meant that all the conversations she and John had had with the older farming family were for naught. While they hadn’t been ready to sell when John had made them an offer the month before he died, the Coulters had promised they wouldn’t sell to anyone but the McKennas. Leasing a right-of-way for utilities—which included the underground mineral rights—would negatively impact the value of their land. And it would create problems for the McKenna property.
John had told her over and over, grow or die. She needed the Coulters’ land.
“Ellie—Ellen,” Clive said, “if you let me come in, we can sit down, have a cuppa coffee, and I can share a new proposal, one that will satisfy both you and Verdacorp.”
“Does this new proposal have me selling or leasing any part of my land?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then the answer is still no.”
