“Good for me,” Virgil said, standing up.
“I’m fine with it,” Lucas said.
“If we can’t schedule the DNA, I might stay home an extra day,” Virgil said. “Call me.”
—
Duncan called him,and Lucas as well, to tell them the DNA techs were off the next day, because they’d been working overtime on the men identified through the photos and were being pushed to take comp time instead of overtime, so Virgil stayed on the farm that extra day.
The farm, which rolled across two hundred and forty acres of pasture, alfalfa, and a line of woodland that followed a creek on the far west side of the property, wasn’t a major source of income. A hundred and sixty acres was in four separate alfalfa fields, the rest being in pasture, Frankie’s garden, and the farm buildings, which included a modest barn, a garage, a machine shed, a newer horse stable built by Virgil and a neighbor, and the house.
On the first evening at home, Virgil had worked through some baseball drills with Sam, Frankie’s fifteen-year-old son with an extremely former husband, and picked sweet corn with his own twins, Alex and Willa, and generally got no writing done at all.
When the sun was three finger-widths above the horizon, he and Frankie saddled their two horses and rode the perimeter of the farm, with a nice gallop along the edge of the creek.
On the morning of the second day, Virgil sat glassy-eyed at the kitchen table as Frankie and Olaf Nilsson, a neighbor, discussed the possibility of overseeding two of Frankie’s aged alfalfa fields with some kind of grass to rehab the declining alfalfa. They were trying to decide who would do the work with what machinery and who’d pay for the diesel and what cut Nilsson might get of the hay produced by the two still-productive alfalfa fields in return for his work and machines on the older fields.
Virgil eventually asked, “Why don’t we just buy the seed and pay Olaf to do the work?”
They both looked at him as though his brain had just rolled out of his ear, and then Olaf said in kindly Scandinavian tones, “Because then Frankie would have to come up with a stack of cash which she’d want to deduct from your taxes, and I’d have to pay taxes on what I get from her. If I do some work for you and get back a few tons ofcattle feed, you think some dim-bulb accountant at the IRS is gonna be able to figure that out?”
During the afternoon, they ran farm-related errands and took the twins on a hike around the barn, and Virgil took a call from Duncan: “We’re good on the DNA sampling for tomorrow at one o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
—
In bed thatnight, he told Frankie, “I’m just burning up this August. Burning it up, talking to Internet influencers. I want to be here with you guys, and I want to write, and instead, I’m up to my neck in true-crimers in the Cities. The question is, how many good months like this can we burn and not regret it when we get old? I mean, this is one of the greatest months I’ve ever felt here, except for a little too much rain.”
“Good questions,” Frankie said. “No easy answer.”
Virgil punched his pillow back so he could lean back on it, half-upright, and Frankie put her head on his shoulder. “I wonder if the BCA would give me a leave of absence,” Virgil said. “You know, a year off. I could do a book and a half and then go back to the BCA if the books don’t work out.”
“You won’t find out about a leave of absence unless you ask,” Frankie said. “That seems like it might be a temporary solution. But: the books will work out. People like what you write.”
“When the new contract comes in, maybe I could build you an arena.”
She patted his stomach: “Not a pipe dream, but not a big urgent thing, either. You don’t really need an arena with two horses.”
“How long are you going to have…only two horses?”
She smiled, rolled her eyes, and said, “Rick and I have been talking about this warmblood rescue horse at Connie’s. Six years old. He’s a beauty, but he’s been abused. He’d need a lot of work just to get him to trust us. We could get him for a contribution to the rescue ranch. Maybe five thousand. Maybe a little more.”
“A rescue,” Virgil said. “A warmblood. I kinda like the sound of all of that.”
—
The next morning,Virgil left for the Twin Cities at nine o’clock, and halfway there took a call from Lucas.
“I won’t be with you at Carlson’s house,” Lucas said. “We went to a goddamn vegetarian place last night. Asmov’s Veggies. I’d stay away from it if I were you. I’m sick as a dog. I can’t get more than ten feet from a toilet or I’m in trouble.”
“You gonna see a doc?”
“I’m married to a doc and she says I have a mild case of food poisoning and I’ll be good again tomorrow. I’m weak as a puppy right now. I get tired when I try to stand up.”
“Don’t worry about it. I won’t be doing anything but watching,” Virgil said. “I’ll give you a call when we’re done.”
“Try to lay a little bullshit on Fisk. See what she thought about her old man. Push her a little on Doris.”
