Page 4 of Kinsey

Of course, they thought that was funny, too, and he laughed with them.He loved his brothers and would move heaven and earth for them, but there were times when he wanted to strangle one or two of them when they got to teasing him.He thought of himself as a manly man, and it had nothing to do with being in the service.

He was taking the trash out when he heard Wylie on the porch talking to someone.Not that he would eavesdrop on any of them, whoever he was talking to sounded like they were pissed off.As soon as his brother saw him, he hung up the call and told him that he needed to talk to him.

“We need to have a family meeting.Please?”He asked him what was going on.“I don’t want to do this anymore, Kinsey.I’m sick of farming until we drop, only to get up and do it again the next day.I’ve not had a date in ages, and I want to be able to find myself a wife someday and raise a couple of kids while I’m still young enough to enjoy them.”He sat down next to his brother on the porch swing.

“You never said anything like that before.”He said that he’d been thinking about it for the last five or so years.“You were breaking a date off with someone.That’s what I heard.Right?”

“Yes, and apparently for the last time.She’s a nice woman, but sick of waiting for me to get my ducks in a row and not cancel another date with her.I’ve seen her a few times, but while I know she’s not one I’d like to spend the rest of my life with, I can’t get out of my head that she’s out there and I’m missing her.”He told him he was sorry.“Don’t be sorry, Kinsey.I don’t want that, but I have a feeling that the others are feeling the same way.I know that Gleason is sick of working for someone else when he’s needed here.Bodi hates his job so much that he doesn’t want to go to work anymore.And Ara said he’s sick of working for a newspaper that doesn’t pay him much and never having a story to sink his teeth into.”

“I didn’t know.”He asked him if he missed dating.“I haven’t thought of going out since I came back.I knew there was work to be done and put it on the back burner.Do I miss it?Yes.Very much so.I hate that the only time I get dressed up is for something to do with the farm and nothing that involves a soft woman.Like you, I have to believe that there is someone out there for us, but I’ve probably missed the chance of—is this because of the rumor and the auction?”

“No.Yes, a little bit.When I heard that it might be going on, I was excited to think that it might be a way for us to get out from under this place.Remember what grandma had to say?She told us to sell to the highest bidder and have a life.Right now, that sounds like a good idea.”Not that he’d been thinking about all that much, but he did now.To be out from under the debt that would be coming to them in the fall again would be wonderful.And for him to go to work that offered insurance would be brilliant.Someone else to take over and do what he hated doing daily.“What are you thinking about?”

“How much I would love to leave the paperwork to someone else.That I’d love a job where when I got off at five, I was finished for the day.”Stretching out his legs, he thought of what it would be like to have to sell this place off.“I’m sure that the renters of the land that we have would buy us out on what they’re renting.But that wouldn’t be enough, would it?You want out all the way.”

“I do.It wouldn’t matter to me if we just sold off everything and walked away.I do know that there are a lot of perks to us owning all this land.That we have meat when we want it.Fresh vegetables too.But even that doesn’t stand up to us having money in our pockets and—selling this all would make us wealthy men, Kinsey.Wealthy enough that we could buy ourselves a home that was built in this century.A new car, as well as going back to college if we wanted, getting a better education for something that would keep us in money, and a new house.”He told him that he’d given this a great deal of thought.“It’s all I’ve thought about for the last decade.Okay, not that long, but about five years.I just want out.I’ll stick it out if none of the rest of us want out, but I’m not going to be loving it anytime soon.I hate it here.”

“All right.We should talk this weekend when Ralpheal comes home.He might not have an opinion either way since he’s rarely around, but we all have to make the decision rather than one ofus.It has to be all or none.”He agreed with him.“All right.You tell the others, and I’ll talk to Ralpheal when he calls tomorrow.Let everyone be thinking about it before Saturday.”

Kinsey thought about it as he was getting ready for bed.It was barely dark outside when he was about ready, and he hated that as much as the others did.Getting up at the crack of dawn and going to bed early enough to be able to stay awake all day.There were other perks he knew that his brother hadn’t mentioned, and he thought about those as well.Did he really want out of this as much as his brother did?He just didn’t know.

Talking to Ralpheal the next afternoon, he thought that he’d not have an opinion, but he didn’t want to live here anymore either.He wanted to buy himself his own home and settle down as well.That surprised him because he’d never said anything like that before, and he was also surprised at how happy he was to be coming home for this meeting.

He didn’t even know how to go about selling this place.It was good acreage; the soil was good, and they had good yields when they grew wheat and alfalfa.Then there were the cattle that they had that they’d have to sell off as well.Or would it go with the farm?He didn’t know.But he knew that if they did go ahead and sell off, he needed to talk to Ruby Gold.That was a promise that he’d made with his grandmother when she’d been dying.That he’d sell to her and only her.

“Don’t you wait until you’re as old as I am before you sell it off, Kinsey.”He’d told his grandma that it was the family farm.“There ain’t no reason for us to have a family farm if it’s killing us off before our time.You sell it to the highest bidder, and you get out of this little town and find you a good wife and have a bunch of little ones.”

The land was in his name only.The others knew that, so asking them if they wanted to sell out was just being nice.He’d split the money with them six ways, too.Just because someone had decided that he should be responsible for this place didn’t mean that the others didn’t have a vested interest in it being sold off.Before he left the house for the day, he put in a call to Ms.Ruby.He had her number in with the other things that his grandma had left him for when he was ready to get his head out of his ass, as she told him, and to sell the farm before it killed him.

~*~

Meggie didn’t have time for sales calls today.She had three meetings today and four tomorrow.None of them were going to go well, she knew, especially if she was in the kind of mood that she was in now.When her phone beside her rang, she didn’t want to answer it but knew that on some level it was her responsibility to at least say something nice to whomever called her.

“Ms.Ruby?Please don’t transfer me again.I’ve been on the phone for an hour now, and I think I’ve been transferred at least a dozen times.I’m looking for Grace Ruby.I don’t want to talk to a salesperson.I don’t need anything looked into, I just want to talk to Grace Ruby.”She told him that she was Meggie Gold, Grace’s granddaughter.“Can you get me to talk to Grace then?I swear to you, I don’t want to borrow money or pay for whatever a dividend is.Just talk to her.”

“I can help you.My grandmother retired a few years ago, and I’ve taken on the job of talking to people who are looking for her.You tell me what you want, and I’ll see where I can get you into the right department.Or perhaps to my grandmother.You tell me and I’ll figure this out with you.”He told her what his name was.“I know about you, Mr.Pennington.Your banker called here, telling me that you were going on the auction block for non-payment of taxes.I’ve since realized that was a lie and have been having a good talk with my grannie about your family.Especially your grandmother.”

“My grandma told me that if I were to ever want to sell the farm, I had to ask you guys first.”She asked him if he was serious.“I am.At least I’m enquiring about it now.My brothers and I have been talking, and while we’ve not made a decision yet, I’d like to see what my options are for selling it all and walking away from this place.We’re having a meeting together on Saturday when my other brother gets here, and we’re going to talk it over.I thought that I’d get some numbers ready to see what sort of options we had here.We have a lot of acres to sell, and some of that is being rented to other farmers.Plus, I have about two hundred head of cattle, too.”

“I’m to understand that you have about five thousand acres, correct?”He said that at last count,they did but one of his brothers was thinking of buying up the land next to them.“I’m assuming that it’s part of the land that your father lost in his cards sometime.”

“You do know a lot about us.Yes, our dad lost about three thousand acres about fifteen years ago when he was losing at poker.We’ve gotten most of it back, but for a few hundred of them, my brother has been looking into it.Farming isn’t what it used to be.From what I’m to understand about our dad is that he was never any good at it and shouldn’t have been playing the cards at all.”

“Do you have access to a fax machine?”He told her that he did, and they had a landline in the house.“So do I in my own home.All right.You fax me whatever paperwork you have on your place, mineral rights, any renters’ agreements that you have, and I’ll get back with you on Saturday, if you’ll allow me to be at the meeting.”

“I’d have to ask my brothers.They don’t know that I’m calling you yet.So you understand, right now it looks as if they all want out, but I think hearing what we can get for the place might be the kicker into it.Only my name is on the deeds.It was left to me when my grandma died.The others know that but have been helping me run the thing since we’ve been alone.”He cleared his throat, and she could hear papers being shuffled around.“I have everything here.When we were able to get the land back from others around, it was put into my name as well.I don’t know why we did it that way, but there you have it.If you give me a number, I can send this right over to you.It’s about fifty or so sheets in case you have to load your paper up.”

The fax machine started to work almost as soon as she gave him her number.It looked like he had the deeds first, then she was waiting for the other work to come through.While it was spitting out the papers that he was sending her, she began calculating what five thousand acres would be to the men.It was going to make Kinsey very wealthy, and if he split it six ways like it sounded like his plan was, they’d all be making a great deal of money off the sale of the land alone.

By the time the last sheet came out of the machine, she’d already figured out about how much was going to be coming from the sale of the place.In addition to the cattle sales and the equipment sales, there was a considerable amount of money coming from the sale of the house, too.Even if it was in poor shape, it would be worth a great deal as it was sitting in the middle of all the land that was prime selling land in the middle of Ohio and into other surrounding states.

Calling her grannie after getting an address from Kinsey, she told her what was going on.She was excited for the boys, as she continued to call them and hoped that they could broker a good deal for them.She told her grannie that she could sell the land to one buyer and be done with it, but she was going to put a for sale sign on it and let the highest bidder take it all.

“You won’t divide it up?”Meggie told her that she didn’t think she’d have to, that it would sell like it was.“Have you ever had a sale go for as much as this one is going to be?”

“No.Have you?”Grannie told her no, she’d not, but worried that people would be pissed about her not being a realtor.“I’m brokering a deal, not selling houses.Do you think that would make a difference?”

“I don’t know love.But before Saturday, I’d look into this to see if there are any rules about you doing this for them.”She said that she would and was glad that she’d brought it up.“You look into it, and I’ll ask around about things, too.I’m sure that the cattle will be nothing to get rid of.It’s the house and the barns that might cause some trouble with people.If they want the land, then they might not care at all if there are houses and barns on the land.Understand?”

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