Clara looked down at the pepper.
“My father died last February.”
Julian’s expression softened.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded once.
Hank shifted uncomfortably.
Clara hated sympathy that changed the air in a conversation.
She returned to business.
“What do you mean by fifty cases?”
Julian smiled.
“There she is.”
“There who is?”
“The person who bought three hundred pounds of peppers before knowing what to do with them.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the crates.
“Then tell me.”
“No.”
Hank laughed.
Julian did too.
“Fair.”
He reached into his shirt pocket.
Pulled out a business card.
Placed it on the top crate.
“If you make something worth buying, call me.”
“Fifty cases?”
“If it’s good.”
“What size bottle?”
“Your problem.”
“Price?”
“Also your problem.”
Clara stared.
Julian continued:
“I don’t buy stories.”
“I buy food.”
“That’s refreshing.”
“Most people find it annoying.”
He started walking toward his vehicle.
Then turned back.
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“Throw away the actually rotten ones.”
Clara raised an eyebrow.
“I had planned to.”
“Good.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
Julian pointed toward Hank.
“Make him regret the five dollars.”
Hank swore at him.
Julian laughed and walked away.
Clara looked at the crates.
Then at the old pickup she had borrowed from her uncle.
She had come to Barlow’s that morning intending to buy sixty pounds.
Maybe eighty.
Enough to test a recipe she had been thinking about for weeks.
She now owned more than three hundred.
Hank held out both hands.
“Still want them?”
Clara looked at him.
Then started loading.
By the time she finished, her shoulders burned.
The truck bed was filled with wooden crates.
She had sorted out thirty-one peppers too far gone to use and left them for compost.
Everything else came home.
Two hundred ninety-one pounds after sorting.
She knew because she weighed every crate.
That was the first number in the notebook.
Not five dollars.
291.4 pounds usable.
Clara wrote it on the first clean page of a spiral-bound ledger.
Then beneath it:
Purchase cost: $5.
Fuel: $18.60.
Crates borrowed: return Wednesday.
She looked at the peppers spread across folding tables inside the Dawson Farm packing room.
Then wrote:
Time before major spoilage: unknown.
That was the problem.
The peppers had been rejected because many were fully ripe.
Fully ripe meant flavor.
It also meant urgency.
Clara had perhaps forty-eight hours before waste became actual waste.
Her mother walked into the packing room holding a laundry basket.
Stopped.
Looked at the tables.
Then at Clara.
“What happened?”
“I bought peppers.”
“I can see that.”
Her mother put down the basket.