He stared another second.
“Okay.”
Across the county road, an engine shut off.
Clara did not need to turn.
She already knew who it was.
Roy Halverson had a supernatural ability to appear whenever someone else’s business became entertaining.
Roy owned three hundred acres bordering Clara’s southern boundary. He was fifty-eight, broad through the middle, permanently sunburned, and usually wore a cowboy hat with one side bent where he grabbed it.
He leaned against his tractor.
When he understood what was on the truck, he began laughing.
Not chuckling.
Laughing.
“Clara!”
She kept walking toward the flatbed.
Roy crossed the road.
“Please tell me those aren’t yours.”
“They are.”
He looked at the overflowing bins.
“Watermelons?”
“Yes, Roy.”
“Five hundred watermelons?”
“Approximately.”
He slapped one hand against the fence.
“You spent money on rotten fruit?”
The driver suddenly became fascinated by his paperwork.
Clara pulled on work gloves.
“Rejected fruit.”
Roy pointed toward a melon with an open split along one side.
“That one rejected itself.”
Clara ignored him.
A watermelon rolled from the edge of a bin.
It hit the dry ground.
Crack.
The rind burst.
Red flesh spread across the dirt.
Every goat in the nearby pen lifted its head.
Roy laughed even harder.
“Look at that.”
The goats crowded toward the fence.
Clara picked up half the broken melon.
It smelled sweet.
Fresh enough inside.
She cut away the dirty section with the knife on her belt and placed a manageable portion into a metal trough.
Pepper reached it first.
Then six others.
Their energy changed instantly.
Roy shook his head.
“Those animals need hay.”
“I know.”
“They need forage.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you feeding them birthday leftovers?”
Clara looked at him.
“Because hay is five hundred dollars a ton today and these cost me four hundred dollars delivered.”
Roy’s smile weakened slightly.
“Four hundred?”
“For the whole load.”
“They’re mostly water.”
“Exactly.”
He stared.
Clara continued unloading.
The rejected melons were not intended to replace hay.
That distinction mattered.
Three days earlier, she had driven sixty miles to a produce distribution warehouse after hearing a supermarket chain rejected two truckloads because of bruising and cosmetic damage.
Most ranchers in the county had laughed when the warehouse manager mentioned it.
Clara had not.
She spent three hours separating fruit.
Anything moldy went into the waste pile.
Anything fermented stayed behind.
Anything merely bruised or split but still sound inside went onto her list.
Then she called Dr. Hannah Cole, the veterinarian who had treated Whitmore goats for eight years.
“Can goats eat watermelon?”
“In moderation.”
“How much?”
“Why?”
Clara explained.
There had been a pause.
Then Hannah asked:
“How desperate are we?”
“Pretty desperate.”
The veterinarian helped Clara calculate conservative portions and warned her repeatedly that watermelons were supplementation, not balanced feed. The goats still required dry roughage, minerals, and adequate clean water.
Clara knew.
What the fruit could do was stretch the hay.
Provide moisture.
Provide calories.
Keep appetite alive.
Not solve the drought.
Buy time.
Seven days.
Maybe ten.
Enough for Clara to find something else.
Enough to keep forty-three animals from becoming a forced sale at the exact moment everyone else in western Nebraska was selling too.