Drifting into Darkness by J.M. La Rocca Read Free Book Online Page A

lady looked up as we entered, setting down the invoices she was looking over. She also had bright blue eyes and a pale wrinkling face with a pair of glasses at the tip of her nose. Her silvering brown hair was in a bun and reminded me of how movies portray librarians. “Nan, this is Sadie. The one I told ya about.”
    “Oh, yes, dear. It’s good to meet ya,” she said in a deep southern voice as she extended a small frail hand.
    I reached out and gently shook her hand in greeting. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
    “Well, go on now,” Nan stated, retracting her hand and shooing us away, “I’ve got plenty to do here and ya need to show her around,” she directed to Lisa.
    “Okay, okay, we’ll be back in an hour or two,” she told Nan. She closed her office door and we made our way out onto the porch.
    I took a deep breath as we got outside to try to rid my nose of the awful smell, but it must have been burned into my nose hairs because the smell wasn’t going away. “It really stinks in there,” I said, scrunching up my nose.
    Lisa burst out laughing as we walked off the porch. “I know, right. It’s because the guys walk in there durin’ the day with shit on their boots. It gets cleaned every couple of days, though. Just imagine what it was like a couple of years ago. They had carpet. Mrs. Johnson finally got Mr. Johnson to give in and put down tile. I couldn’t even imagine what it would look like or smell like if they hadn’t done that.”
    “Ew,” I said disgusted. “That’s so gross. It doesn’t smell any better out here either, but I guess nothing is going to smell pleasant on a farm, right?” I shoved my hands into my pockets. As I looked around at all the crops we were passing, I saw what looked like a big shed up ahead.
    “The only thing that smells good around here are the guys when they get here first thing in the morning,” she smiled and I knew she had to be thinking about Derek. “After that, it’s pretty much downhill from there.”
    “Good to know,” I laughed. “What’s that building right there?” I pointed to the building that looked like a shed, but as we got closer, I noticed that it wasn’t fully enclosed. Each side of the building didn’t have any doors. There was also something huge sitting in the middle of it.
    “First, let me tell you a little bit about the farm. It’s over one-hundred acres and three kinds of vegetables are grown; corn, green beans, and peppers. Although the peppers are grown on a smaller scale than the other two. There’s also the pasture for the cattle and horses, and stables where the horses are kept at night. Our cows are field fed, which means they are sold as organic meat.”
    “You mean they are sold to slaughter houses?” For some reason, the thought just didn’t sit well with me.
    “Yes,” she said with a hand on her hip. “Does that bother you? I mean, you did eat a burger yesterday.”
    “Yeah, just,” I scrunched up my nose, “the thought of what happens before it becomes a burger doesn’t usually enter my mind,” I stated. “Now I’m thinking about it.”
    Lisa laughed. “Come on. I’ll show you what jobs you’ll be doing with me.”
    We walked into the shed and stood next to a conveyer contraption. “What in the world is this thing used for?” It was around ten-feet long with a huge tub-like container at the end of it.
    “This is where we separate the good beans from the bad beans. When the beans are picked, they’re brought here,” she said, pointing to the big wooden empty buckets in the corner. “We bring those buckets over here and one person piles them on the conveyer and three to four others pick through them. The good beans end up in the tub down there,” she pointed at the end of the conveyer, “and here,” she pointed behind me against the wall where white buckets were stacked, “is where you’ll put the bad beans. We give those to the chickens.”
    I raised my eyebrow at her. “Chickens?”