Trial by Fire by Norah McClintock Read Free Book Online

would be if he was forced to sell his
beloved farm.
    The stalls around us began to fill up. I couldn’t help noticing that people were
staring at us. Some of them whispered to one another. The ones who stared the longest
and hardest were at the Winters Farm stall. I glanced at Aram. He was staring right
back at them.
    “Do you know those people?” I asked.
    “I know the farm my father bought belonged to a man named Winters.”
    The man who was staring came out of his stall. The woman with him—his wife?—grabbed
his arm and tried to pull him back, but he shook her off. He marched toward us.
    “Who are you?” he demanded of Aram.
    “Aram Goran. My father owns Goran Farm.”
    The man’s face twisted in disgust, as if he’d bitten into something rancid.
    “And you are…?” Aram said.
    “Ted Winters. Your father stole my father’s farm.”
    Aram stayed perfectly calm despite Mr. Winters’s belligerence. “As I understand it,
my father bought his farm at auction.”
    “He had no business being at that auction.”
    “Ted!” The same woman who had tried to hold Mr. Winters back ran over and grabbed
his arm. “Ted, we have to get ready.”
    Ted Winters glowered at Aram for another moment before letting his wife lead him
away. But once he was back at his own stall, he kept staring at Aram.
    “What is he talking about, stealing?” Aram asked. “Why would he say that?”
    I had no idea. But I bet it tied in with what Sharon the waitress and Carol the florist
had said—that there were people who wouldn’t have called the fire department that
night.
    “I can finish getting ready while you visit your father,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
It might be good for him to get away. Mr. Winters’s staring was making me nervous.
    Aram agreed. “I would like to tell Father what we’re doing. The doctor says I should
talk to him. He says it might help.” He looked at the produce piled high on the table.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
    “Positive. I have everything I need. But when you come back, can you bring some more
change? Just in case.”
    He left, and I finished setting up. People were already sauntering among the stalls.
It wasn’t long before I was bagging beans and cucumbers, tomatoes and corn. Most
of the stalls seemed to be busy, but I heard a few people say that my prices were
better than those at other stalls. I had a steady flow of customers.
    It was a hot day, and all the talking I was doing was making me thirsty. I wished
Aram would return so I could get a cold drink. Some kids wandered over. There were
a dozen of them, maybe more, all boys. I didn’t pay close attention to the whole
group because one of them, a tall boy with a mop of dirty-blond hair, stepped up
close and demanded to know who I was.
    I told him my name and waited for him to tell me his.
    He didn’t.
    He ran his hand over ears of corn, cucumbers, tomatoes.
    “Nice,” he said. He glanced at his buddies. A couple of them had pressed close to
the table. The rest stood back half a pace. A girl stood behind them. Her eyes were
on the blond boy. She was watching as if she wanted to talk to him, and she looked
nervous. She was shifting from foot to foot and turning what looked like a large
coin over and over in one hand, like a magician practicing a coin trick.
    “Can I help you?” I asked the boy.
    “Yeah, you can. Can you step back a little?”
    “What?”
    Before I could do anything to stop them, the boys closest to the table flipped it
over. Tomatoes, corn, carrots, beets cascaded to the ground.
    “Oops, sorry,” the blond boy said. He didn’t sound remotely apologetic. If anything,
he seemed pleased with himself. “Let us give you a hand.”
    But instead of picking things up, as I was doing, he and his friends started to stomp
all over the vegetables on the ground.
    “Hey!” I was furious. I grabbed the boy by the arm. “If you don’t stop that, I’ll—”
I had been going to say that I was going to call