Page 15 of Good Directions

“That’s why Mother Nature froze us out? Because I stood her up…” I try, hoping that she’ll catch on. But her expression doesn’t change. “It was a joke, about where we went wrong…and…well, it’s not really funny if I have to explain it.”

“Not sure it was funny regardless.”

Shifting awkwardly, Sawyer moves her large tote from one shoulder to the other, knocking over some dominos on the filing cabinet behind her. I lunge in her direction, trying to stop her not only before she sets the whole thing off, but before she topples over with it.

“Careful!” I say with a laugh, wanting to make sure it doesn’t come off like a scolding.

She glares at me, glancing over her shoulder briefly at the fallen soldiers, who thankfully toppled in the wrong direction before they could initiate a chain reaction.

“Didn’t mean to disrupt your…toys…” she remarks, nose scrunched in judgment.

Holy cow, she’s a female Gus…

“It’s a Rube Goldberg.”

I drag my hand along the series of complex gravitational stunts lined along the lab, some of which have taken me hours to set up. Sawyer, however, continues to look unimpressed.

“So, soil regeneration,” she continues, turning back to Cary. “Thank you again for inviting me to come down and spend some time working with y’all. I’ll need to see numbers, but I’m pretty confident using my formula we can reduce the replant cycle time. Right now, the models are estimating by about ten years. So, it’ll be exciting to get some live, real-time data in there to see if that changes things.”

Ten years? Well, I’ll be damned. Dr. Sawyer Brown has my interest piqued now, that’s for sure. Although how we’re going to prove in one summer that her formula will be able to reduce the cycle time will be an interesting challenge, since it takes on average fifty years for the soil to be ready again after being “peached out.”

“Great!” Cary says. “Come on in and get settled. I’ll get you whatever you need.”

Sawyer pushes past me, trying her hardest to avoid touching me, but our shoulders brush against each other as she passes. My insides sizzle, my mind flashing back to Saturday when her hair was falling on her shoulders, all frizzy and wild from the open window. A side of her I’m sure she would rather no one have ever seen.

I turn to the dominos, pretending to right them, while pulling out my phone.

Sawyer’s a girl?

Cary

Apparently

I thought it was a dude

Poor assumption on our part?

You never asked?

Does it matter?

No, I suppose it doesn’t. Other than the last thing I was expecting this morning was a beautiful woman walking into my lab. One who seems determined to give me the cold shoulder.

Maybe if I try the business route that will help.

“You’re the expert, Sawyer, but Cary and I were thinking we could focus on the saplings that were damaged,” I say, injecting myself into the conversation that I’m clearly a third wheel on.

“You lost saplings?” Sawyer asks. I have her attention now.

“We did. They were planted two years ago, so still some years away from being fruit bearing, but that’s still two years’ worth of growth down the drain. Cary and Hux, who is in charge of the lumber division, have done what they could to save every tree possible, but we still lost some in the freeze. Our hope is that we can replant in the spots where we lost the saplings.”

She nods, her eyes sparking, and I can almost see the gears grinding in her head. I’ve given her something to latch on to—an actual problem to solve.

“That’s a great place to start. Good thinking.” She praises me as if I’m a kindergartner who asked a sixth-grade math question. Wow, she’s got a chip on her shoulder. “How many acres is that?”

“About five hundred?” Cary asks to confirm.

“Give or take.” I shrug. “Hayes has five thousand acres of noncontiguous plots that we’ve dedicated to trees. Roughly a thousand of that is dedicated to pecans full-time. In the other four, we have about 138 peach trees per acre, alternating pecan in where the topography will let us. Now, you wanna talk peanuts? That’s a whole different process, and another seven hundred and fifty acres.”