CHAPTER 8
Colt
Every Sunday for as long as I can remember, my mama, Catherine Mancinkus, has cooked a large family meal that was served promptly at two PM. This gave her the opportunity to attend Sunday church services with plenty of time left to come home to make a feast fit for a king. There were always the usual staples of a southern Sunday dinner. Biscuits or cornbread, sweet tea, and a homemade dessert. We would also have ham, meatloaf, or country-fried steak. There were always classic sides like collards, macaroni and cheese, or butter beans.
When I was around six, Pap came to live full time in North Carolina from Pittsburgh. Ever since his move here, our Sunday dinner got supplemented with some of his favorites he grew up with in his Polish/Lithuanian family. That meant there was usually halupki or sauerkraut served. Sometimes Mama would make pierogis.
Us Mancinkus kids loved it. We considered these additions to Sunday dinner to be exotic, sort of how we viewed our eccentric grandfather from up North. Pap, on the other hand, became enamored of southern cooking and was completely fine with ham, collards, and cornbread for dinner. He was willing to give up his northern-rooted food. However, we were not since we had come to love it, so my mama had a very eclectic selection of food on Sunday.
Today the Mancinkus dining room is filled to capacity. My dad, Jerry, sits on one end of the long table, and Pap sits on the other. My mother sits to the left of my dad, followed by Trixie, her fiancé Ry, and then Laken, who is looking morose over the fact Jake could not be here since he’s in California on business.
On my side of the table, Lowe sits to my right with his wife Mely beside him and Larkin on the other side. There’s no conversation going on in this exact moment because we’re all too busy passing bowls around the table, counterclockwise as is our tradition. I take a large scoop of red beans and rice from a white ceramic bowl before passing it to Lowe. My hands are immediately filled with a platter of jalapeno cornbread. I take two slices.
“When are you going to fill us in about the grant you got awarded?” Pap says from my right.
I throw him a smirking glance, because he likes to stir stuff up. But the joke is on him. I had intended to lay out my plans for the vineyard tonight to the entire family.
Handing the cornbread off to Lowe, I take a sip of my sweet tea before I answer. I take a moment to glance around the table and see that everyone’s attention is on me with keen interest, as evidenced by the fact they’re all ignoring the delicious food before them.
I decide to do them a favor and make it short. “I’m going to plant grapes on the western side of the farm. Some muscadine but also some vinifera grapes. And then I’m going to make wine from them.”
Once again, I look around the table. Dad, Laken, and Larkin have their mouths open in surprise. My mom stares at me with pride. I glance to my right and see Lowe is nodding—perhaps tacit approval without hearing more—and Mely has an expression on her face that seems to say she can’t determine whether this is a good idea.
It’s Pap who asks the first question. “What’s your game plan?”
Nice. Simple. Nonjudgmental. Pap’s got it going on tonight.
“I had to write up a five-year business plan when I submitted for the expansion grants. Anyone of y’all can take a look at it if you want. The short story, though, is it’s going to take two to three years for the vines to produce. Another year after that to get the wine production settled. I’m hoping by the fifth year I’ll be able to break even, and we can start making a profit after that. Assuming our wine tastes good enough to sell.”
“You’re going to give up some of the leased land?” my dad asks. There’s a tiny bit of doubt in his voice, but that’s understandable. He hasn’t been working morning, noon, and night on this project the way I have for the last few years, so he doesn’t know the ins and outs the way I do. He’s also been removed from the business of our current operations, preferring to do semi-retired tinkering around the farm as is his due.
I nod. “The expansion grant will cover some of that lost revenue, but I have enough repeat buyers for our cattle I’ve been gradually expanding over the last few years that it will compensate.”
And that’s all my dad needs to know. He and my mom put me in charge of Mainer Farms, and I’ve been running it solidly for the last few years. We’ve been struggling, but that’s mainly due to our inability to maintain our tobacco crops. Imported tobacco is just way too cheap for a smaller farm like us to compete with, so we’ve had to get creative and find other avenues to keep the farm going. While the easy fix was to lease out land, by doing the cattle and now the vineyard, I’m hoping we can become a fully self-sustaining farm once again.
“I think it sounds like an amazing idea,” Mely says from the other side of Lowe, leaning forward to look past him to me. I shoot her a grateful smile in return before she says, “You realize you could actually use tourism as an income earner once you get up and running. You could open up a restaurant and have wine tastings.”
Chuckling, I give her another nod. “It’s something I would like to research, but that might be about ten years down the road.”
“What do you need from us, honey?” my mom asks.
My answer to her is simple. “Just your support.”
“You always have that,” she says, and then my cheeks turn hot when she continues, “We are so proud of what you’ve done with the farm. We believe you can accomplish anything.”
“Amen to that,” Larkin says.
And to my surprise, Laken holds up her glass of sweet tea. “To my brother, Colt Mancinkus. The finest farmer these parts has ever seen.”
Everyone follows suit and picks up their glasses, raising them high. They all say things such as, “here, here” or “to Colt”.
“We need to spike this sweet tea with some peach moonshine,” Pap says, and everyone laughs.
But not for long as my mom gets up and goes into the kitchen, reaching into a back cabinet where she keeps some of Billy Crump’s mason jars filled with his specialty peach moonshine.
This has turned into a good day. I generally expected my family to be supportive. Like I’ve always said, there’s not one of them sitting at this table who wouldn’t give their own skin for this farm. But my idea is risky. If this doesn’t work, the farm could go under. And yet every single one of them in here tonight looks upon me as if they don’t have a doubt in the world I can pull this off.
I love my family.
♦
I follow Trixie, Ry, and Larkin out the front door and onto the porch. Ry is carrying a paper bag filled with leftovers. Larkin and I are empty-handed because there wasn’t that much food left, and Trixie and Ry called dibs on it.
The four of us march down the steps to the cars sitting in the driveway. Laken, Mely, and Lowe stayed behind, content to sit around the kitchen table and drink coffee while they eat a second slice of pie. I’m going to put in a shift at Chesty’s, Larkin has to get some baking done at her shop, and Ry said he has an important motion to argue tomorrow morning that he has to prepare for.
Trixie and Ry wave goodbye with promises that we need to get together soon. Larkin and I walk toward our vehicles, which are parked beside each other.
“I’m really impressed with your vineyard idea, Colt,” she says as she reaches her driver-side door.
“Thanks, sis,” I tell her with a little emotion catching in my voice. “That means a lot.”
“Will you let me know what I can do to help? Even if you need an influx of money, I’ve got some saved up.”
I hold up my hand and shake my head. “No way. I’m good on money, but I appreciate the offer.”
She gives me an older sister indulgent smile. Her offer to help will never go away, and I’ll probably never accept.
I start to turn toward my car, but then remember something else I was curious about, and she is just the person to ask. “I was in Crump’s grocery this morning, and I overheard Andy in there talking to Billy. He was talking about Darby, and it sounded like he was sweet on her. You might not have to worry about Andy mooning over you anymore.”
Larkin rolls her eyes. The truth is she was never worried about Andy Forrester mooning over her. It was an absolute unrequited crush on his part, and he knew she was never going to look his way like that.
And I really wasn’t bringing this up to Larkin to tease her, but more to feel out some stuff about Darby. Because when I was in Crump’s this morning and heard Andy tell Billy he was thinking about asking Darby out for dinner, my hackles rose. I have no clue why or from where the proprietary feelings came, but I did not like the idea of Andy being sweet on Darby. He’s a nice guy and has potential for a single woman.
Not that Darby is single, but she will be soon.
“So is Darby sweet on Andy?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant and only mildly curious.
Larkin gives a shrug. “How would I know? She was in the backseat of his patrol car for all of five minutes when he drove us home Saturday night. We dropped her off first and even though both of us were pretty buzzed, I don’t think we even actually talked to Andy.”
“What did you talk about?” This is crucial information because there’s something about Darby that intrigues Andy. A man doesn’t just decide to ask someone out on a date because they have a pretty face.
Or at least I don’t. There has to be substance for sure.
“We were kind of doing girly talk,” Larkin says evasively.
“Girly talk?”
“Yeah. Girly talk. You know… The type of talk you only talk about with your girlfriend.”
“Clearly, I don’t know what that is as I don’t have a girlfriend nor am I a girl,” I point out.
Larkin gives a snorting type of laugh. “I believe we were talking about Darby’s marriage and why it ended.”
Now that’s weird. What could possibly have Andy intrigued about Darby if they were only discussing a failed marriage? Unless he was seeing an opportunity to take advantage of Darby.
I give a shake of my head. Andy’s not like that. He’s a genuinely good guy. If I had to take a guess, he probably listened to Darby and Larkin doing their girly talk and it came through loud and clear that Darby is a good woman. In the handful of conversations I’ve had with her, I’ve come to that conclusion as well. It probably took me all of five minutes to realize it, too.
I sidle up closer to my sister and rest my hand on the roof of her car. “So what is the deal with Darby’s marriage?”
Now, we have probably entered the territory that could either be considered local gossip or it could be said I’m delving into a secret confidence Darby entrusted Larkin with. When Larkin leans back in toward me with sparkling eyes, I know Darby isn’t expecting secrecy from anything she told Larkin.
“Well, it seems her soon-to-be ex-husband is a bit of a control freak and a manipulator. She got married young and got pregnant with Linnie while she was trying to work on her PhD. Her husband sort of strong-armed her into being a stay-at-home mom with promises she could go back and complete her degree later. The only problem was every time she wanted to do it, he would find a way to manipulate her into staying home. I think it was just a generally unhappy type of marriage and she wasn’t fulfilled.”
Well that doesn’t sound scandalous at all. It sounds pretty realistic as to how I bet many marriages die. People just want different things.
Larkin leans even closer in, though. “I did kind of get from her that her husband’s really a jerk. It appears he had been having an affair, although I’m not quite sure that’s exactly what caused the marriage to end. Darby doesn’t speak ill of him, but I can just tell by her demeanor she’s had a rough time of it with him.”
Once again, my hackles rise at the thought of anyone hurting Darby, and that is most definitely a strange sensation when I hardly even know her.
“Why are you so curious?” Larkin asks with wide innocent eyes. Surely she can’t think my interest is just in being neighborly, can she?
She just stares at me, unsuspecting of anything.
So I go with it.
“No particular reason,” I tell—well, lie—to her. “Just curious.”