It was a quarter after six the next morning when the Hughes helicopter rose from the small pasture at the back of the South Burlington farmhouse and tilted its way north-westwards into the bright, snappy sky. The rotor blades flashed in the sunlight as it headed out past the hickory stand, and the flack-flack-flack of its engine was echoed by the outbuildings and the fences.
Dyson Kane was at the controls. He was South Burlington’s most experienced flyer – a small, lightweight, white-haired man as sprightly as a jockey, with a pinched face and eyes that could have punched holes in leather. Dyson had smoked a huge briar pipe, with a bowl as big as a coffee-cup, but three years ago his doctor had warned him of lung-cancer, and now he sucked butterscotch Life Savers as if his life depended on them, and it probably did.
Ed sat next to Dyson in the front seat, and behind them sat Willard and Jack. From the dark smudges under his eyes, it didn’t look as if Jack had slept too well.
‘Keep following the track,’ Ed told Dyson. ‘I’ll tell you when to turn off.’
‘Sure thing, Ed,’ said Dyson. ‘You’re the boss.’
Ed turned around to Jack and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any more ideas since you called me last night?’ Jack shook his head. ‘I tested for everything. It sure isn’t rust, and it isn’t smut, and it’s no kind of mildew that I’ve heard of. But I’m keeping an open mind. We’ve had some pretty humid weather lately and mildew thrives in humid conditions.’
‘Is it worth spraying for mildew?’ asked Ed.
‘I suppose we could try dusting with sulphur, although I’ve never known sulphur do much for really serious cases.’
‘Any other options?’
‘Well, there’s a compound called Bayleton, but that’s not registered for use in the United States and we’d have to seek emergency exemption to dust with that. The same goes for that British stuff from ICI, Vigil.’
‘Would either of those do any good, even if we were allowed to use them?’
‘I don’t know. Until we get an exact analysis of what we’re up against, we’re only guessing. Kerry’s taken the samples over to Wichita, but there’s no telling how long they’re going to take to decide what it is.’
Willard said, ‘I can’t believe it’s mildew. Mildew looks kind of greyish-green, you know and it usually breaks out before the grain forms. It affects the leaves so that photosynthesis can’t occur properly. But I can’t believe it’s that. We haven’t had an outbreak of mildew on South Burlington for fifteen, maybe sixteen years.’
Dyson Kane suddenly said, ‘Jee-sus! Take a look at that!’ He angled the helicopter away from the track without waiting for Ed’s instructions, and took it out across the same stretch of field that Ed and Willard had visited the previous evening. Below them, Ed could make out the tracks of their Jeep through the wheat – but instead of the tracks running around the edge of the dark and blighted crops, they had now been overtaken by the darkness and swallowed up. Everywhere around, like a company of sad, arthritic widows, the rotting stalks hung their heads in the morning wind.
‘It’s spread,’ whispered Jack. ‘Fifty or sixty acres at least. Maybe more.’
Dyson took them low over the field, so that their down draught left a flurrying trail in the wheat. They were flying at sixty or seventy knots, but as Ed peered through the purple-tinted plexiglass ahead of them, it seemed as if the ocean of crops had been stained by the blight as far as he could see, and as far as they could fly. He opened the air-vent, and the cockpit of the helicopter was filled with the warm, sour stench of decaying wheat.
Willard said, ‘This disease sure knows how to eat up a crop, and that’s no mistake.’
Ed told Dyson, ‘Higher. Take her up higher. I want to see how far this stretches.’
The helicopter climbed into the shining sky. Ed slipped on his aviator sunglasses, and looked around in all directions. The dark stain on the wheat now spread all the way southwards from the north-western trail to the banks of the Mystic, in an irregular shape that roughly resembled the state of Idaho. Jack’s estimate of fifty or sixty acres was conservative. From up here, Ed would have guessed a hundred.
‘We’ve got ourselves a real bad one here, Ed,’ said Willard. ‘I think we’re going to have to dust, and dust quick.’
‘Even before we know what it is?’ asked Ed. ‘We could end up doing more damage with crop-protection compounds than the blight’s doing on its own.’
‘We could end up with eighty-five thousand acres of rot,’ retorted Willard.
Take it south,’ Ed told Dyson. ‘Let’s make a circuit round the whole farm, and see if there’s any more of this stuff.’
‘You bet,’ said Dyson, and the helicopter turned away from the blight-stained areas of wheat and beat its way noisily over the Mystic River and out across the silvery-golden stretches of South Burlington’s south-western acres.
‘What did Charlie Warburg have to say for himself?’ asked Jack, taking out a stick of gum.
‘He was pretty inconclusive,’ Ed replied. ‘He admits that all the loans we took out for equipment and farm facilities are covered by insurance, but he isn’t certain if an unknown blight is going to go down very well with the underwriters.’
‘It isn’t going down very well with me, either,’ said Willard, caustically.
Ed said, ‘The whole crop’s protected, of course, under the Federal Crop Insurance Programme. That’s as long as we can convince them that this blight is officially a peril of nature, like a drought, or a hailstorm. But all they can do under the law is compensate us for the cost of putting in the crop. They can’t pay us for any profits we might have made.’
Dyson looked out across the farm. ‘Looks like your first year at South Burlington won’t be too happy, then. All work and no profit.’
Ed nodded. ‘It could be worse than that. If we can’t isolate this blight, and find out how to lick it, then I daren’t plant again next year.’
Willard leaned forward in his seat. ‘With respect, Ed, have you tried to think what your Daddy might have done, under the same circumstances?’
‘I’m not my daddy, Willard.’
‘No, I know you’re not. I don’t expect you to be. But your daddy was never averse to calling on his friends, whenever he needed a helping hand, just like his friends were never averse to calling on him.’
‘You’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you?’ said Ed, raising his voice above the roaring of the helicopter’s motor.
‘I’m trying to suggest something,’ said Willard. ‘I’m trying to suggest that when we get down, you might put in a call to Senator Shearson Jones.’
‘Shearson Jones? That old twister?’
Willard shrugged. ‘He may be a twister, but he’s got himself some pretty powerful friends in the Department of Agriculture. What’s more, when your daddy died, he still owed your daddy for two notable favours, one of which was covering up for him over that wheat-dumping scandal in seventy-eight.’
‘Why should Shearson Jones still think he owes this family anything now that Dad’s dead?’
Willard grinned. ‘Because this family still remembers, that’s why. And as long as there’s just one Hardesty around who knows what the upright and honest Senator Jones tried to do with a hundred and forty-two thousand tons of best Kansas grain, then the upright and honest Senator Jones is going to continue to smile whenever a Hardesty asks him to.’
‘That sounds like blackmail to me,’ said Ed.
Willard grinned. ‘You might call it blackmail in New York City. Here in Kansas we call it mutual assistance.’
‘Hm,’ said Ed.
‘You don’t believe me?’ asked Willard. ‘You call him when you get back, and see if I’m not speaking the truth. You ask Senator Jones if the Department of Agriculture maybe can’t find some extra compensation for the victims of new and unusual crop diseases.’
‘Willard,’ said Ed, ‘you should have been a politician, not a farmer.’
‘Being a farmer and being a politician are one and the same kind of talent,’ said Willard. ‘Everything you do, you do by careful planting, and careful fertilisation, and watching and waiting – so that when the right moment arrives, you can go shhhklukk! and the ripe ears of wheat fall straight in your hand.’
Jack suddenly frowned. ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Look – up ahead there. Just over to the right.’
Ed turned in his seat. Far in the distance, maybe three miles away, he thought he could make out a shadow on the wheat. A brown, irregular stain that covered five or six acres at least.
‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Willard. ‘There’s more of it.’ The helicopter banked in a wide circle around the field, and approached the stain from the south-west. There was no question about it. The blight had spread here, too – almost five miles to the south of the first outbreak. Ed told Dyson to hover by the edge of the dark area while he took a long look at it. Dust and wheat flew up all around them, but Ed could see for himself that the blight was creeping from one stalk to another, from one acre to the next, and that only quick and decisive action was going to save South Burlington from the most disastrous crop in its entire history. That was if any action could save it at all.
‘Okay,’ Ed told Dyson at last. ‘Let’s go check the eastern acres.’
It took them until two o’clock in the afternoon to make a thorough airborne check of the whole farm. By the time Dyson brought the helicopter back into the pasture behind the farmhouse, they had counted seven major areas of blight, and three smaller outbreaks.
The helicopter settled on the grass and the rotor blades whistled slower and slower. Ed opened the door and climbed out, followed by Jack and Willard.
‘Well,’ said Jack, cleaning his glasses on his shirt-tail. ‘What are we going to do now?’
Ed said, ‘I don’t know. Nothing, right now. First of all I want to hear what Dr Benson’s got to say.’
‘And then you’ll call the senator?’ asked Willard.
Ed glanced at him. Willard was brushing his moustache with his fingers and looking exaggeratedly innocent.
‘I may,’ Ed told him. ‘Just to make his acquaintance.’
‘Okay,’ said Willard. ‘I’ll make the call to Dr Benson, if you like, and see if he has any ideas yet. I can reach you at the house?’
‘Yes. I should be there for most of the afternoon.’
Ed walked across the pasture, vaulted the split-rail fence, and made his way around to the front of the house. It was a neat, well-proportioned house, with white carved balconies and shuttered dormer windows and a shingle roof that sloped all the way down to the roof of the front verandah. It didn’t look like the kind of house that Dan Hardesty would have chosen for himself, but only recently Ed had discovered that it wasn’t. An early partner of his father’s called Ted Zacharias had constructed it, and sold it to his father along with twenty thousand acres of arable land. Ed hadn’t been surprised by the discovery: his father had always been a man of business, not of taste.
As Ed crossed the yard, he saw the grey Cadillac Seville parked in front of the steps, and the buff-uniformed chauffeur leaning against it smoking a cigarette. His mother was here. He rubbed the muscles at the back of his neck as he walked through the verandah and opened the gentian-blue front door. His mother always gave him a feeling of suppressed tension, and it sometimes took Season an hour of gentle talk and a massage to calm him down after the old lady had gone.
Mrs Ursula Hardesty was another reason he had left home.
She was standing in the hallway as he came in, primping her hair. She was tall, bony as a clothes-horse and wearing a light green Yves St Laurent dress that was at least twenty years too young for her. Her eyes were as pale and watery as Little Neck clams, and her neck was withered and white, although it was sparklingly decorated with three strands of diamonds and pearls. She gave him a lopsided smile, and raised her arms like someone signalling to a passing ship.
‘Edward. My dear. I thought I’d surprise you.’
‘Hello, Mother.’
He embraced her as circumspectly as he knew how. Curling his arm around her waist and yet not quite touching her; kissing her cheek from a fraction of an inch away.
‘You’re looking peaky, dear,’ she said. ‘Are you still taking that tonic wine I brought you?’
‘When I remember. I’ve just had a bad night, that’s all.’ Mrs Hardesty glanced towards the living-room, where Ed could see Season’s arm on the back of the settee, holding a smoking cigarette.
‘I hope you’re not having any trouble,’ she said, her voice as brittle as fractured porcelain.
‘You mean you hope I’m not having too many arguments with Season? Is that it?’
Mrs Hardesty looked pained. ‘I’ve never had anything against her, Edward, but I can’t say that she’s really cut out to be the mistress of a wheat-farming empire, can you? I mean – fashion and style are all very well,, but has she bought herself any galoshes yet?’
‘Mother,’ Ed told her, ‘I’m not having you start all that again. Season’s settling in pretty well, all things considered. It’s a big change to come to Kansas from New York City. A big shock to the system. Season’s going to have to be given time to get used to it.’
‘Well…’ said Mrs Hardesty, disapprovingly, turning her mouth down at the corners.
‘Well nothing, Mother,’ Ed retorted. ‘And as to when she’s going to buy herself any galoshes… she’ll do it when Gucci bring out some galoshes with red-and-green bands round the top.’
‘It’s your loss,’ Mrs Hardesty said. ‘If you want to carry the whole burden of South Burlington yourself… it’s really up to you. I can’t influence you.’
‘No, you can’t,’ said Ed. ‘Now come and have a cocktail before I start getting mad at you. I’ve got enough problems on the farm without getting mad at my mother.’
‘No serious problems, I hope?’ said Mrs Hardesty, as they walked through into the living-room.
‘Moderately serious. Some sort of crop disease. We’re not sure what it is yet.’
Mrs Hardesty frowned. ‘Is it bad? You’re almost ready for harvesting.’
Ed walked around the back of the sofa, clasped Season’s hand, and bent over to kiss her. She was dressed in tight dark blue velvet pants and a cream-coloured silk blouse. Her hair was freshly washed and shining, and she had let it hang loose to her shoulders.
‘How is it?’ she asked.
Ed shrugged. ‘Hard to tell yet. But it’s still spreading. We saw patches of it all over.’
‘Did Dr Benson call yet?’
‘Willard’s trying to get in touch with him now.’
Mrs Hardesty sat down in the velvet-covered armchair by the fireplace, facing the library chair which had once been her husband’s. She sat stiff and erect, raising her head like an inquiring eagle. ‘You’ve sent samples across to Dr Benson?’ she asked. ‘Your father always thought that Dr Benson was a quack.’
‘Perhaps he is,’ said Ed. ‘But he’s our first line of assistance. Jack’s been trying to isolate the blight all night, and he can’t make out what it is.’
‘I could give you Professor Kornbluth’s number,’ said Mrs Hardesty. ‘He did some wonderful work for us on seed dressings.’
‘That’s very kind of you. Mother, but Professor Kornbluth is an expert on the protection of germinating crops, and that’s it. This is a blight of the whole ripened ear.’
‘Has it spread very far?’ asked his mother.
‘Two, maybe two hundred and fifty acres.’
‘Two hundred and fifty acres? And you’re leaving it to Dr Benson? My dear, you can’t do that!’
‘What else do you suggest I do?’
‘Go over his head. Your father would have done. Go straight to the Department of Agriculture.’
Ed sat down in his father’s chair, and crossed his legs in a deliberate effort to show that he was relaxed. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘Dr Benson is the Kansas state expert on crop protection. Whatever father thought about him, and however erratic he might seem to be—’
‘Alcoholic, more like,’ sniffed Mrs Hardesty.
‘All right, alcoholic. Erratic. Whatever. But he’s still the man I have to do business with, week in and week out, and if I go over his head now there’s never going to be any chance of my getting a favour out of him in the future. I know what he’s like. I’m not dumb. But I told Willard to kick his keister if he dragged his feet, and I think he’ll be able to help us.’
Mrs Hardesty suddenly and unexpectedly turned to Season. ‘What do you think, my dear?’ she demanded.
Season shrugged. ‘I don’t think anything. I don’t think I’ve ever met Dr Benson. Whatever Ed decides to do is fine by me.’
Mrs Hardesty rose to her feet. ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ she said, in a frivolously sarcastic tone. ‘“Whatever Ed decides to do is fine by me.” Have you ever heard any wheat-farmer’s wife come out with such a positive and helpful contribution? Do you know something, my dear, when I was mistress of this farm, I used to spend all my waking hours finding out about crops and how to grow them. I was as much an expert on wheat as Ed’s father was. I could talk about planting and harvesting with the best of them, and I could take a tractor to pieces with my own bare hands. This region is lousy with sidewalk farmers, who commute to their farms from Wichita and Kansas City, and lousy with suitcase farmers, who spend most of their time in Chicago and Los Angeles, and only fly in for the sowing and the harvesting. Well, Dan Hardesty wasn’t one of them, and neither was I. We lived on our land and we took care of our crops and we produced more grain on these eighty-five thousand acres than most farms that were twice our size. We did it together, Dan and I, and that’s why I can hardly believe my ears when I hear you saying that you don’t care about it.’
‘I didn’t say that I don’t care about it,’ put in Season. ‘I simply said that I respect Ed’s judgement.’
‘Come on, Mother,’ said Ed. ‘We all know what you and Daddy did to build up South Burlington. It’s part of the family’s history. But can’t you just leave it alone?’
‘I see,’ said Mrs Hardesty. ‘You’re prepared to talk about your father and I as ancient history – a bedtime story for Sally, maybe – but you’re not prepared to take my advice?’
‘Mother, this is my farm now.’
Mrs Hardesty looked out of the window across the sunlit yard. Her hands were clasped together in controlled anguish. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know it is. And I also remember what it cost this family for you to have it.’
Season turned around. That, Ursula, is a grossly unfair remark,’ she said, coldly. ‘Ed was just as hurt as you were by what happened to his father and what happened to Michael. Good God, you’re talking as if he killed diem with his own bare hands.’
Mrs Hardesty stared at her. ‘My only regret,’ she said, ‘is not that Edward took over the farm when his father and his older brother both died. My only regret is that he should have brought to South Burlington a wife who treats the farm and everything that it means to this family with such obvious contempt.’
Season was about to say something caustic in return, but she held herself back. Instead, she reached over to the low gilded coffee-table and opened the cigarette-box.
‘I’d really appreciate it if you sat down and made yourself comfortable,’ she told Mrs Hardesty. ‘I hate to see anyone feeling ill-at-ease in my home, no matter who it is.’ Mrs Hardesty looked to her son, but Ed simply said, ‘Sit down, Mother. I’ll fix you a cocktail.’
‘You will stay for some supper, won’t you?’ asked Season. ‘Perhaps you’d like to stay the night?’
The telephone over on the French bureau started to ring. Ed said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went across to pick it up. It was Willard, calling from the office on the far side of the yard.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ he said. ‘I saw the old lady’s car outside.’
‘Just the usual,’ said Ed. ‘Did you get hold of Benson?’
‘I sure did. And I hope you’re sitting down.’
‘Has he found out what it is?’
‘He has some ideas. But it turns out that we’re not the only farm that’s been hit. He’s had samples in this morning from as far away as Great Bend and Concordia. Seems like the whole state’s been affected.’
‘The whole state? You’re kidding.’
‘I wish I was,’ said Willard. ‘But I called Arthur Kalken over at the Hutchinson place just to check, and he told me their whole south valley is nothing but two thousand acres of blight. He’s had it for two, three days now.’
There hasn’t been anything about it on the news.’
‘Well, the state agricultural people have been trying to keep it quiet until they know what it is. They don’t want buyers boycotting Kansas wheat just because they’re afraid it might be contaminated or something. And also, the thing’s only just hit. Most of the farmers were like us – they thought they were the only ones who’d got it.’
Ed ran his hand through his hair. ‘What’s going to happen? Did Benson have any ideas?’
‘He’s still trying to isolate it. He’s sent some samples to the federal laboratories, too. But meanwhile, George Pulaski’s arranging an emergency meeting for all die state’s wheat farmers – probably in Kansas City and probably on Thursday morning.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘Did Benson give you any ideas about interim control? Sulphur spraying, anything of that kind?’
‘He said to leave it alone. It’s not rust, and it’s not powdery mildew, and it could react adversely if you dust it.’
Ed put the phone down. Season was watching hin intently, and she said, ‘You’ve got your Aristotle Contemplating The Bust Of Homer face on again. What’s wrong?’
‘Willard talked to Dr Benson. It seems like South Burlington isn’t the only farm with the blight. The whole state’s affected.’
‘And I suppose Benson still doesn’t know what it is?’ asked Mrs Hardesty.
‘No, Mother, he doesn’t,’ said Ed. ‘But it seems like he’s taken your advice, and sent the problem over his own head. He’s asked the federal laboratories to look at it, too.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hardesty, ‘it won’t be the first time the wheat crop’s failed in Kansas. For some of those part-timers, it’s a regular occurrence.’
‘The whole wheat crop, throughout the whole state?’ asked Ed. ‘South Burlington’s wheat crop, too?’
‘The crop’s insured, isn’t it?’ Mrs Hardesty asked. ‘And at least your father isn’t around to see it fail. He would have tanned your hide.’
‘Mrs Hardesty, the blight isn’t Ed’s fault,’ said Season. Mrs Hardesty lifted her head, more like an eagle than ever. ‘Poor farmers always blame everything except their own lack of talent. Drought, floods, hail, mildew – they’re all an excuse.’
‘Mother,’ said Ed, ‘you’re going to make me mad in a minute.’
The telephone rang again. It was Willard. ‘Dr Benson called me,’ he said. ‘Told me to watch the two-thirty news on television. Seems like the state agricultural department has just put out a statement.’
Ed pointed to the television, and twisted his hand to indicate to Season that she should switch it on. Then he asked Willard, ‘Any more news about the analysis?’
‘Not a thing. Looks like it’s one of those diseases that’s going to baffle modern science for years to come.’
‘I’ll keep in touch,’ said Ed, and put the phone down again.
The news was just beginning. After a lead report about fighting in Iran, the anchorman said, ‘Trouble of a different kind here at home. Reports from the wheat-growing states of Kansas and North Dakota tell of a rapidly-spreading and so-far unidentified crop blight. Apparently the blight is attacking ripe ears of wheat and causing them to rot right on their stalks, and hundreds of acres of crops have already been destroyed. Local and federal agricultural experts are working around the clock to isolate the cause of the blight – so far without success. George Pulaski, chief of the agricultural department for the state of Kansas, the country’s number one wheat producer, says that he’s confident the blight will be brought under control before the damage ruins more than a nominal percentage of the year’s crop. But, he warned, many farmers may face substantial losses, if not bankruptcy.’
That was all. Ed walked over and switched the television off. ‘I think I could use a drink,’ he said, quietly.
‘Thank God your father isn’t here,’ said Mrs Hardesty. ‘Thank you, God,’ said Season, and Mrs Hardesty gave her a frosty stare.