Page 14 of Finding Basil (Foggy Basin Season Two)

Chapter Nine

The back of the hall wasn’t exactly scenic. It faced an alley and the back of a store on Main Street. But there were benches, and Herb and Basil took one while Basil’s father came to sit across from them on the other bench.

“Dad, were you sneaking cigars out here?”

“None of your business, Basil.”

“Mom will murder you!”

“Not if you don’t tell her!”

Herb assured, “I won’t let him tell. We all need our little secrets.”

Basil groaned, and Herb figured out why. It was probably not the best thing to say to the father of a guy he wanted to date. “What secrets have you got? Another boyfriend? Family?”

“Oh, no! I mean, no, nothing like that. My secrets are more of the underwear on the floor variety. I pick them up before company comes, of course.”

Michael Jimenez, Basil’s father, didn’t look convinced.

“Dad, stop. If I even thought it was a dirty secret, I wouldn’t be here.”

With a deep scowl on his darkly sun-kissed face, Michael pointed out, “Didn’t stop you from dating that…Steve.”

“Dad, it’s not his fault. He can’t help that he had a disease.”

“He could have helped you by telling you about it and letting you make up your own mind.”

Herb stepped in to say, “I swear, sir, I have no secrets that big, or that bad. I drink right from the milk carton, and I put the broken eggs back in the carton so I can toss them all at once.”

Basil groaned again.

“You’re fixin’ to be a farmer and you’re not even making your own compost?”

“I…uh…”

“I’m teaching him, remember, Dad?”

“Well, do what you have to, but I don’t see a farmer in you,” he said, then added, “No offense.”

“None taken. I’m not a farmer yet, but I am going to try my best. I tend to finish anything I set out to do, so until I’m truly finished, I’ll keep trying.”

“Good for you. Good way to be.”

“Thank you, sir.”

While Basil favored his mother, Michael was an older version of his son, Juan. Handsome, darker-skinned than Basil, but the entire family was good looking. His older eyes seemed like they’d seen far too much for the smile he wore to ever quite reach them.

One day, he’d ask more about Michael’s life. He was sure the stories wouldn’t always be easy to hear, but he wanted to know the family, as they were such a big part of Basil.

Once Michael had gone inside the hall, Basil took Herb’s hand in his. “He’s old and grumpy, but he’s a great guy, really.”

“I know. I doubt any of your family isn’t. They’re lovely people, and you are the loveliest.”

Basil glowed with the compliment and kissed him tenderly. “Thanks. I think you’re pretty great too.”

He was kissed goodbye on his front porch, like some nineteen fifties teenager, and once inside, he listened for signs of water pouring, walls crumbling, anything. After hearing nothing unusual, he did a visual inspection and was overjoyed that everything seemed to be working fine.

After a great sleep, dreaming of Basil the entire night, he rose and started dressing when the first knock came, and he laughed as he hurried down the stairs.

It was Lila who’d been knocking, and she pushed her way inside before he’d gotten the chance to ask her in. “What the hell took you so long?”

“I was getting dressed.”

She scowled. “Oh, one of those that sleep in, huh? Not if you’re gonna be a farmer. Let’s get going.”

“Excuse me, but…why are you here?”

“Didn’t Basil tell ya? I’m your farmhand today. Brought a lot of good seeds with me, gonna have to charge you for ‘em, but I’m not those super stores. I won’t charge an arm and a leg.”

She made her way into the kitchen to scowl more at the new fixtures. “Too damn fancy for these parts.”

“I wasn’t as concerned with fancy as much as the fact that water would come out of them.”

“Right. Your troubles. You have any more of ‘em?”

After she sat at the kitchen table, she said, “I take ‘em over easy, not medium and not hard. I can’t stand an overcooked egg.”

He took it; he was making her breakfast. “Okay, um, sure. Let me get started on that.”

He got out a skillet and set it on the stove, turning it onto medium high before getting out the oil, the carton of eggs and the salt and pepper. “Do you take milk in your coffee?”

“No, just three sugars.”

“Three. Okay, great.”

He started the pot of coffee brewing then poured oil in the hopt skillet.

When he opened what he thought was a brand-new carton of eggs, however, he saw there were four missing. He knew he didn’t use them because the shells would have still been in the carton. “Weird.”

“Weird eggs? What, they got chickens hatching?”

“No, no, it’s just…” He thought about it, and knew he couldn’t prove anything so he said, “Just thought I had more.”

“Getting old man’s brain at your age? Doesn’t bode well for your golden years.”

The juice, too, had been brand-new, but it was open and a third was gone.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

After he made them a breakfast of eggs, toast and applesauce, Lila had him trek out to her truck, where she had boxes and boxes of metal cans with lids that fit over the top. Each one had a neat label on the lid, displaying what seeds were kept inside the canisters.

“Heft that first one back to the greenhouse.”

He did, finding a box of seeds surprisingly heavy. She brought in a box behind him and they both left to get the last two. Basil came while she was showing him the seeds, and he slipped in, quietly watching.

“You don’t want those GMO, lab crap. Heirloom seeds, always use them.

You don’t know what the hell they did to the others.

Supposedly just pest and disease resistant, my fanny.

They can track those seeds! Every last one of them.

If a plant gets into your crop from one of their seeds, they can take your whole farm, so you just be extra careful.

They do it on purpose too, let their crops go to seed, just to let a few fly into your field. ”

He almost laughed at her conspiracy theory, but saw Basil’s face, serious and nodding along with her. Herb asked him, “Is she right?”

“Look it up. They have the DNA mapped for each and every plant they sell seed for, and they will sue you to oblivion.”

“Jesus.”

“So, these, and those that Basil has, all Heirloom. Right from our own plants. We, here in Foggy Basin and the surrounding county, we share our seeds and harvest our own too. We keep our lines going. If Basil, here, makes a hybrid, he patents it and it’s his. That’s the only modified seeds we use.”

He was happily surprised. “You make your own hybrids?”

“Sure. I’ve been playing around with it since I was a kid. Better yields for some, and others, better drought tolerance. Whatever I can do. I did make a few stinkers.”

“Trial and error, but the guy was made for this. He’s good, and we always worry we’ll lose him to one of those big companies.”

“Not a chance. I could never do what they do. Driving real farmers out of business and doing those big factory farms.”

Lila spat, “Warding off bugs and such just to taste like nothing. Ever take a tomato grown from the ground, picked when it was ripe?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You will and you’re know the difference.”

Not that he was planting tomatoes, but he was sure Lila was. “I’d love to see your garden someday soon.”

“Sure. It’s my pride and joy, but don’t even think about stealing from me. Had someone nipping my beans and peppers a couple days ago, and when I catch ‘em, they’ll get a round of buckshot in their butt.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.”

Basil fluttered his eyelashes at his friend. “Maybe you can help me get him started on his own personal garden next year.”

“Too damn late this year, but surely. Butter beans, cucumbers, squash and tomatoes would be a good start for him. I’ll get out some seed for him and mark it up.”

Basil went through Lila’s herb seeds, of which she had thousands, literally. A whole box dedicated to only sage alone. “That there, the good sage in that can in the corner there. Best for poultry seasonings, but the one next to it, that’s just for good hot sausage.”

Herb stared agape at her. “You make your own sausage?”

“Family recipe, passed down for nearly two hundred years now. Enough pepper to make you sweat out all the ills in ya, and so good, you’ll swear you’re in Heaven eating with St. Peter himself.”

Herb looked at the tins for both, and both had the same names, including the Latin species names. “How do you know the difference?”

“Well, it takes a long time, but they grow different. One likes nice soft soil and a little shade, the other is great for those spots that the ground ain’t as givin’ and the sun just bangs down on it all day.”

Basil agreed with her. “The same seeds, from the same packs, people wonder why they don’t grow the same.

One just shoots up in a couple days from the seed and keeps growing while the other takes almost three weeks and grows slower.

It’s like kids, Lila explained to me. You get all kinds from the same two parents.

It’s the same with seeds. She’s marked them down, messed with them all her life until she’s separated them the way they like to grow. ”

“That’s genius, really. I had no idea.”

“Takes time and someone that pays attention, and the world is sorely lacking in that these days. People paying any attention. Always with their phones in their faces, and for what? They have the world at their fingers, and do you think they look up anything that matters a tick? No! They want to learn how to put their fifty layers of makeup on better, or what some idiot in some other country puts in their morning coffee to make them live eighty years.”

He had to admit he’d thought much the same.

Basil added the seed-starting soil to the planters, or what they called cells. The tray was separated into small cells, and they’d plant seeds in the cells. “After they sprout, how long before you plant them?”