Most of her neighbors would have refused before Larry reached the word temporarily. The cannery's byproducts could attract flies, become sour in hot weather, and create a nuisance unless handled properly. Mary Ann knew enough farming to recognize that large quantities of fresh plant material were not something to abandon beside an open ditch. She also knew the back field had once been garden ground, before Walter enlarged the cattle operation. Beneath a tangle of grass lay soil that had not been turned deeply in years.
"Would you let me see what they're bringing first?" she asked.
Larry looked relieved by the question. "Sure. I'll bring you up to the plant."
Two days later she rode with him past the cannery's loading docks. A sour, green smell hung over the buildings, familiar and unpleasant without being entirely offensive. Inside, steel machinery pushed thousands of tomatoes through sorting and processing lines, and the material nobody wanted was directed into separate collection bins. Mary Ann watched bright red skins tumble over a conveyor beside an astonishing number of pale cream-colored seeds. The seeds moved like grain, except they were slick with pulp and mixed with fragments of fruit.
"All of that gets thrown out?" she asked.
"Most of it. Some goes into regulated compost streams or animal-feed processing, depending on the batch. These loads are just the tomato seed-and-skin material from the clean line."
"Do they keep records?"
Larry gave her a sideways glance. "What sort of records?"
"What went into it. Where it came from. Whether they used anything that shouldn't go on farmland."
He led her into the office instead of teasing her for asking. By Friday she had a basic written agreement identifying the material, limiting deliveries to the marked area, requiring the drivers to avoid the ditch, and giving her the right to suspend loads. An agricultural extension agent, Lena Ortiz, reviewed the plan and suggested checking the site's drainage and testing the soil before Mary Ann considered using the field for food crops. Mary Ann paid for those first tests out of money she had set aside to repair the porch steps. She did not know what she wanted to grow, only that she wanted to know what was being delivered to her land.
When Larry finally asked what fee she expected, she surprised him.
"Nothing," she said.
"Mary Ann, I know you. Walter would come back and haunt me if I took advantage."
"Then don't take advantage. Follow the agreement and stop when I tell you. That's worth more to me than a few dollars."
He shook his head, but signed.
The first trucks arrived during a wet March morning. Their tires cut tracks in the old access lane, and the unfamiliar noise brought Gus barking from the porch. Mary Ann watched two loads settle behind the shed, then walked out after the last truck departed. The heaps of red pulp seemed absurd against the gray fields. It looked, she thought, as if someone had decided to throw away summer before it had even begun.