Arthur looked at the cooler.
"How much acreage?"
"Five."
"How much total harvest?"
"Season isn't over."
Arthur's jaw shifted.
"You're enjoying this."
Cole considered the accusation.
"A little."
Arthur laughed once, without humor.
"At least you're honest."
Then he looked across the road toward his own distant fields.
"Blight's worse south of Vincennes," he said.
Cole did not respond.
"Lost one whole contract block," Arthur continued. "Not everything. But enough."
"I'm sorry."
Arthur looked back at him sharply.
"Don't patronize me."
"I'm not."
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Arthur asked, "What are you spraying?"
Cole understood what the question cost him.
"Copper only where thresholds justify it, biologicals in some blocks, sanitation everywhere. Mostly I'm removing disease, managing airflow, and accepting that some varieties lose."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Arthur frowned. "No secret Clara Evans formula?"
"She would've hated that phrase."
"I remember."
That surprised Cole.
Arthur looked down the road.
"Your grandmother argued with me at a growers' meeting in '86. Told me I was confusing yield with resilience."
"Sounds like her."
"I told her resilience didn't pay a bank note."
"What did she say?"
Arthur's mouth tightened in something close to a smile.
"She said, 'Neither does yield after the system breaks.'"
Cole laughed.
Arthur did too, reluctantly.
Then he drove away.
It was the first conversation they had ever had that did not end with Arthur insulting him.