Harvest of Ambition: A CEO's Odyssey novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Every Crate
On market day Mason buys every unsold crate in the county on one phone call, and his wife steps out of her lover's car to say it was the lover's idea.
The sweet corn had been sitting in the sun on Ashford Mills market square since six that morning.
By ten the smell had reached the courthouse steps.
I stood at the edge of the square with my duffel bag still on my shoulder and counted the trucks.
Forty-one.
Every one of them was parked with its tailgate down, full of crates nobody was going to buy.
Harlan Fresh had cancelled its contract with the county on Friday, and the whole town had come out to watch its year rot.
An old grower sat on an overturned bucket with a tomato in each hand and no one left to sell them to.
A woman beside him was crying into her apron and trying not to be seen.
I had left this town five years ago with two hundred dollars and a bus ticket.
I had come back three days after the board of Brightwater Foods Group voted me its chief executive.
Nobody here knew that yet.
The announcement would go out on Friday.
I took out my phone and called the only number I had memorized.
My assistant picked up on the first ring.
"Mr. Kerr, good morning."
"I need you to buy every unsold crate in Ashford Mills," I said. "All of it, today."
"The whole county's harvest?"
"Last year's price plus ten percent. Send the trucks, and put the corn on the freezer line first."
"That's about four million dollars, sir."
"I know what it is."
"Yes, sir. Consider it ordered."
I hung up.
The old grower on the bucket was staring at me.
"Son," he said. "Who was that?"
"Someone with a lot of trucks," I said.
A hand clapped down on my shoulder hard enough to hurt.
"Look who crawled back."
My brother Dale stood there in his packing apron with half the town behind him.
He was bigger than I remembered, and he was grinning.
"Mason Kerr," Dale said, loud enough for the whole square. "Gone five years, and the first thing he does is play big shot on his phone."
Somebody laughed.
Joanna Kester did not.
She stood by the co-op's lead truck in her canvas apron, auburn braid over one shoulder, and she watched me.
"I'm not playing," I said.
"You're a warehouse picker, little brother. Dad told us. You stack boxes at night."
"I did."
"And now you're buying the county." Dale turned to the crowd and spread his arms. "Folks, my brother just bought four million dollars of tomatoes on a flip phone."
The laughter spread.
I felt my face heat, but I kept my hand where it was and I did not look away from him.
My father had come up behind Dale, wearing the same flannel shirt he had worn when I left.
He looked ten years older.
"Mason," he said. "Don't embarrass this family. People are hurting here."
"Dad, I'm telling you the trucks are coming."
"Stop it. Please."
He said it quietly, and that hurt more than Dale had.
"Whose trucks?" a man in the crowd called out. "What company?"
"Brightwater," I said. "Brightwater Foods."
The laughing stopped for one second.
Then somebody said, "Brightwater doesn't buy from nobody."
A black SUV turned onto the square, slow and shining, and the crowd opened for it.
It stopped at the courthouse steps.
The man who climbed out wore a Brightwater company vest over a white shirt, and he smiled.
I knew his face from the regional org chart.
Jarrett Pelletier, Ohio vice president, thirty-five years old.
My employee, as of Friday.
Then the passenger door opened, and my wife stepped out.
Delaney.
Her blonde hair was done, and she wore a cream coat I had never seen.
She walked around the car, and she took Jarrett's arm.
My father's face lit up.
"Delaney!" he called. "Jarrett! Thank God."
"Bert," Delaney said warmly. "I told you he'd handle it."
She turned to the square, and her voice rang out clear and rehearsed.
"Everyone, listen. Brightwater has agreed to buy the whole county's crop, and that was Jarrett's idea."
The crowd erupted.
Some of them were cheering.
Some of them were already clapping Jarrett on the back.
The old grower stood up off his bucket with a tomato still in each hand.
"Jarrett did this?" he said.
"My pleasure," Jarrett said, and he pressed a hand to his chest. "Brightwater takes care of its own."
I stood there with my duffel bag.
My wife looked at me for the first time since her one visit to the city eight months ago, and her eyes were cold and flat.
"Mason, honestly," she said, quiet enough that only the front row heard. "Go home and wash up."
"Delaney."
"The house isn't for you tonight. There's a barn."
My father looked at the ground.
Dale smirked.
Behind them, Jarrett lifted a hand to the crowd and gave me the smallest wink.
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