Feed My People Read online



  Feed My People

  by

  M.A.Kropp

  Copyright 2016 M.A. Kropp

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  Feed My People

  “Look, Frank, I can’t help you.” Beni Oligowma stood at the rear of the long truck backed up to the warehouse loading dock. He was talking to a man standing inside the truck, pushing a loaded pallet jack into place. “I have other customers. And everyone needs more food. I only have so much to go around.”

  Frank cranked the pallet to the floor of the truck, and slid the long arms of the jack out. He rested an arm on the handle of the jack and looked at Beni.

  “You mean you have customers that will pay more than I can afford to, right?”

  Beni shrugged. “Business, Frank. Nothing personal.” He walked away, leaving Frank to finish loading the rest of the small group of pallets on the warehouse floor near his truck. Frank finished and strapped the jack in place. He closed the rear door and locked it, and walked out the side door of the warehouse. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked down the line of docks. Every one had a truck at it, each loading whatever amount of food Beni decided to sell to them. Frank looked up at the dark clouds. At least the rains had stopped, although Frank knew the torrents would start again. The storm cycles seemed to last longer and longer when they came. Frank shook his head. He didn’t know what was worse- the torrential rains, piling snow, and constant flooding of the storm cycles, or the droughts with heat that made it dangerous to stay outdoors for long. He settled his cap more firmly on his head and climbed into his truck. He drove out of the loading area, and turned onto the road, past the sign reading Oligowma Foods.

  Two hours later, Frank was unloading at the back dock of a small supermarket. The rain had started again as he was driving home. It beat on the roof and sheeted down the windows. Visibility on the road was poor. Frank had gotten soaked running from the truck to the building. He unstrapped the pallet jack and began unloading what he’d been able to get. He was pulling the jack arms out of a pallet when a short, gray-haired man walked up to him.

  “Not a big load,” he said, looking over the pallets. Frank pulled off one work glove and wiped his hand across his face.

  “All I could get, Dad.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to his father. The older man unfolded it and read the invoice, noting the price at the bottom.

  “Benjamin Oligowma is a crook.” It was a statement, flat, unemotional.

  “Yeah, and unfortunately for places like ours, he’s the only crook in the area.” Frank turned to one of the pallets. “I did manage to get some oranges. One barrel, and they’re small and hard. Probably don’t have a lot of juice. But it’s fresh fruit.” His father’s face brightened.

  “Forget Oligowma. Come over here and see what else we’ve got.” Frank pulled off his other glove and stuck them in his jeans’ pocket. His father shoved the invoice in a back pocket, leading Frank across the back room to the produce cooler in the corner. They walked through the swinging doors, and Frank stopped. He looked at his father, who was smiling.

  “This from Mae’s kid? And that science experiment of his outside of town?” His father nodded. Frank walked over to the shelves they were facing. Lined up on two of them were boxes of lettuce. Honest-to-goodness green lettuce. The heads were small, but the leaves were dark green, loose, and ruffled. Frank broke off a leaf and tasted it.

  “This is good.” He looked at the shelves. “It’s not a lot, but it’s a start. I gotta admit, when that kid came back here, spouting his crazy-sounding ideas, I didn’t take it seriously. But now.” He finished the lettuce leaf.

  “Yeah, I thought the same thing. But that stuff is going to fly off the shelves. Especially now, with the storms flooding most of the farmable areas.”

  “Well, then, let’s get it out there and see how it does.” They loaded the boxes onto a cart and rolled it out into the store. People were walking up and down the aisles, putting cans and boxes into their shopping carts. When they saw what was on the cart Frank was pushing, they started following him to the almost empty produce section of the store.

  “Is that lettuce?”

  “Real lettuce?”

  “Wonder how much they’re gonna charge for that?”

  “I don’t care! I’ll pay whatever they want! I’m so tired of canned stuff!”

  The chatter continued as the parade of shoppers got longer. Frank was grinning by the time they got to the produce shelves. As soon as he stopped the cart, people began to grab heads of the lettuce out of the boxes, not giving him time to even unload. He left the cart in the aisle and stood aside with his father.

  “What are we going to charge, Dad? I think we could put any price on that stuff, and they’d pay.”

  His father watched their customers, most of whom he had known for years, picking up the fresh greens, sniffing them, smiling as they set them in their baskets.

  “Let’s not act like Oligowma. We’re not going to jack up some artificial price, just because we have something scarce.” He told Frank the price, and left to set up the item in the store’s computer. Frank was watching the people clean out the boxes when a woman stopped her cart next to him.

  “Hello, Janet.”

  “I can’t believe you have fresh lettuce! Is there more? I’d have taken a lot more, but I wanted to let everyone get at least some.”

  “This is all we have for now. I’m really hoping we can get more, though. Maybe some other stuff, too.”

  “That would be wonderful.” She wheeled her cart away. Frank climbed the stairs at the front of the store leading to the offices upstairs. His father turned away from the desk as Frank came in.

  “Got that set up in the computer so it will ring in the registers.” He leaned back in his chair. “You think the kid can keep this up?”

  Frank shook his head. “No idea. Maybe I’ll drive out there tomorrow morning and see what’s going on. Talk to him. Maybe I can get a feel for what we can expect.”

  “Good idea.” His father turned back to the computer. Frank went back to supervise the unloading and shelving of the food he’d brought from Beni’s warehouse.

  Early the next morning, Frank drove out to Mae’s house. She lived at the edge of the small valley town, in a rambling farmhouse. The acres surrounding the house once held prosperous farms, with fertile fields that yielded plentiful crops. As the oceans rose and the weather deteriorated, the crops either withered under the extreme heat and drought, or washed away in the torrential storm cycles. One by one, the farmers gave up and moved out. The land had lain barren and wasted since. Now, driving up the road to the house, Frank could see what looked like greenhouse shells in two of the fields near the house. He parked the car and walked up to the door. At his knock, Mae came to let him into the big, homey kitchen.

  “Frank! Good to see you. How did that lettuce work out for you?”

  “Flew off the shelves. Actually, I never even got it on the shelves.” He grinned, and then stared at the cutting board Mae had on the island in the center of the kitchen. “Are those tomatoes?”

  “Sure are. Bobby brought them up this morning. First ones off the vines. Here, have a slice.” She handed Frank the ripe, red slice. He took a bite and looked across the countertop at Mae.

  “How the heck is he doing this? This is delicious!”

  “Why don’t you go on out there and take a look? I’m sure Bobby will be happy to show you around.” Mae gestured with her knife to the door.

  “I can’t wait to see this! Thanks, Mae!”

  Frank left the house, pulling the h
ood of his slicker up to shield his face a little from the rain pouring down. He walked across the yard, skirting as many puddles as he could. He approached one of the greenhouses, and saw a small side door propped partway open. He stepped inside and found himself looking down a short flight of stairs into a sea of green. He could see Mae’s son at the far end of the rows of vegetables. He climbed down the stairs and walked down the aisle. Bobby looked up from the tablet computer he was working on as Frank approached.

  “Hello, Frank.” Bobby held out a hand. “Come to get more of that lettuce?”

  Frank shook Bobby’s hand. “We’ll take as much as you want to sell us. And anything else you have, too.” He looked around. “This is incredible. How are you managing this when no one else can keep crops growing in all this?” Frank gestured above their heads, where they could hear the rain pelting off the roof.

  “Short answer? Hydroponics. But there’s more to it than just that.” Bobby set the tablet down. “Up at the university, we’ve been working for a number of years now on ways to improve the whole system of growing hydroponically. We knew things were going to get bad environmentally, with the ice caps all but melted and the oceans rising, plus the atmospheric effects from greenhouse gases. We knew hydroponics were the way to go, but there were a lot of kinks to work out. We used our gardens on campus to run