That's the particular thing about Thomas. He never does anything he doesn't believe is right. He just has a very limited imagination about what right looks like. Ruth considered this. That's a generous read.
She said. I spent a lot of miles on that wagon working up to it. Elellanor said. Ruth laughed. A real laugh, unpretentious and sudden.
And Elellanor found herself laughing too. And that was how the friendship began, the way the best ones do, with the surprise of genuine recognition. By the end of July, the Southfield was fully turned and planted. By mid- August, the kitchen garden was producing more than Eleanor could eat, and she began setting aside the surplus, carefully, methodically, preserving and drying and canning with the precision of someone who understood that abundance in summer is the margin between comfort and hardship in winter. The chicken coupe, rebuilt now from actual lumber rather than wishful thinking, had 12 hens.
The eggs alone were covering a portion of her costs. It was Ruth who first suggested the idea. You've got more than you need, Ruth said one afternoon, looking at the rows of preserve jars on Eleanor's kitchen shelves. And the merkantile charges robbery for preserves. Have you thought about selling?
I've thought about it, Eleanor said. But I need a consistent supply before I can promise anything to a store. I don't want to make an offer I can't back up. That's wise, Ruth said. But you're closer than you think.
Eleanor looked at her jars. She thought about the egg production which was increasing as the flock settled. She thought about the fall harvest coming in the south field which was looking against all the expectations of people who didn't know soil the way she was learning to know this soil genuinely promising. Maybe she said definitely. Ruth said the man at the merkantile was named Gideon Pierce, and he was the kind of businessman who had survived 20 years in a small town by being exactly as skeptical as the situation required, and not one degree more.
He looked at the sample jar of tomato preserves. Eleanor sat on his counter, and then looked at her with the measuring gaze of a man evaluating a proposition. "These yours?" he asked. "They are," she said. He opened the jar.
He smelled it. He tasted a small amount from his finger. Not politely, but with genuine professional assessment. Harker Place, he said. Whitmore Farm, she said.
Something shifted in his face. Recalibration the same as Ida had done. I heard you were out there, he said. Heard you'd be gone by July. It's August, she said.
He looked at the jar again. I can take six jars a week to start, he said. If these sell the way I think they will, we talk about more. Eight jars, Eleanor said. And I want fair price, not charity price.