Comfort crops

[By Angelika St.Laurent]

"Really? No, that can't be true!"

Kailee let herself sink on the bench. Her eyes wandered over the field of bright red flowers swinging gently in the wind, stretching from the garden down to the creek. Just five minutes ago the poppies had seemed a bright assurance of the farm's prosperity. But now?

"Not the Count," she protested.

"I just heard it on the radio," answered Ethan, slumping beside her on the bench. "I mean he was old, ninety-three. Not even Count Sam can live forever."

"I know," whispered Kailee, staring at the red field in front of her. "It's just that he's always been here."

Always wasn't quite true. She had been six, back in 2018, when Sam Bear had been elected Governor for the first time. She still remembered her father cursing that day, swearing that that drug-trading liberal gangster would wreck the state within a year. He had loaded his hunting rifle that night and placed it under the bed. It had sat there, loaded, until Mom got cancer and only the state health fund saved them from having to sell the farm.

That spring, Dad had applied for his first concession to grow poppies, and the gun had wandered back into the shed, coming out only in deer season. Governor Bear, always re-elected, had long since been called Count Sam.

Kailee had always loved the bountiful red fields full of the poppies they were allowed to grow every four years. She had never missed the chance to apply for a poppy license since she and Ethan took over the farm. Sure, hemp was good cash too, less trouble to grow, but it just didn't have the grace of poppy.

"With the Count gone, will we be able to sell the crop?" Kailee wondered, "with Billie going off to college next year and all?"

"I think so," nodded Ethan slowly. "Without comfort crops, there wouldn't be many public services left in New York."