Valley Fever by Katherine Taylor

lived in houses like this, houses originally built to house workers, managers, helpers to sustain the farm. But most people, when parents passed on the operating duties or else died and fortunes were inherited, bought 1920s Spanish mansions commissioned by the lumber barons of Old Fig Garden or built themselves obnoxious palaces on the north side of town, houses with twenty-foot front doors and entire tile floors imported piece by piece from monasteries in France. The small, disintegrating ranch houses got rented to farmworkers and then, eventually, were razed. Uncle Felix didn’t go in for that sort of competition. “I prefer my real estate to generate income,” he said. The types of people who built houses on the north side, he thought, were the types of people who turn their family’s land into pink stucco shopping centers. “The best reason not to have children,” Uncle Felix said.
    The first few times I walked up to Uncle Felix’s house, I used the driveway as a destination and then turned around to come home. I liked to walk by myself. But lately I had started ringing the bell, and Uncle Felix would walk me back to the river.
    It was nice to walk next to someone.
    I said, “You think Wilson’s not going to turn a big swath of your land into a housing development?” We took a route along the canal, with vines on one side and trees on the other. Often on these walks, the conversation came back to what would become of the land: Dad’s land, Felix’s land, the land in general. Pavement can’t be reversed.
    â€œI’m working on Wilson,” he said. “He’ll need the vineyards to make the wine. If he wants to sell the company, well. Then.”
    â€œMaybe you should sell the company before Wilson gets to it.”
    â€œI’d rather be dead. I wish you’d stay here. I’ll teach you everything you need to know about the business. You already know most of it.”
    â€œPlease, Uncle Felix.”
    â€œI don’t understand you girls. You’re going to barely scrape out some meager living for yourself down south, jump from one job to another, using your brains to make money for strangers, when you could come back here and be with your family and work in an honest industry and get rich.” It was evening, late July, and the temperature hadn’t yet fallen below 100.
    â€œI hardly see Dad getting rich.” It was a stupid, spoiled thing to say.
    â€œFarming’s been very good to your dad. And you. There were a lot of rich years. Your father would have a hell of a lot more money if he’d get rid of Phillip.”
    â€œPhillip has no loyalty.”
    â€œLoyalty isn’t Phillip’s problem. Embezzling is Phillip’s problem.” Phillip was the orchard manager. Everyone in town knew he’d been buying the chemicals for his own two hundred acres on Dad’s account, putting the orders in on Dad’s peaches. Twenty years of chemicals for two hundred acres of vines and trees costs in the range of $2 million. The only person in town who didn’t consider this sort of pilfering embezzlement was my father. My beleaguered, kind, dear father, who never suspected a sinister motive from anyone.
    â€œHe won’t listen to anyone about that. He thinks everyone is as honest as he is.”
    â€œHe’s lousy at business, your father.”
    â€œWhat Dad wants most of all is to be liked.”
    â€œThere’s no money made in being liked,” Uncle Felix said.
    â€œYou’d know.”
    â€œStill. You wouldn’t have the luxury to hop around doing nothing without farming.”
    â€œI’m not doing nothing.”
    â€œThat’s right,” he said, meaning yes you are . “If you came back here and worked with me, I’d be sure you got rich.”
    â€œI don’t care about money.”
    â€œThat’s bull. Everyone cares about money.”
    â€œI