My Father-In-Law Offered My Growing Rooms To Strangers Before Lunch

The paper strip curled before the meter changed.

I had hung it from a wire above the blue oyster blocks. When the air grew dry, its loose end bent toward the ceiling. It was an old trick. I still checked the meter, but paper often noticed first.

I was thirty-six, a Korean American man with straight black hair, broad shoulders, and a pale scar across my left thumb.

I grew mushrooms for a living in Berea, Kentucky. My hands smelled like wet hardwood even after I washed them.

That morning, I had two restaurant buyers walking between my racks. We were talking about a regular order of eighty pounds a week.

Then Victor brought his own buyers through the loading door.

Victor was a tall white man of sixty-three, with silver hair brushed back, pink cheeks, and a gold watch that slid over his wrist.

He was my wife's father and a property auctioneer. He laughed easily with strangers. With quiet men, he usually saved his breath for orders.

“Here's the space,” he told a woman carrying a yellow folder. “Good roof. Concrete floor. All this comes out.”

He swept one hand toward my racks.

Water dripped from a mushroom cap into a tray.

“We're in a food room,” I said. “You need clean shoe covers.”

“Junho, we're only looking.”

I held out the box anyway.

The woman took a pair. Her companion followed her lead. Victor kept his boots planted on my clean mat.

“This is my son-in-law,” he said. “Family's unpaid caretaker. He likes having something to fuss over.”

One of my restaurant buyers looked down at the price sheet in his hand.

“I run a commercial farm,” I said.

Victor laughed as if I had helped his joke.

“Of course you do.”

The woman introduced herself as Nora Bell. Her company rented tables, chairs, and tents for events. She asked about truck access from the road.

Victor answered before I could.

“Once these shelves are gone, you'll back straight in.”

“They're growing racks,” I said. “And they aren't leaving.”

He turned his smile off.

“You need to clear out by the thirtieth. I've promised a vacant building.”

It was May 6. I had crop cycles running into July, two workers on payroll, and blocks worth $19,600 on those racks.

“You should speak with me after my buyers leave.”

“Your wife handles family matters.”

“This is a business matter.”

He moved closer.

“Then act like you understand business. Go wait outside while I show my property.”

I heard the fans, the soft hiss of water, and someone folding a shoe cover over a heel.

For years, my wife Leah had handled birthday plans, holiday fights, and the careful wording Victor seemed to require. I had let her explain our farm to her relatives. That had saved time until it had started costing me a name.

Caretaker. Helper. Boy with the mushrooms.

I took my phone from my pocket.

Victor nodded toward it.

“Call Leah. She'll explain.”

I called Grace Han.

“Are you at your desk?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Please bring the room file. The long one.”

“All twelve years?”

“All twelve.”

Victor reached for the switch beside the door.

“Leave that on,” I said. “It controls fresh air.”

He dropped his hand, mostly because Nora was watching.

I walked my restaurant buyers to their car. One said they would call about the order. Neither looked at me when he said it.

When I came back, Victor was telling Nora the building would sell for $610,000, with clear possession at closing.

“I've had nothing but family junk in here,” he said.

I stood beside a rack that held next week's wages.

“You have a tenant,” I told Nora. “Please ask for the lease before you spend money on inspections.”

Her pen stopped.

Victor's face reddened above his collar.

“There isn't a valid lease. We settled all that.”

I did not argue in front of the open door. Warm air was pouring in. I closed it, checked the paper strip, and wrote the time in my room log.

Leah arrived twenty minutes later. Victor had called her before I had finished watering.

“Dad says you're threatening his sale,” she said.

“He ordered me out of my business.”

She glanced toward him.

“He said the rent money was returned years ago.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

“Which account?”

“I don't know. He said you two worked it out.”

Before she could say more, tires crunched across the gravel.

Grace stepped from her small gray car carrying a flat black case. She was fifty-eight, Korean American, and had kept farm books longer than I had grown anything for sale.

She passed Victor without answering his greeting.

“Junho,” she said, setting the case on my packing table. “I brought the signed original and the canceled check.”