Human Fuel

Her father had always made it seem easy. Cora worked twelve to fourteen hours a day to accomplish what her father had done in eight or nine. Still, she wasn’t going to give up. His dream deserved to live on.

“Human Fuel,” he’d called it; the farm, the brand, and the product itself. She lugged the bushel baskets of coffee cherries to the barn. She ran them through the masher to remove most of the fruit from the bean, then put them in a barrel and covered them with fresh water. That would ferment the slimy remains of the fruit and separate them from the beans.

Tomorrow she’d run them through the dryer and bag them up. One more day of processing, then she’d be done with this year’s harvest.

The fifty-kilogram bags of processed beans, filled and sewed shut, six to a pallet, stood ready for shipping. With the last of the beans done, she’d have four-hundred and eighteen pallets ready for sale.

Cora pulled out her phone and checked the wholesale prices and did some quick calculations as she left the barn. She’d make enough to pay the taxes, renew the farm’s certification, and keep the lights on…just.

The setting sun backlit the rows of coffee plants, showing how shaggy they were becoming. Pruning and weeding were next on her ever-rotating, never-ending list of tasks.

She walked back to the house, stopping on the way to pull a few errant dandelions from the flowerbed along the walk. Cora frowned, noting that the house was overdue for paint.

The perennial flowers were just beginning to bloom, and it would be a full cacophony of color soon. Better to have the exterior paint brightened up before then, lest it look even more worn than it was.

Cora sat at the desk in her father’s study. No, she reminded herself, it’s my study now. She sent out notifications to the roasters that bought directly from the farm. Human Fuel had 125,000 kilos of certified organic coffee beans for sale, at the current wholesale market rate.

The house was quiet around her. This was always the hardest part of the day. Rather than focus on the silence, she busied herself dusting, polishing the entry hardwood floor, and shining all the chrome in the kitchen, until she was too tired to go any further.

Safely tucked away in her bed, she closed her eyes for another dreamless sleep. She would try, tomorrow, to finish early enough to walk out to the dock and watch the sunset over the lake. A chance to reflect on the life lessons her father taught her, usually right there.

The next day, Cora was feeling proud of herself. She had finished by late afternoon, having loaded the dryer, pruned an acre of the fields, unloaded the dryer, run the beans through the shaker to remove the papery skins, and bagged and stacked the beans.

She was about to walk to the lake, when a black SUV pulled up the long drive to the house. Cora resigned herself to not making it to the lake this evening, either, and went to deal with the visitor.

The man that stepped out of the SUV was small, his pink head bald on top with a halo of black hair, and a slight paunch tightening the buttons of his off-the-rack suit. He carried a pad and stylus.

“Is it already time for our organic re-certification?” she asked.

“No, I’m from the county records office,” he answered. “It seems we’ve fallen behind on this property.”

“I just paid the property taxes last month.” Cora crossed her arms defensively. She wasn’t sure what it was about this man, but he felt dangerous.

“No, no. The taxes are all up to date. We just don’t know who owns the property.”

“Human Fuel, LLC,” she said. She looked at his pad. “See, right there? And that’s who pays the taxes.”

He sighed. “You see, I need to know who the person or people running Human Fuel are. Our records are out of date.”

“I handle all the business decisions,” she said, “what do you need to know.”

“Who, um…started the business?”

“My father,” she said, “Frank Eider, like it says on your pad.”

“And has…anyone replaced mister Eider in his role?”

“No. This is his dream, and no one else.” She studied his posture. Is he scared of me?

He consulted his pad, flipping through several electronic documents.

“I’m Cora, by the way.” She held out a hand to shake.

“St—Steven,” he responded, cautiously accepting her handshake. When she didn’t harm him, he seemed to relax.

“Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“Not right now,” he said. “You say you make the business decisions. Who do you ask for advice…whe—if you need it, I mean?”

“I ask my father,” she said. “I was about to go visit him when you showed up. Would you like to come along?”

He looked surprised. “Well, I…sure.”

Cora led him down the path between the fields. At the far end of the fields, she noticed that the vetch was already blooming. She gathered a few of the purple flowers before cresting the small hill that hid the lake from view.

“Father, I’ve brought Steven to talk to you, but I don’t think he’ll hear anything useful from you.” Cora knelt by the large stone, laser engraved with her father’s name, birth date, and death date. She laid the flowers on the stone and pulled the dandelion that grew on his grave.

Steven’s face was unreadable. He read the headstone and made notes on his pad. “I was afraid of this. Is there any other person who has an interest in this farm?”

“Just me,” Cora said. “It’s the only interest I have; preserving my father’s dream.”

“You’ve kept the farm going for thirty years by yourself,” he said. “That’s impressive.”

“What was I supposed to do? Just give up and walk away?”

“You understand, don’t you, that you don’t….”

“I don’t what, Steven?”

“Cora, you don’t own the farm. The county will have to put it up for sale.”

“You can’t do that!” Her fists clenched at her sides. “My father worked himself to the bone for his dream, and I’m the only one that can keep it alive. You can’t take it away from me!”

He took a half step back from her. “Cora, you understand, don’t you, that you can’t legally claim ownership of the farm. Had we known, this would have happened a lot earlier.”

“Why? Why can’t I keep the farm?”

“First,” he said, “because you’re…uh…. Second, there was no will, you don’t own this property. I’ll do what I can to let you stay on, though.”

“And the county makes a tidy sum selling it off?”

“You’ll see, it’ll all work out.” He turned off his pad.

“Get out of here! Get off my farm!”

As Steven walked back to his SUV, he pulled out his phone and made a call. “The Human Fuel property,” he said, “we need a tech out here…yes, that’s right. Erratic behavior, emotional outbursts, grieving, it thinks the previous owner is its father…no, it looks homemade. Just mark it down as bipedal general purpose farm droid. If the tech can fix it we’ll include it in the auction price, otherwise it’s scrap.”