She turned to look at him. “Sit!” she ordered, as if he were a pesky little dog. She glared at him until he obeyed her, then she went to her father’s desk, put her hands on it and leaned forward. “You’ve got away with your thievery for years now, but this year is different. I think the pickers could put up with the filth and the lack of water, but they won’t put up with the way you’re cheating them of their money. If you don’t start paying, they’re going to start shooting.” She looked at her father and their eyes were alike, both angry and stubborn.
“Amanda, I—” Taylor began.
Amanda glanced at him. “You keep quiet or you leave.” She looked back at her father. “Well?”
J. Harker gave a snort of derision. “I have fifteen men working for me in the fields. They tell me what’s going on, and if they can’t reach me to ask permission, they carry guns and they know how to use them. Bull has more men posted around the area. Let them talk all they want, but the blood spilled will be theirs, not mine.”
Amanda stood back. She had no intention of asking why he had so little humanity and she could see it was no use trying to persuade him. She would have liked to threaten him. But she knew of nothing that mattered to him except the ranch. If she threatened to leave home if he didn’t clean up the camp, it would mean nothing to him. Hank had been correct: a man who could shun his wife and exile his daughter was capable of anything.
J. Harker’s eyes looked triumphant.
“Winning is everything to you, isn’t it?” Amanda said. “No matter who gets in your way, who you have to step on to get there, you have to win. You’re not going to win this one. You may starve a few poor, uneducated migrant workers today, but tomorrow you’ll lose. Your day is over.” She turned on her heel and left the room. She couldn’t bear to be near the man any longer.
Taylor caught her on the stairs. “Amanda,” he said softly, “I didn’t mean—”
“Yes you did,” she said, glaring at him. “You meant every degrading, humiliating thing you’ve ever done to me. For years you’ve tried to make yourself just like my father. He has thousands of helpless pickers to tyrannize while you had only one isolated, lonely girl who was eager to please. Well, Taylor, just like those workers are fed up, so am I.”
“But, Amanda, I love you.”
“No you don’t. You don’t even know me. You love a wooden doll you’ve carved into what you think a female should look like. When you want me, you pull me out of my room; when you have no more need of me, you send me back to
my room with a little list to keep me busy.” She didn’t want to waste more time talking to him but continued up the stairs.
“Amanda,” he said, moving in front of her, “what are you going to do? I mean, our engagement is—”
“Off,” she said, then halted and gave him a look of great patience. “First I am going to do what I can to help the pickers. I will…” She paused, searching for an idea of what she could do. “I am going to make them lemonade—free lemonade. And when the hops are picked I’m going away.”
“With him?” Taylor shot at her. “I’m not as blind as you seem to think.”
She looked at Taylor as if she’d never seen him before. “You may not be blind, but I have been. If Hank will have me, yes, I’ll go away with him, but it’s not likely he’ll want me. Now, will you please move out of my way? There are people fainting from the heat even while we stand here arguing about inconsequential matters.” She moved past him.
“Inconsequential!” he half shouted up at her. “My whole future is being decided by the whim of a woman lusting after some two-bit—”
Amanda whirled to face him. “You’ll get the ranch, I’m sure of it. Where else is my father going to find a mirror image of himself? Neither of you men need me. But let me give you some advice, Taylor. You ought to leave here. You ought to leave today. Now. You should go get Reva and keep going and never look back. Reva will be good for you. She’s just loose enough to counteract that piece of steel you call a spine. Now, I must go, and to tell you the truth, Taylor, I don’t really care what you do.”
She hurried up to her room, tore off her heavy silk dress and put on the lightest-weight white blouse and dark cotton skirt she owned. When she was dressed, she pulled clothing from drawers and her closet. She had no suitcase, so she went to her father’s bedroom and pulled his from the top of the closet. She stuffed her clothes into the case and went downstairs. She didn’t look at the house, for there was no feeling of sadness at leaving it. There was only a feeling that there was freedom outside the door.
She set her suitcase down in the butler’s pantry and went to the kitchen, where she borrowed a tall, lever-handled juice extractor from the cook and called the grocery in Kingman and ordered a truckload of lemons. “Then send to Terrill City for them,” she said into the telephone.
She went outside, the suitcase in one hand, the juicer in the other when she stopped. She needed to say goodbye to her mother.
Amanda stood beside her mother’s chair under the tree for a moment, and everything that had happened came back to her. She felt overwhelming anger at herself. Why had she allowed Taylor to deny her mother? Why had she followed Taylor so blindly?
Grace looked up at her daughter.
“Mother, I—” There were tears in Amanda’s eyes.
“Planning to leave?” Grace asked, nodding at the suitcase.
“I have been a terrible person to you, and I—”
Grace interrupted her daughter. “Mind if I run away with you? And what’s that for? It’s not a cudgel for someone’s head, is it?”
Amanda held the juicer up. “Father promised the workers lemonade and I’m going to give it to them. I figure it will be a day or so before he gets the bill for the lemons and stops delivery.”
“And the suitcase? Does that have to do with the pickers or one very handsome economics professor?”
“I…” Amanda knew she’d been so brave for the last few hours, but her newly found courage was leaving her. She fell to her knees and put her head in her mother’s lap. “It was so awful,” she cried. “Those poor people are fainting from thirst because Father charges them for water, and I feel like such a fool. I have spent years in my room and—”