After I Stopped Buying Their Corn, the Farmers Panicked Chapter 07

After I Stopped Buying Their Corn, the Farmers Panicked Chapter 07

I frowned and signaled the workers to open the gate. 

Outside stood a whole crowd of farmers from Reed Co–op, with Noah Reed at the front. They were covered in mud, faces tight 

with panic and anger. 

Worse than that–they were carrying corn. Piles of it lay at their feet. Damp, moldy, some of it already rotting through. 

What had once been their “hard work” and their “dignity” 

looked pitiful now, churned into the muck. 

The old chairman stepped forward and jabbed a finger at me. 

His voice was hoarse. 

“Ms. Blake! You promised to buy our co–op’s corn! How can you go back on your word like this?” 

“Look at it! Look at what’s happened to it! All of it ruined! How 

are we supposed to live?” 

Noah Reed stood behind him. His eyes were redder than last time, but it wasn’t from feeling wronged anymore. It was 

despair and a vicious need to take it out on someone. He 

gritted his teeth and glared at me. 

I looked at this crowd of people that reality had broken, and all I felt was pity. 

I spoke calmly. “Our partnership ended a long time ago. As for 

this corn–I’m sorry. But what made it rot in the field was the 

weather, your broken sales channel, and the business model you chose that couldn’t take any pressure. What does any of that have to do with me?” 

The farmers froze. Some of them looked lost for a moment, 

then panicked all over again, refusing to take it in. 

“You’re lying!” one of them shouted, holding up a moldy ear of corn. “You’re just kicking us while we’re down! You went back on your word!” 

“That’s right! If you don’t take the corn, you’re driving us into 

the ground!” 

“You have to take it today! Otherwise we’re not leaving!” 

I stood my ground and let those mud–and–rain–soaked curses 

fall on me. 

“Back then, you followed Noah Reed. You smashed up my 

corn, slandered my livestock, blocked my gate, and beat me. The contract spells it out clearly–you’re the ones who chose to end the partnership. What gives you any right to demand a thing from me now?” 

The crowd went silent for a beat. 

Noah Reed suddenly shoved the people in front of him aside 

and pushed to the front. 

“Quit playing the saint! If you hadn’t lowballed us in the first place, would we have had to open our own store? If you hadn’t refused to take our corn later, would we be in this mess? It’s 

all on you!” 

“Lowballed?” I almost laughed. “Back then, the market price was fifty cents a pound at most. Out of goodwill, I paid you seventy cents a pound, and I covered transportation. And you 

call that crooked?” 

“Your variety is old. The market doesn’t want it. Noah Reed oversimplified the whole thing and decided he’d march into the city and sell it for two dollars a pound. Now that you’ve failed, you want to dump all of it on me?” 

My eyes swept across face after face–some angry, some numb, some afraid–and finally settled on the old chairman. 

“Hank. You’re the oldest one here. You’ve seen the most. Tell 

me, in good conscience–from start to finish, have I, Emma Blake, ever done a single thing to wrong Reed Co–op?” 

Hank’s lips moved. His face was awful. In the end, he lowered 

his head in shame. 

“And the rest of you!” I turned on the other farmers. “When you all pooled your money for Noah Reed’s store, didn’t every one of you think you were going to strike it rich? Now the money’s gone, the corn’s rotting, and instead of trying to fix anything, you come back to block my gate again? You think I’m easy to push around? You think I’m your personal ATM?” 

Some of them couldn’t meet my eyes. Some of them lowered 

their heads. 

But there’s always someone too stubborn to listen. 

“We don’t care about any of that! All we know is, our corn 

rotted because you didn’t buy it. That makes you the one in 

the wrong!” 

“That’s right! You owe us an explanation today!” 

An explanation. 

The last shred of pity I still had–just because we were all in 

this business together–burned out. 

“Fine. You want an explanation. I’ll give you one.” 

I turned and walked back to the office and came out with a 

folder. Inside was the original contract and printed photos of every slander they’d thrown at me. I tossed the whole thing onto the open ground in front of them. 

“Take a good look! You signed this contract yourselves, and you broke it yourselves! These photos? They’re a record of 

what you did. Defamation. Vandalism. Threats. My livestream 

got banned. My ranch got inspected. My ribs are still aching. I haven’t even started calling in those losses yet!” 

I pulled out my phone, dialed 911, and put it on speaker. 

“Hello, 911. I need to report an incident.”