Love Means Courage - Andrew Grey

additional horses, we have a year’s worth of hay, and we’ll start bringing in more in two months.”
    “Good idea.” Cliff was starting to look a little less desperate.
“I could put an ad in the paper?”
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“No need. There are already plenty of ads for people who need hay. I already checked. All we have to do is answer them.” “Jesus, you’ve already thought about this, haven’t you?”
    “I was going to suggest it to you anyway.” Len got his mind on his next idea before he lost it. “The next thing we need to do is inventory everything: land, along with its use, equipment, supplies, animals, everything. We need to make sure that we’re using everything to the farm’s best advantage.” He saw the skeptical look on Cliff’s face and decided he should go for broke. “You’ve been in your own world since Ruby and your dad died. Fred and Randy have done their very best for you, but they can only handle what they know about, and I doubt you know all they’ve been doing. So you need to find out.”
    “Okay.” Cliff lowered himself in the chair, and Geoff climbed on his lap.
“And I think you need to visit the bank again. Money leaves a trail, and we need to follow it.”
“They weren’t helpful the last time.”
    That defeatist tone was starting to creep in again, and Len hated it. For a while, he could see some fire behind Cliff’s eyes, but now it was like someone had doused them with water. “I’ll go with you, if you like.” He wasn’t sure Cliff would accept his offer, but he made it anyway. Len felt fired up and excited, and he hoped he was inspiring Cliff to action, but he wasn’t sure.
    “What do we do first?”

    Len got up and went into the living room, returning with the Sunday paper Cliff hadn’t yet thrown away. “You start making phone calls, turning some of that hay in the loft into cash by answering some ads. If they want it delivered, charge them. It looks 71
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like the going rate is almost two dollars a bale.”
“How many bales should I sell?”
Len shrugged. “I’m going to go out and take a rough count and figure what we’ll need for the next three or four months. We can sell the rest.”
    “I’ll meet you in the barn after I make the calls.” Len got up and left the house, hurrying to the barn. Most of the owners had left, but he found Nicole in one of the stalls, grooming a horse. “Nicole, I was wondering if I could use some of your expertise.”

    She looked up from what she was doing. “I’m almost done here.” The brush flowed easily over the horse’s coat. “There you go, Buster, all set.” She gave the horse a pat and then left the stall.

    “How can I help?”

    “We’ve got a lot more hay than we need, and I was wondering if you could help me estimate our needs so we can sell the rest.” She nodded and Len led her to the hay loft. At the top of the stairs, Nicole whistled as she looked up at the walls of hay.

    “This loft holds about two thousand bales of hay, and it looks like you’ve got about fifteen hundred still. I’d estimate you could easily sell a thousand bales with no problem.” She turned to Len.

    “Will this be part of that story you promised?”

    “Most definitely.” They descended the stairs, and Len left Nicole with the horses and walked back to the house, finding Cliff on the phone in the office, just finishing a call.
    “I hope I didn’t overdo it, but after two calls, I’ve sold five hundred bales. It seems the long winter left a lot of people short on hay.” 72
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    “Good. Nicole estimated we could sell a thousand bales with no problem.” Len’s mind boggled as he thought of the hauling and carrying involved with moving that much hay.
    “I quoted then two dollars a bale, two fifty if we had to load it.
They’re bringing their own people. You’ll just need to keep count.”
“When will they be here?”
“One’s coming today at two and another tomorrow at three.
We can reassess then.”
    Len spent the rest of the day helping get the hay out of the loft and recording the major items for their inventory. He didn’t see Cliff or Geoff, and he hoped Cliff was out looking at the fields. At four, the last of the hay they’d sold was loaded, and Len had a check in his pocket. The hay wagon pulled away, and Len saw Cliff pull into the driveway and get out of the truck with Geoff right behind him.
    “That made a dent in the hay loft.” He handed Cliff the check