Thanks to laws where I lived, the police let me know when Daniel was released from jail a month later. I was apprehensive in case he made trouble. And he did. But it wasn’t the sort I had feared.

  I woke up early one morning to a knock on the door. I yawned as I went to answer it with clothes I threw on quickly. The person behind the door was insistently pounding on it and ringing the doorbell. I opened the door to see a man in business casual. He looked like one of those Mormon doorknockers, so I was prepared for soapbox preaching far too early in the morning. What I got instead was a folder thrust into my hands.

  “Mr. Teller, you have been served,” the man said.

  “Me? Not my father?” I asked, realizing what I’d been handed.

  “Your business, specifically. So yes, you.”

  “Ok.”

  “Sorry for waking you,” he said. “Have a good day.”

  Like that, he was gone.

  “Who was that?” Dad asked when he finally woke enough to join me.

  “Process server,” I said. “I—or the business, I think—got sued.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Eh,” I shrugged. “It’ll be fine. That’s why I hired Al. Even if he won’t be handling it, he’ll know the right person. Let’s see what this is all about.”

  I sat down with Dad at the kitchen table. The manila folder was easy to open. Inside was a stack of papers written in legalese. While I wasn’t fluent in that language, I had a passable understanding of it.

  I read from start to finish. After a couple of pages, I had the gist of it. Daniel was suing me for causing the crash and wrecking his car. The fence—according to the lawsuit—has been a trap, which was illegal. Well, it was illegal according to the suit. I didn’t know the law, so I had no idea if that was true or not.

  For the injuries he got plus pain and suffering and whatever else he threw in there, he was seeking $500,000. While a lot of money, that was a pittance to me. Really, I just wanted to guy to leave me alone. That, and the whole thing just stunk of a money grab, so I would fight it on the principle of the matter.

  I told Dad what it was about.

  “That’s dumb,” he said.

  “Yeah. I’ll call Al in a couple of hours when he’s in his office.”

  “Sounds good. Do you need any help or support or anything?”

  “Nah. I’ve got this.”

  “A’ight kid.”

  I snorted before packing the papers back inside the envelope they’d come in.

  Three hours later, I called Al on my phone.

  “Hello, Al speaking,” he said.

  “Hey Al, it’s Eddy.”

  “Oh, Eddy, how are you?”

  “Good enough, I guess. Anyway, I got sued. Got served this morning.”

  “That’s troubling. What for?”

  I explained the suit. He asked for the docket number so he could look it up without me having to scan everything over to him.

  “Alright,” he told me. “I’ll handle this. What’s the outcome you’re hoping for?”

  “I really just want him to go away. This is the guy that burned my shed down a while back. Rammed into my fence to do something else—which is how he got caught.”

  “Do you have any evidence for the arson?”

  “Yeah. I had a private investigator look at it. He found some pretty good stuff online about it. Social media stuff.”

  “Gotcha. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll file a countersuit for the damages from the arson and contest what they’ve filed against you. The most likely thing that will happen is that it’ll settle for a small amount one way or the other—provided the evidence is solid on both sides.”

  “I’m not interested in the money. I really just want to make sure this guy doesn’t interfere with my business, property, family, or anything like that. The peace of mind is what I was more than anything.”

  “I hear you. I’ll see what I can do about that in the negotiation.”

  “What if I use one of those contracts? Would you be able to write a good one?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Hmm,” he said. “That could work. You might have to pay a bit of money for them to accept it.”

  “That’s alright. I have plenty. I could pay what they’re asking for without even thinking about it, but the whole thing pisses me off. It’s not a good deal for me, you know?”

  “Right. Please send over the evidence you have from the private investigator along with their name and contact information. I’ll need them as a witness if it goes to trial.”

  “Alright. Thanks, Al.”

  “You got it, Eddy.”

  I hung up the phone and sighed. Even though it wasn’t a big issue, this whole thing was going to hang over me until it got resolved. I wanted to scream! Why couldn’t I just be left alone to farm experience? That was how I was going to save the world. The idiots getting in my way were cutting off their nose to spite their face—even if they weren’t aware of it! I shook my head. Those thoughts weren’t going to do me any good. I had more important things to worry about. Like the pumpkin I was growing.

  The pumpkin was getting large. I’d been diligent in cutting all of the flowers away except for the one that had been growing. I got it onto the pallet in time. It would be off the ground so it wouldn’t rot. At the same time, hitting it with Grow every day had been helping. Except now it was even more difficult to maintain balance. The pumpkin had a voracious appetite when it came to nutrients. Even more so when it came to water. If I had too much water, I risked splitting the pumpkin. Too little and it wouldn’t grow much and would increase the risk of splitting when it rained or I watered it. The thing was temperamental!

  Beyond all of that, I did have one more issue: pests. While pumpkins—thanks to their relatively thick skin—were fairly resistant to pests, there was something attacking the leaves. Using Grow was only making the problem worse. What I needed was a heavy dose of whatever ‘cide would knock it out. That meant figuring out what the culprit was and ordering the right chemicals to combat the menace.

  Extensive searching determined that I had a couple problems. The first were the aphids. Those little shits were always a problem at the best of times, but this year they had zeroed in on the pumpkin for their meal ticket. The second was a type of beetle that was eating the leaves. For each I needed a different type of pesticide. I ordered both types.

  When they arrived a week later, I read through the instructions. I mixed up a batch of both—with a little more than it suggested. I mean, the infestations of both were pretty bad. The spray bottle—the kind with a big hand pump—wasn’t too heavy. It carried up to a gallon of the pesticide at a time, which turned out to be more than I needed for one application.

  The slow trickle of combat experience for killing the bugs told me it was working. That didn’t stop me from spraying daily for a week. I sprayed a couple more times even after the notifications stopped. I wasn’t playing around—that pumpkin needed to win first prize after all!

  Through the remains of the summer, there was radio silence from Al. I didn’t feel the need to bother him—he was doing his job. Instead, I focused on the crops and the pumpkin.

  The pumpkin was simply enormous. It was as wide as Dad was tall! In height, it was about as tall as me. The typical orange color of the pumpkin was faint. After all, the plant was putting its efforts into growing the pumpkin in size. It wasn’t meant to be a beauty.

  I left the pumpkin to grow as long as I could. Around the time I harvested the grain for the year, I had to snip the pumpkin and get it shipped off to the state fair. Even if I wasn’t going to visit until the prizes were handed out—and the pumpkins were raced—it needed to be there for the duration of the event.

  I was so thankful that I’d put it on a pallet to start with. Despite being on the pallet, the pumpkin was so big that it was spilling over the sides! Using both tractors, Dad and I managed to get the thing into the back of his truck and drive it—slowly—to the state fair.

  “Wow!” said the man who signed us in. “That’s a mighty fine pumpkin you have there.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Been working on it all year!”

  He laughed.

  “Alright, bring it up to the first building on your left. The boys there will help you get it off the truck.”

  “Alright,” Dad said. “Thanks for the directions.”

  The man nodded, and we drove forward.

  The drop off was scarier than getting it into the truck had been. The people working at the state fair needed to use two forklifts to get it safely on the ground. Every inch it lowered made my heart race more. When it was in its position—on a large wagon—they let us know we could leave.

  “I think you’ve got a good chance,” Dad told me. “Compared to the other pumpkins, yours was by far the largest. What did you do?”

  “Magic,” I shrugged.

  “Of course. How’s the money for the magic going?”

  “The experience?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I seem to get about a million and a half every harvest.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It is, but it’s not going to be enough.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “At least a hundred million, probably more. It keeps growing every time I test something out and learn more. Kinda frustrating.”

  “Hmm. Anything else you can do?”

  “No idea. The pumpkin quest might give something good, but who really knows. Those quests have been pretty rare or not worth the effort. With enough resets, I’m hopeful I’ll get enough, but it’s hard to say.”

  “Well, I’m here for you, kiddo.”

  “Thanks.”

  We fell into silence while he drove us home. I stared out the window and watched the trees fly past. I let my mind wander. Images of happier times and dreams for the future flitted through my head. I grabbed at them to pass the time—some attempts more successful than other. Then, out of nowhere, I got a notification that changed everything.

  Seeing as I was in Dad’s truck, there was no way to have killed a fish. Unless…

  I thought back to the excessive application of pesticides. I wondered if that was the cause. Just like I got a portion of the experience when George did anything at his business, maybe I got a reduced amount of experience when something dies that was—at least partially—because of something I did. If that was the case, I had another way to get more experience. And it might be enough experience to fulfill my goals sooner than I had feared.

  The truth was that I would need to test it more to confirm. I’d neglected Combat Experience, generally. Mostly because I wasn’t a killer. I was much more comfortable toiling for my experience than doing something dangerous. It was unexplored territory, though.

  Maybe a day fishing with Dad would be helpful? That might ease me into the mindset I would need to kill something. Fish felt less like me than a cow. So that was an easier place to start—mentally. I made a note to hold off on my testing of the pesticides until after I went fishing with Dad. I had no desire to eat pesticide-laced fish. Dad probably didn’t, either.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said after getting out of my thoughts.

  “Hmm?”

  “Want to go fishing?”

  “Why not? Where were you thinking?”

  “There’s the stream that goes through the fields. I think there are trout there.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “We can try,” he said. “We’ll need some equipment though, so next week, whenever it’s nice out?”

  “Sure,” I smiled.