The underwriter wore loafers to a Christmas tree farm at 2 AM. Then he walked straight for row 41.
Hutch and I both watched him go, and neither of us breathed.
The baling yard sat at the bottom of a hill, and the whole place smelled like sap and diesel. Three flatbeds idled under work lights. A guy in a headlamp Fed trees nose-first through a baler that wrapped each one in orange netting and spat it out like a cigar. Hutch had 6,400 trees cut and stacked, headed to fourteen retail lots in four states, at $38 a tree wholesale.
That's $243,200. Half on delivery, half on December 15.
Hutch needed $55,000 to get there. Trucking, netting, a seasonal crew of nine, and a second baler because the first one ate a bearing every Thanksgiving. His October bank statements showed $3,900 a month, which is what a tree farmer's statements look like in October. The funder wanted to see the collateral with its own eyes. So they sent Lyle.
Lyle had a clipboard and a little LED flashlight on a lanyard, and the first thing he said when he got out of his rental car was, "Are these real?"
"They're trees," Hutch said.
"I mean are they all real. Some places put fakes in front."
"Nobody fakes a tree, man."
Hutch walked him down the front stacks. He pulled one off the pile, snapped the netting, and shook it out. A seven-foot Fraser fir, blue-green, so fresh it dropped nothing. Lyle sniffed it like a wine.
"The lot buyers pull the first ten off every truck," Hutch said. "They check needles, color, and the trunk cut. They've never sent one back."
"How many are like this?"
"All of them."
Lyle wrote something down. Then he did what underwriters do. He ignored the trees he was shown, walked up the hill to the back field, and shone his light down a row of standing trees nobody had cut yet.
Row 41.
Hutch looked at me. I didn't know why yet. I found out about ten seconds later, when Lyle grabbed a branch to steady himself and his hand came away green.
Not sap green. Paint green. Wet.
He shone the light on his palm. Then on the tree. Under the color, every needle was rust-brown and dead, and when he let go of the branch, half of them fell off in a soft little hiss onto his loafers.
"What is this?"
Hutch took his cap off. "Root rot. Wet spring. I lost about twenty-one hundred up top."
"Lost, meaning dead."
"Meaning dead. Colorant's legal. Everybody sprays a little."
"Everybody sprays the dead ones?"
"They go on the back of each truck. Behind the first ten."
I want to tell you I said something smart. I said, "Hutch." That was the whole sentence.
This is where I thought the deal died. I figured Lyle would drive back to the airport, write DECLINE in red across his clipboard, and I'd lose a $4,400 commission and Hutch would lose the season.
Lyle wiped his hand on a branch of the dead tree. Then he made a phone call, walked fifty feet into the dark, and came back smiling.
"We'll do it," he said. "Fifty-five thousand at a 1.55. Eighty-five two-fifty back. Daily debits start Monday."
"Monday they're on the road," Hutch said. "Nothing comes in till the lots open."
"Then you'll be short Monday." Lyle tapped the clipboard. "And we want the lot payments pointed straight at us. First dollar in."
I ran the math while he talked. If one lot buyer shook one tree, he'd send back the whole truck, and the other thirteen would hear about it by lunch. Either way the funder took the first $85,250 off whatever was left. Hutch would be standing in a parking lot in December with twenty-one hundred painted corpses, no crew money, and a daily debit hitting an account with $212 in it.
Lyle didn't care that the trees were dead. He'd just found out Hutch couldn't say no.
"Paper's in your email," Lyle told me. "Get it signed before the trucks leave." He walked back to his rental car and left a green handprint on the door.
Hutch stood there a long minute. Then he climbed onto the forklift, drove to truck three, and started pulling the back bundles off. One at a time. Each one left a green smear on the forks.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"Calling the lots at six," he said. "Telling them forty-three hundred."
That's $163,400. Half on delivery. No funder.
He kept pulling bundles until the sky went gray. Around five I went to help, and when I finally got in my car, I had to drive home holding the steering wheel with two green hands.
