Eleven Little Piggies (17 page)

My next news was the toughest, about Rosie remembering the odd dimpling of hides in the walk-in cooler, how they went back and found trace remnants of blood and tissue in the floor drain that were being tested as we spoke. ‘We haven't got the DNA report back yet, but we think maybe at least some of it is Owen's blood.'

‘He got killed right there in his own cooler?'

‘We think so. We haven't proved it.'

‘And even if you prove it . . . that won't tell you who killed him, will it?'

‘Not unless the killer did some of the bleeding. Or a lot of sweating, which is possible, but then – a lot of people use that workroom, right? So it's going to be pretty hard to prove anything from sweat.'

‘What else then?'

‘Don't know yet.'

Perversely that answer perked him up a little. He gave me an ironic half-smile and said, ‘I do like an honest answer.'

‘Me too,' I said. ‘You ready to answer a few of my questions?'

‘Sure.'

‘Why would anybody cut your fence?'

‘Boy, that really beats me. We're all friends around here.'

‘You haven't had previous incidents of mischief?'

‘No, no. Well, some accidents lately, but . . . accidents happen on farms.'

‘Got any grudge fights going?'

‘No. And the kids don't, I asked Doris. I mean – we've got good neighbors, nobody's mad at anybody.'

‘OK. Try this one: could Owen have enemies you don't know about?'

He lifted his hands, turned them palms up, shook his head. ‘Up until the last couple years, I would have told you nobody in the world could possibly want to see anything bad happen to Owen. I mean, he was the one that kind of smoothed things over for all of us. Anna Carrie's right about that part: he was the easiest one to raise and he's always been the one that's willing to help.'

‘But something's changed in the last couple of years?'

‘Them damn sand miners. You know about this silica sand craze that's happening?'

‘I heard a few things. It's for fracking?'

‘It is now. Always been just a little getting dug up for glass, little two-bit sand-and-gravel yards around, no problem. Then they found that big deposit of oil and gas in North Dakota. Just what we need, everybody said, so we can quit importing so much.

‘But the catch is, the oil's so far below the surface and trapped in the rock. Don't ask me how they know that but they say they do, and so far everything they said they knew has proved out. So they have to drill this deep hole, then go sideways a lot more, and pump down a slurry of sand and water and a couple chemicals. It fractures the rock and the oil bubbles up.'

‘Sounds simple but I don't suppose it is.'

‘Good thing it ain't up to me to figure it out is what I said. But what they say is, “Don't worry, we know what we're doing”.'

‘Does that reassure you?'

His eyebrows did a little dance. ‘Every time they say it I think about General Custer galloping into the Indian camp yelling, “We got 'em now, boys!”'

I was beginning to wonder how I was going to explain to Ray that I had started to like Henry Kester.

‘But that's all out in the Dakotas. Where we come in is where the sand gets dug up. Because it turns out half of Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota including our nice little hayfield, sits on top of tons of that silica sand they like so much to put in the slurry, and there's two or three companies competing to bid on our land.

‘And to begin with, I was all for it. I mean, it's so much money . . . you would not believe. Millions of dollars. For sand!' He laughed, a shocking sound coming out of his tragic face.

‘I've worried about money every day of my life. I mean, farmers – it's what we do: work our butts off and worry about money. If it don't rain enough, or it rains too much, or frost comes early – the whole crop depends on the weather, and who knows what that's going to do? To think about never having to worry about money again – I said I can't imagine it but I'm willing to try.

‘But then Owen started saying, “Think what you're talking about doing – turning our beautiful River Farm into a sand pit”. But Ethan said, “Come on, you can't turn your back on that much money”.

‘“Sure I can”, Owen said. “Money don't last. You know we wouldn't keep it. We'd just buy more land and more stock and have bigger worries. But once the flyway and River Farm are gone, they're gone forever”.

‘Then Ethan said, “But maybe once an opportunity's lost it's lost forever too. And that's just an ignorant primitive thing to say, that money don't last. Money can be turned into beautiful investments that can do a world of good”. And Owen just sneered and said, “Oh, yeah, we've just seen how beautiful investments can be. Wall Street can make those disappear in a blink”.'

I said, ‘So the family fight went on and on.'

‘You bet. They're both smart, those two, and they've been arguing all their lives; they've had lots of practice. Sometimes I think it's their favorite thing to do.' He peered at me sadly over his wall of sorrow. ‘In the end Owen said, “Over my dead body will anybody turn my beautiful River Farm into a sand pit”. I think of that about ten times a day now. That he said that, and now he's dead.' He looked at his hands, unable to meet my eyes.

‘Then the county passed a moratorium against sand mining for the next eighteen months while they study the issues, and that stifled the argument for a while.

‘But we all know moratoriums don't last long. There'll be lots of testifying on both sides but in the end . . . so many people want this to happen for so many reasons, you know . . . they'll be talking about patriotism pretty soon and how this can keep us out of trouble in the Middle East . . . all that stuff. But really, it's the money calling. So some counties will go for it, and then the others will say, “Well, why should we lose out if it's going to happen anyway?” And in end the whole country will go for it; no president can hold out against the pressure that's going to build up to get at that oil . . . it's just too . . . 
attractive.
'

It was such an unlikely word to come out of his mouth, I watched him and wondered who'd put it there.

‘I don't care about the damn money anymore; it won't bring Owen back so how can I enjoy it? All I want now is for you to figure out this terrible crime and prove that Ethan didn't do it.'

‘Is that what you're afraid of? That Ethan did it?'

‘What? No. God, no.'

‘But you said—'

‘I know he didn't do it. But I can't
prove
it. And every day we walk around each other now, with this terrible thing between us that we can't even mention. Because anybody with half an eye can see that Ethan had the most to gain. Owen was the one standing in the way of the money. And he was stubborn as a post, he would never change.'

‘But you don't believe Ethan would kill him.'

‘Never. I raised them both, I know them as well as I know myself. My son's ambitious, like all the Kesters that came before him, but he would never kill his brother. Never. But you fellas in here with the labs and all, you're the only ones that can prove it.'

Ah, such faith in science. I wanted to say, ‘Oh, why aren't they all like you?' But then on second thought, no, let's not make any more Kesters.

‘We're going try, Mr Kester,' I told him. ‘We'll use everything we've got, believe me.' I thought of telling him how highly skilled our lab people are, but I was afraid he might start talking about Custer again.

‘One more thing before you leave,' I said.

‘Sure.' He was in no hurry. Kind of enjoying the talk, I thought. But I knew about the fight that was waiting for him at his farm, and I thought before he got bogged down in the next big mess, maybe there'd be time for me to fill in one more piece of family lore.

‘What did Matt do to you? Before?'

‘Oh . . . well.' He shook his head, shuffled his feet.

‘Nobody ever wants to talk about it,' I said. ‘But you can't seem to let it go, either. What was it?'

He turned sideways in his chair and told it to the wall. ‘He stole from us.'

‘Stole what?'

‘Money and a new pickup, with a nearly new horse trailer on behind, and my best roping horse. And what was worse, he made a fool of me in public so everybody knew.'

I waited. After he'd wrestled with his little chair a while longer, he told me the story. ‘It was June, first cutting of hay. Fourteen years ago. Or fifteen? The weather was perfect for once. Matt wanted to go to the rodeo at the Preston fair. I said no, we got hay to put up. He begged me, “Please, just let me go Saturday, there's a couple of events I know I can win if you let me take ol' Brownie”. Said he'd be home Saturday night or Sunday morning for sure and go right to work. I finally gave in but I said, “You be careful with Brownie, he's the best I got”.

‘Hot Sunday, the other two boys and me sweating all day in the field and Matt never showed. Evening, I called the Fairgrounds in Preston, got the events manager on the phone. He looked up the records, said no Matt Kester registered for any events here this weekend.

‘I called the sheriff, put a tracer on the truck. They found him in Kansas City. He had planned the whole thing, charged a full tank of gas and wrote a couple of checks for cash on his way out of town.

‘Sheriff said, “You want me to bring him back?” I said, “No, leave him be”. I figured that he'd been planning to teach me this lesson for some time and I was probably lucky it didn't cost me more. But I told the boys, “This is it – he don't get to hurt us twice”.

‘But Anna Carrie, she just couldn't stop grieving over losing her boy. Had to find him – got help from her sisters, old school chums, I don't know what-all. After she got an address she sent him money sometimes, didn't think I knew but of course I did, it was all over her face every time. You want to make a killing at poker some time, get Anna Carrie into the game.

‘Both boys got married, we jogged along adding this, adding that. Got into blooded cows and added a whole adjacent farm to put the dairy on – that was a stretch. Ethan said we should have a corporation, declare shares – we had our biggest fight then, when Doris insisted on her shares. I was just as shocked as Anna Carrie at first but in the end I saw she was right. As Charlie Blaise says, she works harder than anybody and she's good at all the jobs – what more do you want? Helluva lot better than Ethan's wife with her nose in the air – she won't even come out to the farm. We have to go to her house on her schedule if we want to see Ethan's boys.

‘Anyhow, we got the dairy going along good and then three years ago Ethan started talking about this tidy little farm near the Mississippi he thought we should buy, grow the hay down there and plant more corn up here. It made sense and as soon as Owen saw that River Farm he just fell in love with the place. So I said, “I guess we can swing it”. Ethan drew up the contract – everything's going according to plan – and then one day there's Matt with his hand out, smiling, and Anna Carrie's saying, “Look who's here”.

‘She really snuck a whizzer on me that time. Ethan didn't like it at first but she worked on him till he said, “Oh, well, how much harm can he do to a few hayfields?” And Owen said, “It makes Mom happy and where's the harm?” One of those rare times they agreed about something and I didn't even get to enjoy it. I said, “I'm just gonna say it once but mark my words: if you let him stay around you better watch your back”. But my wife tut-tutted me till I quit talking about it.

‘But now, see where we are? We're stuck with him and we don't have Owen to run interference for us anymore.' He sat still for a long time, shaking his head. When he met my eyes at last he said, ‘Find out who killed Owen, will you?'

He made his sad way out of the station. I thought of telling him he should call Doris before he went home, but then I thought, Hell, she's probably calling him every ten minutes, he'll get the news soon enough.

I ducked out to a drug store on my lunch hour, bought a couple of teething rings and took them to Maxine's house so her ears could have a rest from Ben's noise. But he wasn't yelling when I got there – he was having a snooze on a bed-pad on the floor while two small boys I'd never seen before built a Lego castle around him.

One of the charms of Maxine's house is that you're likely to come upon small bodies anywhere – sometimes awake and sometimes not, so you have to watch where you step. The kids concentrate on the toys and take a constantly shifting slate of playmates in stride.

If you sit still a minute they'll use you for a spare seat, a backrest, bookshelves – today they had made my sleeping son into the mountain in front of their castle. Several action figures were pulling guard duty on the mountain, propped on his terry sleepers, gently rising and falling as he breathed.

I said, ‘How'd you get him quieted down?'

Maxine stuck the teething rings in the refrigerator, still in their boxes, and said, ‘I think his tooth came through this morning. He was very fretful and then he got quiet and looked tired. So I rocked him a while and he fell asleep. I've got chili on the stove, you want some?'

‘If you've got enough.'

‘Sure. The boys and I have had ours.'

‘New kids?'

‘Three days a week while their mother takes some classes. My pre-schoolers will be here in an hour or so, and Eddy gets home on the bus about four.' Eddy is her foster son, another one of Maxine's rescues after a family disaster. ‘I don't see Nelly much since Bo quit his job.'

‘You'll be getting her back, I guess. We just re-hired him after his new job went south.' Nelly is the amazingly poised, charming daughter Bo somehow managed to raise while his tragically addicted wife disappeared into her cocaine habit. A striking feature of Bo Dooley's striving life is that luck has a hard time finding him. I'm hoping we can avoid any conflicts on the job so he can stay close to Rosie, who even if she seems to me to be about as cuddly as a piranha, is totally devoted to Bo.