Till the Cows Come Home (22 page)

Chapter Thirty

“Hey, Wayne,” I said.

It was eleven-thirty, and I had completely exhausted myself after returning from Das Homestead. The heifers in the lower pasture were fed and watered, the paddock was scraped, and the now-empty calf hutches were as clean as they could ever expect to be. Now the milk truck had arrived, and I had to try to behave naturally. Not an easy thing after seeing Howie’s scribbled notes about our hauler.

Wayne jumped down from his cab and avoided my eyes. “Stella.” He acted like a zombie, his movements slow and clunky. “Sorry to hear about…all that’s been happening here.”

“Yeah.”

We stood silently, neither knowing what else to say.

“So how’s Flo?” I finally asked. I worked to keep emotion from coloring my voice.

He gave a kind of hiccup. “Okay. Okay.” He looked around. “Where’s your new hired guy? I figured for sure he’d be here to help out this morning.”

I took a shaky breath, and tried to hide it. “You mean Nick?”

“Is that his name?”

“He can’t do much more work on the heifer barn.”

Wayne managed a weak laugh.

“Well, I got some stuff to do,” I said. “You can take it from here?”

“Like always. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.”

“I’ll be in the office if you need me.”

I really didn’t want to be in my office, but I had to make sure I knew when Wayne left, and I could see the truck out of the office window. I dug my fingers into my temples and wished I could just go back to sleep. But Howie was dead and my farm was somehow responsible. Sleep just wasn’t an option.

I knew it would take Wayne at least a half hour, so I rummaged through my files to find a number for the co-op. I had meant to call first thing in the morning, but chores and emotions had driven it from my mind. A few minutes later I was on the line with a secretary, and she was trying to look up my records on her computer.

“You’re still producing milk?” she asked. I could hear her fingers clicking on her keyboard.

“Of course I am. I’m a member of the co-op. Have been for almost thirty years. Well, the farm has been, anyway.”

“I’m not finding any records for you for the past year.”

“You must be looking at the wrong place. What are you looking under?”

“Royalcrest.”

“Try my name. See if they switched it to that.”

I heard clicking again. “Sorry. Nothing there.”

“So according to your computer, I stopped producing last year.” Just as Howie had discovered.

“That’s right.”

“So why am I still getting a milk payment?”

“I really don’t know. I’m sorry.”

I sat back in my chair, completely thrown. “Can’t you look it up on your payroll or something?”

“Our accountant would need to do that, and he’s not here. Should I have him call you?”

“Yes, please. As soon as he can. And can you tell me why I got an invitation to the banquet if I’m not on the books anymore?”

“Oh, that’s easy. We always send to past members. In case they want to rejoin.”

I thanked her and hung up, confused. If the co-op hadn’t been using my milk for the past year, where the hell was it going? And who was paying me? Howie’s far-out theories may actually have had something to them.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Yeah?”

Wayne stuck his head in. “All done. See ya in two days?”

“See ya.”

He closed the door behind him, and I watched as he shuffled out to his truck. He paused before getting into it to look back where the heifer barn had been, then to study the ground for a moment before stepping up into his cab. I let him get a head start before I bolted out to my truck. Once I saw which way he had turned, I gunned it down the lane and followed him.

I kept far enough behind him he wouldn’t think about me—he knows my truck and I didn’t want him to recognize it now. We went out Route 113 through Silverdale, through Blooming Glen, out to 313 in Dublin. We turned right and I followed him a few more miles until he turned off and started winding down a country road.

Again, I kept far enough behind he wouldn’t see me, and when I saw him turn into a drive, I pulled off the road and parked in the irrigation row of a corn field. I was counting on the corn to shield my truck from view of the farm where Wayne was headed. The corn was about six feet tall, so I was confident it could do the job.

I hopped down from the truck and started making my way through the field toward the house. I crossed several rows until I couldn’t see my truck anymore, then turned to walk down a row as far as I could without being seen. The field must’ve been irrigated recently, because my boots were sinking into the ground, and walking was tough work. I was glad I still had on my work boots.

When I got to the edge of the field I was still several hundred yards from the farm. I could see Wayne’s truck and a couple of people talking and milling about. The only other vehicle was a shiny black Dodge Ram.

I went back into the corn several feet and began walking across the rows, trying to be as quiet as possible, which was hard, since the cornstalks rattled and crunched as I walked through them. By the time I got close to the barn, I was itchy and had a host of scratches on my arms and face. I went again to the edge of the field and peered out.

Wayne and whoever else had been there were no longer in sight, but the truck was now backed up to a small concrete building beside the barn. I made sure no one was around, then sprinted, staying low, to the back of the barn.

Once there, I caught my breath and crept to the corner, peering around the corner at the smaller building. Wayne was climbing into his tanker, having apparently emptied his load. He closed the door and drove away. I kept my fingers crossed hoping he wouldn’t notice my truck.

After waiting a minute to make sure no one new was leaving or arriving, I hunched over and trotted the twenty or so feet to the side of the concrete building, where there was a window. Unfortunately, the window was blacked out and I couldn’t see even a speck of light through it.

I crept around the back to the other side, only to find more blackened glass. The only other window was on the back wall, about eight feet off the ground. I looked around for something to stand on, but all I could see was overgrown grass—nothing to give me any height. I stared up at the window and tried to come up with a way to see in.

The window was set into the concrete about six inches, making a nice, wide sill, and the concrete on the wall was textured. Only one of my ideas could possibly work. I walked back several feet, took a few quick strides, and leapt up the side of the building, grabbing onto the windowsill. My hands and fingers received the brunt of the cement’s roughness, but my boots got traction on the wall and I was able to pull myself high enough I could get my elbows onto the ledge. When I finally got up there, I was frustrated to find I couldn’t see through the window because there was so much grime on it. At least it was regular dirt, and not black paint. I put all my weight onto my right arm and rubbed the heel of my left hand on a corner of the window, hoping no one inside suddenly decided to look up.

When I finally got a little circle cleared, my arms were starting to shake, but I gritted my teeth and leaned to look in.

An old milk processing plant took up the entire building. I could see each part of the system crammed into the space. On the end farthest from me, in front of one of the blacked-out windows, was the homogenizer, busily breaking cream into particles so the cream wouldn’t float to the top of the milk jug. A separator sat close by, waiting to break the milk down even more, producing skim milk. I could see milk shooting through the tubes and could hear the machines working.

Directly in front of me was the pasteurizer, connected to the homogenizer by tubes, but it didn’t look like it was in use.

On the wall closest to me was a control panel. There usually were four red lights, showing power for heating, cooling, pumping, and circulating. Only two were lit, which made sense if the pasteurizer wasn’t heating up the milk. A fifth, bigger red light, showed the main power was on. Above the lights was a graph which shows that each batch has been heated to a high enough temperature and records it, in case of trouble. I was confused as to why they would need records, seeing as how nobody knew the milk was being processed here, but realized there was nothing being graphed on the temperature chart, anyway.

Finally, in the corner of the room across from me was a bottler, where I could see jugs from Rockefeller Dairy waiting to be filled. I was sure Robert Rockefeller would be surprised to see his logo on milk processed outside of his building.

Moving in the midst of all this equipment were two men, unrecognizable to me. They worked as a team, obviously having done this many times before. They talked while they worked, apparently sharing stories and jokes, for they were laughing and gesturing animatedly. I wondered who the hell they were.

My arms finally went numb, and I pushed away from the building and let myself drop. Now that I knew what was going on inside, I wasn’t afraid they’d hear me. Processing milk is a noisy business. I peeked around the corner, not wanting to get caught by some latecomer, but no one else was there, so I ran behind the barn and found a spot to sit in the corn and watch.

I squatted behind a clump of weeds about three feet from the edge of the field. Milk processing takes a couple of hours, at least, and I knew for a fact they’d just started when Wayne had arrived. Without the heating cycle, it should take maybe half the time. I also knew there were only two guys in the building. There was a chance they’d go away and I’d have an opportunity to snoop. So I’d wait.

An hour and a half later my legs were sore and my jeans had mud on the knees and butt from necessary changes of position. I was beginning to wonder if the men would ever come out and had just shifted my weight another time when the door opened. I held my breath and ducked lower behind the weeds.

The men—both middle-aged white guys—were still talking, and didn’t so much as glance my way. The taller of the two turned a key in the door, then poked his finger at what had to be an alarm pad. Great. So much for me snooping around.

The men headed straight for the Dodge Ram. As soon as they got in the cab they started it up and left, disappearing in a cloud of dust.

Seeing the alarm had stopped all thought I had of getting into the place. I knew I couldn’t bypass a security system, so I was forced to leave empty-handed. Damn.

I picked my way back through the corn field and hesitated once I got close to the road, just in case Wayne had seen my truck. No one was waiting for me.

I got into the truck and sat for a minute, wondering what in the world I had just witnessed. Who were these people, what were they doing, and why was my milk hauler of ten years taking my milk to a plant no one knew existed? And why in heaven was I still getting a check from the co-op when they had no record of my production since last summer?

An answer started to surface in my convoluted thoughts, but it was so horrible that at first I couldn’t allow myself to think about it. Eventually, though, I let it come.

People, kids mostly, were getting sick. They were getting sick from an ingested toxin, and no one could locate the source. Not on vegetables, not in the drinking water, not in the air.

My God. Had anyone thought to test the milk?

Chapter Thirty-One

I jammed the truck into gear and sped out of the irrigation lane, narrowly missing a passing car. Was I completely off-base? I mean, what were they doing? Poisoning milk—
my milk
—and distributing it? For what purpose?

A half-mile down the road I passed a woman out weeding in her front yard. Fifteen seconds later I braked the truck, did a three-point turn, and drove back to the little house.

The woman looked up when I pulled into the drive, her eyes half-curious, half-defensive. A baby lay on its stomach on a blanket beside the woman, slowly edging its way through a stash of toys toward the grass. I jumped out of the truck and tried to hide my anxiety.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked. She clapped her gloved hands together, spraying dirt over her shorts and the baby’s blanket.

“I hope so. There’s a farm about a half-mile down the road, looks empty, but has a barn and a couple of outbuildings that look in use. You know who owns it?”

“You mean the white house with the long driveway? Dark green shutters?”

I tried to remember. “I think so.”

“We just moved here in May, so all I know is some older man owns it. About six months ago his wife died and he moved somewhere south to be near his daughters. Oh, Debbie, don’t eat that!”

She lunged toward the baby, snatching a clump of dirt and weeds from the chubby fingers. She plopped the baby back on the blanket and the baby looked at the toys with disappointment.

“You know who’s managing the property?” I asked.

The woman shook her head. “Sorry. The best I can do is that he had a brother living around here. Maybe he’s taking care of it.”

“Know his name?”

“Sorry. Can’t help you with that, either.”

I thanked the woman and left her to her weeds and her dirt-eating daughter, trying to wrap my mind around everything I knew. It wasn’t much. I sat in the driveway long enough the woman stopped working again to look at me, so I waved and backed out of the drive.

As I drove toward home, my rage transferred itself to my foot, and I sped along the roads. Lord knew I didn’t understand what exactly those folks were doing with my milk, or if it was even the substance poisoning people, but it didn’t take a college grad to know they were up to something illegal. I had to call Willard.

I pulled into my drive, wheels skidding, and almost slammed into the back of Nick’s truck. Nick was lying in the grass, wrestling with Queenie, but as soon as I pulled in the lane he was on his feet.

I got out of the truck.

“Hey, Stella,” Nick said.

“Nick.”

Queenie snuffled around my legs, probably smelling manure from the cornfield I’d been stomping through.

“How’d you get all those scratches on your face?” Nick asked.

I stared at him. “What do you want, Nick?”

He stepped toward me, then stopped and put his hands to his eyes. In a moment he dropped them, and the raw hurt on his face made me gasp.

“What I
want
,” he said, “is a chance to do this over. To tell you the truth from the beginning.”

I looked down at my boots. “How ’bout telling the truth now?”

He was silent for so long Queenie whined and trotted over to him. He knelt and rubbed her face. “You saw the letterhead. You know what I do.”

“I know what you
are
.”

He stood. “Goddamnit, Stella, you
don’t
know that! You can’t look at that one thing—the
business
—and think you know who I am inside.”

“So why don’t you tell me, Nick? Can you do that? You’ve spent the past several days picking
my
brain, getting all sorts of inside stuff from
me
. And what have I got? The false assumption that you’re a guy who knows at least some of what farming life is about. Who knows a little of what I’m up against. Instead, I find out you
are
what I’m up against. You’re the enemy.”

He spun away, then back, and a fire I hadn’t seen before lit his eyes. His voice was tight with anger. “I left my family in Virginia two months ago. My mother keeps threatening a nervous breakdown, and my sisters declare it’s not all a ruse. All my life it’s been assumed—
expected
—that sometime down the road, in the future, I would take over the business. I would take responsibility for developing the last remaining natural spaces of Virginia.

“But Stella, something in me has always been different. I look at those mountains and I see beauty. I see peace. I don’t envision the high-priced condos with a view, the ski resorts, the retirement villages. I look at the farmland and I smell the fresh-cut hay and I see the animals and I think
this
is what it’s all about.
This
is what Virginia is meant to be.”

He stared out across the cornfield behind my house.

“Six months ago my dad was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors gave him a year. He got three months. All that kept him going those last painful weeks was the knowledge that the family business would be in my hands. I’d be in command. But I just can’t.…”

His voice shook, and he got it under control. “So I’m on a journey. I’m on a journey to find out just who it is I’d be buying out. Whose lives and land I’d be destroying. I couldn’t do it in Virginia. Too many people know me. Know the Hathaway name. So I left the CFO in charge and traveled to Pennsylvania, where developers are just as aggressive as good old dad. And I came here, where I—”

He looked into my eyes. “I found you and I got to know you and…and I got to love you. I’d give anything to go back to that first night out in your field. I’d tell you at the first opportunity I had. And maybe then you’d be able to forgive me.”

I turned away from him, realized I was looking at Howie’s apartment, and spun completely around to rest my arms on my truck.

“We could’ve really had something,” Nick said. “I felt it as soon as I walked into your office that first day.”

I tried to breathe around the lump in my throat. “I felt it, too.”

“I’m sorry, Stella.”

I made myself look at him. “I’m sorry, too.”

The distance between us evaporated when he took two quick strides toward me. He crushed me against the truck, his mouth finding mine, and I clutched him, my fingers digging into his back. I lost myself in the kiss, putting all of the emotion I’d been bottling up into this expression of anger, and betrayal, and love. Howie was dead, my farm was on the brink of bankruptcy, and this man had taken my heart and twisted it around my spine. It was a kiss full of a multitude of feelings. But absent of any joy.

Nick broke away and walked quickly to his truck, opened the door and got in.

“Nick,” I said. “Nick, stay.”

He closed the door, started down the drive, and was gone.