The Illusion of Simple, page 14
Back at the funeral, Kathleen starts the sedan and off they go. Larry smiles wanly and gives thumbs up to the watching, worrying crowd. His wife waits until they are out of sight to scold him for making such a scene.
“I don’t know how Father will ever forgive us,” Kathleen despairs.
“He has to,” her husband cranks. “He’s a priest.”
When order is restored, the funeral continues. Father Turney breaks the tension with a few funny remarks, then offers a benediction. Everyone says “Amen.” He signals the front row, to the men that remain. Come forward and help lower the coffin.
Ace, Owen, and Billy each take hold of an orange tow strap. But there are four straps, and only three of them. Billy somehow finds this bitterly appropriate. Russ Haycock cannot do anything right, even in death. Father Turney rolls back the sleeves of his robe. He has new strength to demonstrate. Just then, a tall person emerges from the crowd.
“I was there, too,” Ayesha Perez announces.
Owen, Ace, and Billy nod, as if to confirm that she was present. She grabs the last strap and braces her feet. Billy is grateful for her help. Father Turney rolls his sleeves back down in disappointment. They lower the coffin, slowly and carefully. From sunlight into deep shade. When it touches bottom, they remove the tow straps and stand back.
“We commend his soul to God,” Father Turney concludes.
He takes hold of a black-ribboned shovel, steps on the shoulder, and fills the blade. He is pleased at how light the load feels in his hands. He pauses dramatically—timing is the essence of song and dance—then tosses clods onto the aluminum casket. They land with dull finality. Dust to dust.
The mourners form a line. These are sturdy people with calloused hands and spadework in their blood. They have mucked out stables, planted gardens, and cut irrigation ditches. Dug water wells by hand, two hundred feet deep. They are not dainty in their turns. After two cycles, the grave is full. Russ Haycock is buried. The citizens of Ewing County slowly meander back to their vehicles.
“I’m glad you came,” Spire says to Ayesha. “Not a lot of people ever bothered with Russ Haycock.”
“I somehow feel invested in the guy,” she shrugs.
They walk.
“You around the next few days? I’ll need to get a statement.”
“I have to go to Topeka. Call me next week.”
“Will do,” he answers.
Because LeeAnn took the Lincoln, Spire drives Owen home in the 1500. They make idle conversation about who was at the funeral and how they looked. They laugh at the old ladies and the flying Emma Ace. Then Owen gets serious.
“Is Nadine going to be okay?”
“I hope.”
“She’s not getting any better, is she?”
“No. Not better. But not much worse, either.”
“If you say so.”
“What else am I going to say?”
Billy is relieved to have arrived at Middleton’s driveway.
“What’s happening at the Statehouse?”
“Interim committee and some sort of cowboy exhibit.”
“Sounds fun.”
Owen blows out a puff of air to signal insignificance and boredom. But Billy knows better. His friend is defined by being senator. Loves Topeka and the machinations of state government.
“LeeAnn going?” It’s a rhetorical question. LeeAnn had not been to the State Capitol in years.
“Nah. That stuff bores her to tears. If she’s sitting in a car for four hours, it will be headed west. To Denver. Friends and shopping.”
Billy nods slowly, as if taking in new information.
“How long you gone for?”
“Maybe a few days.”
“Safe travels.”
Owen Middleton gets out of the pickup. Without looking back, he waves goodbye over his right shoulder.
Billy waves back, knowing that his gesture will not be seen. His affection need not be acknowledged to be certain. He and Owen are bound by time, proximity, and common experience. When that overloaded station wagon abandoned Stonewall, the derelict trailer, and an oldest son, Billy lost his kin. It was his great fortune to be adopted into the Middleton clan, to have that bond with Owen. The two are grown men now, serious in their bearing and responsibilities. Elected officials, they share public service and the higher calling of Matthew Middleton. They are brothers in legacy and aspiration. Brothers in their understanding of and respect for each other. Brothers in everything but blood. Brothers.
Billy starts the pickup and heads home. To gather the pieces of his wife.
Part 2
THE MORNING AFTER the funeral, Owen Middleton rises before dawn. He shaves, showers, and eats a bowl of cereal while watching morning news. He slips into the bedroom to kiss LeeAnn goodbye. She stirs.
“When are you coming home?”
“Tuesday, I hope.”
“Be good,” she murmurs, then rolls over and falls back to sleep.
It’s a blustery morning. Naked trees shudder and dry gusts of snow skitter across the pavement. The town is just waking up. Lights glow in kitchen windows. Farmers and other early risers drive slowly down dark streets, easing their way to biscuits and gravy at Effie’s. They wave at Owen by lifting their index finger from the steering wheel. The senator stops at Gas-N-Go, Stonewall’s sole remaining convenience store. He tops off the tank and heads inside for coffee and donuts. Road food for the four-hour drive to Topeka.
“Becca, what are you still doing here?” he brays to the clerk, a young woman with bad skin and a radiant smile. Owen is one of those unbearably cheery people who are especially loud in the morning.
“Where else am I supposed to be?”
“Over in Colby. At JuCo.”
“I ain’t that smart.” She rings up Owen’s purchases.
“You don’t even know how smart you are.”
“I know how smart I’m not. Got the grades to prove it.”
“You don’t know how to study is all.” He takes out his money clip and peels off a couple of bills. “I’ve been around plenty of intelligent people. So believe me when I say it. You’re more than smart enough.”
“Smart enough to have a baby at sixteen.”
“They got childcare at JuCo. You owe it to that baby to do better.”
“It’s cold out there.” She looks out the frosty windows.
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
Owen leaves his change on the counter. As she watches him go out the door, Becca sweeps the tip money into her apron and begins to wonder. Childcare at JuCo. Things are hard for a single mom. Still, she has a long life ahead and plenty to dream about.
Back in the Lincoln, Owen makes a slight detour. Topeka is northeast, but he crosses the highway south to McQuitty’s Feedlot. It is abandoned now, a ghost town of cattle pens. Dozens of them, each railed by steel pipe. At the center of the property stands a cluster of neglected structures. An office, equipment barn, garage, and a trio of grain siloes connected by rusting chutes and augers.
Middleton sighs at the emptiness. The doors and windows pried open by vagrants seeking warmth. The plastic bags and blue newspaper wrappers caught on the fences. He recalls a time when the feedlot pulsed. Fifty-thousand head and all the people those cattle required. Stonewall prospered in those days. Back when old Duane ran the place.
So much lost in the few years since his death, Middleton laments. Kansas wind and weather are cruel to untended things.
Middleton stops in front of the old office, the only building with any remaining integrity. The door is secured with a padlock and chain. The windows, inlaid with chicken wire, are cracked but still hold.
The senator gets out of the Lincoln and looks around to make sure he’s alone. He pulls his coat tight and paces back and forth across the gravel parking lot. Bending low. Searching for footprints, tire tracks, or drag marks. The wind has erased whatever might have been. He goes to the exact spot and detects faint stains, maybe grease and maybe blood. But unless a person knew exactly where to look and what to look for, any tell-tale signs are beyond discernment. What has happened is now a secret of time.
He climbs back into the Lincoln and swings a wide turn. Heading for the highway and State Capitol.
‹›
The cigarettes he chain-smoked left yellow stains on Duane McQuitty’s fingers and cancer in his lungs. It was a lingering death. But he never complained. In fact, he spent his last hours saying how lucky he was. Lucky in business. Lucky for the love of his life, his wife, Betsy, who had passed a few years earlier. Lucky to have so many good friends. Those friends felt lucky, too. They came to see him every day. They told stories that made him howl in amusement, face red with pain, thin arms hugging his own chest as if to keep it from tearing open.
When the disease made its final turn toward death, he grew quiet and withdrew to a distant place. He smiled vacantly and sang hymns right up until the end. The people of Ewing County were sure sorry to see him go. Worried, too, about the fate of the feedlot and the people it employed. The focus of anxieties was Duane’s sole heir, Melvin.
Melvin McQuitty is a tall man, six-foot-six, who gilds that lily with cowboy boots on two-inch heels. He wears a mullet as tribute to the hair bands of his youth. Business in the front, party in the back. His face is long and thin with a prominent nose and thick lips. He is striking in appearance, but not handsome. At least not to anyone but himself.
“Wish I could buy that man for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth,” once said a waitress, to whom he gave a toothy smile but no tip. He thought he was being generous.
Melvin has never been known for the quality of his decisions. He is a gambler more than an investor. A being of impulse rather than consideration. He takes risks in the easy way of one with family money. In his desire to take a big allowance and make it bigger, he went heavy into a collagen scientist full of brio and fraudulent claims. He invested in a dish-antennae start up, unaware that better technologies were already being marketed. He sponsored an expedition for a buried steamboat and came up with nothing but mud. When the money was gone, Melvin always went to Duane for more. And Duane always came through. He was powerless to say no. The good people of Ewing County watched and shook their heads.
When the old man died, he left his cash to the community fund and the feedlot to his son. Melvin would have to work for his money. Still, it was a good gig. McQuitty’s had reliable annual profit of one hundred thousand dollars. But Melvin figured he could bump one into two by firing the experienced staff and replacing them with a cheaper crew. They were cheap for good reason. They didn’t know what they were doing.
Cattle eat silage and leave waste. Lots of it. Mountains of it. Heavy and malodorous. Managed properly, the waste is collected in plastic-lined lagoons, dried and used to fertilize fields. That’s how it’s supposed to work, in accordance with common sense and environmental regulations. But an operator must stay on top of things. Getting behind at a feedlot is a dangerous game. Melvin McQuitty had little appreciation for either danger or good housekeeping. He siphoned money for personal use at the expense of the caretaking. For weeks then months.
One spring day a heavy rain came, as it does every spring. The pens, deep in excess muck, got sloppy. Cattle sank in their own waste. Some wallowed so deep they had to be lifted with a backhoe and chain. A few died in the process. At a cost of about fifteen hundred dollars per. Melvin was unaffected by the suffering of animals, but financial losses got his attention. So, he stomped into the downpour, climbed on a front loader, and went to work.
“Get out of the way!” he screamed as the crew shuffled cattle and carcasses.
Desperate to give the livestock a place to stand, he started scooping manure out to the plastic-lined lagoon, which, having not been properly emptied, was way past full. With more muck to move and no place to move it, Melvin knocked down the fence and pushed a wall of crap about twenty yards onto the neighbor’s land. There was a cracking sound. The front loader tipped perilously. Melvin jumped off and ran.
Abandoned hand-dug wells are common across western Kansas. Testimony to the value of water. Some thirsty settler went out one day with a pick and shovel, guided by need and a dousing stick. Down through flint and substrata. In some layers, the earth is stable. In others, it is sandy and likely to cave. Then, crude wooden braces are lowered and pounded into place. Down into the darkness. As much as two hundred feet. From the bottom of a deep well, a man can see stars, even in the middle of the day. The Kansas motto, “Ad Astra per Aspera, to the stars through difficulties,” was never truer than when digging a well. When old gave way to new, the historic wells were covered and, often, forgotten. The abandoned well that Melvin McQuitty broke through was one hundred eighty feet deep, ten in diameter, a hundred twenty years old.
The front loader idled at an angle, headlights shining up into the rain. When it stopped settling, McQuitty gingerly climbed back on and used the bucket and wheels to wiggle free. That’s when the damage was done. Removing the dozer blade was like pulling a knife from a wound. Manure poured into the opening. Straight down walls scarred by ancient shovels, through rotting wooden curbs, into the dark aquifer at its bottom.
Melvin had his crew tear up an old wooden shed and cover the hole with siding. He mounded dirt and manure over the top. By daylight, there was nothing left to see, other than a mountain of crap in the field. Which pleased the neighboring landowner not at all.
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Melvin exclaimed brightly, hoping spunk and a toothy smile would win the day.
“You may be right,” the neighbor grunted. “But most people wouldn’t be jackass enough to say it. Just clean this mess up.”
“I owe you for this big time.”
“Just clean it up.”
Melvin grabbed the neighbor’s hand and shook it. Neither was aware that one hundred eighty feet below, trouble was forming. In the shape of a plume.
It was soon evident that something was wrong. Stonewall water taps began delivering a disagreeable product. Amber, with an earthy smell. Calls were made, officials descended. Geologists triangulated to the neighboring property. Its owner whistled softly when a caravan of state vehicles pulled up in front of the house. His nervous wife poured coffee as scientists explained the situation and asked if there was anything the neighbor might tell them.
“Melvin McQuitty did make quite a mess out there,” he drawled. “By the old abandoned well.”
His wife gasped. This was news to her. About a neighbor for whom she had little respect and even less fondness. Her too-lenient husband would get an earful after the others left.
A public meeting was held, complete with maps showing sources and migration. In their curiously objective manner, state scientists did not mention any names. But everyone could follow the directional arrows straight to McQuitty’s Feedlot.
Melvin was at that meeting, too. He raised all kinds of absurd possibilities and demanded expensive, time-consuming tests to prove the contamination source. He asked about cleanup funding and implied that the state should pay, since it didn’t prevent the pollution in the first place. The townspeople said little. But their faces wore volumes. They were flat out of patience. Stonewall wanted its water back.
Field staff from the Kansas Department of Environment cleaned up the mess. They poured chlorine down the well to kill cattle-borne pathogens, then sealed the opening with a concrete plug. They pumped nearby irrigation wells to divert the expanding plume from city intakes. Farmers cursed at all that water spilling uselessly into road ditches and tailwater pits. Eventually, the taps flowed clean and life went back to normal. The department packed up and went away.
Then it sent Melvin McQuitty a bill. Seventy-five thousand dollars, including remediation costs and penalties. Melvin was outraged. How was it his fault there was an abandoned well? If he was footing the bill, why wasn’t he consulted about the cleanup? He could have done it much cheaper. Furious, Melvin called Owen Middleton.
LeeAnn was at the kitchen table, working a crossword, when the phone rang. She listened long enough to recognize the voice, then handed the phone to her husband.
“For you,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Melvin, but there’s not much I can do,” the senator kept repeating. It was a lie, of course. He could do plenty if he wanted to. “You might try the Association or Bureau. Good luck.”
When he got off the line, LeeAnn looked up from her puzzle.
“Good luck? You wished that fool good luck?”
The senator shrugged. Owen Middleton is a smart politician, and smart politicians are never needlessly rude. Even the worst pest might one day prove useful.
McQuitty followed Owen’s advice and called the Farm Association and Livestock Bureau, lobbying agencies in Topeka. When he threw out Middleton’s name, they agreed to meet at his earliest convenience. He said that afternoon, jumped in his car, and burned up the highway.
Cautious men in expensive suits, the lobbyists used Melvin’s four-hour travel time to assess the situation. They called Owen Middleton, who listened and offered noncommittal answers. He didn’t know who was right or wrong but thought the department did a pretty good job fixing the water. He guessed Melvin was a “decent enough fellow most of the time.” The lobbyists recognized faint praise when they heard it.
When Melvin arrived in Topeka he was ushered into an oak-paneled office. Therein sat two lawyers, one from the Bureau, the other from the Association. They listened intently to McQuitty’s tale of woe, nodded their heads, and looked at one another with furrowed brows.
“Yes, yes,” Association mused. “This is a tough one.”
“Amen,” chimed in Bureau. “If there was a loophole. A wrinkle.”
“Can’t you just pick up a phone and call someone?” Melvin asked impatiently.
