Montana Sky
A Law Edwards Mystery
Part 2 of 2 - Part 1 is entitled The Relentless Passage of Time
1
Blame
It was the summer of 1918, on a bright, beautiful, sunny day. I was assigned to a detail to destroy a farm on our flank. The brass was worried the farmhouse and outbuildings could be used as cover for Kraut spies. Peter and I went with some other members of my platoon and a pair of limey sappers to wreck the buildings.
We couldn’t just burn them because the cottage and barn were both built of mortared fieldstone. Fire would have only taken out the rooves. We wanted the walls down, so the sappers used high explosives, then we fired signal flares into the rubble to torch what was left. The sun went down while the fire raged.
Peter wept with grief like the farm was his own instead of belonging to a French peasant who fled when the war got too close. “This was someone’s legacy. This farm is older than all of us. It’s probably been here for hundreds of years and now it’s gone.”
I didn’t give a damn about the farm, the farmer, or his ancestors. When we searched the house before we blew it to shit, I found a can of tobacco and a clay smoking pipe with a long black stem. I packed the bowl and lit the mellowest smoke I’d had in months.
Peter chastised me for enjoying my prize. “How could you, Law? How could you smoke that poor man’s pipe while we watch his house burn?”
I shrugged and drew on the pipe. Peter thought I did it to tease him. He didn’t speak to me for a full day and a night after that.
Fifty-one years later, in May of 1969, I was watching another farmhouse burn under the biggest, bluest sky I’d seen since I was in France. No one bothered to call the fire department because by the time we got there, the structure was too far gone to save. The dairy barn was far enough away not to be at risk, and the breeze was in its favor.
No one spoke. Me and Walt, David and his youngest sons, Charlie and Mitch, and Eddie, David’s second oldest son, who was also the foreman who ran the hired hands, all watched in silence as the house was consumed. The fire crackled like any fire. The only odd sound was the occasional tinkle of shattered glass.
The metallic click-clink of a wind-proof lighter split the monotony like a gunshot during a dull church sermon. Charlie snapped the lighter closed and puffed his cigarette. David snatched it from his mouth, threw it on the ground, and slapped the boy’s face hard enough to spin his head around. “YOU DID THIS WITH YOUR FUCKING CIGARETTES!”
Charlie shook his head. “No Dad…”
David insisted with a growl instead of a shout. “You were the last one here. The house doesn’t even have any electricity in it. How did it catch fire? It had to be you.”
The boy objected again. “I didn’t smoke inside when I was here. Caroline hates the smell. Why would I smoke in her new house?”
“You’ve got no respect, is why.”
“No, Dad, I swear…”
David exploded. “GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!”
Charlie looked as if he was about to cry, but he did as he was told. He punched his younger brother’s arm. “Come-on, Mitch; let’s get the fuck outta here.”
He and Mitch got in a battered army Jeep with a towbar on the front and the windshield folded down and drove off. David rubbed his hands together and shook his head at the dust the boys raised as they left. His next words were to his remaining son. “Eddie, would you radio the bunkhouse and get some of the boys out here to see this burns out safely? Let it burn to the ground and get some water on it. The electricity is out but the pumphouse has gasoline backup. I don’t know if there’s hoses or anything, but it’s a brand new well, so there should be plenty of water.”
Eddie touched the brim of his cowboy hat like he was saluting. “Sure, dad. I’ll see to it.” He went to a gigantic, four door pick-up truck that had an extra aerial on the roof, took a radio mic from inside, and spoke into it.
David gathered Walt and I toward his vehicle. It was called a Suburban and was kind of a tall station wagon. I’d seen them before, but only rarely. I liked it because its height made it easy for me and my arthritic joints to get in and out.
I tried to take some of the stress off my friend. “You don’t have to worry about us, David. We can find our way to your house if you need to stay and deal with this, or we can wait while you do.”
He refused with a shake of his head. “I can’t believe this happened on your first day. I love my son, but I don’t like him very much right now. I don’t have any idea how I’m going to break the news to poor Caroline. She and her new husband Ricky were planning to move in here next month. Ricky works for me. He was going to get the dairy back up and running. Now they’ve got nowhere to live.”
As if cued by David’s words, the burning structure groaned and collapsed in on itself. David glanced at it and sighed. He opened the back door of the Suburban and held it for Walt. I got in the front. David joined us and drove toward the main house on a dirt road that bisected his property.
“Farming is getting harder,” he explained as we drove through the lush green fields. “It’s tough to make money as an independent. It’s even tougher as a small time independent. Now-a-days, you either grow to match the big boys, or go under. I don’t want to go under, and I don’t want to sell out to one of the conglomerates, so I’ve been growing. Everyone around here knows if they want to sell, I want to buy.
“I bought my first two-hundred acres at the end of 1929. Forty years later, I’ve got twenty times that. Eddie is a good foreman. I’ve also got a great accountant and an even better lawyer. I employ a lot of people, and I pay well. I want to keep growing. I want to leave my kids an operation they can be proud of. I’ve also managed to get bigger without taking on a pile of debt. I’ve got some equipment loans, but I own title to all four thousand acres free and clear. If I went bust, the only thing the bank could take is a couple of tractors, a combine, and this Chevy. As long as I’ve got enough to pay the taxes on the land, no one can put me off. I’m my own man from beginning to end.”
He glanced my way and amended his speech. “Sorry, Law. I guess I’m not my own man from the beginning. I owe that to you.”
I waved away his apology like it was a troublesome gnat. “Don’t worry about it, my friend. You have every right to be proud. You started with nothing. You were a kid. You had some money, but you didn’t have anyone to help you. You built a four-thousand-acre farm and a family with ten children. This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I’m so glad we finally came.”
Walt echoed my sentiments. “I’m glad too, David. I’m sorry it took sixteen years. You invited us every year since we saw you back in ’53, but we never seemed to have the time. I guess we still wouldn’t if not for my heart attack.”
David checked on Walt in the rearview mirror. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”
“Me too.”
“Me three.” I added.
David returned his eyes to the windshield as we pulled into the farmyard. “I don’t want you to strain yourself while you’re here. You can stay as long as you like and move at your own pace.”
“Thank you, but you don’t have to worry about me. The attack was six months ago. I’ll never run a marathon, but I can do pretty much as I please.”
I interrupted. “I keep a watchful eye on him. He says he can do as he pleases, but the attack he had was massive. The doctor said his heart is barely half of what it should be.”
Walt tried to dismiss my worries. “I keep telling Law I’m fine. He never listens.”
I set the matter aside with another question about the farmhouse that burned. “What’s the story on that place?”
David parked at the main house and stayed behind the wheel to explain. “That’s the Krengel place. Lars Krengel wasn’t a crop farmer like me. His main business was the dairy. He had a garden for himself and used his land as pasture and hay fields for their milk cows. He was getting older and looking to retire. His wife died a few years back and he only had one hired hand to run the whole place. Lars’ only son has a job in Billings. He didn’t want any parts of the land or the work of keeping the dairy going. We’d been talking about me buying the place for a while. Poor Lars had a run of bad luck lately and that was enough to make him sell.”
“Bad luck?” I asked.
David got out and walked around the vehicle to let us out. “A bunch of stuff went wrong one thing after the other. The water well ran dry a little over a year ago. After that, the refrigeration plant that kept the raw milk cold broke down and he lost a whole week’s production while it was fixed. The plant broke down twice more and it took a week to get it fixed both times. The last straw was when the herd came up sick.
“Hoof-and-mouth disease hasn’t been a problem in the US for years, but the government still inspects for it. Poor Lars threw his hands up when the government man told him his herd would have to be culled. He called that night and said he was ready to sell. The real shame is, he doesn’t even know where the virus came from. He hadn’t bought any new heifers for a while and never any from out of the country.
“Anyway, we signed the papers two days later. He had another offer, but it was so low he didn’t consider it. He also liked that I promised to start the dairy up again and continue things as he did them. I think it was a relief to him in the end. Lars turned 80 this year and he was wearing out. I’m glad to have the place. His 400 acres brought me to an even four thousand.”
I slid down from the vinyl passenger seat and my shoes crunched on the gravel drive. “Do you really think Charlie was careless enough to set fire to the house?”
He rubbed his hands together. “I don’t want to think it, but what else could it have been? The electric company came and pulled the meter because I was fixin’ to have the house rewired. There’s been no electricity for a week, and no one’s been on the place except Charlie and Mitch. They were putting insulation in the attic.
“Charlie started smoking when he was sixteen. He picked it up during harvest two years ago. I had him driving truck that year and he was using the cigarettes to stay alert for the long hours. By the time I caught him, he was already addicted to it. I told him to quit, but he wouldn’t. He smokes everywhere. I keep catching him early in the morning in Abby’s kitchen. He thinks the ventilator fan is enough to stop the room from smelling like smoke, but it isn’t. The kid’s got no respect.
“Makes me mad because he set fire to the equipment shed last year. He knocked an ash into a bucket of rags and it flared. He got a lid on it and put it out quick, but it could have been much worse. He was probably up in that attic and dropped an ash and didn’t realize when the wood started to smolder. I don’t like to think stuff like that about my own flesh and blood, but the idea that he started that fire is as easy as one and one are four.”
I corrected his math. “Two. One and one are two. Two and two are four.”
He shrugged off the mistake and let Walt out of the back of the Suburban. “Either way, now the house is gone, and I’ve got to figure out what to do about it. I want the dairy producing as soon as possible. I can’t afford to have land that isn’t earning. Besides, Ricky and Carol need a place to live. Carol is three months pregnant. They were supposed to move in next month and have plenty of time to settle in before the baby was due. Now I’ll have to have a house built.”
Walt asked a pragmatic question. “Will the insurance cover the loss?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know. I hope so. Charlie didn’t burn his sister’s house down on purpose. I’ve been with my agent for years and haven’t put in many claims. It was an old house and not worth very much. Maybe they’ll pay enough to build a cottage and we can add onto it as the family grows.”
He lifted an arm toward the back steps of the yellow farmhouse. “Let’s go in. I’ve got to break the news to Abby and it’s not very gracious of me to keep you standing in the heat while I go on about my troubles.”
We went in. Walt and I went to the comfort of the living room while David stayed in the kitchen to tell Abby about the house. He invited us in after they had their talk.
Abby took the news better than I might have under similar circumstances. She was a farmer’s wife and a farmer’s daughter. People who survive by the grace of God and the will of the weather seem to have a stoicism that city people do not. She put the percolator on the stove and set out a plate of lemon sugar cookies for us to snack on.
She was a tall woman, at least my height or better. Once upon a time, I’d been five-ten. Now that I was sixty-nine, I was down to five-eight. With her chunky square heels, she was easily taller than me. Her hair was long and full and black with the barest streaks of grey to hint at her fifty-seven years. Her skin was still good with only a few lines in her face and her figure amply feminine.
She wore a modest, floral print dress that clung to her buxom curves because it didn’t have any other choice. She had full hips and an impressive bust even while she maintained a trim figure. I saw why David liked her. She was objectively beautiful and not a silly woman. She interacted with her husband just as a man might, with pragmatic logic and no undue emotion. She was obviously capable of tenderness, but she was much more than a mother and a homemaker. She was David’s full partner.
David was as masculine as ever. He was fifty-eight and just as tall and strong as I remembered. His face was weathered and his hair was mostly white, but the color change was barely noticeable from his former bright blond. He was still very attractive.
The four of us sat at one end of a kitchen table big enough to feed an army and talked about everything except the fire. The main topic was the flight we’d taken from Philly. I wanted to take the train, but we flew because of Walt. I had some very definite opinions about the experience.
“It was fucking awful!” I realized I’d used a four-letter word in front of David’s wife and apologized for it. “I’m sorry, Abby. My mouth gets away from me sometimes.”
She accepted my apology with a smile. “I’ve raised six boys and have been around working men all my life. A little colorful language doesn’t bother me.”
I appreciated that she accepted me as I am and went back to my story. “We couldn’t get a direct flight into Billings, so we took a jet from Philly to Chicago. They called it a 727. It was smooth, but it was loud. It was like flying inside a blender chopping ice. I hated it. I let Walt have the window because I didn’t want to see out. From Chicago to Billings, we had to take a DC3. At least it had propellors. I liked the DC plane better. It was much smaller, but it didn’t fly as high and it was quieter than that awful jet.”
Abby asked a question of Walt. “Weren’t you worried about your heart? I would think being up in the air like that wouldn’t be very good for you.”
Walt complimented a lemon cookie and explained. “I had a checkup with my doctor when we first started to plan the trip. He said flying would be easier on me because it’s a short stress. Train travel takes days, so you’re out of sorts for almost a week. Honestly, I was much more worried about my poor husband. He must have prayed around his rosary ten times during the flight. He’s not as trusting of modern technology as I am.”
David peered my way like he wasn’t sure I was the same man he knew. “You prayed the rosary?”
I took the strand of cheap plastic beads from my shirt pocket and held it up. “I’ve been doing it for a while. I’m an old man now; old enough for the past to haunt me. I confessed the…the bad things that I’ve done. Part of my penance was to pray the rosary once a day. I kept doing it even after the penance was over. I didn’t tell Walt about it for weeks because I didn’t think I could talk about such things. The priest, Father Groff, said it was alright. The prayers have brought me more peace than I thought they would. Usually, I keep the rosary in my nightstand at home, but I was worried about the flight, so I put it in my pocket. I’m glad I did.”
David’s confused expression didn’t change. “You surprise me.”
“Why?”
“You just do.”
I shrugged because I didn’t know what to say to that. “Maybe I’ve changed. I hope I have.”
Walt steered the conversation away from a topic that had grown difficult. He mentioned the kindness of the welcome David and Abby treated us to, and I put my rosary back in my pocket. “Thank you for the room you gave us. It’s like we have our own apartment in your house.”
David explained how our suite came to be. “We built the room for Abby’s mother. She was getting older and needed help. It was easy enough in the nice weather for us to run back and forth to her house just on the other end of the fields, but in the winter, sometimes we wouldn’t be able to make it for a day or more. I had the room built so she could keep her independence, but we could have her close in case she needed us.”
Abby took up the tale. “She lived there quite happily for almost ten years until she passed three years ago this November. By the end, her arthritis was so bad she couldn’t hardly move. Of course, I hated to lose my mother, but I know she’s out of pain now and in a better place.”
I looked at my own hands and their swollen joints. “I’ve had it in my hands for a while. My knees started later but seem to be getting worse faster. I can walk well enough but standing still is torture. My hands got so bad, I could barely do my job at the restaurant. I was the host, so I was supposed to take people to their tables. I kept dropping menus because my hands wouldn’t close. It’s hard getting old.”
Walt put a comforting hand on top of mine. “I didn’t get the curse of arthritis, but my heart let me down. The attack I had in November would have killed me if we didn’t live across the street from one of the best hospitals in the world, and if my husband hadn’t picked up a stray physician that very day. I fought against my new situation for a long time. I hurt my husband with my fighting. I thought the attack was a cruel injustice. I’m trying to see it as a reminder that we’re not going to live forever. If I want to travel and spend time with Law, I better do it. This is our first big trip. Thank you both so much for having us.”
We sat around the kitchen and talked for hours. At some point, Eddie came to tell David the housefire was out and the men were released from their work for the night. The announcement didn’t reignite the topic of the fire. David merely thanked his son and trusted foreman. Abby gave him a package of lemon cookies to take to his wife and school age children. Eddie kissed his mother and nodded to his father and left to go home. Quite a bit later, we excused ourselves and went to bed.
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