Sabotage Surprise
I ate a more reasonable breakfast the next day and felt better during my Jeep ride up to the old Krengel farm. Charlie parked in the shade of the barn, shut the Jeep off, and lit a cigarette. He pointed the pack my way, but I refused.
I took a minute to consider how we should start our work. I didn’t have much to go on other than a flare cap and a hunch. I had the little bit of story David told about bad luck on the dairy farm before he bought it. He telephoned the previous owner that morning but didn’t get an answer. He promised to take me by Krengel’s new place in the afternoon to see if we could catch him at home.
In the meantime, I wanted to get the lay of the land. I clambered out of the Jeep and adjusted my hat. I also checked to make sure I still had my borrowed gun on my hip. Between the hat and the holstered sidearm, I felt like the sheriff in a spaghetti western.
I had an idea right away. “Charlie, will the floor in the barn support the weight of your Jeep?”
He grinned like my question was silly. “The cows weigh as much as the Jeep.”
“Do they?”
“Yeah, cows weigh fifteen hundred each, maybe more.”
“I didn’t know. Point is, I want you to park in the barn, or maybe the machine shed, and close the door. We’re a small presence up here. If someone comes who doesn’t belong, I want them to feel safe. If they see the Jeep, they’ll be on their guard. Make sense?”
Charlie agreed. “We’ll put her in the shed.”
Mitch ran ahead to open the door. The boys stowed their vehicle away and came back. They both had their hats on and their .40 cal sidearms on their belts. I asked about the guns before we got started. “You carrying one in the chamber?”
Neither of them were. Charlie didn’t see the point. “Doesn’t take no time to rack one in.”
“Listen, both of you, this is a big piece of property with a couple big buildings. It’s easy enough for someone to walk in here without us noticing. We’ll be on our guard, but we can’t watch the whole place. If you’ve got to pull your weapon, it needs to be ready to use. The time it takes to chamber a round can be the difference between life and death. That’s why I always carried a revolver. I’ve got fewer rounds, but I know it’ll fire first time every time and there’s no damn safety to worry about. Both of you, chamber a round and put the safety on. If you want to empty the chamber when you go home at night, that’s not a bad habit to get into. When you’re up here, that pistol better be ready.”
They did as I asked, though neither was happy about it. I gave one more piece of advice before we got started. “Don’t pull that gun unless you plan to use it. That’s a cardinal rule. The only reason to pull a gun is to kill. It’s not to threaten or to shoot someone in the leg. Pull, aim, and fire. Not even aim, ‘point’ is a better word. You point at the midsection of your enemy, and you put him down. That’s how you live to fight another day.”
Mitch asked a careful question. “Have you ever killed someone?”
I answered bluntly because I wanted my record to reinforce my point. “Thirty-eight men; twenty-five in The Great War and another thirteen later, either as a cop, a detective, or a private citizen.”
Charlie punched his brother’s arm and whispered. “He killed almost forty men.”
Mitch whispered back. “He’s like Marshall Dillon.”
“Who?”
“Marshall Dillon from Gunsmoke! You know, on the TV. You’re like him!”
I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of the comparison. “Let’s go, you two. I want to look around this whole place, and my knees are only gonna last so long. Let’s get moving.”
I headed down the drive toward the main road because I wanted to see if any structures overlooked the property. The boys walked along beside and peppered me with questions. They alternated asking them and seemed to try to best each other with silliness.
“What did you do in the war? Did you ever drive a tank? Did you ever kill a man with a sword? Did you ever blow someone up with a grenade? Did you ever kill a man in a duel?”
I stopped because I knew they wouldn’t. “You get one story. Ask your question.”
They went into a quick whispered conference to decide what they wanted to know. Charlie asked the question once they settled on it. “Tell us about someone you killed in the war.”
I agreed and got us in motion again. I didn’t want to glorify killing, so I picked a story that didn’t show me in the best light. “A month or so into my war service, we had a run of bad weather. We didn’t usually fight in the rain because it’s hard for the artillery to fire and the men can’t attack in the mud. I was dozing on a pile of sandbags when my friend Peter shook me awake. He said he heard something like someone sneaking around no-man’s-land.
“Poor Peter was a nervous man. He always heard things and there was almost never anything to hear. He insisted, so I got up to listen. I heard something too. It was the middle of the day, but there was no sun. The whole world was grey. I peaked over the side of the trench. There was a burned-out limey tank not too far from where we were. The sound was coming from its direction. The way the thing was sitting, I could look under it between the treads. A pair of feet moved on the far side.
“Something you should know about trenches is they all look the same. Kraut trenches, frog trenches, limey trenches, they’re all just filthy holes in the ground. Neither side flew flags over them because they didn’t want to identify themselves to observers or to air reconnaissance. It wasn’t too hard for a lone soldier to get disoriented and wind up in the wrong one. It happened much more than you’d think. That’s why I didn’t know if the muddy boots I glimpsed between the tank tracks belonged to an ally or an enemy. I waited to see.
“I tried to arm myself while I did. My rifle was too far away to grab. I might’ve made noise if I moved to get it. I’d been using a box of grenades for a pillow, so I took one of them out and pulled the pin. The way a grenade works, you can pull the pin, and nothing will happen until you release what’s called the spoon. The spoon is a little lever that sets the fuse when it’s released. The pin only keeps it in place.
“Anyway, I held the grenade until the man came around to our side of the tank. He was a Kraut. He must’ve been lost because he didn’t even have his rifle, just a sidearm. I whistled as loud as I could and threw the grenade like it was a baseball. I might have even told him to ‘catch.’ He caught it out of reflex and drew it into his body like it really was a baseball. The grenade blew and just about cut him in half. I remember the sticky wet splat as he fell to the muddy ground in two or three pieces.”
My story brought us to the edge of the road. There was nothing in sight but crops. The road was a macadam strip without even a line painted down the center. There were no speed limit signs or anything else in view. Telephone poles ran down the far side of the street. The mailbox was on our side. I checked and found it empty.
I looked back at the property. There was a cluster of trees between the street and the farmyard. The foundation of the house was visible up the drive. The front of the barn was mostly obscured, and I couldn’t see the machine shed at all. I could see the pumphouse, but if the house had still been there, it would have been hidden. I wanted to see the property from all angles, but it was too far to walk for the view, and the boys had already put their Jeep away. I wasn’t going to have them get it out again so soon. I’d get them to drive me along the road once we were done with everything else.
I started to walk back down the drive. The boys were whispering to each other. They seemed to be analyzing my story. Mitch asked a follow-up question before we made it back to the barn. “What…uh, what was that like?”
“You mean what did it feel like to take a life?”
He nodded.
“I killed that man fifty-one years ago next month. You two have no idea how much time that is. In 1918, I was a hate filled beast, a wild animal with a rifle. The war I fought had no meaning to me. The man I killed meant nothing to me.
“It’s taken me until my old age to come to grips with the full horror of the things I’ve done. I can see that man’s face as clearly in my mind as I can see yours right now. I can see the surprised expression when I whistled and shouted at him. I can even see the fear he felt when he realized what I’d thrown to him. I can see most of their faces if I think hard. Some are lost to time, but most are seared into my memory like a physical scar. I will remember until I join them in death. I pray they’ll forgive me.”
We gathered under the overhang of the barn for a moment. Charlie took out a smoke and lit up. I hitched my ass on the edge of the ramp that led to the barndoor to take some weight from my knees. He offered a cigarette, and I accepted. Walt wouldn’t want me to have it, but my trip into the past made me want one.
I pointed along the front of the barn to the machine shed. “Let’s look in there next. We’ll save the barn for last because it’s so damn big.”
I drew on my cigarette and savored the smoke. Charlie seemed to enjoy his cigarette almost as much as I enjoyed mine. Mitch leaned against the wall and stared at nothing. He started talking with no preamble and it took a moment to realize he was speaking to me. “There was a man who worked the farm last year. He left before the winter. He was in Vietnam. I kept trying to ask him about it, but he wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t understand why. Now I think I do.”
I drew on my cigarette and lifted my face to the sky. I closed my eyes and exhaled. The sun felt good on my face. “The Great War was pointless. All the death and carnage was for nothing. World War Two was different. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it was a necessary war. I won’t call it a good war, because there is no such thing, but we had to fight that one. Korea was pointless and so is Vietnam. I watch it on television, and I’m appalled that we’re still sending young men to far off places to die for no good reason.”
I smoked some more of my cigarette and opened my eyes. “I hope Nixon can stop it. He says he will. I hope he can.”
I dropped my butt in the dirt and ground it to dust under my heel. Charlie finished his cigarette and did the same. We went to the machine shed and opened it up.
The building was bigger than I thought. It looked small next to the massive barn, but there was a lot of large equipment in it. The Jeep was parked in front with a tractor next to it. The tractor had a big, red scoop on the front and the rest was painted green. It said ‘Oliver’ on the hood. I almost made a joke about tractors having first names, but I skipped it. There was a big, flat wagon on the other side with stake pockets around the bed. The stakes were all piled against the wall. There was more equipment behind.
The boys explained that the equipment was made to attach to the tractor. The first piece was a hay mower. It would cut the grass or whatever they make hay out of and pile it to dry. There was another attachment that reminded me of a Rube Goldberg device. It was a crazy contraption with belts and gearwheels and bars with stiff, sprung wires attached to it. It was a mechanical rake used to turn the piles of grass so they would dry evenly. The last piece of equipment was a bailer which would scoop up the dried piles and spit out bales of hay. Once it was baled, the farmer would come behind to gather the bales onto the wagon so they could be stored inside to feed the animals in the winter.
“Do you two know how all this stuff works? I mean, if something was wrong, could you spot it?”
Charlie said they could. “Dad’s had us cutting hay since we were kids. His equipment is a little newer, but it all works about the same.”
“Give this stuff the once over, then. Check everything. Hitch it up and run it if you have to. I want to know if anything is wrong with any of it. I’m going to look around a little.”
The boys began their work with the tractor. I went deeper into the shed to see what I could see. There was a long workbench at the back that caught my interest. There were a ton of tools and stuff, but it was all very well organized. The back of the bench was a wall of pegboard where all the wrenches and hammers hung. Each item had its own spot. The farmer painted the pegboard white, then traced all the tools in black. If a tool was missing, its outline would stand out. Not one tool was out of place along the whole wall.
There was a stack of greasy, dog-eared books on a corner of the bench. They turned out to be manuals for the farm equipment. A few of the bindings were broken and repaired with paper tape. I paged through the top one. It was for the Oliver tractor. There was another for the baler and the hay mower and the rake. There was also a book for a refrigeration plant, presumably for the raw milk storage in the barn, and one more for milking equipment. I was impressed to find them because I was no good with manuals and misplaced them regularly. Walt kept ours organized in a filing cabinet in the bedroom.
A yellow metal cabinet stood in the corner. It was labeled ‘FLAMMABLE’ in red block letters across the front. I opened it to find all kinds of oils and greases and solvents. I guessed it was a good idea to keep that stuff together in a cabinet that couldn’t burn. The farmer seemed like a safety-oriented man.
An engine cranked at the front of the shed, but it didn’t start. The boys were trying to start the tractor, but it didn’t catch on the first try. Mitch was giving Charlie the business. “More glow plug! What’s it your first fuckin’ day?”
Charlie gave back as good as he got. “Don’t give me any shit, baby brother! I know what I’m doing!”
Mitch taunted his brother again. “Oh yeah? Why ain’t it runnin’ then?”
I smiled at their banter because it was typical of brothers. The engine cranked again and started with a clattering roar. There was a sudden pop and a spurt and shouting from both boys. The engine died, but the shouting continued. Mitch was the loudest. “FUCKIN’ HYDRAULICS! DAMNIT, CHAR!”
“Don’t bitch at me! Why the fuck were you standin’ there?”
“WHERE THE FUCK ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO STAND?”
I hurried to the front of the shed to find Charlie climbing down from the tractor and Mitch covered in oil. “What happened?”
Mitch roared. “FUCKIN’ THING BLEW A LINE AND I’M SOAKED!”
I didn’t understand. Charlie explained. “Tractors have hydraulic systems to run implements. They pump oil under high pressure to run cylinders for loaders and other stuff. There’s rubber hoses all over the machine. Sometimes they blow.”
I pointed toward the back of the shed. “There’s a box of rags under the bench. Get cleaned up and let’s have a closer look.”
Mitch stormed off with Charlie behind. I stayed to examine the machinery as best I could, but I didn’t know what I was looking at. Mechanical things were always a mystery to me. The end of a black hose lay on the concrete under the tractor. I tried to look at the break, but I couldn’t bend low enough to reach it and it was too far away to see.
Charlie and Mitch came back before too long. Mitch had quieted down, but he was still fit to be tied. Charlie crouched under the tractor and looked at the end of the hose. He held it up to show me. “This has been cut. The hose isn’t that old. The rubber isn’t cracked and the break is real clean. These lines never break in half like this. Usually, they blow out near the fitting and piss oil all over. They don’t split in two. Someone sliced it almost all the way through with a knife.”
He came out from under the tractor with a question. “How did you know we’d find stuff like this?”
I ignored his question and asked one of my own. “What kind of a delay would this be for a farmer who wants to cut hay?”
“Half a day at least. You gotta get the hose off, drive into town to have a new one made, drive back and put it on. Mister Krengel was getting on in years. He used to ask us for help with stuff like this. If we were busy, he might have to wait a whole day or maybe two.”
I spoke my thoughts aloud. “This isn’t a showstopper, but it’s demoralizing. Here comes Krengel to mow some hay. He starts his tractor and blows a line. Takes him a day or so to get it fixed, then maybe it rains, and he’s got to wait some more. By the time he gets his work done, he might feel like the whole world is set against him.”
“Yeah,” Mitch said, “and if he’s soaked in fuckin’ hydraulic oil, he’d feel even worse!”
I gave some attention to Mitch and his tantrum. “Do you need to go to the house to clean up properly?”
“NO! Fuck it! I’m already a mess. May as well stay that way!”
Charlie added insult to injury with a comment to me. “He’s got the worst temper.”
Mitch screamed and raised his fists to his brother. I stepped between them and put my hands up toward Mitch. “Alright, none of that. We’re not here to fight each other.”
Rage ran out of Mitch like water from an upended bucket. He lowered his fists and calmed down. I turned around and pointed my finger at Charlie. “You, apologize for being a pecker-head.”
He pressed his hands to his chest. “ME? Why should I?”
“Cause you being eighteen and him seventeen doesn’t make you the adult and him the child. We need to be a team. Rubbing his nose in getting soaked in oil doesn’t help the team spirit.”
Charlie pouted, but he did as I told him. “I’m sorry.”
I added, “for being a pecker-head.”
He balked at using the words. “I gotta say it?”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m sorry for being a pecker-head.”
“Now say, Mitch is my favorite brother and he’s much better looking than me.”
Charlie’s jaw just about hit the floor until he realized I was teasing. He laughed and so did Mitch and we were all friends again. I patted the tractor hood. “We’ve got one cut line. Is there anything else?”
The boys searched the machine. I propped myself on the nearest tire of the flat wagon and rubbed my knees. I wasn’t sure which hurt worse, them or my hands.
Mitch cried out with a discovery. “The U-bolts on the axel are loose!”
I got up to see what he meant. He showed how the huge rear wheel of the tractor was fastened to the horizontal shaft of the axel with a pair of U-shaped bolts. The nuts of both were only hand tight. He explained. “This is dangerous. The wheel could slide right off, and the tractor could roll over. Farmers have been killed like that.”
“Could they loosen up on their own?”
“Not really. If they’re not tight enough, the wheel will walk in or out on the shaft, but that usually happens slow. You’d find it when you do your walk around before you start up for the day. It’s more common that they get stretched out from being tightened over and over and they snap. When that happens, it’s only one at a time. That’s why they fasten the wheels on with two or three of these U-bolts. You’re supposed to replace ‘em from time-to-time, but no one does. They wait until one snaps and just replace that one. Either way, if they’re loose like this, it’s ‘cause someone loosened ‘em.”
I was happy for the boys’ expert knowledge. “That’s good enough for me. So far, we’ve got a cut hose and loose wheel bolts. I wouldn’t trust anything on this property farther than I could pick it up and throw it. Let’s check the other equipment.”
The boys inspected the hay mower, the rake, the wagon, and the baler. All four had subtle things wrong with them. Each individual item, a loose nut, a slack belt, a missing cotter pin, could be taken as an oversight or a wear item. Taken together, they were clear evidence of sabotage. Someone had been gumming up the works on the Krengel dairy farm. That someone obviously wanted Krengel to get discouraged and sell out. I had no idea why.
I clapped my hands to signal the end of our labors and regretted the action when the clap made my joints hurt. “Let’s close up in here and check the barn.”
Charlie secured the equipment while Mitch threw some sawdust on the floor to soak up the spilled oil from the tractor.
I walked outside for a breath of air and saw a man some distance away, near the opposite corner of the barn. I shouted to him. “Help you, mister?”
The boys scrambled toward the door to see who I was talking to. I hissed at them so the man wouldn’t hear. “Stay out of sight!” They stopped on the threshold and waited.
The man called back. “I’ve got trouble with the truck.”
“Do you? What kind of trouble?”
The man walked toward me but didn’t answer. I let him come because I wanted a better look at him. He had on blue jeans and a blue shirt, and he wore a weather-beaten cowboy hat too far back on his head. There was a gun on his hip. He was a big man, thick bodied and stocky. I guessed he was about forty.
I rested my hand on the butt of my revolver and asked again. “What kind of trouble are you having? There’s no telephone right now. It went when the house burned.”
The man stopped. “She just quit on me. I don’t know what happened.”
“Why don’t I come out and take a look?”
He tilted his head like he was thinking about my offer, then shook it. “You know, sometimes they just need kind-of a break. I bet if I try her, she’ll take right off.”
“You might be right. If she doesn’t, come-on back. I’ll be here for a while. Got some trouble with the old Oliver. Blown hose and some loose wheel nuts. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
He blanched. “Why would I know about those things?”
“No idea. I’m not much of a mechanic. I thought maybe you were. Funny, you’ve got truck trouble and here I am with tractor trouble, and house trouble for that matter. The world is full of little coincidences, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. Good luck with your trouble. I’m gonna run along.”
“Good luck with yours. Have a nice day.”
The man turned back and walked toward the drive. He didn’t go quickly, but he didn’t dawdle either. I waited until he was out of sight beyond the barn, then spoke to the boys. “Quick, which one of you knows trucks better?”
Mitch raised his hand.
“You think you could sneak around through the trees and see what he’s driving? Maybe get the tag number?”
He nodded and bolted away. Charlie tried to say something, but I shushed him. “Just listen.”
We listened together. A hood slammed shut, then a door opened and closed. An engine cranked and caught right away. I smiled, ‘truck trouble my ass.’ The vehicle drove away. Mitch came back a few minutes later and reported like a beat cop phoning into central. “Dodge half-ton pickup, light blue, Sweptline bed, farm use tag. It looked between five or ten years old.”
I was disappointed at the wide spread in the year range. “You can’t pin it down any closer than five or ten years old?”
He explained. “I only saw it from the back and even if I could see the front, Dodges stay the same forever. That’s why they’re cheap. They only change the styling every five or six years. They looked exactly the same from ’61 to ’65 and only changed the grille for ’66 to now. The beds on the brand-new ones look exactly like the ones from ’61.”
“What’s a Sweptline?”
“It’s not a step side. You know how some trucks have a rectangle box and big fenders over the wheels?”
I nodded.
“Those are step-side trucks. Sweptline is when the bed is the same width as the cab all the way back.”
“Got it. Did you notice anything special about it?”
“It was hailed out, like dented up and battered. Looks like a ranch pickup.”
“Why a ranch pickup?”
“The guy was a cowboy. I could see that a mile away. Cowboys are hard on equipment. Farmers are careful because they want things to last a long time. Cowboys are different. For them the job is more important than the equipment. If you gotta buy something second hand, you do better buying from a farmer than a cowboy.”
I praised the boy for his information. “That’s a hell of a good observation, Mitch! We’re learning things.”
Charlie had a question. “Why didn’t you want him to see us?”
“A couple reasons. I wanted to see how bold he’d be with just one old man to deal with. I also wanted to keep you safe. He can’t shoot what he doesn’t know about. I’m also not likely to be off the farm without someone with me. You and Mitch might go out alone. I didn’t want to risk you running into him out in the world. The only person he’s seen so far is me.”
I thought about the conversation I had with the cowboy and wondered if I said too much. “I’m not sure if I was right to mention the loose wheel nuts and the blown hose. He’s obviously the one doing the sabotage. He was probably the one who torched the house. I doubt it’s him we want, though. We want whoever is paying him.”
I waved my hand into the machine shed. “You done in here? My knees are starting to hurt again, and we still need to look through the barn. When we see your dad later, I want to have a long list of stuff we found.”
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