Dark Coulee (17 page)

W
HEN she was little, her mother read her fairy tales when she was sick: “The Tinder Box,” “The Wild Swans,” “Hansel and Gretel.” In these tales, the heroine always overcame evil. The daunting tasks were accomplished. Her mother would sit on the bed next to Jenny and read stories that would help her grow up strong.

Jenny wanted to do the impossible.

She had set her alarm and risen with the sun. She had put on a T-shirt and overalls so she could work in the field. She had borrowed Brad’s big straw hat and put on her mother’s old Red Wing boots.

Her father would have never let her do this. Even though he was dead, she still wanted to show him that she could do anything she wanted to better than he would ever imagine.

She sat on the seat of the tractor and tipped her head back to the sky. It was early in the morning, and the sun was peeking over the roof of the far barn.

Jenny loved riding on the tractor. She sat up so high, and she could feel the power of the engine under her seat and in her hands as she worked the gears. Brad had taught her how to drive it when her father hadn’t been around. He told her if she could drive the tractor, a car would be a piece of cake. Now that he was gone, she might need to drive the car if an emergency came up.

After Brad had been taken away last night, Jenny had decided she needed to do something to help keep their family together. She knew that the sunflower harvest was critical; Brad had planned on harvesting the crop this weekend. So as she lay awake in bed last night, jittery from taking no sweet little pills to get her to sleep, she decided she would have to take on the harvesting herself.

Maybe if she could do it, it would change everything. With the money, she could hire a lawyer and get Brad out of jail. She could prove that she was good at something. Mrs. Gunderson would believe in her again and not just see her as a stupid druggie. She would save the farm, and they all would still have a place to live. She would accomplish happily-ever-after.

She knew that Brad had worked on the combine all yesterday before he had been taken away. He had oiled it and checked it over. Then he had attached it to the tractor. Most of the new combines were tractor and harvester in one, but theirs was an old model, 1966. Same year as their tractor. Their father could never afford to buy anything new. It was a faded red color with big cutting blades. As long as the tractor, it was actually bigger, and she was always amazed that the tractor could pull it along through the fields.

Jenny had tried to call Brad yesterday at the jail, but they wouldn’t let her call go through to him. She’d wanted to ask him some questions about the combine, but she would just have to wing it. She had sat up reading the combine manual last night and thought she knew what she needed to try to set the adjustments for harvesting sunflower seeds.

First thing to do was to drive the tractor and combine down to the field.

She started up the tractor and put it in a low gear to get ready to pull the combine. When she tried to move forward, the engine cut out on her. Easy, she thought, give it the gas easy. She tried again, and this time it chugged a couple of times, but caught and moved forward. Once she had it moving, it was a straight shot from the barn to the field.

After driving alongside a fallow field, she came to the beginning of the sunflowers. They spread out in front of her like a roomful of thoughtful children, their heads bending down over their work.

She sat in the sun at the edge of the field and readied herself. It would all be trial and error. It would have been even if it had been their dad doing it. He had never harvested sunflowers before. He would be swearing up a blue streak. At least she didn’t have to listen to that. It was so quiet out in the fields. She could hear a bird trilling its early morning song. If Brad were here, he would know what it was. He knew all the nature stuff. If he were here, the fields would be as good as harvested.

She looked down at the manual. Written inside was the quote: “A good thrasherman wasn’t made in a day.” Nor a good thrasherwoman, she was afraid.

Like the heroine in Rumpelstiltskin, she would try to turn these fields of sunflowers into gold. If she did, she would save the firstborn—Brad—from being taken away. And she would save Nora, too. Because she knew if Brad went to jail for good, she and Nora would be removed from the farm and sent to foster homes.

She tied Brad’s old straw hat to her head with leather shoelaces. She climbed up into the seat and started up the tractor. She moved slowly toward the golden heads. She felt like she was sneaking up on them as they were all facing away from her. She got the tractor right up next to the first row. That would be her marker. Just keep the wheels right next to the row of sunflowers.

She nosed the edge of the sunflowers with the side of the tractor. Then she moved forward and pulled the combine into the field.

She was combining a field. For better or worse, the sunflowers were being mowed down behind her. She turned around once to look, but pulled the tractor too far to the side. After that she kept facing forward and just kept the tractor moving along steadily.

When she came to the end of the field, she knew she had to stop everything and check how she was doing, but she didn’t really want to stop. After she had pulled the combine completely out of the sunflowers, she turned off everything.

She walked back and looked at the seeds in the side bin. Some were crushed. That was no good. She could make an adjustment so they wouldn’t be handled as roughly. Walking back along her first pass, she saw that she was not scattering too much seed out with the chaff. That was good. Not bad for a first try.

Her heart lifted for a moment, and she thought she might be able to do it. If she could keep moving, she might finish this field by lunch. She was worried about the turns. She knew that she had to do them just right to keep the combine moving smoothly behind the tractor. If she cut it too tight, the combine might jackknife on her. If she took the turns too wide, she wouldn’t get back in position to harvest the next row.

Jenny wiped her face, then climbed back on the tractor. It was a perfect day—quite warm, not much of a breeze, the insects thrumming in the weeds alongside the fields. The sun was nearly overhead, and she needed to keep moving.

By shortly before noon, she had half the field done. Her back was aching from keeping the tractor steady. The sun beat a blazing hole in the back of her T-shirt. Her arms and wrists were starting to burn. She hadn’t put any sunscreen on, but she didn’t feel like she could stop. She wanted to finish the field before she went into the house.

As she was heading back toward the house, on one of her last passes, she saw Mrs. Gunderson walk out to the field, holding Nora’s hand. They waved at her. She was surprised it had taken them so long to come looking for her. But then Mrs. Gunderson probably just figured she was sleeping in and had let her be.

She slowed the tractor down to get ready for her final turn and stood up to wave at them. The tractor hit a bump and jolted her, and she lost hold of the throttle. The tractor popped again, the engine cut out, and she fell back, one hand hanging on to the seat.

She was going to fall, and if she did she would be eaten up by the combine. She needed to get out of its way. She made a quick decision to jump free of the tractor.

With the tractor moving faster, rolling downhill, she flung herself off the vehicle and fell into the last remaining row of sunflowers. She landed on her side. Brad’s hat had come off her head and fallen into the combine’s path. It would be chewed up by now. The tractor kept careening ahead, the combine slowing it slightly. Mrs. Gunderson and Nora ran out of its way.

The tractor ran into the side of the barn with a thud and then died, then the combine piled up behind it. Jenny righted herself and ran to shut down the combine. She turned it off, but saw the damage that had been done. The tractor had torn a hole into the barn and bent the front axle. The attachment between the tractor and combine was also damaged, and Jenny wondered whether the tractor would even work anymore.

“What happened?” Nora came running up.

“I fell off the tractor.”

“What were you doing, Jenny?” Nora asked.

Jenny shook her head.

Mrs. Gunderson came walking up. “What’s going on here?”

“I harvested most of this field.”

“My goodness,” Mrs. Gunderson said in amazement.

“And I think I ruined the tractor.”

Claire got called off her investigation to come in and talk to the prosecuting attorney, Wendall Thompson, about Brad Spitzler’s arrest. She had been checking on a burglary that had been called in the night before and had told the dispatcher that she would come in as soon as she finished talking to the owner of the sporting goods store. All that had been taken were fishing rods. She thought it might be kids, she told the owner. They had climbed in through a window in the bathroom and left their footprints on the toilet seat.

Sheriff Talbert had Thompson in his office, and both men were looking at a golf club that the sheriff had just bought. Claire stood by the door until they were done discussing the pros and cons of steel-shaft versus graphite shaft clubs.

“What’s going to happen to Brad?” she asked Thompson as they all sat down.

“His lawyer, Kent Byron, is advising him to plead self-defense.”

“Really?” Claire had thought his attorney was a public defender. She wondered what had happened to change that.

“Self-defense, since his father was always threatening to kill him. Since he feared for his life and his sisters’ lives.”

“What do you think of that?”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Are you just going to plea-bargain him out?”

Wendall Thompson pursed his lips. “I hope so. I don’t think this case should go to trial. What good will it do? But before we go any further, I’d like to get the sister in here and talk to her about the past history and the stabbing itself.”

Claire agreed. “I’ve been thinking we need that corroboration, no matter how the case is handled. I don’t know how well you’ll do with her on the crime itself. She was drinking and on drugs that night, from what I could tell. Out of it. She’s admitted as much.”

“Can you bring her in tomorrow morning? I’ve got to go to court this afternoon, or I’d say we should do it sooner.”

“Will do.” Claire stood up to leave.

“Brad Spitzler is lucky to have Kent Byron as his lawyer,” Thompson remarked.

Claire nodded. “As far as I knew, that was not who was assigned him.”

“How did this happen?”

“You know more than I know.”

Thompson looked Claire in the eyes. “I know that Pit Snyder got him the lawyer. Did anyone suggest that to him?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

Ella heard a noise down in the kitchen and turned on the light by her bed. One of the girls, she thought, but she decided to go down and see. She slipped into her chenille bathrobe and put on the blue slip-on socks she had taken home from the hospital when she went in for eye surgery.

She kept a good grip on the railing as she went down the stairs and wasn’t surprised to see Jenny, her golden head on the kitchen table, staring at a bottle of beer. The girl had slept most of the afternoon after her harvesting attempt and then had moped around and not eaten much of her dinner.

“You having a little nightcap?” Mrs. Gunderson asked, but one look in the girl’s eyes, and she could see that Jenny had resorted to drugs again. Her eyes were wandering, and she seemed to be having trouble focusing them.

“I can’t get to sleep. I need something to help me wind down.”

“I bet you do. I think I could use one too.” Mrs. Gunderson went to the refrigerator and pulled one out of the bottom shelf in the back, where Jenny had stashed them. She had noticed them hidden behind a Tupperware container when she was looking for some leftover stew.

Mrs. Gunderson pried the cap off and sat down at the table opposite Jenny. She took a big swig of beer right out of the bottle.

“You drink beer?” Jenny asked.

“Sure. I don’t drink too much of it. But my late husband often liked a beer at the end of the day. I joined him as often as not.”

“You had a husband?”

Mrs. Gunderson laughed. Young people never think the old people have had any kind of life. How do they imagine that they have come to exist, if their elders didn’t drink and love and have sex? “Certainly. Why do you think people call me Mrs. Gunderson?”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed in Korea, during the conflict.” How easily she could say that now. So long ago, and yet some days she could still weep if she thought about it.

“What conflict?”

“In the early 1950s America sent troops over to Korea. They fought there, but they didn’t call it a war, just a conflict. As if that made a difference. But men still died. Herbert went over for what he thought would be a short stint, and it was short, but he didn’t come back alive.”

“How old were you?”

“Not a lot older than you are now. I was twenty-two when he died. I’ll never forget the day I got the phone call. I felt like the earth had just opened up and swallowed me.”

Jenny went to the refrigerator and got out another bottle of beer and opened it. She sat back down at the table and rolled the bottle back and forth between her hands. “I know that feeling.”

“Everyone has bad things happen to them, Jenny. You live through them, believe it or not.”

“Does everyone have their mom die, her arms torn off, then their dad die, stabbed in the guts, then their brother put in jail and then maybe lose their farm?”

“No, the stories are not the same. But whole families are wiped out in Africa or India when there’s a drought or a monsoon. It’s a hard and terrible world sometimes. We all have our problems.”

“Does that mean I don’t get to feel bad?” Jenny’s voice was rising, and Mrs. Gunderson could tell she was getting hysterical.

“No, quite the opposite. You should feel bad. Feel as bad as you can feel. But what you are trying to do is escape your feelings by drinking and by drugging.” There. She had said it. She might as well ask another question. “Did anything ever happen between you and your father that you would like to talk about?”