Tamarack River Ghost (35 page)

“I just couldn’t stomach the company’s ethics anymore. I gave them two weeks’ notice.”

“Really, what happened?” He could sense a good story in the making.

“Remember the meeting where Emily Jordan presented the tampered research data?”

“How could I forget? Her report swayed the zoning committee’s vote.”

“Did you know what was really going on?” Clark asked. “With Emily Jordan, I mean? Do you know why she changed the numbers?”

“I heard she wanted to help Tamarack Corners by bringing new jobs to the area.”

“Ha. That was just a smokescreen. I’ll bet you didn’t know that cute little Emily was working for Nathan West the whole time. She was a plant. Sure, she was a graduate student—but she also was on the payroll of Nathan West with one important job—help convince communities to accept Nathan West’s big hog operations. One of the vice presidents at Nathan West is her uncle.”

Josh was dumbfounded by what he was hearing.

“You mean the whole thing was a setup, with Nathan West duping the university as well as Tamarack Corners and Ames County?” said Josh.

“That it was, and that’s the main reason I resigned. I just couldn’t take this stuff anymore. Emily did the same thing in Ohio, except the Ohio State University people couldn’t prove it.”

“This is all on the record?”

“Print whatever you want, and you can quote me too. There was a day when Nathan West was an honest, respectable company. But they got too big, and too greedy, and too willing to cut corners to get what they wanted. You can quote me on that, too.”

All the while, Josh was furiously taking notes. He realized that he had a story that would make national news.

Natalie Karlsen and Josh Wittmore were married on June 18, 2011. They share the cabin on Copperhead Lake, which they have purchased. On special occasions, they enjoy chocolate cake with a bottle of wine. Natalie continues as the Ames County conservation warden. She makes certain the game and conservation laws of Ames County are strictly enforced. But since the fire at Nathan West, and her close call with death, she spends less time searching for game poachers in the Tamarack River Valley. After the fire, Natalie penned a personal note to Dan Burman, thanking him for his heroic act and wishing him and his family all the best. She didn’t mention her concern about his game poaching. Natalie continues writing but has promised Josh that she will do no more “ghost writing.” “No need for it,” she told him, chuckling.

Josh Wittmore’s story “When Factory Farming Loses Its Way,” published in the
Ames County Argus
in both its online and print editions, was nominated for a Pulitzer. Josh is well on his way to becoming one of the leading voices for agriculture in the Midwest. With his leadership, the
Argus
created a section titled “Farming Yesterday and Today,” which is available on the
Argus
website and has already won an award for regional agricultural reporting. Several freelance reporters in the upper midwestern states regularly contribute to the section. Many freelance submissions arrive every week from farmers wanting to share their stories about what farming was like when they were kids. The
Argus
’s website edition, with its regional agricultural section, has taken up much of the slack created when the electronic version of
Farm Country News
went off the track, as Josh explains it.

The electronic
Farm Country News
is still in business, but barely. Its staff now consists of just three people, and Lawrence Lexington stubbornly promotes his everyone-pays-to-publish model. Lexington has already missed one loan payment to the bank; the future of
Farm Country News
appears bleak.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Agribusiness Studies continues as a national leader in both its undergraduate and graduate training programs, and especially in its cutting-edge research on large-scale farming operations. Assistant Professor Randy Oakfield left the department at the end of the spring semester. He began a new teaching assignment in a small community college in south Texas that September. He has not maintained any contact with the University of Wisconsin– Madison. The week before he moved from Wisconsin, a small package arrived in his mailbox. It had no return address. When he opened it, he discovered a DVD and a note: “Here is the only copy of this DVD; I destroyed the other copies and removed the file from my iPad. Have a good life. Emily Jordan.”

Emily Jordan continues as a consumer researcher with Nathan West Industries in Dubuque, Iowa. She has not sought entry into any university graduate program.

Ed Clark now works as a sales representative for Ames County Feed and Supply. He and Josh have become close friends and regularly have coffee at the Lone Pine, where they discuss farming and agricultural issues.

Marcella Happsit, president of the Tamarack Corners Historical Society, reported at the society’s meeting after the fire that she had received a note from Nathan West, canceling all of its promises to give money to the community. All except the full-sized statue of Mortimer Dunn and his dog, which had been completed at the time of the fire. Today the statue stands in front of the Tamarack Corners Museum. “At least we got one good thing out of the company,” Marcella said.

Nathan West Industries sent several fire inspectors to the site of its destroyed building. They found nothing definitive as to its cause, other
than evidence that the fire started at one end of the building, where electricians had been working on a special new computerized feeding system earlier on the day of the fire. The workers claimed they turned off all the electricity when they left that day.

A couple of weeks after the fire, bulldozers leveled the site of the burned building, and all work stopped on additional buildings. An announcement from Nathan West Industries in Dubuque stated: “Nathan West officials are reviewing all options as to whether we will rebuild this site or abandon.” At this time, no decision has been made.

Fred Russo and Oscar Anderson still meet regularly for coffee. At one of their meetings they discussed the possible cause of the fire. Oscar was convinced that the Tamarack River Ghost set it.

“Remember what the fire inspectors said,” offered Oscar. “They couldn’t find a cause. It’s got to be the Tamarack River Ghost, no question about it. Know what else? I was over at the Dunn cemetery the other day. Just looking around. Know what I found?”

“You’re gonna tell me no matter what, aren’t you?”

“I found one of Mortimer Dunn’s wood carvings. It was a wooden spoon, all nicely decorated. Found it on top of his wife’s grave. Looked like it was just put there, no grass growing over it or anything. It was old looking, all faded. I picked it up, and you know what it said on the back, carved with little letters?”

“Okay, what’d it say?”

“It said, ‘For Amelia, from Mort. 1900.’”

“I know what you’re thinkin’. You think the ghost put the spoon there.”

“He did. No doubt about it.”

Since the fire, several people who live in the Tamarack River Valley or have visited there in the evening swear they have heard the ghost, especially on nights when the wind is down and the moon is up. They smell pipe tobacco smoke, hear the clear sound of the ghost dog’s little bell, and hear his song, sometimes faintly, other times more distinctly: