The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County (2 page)

“Hi, Ranger,” said Ambrose. “Miss me?” The little animal rubbed up against Ambrose's leg. Ambrose had stuttered since he was a boy and still stuttered today, but when he was alone with his dog or with his pet raccoon, he could speak clearly. He never understood why that was the case, but he enjoyed talking to animals, and they seemed to understand him and enjoyed “talking” with him as well.

Ambrose started the fire in the wood-burning cookstove and soon he could hear the snapping and crackling of the pine sticks that he used for kindling. Ranger sat at his feet, looking up at him, his head cocked to the side.

“You wanna hear what I learned from the doctor, Ranger?”

The little raccoon made a purring sound.

“Doc Stevens said I'm not so young anymore, and I guess he's right because I'll be eighty-two next year. He said I should slow down a little, but you know, Ranger, if I stop doing what I've been doing, I might as well die.” He poked at the fire and thought for a minute. “There's something else that's been bothering me. You wanna hear about that, Ranger? You interested in hearing about what I've been thinking?”

Ambrose reached down and petted the little animal on the head.

“I've got a secret that I've told only one other person. I've been thinking that I really don't want to go to my grave with it—but how do I let people know about it, and even more important, I suspect, is when should I let them know? When should I let the cat out of the bag?”

Ambrose reached down and petted the raccoon again, then sat back in his chair. Oh, how he enjoyed sitting by his woodstove on a cool spring day, listening to the snapping and crackling of wood burning, smelling the wood smoke that escaped from the stove, hearing the subtle sound of steam rising from the teakettle. As he sat there, soaking up the warmth, his thoughts went back to the many years when he felt worthless because of his inability to speak properly. He remembered when he began doing this one thing, and how it had given him the self-confidence he had never otherwise known. Only his beloved Gloria, whom he had not seen in years, knew his secret. She had vowed to tell no one, and she hadn't.

Over these many years, he had kept people in the dark—people who thought they knew who he was but really didn't. People who thought they knew what he was doing but didn't know at all. He wondered what would happen when people discovered that there was a lot more to Ambrose Adler than a stuttering old man who grew vegetables and had ignored taken-for-granted technology such as telephones, automobiles, indoor plumbing, tractors, and central heating—and who talked to a raccoon.

2

M
arilyn Jones sat in her cramped little office located in the back of the Link Lake Supper Club. A small window to her left allowed her to see the waters of Link Lake, sparkling in the early morning sun. A mirror hung on the opposite wall, where she checked her appearance every time she left the office and entered the spacious dining room. She always wanted to make a good impression, no matter how she really felt at a given time.

This morning when she glanced in the mirror, she saw a woman with graying hair and puffy eyes from not enough sleep. But she still had a face and figure that caused men to turn their heads. The desk in front of her was piled with invoices and assorted pieces of paper that were part of running a business, especially one as successful as the Link Lake Supper Club. She was tired. Things had gone late last night as the Link Lake Wild Turkey Club—the Struttin' Gobblers—held its annual dinner meeting at the supper club. Several of the members intent on making the most of the celebration had stayed until the bar closed at 2:00 a.m. It was good for business, but Marilyn, now sixty-one, was bone tired when she came to work at 8:00 a.m., as she had done every day since she became owner and manager way back in 1973.

On Mondays the place was closed; otherwise, running a supper club was an everyday job. The place didn't open until 11:00 a.m., but she and her longtime employee, Joe Jensen, showed up each working day at 8:00 a.m. Joe cleaned up the place and she did the bookwork and handled all the details necessary to keep the Link Lake Supper Club afloat during these tough economic times.

An hour after Jensen arrived, Jonathon Frederick, Marilyn's chef of twenty years, arrived. Always right on time. Jonathon was responsible for the food orders, supervised all the cooking and baking, and was the never-challenged supervisor of the menu and the kitchen. No one questioned his decisions. No one, not even Marilyn. Over the years Jonathon had become ever crustier, but he was a good chef, one of the best, if not topping the list of all the restaurant chefs in Ames County. Marilyn knew that, but so did Jonathon—and he was quick to remind her of it when she questioned him about something involving the menu and the kitchen.

Marilyn enjoyed these early hours at the club, when the place was closed and quiet, except for the occasional squeaking of moving chairs and tables as Joe mopped the floor, and the subtle sounds and smells that came from the kitchen after Jonathon arrived. The last couple years, during these quiet moments, Marilyn often thought about how she wanted the community to remember her. She knew that one of these days she would retire—and she didn't want to be forgotten. She wanted to be remembered for more than merely being a successful businesswoman. She wanted people to remember her as a woman who cared about the community and worked hard to improve it. That's one of the reasons she had decided to help form the Link Lake Economic Development Council five years earlier and agreed to head it up when the mayor asked her to do it. She wanted people to remember that she, as president of the council, had sparked outside investors' interest in coming to Link Lake and providing much-needed jobs. If the economic council's negotiations with a mining company out of La Crosse panned out—well, it would surely add to her legacy. She smiled when she thought about that prospect.

She was also pleased that she, the Reverend Ridley Ralston, and Lucas Drake, a large commercial farmer, had been able to organize the Eagle Party, a political group with members throughout Wisconsin and beyond that was committed to bringing forgotten values back to government, including supporting business development with few rules and regulations.

The Link Lake Supper Club had demanded a lot of Marilyn Jones, but it had made her a wealthy woman. She never flaunted her wealth. She lived in a modest home on the lake only a few blocks from the supper club. These days she often thought about how her life might have been different if she had a partner to share it with. She had several opportunities for marriage but turned them all down. She could never determine if her various suitors had the passion she had for running a business, and running a supper club surely required passion as well as untold hours of time, including every weekend. So she remained single, and even though there were always people around her, employees as well as customers, she had almost no close friends. Being a business owner and operator can be a lonely job.

3

E
mily Higgins had presided over the Link Lake Historical Society, the oldest organization in the Village of Link Lake, for so many years that people couldn't remember when she was first elected. Higgins was a short, thin, white-haired woman in her mid-eighties, with a voice that carried to the far corners of any room where she spoke, no matter how large the room. One thing people liked or disliked about Emily Higgins was that she was a supporter of local history and the preservation of Link Lake's historic structures. She never wavered, no matter how much pressure she received from those who opposed her position and accused her of standing in the way of Link Lake's economic progress. Emily Higgins knew what she believed, and she wasn't at all shy about sharing those beliefs with others—especially when the discussion turned to local history.

Most people in Link Lake remembered when Emily Higgins took on the then newly formed Link Lake Economic Development Council five years earlier. The council, with Marilyn Jones at the helm, had convinced the Big R fast food chain to open one of its restaurants in Link Lake. Prior to that time, the only eating establishments in the village were the Eat Well Café and the Link Lake Supper Club. A fast food restaurant seemed a good fit, especially since the village was trying to attract more summer visitors to the area. Both the Economic Development Council and the Big R siting representative had agreed that an excellent place for a Big R establishment would be the abandoned Chicago and Northwestern depot site. The trains had stopped running in the 1980s; the tracks had been torn up and a bike trail had been established—quite a popular one, too. The Big R people and the Economic Development Council both agreed that the old depot, badly in need of repair, should be torn down to make way for a new Big R restaurant. Of course, no one had bothered to let Emily Higgins and the Link Lake Historical Society know about what the Economic Development Council and Big R were cooking up, and Emily didn't know a thing about it until an article appeared in the
Ames County Argus
announcing the potential arrival of Big R to Link Lake and the razing of the old depot.

When she saw the article, Emily immediately called an emergency meeting of the historical society, and soon Marilyn Jones discovered that the Link Lake Historical Society was not near as irrelevant as she thought it was. At the Economic Development Council's next meeting, which was supposed to be a celebration of the decision to bring a new business and new jobs to the community, everything hit the fan. The entire historical society membership, all forty of them, were in the audience, plus another twenty-five people who sometimes attended historical society meetings but never took the time or had the inclination to become members of the organization.

Marilyn Jones and the mayor knew something was up when they saw all those “old-timers,” as Marilyn referred to them, in the audience at the community room at the Link Lake Library. She had no more than begun her opening remarks when Emily Higgins's hand shot up. When Marilyn refused to recognize her, Emily asked in her loud voice, “Is this deal with Big R final?”

“Miss Higgins, I believe you are out of order and that I have the floor,” Marilyn replied.

“You may have the floor, Miss Jones, but as you know, I represent the Link Lake Historical Society and you haven't once bothered to let our organization know about this proposal to bring a new restaurant to town and to locate it on the site of the old railroad depot, so my question deserves an honest answer.”

“Well, Miss Higgins,” Marilyn Jones said, smiling. “I thought your group had better things to do than worry about a dilapidated railroad depot. We didn't want to bother you with this rather minor undertaking.”

“Not bother us? Not bother us?” Emily said with an even louder voice. “I understand the plans are to tear down the depot for this new fast food place.”

“Well, yes that's likely to happen. The Big R group prefers to put up new buildings. They like the depot's location, but the old building is in the way.”

“In the way, huh?” said Emily, her face getting ever redder. “Are you saying that history stands in the way of your plans? Is that what you are saying?”

“Of course not, Emily. You know how much everyone on the Economic Development Council appreciates and supports Link Lake's history.” She said it with a straight face, but it evoked several groans from the historical society membership, which included Ambrose Adler, who sat in the back row with a big grin on his face as he listened to the give and take between Emily and Marilyn.

“Have you suggested that Big R might renovate the depot so they could save the building but still have their restaurant on the site?” asked Emily.

“We did, but Big R rejected the idea.”

“I suggest you talk with them some more,” shot back Emily.

The meeting continued with the rift between Emily Higgins and Marilyn Jones deepening, and a new distrust between the Link Lake Economic Development Council and the Link Lake Historical Society developing.