by Callan Wink
The pasture was not attached to the main Virostok ranch holdings, and so they were more than five miles from the house and a tractor they might use to pull them out. Ancient sighed and spit into the mud. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked off across the river, where the slowly rotating turbines of the Hutterite colony’s wind farm were just visible. “Well, fuck,” he said. “I guess we’ll go talk to the Hoots.”
They set out walking across the rutted pasture, a few of Virostok’s Red Angus watching them balefully. At the top of the hill they angled across the field and ducked under the fence that separated Virostok’s section from the Hutterite land. They climbed the rise, and the windmills loomed before them, three stories high, their brilliant white turbine blades turning lazily. August could feel only the slightest breeze and was surprised that it was enough to move the windmills.
Both of them stopped walking, and craned their necks up; the blades in front of the sun draped great dagger-shaped shadows across the brown fields.
“I watched them put those things up,” Ancient said. “The blades came in from Seattle, I think. Two flatbed railcars for each one. They had to truck them up the last leg here from Livingston. I remember seeing them coming up the highway, bigger than seemed possible.”
“I heard that eagles and hawks sometimes run into windmills and get killed,” August said. “But from here it looks like they’re moving so slow I don’t see how that could be true.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Ancient said. “I do know the Hoots are making a killing on the deal, though. The company that put them up leased the land, and I guess the colony gets some kind of percentage of the profits. It’s been five years, and I’ve been noticing they’ve got a bunch of new trucks on their place. Giant new chicken barn, too. You ever been down into the colony?”
August shook his head. “Kind of. Not really.”
“Well, you’re in for an experience.”
From the hill they could see down into the Hutterite compound. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s around,” August said.
Ancient looked at his watch. “Probably dinnertime. Don’t worry, they’ll come out of the woodwork when we go down there. They’re always around.”
August and Ancient headed down the hill, crossed the small bridge over the Musselshell, and continued behind the large, dormant gardens into the colony itself. The whole place was exceedingly neat. No trash or junk. A wooden fence circled the main yard and it was a brilliant, freshly painted white. The dorm buildings were long and low, with many separate entrances on each sidewall. Every doorway had a small poured-concrete stoop upon which rested a metal-wheeled cart. Probably thirty doorways, August guessed, between the two buildings. Thirty evenly spaced doors, thirty stoops, thirty carts. No decorations of any kind, every door a clean, freshly painted white.
“Kind of creepy,” August said.
Ancient laughed. “Oh, come on. They’re God-fearing Americans, just like you and me.” He reached around in his back pocket and pulled out his dip can, thwacking it a few times against his thigh before packing his bottom lip. “But seriously,” he said. “All these people think radicals are only living in hippie towns on the coast. Berkeley or Brooklyn or whatever. These people right here are the straight-up most radical group of people I’ve ever heard of. At some point they said, Fuck society. We’re going to go out to the middle of nowhere, Montana, and live our goddamn lives. We’re going to raise our chickens and wear our little homemade outfits and the rest of the world can burn itself to the ground for all we care.”
Before long a man emerged, wiping his hands with a rag. He wore the standard Hutterite garb—a black broad-brimmed Stetson and a dark blue pearl-snap shirt tucked into black Wrangler jeans. Black boots covered in mud. He had blondish-red muttonchops, his belly strained the front of his shirt, and his red face was split in a big smile.
“Hey, John, how’s it going? Long time no see.” Ancient and the Hutterite shook hands; the Hutterite’s were huge and grease stained.
“Okay,” the Hutterite said. “Sure has been a long time.” He put his hands in his pants pockets, rocking back a little on his heels. “Remind me of your name again,” he said.
“I’m Ancient Virostok. That’s me over there.” Ancient pointed in the direction of the pasture. “Remember, I gave you and your boy a lift from Livingston a few years ago when your truck broke down?”
The Hutterite nodded and rocked a little more on his heels. “I don’t have a son,” he said. “Maybe that was my cousin, John Daniel. I’m John Rile. I’ve got three daughters. John Daniel has a son, though. Probably you gave him and his boy a ride, because he’s the fowl boss and he gets down there to town for deliveries. I’m the farm boss, though, so I mostly stay around. That John Daniel, though, he gets down there to town as much as he can. He’s always going to the Taco Time drive-through and getting those chalupas with the hot taco sauce. He loves spicy. We don’t get much of it up here. I don’t really like spicy. What can we do for you, then?” the Hutterite said. “Want to buy some fryers?”
“Well,” Ancient said, “the thing is, we’re stuck. Got our truck bogged down in the pasture on the river back there, and we’d be super obliged if you could give us a hand.” While Ancient spoke, dormitory doors were opening. Kids stepped out into the yard, the boys dressed in home-sewn dark blue pants and shirts, the girls in dark blue or dark green dresses, hair covered by black-and-white polka-dotted kerchiefs. They stood quietly at the edge of the yard, watching.
“Real muddy out there, eh?” John Rile said. “I bet. I’ll drive the Kubota up there, should do the trick. No problem. Maybe you want some fryers, though, since you came all this way? Nice fresh ones right now, all wrapped up and ready to go.”
Ancient shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “My fiancée will be happy about that.” He pulled out his wallet. “How about three?”
John Rile nodded and looked at August. “And you?”
“I don’t know,” August said, looking at Ancient. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know what we’re talking about. What’s a fryer?”
John Rile blinked and wiped at his mouth with the back of one hand. “Poultry, boy,” he said. “A nice young fryer. You must not be married. You probably like our rhubarb wine, though, eh?”
“I don’t know,” August said. “Never come across it before.” August could see Ancient trying to hide his smile, looking down at the ground and kicking at something with the toe of his boot. “How you set for cash, August?” Ancient said.
August patted his jean pocket and shrugged. “I guess I got like twenty bucks.”
“Whelp,” Ancient said. “Bust it out and pay the man for your booze.”
John Rile was smiling again, holding the twenty Ancient had given him for the fryers. August dug out his wallet and handed over his money.
“Good deal,” John Rile said. “I’ll get Ma to box up the fryers and set up your jug. You have a chain?”
“I’ve got a tow strap,” Ancient said.
John Rile stuffed the two twenties in his pocket and said, “We’re in business, then.” He turned to the gaggle of kids and yelled, “Tell Ma Sal three fryers and a jug, hurry up.”
John Rile drove the Kubota out of the colony with August and Ancient riding perched on the fenders, and the box containing the fryers and rhubarb wine resting in the tractor’s front bucket. The kids followed, running silently behind the tractor, and a gray-muzzled heeler trotted behind them, tongue lolling.
* * *
—
It was nearly dark by the time they got the truck up the hill and out of the pasture, and everyone involved was very much splattered with mud. After extended thanks and goodbyes to the Hutterite clan, they headed out, with Ancient at the wheel. The box of fryers sat between them on the bench seat. The rhubarb wine was in a plastic milk jug, and August twisted off the cap and sniffed.
“Ever had that before?” Ancient said.
August shook his head and took an experimental sip. It was golden in color, sweet and syrupy—not too bad, but tasted faintly of the milk jug’s plastic. He offered the wine to Ancient, who shook his head.
“Had plenty when I was younger. Just tastes like a hangover to me.”
August recapped the jug and put it at his feet. “I heard a thing about the Hoots the other day,” he said. “Probably not true. But I heard that they sometimes get guys from outside the colony to come sleep with their women, like, as a stud service.”
Ancient was shaking his head, laughing. “That old line. Guys have been saying that around here for thirty years. I don’t know one single person that has actually ever done it, though. Just wishful thinking by a bunch of sad-ass bachelor ranchers.”
“That’s pretty much what I thought. I met a guy the other night that was giving me a big story about it.”
“Who was that?”
“Guy named Tim Duncan. I guess you probably know him.”
Ancient started to say something, then stopped. Shook his head. “I’ve known that kid since he was a toddler. They’ve had a tough go of it over there for a while. Timmy’s dad, Big Tim, is, well, I don’t know. He used to be all right. You ever drive by their place? It’s on the back way to town on Dry Creek. All those signs out by the road?”
August shook his head.
“Yeah, it’s kind of out-of-the-way. No real reason to go that direction.”
“What kind of signs?”
“Conspiracy theory shit. About how 9/11 was a cover-up and Bible verses and Nazi-type stuff. Your basic standard-issue right-wing lunacy.”
“Tim told me his brother died a few years ago.”
“Yeah. I knew Wes, too. Good kid. Everyone liked Wes. Hell of a natural athlete. Did rodeo and pitched in high school and probably could have just walked on anywhere, but I guess he went down to college and got distracted so that he didn’t care too much about sports. Can’t blame him there.”
“Tim said he was drunk and got in a wreck.”
“That’s the long and short of it. We’ve all been there. Bad luck. Big Tim’s screwiness seemed a little more harmless before Wes died. But that’s no real surprise. You lose a kid like that and all the normal anger within a person gets the heat turned up on it. Timmy’s not a bad kid.”
“He said you bought some land off his dad.”
Ancient nodded. “For more than a fair price at that. He say that I took advantage, or ripped them off, or anything like that?”
“Nothing like that.”
Ancient looked out the window and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “People around here, I don’t know. Everyone’s all neighborly, and then you find out that people you’ve known for decades have been secretly holding their breath, waiting for your downfall. Timmy say anything about Kim?”
“Kim? No. Why?”
Ancient shrugged. “People are nosy.”
“Where is Kim, anyway? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
They were home now, sitting in the driveway. Ancient turned the truck off, and the diesel ticked. They sat there looking at the house, no lights on because there was no one there.
“Give me that jug,” Ancient said. August handed it over and Ancient tilted it back, his Adam’s apple bobbing twice. “Goddamn, but that’s bad,” he said, coughing. “I don’t know what it would do to you first, get you drunk or give you a cavity.” Ancient was sitting behind the wheel looking straight ahead. He had the jug on his lap and was turning the cap over in his fingers. He was a small man, high cheekbones perennially red and chapped. Tangled blond hair flaring from under his dirty cap. “Sometimes when your fiancée says she’s going downstate to visit her sister, it means that she’s going downstate to visit her sister. Apparently, though, it can also mean that her return is questionable.”
After two months of unrelenting cold, in early March, just in time for calving, the warm winds started coming down from the north. August and Ancient patrolled the herd, cutting out the heavies and moving them into the small corral near the calving shed. Ancient was on his big geriatric gelding, Chief, the only horse left on the ranch, and August drove the four-wheeler. It was a fifty-fifty day, as Ancient termed it. Fifty degrees and blowing fifty miles an hour. Snow melting, the knobby four-wheeler tires throwing big clods of wet mud.
They got a half dozen of the cows that seemed closest to being ready separated from the herd, and then they stopped to eat their sandwiches, hunkering down on the lee side of the calving shed. In this patch of calm, the sun warmed them and August leaned back against the boards of the shed and closed his eyes. They were halfway through calving, and the long days and nights had started to take their toll. He hadn’t had an uninterrupted night of sleep in a week. Ancient, somehow, didn’t seem tired. He chewed his sandwich loudly, crunched his chips. “Check out ol’ Chief,” he said, nudging August’s leg. August opened his eyes. Chief had wandered to the wind block as well. He stood next to them, asleep on his feet, reins trailing in the dirt. “I swear that horse is part dog. He’d follow me into the house if I let him. You want to hop on his back this afternoon? He pretty much drives himself. If he had thumbs he could probably run this ranch better than me.”
August shook his head. “I’ll stick with the four-wheeler.”
“Suit yourself. My dad was a hell of a horseman. Chief was his last. Started him as a green broke colt. He always said the only reason he messed with cattle at all was to keep his horses exercised. He hated the four-wheeler. Of course, he wasn’t dumb; he recognized how useful they are. But he used them for doing the irrigation only. It was like a religion for him. Money only factored in when it was scarce and he never set himself up to make more of it. Poverty and a pasture full of horses eating new grass—that was his idea of heaven. You have horses on your place growing up?”
August closed his eyes again. Shook his head. “Dairy cows. They pretty much come when you call them. No need for horses.”
“Dairy,” Ancient said, as if trying it on for size.
“One hundred acres,” August said.
“One hundred acres?”
“That’s it.”
“My old man and I probably would have killed each other if we were cooped up on one hundred acres.”
“There you go,” August said. “Instead of that I came out here.”
Ancient nodded and balled his sandwich foil. He thwacked his chew can a few times and packed his lip. “My old man could be a funny dude. The first four-wheeler we got was a Honda. He always called it the Jap quarter horse.”
“Good one.”
“He had a lot of good ones. Kim only met him at the end, when he was already half out of it. She’d chopped her hair so it was even shorter than it is now, and the old boy thought that was something. He told her that the West was won by women with men’s haircuts. She laughed. I think they liked each other okay.”
August didn’t say anything and the wind picked up for a moment, the gust sending up a howl as it was cleaved by the single strand of electric wire strung up on posts to the shed.
“Yep, when ol’ Chief kicks the bucket it’s going to be the end of an era. It’ll just be me, Ancient, the poor orphan boy. The only one left who remembers how it used to be.” Ancient grunted, heaved to his feet, and stepped around the side of the shed. “The divine wind,” he yelled. “The Chinook. The snow eater.” He turned his back and unzipped, sending a plume of wind-driven piss flying for nearly thirty feet.
August took the Dry Creek cutoff, pausing for a moment on the old single-lane iron bridge over the Musselshell. He could see down into the water; it was clear enough to make out the rocks of the streambed, and he watched for a while but couldn’t see any trout. He clattered over the bridge timbers and headed toward town, driving slowly on the heavily rutted road, pa
ssing a field of winter wheat and a group of crows, shards of scattered iridescent black against electric-green new growth. The field was fenced, and there were signs on the posts running along the barrow pit. They were hand-painted, thick black letters against whitewashed plywood: KEEP AMERICA FOR AMERICANS! JEWS ARE THE TERRORISTS—MOSSAD DID 9/11! BUSH KNEW! Some of the letters had dripped, lending their messages an air of fresh fevered intensity.
August was creeping along, reading, when a truck rumbled around the corner and slowed. It was Tim. He braked next to August and rolled his window down. August rolled his down as well, and Tim nodded at the signs. “You taking some time to get educated?” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” August said.
“There’s a lot of shit that don’t make sense about 9/11.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that there were unidentified explosions that came from the ground floors. It wasn’t just from the planes. And—” Tim paused, rubbed his face, spat out the window. “You know what? It don’t matter. It’s not my deal. My dad’s always going on about it. Talk to him if you want all the info. I’m just living. How’s it going? How’s that dick Ancient?”
“Going fine. Ancient’s fine, I guess.”
“Does he pay you to drive around admiring the scenery, or what?”
“He had to go to Billings. I’m headed to town to get some stuff from the Feed-n-Need.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Some big stainless lag bolts. Rehanging a gate that ripped out of a post. It was just screwed in at the hinges before.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen. If you want to make it last, you have to drill a hole through and then bolt it.”
“That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Smart.”
“I guess.”
“So if you’re going to town, why’d you come this way? It’s going to take you about twenty minutes longer.”