Driftless

by David Rhodes

  “But that can change, and it’s changing all across this country as men wake up and prepare to take action. You don’t have to live in open conflict with your conscience. You can learn to stop being intimidated. You can learn the tactics of modern warfare so the threat of violence will no longer make you timid. You can learn to be free men again, to assume those massive virtues of your ancestors and stand without shame before them.”

  Gail watched as her brother’s chapped hands clenched together and his head nodded up and down.

  “As you train you will begin to see a faint glimmer of something new and hard. You will recognize it as your new self. You were not born to live like sheep waiting to be slaughtered. You can stare back at evil, and the hunted become the hunter.”

  Grahm shifted eagerly in his chair.

  Gail looked anxiously at July Montgomery and he stood up.

  “Wait just a minute,” he said.

  In a single snap of his head, Moe Ridge located the source of the sound, and two pairs of eyes measured each other. July laughed self-consciously as he walked forward, shaking his head, repeating, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

  When he reached the front of the room, he turned and addressed the group.

  “Most of what this man says is probably true, but you still shouldn’t listen to him.”

  Moe Ridge walked over and stood close to July, making him look small in comparison, and July smiled again self-consciously.

  “The trouble with some people,” July said, “is they believe their thoughts are new. They don’t think anyone else has ever thought them. Most of us in this room have thought them many times.

  “Is there a bunch of greedy fools at work in this and every other country? Yes, of course. Do they often lie, cheat, steal, bribe, intimidate, and murder to get what they want? Yes, they do. Is their propaganda often persuasive and does it convince many other folks to go along with them? Yes again. Does power corrupt? Sadly, yes.”

  “If you agree with me,” snapped Moe, “then join.”

  “That’s just what I’m coming to,” said July. “I agree with everything my angry friend here says, up until that joining part. These problems have been around since we first lit a fire in the cave and discovered someone stealing our collection of pretty animal bones with the help of the clan council. But my friend here thinks these problems can be fixed once and for all—right now. Africans couldn’t fix them, Egyptians couldn’t fix them, Persians couldn’t fix them, Greeks couldn’t fix them, Romans couldn’t fix them, Arabs couldn’t fix them, Turks couldn’t fix them, Europeans couldn’t fix them, but he can fix them.”

  “You’re afraid to confront the injustice of a dying civilization,” said Moe. “In the days of the founding fathers—”

  “Frankly,” said July, “I don’t give a damn about civilization, dying or otherwise. The only reason we have a civilization is that hardly anyone pays attention to it. Most of us live without trying to change anything. We’re content with more important, private things. Myself, I like to farm. If there were something I’d rather be doing, I’d do that. I like farming. I like being outdoors, growing things and feeding animals. I like it. I farm to be farming.”

  “The tyranny of kings would never have been overthrown without people standing up,” said Moe.

  “Tyranny still exists. No, my friend, most of the people in this room feel just like I do. We’re not here to solve big problems, and we don’t really believe in the idea of solving big problems because of the bigger problems that come out of it. We’re here to figure out a way to keep farming. The gentleman who spoke before you—he wants me to sign a petition. That’s easy enough, so I’ll sign it. But you want me to do something else with my life and I simply don’t have time for that. As I said before, I like farming. I like going to county fairs, listening to music, and eating my neighbor’s pies. None of that involves fighting with anyone.”

  “You’re afraid to stand up for what you believe.”

  “Whoa there, Moe, I don’t doubt your courage and I don’t think it’s fair to doubt mine. I’m not saying I’d never join. Someone may someday figure out how to distribute all good and bad things fairly. Maybe you can do that, find a way for even the most unfortunate people to have the same opportunities as the rest of us. Maybe you can discover how to make sure that only those who truly deserve wealth—or poverty—will have it. Perhaps you can find some men and women who after overthrowing the corrupt fools now in power will not become corrupted themselves. As soon as you find them, let me know. Let all of us know.”

  The veins in Moe Ridge’s neck throbbed.

  “I’ve said all I wanted to,” said July. “Thank you for listening.” He walked back to his chair.

  Moe Ridge seemed temporarily unable to find something to say. The crowd began to murmur.

  “I’ll join!” yelled Gail, and stood up at the back of the room, smiling her best smile.

  Grahm glared at her with a loathing known only to siblings. Everyone looked at her, and because she was one of the few young women in the building, and the only attractive one, they assumed she had been brought in to advertise the militia.

  “There’s doughnuts and coffee next to the petitions,” said the white-haired man.

  The crowd climbed out of the folding chairs and moved in several directions, some to their cars, motorcycles, and trucks, a few to join the militia, but most toward the pastry.

  Grahm and July signed the petition and carried coffee in Styrofoam cups out of the sweltering building to the truck.

  While she waited in line for a doughnut, Gail spoke briefly with Wade Armbuster, who had just written his name onto one of the militia’s clipboards.

  “Is that your trailer in the Brassos’ back yard?”

  “Yes,” said Wade.

  “I saw you join the militia. You must not agree with July.”

  “Sure I do,” he said. “July and I agree on practically everything. We’re good friends. He just said all that tonight because he didn’t want your brother to join—just like you standing up and saying you would join when you wouldn’t. That’s okay, I understand that. Grahm has a family and a farm. Big difference is, I’m not a farmer.”

  On the way out of the building, beneath the hazy light from the lantern, she could hear the insects and feel her new song growing inside her, swelling up with all the sadness, joy, longing, and anger she had grown up around.

  THE LOOK OF DEATH

  AS THE MORNING RINSED STARS OUT OF THE NIGHT SKY, JULY Montgomery found his cows bunched up along the lower fence and called to them in a chiding voice. They needed little coaxing and fell in behind High Socks, the self-appointed chief of the bovine tribe.

  As he followed them in the growing light, July noticed, again, that his pasture was getting thin. The rye, timothy, and couch grass crowded out the alfalfa. He resolved to plow it up in the fall, plant oats or beans and seed a new paddock on the other side of the barn where the soil had more nitrogen. Alfalfa was a nutrient-hungry plant, and four years was about the life span of good pasture—at least in his ground.

  Without ever consciously counting his twenty-six cows, July gradually became aware that one was missing. As they lumbered into their stanchions (all but three or four of the younger animals always went to the same places), he knew which one: the white-faced four-year-old that had given birth to an all-black bull calf the year before.

  The cows pushed their wide, wet noses into the little mountain ranges of ground feed he had shoveled into the concrete trough earlier, and July returned to the pasture.

  He found her on the side of the hill. She was wedged between a willow and the creek. For some reason, she had chosen to lie downhill and hadn’t been able to get back on her feet. The dreggy ground was dug up from her doomed effort. The grain and fresh alfalfa in her stomach had reacted with digestive juices to produce methane. The gas had blown her up like a leather balloon, choking off her lungs. She was dead.

  The thought of the lonely, despera
te struggle to reach her feet and the dumb- animal senselessness of the death brought tears to his eyes—remorse over the suffering and anger over its needlessness. Cows were upright creatures, nearly helpless on the ground. Why couldn’t they be more careful?

  July got the tractor and dragged her around in front of the barn, where the carcass could be located easily. He called the rendering service (no longer free since two years ago) from the house and returned to the barn.

  As he milked, he tried not to think about how death looked. An hour later, still milking, he heard the rendering truck pull into the drive and the cable winch running. He didn’t go outside. He would wait for the bill.

  His relationship with the animals he raised, kept pregnant, milked, and eventually slaughtered was complicated. He worried over their health and comfort, resented them, appreciated them, pitied them, hated them, and loved them.

  East of the barn, July moved a section of electric fence, closing off one paddock and opening another. He drove his herd down the narrow lane between the single strands of bare wire and into the new section of pasture. There, alfalfa rose, uneaten, nearly to their knees. From a distance they seemed to be wading in a green pond.

  After cleaning out the barn, scraping the manure off the concrete, hosing it down, sweeping, and throwing lime, July went to the house, showered, and dressed in a clean pair of gray pants and a blue cotton shirt.

  At the kitchen table, he drank a cup of reheated coffee, fried an egg, and ate the last piece of Violet Brasso’s peach pie. He thought about finding the cow lying by the creek and tried again to push the image out of his mind. The look of death was always disturbing, and he guarded against it. There were many things to do today and it was necessary to keep moving.

  He needed to take a load of corn to the mill. The elevator was sticking out of the crib from the last time he’d used it, looking like a tin dragon guarding a keep of yellow gold. He pulled the inverted-pyramid-shaped wagon—the gravity box—around the barn with his Minneapolis-Moline G750.

  The tractor was more than thirty years old, which in the modern farming world was something of an antique. Once considered powerful, it had since fallen into the medium range and was in danger of slipping into the small category—shrunk by the trend toward ever larger and more powerful equipment. Still, it possessed a mechanical charm for July, and he had, so far, put up with the inconvenience of hard-to-find replacement parts. The six-cylinder, Oliver-built engine burned liquid propane instead of diesel fuel or gasoline, a somewhat novel feature dating to the gas rationing days of the Second World War. Sporting the optional dual- speed power takeoff and three- point hitch, the tractor was rated at sixty-one horsepower at the drawbar and seventy for the power take off.

  July parked the gravity box beneath the neck of the elevator. He backed the tractor near the elevator, climbed down, and coupled the PTO shaft protruding from the rear of the tractor to the conveyor shaft of the elevator. The heavy machinery locked together with a confirming metallic snap. Then he engaged the PTO, commanding a loud clattering as the shaft transferred its turning to the chain- driven elevator.

  A cool breeze blew out of the north and he found the grain shovel in the barn. Wanting to keep his shirt clean, he tossed it inside his pickup and put on the long denim coat hanging on the milk-house wall.

  The prospect of rain increasing, he quickly shoveled corn into the clattering elevator, thankful for the lightweight plastic body of the shovel. The dried ears rode up the slats of the conveyor chute and dropped into the gravity box, and he watched for the level to rise above the top. When it did, he climbed out of the crib and into the wagon to kick the ears into the corners until there was room for another eight or ten bushels.

  Letting himself to the ground, he noticed a pocket of sky that seemed unusually blue in contrast to the growing gray.

  The corner of his denim coat brushed against the whirling PTO. The six-sided shaft collected the material, folded it over, and wrapped it up, yanking him down. At the same rate of turning, he moved from alarm to injury, to mutilation, and then to death. The coat was finally ripped from his shoulders and his body fell to the ground.

  FINDING JULY

  AS JACOB BOLTED A CARBURETOR TO THE CYLINDER HEAD OF A gasoline-powered electric generator, Winnie’s car drove by the front of the shop. Several minutes later it went by again. He washed his hands and shouted into the craft room.

  “I’m leaving, Clarice. Will you close up?”

  “Of course, Mr. Helm,” she shouted back.

  “Stop calling me mister.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Outside, Jacob saw the yellow car disappear around the corner, heading for Thistlewaite Bridge. He ran to his jeep.

  A mile down Highway Q, Winnie pulled onto the shoulder and got out. Jacob stopped behind her.

  “Are you following me?”

  “No,” he said. “Well, yes. I saw you drive by and I was ready to leave and wondered where you were going.”

  “You can’t follow me around, Jacob.”

  “I know that. I do. Where are you going?”

  “I’m taking a quart of blackberries to July Montgomery. He probably hasn’t had time to find any.”

  “That’s just where I’m going. I need to talk to him about something he left at the shop.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes. Go on, I’ll follow.”

  The jeep and the yellow car continued for another mile and turned into the drive.

  In the farmyard, a tractor could be heard running and the elevator clattering on the other side of the barn.

  “I’ll check the house,” said Winnie.

  Jacob watched her walk away and followed the worn path around the barn. The clattering was louder here and he saw the gravity box parked in front of the crib, to the side of the MM. There was a space between the front of the box and the tractor, and he went through it.

  There are some things, he later reflected, that change everything else. Their breaking makes no sound yet fractures the world. Afterwards, nothing can be restored to its original order. It’s Gone. But at the time, at the moment of domestic impression, Big Events don’t appear to have any power at all, a single leaf falling. They don’t seem as if they will be important. Their terrible reckoning is hidden from view.

  He climbed onto the tractor and turned off the engine. The clattering died in a heavy denim flapping. He jumped down and stood over the mangled body. There was no question he was dead and no question he was July, doubled over like a fallen rag.

  Jacob looked at the broken human form and felt, astonishingly, nothing. There was no mystery that required explanation. No laws had been broken. No dangers still lurked and no urgency spoke out of the vacant silence. Everything was done. July had been loading corn into his gravity box. His coat caught in the PTO. The shaft killed him. The look of resigned astonishment on the good side of his face was probably an accurate portrait of his last conscious moment; and even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter. The thoughts passing through people’s minds at the gate of death are always concealed from the living, and there was little point in speculation. July was dead. It was an accident. He had been working alone and should have been more careful. Maybe he was tired or preoccupied. No one could know. People died, sometimes accidentally. The death had been brutal, but that’s the way with farming accidents. They were part of a hard life. The deflated, bluish look of the blood-drained body was normal. So were the open eyes. The look of death.

  A pair of bright red male cardinals lit on the gravity box and hopped inside, disappearing from sight. A female joined them. The color of the dried blood, black and blue flies, and the scattered yellow kernels of corn lying among blades of green, green grass seemed almost beautiful.

  When Winnie walked around the tractor, she pressed her hands against the sides of her face. Jacob unwound the denim coat from the PTO shaft and placed it over July. He put his arm around Winnie and turned her away, but she pushed him aside.

  Th
ey walked to the house.

  Jacob phoned for an ambulance. Winnie sat at the kitchen table with the crumbs from July’s breakfast staring back at her. Beside the crumbs, she put her box of blackberries.

  Jacob was still perplexed by how little he felt. It was just like a normal day, like yesterday and the day before. He noticed the fingers on Winnie’s right hand rapidly tapping the top of the table.

  “We’d better try to locate July’s family,” he said.

  Winnie looked at him. “He doesn’t have any close family,” she said. “Maybe a cousin. At least that’s what he told me once.”

  Winnie gripped her right hand with her left to stop it from tapping on the tabletop and then discovered that with her fingers in prison, other things were harder to contain. Without noticing how it happened, she had stood up. “Jacob, we’ve got to find someone to take care of the cows.”

  “Everyone’s got some family, somewhere,” said Jacob.

  “We’ve got to find someone to take care of the cows,” Winnie repeated.

  Jacob walked through the living room and into the room July used for an office. Winnie heard him climbing the steps and walking around upstairs.

  Then the house was quiet and Winnie cleared the dishes from the table. As she waited for the ambulance to arrive, she ran water in the sink and washed the frying pan.

  She heard another sound, went upstairs, and found Jacob sitting on a wooden chair in a bedroom with a single bed. On his lap sat a shallow box of photographs and newspaper clippings. He was looking out the window, as though for the first time noticing that something had changed and that this day was nothing like the day before.