by Robert Greer
“He’s going to pick up Harriet. They’re headed up to Colstrip to meet with some old Cheyenne guy. Spoon claims he and the old man are kin.”
“Thinkin’ somethin’s true doesn’t make it so.”
“Guess so,” I said, determined to charge right into the coal-fire issue. Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out the article. “I found this lyin’ around,” I said, nearly stuttering. “It’s a piece on underground coal fires.”
“Oh. And what did you learn from it?” Dad barely sounded surprised.
“That they can be devastating and that they can burn just about forever.”
“That all?”
“Nope. There’s a section that talks about natural gas fires and coal fires competing. Seems like sometimes they’re able to snuff one another out. Sorta end up in a draw.”
“Like lots of things in life. Where’d you find that article?” he asked.
“Ah…in the dining room.”
“Strange. I don’t remember leaving it there.”
“Well…”
He stepped forward and draped an arm over my shoulder. “You can stop hemmin’ and hawin’ and coverin’ for your mom, TJ. She came clean earlier this morning. Told me she was the one who found the article and read it.” He sighed and shook his head. “What surprises the heck outta me is how fast the two of you eased down a crooked back road to nowhere after readin’ that piece. Let me set you straight. First off, like I told your mom, I’m not plannin’ on startin’ any fires, puttin’ any out, or, God forbid, blowin’ anything up. What Ricky and I are hopin’ to do is get an injunction that will stop Acota from strip-mining any of the ranches that meet at Four Corners by arguin’ that mining these lands will put every rancher involved at risk for underground fires and damage to the ecosystem.” He looked at me and smiled. “No need to conjure up ghosts when there aren’t any, TJ. Now, does that set things straight for you?”
I don’t remember letting out a sigh of relief, but I’m sure I must have.
When he continued, his tone was a little more biting. “This time you, your mom, and Spoon were way off base. I can understand Spoon’s continued need to prognosticate, given that supposedly clairvoyant bone of his, but you and your mom should know better.”
It was easy to see why he figured that Spoon had been a party to the hysteria, since he’d just seen me coming from Spoon’s quarters. Determined not to allow Spoon to be tarred with the same brush as Mom and me, I said, “Spoon didn’t have anything to do with me and Mom jumping to conclusions. We did that on our own.”
“Maybe not directly,” Dad said, shaking his head. “But he’s the one who’s got the two of you in some constant prophesyin’ frame of mind. We’ve hoed this row before, TJ, and I’ve told you that Spoon’s so-called future-seein’ powers are nothin’ but a fulcrum for trouble. So if you and your mom would do me the favor of a little less conjurin’, I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Okay.”
He nodded approvingly, the way he generally did when a bargain had been struck. “Good,” he said, glancing toward the county road. “Sure hope Spoon finds what he’s lookin’ for. But you know what? I don’t think he’s ever gonna. Men like Spoon aren’t meant to find balance, or for that matter very much satisfaction, in this world. If they did, it would probably ruin ’em.”
He removed the railroad engineer’s cap he always wore for welding and snapped the dust off the brim. “How about helping me weld a few loose pipe joints in the corrals?”
“Sure thing. I’ll go get goggles and gloves.” I headed for the machine shop to get the gear. Halfway to the shop I glanced toward the house and realized that my mom had been watching our conversation from the front porch. I flashed her a thumbs-up sign, and she responded with a smile. When I reached the shop, I wondered if she and Dad had had the same conversation about jumping to conclusions, underground coal fires, and the divisiveness caused by Spoon’s predictions, and I wondered if in the future she’d be less likely to conjure up boogeymen when there weren’t any there.
Eighteen
I’d never met Willard Johnson’s niece—in fact, until his death I’d never even heard of her. But just after lunch on the day Spoon took off for Colstrip, Thelma Lawson, the daughter and only child of Willard Johnson’s long-deceased brother, showed up at our ranch with her husband, a smallish, rumpled, bug-eyed wisp of a man, in tow.
I was sitting on our front porch with my folks when they arrived in a gunmetal gray Suburban sporting temporary plates. We were lined up three abreast, enjoying the eighty-year-old wooden porch swing that had belonged to my grandfather and discussing neither the defunct Willow Creek Ranchers Coalition nor greedy, coal-excavating companies looking to strip-mine us out of existence, but instead what Spoon and Harriet might be up to romantically. My mom had started us down that road by mentioning that Harriet, as giddy as a schoolgirl, had called that morning to tell her that she was more than a little nervous about making the Colstrip trip with Spoon.
Dad’s tongue-in-cheek response to her revelation, “Songbird’s gotta sing, Marva. Could be Harriet’s got a lot more chirp in her than she generally lets on,” came just as the Suburban pulled to a stop in front of the house.
Trying her best to keep a straight face, Mom said, “Bill, please,” as she rose to greet the SUV’s occupants.
Thelma Lawson was a big-boned, russet-skinned woman. Her hair was in a tight bun, and she wore unbecoming tortoiseshell glasses. She walked straight up the porch steps as if she’d been there before, introduced herself as Willard Johnson’s niece, and, turning daintily toward the man below her on the steps, announced, “This is my husband, Jarvon.”
Jarvon stood there without moving, right hip cocked higher than the left, and forced a smile.
“Well, hello,” my mom said, still not completely comfortable after all her time out west with a simple howdy.
I had the feeling as I stared down at Jarvon that no matter the time, the place, or the circumstance, he always remained at least three steps below or behind his wife.
“I’m hoping you’re the Darleys,” Thelma said. Her voice had the telltale hoarseness of a long-term smoker. She smiled at each of us before flashing Jarvon a look that said, I told you so.
“That we are,” Mom said, shaking hands with Thelma, then stretching to shake hands with Jarvon. As my dad and I moved to greet the Lawsons, Thelma never moved from her perch on the top porch step, and Jarvon never ascended from his.
“Why don’t you join us on the porch and visit for a bit?” Mom asked as the handshaking ended.
“We’d like to,” Thelma said, looking down at Jarvon as if to say, I’ll do the talking. “But we’ve got several more stops to make in the valley. We just stopped by to let you know that we’ve leased my uncle’s coal rights to Acota Energy. Thought you had a right to know.”
None of us were surprised by the revelation. I was, however, curious why Thelma kept referring to herself as “we” when Jarvon more than likely had zero input into any decision his wife made.
Continuing as if she were in a classroom lecturing, Thelma said, “I didn’t want people down here in this valley to get all riled up over my leasing the ranch out to Acota and end up trashing my uncle’s place. So I figured I’d come by and tell everybody personally what we’d done.”
My mom’s tone, which to that point had been hospitable, took a sharp, unfriendly U-turn. “I don’t think anyone in this valley would care to trash Willard’s property, Mrs. Lawson. Besides, it would be pretty hard to trash all that acreage, unless of course you leased it out to a strip-mining company.”
I nearly said, “Oh, shit,” as my dad stepped forward to intervene. Thelma Lawson might have been accustomed to raining down orders on the little man standing below her on the steps, but the cold hostility in my mom’s voice signaled that Thelma was teetering on the brink of an old-fashioned verbal butt-whipping.
My dad smiled at my mom, who was now an irritated shade of pink, and slipped his arm
around her waist. “We appreciate your stoppin’ by and givin’ us a heads-up,” he said to Thelma. He sounded so ingratiating that I could’ve sworn he was the one who’d been a Broadway entertainer, not Mom. “Who else do you plan on visitin’?” he asked, squeezing my obviously ruffled mom more tightly.
“The Cundiffs, Dale Turpin for sure, and Thurston Lyle, if time permits,” Thelma said in what could only be described as a snit.
Still seething, my mom flashed both Lawsons her best chorus-line-dancer’s smile. “Well, please give them our best.”
Dad and I broke into disingenuous smiles of our own.
Uncertain what to make of the three mind-melded faces smiling at her, Thelma glared down at Jarvon. “I think we’re done here,” she said authoritatively.
As Jarvon’s head bobbed up and down, like an excited puppy’s, and he turned to leave, my dad slipped his right hand into my mom’s and squeezed it tightly. He might as well have just come out and said, “Don’t you dare say anything, Marva; just let them leave.” My mom’s smile turned into an ice-dagger stare as Thelma turned and bounded down the porch steps. Jarvon schlepped his way to the Suburban two steps behind her. Only when the engine roared to life did I realize that my dad was restraining my mom by the waist.
“The nerve!” Mom said as the Suburban circled the driveway.
Eyeing me and trying his best not to laugh, Dad simply said, “Yep.”
“Don’t you dare laugh, Bill Darley!” Thoroughly peeved, Mom slipped out of his grasp, my dad swallowed his laugh, and I was left to enjoy an inward chuckle, knowing Thelma Lawson wasn’t the only person who could turn her husband on a dime.
We didn’t say much about the Lawsons’ visit until two days later, when it became obvious to every rancher in the valley that, given the speed of Acota’s negations with Thelma, Acota and Willard Johnson had been working on a leasing agreement for quite a while before his death. That same day, Spoon, who’d been strangely standoffish since returning from his meeting in Colstrip, walked into our machine shop, a little past nine, where Dad and I were busy replacing a set of blades on one of our hay mowers, and announced that a dozer, several front-end loaders, a couple of road graders, a strip-mining bucket and dragline, and three backhoes were lined up like Star Wars mechanical beasts on Willard Johnson’s property just up from Four Corners, about thirty yards from our fence line.
“Acota’s settin’ up to dig,” Spoon said, nodding to himself as if there were some need to confirm the statement. “And from the looks of things, I’d say pretty quick. Might take ’em a while to set up that dragline and bucket, but from what I saw, they could be in business within a week.”
My dad set his socket wrench aside on a bench top. The look on his face was more one of calculation than upset or anger.
“I rode our Four Corners quarter section three days back. Wasn’t no equipment there then,” Spoon said, pointedly.
“They must’ve moved it in since then,” my dad said. “Probably at night for fear we’d see them.”
“No matter. Their equipment’s still on Willard’s side of the fence,” I said.
“Yeah. But the question is how’d it get there? It’s a hell of a lot longer and a much more risky trip to bring equipment like that around the backside of Willard’s. Cross us and you save yourself at least a day and the chance of gettin’ mired in the creek.”
“And that’s just what they did,” Spoon chimed in. “Cut across us. There’s plenty of tracks out there to prove it. Means they musta done a lot of their movin’ durin’ that rain we had a few days back. There’s one other thing,” he added reluctantly. “There’s a thirty-foot-long diesel-fuel spill just up from the gas seep. You can smell it from a good bit away. They musta tipped a fuel tank or piece of equipment over in their rush.”
“Bold move, though, you gotta give ’em that,” Dad said, deep in thought.
“Yeah.” Spoon adjusted his Stetson. “Bold enough to make me think Acota’s lookin’ to provoke us.”
“Or lookin’ to flex enough muscle that we’ll turn tail and run.”
“How could they have gotten a go-ahead to dig so fast?” I asked.
Dad shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe Acota greased the right palms, or maybe they worked out a deal that got approval while Willard was still alive. Could be that all that irritatin’ niece of his had to do after his death to get the deal on a fast track was to dot a few i’s and cross a few t’s. Especially if he’d already named her as executor of his estate should anything ever happen to him.”
“Sounds like you’ve done some thinkin’ on the subject,” Spoon said.
“I have, but mainly I’m just repeatin’ some of the things Ricky Peterson laid out as possibilities a couple of weeks back.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“For the moment, nothin’,” Dad said. “At least not until I’ve had a chance to talk to Ricky. I’m guessin’ right now that the most we can hope for legally would be for a judge to fine Acota for trespassin’. And when you get right down to it, what would they care? The fine would be two or three thousand dollars at the most. It would cost me as much in attorney’s fees to make an issue of it.”
He leaned back against the workbench and rubbed his hands together, almost in anticipation, it seemed to me. “There’s somethin’ else at stake here, though. Somethin’ bigger than petty fines for trespassin’, or the fact that Acota’s primed to forever scar up this valley. And that’s the fact that we’re dealin’ with bullies. Flat-out, second-grade, kick-sand-in-your-face kind of bullies. Arrogant asses who think they can do anything they please.”
Spoon’s and Dad’s nearly synchronous nods and their identical determined looks told me that for once they were on the very same line of the very same page.
“I’m thinkin’ it’s time the folks at Acota get taught a lesson,” Dad said. “One that just might keep them from pullin’ the same shenanigans elsewhere. Whatta you think, Spoon?”
I had the sense all of a sudden that both men had forgotten I was there. They seemed to be communicating
in some between-the-lines kind of language I couldn’t understand. As they eyed one another with an earnestness I’d rarely seen, I had the feeling they were thinking, Let’s lob a grenade or two and even the score. I fought back a shiver as I considered running from the shop and shouting to someone in authority, as if I were some schoolchild on a playground, “Do you know what Arcus Witherspoon and Bill Darley are planning to do?” Instead, I stood and watched my dad and Spoon continue to connect in a way that I imagined soldiers thrown together by happenstance and bonded by necessity likely did.
Dad didn’t say anything to Mom about what had transpired in the machine shop as the three of us ate lunch a few hours later. He’d talked to Ricky Peterson by phone, I knew that much. But he wasn’t tipping his hand for dealing with Acota. As we wolfed down a meal of biscuits and honey, meatloaf sandwiches, and vegetable soup, I had the sense that Dad was weighing all his options.
“Get either of you seconds?” my mom asked, noting my dad’s thoughtful mood.
“Nope,” Dad said.
“Something the matter, Bill?” she asked. “Your jaws seem a little tight.” It was a catchphrase she used whenever my dad seemed stubbornly preoccupied.
“Nope.”
“Doesn’t look that way to me. In fact, you and TJ both seem a little tight jawed to me.”
For a second I thought Dad might mention Spoon’s early morning trespassing revelation, but before he could, Mom said, “Now, Spoon being preoccupied, I can understand. Especially now that he’s discovered that searching out his roots might very likely take him off to Washington State, or maybe even Alaska.”
“How’s that?” I asked, totally surprised.
“You mean Spoon didn’t tell either of you about what happened on that trip up to Colstrip?”
“No,” I said, feeling the muscles in my gut tighten.
“I’m surprised by that. Real surprised. Anyway,
what he found out is that he’s related to that old Cheyenne man, all right, but not in a way he figured. It turns out, at least according to what Harriet has told me, that the woman Spoon’s great-grandfather was supposedly married to wasn’t Cheyenne at all. According to what the old man told Spoon, she was Muckleshoot, or possibly even Yakama, and she’d been taken in by the old man’s family after losing both her parents as a child.”
“What about that land Spoon talked about?” I asked. “The land Spoon’s kin supposedly owned up at Powder River Bluff?”
“Harriet claims the land’s his, all right, but he’ll have to do a lot of legal legwork to claim it.”
“Ricky Peterson can help,” I blurted out.
“I’m sure he can,” Mom said. “But I expect it’s really not the land that Spoon’s after. He’s looking for the genesis of his family, not simply a piece of real estate. Harriet says he’s terribly disappointed, especially since he thought he was close to the end of his search.”
“So what’s he plan to do?” my dad asked.
“He hasn’t told anyone. Right now he’s got Harriet doing a title search on that piece of land.”
“Think he might leave?” I asked.
“I don’t really know,” Mom said.
“I’d hate to lose him. At this point especially,” Dad said.
Uncomfortable with the possibility that Spoon might leave, I said, “Can’t you get Ricky to help, please?”
Sensing that I was upset, Dad leaned over from his seat and patted me reassuringly on the shoulder. “We’ll work this out, TJ,” he said. But the way he said it didn’t give me any confidence that we would.
I spent the rest of the day working on machinery, greasing tractor rear ends, checking tires, batteries, fan belts, and alternators, and mothballing equipment that wouldn’t be needed until spring. I didn’t think much about my dad or Spoon’s leaving during the four hours or so it took me to finish the tasks, largely because, engaging a self-protective trait I’d perfected over the years, I forced myself not to. When I headed from the machine shop to the barn to get the coffee can full of assorted nuts and bolts that I’d left there earlier, I found myself thinking about college and the fact that I’d be leaving Willow Creek come January.