Stories About Corn

by Ri, Xesin

  “This is the Synad farm driveway. The one with all the trees.”

  James could see beyond the drive lined by overgrown brush and trees was a field full of weeds and dried brown cornstalks.

  James suddenly realized again that this was the last road his brother had ever been on and, what was more, was that it was in a car just like this, riding up this very road, Sheriff Douglas at the wheel, that his brother’s life ended. James looked at the sheriff to see if he was thinking something along those lines. He decided to ask, “What have they done up here? Any big changes since the explosion?”

  “Most of it is in the reports. Synad’s people basically abandoned this section after everything that happened. Some of his workers refused to come anywhere near this part of the property. I don’t know if it was superstitious or if it was because they were worried about health issues due to the burning of h. h. corn when the silo went up, but they didn’t want anything to do with this area, that’s for sure. Locked up tight, though. Rain and weather has probably been having its way with anything exposed, as we’ll see. Lots of weeds, for sure.”

  “Someone plowed these fields and left all these fields out here, dead like this?”

  “Synad has a lot of people. I’d have no idea who was the last to plow or seed or any of that. We don’t keep that sort of information.”

  The road was pretty decent. To the left and right the narrow road should have been flanked and swallowed up by corn reaching up high to the sky, nearly ready for harvest. Instead, the road was part of the dark stretch of land once the brush died away. The road had even joined in with the fields by mixing weeds and tall-growing grasses in with its own dashes and cracks marking the dusty pavement’s rapid aging.

  James couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a home or building that could be seen, despite the short plants and unkempt fields. The silos had been buried deep on the property, away from the sight of any person not already on location or maybe flying overhead.

  “This is the crime scene. I hope you find something or at least are good at writing reports. Make sure ADD knows how important I am.”

  James nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The car stopped.

  Sheriff Douglas got out of the car making sure his gun was secure as he stood up. James did the same. Sheriff Douglas shook his legs, and James stretched his shoulder blades back and forth.

  “I thought it would be a bigger area with tight corners and difficult angles,” said James.

  “One thing about farms is that they aren’t short on space.”

  James nodded.

  “These are where the silos were?”

  “Yup. The big crater is where the third silo was. They salvaged a lot of the metal, but you can get a pretty good idea of how big the explosion was. It was a slow burn, but there was plenty of power.”

  James nodded. The two concrete foundations that the other two silos sat on were mostly intact since Synad was getting ready to have special h. h. corn silos built there. The third silo’s concrete ring was cracked, broken and one third of it was blown out.

  “What was the weak point?” asked James.

  “That would be wherever the lower door was.”

  “Path of least resistance, huh?”

  Sheriff Douglas nodded.

  “Was the barn damaged?”

  “Not really. They got some offices up there at the top of those stairs. See the windows—blown out by the force of the blast. All boarded up now.”

  “Let me walk through this. You were going back to your car to get your camera.”

  “This camera,” said Sheriff Douglas pointing to the little digital point-and-shoot in his pocket. He left his hands on his hips.

  James saw the sheriff’s thumb slide through, freeing the sheriff’s gun. There was only one reason for that.

  “And Al Duncan was checking the grain elevator, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why was he doing that?”

  “I think it was something to do with needing to keep it warm. The machine was old, I think, something to do with oil.”

  “Right. Then: ambush.”

  “Right. Duncan couldn’t hear anything over the machine, and I was too far away.”

  “Because they were inside and high up.”

  “Right, I think so.”

  “Deputies Rightendale and Reingold had gone up to the top of the silo, you knew they were up there?”

  “Yup. They were just supposed to check it out. Your brother said he’d heard something. I gave an order for them to come back down. We had reason to suspect drug dealers or smugglers because, like I said and have written before, nobody trusts Synad.”

  “Why didn’t you back them up?”

  “How could someone get here without anyone knowing? Seemed like the place was safe enough.”

  James felt his eyebrows go up in shock. “So, ambush?” said James. “Did the ambush cause the explosion?”

  “That’s hard to tell. Somewhere in the shuffling and fighting in there—“

  “I thought it was an ambush, everybody dead in a few seconds—and you couldn’t hear?”

  “Yes and no. There were a few moments before the shooting started, as the report talks about. It was dark in there too. In any case, a fair amount of h. h. corn dust was in the air from the action, and the heat of one of the shots appears to have triggered a chain reaction causing the whole thing to go. Had Al Duncan not been inside the reinforced cabin of that machine’s operator’s compartment, he would have been killed by the shockwave itself. I was farther off and partly inside my car. I don’t know how much difference it made, but I was wearing my sunglasses when my car’s windows got hit by the shockwave and shattered. It was the damn scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Makes a tornado seem like a little breeze.

  “I don’t know why your brother went in if he had any thought that there were people in there. It really is a tragedy. Had he simply backed off like he was trained to? He was a great guy; but on that day, he just wanted it too much and got himself and Deputy Rightendale killed. In fact, had he survived, I don’t think I could have let him continue on as one of my deputies.”

  James nodded his head regarding all that was being said.

  Sheriff Douglas took a few steps to his right. James realized the sheriff was directly in front of the dash cam in the car. James’s back was turned to the camera.

  “I’m sorry if that angers you, but it is the truth. We aren’t out here to tell stories. Your brother died because he was a cowboy. You’ve got to accept that!” The sheriff was animated now. “Don’t give me that look!” James had given no look. He could clearly see the sheriff was over-lipping the words to be sure the camera caught his apparent fear and anger. It looked to James like the sheriff was making sure certain words like “brother” and “cowboy” were readable to whoever blew the image up for a court proceeding. No jury would be confused.

  James backed up.

  “What are you doing?” asked the sheriff.

  James backed up a little more, getting closer to the car behind him.

  Sheriff Douglas stood his ground.

  “My brother was a soldier. He was a soldier to a fault, literally. I was always the cowboy of our family.”

  “So what?”

  “So, I know a cowboy when I see one, and you are a cowboy, aren’t you, Sheriff Douglas?”

  Sheriff Douglas stood a few feet from the ruins of the third silo. James stood twenty paces away.

  “My brother wouldn’t have gone in there against any order.”

  “You’re a cop, just like me. You know people don’t always do what they’re told. You know time and time again people forget their training when they think they’ve got a big bust.”

  “True. Still…seems odd.”

  “That whole business was odd. People died. I was lucky.”

  “And you’re sure that Deputy Rightendale did things the way you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “T
hen why do I have pictures from his camera that show Al Duncan and those armed Mexican drug runners waiting outside, in front of that very barn?”

  “What?”

  “Your deputy got here first, took some pictures. They show Al Duncan and his workers just standing around, looking right into the camera, Rightendale’s camera. It is difficult to imagine that he was ambushed in the silo by men whose picture he’d just taken minutes earlier.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. How do you know these pictures are real?”

  “They look pretty solid. Show Al Duncan and the workers carrying guns. They show Rightendale’s car, the one recovered that very day, its markings are clear. You aren’t in them.”

  “It could be fake. Synad may have had them created to throw off the investigations into his deals.”

  “But they look pretty real. Shadows are right. Besides, I also have an audio recording between you and Al Duncan discussing the ambush on your deputies.”

  “What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind, Officer?”

  “Am I? It sounds pretty real, too.”

  “You know I have this all on the car’s audio recorder. Everything you say is recorded along with the video from the dash cam.”

  “We both know that you turned off the audio recorder on that car. There’s just the video.”

  “Why the hell would I unplug the audio? Why would I? That’s crazy talk!”

  “The same reason your gun isn’t secured.”

  The sheriff stiffened up.

  They were still just twenty paces apart.

  “Why isn’t your gun secure?” asked Sheriff Douglas.

  “You know why. You turned off the audio. You unsecured your gun. You accused my brother of being a cowboy. You tried to get a rise out of me, talking politics and religion on the way here. A few aggressive motions and you can blast me and then write history as the victor, just like with my brother and Deputy Rightendale and those men. Al Duncan too?”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “You don’t want to do that. You didn’t record this, but I did.”

  “You’re going to extort me, is that it? Try and destroy my career over accusations and phony pictures and recordings because of an insane theory.”

  “No. That’s one idea that never even crossed my mind.”

  The sheriff moved his hands from his sides. “What would you say to them? How could you do that?”

  “I think it’s pretty easy. We’re just going to settle a problem between you and me like two men. If you win, you’ll take the recording out of my pocket.” James tapped his shirt’s left breast pocket just under his nametag. “If I win, I’ll go home and tell my story. You won’t come off so good in that story. Synad won’t look half as bad either. And my brother will be vindicated. And I have the luxury of truth-in-knowing I didn’t know anything about what I was going to do until I got out here. To be sure, I didn’t want to believe a veteran like you would do something as horrific as you did, but no matter the suspect, good evidence mounts—you’ve got to take a look. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “No, I don’t think we should do this. What about your family? What about your career? You kill me, that’ll hang over you. You really want that?”

  “I don’t reckon—“

  The bang of the sheriff’s gun was jolting. James pulled his gun just behind the sheriff’s move.

  James’s left ear had a deep and bloody hole in it.

  James fired hitting the sheriff in the thigh. He fired again and hit the sheriff in the stomach where the vest stopped the bullet.

  Sheriff Douglas fired his second shot wild.

  James fired hitting the sheriff’s vest a second, third, fourth and fifth time.

  The sheriff’s aim was bad from the force of the hits. He fired off into the sky.

  James fired and hit the sheriff in the neck.

  And he fired again. The bullet entered just under the chin when the sheriff’s head was flung back. The bullet followed a path right through the lower jaw, the tongue, the mouth, and up through the sinuses, through the frontal lobe, and out of the sheriff’s skull, right at his hairline.

  James fired again, missing. James fired again, missing.

  And Officer James T. Reingold stopped shooting.

  Sheriff Paul Arthur Douglas’s corpse hit the gravel. Blood ran out from the eyes, nose and ears.

  The corpse shook and jolted.

  Noise emanated from the hole in the throat that James could not hear as he dropped to one knee, still twenty paces from the body of the sheriff.

  And the corpse stopped.

  And no one wept.

  But—no one cheered either.

  James stayed on one knee for two full minutes holding his gun up at a corpse leaking blood into the dusty white gravel it laid upon.

  A brother, friends, land, family, and a hill of hope had been lost. James tried to feel something in the moment, a vindication maybe. But it wasn’t there. If this was revenge then revenge was a hollow endeavor.

  Synad would get all the information he would need to push back against his detractors. They would have no ability to go after someone who’d been so wrongly labeled by the media and by a corrupt and dead sheriff.

  The farmers who lost everything or were losing everything, thought James, were no better off now—the law was passed and only Synad, along with a handful of others, would avoid the h. h. consolidation.

  Mrs. Loretta Dean was still gone, wherever. James liked to think she had escaped the people who would play rough. Either she had or she hadn’t. Either way, thought James, she wasn’t coming back, and he wasn’t the cop to find her.

  And so it had gone.

  And so it had been.

  James went to the car and radioed.

  “This is Officer J. T. Reingold. I was out here with Sheriff Douglas. I need an ambulance out here at the Synad property. I need you to send out a forensics team too because we’ve got a crime scene. I’ve shot Sheriff Douglas after he drew and shot me.”

  There was a man’s voice asking questions rapidly.

  “Just get out here,” said James. “Just get out here.”

  James let go of the radio mic and stood up outside the car.

  He leaned hard against the car. Propped against it, right next to the front wheel of the car, he stood.

  He stared.

  Blood streamed from the hole in his ear.

  The yellow letters said, “To Protect and Serve.”

  On this September day, he could say he’d gotten the best of another man.