Big Hungry: A Novel

by John Clausen

  Pulling up his team of heavy draft horses in front of Lud’s stakes, he said, “You’ll have to be movin’ your stakes, friend. This parcel is already spoken for.”

  Lud continued pounding in the stake he’d been working on, the last of the four required by the law, then silently picked up his ax and climbed into his own wagon.

  “By Gut,” he said in his heavily Norwegian-accented English. “Dis land, she belongs to da man who gets to da land office first.” With that, the race was on. It was 16 miles to the land office and Lud lead the race the entire way…mostly by virtue of a lighter load and an unexpectedly nimble horse which he almost killed off in the dash.

  Ironically, the Sorenson homestead proved to be one of the worst pieces of land in the area, prone to a producing a white, powdery, crop-destroying condition later referred to as “saline seep.” Plus, it often became a small lake when the winter snows melted. No one ever grew a decent crop on the land. In fact, Lud once tried to sell it to his old rival Ramsbothum and got laughed at for his trouble. He finally found a buyer named Brekhus and got rid of the swampy mess. In later years, a wildcat driller discovered oil on the land and made the Brekhus heirs annoyingly wealthy.

  Thus, a long line of bad mistakes and minor disasters visited themselves upon several generations of Sorensons. Barns burned down, horses drowned in stock ponds, businesses failed, and babies died of diseases that would have been easily cured in more modern times. In short, a pall of failure settled down over the family. As a matter of routine, the Sorenson children chose the wrong companions and made bad marriages that resulted in wife beating, philandering, and generally unpleasant behavior of all sorts. One of these doomed liasons, however, produced one success…a bright, tow-headed sprout named Carl Sorenson. It was soon evident that Carl – despite being born into what would later be described as a massively disfunctional family – had the stuff to turn around the clan’s fortunes. He would no doubt save the Sorensons from the curse of constant failure that had hounded them ever since homestead days.

  Carl excelled easily at everything, becoming a star athlete and a more than competent scholar. He selected his girlfriends from the upper strata of high school society, broke hearts without remorse, and always remained friendly with his former conquests, in whose fevered minds there always remained hope of reconciliation.

  Unlike a lot of athletes whose careers peak while they’re still in high school, when Carl entered the working world, he enjoyed the same kind of easy success that he’d experienced in his scholarly years. He began farming with his father, turning in long hours and seeing his efforts rewarded with lush fields of wheat, durum, and flax. The hailstorms and grasshoppers that had so frequently devastated his ancestors seemed to avoid his crops.

  He negotiated with neighbors and ended up buying out several less fortunate operations. He opened an auto parts store, a pizza parlor, and a small radio station. He was also one of the few real estate brokers in the immediate area. His successes, although not as spectacular as those of Harley Ackerman, were nevertheless enough to make him a leading citizen. No business or industrial project of any note got off the ground without Carl’s knowledge and, more often than not, his participation.

  The only hint of the old family curse came shortly after he graduated. His girlfriend Rita, the third oldest daughter of Knut and Diane Wolf, left him for another local lad. She was a pretty, young thing with an engaging smile and a surprising ribald sense of humor. People who knew them both were shocked at her desertion. He was astonished himself and missed her terribly at first. He managed to assuage his broken heart with a series of young ladies who were glad to have his attention for as long as he wanted to bestow it upon them. He finally settled upon one of them, Eugenie Huff, and married her.

  They had three daughters and one son. The daughters, all of them pretty and popular, married in their early twenties and fled North Dakota. The son, Johnny, stayed on in hopes of inheriting the family farm and businesses. He became something of a wastral, staying out late drinking with his friend Pooch Eye Ziegler and assorted other scamps. His mother worried about him constantly and his father refused to turn over to him anything but the most rudimentary jobs in the family business. Johnny tried desperately to live up to the standards of his ultra-successful father, but the Sorenson curse, having leapfrogged over Carl, landed without mercy on the son. No matter what he turned his hand to – be it schooling, business, or even sports – Johnny failed miserably.

  An operation the size of the Sorenson spread required several farmhands. The available pool of labor was small enough that eventually just about every young man in Tulleyville had worked for Carl and his family at one time or another.

  Even Droop Hornsby had put in his time at the Sorenson spread. However, he was summarily fired for pouring deisel fuel and field dirt on a Pontiac Sunbird owned by one of the other fieldhands. There had been harsh words between the two in the morning and this was Droop’s way of exacting revenge. Carl Sorenson told him that there was no room for “hoorawing” on the farm, cut him a check, and sent the chastened young man down the road. Both Carl and Droop considered it a final parting and hardly ever saw each other again.

  For this reason, Droop was surprised to find himself in the company of Johnny Sorenson at Nolen’s Bar. What was even more surprising was that the young Sorenson was actually buying the beer. Droop wondered briefly why Johnny was being so uncharacteristically generous, but after the first two or three free beers began to make their presence felt, he quit thinking about it and simply accepted the cold cans of Budweiser as if he had earned them.

  Johnny slung an arm over Droop’s sloping shoulders and slid a shot glass of Early Times whiskey in front of him. “Ya got enough balls to do some shots, old Droopy?” he mumbled. “Or you some kinda pussy?”

  Droop slammed the whiskey down his throat and marvelled at how fast another appeared. He was entering into that pleasantly euphoric state that preceeds the more damaging stages of a serious drinking bout. All was right with Droop’s world right then. He was with his new best friend, the whiskey and the cold Budweisers continued to appear in front of him…and so far everybody was too drunk to remember that he was Droop, the town dufus.

  Pooch Eye Ziegler was drinking tequila with Deedee Christianson. It was the cheap stuff – Casa De Gordon – that Jimmy Nolen stocked to match his equally lowbrow House of Gordon vodka, gin, and alleged bourbon.

  Deedee saw Droop staring at her ample breasts and whispered something to Pooch Eye, who looked over grinning and said, “Quite a set, huh, Droop? Come on over and get yourself a better look.”

  Droop, emboldened by the free alcohol and fascinated by the Christianson assets, staggered over and accepted a shot of tequila from Pooch Eye. It was the last thing he remembered from that night.

  The next morning, Droop woke up on a pile of straw in one of the smaller barns on the Sorenson farm. In addition to the traditional headache, sour stomach, dizziness, and cottonmouth, he also sported a large wet spot in the front of his jeans. It was not a good morning…and it got no better when he opened his eyes.

  The first thing he saw was a huge, dangling set of goat testicles. The size of California Avocados, the goat nuts belonged to a mangy, hostile-looking animal that was staring at him through yellow devil’s eyes. The goat shook his impressive set of horns at Droop as if to challenge him for the pen they shared.

  Droop staggered to his feet, holding onto one of the rails that formed the pen. Just as he was almost verticle, the goat butted him in the stomach forcing everything in it to come shooting out his mouth. He sat down hard and the goat backed off a few feet still shaking his horns. Droop was about to attempt another escape when he heard Carl Sorenson’s voice.

  “What the hell is goin’ on in here? Is that you, Hornsby?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s me. I ain’t sure how I got here, though.”

  “Geez, man, you’ve pissed yourself…and you puked on my goat.”

  Sorenson grabbed t
he goat by its horns and wrestled it into another pen. “I’m guessin’ you and that fine son of mine were out drinkin’ last night. Hope you weren’t trying to mount that goat.”

  Droop vaguely remembered driving very fast and shooting at an owl the night before, but he had no recollection of any assaults whatsoever on the goat.

  “Well, come on. You can wash up at the stock tank and we’ll get you a ride home before you get into any more trouble. You still got a home somewhere, don’t you?”

  Droop mumbled, “Yessir,” and hobbled out to the moss-covered stock tank. He thought about cigarettes and wondered if maybe he ought to consider giving up alcohol.

  Chapter 14

  Claire Norgard parked her rented Camry in front of Harlen Ackerman’s three-story, stone-and-cedar home. A blue heeler cow dog scurried around the car and greeted her with an enthusiastic wiggle, capering playfully over the crushed rock that covered the driveway.

  “That’s Reverend Walker,” a voice boomed as she got out. “He can be a little too friendly.” Claire looked up and saw two men coming down the flagstone sidewalk leading from the house. The dog immediately ran toward them.

  “I’m Harlen Ackerman,” the older man said grinning. “This is Jerry Guthrie He’s a famous newspaper man, so watch yourself.”

  The young man smiled tolerantly and put out a hand. “You’re the news reader from St. Paul, I guess.”

  Claire could feel the familiar hostility that a print journalist often harbors for someone in the more glamorous and higher-paying electronic news-gathering business. She had encountered a lot of that in her short career. If this guy was like most of the others, she thought, he would likely get over it in about five minutes and start hitting on her.

  Instead, he shook the older man’s hand and said, “Thanks for the interview Mr. Ackerman. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.” Then with a short nod in her direction, he climbed into his pickup truck and drove away. Reverend Walker chased the truck until Ackerman whistled him back.

  “That’s a very obedient dog you have there, Mr. Ackerman. Did you train him yourself?”

  “Didn’t really train him at all. He comes by it naturally, I guess.”

  “How did he get that name?”

  “I thought I’d put that on his tag…that way somebody finds him in their chicken coop, they’ll think he belongs to a preacher and maybe not shoot him. He’s kind of hard on chickens.”

  Moments later, Claire and the rancher were seated at the Ackerman kitchen table with a tape recorder between them. Claire explained that she was doing background research on a story about the Big Hungry Recreational Project. If the story turned out to be something that her assignment editors wanted, she’d be back with a camera crew and equipment.

  This was, of course, a fib that she had used many times before. Her assignment editor and his boss had not sent her to Tulleyville on a simple prospecting expedition. Rumors regarding bribery and malfeasance on the recreational project had found their way to her bosses. Nothing made them more eager than the chance to uncover major wrongdoing in a neighboring state, especially when it involved a man like Harlen Ackerman who owned a great deal of property in several surrounding states and Canadian provinces. Federal money was involved and the management at Claire’s station smelled scandal.

  Claire, however, knew better than to dash into a rural community waving a camera and demanding answers. Experience had taught her that the actual filming was the least important component of reporting a story. Her reputation had been made on her ability to find out exactly what was happening and who the important players were. She had already done considerable background research. She knew that Harlen had a cozy relationship with several legislators, including Cameron Boyd. She knew that Harlen had sold off bottomland that would be flooded by the project. And she knew down to the exact acreage and location how much of Harlen’s property would be lakeside.

  What Claire didn’t understand was why a man of Harlen’s wealth and property would bother with a recreational project in a state that was, to be frank, not on the top-ten list of vacation spots of the rich and famous. Why bother to build such a facility in a state whose population had been declining for years? She was in Tulleyville to turn over a few rocks and see if the truth scurried out.

  Chapter 15

  Ben Mooney loved his rifle.

  To anyone else, it was a beat-up Winchester lever-action 30/30 with a small chunk of wood missing from the stock and a gouge in the very end of the barrel. To Ben, though, it was something reliable and solid…a serious piece of equipment in an age of plastic junk and disposable consumer garbage. The rifle was manufactured in 1949 and for several years was used as a guard’s rifle at the State Penitentiary in Florence, Arizona. After the prison bought more modern arms for their staff, the Winchester had been sold to a company that specialized in liquidating government property. Ben had purchased the rifle several years and four owners later for $75 at a flea market when he was driving a truck for a mobile home dealer in Tucson.

  Ben had been short of cash that day, but the guy selling the gun told him to take it and come back the next week with the $75. The seller didn’t seem at all surprised when Ben actually showed up with the money.

  For all its damage and rough looks, the gun was extraordinarily accurate at up to about 150 yards. In Ben’s hands, it had killed scores of deer, some of them during the regular season, but a lot just whenever the opportunity presented itself. None of them died with benefit of a hunting license or a tag. Ben, chronically under-employed and living alone in a cabin not far from Jerry Guthrie’s place on the Big Hungry, seldom bought meat or groceries of any kind. He preferred to trade venison or antelope steaks with the local farmers for whatever store-bought items he needed. Because there was a superabundance of deer in the area, the local game wardens took a hands-off approach to Ben’s poaching. After all, if he didn’t kill the deer, there was a good chance they’d die of starvation and cold during the winter. Not only that, catching him in the act would have been difficult and more than a little perilous. Also, the authorities seemed to figure that if Ben were in the woods killing deer, he wouldn’t be in town endangering the citizenry.

  Naturally, Ben and his Winchester spent a lot of time in the woods around the river, which is why he was the only unobserved witness to Jerry Guthrie’s kidnapping and subsequent meeting with the River Rats. He’d spied on several other of their get-togethers and considered the group to be the worst outdoorsmen he’d ever seen. They were noisy, undisciplined, and left mounds of litter behind them. Sometimes, just to calm his anger, Ben would settle the Winchester’s iron sites on one of them and softly mutter, “Bang.” He was enough of a psychopath to enjoy the moment, but sane enough to restrain himself from actually firing. He considered the game similar to the old plains Indians “counting coup” with a stick during battle. Sometimes he would stalk individual members of the group at their homes, just to show himself that he could get away with it as easily in town as he could out in the country.

  Fortunately, the River Rats never knew that Ben, rifle in hand, was watching them with such interest and disdain.

  There was something about Ben Mooney that inspired caution, if not outright fear. Maybe it was the look in his blue Irish eyes. Perhaps it was the sunburned skin that stretched so tightly across his face. Whatever it was, everyone seemed to get the distinct impression that Ben Mooney was a barely restrained disaster just waiting to happen. On the rare occasions that he visited Tulleyville, he seldom got into any sort of trouble with the locals, mostly because the townspeople tended to leave him alone. He drank draft beer at Nolen’s Bar, seldom spoke to anyone, and never left a tip. A few years back, a quarrelsome out-of-town oil-field roughneck, having heard of Ben’s reputation, walked up and stuck his fingers into the draft beer Ben had been drinking.

  Without a word, Ben turned and stabbed his right index finger deeply into the roughneck’s left eye socket, making a stirring motion that effectively turn
ed the eyeball into a gelatinous mess that one observer said, “looked kind of like tomato soup.”

  With that simple but profound bit of violence behind him, Ben had turned around, finished his beer, and quietly left the bar. The roughneck was rushed to the Porterville Hospital and then to a larger, more sophisticated facility in Kansas City. He was never heard from again, although his treatment at the hands of Ben Mooney became a legend at Nolen’s. From a law-and-order standpoint, the episode had at least one benefit. Absolutely no one ever dipped a finger into anyone’s drink now that Ben had set the standard for responding to that sort of insult.

  Chapter 16

  Nolen’s bar was the closest thing in Tulleyville resembling a community center. Gary Wong’s diner was suitable for a daytime meeting place and his food was really quite extraordinary…especially when compared to any of the other eateries within a 50-mile radius. But Gary closed at 8 p.m. and retired to his small apartment from which he refused to be dislodged by anyone except Harlen Ackerman. Also Gary didn’t serve liquor, which was a necessary lubricant for important Tulleyville civic matters.