by B. Chen
Chapter 3. The Weekend.
Saturday morning arrived. There was something going on downstairs in the kitchen, the noise woke me up. At first it sounded like Mom and Dad were arguing but there was something else wrong.
I heard my little sister crying so I got up to see what all the drama was about.
My little sister Melissa (or Mel as we usually call her at home) was sitting at the kitchen table, Mom was sitting next to her holding her hand, both of 'em looked like they were really upset.
"Good morning sleepy head." Mom said to me with her usual tone when I sleep past 8am on a weekend.
I went about my business but kept an ear on them trying to figure out what was up without looking too interested. Bowl on the counter, cereal poured, milk from the fridge, back in the fridge. I stood in front of the sink staring out the window at the soggy brown and white state of Nebraska listening to the drama behind me, across the kitchen. There was a bad vibe over there I was afraid of catching.
"Your sister's dog is missing John." My mom told me.
"Oh? When'd he disappear?" I asked not bothering to turn my head, trying to speak with a mouth full of milky crunchy cereal.
"Last night. I heard they found Beth's horse tied up in the cemetery this morning with her legs cut bad, Dad said it's a cult or something." My sister added with her mocking tone she usually has with me.
"Can we not talk about blood while I'm eating?" I said trying to get her back for talking down to me again. She always talks to me like I'm the village idiot or somethin'.
Melissa looked at Mom then stomped up the stairs to her room across the hall from mine. My mom gave me 'the look.' So I dumped the other half of my cereal in the sink and headed outside. I saw a line of clouds were starting to appear in the south-west, a sure sign of storms coming. It was still rather warm out, almost fifty five degrees (13 Celsius) on the big dial thermometer on the side of the barn.
I walked to the barn to get the Honda four-wheel ATV out and push it out the door. I hopped on and pressed the starter button then rode down the driveway onto the street heading north. The old Fricke Cemetery was about a quarter mile north of our place, a gentle down-hill trip most of the way.
Once you get away from the center of Oakton there's not a lot of trees, but along the dry creek beds near us there are a surprising number of apple trees. They say those are the descendants of the ones planted by Richard Chapman in the late 1700's. No GMO apple trees on our town!
In a few minutes I came up on the cemetery, there was a crowd gathered. There hadn't been any burials here in over a year and I wasn't expecting to see one today but there were four trucks, a few I recognized from town.
I saw Beth's horse Bullet was tied up to a large cross headstone; she was standing by Bullet's face petting her. The vet, Doc Wilson, Beth's dad, some guys from town, two were game officers where there too. I saw the horse's back leg was covered in dried blood. Everyone stopped and looked my way when I rolled to a stop by the short limestone block wall along the street, then went back to their investigations. One guy was taking pictures of the scene. The vet was looking closely at the animal's legs. Beth looked upset. I kept my distance. Her dad looked angry about something.
I walked in the cemetery but kept a safe distance, really just trying to hear what all the hubbub was about at the same time trying to respect the feud and not cross any of their invisible political lines. Many of us here had relatives buried in this cemetery. Both my grandparents and great grandparents were here. I walked to their headstones and kicked at the weeds then slowly went back towards the four-wheeler.
A large pick-up truck arrived pulling a two sided horse trailer. The sign on the side said, "Falls City Veterinary Clinic" I guessed Bullet was heading to town for treatment of her leg wounds. Too bad horses can't speak English. This is a good example of why I don't own any animals. I'll let my sister enjoy the heartache for me, she seems willing. And now her dog was missing too.
Maybe what we needed right now was a town meeting and an animal census but nobody'd listen to me. The feud assured that nothing would be done either. I remember the time I asked Dad to come watch one of our games against Nebraska City, he refused saying he didn't want to see Ben's dad at the game.
On the way home I remembered the last weekend our town had four houses. That was the weekend when the Patton's house burned down while they were in town having dinner. They never rebuilt but the foundation (a full basement) is still there, so is their barn and a garage. They still work the land but now they live in a newer place half the distance to Falls City as Oakton.
I didn't have a really good feeling for where the original town of Oakton was or where the Missouri River was when it flowed around our hill. As I rolled through the intersection I saw Dad walking to our barn so I headed that way.
"Dad, can I ask you something if you got a minute?"
"Yeah, what's up?" Dad answered with a sincere smile.
"I know this is like a big question but could you show me on the ATVs exactly where the old town sat, where the old river bed sits, and where the Pawnee are buried?"
"Wow, no small request! Uh, sure I got the time right now. I'll meet you out there in a minute." He seemed eager to spend a few minutes with his son so I was willing to play along. I just wanted the information but I wasn't going to sit around to hear about why they don't speak to the Meek's or the Brown's any more.
I heard his ATV fire up and in a few seconds he rolled out the barn with his rifle still strapped to his handlebars where it usually was. Dad has a semi-auto AK replica made in China. I got his old Honda ATV but he got a new Land Rover gas turbine powered, electric drive ATV.
Start-up takes a few more seconds and makes more noise but acceleration is phenomenal. He has almost unlimited electrical power, speed and torque. It's a miniature version of the drivetrain in his farm tractor. We rolled to the intersection and stopped, he killed his motor so I did the same.
"It starts here. This is the center of the new Oakton. If you look down the road in all four directions you can see it's downhill every way. So this entire neighborhood, about five hundred feet in every direction is supposedly a Pawnee burial mound but since I've been alive nobody's ever used ground penetrating radar to prove anything one way or another. Even when our foundations were dug, nothing was uncovered. Over the decades there've been home and barn foundations dug, septic systems and water wells dug with nothing ever found."
He pressed the start button heading north towards the cemetery. About six hundred feet north he stopped but kept his engine running, I pulled along side.
"You can see how it's a downhill grade all the way past the cemetery up there on the left. The original site of Oakton was in the fields on both sides of the road around the cemetery, heading up this hill. I've heard when they plow the fields once in a while they still hit some big stones from the old home foundations, but that's just here-say, never seen it myself.
There were some real bad floods in 1820, 1854, 1871, and 1902. All the land around here was flooded which is why they started to build new homes for those that didn't move away further up on the hilltop. Most of the people moved away from the river. That's why Rulo is a bit of a ghost town today. By the late 1800s there were established dirt roads all over the area and people were no longer using the river as a highway so there was no longer any reason to live near it. Then in 1904 the Missouri River flooded again and moved to where it is now."
"The rumor of our town being built on sacred lands got started because most of the college people believed the Pawnee only buried their ancestors on high ground to prevent them from getting pushed up from the ground during the big floods. We found out about ten years ago that that's not true at all. Most of the time they buried their people along waterways and established trails so they were easy to find again and pray to." That was the first time I sat still for one of his Pawnee lectures which often sounded like he was defending his grandfather's legacy, the guy that started the feud.
"You gotta remember this stuff I'm saying is like fourth-hand from my grandpa who heard it from his grandpa long ago, I can't promise how accurate this is." He glanced at me then looked away.
He sat there staring at the land, on the side of the hill we could see the slowly dissipating crowd at the cemetery, as Bullet was being loaded on the horse trailer by Beth and her father. We were still higher than the cemetery by about fifteen feet or more. He started heading north again past the cemetery on the left to the lowest spot on this county road. Any further north and it started heading up-hill again. We were in like a shallow valley that sat just to the north of the Fricke, it ran roughly east-west. There were some apple trees along the sides and lots of weeds. It looked too wet and hilly to farm.
Dad motioned for me to come closer.
"What we're standing on a few hundred years ago would be in the middle of the Missouri River, it ran past here to the west, then curved around back south and east to near where it sits today. The actual river bottom was lower than it is here today. My grandpa said the location now is totally man made because rivers never run that straight. But they all move over time. Just look at a map of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to see all the trapped loops of river cut off over the years as it moved east and west during the spring floods. Just like here."
"That's weird, hard to imagine a river just moving one day." I said trying to understand the whole story.
"Well it's not that simple. Like I said, look on maps at the abandoned segments of looped riverbed near Vicksburg, Mississippi some day. It's easy to see how rivers move over time. Sediment gets pushed hard in floods, it makes sand bars, rivers overflow, and new river paths are made in a couple of days. Anytime you see a straight river on the map, that's man made."
"See Beth's horse?" I asked him.
"Yeah, what happened?"
"Mel said it got out last night. They found her all bloody but alive and tied to a headstone in the cemetery this morning."
"That's weird." Dad looked all concerned as the truck hauling the horse slowly left the cemetery and the rest of the crowd started to drive off. "They got'ny idea what happened?"
"No, but there's been some weird stuff with other animals in Oakton since the snow left."
"Yeah, your Mom said Melissa's dog is missing too. Since last night I guess."
"So do you know where the Pawnee are buried?" I asked Dad.
"I've heard lots of stories over the years. The big question isn't if they're here but exactly where they are. Last I heard is some relics sneak up out of the ground over there north of Brown's place." He said raising his arm pointing at the farm land this side of Ben's house, and a little to the east.
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out, Dad watched. I had barely one bar on the signal meter, not good. Slowly a text arrived, it was from Ben. He asked if I'd seen their dog. "Ben's dog is missing too Dad." We started our ATVs and headed for home just as the last truck pulled away from the cemetery. This was probably the first traffic jam in Oakton since Patton’s house burnt a few years ago. Dad told me he thought it sounded like some sort of cult activity from one of the reservations.
I did some serious thinking for the next hour or so. Then I decided to text Ben and Beth, we needed to meet.
Beth responded that she was in town at the vet, maybe later today she’d be home with Bullet. Ben and I rode west on our ATVs to the next intersection and stopped along the road to talk. He told me about his dog, I told him about ours. I also told him about Beth's cat and horse. We talked a bit more about stuff and our discussion at school about the plan to force the parents to meet outside. Then I txt'd Beth, told her to message me as soon as she got home, we needed to meet.
We ended our meeting. We both headed home to inventory ammunition and check our weapons. Ben took off heading towards the dry creek bed, I took the street home so it didn't look like we were together.
The clouds were heavier and darker overhead. I felt really angry inside, my stomach was tied in knots.
Back at home I knew Ben was doing the same thing at his place. I got out my rifle, pistol and ammo. Everything was counted and cleaned then standing along the wall near my bedroom door.