All my whining and agonizing of the last few weeks has proven a great big “all for naught.” The devious Arn Mikkelson and his lovely family have wormed their way back in. Couldn’t turn him loose after all. Another thing was, I had never conceived of Loren Ouillette as a point of conflict, and it just doesn’t fit. I can’t make it fit. I don’t want it to fit. So, the sharecropping landthief returns… and without as much background to this point to give those who’ve been following much to go on. Tough luck. It’ll get fixed in the first real edit, and I’m just going to carry on as is.
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Chapter Thirteen
Will paused as he bounced out the back door. He took a couple of jogging strides across the end of the driveway, turned, and jogged backwards a few more strides. The roof was nearly complete, with about five sections of green steel to be placed toward the rear. It looked fantastic. Fuckin’ Maartens . . . At that thought, Will caught sight of the man. He gave the contractor a quick wave and half-jogged, half-walked up the drive to the county road.
The sky was a shattering blue, cloudless with a gradual darkening toward the West. At the crest of the driveway that horizon appeared a thousand miles away. The sun had scarcely cracked the horizon in the East, but the heat it promised was already evident on Will’s skin. Instead of swing left or right at the county road, he stopped. The field directly opposite the driveway was twice as deep as the Rijsbergen property, stretching away from the road for at least a mile. Soybeans, it appeared. They hadn’t matured to the point that they covered the entire field, and dark strips of soil stood out in contrast to the rows of bright green. The windbreak at the far end was, at this distance, just a strip of brighter green with the trunks of the Pin Oaks and Cottonwoods just dark highlights. He lifted his eyes to the clear, clean sky, a boundless dome of impenetrable azure. He tried to imagine this sky one hundred fifty years ago, over an ocean of unbroken prairie grass, four feet high and already burning to brown under the early summer sun, narrowing to an unbroken, three hundred and sixty degree razor thin division between blue and yellow, and had a better understanding of how many pioneer wives went insane. He started churning his legs, and broke left.
Sticking to the gravel shoulder, Will was setting an early pace as he almost cleared the west field. He coughed a couple of times and launched a gob at Arn Mikkelson’s illicit corn crop. It fell well short of the burgeoning plants, now unmistakably corn and just showing tassels. He tried working up another to deposit in the man’s driveway, but couldn’t bring up enough phlegm. Fucker.
Will had broken that first plateau and let his stride out. He was still waiting on his lungs but, per usual, they’d be their own stubborn selves and not relax for another mile and a half. Even at this point, he knew it was going to be a good day. Perhaps he’d push it to nine miles.
The running and golf were passions, but not born of an organic process of self-discovery, but by the value they had first and foremost as diversions, distractions. The golf was a result of mere locale. Will had grown up in a house that abutted a golf course. Escape was a matter of crossing a fence. The running was just an obvious means of getting away. The escape they provided would be forever qualified and quantified as that it came from an outside purpose, generated by an exterior purpose. One way or the other, and no matter how he looked at it, Mom got the credit.
Just passing the spot where he’d left the road in search of dead cattle, Will felt the expansion in his chest and the air coming in a rush. A few hundred yards more and he could stretch his legs and slip into the hypnosis that would carry him for as long he was willing to go. The mild euphoria, that “runner’s high”, had ever been an illusion in Will’s case. There was always something in his head, something he could not set aside.
“Run, Billie. Run, run, run. The thing is, Billie, and in case you didn’t hear, the world is round. Run, run, run, no matter how far, someday you’re going to find yourself right back where you started. There’s no getting away from that.”
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And then there’s dear old Mom. Often hinted at, teasers laid out all over the place, and we are now moving to a spot where we’ll all get to know her. Hang on, folks.