Long, but falling back into place, and it’ll make things a lot more clear and, come the first edit, cut what’s preceded it waaaay down. I’ll clarify next time around.
+ + +
Will didn’t waste any time in the parking lot. He parked close to the door. Blom was dealing with a few customers at the register. He saw Will the moment he came through the door and his expression didn’t send a message of warm welcome. Ouillette and his nephew were restacking a pallet of lawn fertilizer near the entrance. There was a small forklift parked near them. There were several torn bags of the fertilizer and the floor was covered in tiny pellets. Ouillette was muttering a mantra of “pallet dolly, Jared, pallet dolly” as Will walked past them.
The customers left the counter. Will glanced around, so no imminent transactions in the immediate area, and asked. “What the fuck is with that joker next door to me?”
Blom closed his eyes, tipped his had back and released a long exhale.
“I met him at the end of his driveway, just wanting to talk to him, and he just blew right away from me.”
Blom neither opened his eyes or straightened his head. “You were waiting at the end of his driveway first thing this morning?”
“No,” Will answered. “I was out for a run and just happened to be near the end of his drive when he was heading out. I tried to flag him down. He looked me in the eye and took off.”
“Do you often stop for strangers running down the road?” Blom was looking at him now.
“No,” Will answered again. “Can’t say I’ve ever encountered anybody in that way.”
“Would you advise people to stop for people attempting to flag them down?”
Will rolled his eyes. “Depends on the circumstances.”
“Other than your running down the road, was there anything about your ‘circumstances’ that would indicate to Arn he should stop? For example, you were bleeding, or had an obvious injury? Do you carry and empty gas can when running? Were you being chased?”
“I was just trying to wave him down for a brief chat.”
“I believe you already had an idea of how willing Arn Mikkelson would be regarding a chat.”
“I did,” said Will. “So, I sent that asshole a letter last week.”
Blom responded by staying quiet.
“Do you want to know what he did with it?”
“Have I a choice?”
“Fucker sent it back,” Will told him. “With ‘return to sender’ scribbled all over it.”
Blom made a gesture, particular to Blom, that Will was finally able to interpret as what Blom passed for a shrug.
“How am I supposed to resolve this if the jerk won’t talk to me or even answer a letter?”
Blom threw up his hands. “I suggested you just might want to let this thing pass for a bit. Ignore it and maybe he wouldn’t pull this sort of thing again. Maybe he just wasn’t aware of you’re being there until he had the damn thing planted, and now he knows better.”
“Well, obviously, I can’t do that,” Will argued. “At the very least, the jerk-off should have the balls to give me an explanation. If he can’t at least meet me halfway, I might just hire somebody to plough the whole thing under.”
“As I told you before, Will, it’s very complicated.”
Will huffed, crossed his arms, and stepped aside as a customer to approached the counter. When the man left, throwing a backward glance at Will, he stepped back up to Blom. “Do you sell tractors?, Plows? Disc harrows?”
“Loren,” Blom suddenly called out, “you want to pitch in here?”
Ouillette stopped sweeping only long enough to say, “It’s really none of my business.”
“Well, you didn’t keep to your own business when it came to making supporting statements disparaging the banker, and now you can chime in when it comes to solving a problem rather than adding to one. You know more about this than anyone else in the county.” Before saying anything, he pointed a finger at his nephew. “Touch that forklift and you’ll be taking the rest of the week off.”
Jared made as if to protest.
“And you’ll have to ask me if you can come back to work before I’ll let you out of the house. We’ve talked about this more than once.”
A hot flash of anger crossed the boy’s face. His body tensed and, to Will’s shock, he moved his hand towards the knife dangling from his belt.
“That hand moves another inch,” Ouillette snapped, “that thing will sit in the safe a year. And you might never work another day here. Do you understand?”
The boy immediately sagged, like air leaked out of him. “I’m sorry.”
Will could see tears forming in the boy’s eyes. “I’m sorry Uncle Loren.” Jared faced the counter. “I’m sorry, Mister Blom.”
“Apology accepted, Jared. Now, you just listen to your uncle, and everything’s fine.” Blom leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “When you get the rest of this mess cleaned up, you can go out and sweep the loading dock and the sidewalks before it gets to hot to be outside. If the rest of the morning goes well, and if it’s not too busy, I think you and I should go out for lunch. Let your uncle run this show for an hour or so.” Will was sure he wasn’t mistaken when he thought he saw a little extra moisture in Blom’s eyes as well.
The young man brightened in an instant, and began vigorously sweeping the remainder of the mess on the floor. Ouillette gave Blom another “look,” then said to Will, “Mikkelson plants on that lot because he’s convinced it’s supposed to be his.”
However intriguing the exchange of a moment ague may have been, the curiosity it triggered in Will vanished. “How so?” he demanded.
Ouillette smirked. “It’s complicated.”
“Goddamn it…”
Ouillette’s smirk hardened. He looked past Will toward Blom and said. “Did my bit.”
He winked at Will, went to the little forklift and drove away.
Blom didn’t bother to wait for another question. “Arn’s a farmer, Willem.”
“So.”
“Not just a farmer, but a farmer.” Blom nodded toward Will in a way that suggested Will’s questions had been magically cleared. They had not.
“I repeat,” Will said. “So?”
Blom heaved another sigh, shook his head for the dozenth time. “Age wise, there can’t be more than two or three years between you and Mikkleson.” His elbows were back on the counter. “In all the years, and all the times you were at your grandparents, had you ever spent one minute with Arn Mikkelson?”
Will had not. In all the years he’d visited Venlo, he’d never spent a minute with another kid. There was no other family in the state, no cousins, no weddings, no social events that would have brought him into any kind of social contact with any locals. Most of any time he’d spent away from the house had been with his grandfather. It’d never been suggested to him to run across the field and play with the kid next door. He didn’t know there was a kid next door. It was what he’d been conditioned to. He didn’t have any friends at home, either. He shook his head.
“Did you even know Arn existed?”
“No.”
“No fault of your grandparents,” Blom told him. “You could have gone over there every day and never caught sight of him. Since that boy could walk he was either on a tractor or in the machine shed. He was the youngest of four kids, and youngest by ten years at least, kind of a surprise baby, I’d guess you’d say.”
Will didn’t give a rat’s ass about Mikkelson birth order. “Perhaps, due to his unique position in the family, he resorted to stealing in order to get the attention he was desperate for.”
Blom ignored the comment. “The kid used to skip school to work at home. He never joined a club, he never played a sport, he never picked up a hobby. He was turning fields, planting crops, running a combine, spraying pesticide and fertilizer, all by the time he was ten years old. He could fix any piece of equipment on the place by the time he was ten.
“If there wasn’t anything for him to do at home, he’d find someplace else. A neighbor got laid up for something, Arn would handle things until the fellow was back on his feet. Family emergency, Arn would hold the fort until the problem was sorted out. Come Fall, when all the other boys were all fired up for hunting season, Arn was half crazy with harvest fever. His family would get their own crop in and Arn would be off helping everybody else in the county until every last field was down.”
Will rolled his eyes and said, “Inspiring. What’s that got to do with my present situation? Does this give him the right to plow under and plant any bare space in the neighborhood?”
“I’m getting there, Will.”
+ + +
So am I, honest. This’ll be wrapped up in a day or two.