Tag: first draft

Chapter Thirteen, Aaaalmost done.

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.

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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.”

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So am I, honest. This’ll be wrapped up in a day or two.

 

 

Chapter Twelve, Part 2

No need for chatter. Chap 12 continues . . .

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Will hated yard lights. He’d only been exposed to one in his entire life, and it was on this property. It had been in the back of the house, and actually very close to where the new power pole was placed. The room he stayed in during his visits—“his room”—had been at the rear of the house, on the other side of the bathroom as his mother’s. The light, a large, buzzing globe from within a tube of mercury vapor blazed with the intensity of nuclear fission. It was set at a height more or less even with the second floor windows. Even with the shade down and the wispy, curtains pulled, the light that bored into the room was bright enough to read by.

The supervisor never came back. Neither did the Sheriff, though Will sweated it out for a day or two. It was not at the idea of being compelled to install a hated means of exterior illumination, but that he’d have to sit through another sales pitch for the coroner job.

Will shuffled out of the parlor and into the kitchen. He stopped at the back door, opening it a few inches. It was raining, and literally in sheets. It was coming down so fast and so hard that the huge drops shone white. Even through the downpour, he could make out the last power pole. The lineman had taken down the light, but the bracket was still in place. If he were somehow compelled to put up the light, he would indeed go to town and purchase a rifle. There was a quick flash and an impressive bang of thunder. There would be no golf swings today. Nor would there be a run, which disappointed him. He was up to a solid weekly schedule, running three, six and nine miles spaced out over six days. That was a pace he hadn’t maintained since college.

Will paused a moment before closing the door. He was deciding whether to dash out to his truck for a trip into town and breakfast. He’d taken Bertie Blom’s advice and forced himself to make regular appearances in town. So far, it seemed, it was good advice. His banter with Wendy the waitress had progressed beyond the wetness of his feet. He’d had more than one spontaneous conversation with a local on the days there wasn’t an open booth. He discovered, with some surprise, there had been years of speculation regarding the ultimate fate of the “old Rijsbergen place.” He’d met more than one person who remembered his grandparents and, to his relief, nobody who remembered his mother— at least nobody had brought her up.

Too wet, Will decided. The thought also crossed his mind that, now that it had become a thing of the past, rekindling the saturation level of his shoes wasn’t anything he’d miss. He’d also made a few trips to the “Muni”, the only bar in Venlo’s city limits. Under the auspices of watching baseball, Will had slunk in, perched himself at what seemed to be the most inconspicuous end of the bar and sipped beer. The first night in, he got several hard looks, but never exchanged a word with anybody, aside from the bartender, a kid who looked scarcely old enough to drink himself. He wasn’t much of a talker, which had suited Will just fine. The place became quite crowded by the third inning, and while he got plenty of second and third long looks, the only conversation he engaged in was typical bar banter with whoever was sitting next to him at any given time. Will sat through the entire game, which turned into a three and a half hour slugfest. He managed to leave after only three and a half beers, never tipped more that a buck a beer—which the youngster had no problem with, and stopped himself from buying the house a round.

It wasn’t until his third visit that Will suffered a momentary shock and had to fight the urge to flee, and that was when the person minding the bar turned out to be Wendy, the waitress.

“Well, look who’s decided to join the neighborhood.”

Will had been tempted to tell her he’d just stopped in to use the bathroom. A moment’s consideration stopped that plan of action. He’d either have to never set foot in the place again, which essentially meant he’d given up on developing what never had much promise of more than a meager social life, or put up with whatever comments she’d have ready for him the next time he had breakfast at the diner.

“Ballgame,” was all he said, and took the same place at the bar as he had his first two visits.

As it turned out, he discovered she was a resource that rivalled Blom when it came to his “public image.”

When she plunked his second beer in front of it, she asked, “How’s that house coming along?”

She’d not said a word to him otherwise since he’s sat down.

“You tell me,” he answered.

“I heard it’s getting a real nice makeover.”

“Heard from whom?” he responded.

“Anybody you’d care to ask,” was her counter.

It went no further than that, but it told Will volumes. It also opened the door to further interaction. Once he’d been seen talking to Wendy, several people who come to the bar from the tables for a refill or to drop off empties—Will’s preferred seat was next to the wait station, which had functioned as a buffer to his left flank, and he’d yet to see a server—they’d give him a hello and offer some idle chitchat. More than one had asked him “How’s that house going?”

Any further conversation he’d had with Wendy was neutral, generic, and only as personal as her revelatory statement of, “five days a week at the diner, three nights a week here.” The only comment Will had regarding his own business was his uncertainty of “how long I’ll stick around here after the work on the house is done.”

“Nice to have options,” she said.

Will had actually enjoyed the evening, and was surprised that, when he left, he had no idea of who’d won the game. He’d also limited his intake, however, not wanting to risk a lowering of inhibition. His purpose had been only to be seen, not understood. Closing the door on the rain and socializing for the day, went to the refrigerator and took out the makings for a frittata.

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Back before ya know it.