The Wind Comes Sweeping

Chapter Four

The clock atop the county courthouse showed ten minutes before nine when Marik drove into Pacheeta with a dead eagle in the back of her truck. Half the parking spaces along Main Street corralled pickups and SUVs, and the lighted windows of the Corner Café displayed a late-break-fast crowd. There were no boarded-up storefronts here; compared to Silk, the county seat swarmed with commerce.

The regional office of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation sat next to the courthouse and across from the town square. In the square, a community pavilion flaked white paint onto the dormant grass, and a statue of Will Rogers stood sentinel above a concrete pool drained for winter. A lariat dangled from Will’s hand, and his bronze hat sat askew above a face expertly modeled with his whimsical smile. Unlike the state’s amiable native son, Marik had met plenty of men she didn’t like. But she’d always loved that sculpture.

Beside her on the breezy seat of Red Ryder, Jace Rainwater observed the town without comment. Except for the sculpture, Pacheeta looked like a hundred other small towns, and Rainwater looked as if he’d seen them all before.

She circled the block, past the Pacheeta Tribune that supplied the county with local news and gossip. An alley ran behind the wildlife building and she turned into it, hoping to unload her cargo away from the eyes of curious pedestrians. Two vehicles occupied a potholed gravel area next to the alley. Marik parked close to a metal door with ODWC stenciled in white letters on its brown paint.

The door was locked, and nobody responded to her pounding. She went back to the truck, where Rainwater was securing the tarp around the eagle after its windy trip. “I guess we can leave it here for a few minutes while we go inside,” she said.

He nodded. “Not much traffic back here.”

They walked down the alley and turned on to a quiet, spider-veined sidewalk. A brittle sun warmed their shoulders until they rounded the next corner, where the shade swaddling the front entrance of the building still felt like winter. Rainwater opened a glass door and held it for her. Marik stepped onto the industrial-strength carpet of a small outer office.

A young woman with straight, jaw-length hair sat behind a desk, staring into a computer screen. Her hair looked too black to be natural, but it was striking against paper-white skin. One or two strategic piercings and she could be a Goth girl. The phone on her desk rang and she held up a red-nailed finger. “Be right with you.”

“Department of Wildlife,” she said into the receiver. There was a long pause while the girl rolled her eyes. “Gee, you’re the first guy who thought of that joke,” she said. “Is there something else I can help you with?” Another pause. “Just a moment, I’ll see if he’s in.”

She punched the hold button and hung up. Her eyes flickered over the lanky form of Jace Rainwater and she smiled brightly. “Now then. How can I help you folks?”

“We need to see a ranger, if we can, or some other conservation official,” Marik said.

“You’re in luck. Ranger Ward is actually in this morning.” She turned her head toward a hallway behind her desk and hollered in a voice that could have brought cattle in for milking. “Roger? Somebody here to see you!”

In seconds a wiry, fortyish man with a fairy ring of brown hair appeared in the opening to the hallway. He wore jeans crimped at the knees, cowboy boots and a tan-colored shirt with a Wildlife Department logo on the pocket. “We do have an intercom, Kim,” he said to the receptionist, but his voice was as mild as the rest of him.

Kim shrugged, grinning. “Sorry.” The hold button on the phone continued to blink.

“Morning. I’m Roger Ward,” the ranger said, offering his hand to Marik first.

Marik thought how she would sketch him: oval head, round bald pate, oval wire-rimmed glasses, oval body and thighs. He wasn’t fat, though, just compact, and no taller than she was. She introduced herself and her companion.

The ranger shook hands with Rainwater. “Come on back to my office.”

Ward’s office was just what she expected. Battered wooden desk, cluttered bookcase, a faux-tile floor that felt slightly gritty underfoot. Dusty but impressive portraits of Oklahoma’s larger wildlife hung on the walls—whitetail deer, bobcat, elk, even a woolly black bear. Marik recognized the artist’s name. From atop the bookcase, mounted specimens of bobwhite quail, wood duck and wild turkey fixed them with glassy stares. There was almost room to sit down in the two straight chairs Ward offered.

“Actually,” Marik said, “the reason we came is out back in the bed of my truck. Can we bring it inside?”

Ward’s interest perked up. “An animal?”

She saw a sharp intelligence in the faded blue of his eyes. “A bald eagle, we think.”

The eyes widened. “Alive?”

“Unfortunately, no. I found it on my place this morning.”

“Killdeer Ridge, right? Where the wind farm is.”

“Right.” He had recognized her name, like everybody else since the windmills went up. Sometimes she missed being debt ridden and anonymous.

“Let’s take a look.” He grabbed his oval ranger hat from beneath the turkey’s wattle.

Why did men around here never step outdoors without a hat on?

In the alley, Rainwater carefully uncovered their cargo and they all leaned over the truck bed, arms on the sidewalls. Ranger Ward whistled through his teeth. “Isn’t that a beauty.”

“I’m guessing an immature female,” Rainwater said.

Ward checked the tail feathers. “Good eye. Most people can’t tell an immature bald eagle from a golden.” He looked up at Jace. “It isn’t banded. Any idea what killed it?”

Marik and Rainwater glanced at each other. “No visible blood or bullet wound,” Rainwater said.

“Huh. Exactly where was the eagle when you found it?”

“Up on the high ridge,” she said.

“You found it beneath the windmills?”

She nodded, her face glum.

“Uh-oh,” he said.

“You know the Gurdmans, my neighbors?”

“Not personally, but I’m familiar with their complaints about the wind farm.”

Marik sighed. “I’d like to keep this quiet until we know for sure what killed the eagle.”

“No need to make an announcement. Let’s get the carcass inside and look at it closer.”

In a back room, the ranger laid the eagle out on a table and checked it over. Within a minute, he leaned over and smelled it.

“Diazanon?” Rainwater said.

Ward gave him a sharp look. “That’s what I was thinking. Why the heck would an eagle smell like tick poison?”

“Good question,” Marik said. “My friend here suggested a necropsy.”

“Absolutely. We can learn a lot from a carcass. Birds have practically no sense of smell. It might have eaten poisoned meat despite the odor. Eagles do eat carrion sometimes.”

Ward bagged and tagged the bird, then laid it gently in a chest-type freezer. “I’ll put in a call to our chief biologist in Oklahoma City. Either he’ll get a local vet to do the necropsy, or we’ll send it to a special U.S. Fish and Wildlife installation in Wisconsin.”

“That could take a long time.”

“Yup. That’s why we’re going to freeze her. If Wendell can’t come get the carcass, I’ll have to pack it in ice and haul it to the city.”

“Maybe we should call Sam Sullivan,” Rainwater said, “up at the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville. I know they keep records on Oklahoma eagles.”

“Good idea,” Ward said. “They’ve coordinated with the department on migratory-bird incidents before.” He smiled. “You know Sam?”

“Went to school with him a year or so. And I did some volunteer work at the research center.”

“Sam’s a good guy. Knows his stuff.” He washed and dried his hands. “We need to fill out a report. Where you found it, date and time, any other circumstances.”

He led them back into his office and cleared off a space in the center of the desk. After two tries, he found a ball-point that worked. Marik and Rainwater sat, their knees touching the front of the desk, while she supplied the information the ranger asked for. He finished the paperwork and sat back in his chair, the springs squeaking.

“There’s a town meeting coming up in Silk in about a week,” she told him. “I’d sure like to know what killed the eagle before that.”

His frown looked doubtful. “It usually takes longer. But I’ll do what I can to hurry things up.”

“Do you believe an eagle would really fly into those windmill blades?”

Ward shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Out in California, there was an incident like that, but those windmills were built directly in the eagles’ migration path, and it isn’t a migration month here. The trouble is, there’s a shortage of science on how the windmills might affect the ecology. Since the power companies don’t announce where the wind farms will be built much before they build them, nobody’s had a chance to map the ecology of a location beforehand. There’s no control data, we don’t know the natural patterns of the wildlife or even the plants in the area before the windmills—only after.

“Some biologists think the eagles might view the windmills as perches when the blades are still, and try it again when they’re moving.”

“That seems hard to believe.”

“Yeah, it does. But we don’t know about the songbirds or game birds in the area, either. Some might not nest there anymore because they view the wind towers as raptor perches, or the flickering shadows as raptor wings.”

Marik frowned. “Even if that’s true, wouldn’t they just move over to the next pasture or creek?”

He shrugged. “Probably.”

“Well, there aren’t any trees on Killdeer Ridge, but the killdeer still nest all over the ground up there.”

Ward smiled. “That’s good to know. Wildlife is pretty darned adaptable. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have any left. If you want my personal opinion, we’ve got to do something to cut down fossil fuel consumption, and for producing electricity, at least, wind farms are the best idea yet. The long-term benefits to the ecology far outweigh any short-term potential for harm.” He shrugged. “But the real scientists want more proof.”

“I don’t think my neighbors’ objections have anything to do with science,” Marik said. She took a paper from a cube on his desk and jotted down a number. “That’s my cell. It’s the best way to get me.” She stood up. “I appreciate your time.”

He gave her a direct look. “Thanks for bringing the bird in. You did the right thing.”

“Yeah, well. We’ll see if good deeds go unpunished.”

She followed Rainwater out through the front entrance. Kim was multitasking, the phone receiver gripped under her chin while she typed an e-mail and waved goodbye.

Marik filled up with gas at a Love’s Country Store at the edge of town. On the drive they talked about her ranch operation and the proposed second phase of wind turbines. Rainwater said all the right things, but she listened for subtext that might signal problems. She didn’t fault him for the wall of privacy around his family; she wouldn’t discuss her personal life with a stranger, either. The main things that concerned her were the estranged wife and his over-qualification. She didn’t want to train a ranch manager for six months only to have him quit and move on to a better-paying job.

Wind whipped through the passenger window and the truck bounced along the two-lane road. “Okay, direct question,” she said. “And remember that I can check on this. Have you ever been arrested or jailed for anything?” She glanced at him sideways.

“No.” He smiled. “Check all you want to.”

“Then why are you willing to work for the pay I’m offering?”

He took a breath before answering. “I don’t like cities, even if that’s where the money is. And I would expect that after six months or so, if you were happy with my work, you’d be willing to raise the salary.”

She nodded but said nothing. Her finances were too iffy to make promises.

It was eleven o’clock when they approached Silk. “How about a Sonic burger and a cherry limeade?” she said. “I’m starving.”

She pulled into a drive-in stall and killed the engine. The day had warmed, and with their jackets on, the cab was comfortable even with the half-open window. She let him look over the menu a minute before she punched the call button. A teenage voice with a West Texas accent emerged with a hail of static from the speaker box. Marik wondered why the girl wasn’t in school.

“I’ll have a bacon burger and onion rings,” Marik said and looked at Rainwater.

“Broiled-chicken sandwich and a side salad with Italian.”

She gave him a shocked look, but repeated his order into the speaker and added two cherry limeades.

“High cholesterol runs in my family,” he said.

“Ah. You had parents.”

He smiled. “Grandparents, too, so I’m told.”

Marik’s cell phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She glanced at its tiny window and smiled. Daisy Gardner had seen her truck in town.

“Excuse me,” she said to Rainwater as she flipped the phone open. Then to Daisy, “You’ll never get your paperwork done if you keep watching out the window.”

“In my job it pays to be nosey,” Daisy said. “Can you stop by the office?”

“I’ve just ordered lunch, actually. And I’m not by myself.”

“I know, and it looked like a man in there.”

“What, you’re using binoculars now?”

“Why are you riding him around in that old wreck of a truck instead of your perfectly nice SUV?”

“Long story. How about lunch tomorrow? I want to come in and get horse feed anyway.”

“Okay, but call me this afternoon when you’re alone. We need to talk. Today.” She sounded pissed off.

“What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you later. And you can tell me who that is in your truck.”

“Right. See you.”

Marik closed and pocketed the phone. “My friend Daisy,” she said to Rainwater. “Just another reason there are no secrets in this town.”

Which wasn’t quite true. Daisy had kept at least one secret for eight years.

The carhop brought their food, and after the obligatory rustling of sacks and paper-clad straws, they settled down to eating. Static crackled sporadically from neighboring speaker boxes, and from the top of a power pole, a mockingbird sang a forecast of spring. Marik kept thinking about Daisy’s warning: We need to talk.

Had Daisy somehow learned about the private investigator she’d hired?

“You’re right about the cherry limeade,” Jace Rainwater said, his mouth half-full. “Good sandwich, too.”

That afternoon she drove Rainwater over the parts of the ranch he hadn’t seen earlier—the north quarter, hilly and forested, where elk sometimes passed through; and next to it the upper pastures, still dormant in February. Killdeer Ridge bisected the ranch at a slight angle from east to west. South of the ridge, two herds of cattle were grazing on winter wheat in the flat fields close to the river. A large pasture also bordered the river, part of it fenced off around a sheet-metal hangar and a grass landing strip for lightplanes. Today the airstrip was unmowed and looked abandoned.

“The foreman will be the only full-time hand, at least for now,” she told him. “I’ll hire extra help for jobs like cutting and branding.”

Rainwater’s hands clenched and unclenched on the knees of his jeans, as if they were anxious to get to work. He asked smart questions, and she saw the thirsty expression in his eyes when he looked at the landscape. “It sure would be good to work cattle again,” he said.

She knew the feeling. Marik loved cattle and she loved the land, even though she had once abandoned it. Monte used to say, You can’t beat out of the hide what’s bred in the bone.

Jace Rainwater was her best prospect for the manager position, and she could use an ally who had an appropriate education to back up the things she knew instinctively about ranching. Marik had majored in art and education—not the sort of credentials that carried much weight with a bank or her ranching neighbors. But she couldn’t afford to make a quick decision about someone she’d be working with daily, who would live a few steps from her house. She sent Rainwater back to Amarillo with a promise that she’d make a decision within two weeks. Meanwhile, she could phone a couple of his references and have the P.I. do a background check. Might as well get something for her money.

She stood on the gravel driveway and watched Rainwater’s white truck drive away, wishing Monte were here to help assess his possible replacement. Monte was a better judge of character than anyone she knew.

Wind swept across the yard and solitude surged around her. She was the only living person for farther than her voice could carry. If she dropped dead like that poor eagle, no one would know and few would care.

Okay, that’s pathological. Cut it out.

The place was too damn quiet. She ought to get a dog. The last dog on the ranch was Monte’s old basset hound, a low-slung submarine named Rush Hour. The dog was lovable and useless, and when he died Monte was so broken up neither he nor J.B. got around to replacing him. What Marik wanted now was a big, furry ranch dog that would set up a ruckus if a stranger came onto the place.

She carried a bucket of horse feed and dumped it into the feeder in the corral. A ranch without horses was just wrong, so she had kept Lady and Gent. The blaze-faced mare and chestnut gelding coexisted in the small pasture behind the barn. When she was a kid and the ranch was prosperous, they’d had a string of twenty.

Her melancholy persisted, and instead of calling Daisy back right then, she walked toward the small barn next to the corral. It used to be a hay barn, but now it held something altogether different.

Her boots crunched in the silence. The barn door’s curved handle felt cold in her palm when she rolled it open. In the barn’s shady interior, the remnants of her father’s green and white Cessna airplane lay mangled on the dirt floor.

Chapter Five

Marik stepped into the triangle of light on the barn floor and paused to let her eyes adjust to the surrounding shadows. No matter how many times she confronted the wreckage, her breath caught hard in her chest. J.B. had worshipped that plane, a sweet little Cessna 210 that he treated like royalty. Marik had loved it, too, once. But something faulty with its engine or wiring had killed her father. It was hard to look at the ruined fuselage, but even harder to have it hauled away as junk. To her the aircraft was still an indivisible part of J. B. Youngblood.

The musty smells of mice and old hay closed around her, and beneath that the metallic scent of engine oil. Overhead, sparrows chirped from the lofted darkness. When she was very young, the hay barn had been a magical place. She remembered two little girls scrambling over a mountain of hay bales that reached to the rafters. In a crevice between the prickly bales, they’d found a nest of sightless kittens. Nowadays hay was packaged in giant round bales and lined up along fences like Jurassic caterpillars. Today’s ranch kids didn’t know the joy of playing in the hay.

She took a deep breath that stuttered in her chest as her gaze settled on the ruined airplane. The left side of the cockpit was torn raggedly open, as if bitten away by monster teeth. The monster was a grove of hackberry trees that had ripped J.B. from his seat as the plane cartwheeled. She tried not to imagine the horror that must have seized him as he vaulted through the sky, out of control. Did images of his life pinwheel before him? Did he think of the granddaughter he never knew?

In her nightmares she flew with him and felt it all.

They’d found his body hanging in the branches, fifty yards from where the Cessna finally scraped to a halt. He was only twenty miles from the ranch when he crashed, on his way to pick her up for a visit. She was living halfway across the state at the time, a traveling art teacher for a sprawling rural school district. If she had promised to drive home for spring break, maybe he would be here today.