New Sheriff in Town by Drake Koefoed - HTML preview

“She usually is.  Put speaker on if Annabel is there.”

He did.  “We are on, she is here.”

“Know the greater metropolitan area of Millie?”

“West of us, six miles, this side of the tracks.  I blinked a few times, but I have seen it.”

“What does Millie have that Rabbit does not?”

“An old brick building they don’t want torn down.”

“Making business your hobby.  Some day they will ask you to knock that thing down and sell the bricks.  Millie also has?”

“The Cottonwood river.”

“Bingo.  So if Alice completes like she wants to, where does your recycling plant go?”

“I could close it.”

“Bad answer.  Rabbit needs rocks, the area needs to recycle fuels.  You need an equipment yard.  The neighbors are willing to give up Jolene road to make the park pretty.  As in signed already willing.  Jolene road is mine.  I’m going to gravel Marcus Thurber road.  Actually, you are going to gravel it, but.  Also some private roads over there.  The county gave me the little tail off of the yellow road.  Acquisitions has got the parts we need for the rounding out.  We are shifting title on our new surveys, so the state can’t crawfish on us.  So Alice has her park.  She needs some outhouses, some planting, and some Pippy roads.”

“OK, then that leaves us with a homeless recycling center and no quarry for these rocks you are already selling.  Where does that all happen, Millie?”

“Right.  Beside the Cottonwood river, some land that belongs to me is permitted to quarry.  The state is fine with a big hole.  It gets better.  The fed wants the hole for flood control, the state wants it for a reservoir, and the county wants it for a recreational lake.  This looks like about 1,000 acres down to the red bed, which here, is about 60 feet, so think 60,000 acre feet.  Big hole you think?  I’ve got 11 sections.  We could complete at 2,000 acres and make it a nice 120,000 acre feet.  Nice pond, you think?”

“Dig the hole, sell the rocks, divert the river a little in and out.  Maybe you need to control flow to keep the river running for a while.  Next time it floods, you fill the reservoir, and that does it.”

“You in?”

Kevin nodded, and Annabel said “We’re in.”

“We go look tomorrow.”

“We stop at the house first.”

“Yeah.  Let’s have breakfast and then go.”

“On it.”

* * *

In the morning, they all met in Kevin’s kitchen.

Alice said, “You’re not taking anything needed for reclamation.”

Tom said, “You don’t want the walking draglines or Annabel’s 12, do you?”

“No.”

“We’re going to lay temporary rail, drag the hole and then pull back.  I’m planning on 6 crusher/sorters.”

He laid out the map.  The plan was pretty simple.  They would start digging on one side with the draglines.  They would turn around and fill crushers, which would feed sorters, which would fill railcars, which would go somewhere and deliver the rocks.  If prices fell, conveyors would take the rock to piles out of the area they planned to use for the reservoir.  They would dig 24/365 anyway.  If they could not crush or sort, they would stack, but the hole would go on.

One guy, a young operator who had driven D-4 bulldozers for a few years on his Dad’s ranch, looked at the 8750 dragline and shook his head.  “Ma’am I can’t drive that.”

“Don’t matter.  It walks anyway.  Now get your ass up there and I will show you how to operate it.”

“It’s too big.”

“That bucket is only 115 cubic yards.  It can only pick up a half a million pounds.  It’s not big.  This is the baby of the family.”  (This being nonsense, of course)

She showed him how to pull the bucket and lift, and how to dump it into the crusher, which was something like a battleship on land, or it would not have been able to eat what the monster dragline could feed it.  

“Stay up off that redbed.  We don’t want it.  That is the pit bottom.”

* * *

They dug their way along.  Lots of new operators got ragged by Annabel, or much worse, Cattie.  Trainers came from Nowhere to help.  The operators pulled the draglines back, and the temporary tracks were moved.  The pit came in very well, with a nice bevel to make it safe when it became a pond.  Tom pushed the work hard because he believed rock prices were a lot higher than they would be for a long time.  He was right about that.  Quarrying had peaked with the Pan, and was now declining.  Lots of people were getting out of the game.  Tom wore out his ultra heavy equipment like the big draglines.  He told Kevin and Annabel to sell their heaviest machines at a time when prices were still strong.  The reason was, the Pan was mostly built, and Tom expected rock prices to slide, which was why he was selling his rocks.  He wanted the quarries, because he believed in the long term value of rock.  He did not want the ultra heavy equipment, because he would buy it new in coming years.  

Kevin sold his dragline with a leaseback for a year.  Annabel finished pushing down the overburden on Millie, and sold her 12.  Within 6 months, none of them owned any of the big quarrying machines.  Tom sold equipment to buy quarries that were not making money, stripped the equipment, and leased the land to deer hunters and such.  Tom sold and leased back lots of heavy equipment.  He swapped around with Kevin and Annabel, moving them into smaller machines and selling big stuff.  He sold and leased back the crushers and sorters at Millie.  

The pit moved along to about a square mile.  It kept going.  Contracts with government agencies had obligated Tom to dig a pretty large hole, but the pit was already that big.  Tom kept digging, and selling rock while the price was good.  As prices declined, he stopped selling, stacked rock until his leases ran out, and returned the big equipment in good order to its owners.  The biggest machine he had not sold, a monster trackhoe, dug the river diversion.  He put his good operators on the Pan.  A nice railcar house, your machine on the back deck, and you hit the rails.  He put some of those who needed to stay in Millie in business with small equipment like backhoes, and sold some machines.

Mother Nature reminded everyone who the real boss was again, dumping massive amounts of rain and hail on West Texas.  The Cottonwood river roared into frightening life.  A decent amount was let down the channel, but no more than the state wanted.  The most of the water went into the big pit at Millie.  The sneaky no good fishing crowd slithered in and put blue cat and perch in the pit.  It was just the sort of thing they would do, including taking the trash and putting it in a dumpster.

The rain washed Tom’s rocks, which was nice, because he could hardly have sold them.  They just sat there, amplifying the doubts about him.  First he sells the equipment and buys land, then he digs up rocks that are not selling.

When the ground dried out a bit, Kevin’s recycling setup was moved to the end of the rails near Millie.  Tom had a spur put in right to the industrial district of that city.  He owned some land by it.  The “city fathers” declined to move on with the rail line.  Time, in Tom’s opinion, would correct that.  Perhaps the amount of time it took for them to die off and be replaced by people who understood the Pan was here to stay.  

* * *

A barbecue had to happen.  Tom came and gave Kevin and Annabel a little pep talk.  “Lots more jelly beans in your jars.  You can’t really use this kind of money unless you are Marcie Della.  You play with it.” He handed each of them a small bag.  In the bags were little gold bars the size of a child’s finger.

Annabel asked, “Are you saying we don’t know how to spend money?”

“Well, You don’t have a Seven Three.  A mere $115 million or so.”

“Is that all she paid for it”

“Before she had it customized, of course.”

Mauser and Ghost came and got on their laps.  Tom felt left out until Li Li clawed his leg.

Marcie sat next to Alice, as royalty is expected to do.

Anita asked if anyone wanted clams, oysters, or champagne.  Kevin said all of that would be great, and why was she bringing it?  Anita laughed and went to get it all.

“We don’t pay her.”

“She wouldn’t accept it.” Tom said.

“That’s right.”

Alice said, “Well, guys, we have another place to dig our holes in the ground, and recycle.  We have rail there, and we are close to completing here.”

Kevin said, “Maybe we should keep the park.  Let Nat drive people around on the Pippy roads, and we will just stay here.”

Tom said, “Complete the park, and ask that guy Michael Hagarty in San Francisco to make a nonprofit to own it.”

Alice said, “Let’s do that.”

Annabel said, “What will he do?”

Alice said, “Make a nonprofit corporation that will take the whole thing over.”

She called his office in spite of the late hour.  Hagarty listened to the basics.  “We can do it, Alice.  You don’t even need to complete it first.  The nonprofit can do business.  It just can’t pay stockholders is all.”

“So it could have contracts with some vendors?”

“Generally yes.  What kind of vendors?”

“A road maintenance person, and a horse and buggy operator.”

“Oh, sure, I can do that.  You can put a few bucks in to fund it, the quarry can sell it rock, things like that.  This is Rabbit, right?”

“Right.”

“Great.  I bet it will be a wonderful park.  Can I come out in a few days and see you?”

“When you like.”

“I won’t be hard to find.  We’ll get it happening.”

After she hung up, she said, “There is a lawyer working for God.”

Kevin said, “Quite a few, really.”

 

Chapter 21  Back on Duty

 

In the morning, Tom and Alice were gone.  It looked like another slow day in Rabbit.  The creek was running fast.  Then Kevin saw something wrong.  An immense mulberry had fallen in the creek, and was resting against a bridge.  If trash continued to accumulate, the best you could hope for was extensive flooding.

Kevin called home.  “Annabel, is Syd around?”

“She is.”

“Can you guys come down to the creek by the bank with Egret in the real soon?”

“We can.  Seeya.”

They were there in a few minutes.  Syd looked at the tree, and got a nylon sling out of Egret’s pretty nice rigging box.  She told Annabel, “Put it out about 50 feet and let it to the ground.”

Annabel did it.  Syd put a foot in the hook, and a hand on the cable.  Syd signaled for her to lift and extend, and shift over the tree.  She signaled to lower.  Annabel didn’t want to.  Syd yelled “Cowgirl up!  I can’t do this by myself!”

The junior reporter for the local paper came.  Kevin said, “Get your pix, but don’t get in the way.  She can’t watch you and the job at the same time.”

Annabel lowered, and Syd clipped the sling.  She signaled for lower, and dropped onto the tree.  She signaled lower again, and Annabel let down some more.  She looped the sling on the tree and clipped it on.  She signaled up, slow.  When the cable was tight, she went up it hand over hand, and came down the tower the same way.

“Walk in the park, Annabel.  Pick it up, boom in as much as you can, we take it to the recycling center, yeah?”

Annabel did it, and they took the tree to be shredded or whatever would happen, with Kevin behind them using lights and siren to let people know that what looked like a crane carrying an enormous mulberry tree was a crane carrying an enormous mulberry tree.  They set the tree down, and went in for coffee.

They drank some of it, and Syd went to the key rack.  Syd and a key rack is a bad combination.  Kevin should have known.  There were other people who should have known.  “I gets your tree.  Now I paints your new crane.”

The crane that had replaced Heron ripped down the driveway and was gone.

“Is it safe to drive, Annabel?”

“Yes, Mr. Misses The Point.”

“Well, she left with it.  I don’t want an accident.”

* * *

In the morning, Kevin drove around town.  Nothing was wrong.  He went to the café and got breakfast.  Everyone seemed pretty content.  He drove around the ‘bad’ part of town, which was just the poor part of town.  A couple of people wanted rides.  He took them where they were going, and went home.  The crane, now Great Heron, was back.  It had been beautifully detailed, and the cab was painted.  It now bore the name Great Heron, and all the way around the cab strutted a detachment of armed and dangerous herons with mischievous expressions and military weapons.  In the lead was a second lieutenant with a map and compass.  Behind him came herons with M-60s and M-79s and M-16s.  It was, of course, a Sond.

Annabel was not in sight, but it was pretty clear she would be mad, although the artwork was quite valuable.  Egret was gone, and so was Annabel’s truck.  It appeared the two things were separate.  A piece of paper on the counter said “Little Syd paints your cranes.”

Kevin went to the reclamation and made a little list of things to do.  He came back to the house, and as he drove in, Annabel’s truck was still gone.  Egret was back, and Sandpiper was gone.  Kevin got a strange feeling.  Annabel would go completely nuts if Sandpiper was messed with.  He looked at Egret.  The whole cab, again, was the canvas.  No attempt at likeness had been used, but the egrets on one side of the cab were Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton, those in the stern, Yammamoto, Tojo, and the Emperor.   On the front were Stalin and some other Russians.  On the other side were Churchill and Montgomery.  On the upper part of the cab was Rommel with tanks on the horizon.

Syd drove up in Sandpiper.  The whole cab was a beach, with flocks of sandpipers running all around.  There were crabs, kelp and even kelp flies.  The sea was coming in on port side and going out on starboard.  The sandpipers had some kind of comic look to them although they looked realistic.

Kevin was going to ask Syd something, but she was gone.

He called for another barbecue.  Randy came with a pig, and shot it and hung it.  In not long, it was over Kevin’s fire.  

Annabel came in.  “Sorry I didn’t call, Kevin, but…”

“She painted your cranes.”

“When?”

“Today.  I never saw her.”

“This was counting coup for her.”

“Fidelis didn’t even know, or didn’t say.”

“How bad is it?”

“Masterpieces.  Most people would pay thousands for those jobs.”

“Get your Coleman light.  I have to see.”

Kevin got a rechargeable light with millions of candlepower.  He lit the cranes up.

She took it and walked around.  “I was afraid it would be real dark like on Stork.  The Great Egrets are kind of dark, but also funny.   The herons are fun, and the sandpipers are really funny.”

Anita came and looked.  “You should put this on your web site.  These are awesome.  The fact that the Angel of Death did them just makes them worth more.  It would be so cool to meet him maybe make a video for your web site with him sitting in the dark or something.  I want to see these in the sun.  He’s a master.”

“I guess she did this as a favor.  Syd, if you can hear me, I am not mad.”

Syd was right behind her. “Syd doesn’t do this to be bad.”

“What do you think of Anita’s idea?”

“I have the camera.  We can do it.”

“We need him, too.”

“He is here.  You don’t use any lights, huh?”

“And we can ask him about his paintings?”

“Maybe other things.”

Kevin said, “David?”

A voice in the darkness said, “I am here.”

“David, would you tell me who the cards are?”

“The Ace is Death.  The king is Tom.  The queen is Alice.  The jack is me.  The ten is chance.  It comes back around to Death.”

“On Great Heron?”

“The most dangerous thing is the second lieutenant with a map and compass.  He is followed by soldiers long ago dead.”

“The Egrets?”

“Second world war.  We see all the guys who thought they were saving the world.”

“Sandpiper?”

“They are us.  Humanity running around thinking it matters, eating bugs out of the sand.”

“So where do we find the point of it all?”

“Go back to the beginning.”

“To Death?”

“That’s the end.  Ask a Hindu.”

“What should I ask him?”

“Ask a Zen master what you should ask him.”

“What will the Zen master tell me?”

“To ask the wisest man you know.”

“And who is that?”

“Ask someone who knows more than you.”

“I don’t know who to ask.”

“That’s the hard part.”

He was gone.  Syd turned the camera off.  They went in the office and uploaded it to the computer.  Syd reviewed it.  “You can puts it on the web site.”

“Someone can’t enhance it and see him?”

“In a movie they can.  Information can be filtered, but if it is not there you do not find it.”

“What was that all about, the allusions to reincarnation and all that?”

“He tells you what he tells you.  How do you know the bird that is Eisenhower when there is no likeness?”

“I don’t see how he did that.”

“That is Sond.  You don’t see how.”

Kevin uploaded the video to the website, and looked up.  Syd was gone.

* * *

Back at the barbecue, they ate some oysters.

“Any of that make sense to you, Annabel?”

“Talking in circles.  Not necessarily bullshit, but.”

“Was he telling us something?”

Anita came by.  “Do you guys want some clams?”

“Clams and champagne for me.  What do you want, Anita?”

“When you have what you want, never say, in case the Devil takes it away.”

“Is there a devil?”

“If there is, you know him better than I.”

She left.

She came back with clams and champagne.  They thanked her.

They ate the clams and drank the champagne.

“We’re on a Tom trip, aren’t we, Kevin?”

Kevin shrugged, and ate some clams.  “What if we are?”

“What if he is the devil?”

“Takes the kids from Make a Wish to make their wishes.”

“Hiding his real plans.”

“If you want convoluted conspiracy theories involving the devil, the church is the place to start.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“No.”

“I have known you so long, and never did you say that.”

“It means nothing.  We live in this world.”

Anita came back.  “We might be way over on pig.”

“Too much for the walk ins at your kitchen?”

“Maybe.”

“Ask you something.  Why would I know the devil any better than anyone else?”

“You are the most tempted.  You could do evil.  You could be seduced by the dark side of the force.”

“Do you believe in God, Anita?”

“I can’t make up my mind.  I worry that he is there, and I disappoint him, and I worry that he is not, and I lack courage to do good.”

Kevin said, “I think if he does exist, all he wants is for us to do is be good.”

“I think rocks are hard.”

“This pig.  I like the ribs and back strap.  Oh, I guess I would like bacon.  If I took my favorite parts, would you be able to find space for the hams?”

“Maybe.  You cook them so often.”

“Do you know who here is poor?”

“Most of us, but I know of some with too many children to feed.”

“Here tonight?”

“Can we give them some hams without embarrassing them?”

“Maybe.  What could we do?”

“What if you said, ‘could you keep this for us?  If Kevin does not want it in a few days, just eat it.  No.  Tell them I might want it by tomorrow for a lunch with some customers, if I don’t ask for it by 1 pm, they should eat it, give it to friends?”

“That will do.  I think maybe we should cook smaller pigs in the future.”

“Tell Randy what to buy.”

“There is, you pay.”

“Right.  I pay, so I tell you we want a smaller pig, he buys a smaller pig, and I pay for it.”

“I think that works.  Do you, Annabel?”

“It does, but Kevin wants to buy pigs a little too big, and then ask everyone to take some home.”

“Do you want some more clams?”

“Yes, please.”

Anita left.

Annabel said, “You, Tom and the Devil.”

Kevin said, “Tough choices.”

“I like you the best.”

“I like you the best, Annabel.”

“Even if I go off on Catholic things?”

Kevin cut off some bacon.  “If this is not cured it isn’t really bacon.”

“Maybe grill it a little and get rid of some of the fat, or let the cats eat the fat.”

“Anita will do that for you.”

Anita came back and gave them some clams and sauce.  She made the tick sound with her tongue to draw in the cats.  She passed out fatty cattables.

Annabel said, “There is a perception of value there.”

Kevin asked, “Is there really a market value to anything?”

Annabel said, “Maybe not.  Mary thinks black agate is junk.”

Kevin said, “She throws it away.  I don’t do anything about it, but people would buy it.”

“Concern for her feelings?”

“We could sell black agate.  I could ask her to save it.  She would not be upset.  But I just let her throw it in deselected, and then leave it out in a ‘to be crushed’ pile for a million years and six days, and if they want to fill a pickup with it, then it’s $500 for a nice pickup, down to $50 for a real beater.”

“You don’t really do that.”

“Sure I do.”

“That goes against the basic concepts of our economic system.”

“That the rich should get richer?”

“Supply and demand, rewards for effort.”

“So that black grandma who has been cleaning bathrooms for 50 years is about to be rewarded”

“It isn’t perfect.”

“A plastic surgeon who does whatever the rich have done makes ten million a year and a laborer makes ten thousand if he is lucky?  We are on the top of the heap because we landed here.  I am all in favor of staying rich, because poverty sucks.  We got here working hard, but lots of people who worked hard got nothing.”

“One of the presidential candidates says wages are too high.”

“His are. A couple years in a sweatshop might help.”

Randy came over.  “Anita says smaller pigs.  Problem is, smaller ones are not much cheaper.  More to the point to share it.”

“Take a ham and make sandwiches.”

Anita said, “We can slice it.”

Randy called his wife, and she came to get some pork.  Randy cut it into pieces that would make good sandwich meat, and she took it to the kitchen to get it sliced, and home from there.  She didn’t care much for the barbecues.

Anita passed fatty stuff to the cats, and Randy gave a large bone to Fidelis.  Kevin called Mike, who had the duty that night.  Mike came and got some bones for his dog, and some lunch meat.  He took off to a call about a barking dog.

Some tiny pieces of gravel bounced off the barbecue.  “She’s not mad, Syd.”

“I has pebbled you.”

Anita said, “Do you want some lunch meat?  The kitchen can slice it, you can freeze it on your railcar.”

“Sure.  I want some half pound packs, I thaw them one at a time.”

Randy took off some pieces of the right size, and one of the kids, Brian, took it down to the kitchen to get sliced and packed, brought it back and put it in Syd’s freezer.  When he came back, he told Syd that her cat had hissed at him.

“I’m not surprised.  She didn’t get out?”

“No.  Just hissed.”

“Well, then.”

“I’ve never seen a cat that big.”

“They have lots of bigger kitties in Africa.”

“What kind of cat is she?”

“You were never there, never saw her, don’t know what people are asking about, not to your knowledge, have not heard a thing.  We clear on that?”

“Sure, Tia.”

“Her name is Little Trouble.  You never saw her.  She is an ocelot.”

“I didn’t know you could have an ocelot.”

“You can’t.”

“She’s real pretty.”

“If she was clawing you in the face she wouldn’t be so pretty.”

“Would she do that?”

“If you threatened her, she sure would.”

Anita came out with some clams and a bottle of Cuervo gold, and some glasses.  They went at the clams.

Anita said, “There it all is, what you don’t see in the city.  The milky way, Venus, and a rising moon.”

They all looked for a few minutes.  Annabel asked, “Kevin, without looking at a watch, what time is it?”

“About 11:15 pm Central Standard Time.”

“Wrong as usual.  It’s 11:02.”

Brian said, “How does he do that?”

Kevin said, “The stars.  When one of them rises, then that tells you the time.”

Annabel said, “He took celestial navigation in a Navy school.  Most people only know how to use a GPS.  But if they didn’t work, you would go back to the stars and compasses.”

Syd said, “Does you know Polynesian navigators, without a chart or compass, can sail an outrigger canoe hundreds of miles to an atoll you can’t see from a mile away?”

Annabel said, “That’s impossible.  Where did you hear that?”

“You says Little Syd lies to you, she goes.  I doesn’t hear. I sees.”

“What do they do?”

“Look at the sea.  They can see this wave comes from this place, that one comes from the other place.”

“It works?”

“It did, but now almost nobody knows how.  I knows a little.  I puts it to work for me.  Anywheres you sails, you can finds these seas, that they don’t all look the same.  You learns this, because you could maybe not see the stars, not have a compass.  You know all you can, you want to get back.”

Brian said, “This is bullshit.”

Syd said, “Ralph, this kid pokes a mean little critter.  He keeps it up, I throw him in the pond.”

Ralph laughed.  “He needs a bath anyway.”

Brian said, “Like you could kick my ass.”

That was not the right thing to say.  Brian weighed about 200, and was probably much stronger than Syd.  But knowing how to do things can be important.  Syd came over the table like a deer jumps a bush.  She twisted Brian’s arm in a painful hold, spun him around, and faster than you could see it, she threw him into the pond.  “Now you stays there until Little Syd says you can comes out.”

She ate some clams, watching Brian.  Ralph came over.  He whispered, “He is in no danger?”

“BUDS, you have to swim a mile in water colder than that.”

After 20 minutes or so, Syd let him out.  Someone took him home.  

Syd started telling Kevin about the virtues of the Silver 7A.  She wanted to show all the officers.  Kevin told her there was no money.  She said they should have them, couldn’t Rabbit cops have their own guns?  They could, but they could not afford them.  Tomorrow, Syd said, they would do some shooting.

* * *

Morning came, and Kevin went around in his