Border songs

20

NORM MADE himself wait, not knowing if he should check his box before or after the postal truck came, finally deciding he couldn’t stand it any longer. What if the postman saw the money? If there was any, of course. He knew it was the longest of long shots, but he craved a shot, any shot, the image of free money rushing through him. Norm had clearly said no, hadn’t he? By now, he had reworked the conversation so many times—including all the kid’s insinuations and discreetlys and prerogatives—that what he’d said and what he wished he’d said were getting jumbled. He hadn’t agreed to anything, he knew that much, but who knew how it was interpreted? And what if they wouldn’t take no for an answer?
A minimum of $10,000 on the twenty-third day of the month? He had no idea what that would look like. Rubber-banded stacks of hundreds in a manila envelope? With a note, maybe: Appreciate your business, Mr. Vanderkool.
Wasn’t he due for a break? Doc Stremler would be there within an hour to lower his glasses and hand him a verdict, a lecture and a bill. Most of the night, Norm had been straightening and cleaning the barns until he had to ice both knees, his mind circling to Sophie’s recurring suggestion that he let her “work” on his legs. His curtness with her in the field seemingly hadn’t dented her desire to get to know the savages. She’d waited a couple days, then swiveled over and crawled right back inside his head to remind him of her “good-neighbor discount.”
He shuffled toward the end of the drive, glancing up Boundary Road at the new motion-detecting video camera on the fifty-foot pole. It was hard not to take it personally. Everyone heard the cameras were coming, but they went from rumored to ordered to installed practically overnight and felt twice as intrusive as Norm expected. They’d be watching if he took a leak in his back ten, or if he strolled over to Sophie’s for a good-neighbor special…. And there were more coming, including one right on Northwood. He took a breath and shuffled toward the box, simultaneously hoping the money was there—so he could breathe!—and that it wasn’t, so he wouldn’t have to plumb his weaknesses any further. He’d clearly said no, so it wasn’t as if he’d been compromised, right?
“How’re the cows?”
Christ! He looked up to find Wayne leaning against the shady side of a telephone pole on Zero Ave. “Just great,” he snapped.
“Excellent.” The professor matched his sarcasm. “What about your boat? When do you launch that cruise ship?”
“Don’t know, Wayne. When’re you gonna patent that lightbulb?”
Wayne laughed. “I had no idea you knew about that sort—”
“I find it interesting,” Norm said, breathing harder, “that Edison’s father was run out of Canada.” He scrambled to recall what Patera had told him, bungling the details right out the gate and wishing he could start over.
Wayne grinned and waited.
“He got ousted from Canada,” Norm said, “as I recall for—”
“As you recall.”
“For rising up against a government that wouldn’t even stand up to the Brits.”
“Did someone read that to you?”
“Seemed pretty well documented,” Norm said, the insult sinking in.
“Oh, let me guess, you’re gonna tell me Edison was an opportunistic bastard who stepped on everybody for his own glory.”
“He sure doesn’t sound like your kind of hero.”
“Who stands up to that sort of test, Norm?”
“What?”
“Who looks like a white knight after all the historians and gossips get done with him?”
“I think Thomas Jeffer—”
“Banged his slaves.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes we do. A smart guy who knocked up Sally Hemings.”
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that perhaps Jesus has withstood the test of—”
“Modern, Norm. Someone we actually know something about.”
“Well, I’d argue—”
“We are not gonna have that discussion. Who stands up—musicians? Mozart was an ass. Wagner hated Jews. Sinatra was a mobster. Edison was just fine, Norm. Brilliant, actually. Can we just admire the guy and accept his imperfections as part of the inev—”
“You’re defending Americans. Now, that I like.”
“Not at all. I’m saluting greatness and originality without pretending to know or to judge anybody’s integrity.”
Norm didn’t even know what he was arguing. One potshot about Edison and he was suddenly trapped in Wayne’s dissertation. “What about Ripken?”
“Who?”
“Cal Ripken,” he snapped. “The shortstop! Retired now, but he played in over twenty-six hundred straight games with—”
“The help of steroids.”
“Bullshit.” Norm turned to leave, furious with himself. “Ben Franklin!” he bellowed over his shoulder.
“Ah, Franklin!” Wayne exclaimed. “A great man, an amazing man, but the first great American xenophobe, eh?”
“Whatever you say.” Norm headed toward the barn, waving off further objections. He watched through the slats until the professor hobbled home, then stepped into the light as a baby-shit-beige Mercedes puttered into view. Unbelievable. He’d forgotten Stremler always arrived a half hour early.
The vet didn’t acknowledge his wave, just parked in the shaded grass beneath the willow, pulled on rubber boots and organized the supplies in his trunk like a fussy angler preparing to fish a river. He responded to Norm’s warmest “Hello there” by asking, without even a glance, why he didn’t have any casino signs up, especially considering the proximity. That was another thing Norm had forgotten about the doc, that he’d started the anti-casino crusade.
“You in favor of gambling, Norm?” Still no eye contact.
“Of course not.”
“Then why don’t you let folks know?”
“Because I don’t see how putting up signs changes a damn thing.”
Stremler finally eyed him. “If you don’t believe in democracy, why don’t you move somewhere you don’t have to participate in one?”
The old vet loved words like democracy and proximity, and if there was a four-syllable synonym for a one-syllable word he’d brandish it. “I think that might be a slight overreaction, doc.” He took a breath. “The casino’s already half-built in case you haven’t noticed.”
Beet-faced, Stremler marched toward the parlor at a pace Norm couldn’t match. As usual, he insisted on seeing months’ worth of records before cocking an eye at the first cow. He studied the daily milk temperatures and yields as well as the monthly stats on somatic cell counts, leukocytes and production, zeroing in on cows that had calved in the last year.
Norm had downplayed the situation, not wanting it to sound urgent. There was a little mastitis issue the doc could check out whenever he had the time. No hurry, he’d said, but he hadn’t expected it to take three weeks for Stremler to show up.
The vet reshuffled the papers, agitated. “Where are the other culture tests on your bulk tank?”
“You’ve got ’em all there.”
“This is January and April, Norm. We’re in late June here.”
“Those are the most recent ones I’ve got.”
Stremler pulled his glasses off, baring eyeballs with too much white around the edges. “Hey, you need to wake up here. This isn’t going to just spontaneously rectify itself. You need to pay for a culture test and a staph antibody test so you know exactly which animals to segregate. You can’t ballpark this sort of thing. And if you’ve dried some of these chronics twice already and they’re still carrying and their production’s still low, you’ve got to cull them. Understand?”
“You want to actually look at the animals,” Norm said, “or are the numbers more important to you?”
Stremler put his glasses back on to gauge this insolence. “I’d have been out here weeks ago if you’d told the truth about how bad it was.” He started toward the main barn, explaining that while he’d skip lunch he most certainly wasn’t about to be late for an appointment at an Abbotsford dairy.
Norm remembered that Stremler fancied himself an international businessman, seeing as how he stuck his arm inside some Canadian cows and rolled so freely over the border with his fancy NEXUS pass.
After inspecting a dozen scabbed udders, the vet looked up as if he’d just caught Norm mounting one of his heifers. “Some of these definitely have staph. The carriers need to be milked separately or not at all, and a few need to go on antibiotics immediately.”
Moments later, he jabbed Norm with another glare. “Your bedding’s atrocious. They need dry wood chips or, better yet, sand. Your cows are disconsolate, Norm. You need Brandon, or someone who understands them, out here full-time.”
Norm forced a laugh. “He’s a little busy these days, if you haven’t heard. I’ve got Roony helping me out.”
“Roony Meurs,” Stremler said like a prosecutor calling a witness, “is the only dairyman I know who’s contracted both farmer’s lung and salmonella twice.” He inspected another udder. “That boat of yours still taking up prime barn space, Norm?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The security around here looks nonexistent. Anyone could walk right up to your bulk tank.”
“Yeah, and who, exactly, would want to?”
“Don’t play dumb, Norm. You read the papers, I presume. Ever hear of botulinum? Someone empties a bottle of that in your tank, it gets trucked away and mixed with the rest of the milk supply and half a million lives are at risk.”
Of course, Norm thought. That’s how the chief got his little speech on the subject. Patera and the doc had a weekly chess game, and he couldn’t imagine anything more excruciating.
“You consider selling, Norm?”
He snorted. “Who’d want a dairy in this shape?”
Stremler curled an eyebrow. “Developers.”
Norm grunted, amazed. “You’re asking if I’d sell to a developer?”
“Suit yourself.” Stremler crouched beneath one last cow. “My farm looked like this, I’d off myself.”
Norm hesitated, speechless. Did he hear the doc correctly? It was barely more than a whisper, so maybe he missed a word or two. “You’ll send me a bill?”
“No, you’ll write me a check right now.” Stremler glanced at his Rolex. “Two hours, so four hundred.”
“Nice big number to round up to,” Norm mumbled, his gaze just low enough to miss Stremler’s eyes. No matter what the bill, the vet always acted put out when you paid up, as if you’d stiffed him. Norm fumbled for his checkbook and did the math, multiplying two hundred by forty by fifty-two; at this rate, the doc collected more than four hundred grand a year belittling bankrupt dairymen.
By the time Stremler’s Mercedes left a diesel fart for Norm to stand in, it was midafternoon and he realized that he needed food and a nap or he’d soon collapse. But before heading to the house, he lit a Winston, scanned the ditch for Wayne or any other voyeurs and revisited his mailbox fantasy, shutting everything else out—the vet’s warnings, his own worries about Jeanette and Brandon—to indulge in a moment of uncluttered hope. He took a long drag, bent at the hips and peered inside the box at a stack of envelopes and colorful flyers, then lingered in the unsympathetic glare, his heart slowing as he clumsily flipped through them, the only one with any girth returning canceled checks. He opened a letter from the Dairymen’s Association and scanned the bold type until he came to: “In the hands of a terrorist, a dairy is every bit as deadly as a chemical factory or a nuclear plant.” Norm grunted and, out of habit, thumbed through the junk—flyers for home security, farm equipment scams and another E.D. pitch even cheaper than the last. Pretty soon they’d be giving erections away in the mail. He felt around the sides and top of the box, in case something had been taped to the interior, but his hand came out empty and black.
Could the postman have considered the money outgoing mail? Not that Norm could do anything about that. Excuse me, did you happen to find ten grand in my box? And what if he was the only one on Boundary Road not getting paid? Didn’t the hustler say he’d come back if more of his neighbors didn’t sign up? It occurred to Norm that he was probably being watched right this minute by people laughing their butts off. He glared into the glassy reflections in the Canadian hills until he felt something crawling on his free hand and glanced at a large honeybee that flew off when he flapped his fingers. He didn’t see where but didn’t have to wonder long, because something brushed his right cheek and left a burning pinch below his eye. He squealed, dropped the mail, spiked his cigarette and lurched around, one hand holding his face, the other whirling spastically.
Had to be Dunbar’s goddamn bees. He brought crates in every spring to pollinate his laser-straight raspberry rows and—surprise, surprise—the bees stuck around all summer to repeatedly sting Norm, who was more than mildly allergic. Big Tom slipped out of dairy farming into berries and out of an old wife into a young one as easily as most people changed clothes. Then, without a flicker of shame, came his platoons of illegal workers.
Norm was cursing Tom and patting the swelling pouch beneath his eye when a Plymouth sedan rolled to a stop in front of him as if God had hand-delivered somebody for him to yell at.
A stout woman with hyper-blinking eyes and a raised birthmark on her neck rolled down her window and looked at him. “Mr. Vanderkool?”
“What?” he barked.
“I’m pulling over.” She parked precisely on the narrow shoulder and walked toward him slowly, nervously. A young man popped out the other side, straightening his collar and hurrying to catch up. Were they from the Ag office? Had Stremler already spread the word? But the woman’s stricken expression made Norm suspect it was far worse than that. Picking up his mail, he braced himself for the worst news a parent can hear. He stood there already feeling guilt and loss and Jeanette’s delayed reaction and the burden of meeting everyone else’s expectations about how a parent should grieve. Though by the time the woman closed in and said two words—“Rebecca Wright”—he recognized the diction and body language of a regulator.
“I’m with the EPA,” she added, polite but hardly friendly. She’d no doubt learned that a sense of camaraderie is the last thing you want to conjure with someone you’ll likely have to punish. “We’re here to inspect your compliance with the Dairy Nutrient Management Plan,” she said, handing him an envelope like she was serving a warrant. “We’ve been recording high levels of nitrates and algae growth in Fish-trap Creek. So we’ll need to take a look at your waste repository.”
“Lots of dairies in this valley,” he bluffed, an ache spreading across his chest.
“Not upstream from where we sampled, Mr. Vanderkool.” Her eyelashes were fluttering so fast that Norm worried they’d fall off. “And with tribal shellfish and salmon protections being what they are, sir, we’re required by law to take action if we find low dissolved-oxygen levels …”
He wasn’t listening, wondering simultaneously how much chest pain could be chalked up to indigestion and whether this was a warning or a raid. He’d heard about the EPA showing up with aerial photos that left no doubt about who was polluting what. “What about all those new cul-de-sacs?” he asked, hating his petulant tone. “You policing them, or just going after the lowest hanging fruit?” He’d heard Morris Crawford deliver this argument much more diplomatically, but now he had to finish it. “We can’t regulate ourselves back into yesterday, Ms. Wright, can we?”
Her lip tremor made him feel like a monster. “We’re here to inspect your operation from the parlor to the pond, Mr. Vanderkool. The sooner we begin, the quicker it will be over. Depending on what we find, we might issue a warning. This would put you on notice that there appears to be a problem, in which case you may want to contract with someone to figure out a better site for your lagoon.”
He snorted and then glared at her with his good eye, the other swelling itself shut. She took another collarbone-heaving breath and looked away. Norm turned his scowl on the trainee, who reared back as if he’d been slapped.
Beyond them, Jeanette was standing beneath the green willow in the driveway, her hands clasped. Across the ditch, Wayne Rousseau was propped against a railing, blowing smoke, his slender shadow falling over the deck. Norm pivoted on his good knee until he saw Sophie, in turquoise shorts, pinning colorful wet panties to her clothesline.
Nobody wanted to miss this hanging.