Thin Gray Lines

by Mark Hazard

  She glared at him, eyes narrowing. “Danny…”

  “I think we can all agree…” Corus’s voice cut through the argument before it began. “Sometimes it’s good to not know things.”

  Jameson smirked and nodded. “Being at peace with the unknown. We talk about that in group.”

  “Group?” his wife said. “You’ve been going back to group?”

  “I have, baby. I’m doing it for all of us.”

  Danny offered out his hand, and she slid hers into it. Their fingers interlaced and closed the space between them.

  Corus closed his eyes, thinking about the pancakes he’d left uneaten on the railing of the Tanner’s porch.

  FORTY-SIX

  For days, they watched the farm, as NTSB, police, and other agencies scoured it. A work crew tore down the remnants of the DC, hauling its blackened guts off to form a pile of scrap by the road. After the third day, in the cover of darkness, they piled into a rusting tuna boat and rolled down the road, and onto the hard pack. The driver coasted to a stop so as not to use the old, squeaky brakes.

  Five Mexicans exited the vehicle, two of whom held shovels.

  “It smells so bad.” Oswaldo limped toward the blackened floor on crutches. “I hope that fucker Arlo died in the blaze.”

  “I told you, he showed up afterward,” Chito said. “I thought he was going to kill me?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. They have me on these painkillers.”

  “I’m on the same painkillers.” Chito hoisted his cast-bound arm. “You’re just getting old.”

  They trudged over to the flat black spot and crossed themselves before stepping onto it. “Father in heaven,” Oswaldo said, “We pray for the soul of our cousin Jorge.”

  “Fucker thought he could fly a plane,” Chito said. “For a second he had me convinced too.”

  “He did fly the plane,” Oswaldo said. “Verdad?”

  “Si. He flew the plane.”

  “And that is how we will remember him.”

  They tapped at the sooty concrete with their shovels, Oswaldo using his crutches. Little pink-pink sounds floated up around them.

  “It’s so damn dark. Why can’t I light a flashlight?” Chito said.

  “No. No flashlight,” Miriam said. “We work in darkness.”

  Pink-pink.

  Pink-pink.

  Pink-pink.

  Tang-tang.

  “I found something,” Paco said. He was the owner of the tuna boat that had driven them that night.

  Chito stooped over the spot and ran his hand along the floor, sweeping ashes to one side. His fingertips brushed over a ring.

  The panel made a crunching sound and broke apart like a cracker. Chito pulled the rest of the crumbling pieces off and pressed down. His hand found a firm, unburned metal beneath. It hadn’t been bent or smashed in. This hatchway was untouched.

  “This is it. This is the second bunker.”

  “Set up the tent,” Oswaldo said.

  They’d bought it at CheapValue in town and removed the floor with a pair of scissors. Now, they set it up and draped a tarp over it for good measure. Antonio crawled inside, and Miriam handed him the cutting torch.

  Every half minute or so, Antonio stuck his head out the flap and took breaths of clean air. Then he took a big gulp and retreated inside.

  The sixth or seventh time he poked his head out, he said, “Take it off. I’m through.”

  Oswaldo kept watch as Antonio and Miriam descended the ladder with Chito and Paco behind them.

  “Now can I use a flashlight?” Chito turned it on, illuminating the bunker.

  Twenty-five hastily piled bricks of cash sat in an otherwise empty room.

  “I guess they were planning for growth,” Antonio said.

  “You have to do that,” Chito added. “You have to plan to succeed, not to fail.”

  They all stared at him, brows heavy.

  “Just something Jorge used to tell me.” Chito sniffed. “You have to take risks to make room for your success.” Tears overwhelmed him, shaking his shoulders. “You have to actualize.”

  Miriam picked up a brick of cash in both hands and offered it to Chito. “Jorge did this. He made this possible. I thank him for actualizing.”

  “We can throw a big party for him every year on his birthday,” Antonio said. “For now, let’s move our asses.”

  Chito cuffed tears out of his eyes. “You hear that, Jorge? We’re rich.” He smiled as he pinned the brick to his side under his cast and climbed up the ladder.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  A stiff wind flipped up the collar of Randall’s jacket as he walked out to the seeder. He clamped a hand onto his hat to keep it from blowing away. Far away, thunder rumbled, and black clouds rolled in from the west, ominous but ripe with rain.

  After a week staying in motels in Boise and a mountain town called Ketchum in Idaho, letting their love bloom unrestricted for the first time, Randall and Olive made the biggest decision of their lives. In many ways, it was a larger risk than any they’d taken previously, but after encountering a world free of Iris’ spell and influence, cutting away from its vestiges took no convincing.

  They gave her parents’ money away.

  To poor people, to the homeless, to women’s shelters and noble charities. All anonymously in cash, a few thousand at a time, moving from state-to-state in a big western loop. When Olive’s car was empty, and they’d unburdened themselves from her parents’ ill-gotten wealth, they returned to find the farm lonely and devoid of care.

  The farm had Iris’ touch all over it, but it was not her creation. That legacy belonged to Olive’s paternal grandparents. The DC burning down was a good start on buffing away her fingerprints entirely. Strangely enough, the farm was the place where they most keenly felt and enjoyed her absence.

  There was a danger in staying. Law enforcement, sure. Destitution, of course. But for Randall it was the foreboding inside he couldn’t name. Voices that spoke in Afrikaans, often from a pulpit, or in the pinched accent of the farm’s deceased matriarch. Voices that always demanded from him but never gave anything back, except to spare the lash when he was a good boy, and then only some of the time. Voices that resonated despite death or distance.

  Voices he was learning he had the freedom to ignore.

  The courage to do so, however, was another matter.

  Randall lugged a big, red canister with him, just enough fuel to drive the tractor back into the big barn and give it a proper fill up. Flecks of rain pelted the brim of his hat as he reached the spot where the big tractor had run out of gas. After pouring in the fuel, he climbed up into the cab, turned off the autopilot and drove it back toward the tractor barn.

  The distribution center kept drawing his eye, rather the lack of it. Its blackened footprint sitting next to a pile of blackened scrap might look ugly to some, but to Randall it was good to see it gone, to see what the fire burned away. It was even better to see what the fire left behind.

  Government types arrived every so often to take pictures and ask questions, from agencies he’d never heard of, more often interested in the potential for environmental harm than illicit activity. He was certain South Africa didn’t have a quarter as many agencies. Essential services were still hit or miss, making Randall shake his head when Rodger Tanner railed against the size of government. Too much government? Only in America.

  Randall was gassing up the tractor from the ground tanks, when a panel van with some kind of seal on its side rolled off the road toward the big house. Randall trotted over to lend his assistance.

  A man wearing jeans and a sweater with a lanyard around his neck got out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the sliding door on the other side. He pulled it back and let down a metal grate, then stepped up into the van. He pushed a slump-shouldered man out onto the grate in a wheel chair, then pressed a button that lowered the grate to the ground.

  The man’s hair hung over his face, lank and gray, unrecognizable except for the
stone chin.

  “My word.” Randall choked on the realization. “Rodger.”

  As the driver wheeled Rodger to the front steps, Randall trotted alongside. “Sir, you didn’t say you were coming home. I could have whipped up a ramp.”

  Rodger didn’t answer. He wore a cheap, plain gray sweatshirt and sweatpants. One arm hung in a sling.

  The attendant didn’t seem fazed by the inconvenience and backed the chair to the steps like a hand truck. Randall helped push it from the bottom, Rodger’s big frame jostling with each step.

  They got Rodger inside and turned him to face the oblong oval table in the entry hall.

  “Thanks for the help. Good luck, Rodger, and get well.” The attendant brushed his hands and walked back outside.

  Randall blinked, looked down at Rodger then ran out after him.

  “Hold up. I’m no nurse,” Randall said. “What do I do with him?”

  The driver danced down the steps, turned and cut a hand down. “He knows how to get on the toilet. Don’t let him tell you otherwise. Did someone tell you to install bars?”

  “Yes. We got a voice message. I have them, but I’ve yet to bolt them in.”

  “And he knows how to control his functions. So, if he poops himself, you gotta give him a stern talking to. Taking away his desert always gets him back on the program.” The driver strode for the van.

  “Poops himself?” Randall leapt down the stairs. “Wait up.”

  “I gotta get back to Spokane. You’ll figure it out.” The man got into his van and pulled away.

  Randall cursed in Spanish and slowly made his way back to Rodger’s side.

  “Shall I take you into the dining room, sir?”

  Rodger grunted. Randall took that as affirmative, and carefully rolled him down the hall and to the right.

  The dining room was bare. No files or papers or boxes. Olive had asked that Randall also remove the TV from the wall and donate it to the VFW.

  “Where is it?” Rodger croaked.

  The files and computers were gone from the makeshift office space when Olive and Randall had returned. The next day, a private courier van returned it all in boxes sealed with FBI tape, but explaining that would bring up the specter of prison time that hung over Rodger on top of his injuries and the loss of his wife.

  “It’s in the new office.” Randall’s voice was raspy with emotion for some reason. “The old one, rather.”

  Olive had gone through the boxes, with Randall’s help, gleaning everything about the farm’s activities she could and refiling everything into the previously unused office space with its large desk and corner views. She spent so much time in the new office Randall assumed she was there at that moment, before remembering her big meeting with the co-op board.

  “Olive will be back soon. Shall I fetch you a cool drink?”

  Rodger stared despondently at Iris’ empty chair.

  Randall came back a moment later with a glass of iced tea and set it on the table. “If you like, I could take you to the den. There’s still a TV in there.”

  Again, Rodger didn’t answer.

  “I’m sorry, but I must go now.”

  He turned back through the kitchen, headed for the rear sliding door.

  “Randall,” Rodger called in a breathy approximation of his former voice.

  Randall returned, having to step up against the table edge so Rodger could see his face. “Ja, boss.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Randall frowned. “Sir…”

  “Why are you here?”

  The question offended and scared Randall at the same time.

  He jawed up and down. “I… Well, I… Sir, I’m just here. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  “There’s twenty farms that would hire you like that.” Rodger snapped his fingers, suddenly looking alive again.

  “Ja, I suppose that’s true. But I work here.”

  “This is a farm,” Rodger said. “Not a plantation. A farm pays employees for labor.”

  “Is this about my pay? Boss, I—”

  “Pay’s not late, Randall. It’s never coming.” Rodger huffed, getting agitated, as if Randall was forcing him to speak unpleasant truths. “With legal fees and medical bills, our cash reserves are… And then will come the seizures, Randall. The furniture, the equipment, maybe even our land purchases. Maybe even this house and the goddamned chair I’m sitting in.”

  “Sir? How can they do that?”

  “Because that’s what they do to drug dealers. They punish them, as they should.”

  “Dealers? You didn’t deal.”

  “Sounds like Arlo and Baynes were running a side business we didn’t know about, but it looks bad. One of their pushers on the west side is going to testify.”

  “Arlo was a snake.”

  “The lawyer says he can handle it. And he thinks I can play dumb and pin the rest on Iris. He said he already transferred everything into Olive’s name in case. Lawyer says that sometimes acts as a firewall.” He folded his hands in his lap. “Point is, Randall, I can’t afford to keep you on. Whatever doesn’t get taken, I’ll need to sell to finance my legal team and, if I win, my forced retirement. No one’s gonna hire a fifty-eight-year-old cripple.”

  Randall’s chest swelled, and a feverish chill coursed through him. He’d heard these dire predictions in one form or another, both from Olive and from chatty government workers on site. But hearing it now made it more real.

  “You need to go,” Rodger said. “Don’t make me say sorry. But I am. I’m sorry for all of it. Please don’t make a fuss. If I start getting emotional, I won’t stop.”

  “I’m staying,” Randall said. “You can make this work, boss. I’ve never seen you give up.”

  “I’ve lost everything,” Rodger moaned, spittle stretching between his dry, colorless lips.

  “You still have breath, and you still have Olive.”

  “How can she ever forgive me?”

  That wasn’t for Randall to say. “I’ve a debt to pay. Not to you or any one person. It isn’t a debt of money. It isn’t a debt I can describe to you now. But I intend to pay it the only way I know how, making those little green lines stretch to the horizon.”

  Rodger’s eyes searched his.

  “We got some seed in the ground already. The rest is bought and paid for.” Randall jabbed a finger to the south. If I have to weed every inch of every row myself, I will. And if they take the tractors, I’ll uproot the crop by hand. And when it cures, I’ll pick it up myself. And what God sees fit to give us, we will use to rebuild and help others.”

  Rodger didn’t appear inspired by that. “My princess would know what to do. She was a princess, you know.”

  Randall couldn’t begin to agree with the statement, but Rodger looked up, expecting a response.

  For Randall, Iris had been the key.

  Seeing the awful ways she treated her daughter, while knowing that Olive deserved none of it, had finally given him vital perspective, permission to declare without reservation that his upbringing had been something perverse. Just as Iris’ abuses had always been about her meanness and not Olive’s worth, Randall’s view of himself and the world had been constructed by his so-called pastors and their adherents. It had never truly been about God or Randall or his sinfulness, but about their sinister and controlling interests.

  Olive’s immense courage in facing down her mother had given him hope, but also a duty to pull his weight. They had to tear down the false idols as many times as it took until they were both free.

  “Olive runs things now,” Randall said. “Not in name. Truly.”

  He left before Rodger could respond.

  Randall made quick work of the handicapped railings in the bathroom, then took the seeder out and planted forty-five acres before Olive’s little hatchback cruised along the road toward the house. Luckily, he was only a quarter mile away, and left the tractor on auto while he raced on foot to give her a heads up before walking into the house.
She got out of the car with alarm plastered on her beautiful little face.

  “Randall?”

  “Sorry, love,” he panted. “It’s just… Your pa is back home.” He took a big breath. “Van brought him. He’s in the dining room.”

  Olive looked to the house, the hair of her chestnut wig blowing in the breeze. She nodded, and they walked toward the door.

  “How’d it go? Did they treat you respectfully?”

  “Half of them have known me since I was born. My mother’s disappointment in me was well-known. They think I’m an idiot weakling. One farmer even made a bid for Tanner Farms right there in front of everyone.”

  “Was it a good bid?”

  “He was practically licking his lips and twirling his mustache, so what do you think? They think we’re dead in the water.”

  “Is the co-op staying together?”

  “Without control over distribution, there is no co-op. They want to build a new DC. Somewhere else.”

  A truck pulled into the complex, one Randall had seen many times before. Kline Harlow stepped out with a shorter, pot-bellied man, both wearing suit jackets with bolo ties.

  Olive turned back.

  The two men approached Olive’s car. Kline had his thumbs in his belt loops. He was mid-forties, big like Rodger.

  “Afternoon.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “We wanted to make sure our message was properly received.”

  “You want to build the new DC on neutral ground,” Olive said. “I agree that’s for the best.”

  The two men shared an uneasy glance.

  “There are quotas,” the pot-bellied man said. “Deals in place. Contracts with Taiwan, South Korea. If this farm doesn’t produce, those contracts go under. All our farms suffer.”

  “Tanner Farms would be better served under proper management.” Kline cast a look at the footprint of the DC. “Especially considering the shameful events that recently passed.”

  “Shameful?”

  “What would you call it?” Kline said. “You parents got so big off their illicit activities, now we can’t afford their failures. We’re all in your orbit.”