The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County

by Jerry Apps

  The village brought in a tractor with a front-end loader, filled in the crater made by the explosion, and planted the area with grass seed. Park visitors soon returned, children played on the playground equipment, and picnickers enjoyed the view of the lake on sunny summer afternoons. No protest marchers were in evidence.

  A Fish and Wildlife Services officer, Gretchen Kimberly, arrived to investigate the killing and injuring of the bald eagles and the destruction of the eagle nest, all federal offensives. Trying to put the incident in some kind of context, she talked with Emily Higgins from the historical society, who along with the nature club at Link Lake High School had sponsored the highly popular eagle cam.

  “All I know,” Emily told her, “is when the machine blew up the camera blew up, the nest blew up, and the eagles were killed.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “Nope, nobody seems to know. Sheriff ’s office and the local police are baffled. Terrible to see what happened to that eagle nest, and to think three eagles were killed. Just awful.”

  Officer Kimberly next stopped by the supper club to talk with Marilyn Jones; Karl Adams happened to be in Marilyn’s office as well. After introductions all around, Kimberly asked, “Why was the bald eagle nest destroyed? And who did it?”

  “That’s easy,” said Marilyn with anger in her voice. “Some wild-eyed, save-everything historian did it—but nobody’s talking. I tell you, if the historians ever get control of things in this country we’ll all starve to death. What a bunch of obstructionists they are. We’re trying to bring jobs to little Link Lake. What are they trying to do? Save a damn old bur oak tree that’ll probably die in a few years anyway.”

  “Can we get back to the eagle nest?” asked Kimberly.

  “Well, sure. It’s obvious. Whoever blew up the Alstage drilling machine killed the eagles. Why aren’t more people talking about the machine that blew up? It was worth a million dollars. What’s an eagle nest worth?”

  Officer Kimberly left the last question hanging. “You, sir,” said Officer Kimberly, as she turned to Karl, “what do you know about all this?”

  “Not any more than you’ve probably picked up by talking to the sheriff and our local police, which I assume you’ve done,” said Karl.

  “Yes, that’s where I started. But I’d like your take on what happened.”

  Karl explained his role as advance man for the mining company and said he believed the community had quieted down from the early debates about whether a sand mine should come to Link Lake.

  “Everything changed when our company brought in a drilling machine to do some preliminary exploration,” Karl said.

  “How so?” the officer asked.

  Karl went on to explain the defacing of the map, the increase in the number of protestors, and then how he was awakened by an explosion that shook the cabin where he was living.

  All the while the officer was taking notes.

  “What can you tell me about the eagle nest and the dead eagles?”

  “Not much, except as the military is prone to say, the eagles appear to be collateral damage. One of the little eagles survived—you knew that, right?”

  “Yes, I heard a vegetable farmer just out of town knows how to take care of wild animals.”

  “Tell you what,” said Karl. “I’ll take you out to his farm. I was out there for a thresheree a few weeks ago. I know him slightly.”

  When Officer Kimberly and Karl Adams arrived at the Ambrose farm, they stopped at the little roadside vegetable stand. A young boy sat behind the little counter.

  “Can I interest you in some fresh vegetables?” he said. “We picked them just this morning; nothing better than fresh-picked garden vegetables.”

  “What is your name, young man?” asked Karl.

  “It’s Noah Drake,” he said, smiling. He grabbed up an empty paper bag and was prepared to fill it with vegetables.

  “We need to talk with Mr. Adler. Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s up at his house.” Noah pointed to the house at the end of the driveway. “He said he wasn’t feeling well this afternoon and he asked me to tend to the vegetable stand.”

  “Thank you,” said Karl. “Sell lots of vegetables.”

  “I’ll try,” said Noah.

  Karl knocked on the door.

  “Y . . . yes?” said Ambrose when he opened it.

  “I’m Karl Adams and this is Gretchen Kimberly with the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

  “Come in,” said Ambrose, standing aside as they entered his modest but tidy kitchen.

  “Ambrose, you probably don’t remember me, but I talked with you at the Trail Marker Oak Days, and I was out here for the thresheree,” said Karl.

  Ambrose looked carefully at Karl. “Yes, I . . . remember. What can I do for you?” he asked, trying hard for the words.

  “Officer Kimberly is here about the little eagle,” said Karl.

  “Yes,” joined in Kimberly. “We so much appreciate that you were able to take in this injured bird.”

  “Glad to do it,” said Ambrose as he walked to a far corner of the kitchen and picked up a cage he had built to house the injured bird.

  As Ambrose was retrieving the eagle, Karl’s eye caught a framed photograph of a young woman hanging on the wall next to the door. He looked carefully at the photograph and thought, There’s something very familiar about that woman.

  Ambrose handed the cage to Officer Kimberly with a big smile. “This little guy is doing well,” he said.

  “Thank you so much for taking such good care of him,” said Officer Kimberly. “I’ll take him off your hands. We have an eagle rehabilitation center in Dubuque, where they’ll take him until he can be released back in the wild. You’ve done a great thing, Mr. Adler.” She shook Ambrose’s hand. “A very important thing.”

  Karl and Officer Kimberly put the caged eaglet in the back of the officer’s car and headed back toward Link Lake. As they drove, Karl couldn’t get the photograph he saw on Ambrose’s wall out of his mind. He thought, I can’t believe it. But that woman looks a lot like my mother did when she was young. There is a striking resemblance.

  44

  Quiet Time

  Legions of Stony Field fans wrote hundreds of letters to the Link Lake Economic Development Council, to the Link Lake Village Board, and to the mayor. All pleaded, many insisted, some even threatened—and all had one message. “Reverse your decision. Tell the Alstage Sand Mining Company to get the hell out of Link Lake,” as one writer bluntly put it. The letters, which arrived in bundles and boxes, were mostly unopened and unread. The village officials, with the backing of the Link Lake Economic Development Council, had made up their minds. Since the ruckus over the blown-up drilling machine and the killed eagles, village officials dug in. As one of them said, “By God, we make our own decisions. We sure as hell aren’t going to listen to those wild-eyed liberal agitators that this tailender Stony Field stirs up on how we run our village.”

  Other than the letters pouring in from all parts of the country, which only a few people knew about, the Village of Link Lake was mostly back to its quiet, bucolic self. Ambrose Adler continued brisk sales of vegetables at his stand with the able assistance of Noah Drake. The Link Lake Supper Club, with its new Lake Coffee Bar, became increasingly popular as bicyclists traveling the bike trail through town stopped for coffee, some pastries, and free Wi-Fi.

  About the only change at the Eat Well Café was customers could no longer watch the eagle cam that had become one of the popular attractions. After a few days of discussion about the explosion, the destruction of the eagle nest, and the apparent inevitability of a sand mine coming to the park, most early morning customers at the Eat Well turned to other topics such as wondering who the next president was going to be and whether there was any rain in the forecast.

  But not Fred Russo and Oscar Anderson.

  “Fred, I don’t like it. Don’t like it one bit,” said Oscar.

  “You complaining about
your coffee again, Oscar? I happen to think the coffee is pretty damn good,” said Fred.

  “I’m not talkin’ about the coffee. I’m talkin’ about a feeling I’ve got.”

  “Oh, so now you wanna talk about Old Arthur. You know I got enough of Old Arthur for both of us, you don’t have to tell me about yours,” said Fred.

  “Dammit, Fred, it’s not my arthritis that’s keeping me awake these days.”

  “Something keepin’ you awake, huh? Know what, I got this damn whip-poor-will that sits right outside my bedroom window and calls ‘whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will’ all night long.”

  Oscar laughed then picked up his coffee cup and took a long drink.

  “Remember that column Stony Field wrote asking people to write to the mayor and the village board and some other folks? Have we heard if they got any letters? No, we have not. We don’t know if they got one letter or five hundred. I don’t trust that bunch. Don’t trust any of ’em,” said Oscar.

  “So?” said Fred. “Who cares?”

  “I, for one, care. And I’ll bet Emily Higgins and the rest of the historical society membership cares. Those backers of the sand mine have put a lid on things, and I don’t like it. Don’t like it one bit,” said Oscar. “I’ve got a feeling this whole thing is not over—we got us a few weeks before October, which is when the mine is supposed to open. Lots could happen between now and then.”

  “Like what?” asked Fred.

  “I don’t know,” said Oscar. “But I got a feeling. Got a strong feeling.”

  “Say, Oscar,” said Fred, changing the subject. “You see that Karl Adams fellow lately? Used to eat breakfast here every morning.”

  “I suspect he went into hiding,” said Oscar, chuckling. “A bunch of folks here in Link Lake were fooled by this guy, him not telling us that he worked for the mining company. People around here don’t like to be fooled. You bet they don’t.”

  45

  Karl Adams

  Since the big community meeting when everyone learned that Karl Adams worked for the mining company, he ate breakfast every morning at Marilyn Jones’s new Lake Coffee Bar, where he didn’t have to worry about running into any of the locals. The coffee bar customers were mainly bicyclists passing through town and a growing group of Milwaukee and Chicago people who owned second homes on the lake.

  Most mornings Marilyn joined Karl over breakfast. She had become quite impressed with Karl and the contributions he had made toward both the enhanced Fourth of July celebration and the wildly successful Trail Marker Oak Days. She realized that a number of people in Link Lake were unhappy with Karl, especially when they learned that he worked for the mining company. It was Marilyn who suggested to Karl, “If I were you, I would lay low for the next several weeks, until things quiet down a bit more at least.”

  Karl was smart enough to figure that out for himself, thus he seldom appeared downtown but spent most of his time at his cabin and at the coffee bar.

  A couple weeks after Stony Field’s column asked people from around the country to write letters to the backers of the sand mine, Marilyn confided in Karl that they had received several thousand. Outside of the village board, the mayor, and the executive committee of the Economic Development Council, no one knew this and Marilyn wanted to keep it that way. Marilyn told Karl that Billy Baxter from the Ames County Argus had inquired about how many letters they had received. Marilyn told him they had gotten a few, but not enough to warrant doing a story.

  Karl listened to all of this but didn’t respond. He was not one to keep secrets from people—he believed they had a right to know what was happening in their community. But then he quickly reminded himself that he had done the same thing; he had people believing he was someone different from who he really was. He felt more conflicted than he had ever remembered feeling. There was something about little Link Lake that was getting to him, crawling under his skin, making him examine things about his life that he had not thought about before. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. Maybe that’s why I am feeling as I do these days. But never before had he felt that he was being dishonest with people. He had always prided himself in being an upfront what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of person.

  Before he had signed the contract with Alstage, he had done considerable research on the company—some of these companies had broken zoning and environmental laws and he did not want to work for any of them. But the Alstage Sand Mining Company appeared to have abided by all the laws and regulations as they developed mines. Even with all of the controversy the proposed mine created in the Link Lake community, the mining company was not dishonest about any of it—or at least it didn’t appear so. They had been right up front from the very beginning of the negotiations with the village; they had even contributed several thousand dollars toward the village’s summer events. And what did they get for all of their efforts? A million-dollar machine blown to bits. I was the one that was being dishonest by not telling people from the beginning that I worked for the mining company. I was the dishonest one, not Alstage.

  After his mornings at the Lake Coffee Bar, he returned to his cabin and spent most afternoons fishing and thinking. These late summer days were not the best for fishing, but he did manage to catch the occasional large-mouth bass and usually a bluegill or two, all of which he returned to the lake.

  His thoughts took him in two directions. When he wasn’t pondering whether he’d been dishonest by not letting people know who he really was, he couldn’t stop thinking about the photograph that he saw hanging on Ambrose Adler’s wall. It reminded him so much of his mother as he remembered her when he was a little kid growing up in California. As the years passed, he had not been close to his mother—she was always working hard at her job, and he traveled the country. He realized now that it had been several months since they’d talked, and he decided to give her a call one evening after he had returned from fishing.

  “Mom, it’s Karl.”

  “Oh, Karl, it’s so good to hear from you. Where are you?” Karl’s mother had given up trying to keep track of her widely traveled son.

  “I’m in Hicksville, Wisconsin,” answered Karl. “In a little village called Link Lake. I’m staying in a cabin on the lake, quite a nice place.”

  “Where did you say you were?” his mother asked again.

  “Link Lake, Wisconsin. Have you ever heard of the place?”

  “No, I guess I haven’t,” said his mother after another pause. “What are you doing there?”

  “Oh, I’m working for this mining company that’s planning to build a sand mine in the village park. It’s been quite a struggle. Lots of people are opposed to having a sand mine in the park. One of the problems is there is an old oak tree that people claim is historic. They call it the Trail Marker Oak.”

  “Oh, really,” his mother said quietly.

  “Then there’s this environmental writer who has stuck his nose into the fray. Do you know of a writer called Stony Field?”

  “Yes, yes, I do. Everyone knows about Stony Field,” his mother replied.

  “Well this Field guy has gotten people all steamed up in opposition to the mine. It’s quite a mess. It’s an interesting place, though. It’s grown on me. I met this old farmer, named Ambrose Adler, a strange old guy who grows vegetables and talks to animals. But he’s interesting. He stutters so badly I can hardly understand him. But there’s something about the guy that I like.”

  “He does sound interesting,” his mother said quietly. “And a little different.”

  “And you know what? He has a photograph hanging on his wall that reminds me of how you looked when I was a little kid.”

  “Oh, Karl,” his mother said. “It’s been a long time since you were a kid—how could some old photo remind you of me? Have you met anyone else interesting there?”

  Karl answered, “Let’s see. Then there’s this woman who owns the Link Lake Supper Club. Her name is Marilyn Jones and, well, she can best be described as a go-getter. Unfortunately, it
seems she wants to take the village in a direction that many of the people don’t want to go, especially those interested in preserving the history of the village and such things like this Trail Marker Oak. All that this Jones woman sees is jobs, jobs, jobs. She thinks preserving history gets in the way of progress. I mostly disagree with her on that point—but I’ve got to be careful with what I say, as I’m working for the mining company, and she was the person who convinced the village board and the mayor to bring in the mine in the first place.”

  “My, it certainly sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” Karl’s mother said.

  “Everything really got tense a few weeks ago when somebody blew up one of the mining company’s big drilling machines.”

  “Really! Who did it?”

  “We don’t know, but everybody is sure worked up about it.”

  “You better be careful, Karl. Maybe you should pack up and leave that place.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom. I’ve been in tight spots before. Trying to work through these situations is what I get paid for.”

  “Well, you be careful. You hear me?”

  “I hear you, Mom, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  After he hung up, Karl thought, Something’s not right with Mom. She didn’t sound like her old self. Is she having problems at work? He was well aware that all newspapers were cutting staff and tightening down. Is she worried about her job?

  46

  Dry Weather