by Sue Hardesty
"The box you gave me? Read about your dad's love of windmills. He teach you how to fix them?"
"Yep. Left me some tools and manuals. I wrote off and got others. He taught your dad first before he went off to the mines. Benny loved windmills as much as our dad."
"Do you know anything about the mine where he died?"
"I'll never forget it. A salt mine in Louisiana. The Belle Isle Mine." Uncle Herm paused. "Often thought of going back there for a look-see."
"Maybe we can go together."
"I'd like that. Meantime, we need to get a windmill repaired."
"What kind of windmill is this?"
"This here's a Samson like Bahb's."
"What are you looking for? Maybe I can help."
"Pump rod. One you brought was busted so bad I couldn't fix it."
"Well, shit! Why would anyone take the trouble to ruin it?" Loni wiped her face with her sleeve while Uncle Herm searched through the pile. The iron was already too hot to touch, so Loni re piled the wood. The sun was baking their heads by the time he was down to the motor parts. Digging out a pump rod, Uncle Herm finally answered, "Makin' things harder for others."
"Is there a whole windmill here?" She tried to remember what she had heard. Something about the old man pulling down windmills.
"Used to be," Uncle Herm answered. "Been picked over for parts more than sixty years though. This Samson windmill was a favorite out here before the Stover Company later made the Oil Rite and Aermotor 702." Uncle Herm tossed the pump rod in the back of the jeep and walked over to the windmill fan. "The 702 was the most popular, especially after World War II. Most still work."
Hanging onto the center hub, Uncle Herm gave a fierce grunt and pulled up the fan, standing it on its end. Loni watched in surprise. "My god! That thing's huge! It's more than twice as tall as you are!"
"Looks like somebody else needed blades." Uncle Herm counted five missing. "Gotta be the Burnt Wells bunch. Only other Samson around here I remember still working outside Bahb's." He leaned the fan against the bottom of the old metal tank. "Bring me the tool box from under the front seat. I need penetrating oil."
Loni opened the box and handed him a squirt bottle. He sprayed oil on the nuts connecting three of the blades to the fan and sat in the shade of the tank to wait.
"Why three?"
"Bahb said he only had three damaged."
"I was so busy staring at the tank, I didn't even look up."
"Glad you're not trying to solve a crime for me," Uncle Herm teased. Then he got serious and stared at her as though he was trying to figure out what to say. "Daniel said you got shot at. Want to tell me about it?"
"Nothing to tell, though I'm working on it. Lola's helping me hunt for motorcycles in the county and who owns them. Maybe when I find out, I'll know more."
"Something's worrying James. Do you know what it is?"
His question surprised Loni. "Not the slightest."
"Think it's got anything to do with Rene's plane?"
"I don't know, Uncle Herm. I know I'm worried. I suppose Daniel told you Rene was murdered."
"Yeah. He slipped up, so don't get mad at him. You think Rene's death and your gunshot are related?"
"Don't know yet, but I think so." Ready to change the subject, Loni looked down at the open tool box and pulled out a windmill manual. "Good lord, Uncle Herm. This was published over a hundred years ago!"
"Well, not much changed in the Sampson since then." He reached in the box and pulled out a worn tool resembling pliers.
"What's this?" Loni asked.
"It's pliers for the Sampson pump rod. One of the tools Dad gave me. He called it a Love Pump. He thought it was pretty funny." Uncle Herm grinned as he threw a stick at a curious lizard. It scurried to the stick and promptly climbed on. Uncle Herm laughed. "Stick lizard. You gotta love 'em."
Loni touched the dirt in front of her. "Good. Too hot for rattlers to crawl too."
"You have any snakes or cactus up in the Northwest where you went to school?"
"No. Just some gorse down the coast."
"What's gorse?"
Loni was quiet a minute. "Remember the time you took Daniel and me hunting muskrats down the canal and that jackrabbit jumped out in front of us?"
"Yeah." Uncle Herm grinned. "There was a field of safflower on one side of us and that canal on the other. That field was at least a half mile long. The poor rabbit's tongue was hanging out before he got to the end."
Momentarily lost in the vision of that huffing jackrabbit sitting under a catclaw bush, Loni finally said, "Gorse is like safflower. If you get in it, somebody has to find a tractor to come in and get you out."
"Sounds like jumping cactus." Uncle Herm started to remove the nuts. "Only safflower don't jump on you."
Thinking back on Flossie, Loni's anger flashed. She kicked dirt on a cone nosed beetle to watch it stand on its head. "Nice thing about the Oregon coast, though, nothing poisonous." Loni checked the back of a blade Uncle Herm handed her for crawly things before she put it on the backseat of the Jeep. "No cockroaches there. Mosquitoes get blown away pretty fast. Best of all," she added, fanning herself, "no goddamn heat." She stacked the second blade on the first. "Did Billy Bains really take down three windmills?"
"Yep. This here's Moon Mountain. Then there was Whitehall and Old Six."
"Whitehall was that away, right?" Loni pointed north.
"It was. About ten miles." Uncle Herm grunted as he strained to take off another nut.
"Where's Old Six?"
"Way up on Eagle Tails." Uncle Herm nodded to the west. "Camped there every summer. Only water for miles was at that windmill."
"Why did he take them down?"
"It was during the second war. My dad, your dad, and I dug dams on Centennial Wash to catch rain water. One dam could water a lot of cows during the winter. Of course, August thunderstorms washed the dams out, so we went back every year to fix them." He threw another stick at the lizard. "I really miss your dad." They watched the lizard jump from the old stick and clamber onto the new one. "We camped on the banks of the wash in a clump of rocks we called the Shit House hills."
Loni laughed. "You serious?"
Uncle Herm said, "You bet. The rocks jutted up just like outhouses. Up that high you could see everything happening in the Harquahala Valley. I must have been nine the summer the Army came." Uncle Herm managed to get another bolt unscrewed and handed it and the nut to Loni. His blue work shirt darkened down the back and under the armpits from sweat.
Loni didn't dare ask if it wouldn't be cheaper to buy a new fan blade. She knew "waste nothing" was the law of the land.
Uncle Herm continued, "The Army came in to train, they said. Mostly they dumped, burned, and buried. Dad called it the government's biggest cost-plus burial ground boondoggle."
"Did they really bury tires?"
"That and food and lumber and gas and oil. Stuff we needed to survive."
"Why?"
"Who the hell knows? Some Washington idiot's idea. Some said Americans needed to sacrifice for the war. Kept them going. Others said it was corruption. I say follow the money. Been a lot of years and nobody I know of explained it." He sat a minute in thought. "Dad always said justice is like greed or God and laws. It only exists in the minds of men. And most laws are made to help people keep what they got until somebody comes along bigger and richer."
"And that can't change?"
"Too late. Soon as somebody suggests it, the greedy bastards holler socialism! Communism! Corporate America is too powerful now, too big to fail. It's like a huge vacuum, lowering prices until it sucks small businesses and farms into its bowels and shits them out in one big polluted turd not even useful for fertilizer. Families break up and scatter, working for corporate America wherever they can find a job." Uncle Herm's laugh was hollow. "But then, what the hell do we country boys know?"
"I remember hearing a story about one of our relatives during the Great Depression. He put money in a bank
, and as soon as he walked out the front, they locked the doors behind him. So he circled around to the back door and took the money back at gunpoint. Did that really happen?"
Uncle Herm grinned. "Yep. Your grandfather's brother. It was in Texas. He was an outlaw till the day he died. Hid out in the Arizona desert to race horses. Then he switched to racing ostriches. Brought them in to herd cattle. Ate next to nothing and everything, laid an egg equal to a dozen chicken eggs, had huge drumsticks, loved the desert heat." Uncle Herm tilted his head back and laughed. "Problem was, those ostriches scared the shit out of the cows. They scattered so bad, some were never found. After that, Johnny bet his ostrich could beat any horse alive. Made a good livin' until everyone heard about it."
Prying another nut off, he stopped, sprayed again, and sat back down to toss the lizard another stick. The lizard ignored it. Instead, it picked up the one it was on and ran a short ways before it dropped the stick and climbed on. Looking around, the lizard ran across another stick and scurried up an ironwood tree. Uncle Herm watched the lizard and loosened the nut. He handed Loni the last blade.
They climbed back in the Jeep and found a vague trail to follow as they headed for Seven Mile Well. Grateful for the shade of the canvas top and the breeze cooling the sweat on her body, Loni wanted Uncle Herm to finish his story. "The windmills?"
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to finish." Uncle Herm laughed. "Well, Billy Bains gave the Army permission to use his land, so they let him hang out with them. That was after one of them shot a horse out from under one of his wranglers. They got nice to Billy after that."
As the road turned smooth, they picked up speed. "One August we didn't have much wind, and the windmills weren't pumping enough water to keep the tanks full. Don't know why Billy worried though, considering he had no cows since his dad died. Anyway, an Army sergeant told Billy that if he took down some of his windmills, then the rest would get more wind."
"Be serious. He actually believed that?!"
"I am. He did."
"He really went out and took down windmills to get more wind for the others?" Loni couldn't keep the amazement out of her voice.
"The two cowboys hired to take care of him even helped him. His dad's will paid those two cowboys to stay with Billy the rest of his life. He outlived both of them."
"So he died alone?"
Uncle Herm pulled his straw hat off to wipe inside the band, stained dark from years of sweat and dust. "Tried to get out there at least once a month or so. Took him some beans, flour for tortillas, and beer. Listened to him talk about his friends. His half coyote. His skunk. His horse." Uncle Herm smiled as he ran his hand through his hair. "Skunk lived under the house and let go every so often. Pretty hard to visit him on those days." Uncle Herm shook his big head. "I got so busy building the airport and keeping after contractors, I neglected him too long."
They were making good time. Loni started counting the humps of dirt. "How many planes did they finally dig up here?"
"Don't know. We counted thirty piles." Uncle Herm chuckled. Loni loved listening to his stories.
"How did you find the plane?"
"Our cable caught the propeller and drug it up out of the ground. Should have seen your dad's face just before he jumped off that tractor and ran. I wasn't far behind."
"Cable?"
"You don't remember?"
"No. Dad was pretty much gone by the time I was ready to hear stories."
"That's true," Uncle Herm said sadly. "Losin' your mom pretty much killed him." He continued, "We looped a cable on a small tractor and drug it across a space to clear the brush so we could build temporary corrals. That way, when the cattle got here from Old Mexico, we could get them cut, tagged, and branded, before we turned them out."
His eyes glazed in memory. "Too many times they came in sick. Even though the truck traveled at night, some got pushed into the middle while others tried to get on the outside. Then they'd push back out and go from hot and sweaty to cold and shivering." Uncle Herm pointed out the wide road. "This was the landing strip. It's still a good road. Too short though."
"I don't understand. Why did they bury them way out here? It's three hundred miles from the coast!"
"They were worried about a Japanese invasion. Out here they had time to dig them up and get them on their way."
How fast, Loni wondered.
"The plane we dug up was wrapped in rubberized tape to waterproof it."
"So they had to dig them up, unwrap them, clean them up, gas them, and then take off?" Loni shook her head in disbelief. "Whose crazy idea was that?"
Uncle Herm laughed. "Well, hell. Another thing never to be told." Leaving the smooth runway behind, Uncle Herm slowed down again on the deep rutted road. "After the Army ran us off so they could dig them up, they came by the house and explained what they could. Seems the government buried them from Old Mexico to Canada. The two I seen were around ninety miles apart."
"No way! Are they still in the other one?"
"Hard to say. That plane we pulled up had already been there thirty years or so."
* * *
At the well, Loni took photos of anything that didn't match their own tires and tracks. Working around Bahb as he held the rod for Uncle Herm to connect, she found tracks from an unshod horse. One hoof had a crack in it. She found prints from a tennis shoe. "Look at this," she said in amazement. "Why would anyone wear tennis shoes on a horse?"
Uncle Herm laughed at Loni. "Good way to get your foot caught in a stirrup for sure, especially tryin' to herd some of those feisty half Brahmas you got. They run you down for the fun of it."
Loni stopped to re read the writing on the tank. "Tell me about the diary again, Bahb."
"You forget I no tell stories in day."
"You forget I don't believe the evil one will get me for telling stories in the day."
"You forget I do."
"Well, forget about your Navajo beliefs this time and tell me the story from your Papago half."
Bahb smiled and shook his head.
"It's really hard to read anymore." She began to talk out loud, making up things. "Day Five. Ate mesquite beans. Day Six. No coffee since yesterday. Today found cone nosed bugs. Ate them. Bitter. And a lizard. Nasty thing. Day Eight. Fought Henry for a rattlesnake. Snake bit him so I won and ate well. Day Nine. Bugs again. Day Ten. Fished a dead bird out of the tank. Stunk. Day Eleven. Nothing. Day Twelve. Walking out." Loni paused. "Hey, Uncle Herm, what happened to them?"
"They were old men when I knew them. Dead long time now." Uncle Herm strained to tighten the nut on the pump rod. "Part of the Hellman tribe. Seems their horses wandered off and took days to get home. It was awhile before the oldest brother finally came looking for them. Found them a day out."
Loni stared at the faded date. 1933. The year Bahb was born.
Willie was sitting on Paint in the shade of the tank. Nine in the morning, and it felt over a hundred degrees. Loni didn't want to leave the shade. Finally she moved around the tank and walked over to Roanie. "Let's go, Willie." Groaning, she hop-stepped up on Roanie, stiff and sore from yesterday's long ride. Against Roanie's will, she followed Willie for miles as they trailed the rustler's tracks. As soon as she relaxed, Roanie started his side-hop dance to let her know how much he hated to follow anyone. Loni let Roanie catch up to Willie, and he peacefully kept a rolling walk beside Paint as long as his nose was out in front.
"Was rustling worse in the old days?"
"No. Easier to truck them out now. Sell them hundreds miles away."
Ignoring her sore butt, she focused on the track signs ahead of her. It was noon before they tracked the cattle to a cut in the barbed wire fence on the eastern border of the ranch. Cattle tracks ended where the tire treads started at a cut in the fence. Photographing the treads, Loni followed them until they disappeared at a paved road.
The sun overhead left neither shadows nor shade as Loni and Willie started back to the tank. When Willie pointed, Loni followed his finger to a coyote
following them, stealing from bush to bush. After another mile, the coyote gave up and loped away.
Watching his skulking had helped Loni ignore her burning thighs, rubbed raw. "Tell me how the Coyote got his yellow eyes, Willie."
"I tell you many times. You too old for stories now."
Loni kept wiggling in the saddle, standing in the stirrups or riding sidesaddle. Nothing helped. "Tell me something. I'm dying here," she whined.
Willie relented. "Coyote meet Blue Bird and tell him how beautiful he is. But Bird does not understand, so he throw his eyes straight up. When they fall back in Bird's eye holes, they are much brighter. Coyote ask Bird to brighten his eyes, so Bird take Coyote's eyes out and throw his eyes straight in the air and they come back much brighter. Coyote say, 'That great, Bird. I want eyes brighter.' 'Go away,' say Bird. 'I am tired.' But Coyote insist and throw his eyes back into the air."
