by Robert Greer
I left Spoon’s quarters that evening confused and a little hurt. He seemed to have Harriet in his corner, if not under his thumb, yet he wouldn’t admit to me that there was anything romantic between them. But I’d never mentioned Becky Walterman to him either, so in a sense we were even. And although he seemed certain that Koffman and Rodue would resurface, he’d been reluctant to offer any specifics about where and when. I felt even more ill at ease after Ricky Peterson and my dad, looking as nervous as expectant fathers, gave me less than two minutes of their time in what amounted to a dismissive pat on the head when I ran into them on my way back to the house.
As I stood in the ebbing twilight and watched them chat in low whispers as they headed for Ricky’s car, I felt petty and unincluded. That feeling of isolation stayed with me for the rest of the night as I wrestled with the fact that I hadn’t told my father, mother, or Ricky about what had happened in Hardin.
The next morning at a few minutes past ten, Sylvester King, our rural-route mailman of more than twenty years, a bug-eyed, stick-figured Ichabod Crane of a man given to runny noses and hysteria, stood pounding on our front door screaming at the top of his lungs that he’d just found Willard Johnson dead. He’d discovered Willard lying in a hay meadow near his house next to his overturned John Deere 8760 tractor. Willard’s skull had been crushed.
Sylvester had had the good sense to call 911 on his two-way before rushing the two miles from where he’d found Willard to our house. By the time he’d given the news to my mom, the only one home at the time, upsetting her normal rock steadiness with his out-of-breath gesticulations and guttural pleas for help, he was sweating like a racehorse. She left him standing on our front porch, shaking, drinking a glass of ice water, and perspiring, and rounded up Spoon and me from the machine shop, where we were busy fabricating stabilizing footings for the two culverts we planned to set that day. The three of us immediately headed out in one of our pickups for our south horse pasture to collect my dad.
We spotted him several minutes later, kneeling next to his horse, Smokey. Smokey was holding a hoof off the ground as my dad massaged his left hind fetlock.
“Don’t rile him,” he called out as Spoon brought the pickup to a stop several yards away and the three of us got out. “Poor guy stepped in a gopher hole, and he’s gone a little lame.”
I hoped that the injury to the amazingly spry nineteen-year-old horse my dad had raised from a colt was minor. Born nine months before me, and the calmest, most steady and most majestic horse I’d ever run across, Smokey had helped my dad transition through the dark days after Jimmy’s death.
Dad shook his head and ran his hand from fetlock to hock. “Nineteen years of runnin’ all over this place, not one day of sickness, and he goes and steps in a gopher hole.”
Hesitant to serve up another problem and in as calm a voice as she could muster, my mom said, “There’s been a terrible accident, Bill. Willard Johnson’s dead. Sylvester King found him a little while ago with his skull crushed in, lying next to that new tractor he bought this spring. It was overturned.”
“Shit!” The fact that my dad had cursed, and in front of my mom, caused me a start. “Been expectin’ trouble, but nothin’ like this,” he said. The look he flashed Spoon told me that he’d more than likely been mulling over Spoon’s prediction of trouble for weeks. “Let me see how well Smokey can walk and we’ll head on over to Willard’s.” He rose, grabbed the big bay’s reins, and led him in a tight half circle. “Come on, Smoke. Show me what you’re made of, boy.” Smokey hobbled every step of the way.
“Don’t think he can make it,” Dad said to Spoon. “Better go get a horse trailer. We’re gonna have to haul him back home.”
As Spoon turned to leave, my dad called after him, “And Spoon, make sure the trailer you bring has a horse-doctorin’ kit.”
Spoon sprinted back to the pickup, wheeled the truck around, and was headed back to headquarters when mom asked, “You don’t think Willard’s death had anything to do with those Acota people or Koffman, do you, Bill?”
“Don’t really know,” Dad said, running an open hand reassuringly along Smokey’s withers. “Maybe we should’ve asked Spoon.” He cupped a hand to his eyes and watched the rooster tail of dust rise from behind Spoon’s pickup. “He’s the one in the crystal-ball business.”
By the time my folks and I reached what my mom insisted on calling the accident site, Sheriff Woodson and one of his deputies were on the scene. Spoon had stayed behind to watch Smokey and wait for the vet. The sheriff had cordoned off a twenty-five-by-twenty-five-foot area around Willard’s overturned tractor and was busy examining one of the tractor’s rear tires. A few feet from the tractor, a tarpaulin covered Willard’s body. All that was visible at one edge were the soles of Willard’s run-over work boots. Sylvester King, nervous and still shaking, stood between the sheriff and the three of us.
“Hell of a heavy piece of equipment to flip over out here in the middle of a perfectly level hay field,” said Woodson, leaning against the tractor tire, stroking his chin, and aiming the comment at no one in particular. “Stranger still that old Willard, a man with tens of thousands of hours behind the wheel of a tractor, would turn one on its side. Wouldn’t you agree, Bill?”
“Pretty much.”
The sheriff glanced down at the tarp. “I’d say it would be a real uncommon circumstance for old Willard to have hit his head on the one oversized, razor-sharp rock that happened to be jutting up outta this meadow as well. Could be coincidence, I guess,” he said with a
noncommittal shrug. “How’d you happen to be down here and find him, Sylvester?”
“He had a certified piece of mail I needed his signature on.”
“Good thing he did or we might notta found him for days.”
The sheriff’s matter-of-fact tone upset my mom. “He’s got kin in Great Falls and other folks who cared about him, Harvey. How about a touch of humanity on your part?” she said with displeasure.
“Yeah, I know.” Woodson looked only slightly and briefly embarrassed. “I wouldn’t want to think that Willard’s meetin’ his maker had anything to do with any of the problems you folks out here in the Willow Creek valley are havin’ with Acota Energy. There’s been enough pushin’, shovin’, and name-callin’ already. Wouldn’t want to think it escalated to this.” He eyed the tarp and shook his head.
“We didn’t start the pushin’ or the shovin’,” my dad shot back.
The sheriff turned and looked directly at me. “Maybe not, but from what I hear from Ed Koffman, you’re keeping it going. He charged into the office yesterday and complained that TJ assaulted him. To make matters worse, he said that hired man of yours, Witherspoon, threatened him with a shotgun. I was plannin’ on comin’ by your place to discuss the issue today. Didn’t expect I’d have to deal with a bigger problem.”
“What’s he talkin’ about, TJ?” my dad asked.
Knowing there was no way to sugarcoat what had happened, I said, with as much self-assurance as I could muster, “Koffman and that wingman of his, Rodue, and I had a little stand-off in town yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” There was clear disappointment and more than a hint of harshness in my dad’s tone.
When my mom, looking and sounding astonished, said, “Why didn’t you, TJ?” I wanted to sink into the ground.
“I thought it was pretty minor.”
“There’s nothin’ minor about pullin’ a shotgun on someone, son,” said Woodson.
“Spoon had to. Otherwise Rodue would’ve broken my wrist.”
“What in God’s name?” my mom said in as loud a voice as I suspected she’d used in years.
The sheriff shook his head. “Like I said, we’re all gonna need to talk. Tell you this up front, though. I don’t like the idea of an ex-con levelin’ a shotgun on folks I’m sworn to protect. Don’t like it one bit.”
“Did Koffman file a complaint?” my dad asked.
“No.”
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“Well, then. There’s two sides to every coin. I’m guessin’ Koffman would’ve pushed a whole lot harder if he figured he was gonna come up a clear winner on the issue. You got no complaint, you got no case, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Unless you’re dealin’ with an ex-con,” the sheriff shot back. Agitated and trying to restore some sense of order to things, he said, “We’ll talk later, Bill. Right now I’ve got a possible homicide on my hands.”
Dusting off his hands as if to punctuate the point, Woodson turned, as we all suddenly did, in the direction of an approaching vehicle. “That’ll be my crime-scene technician,” he said. “And that means I’ve got work to do. I’m gonna have to ask everyone to leave.”
Dad nodded and said, “Okay. When you’re ready to talk about what happened in Hardin yesterday, come on by the ranch.” His words were meant for the sheriff, but all the while he was looking at me. “I’ll be at home all day, and so will TJ.”
“Want to make sure that hired man of yours, Witherspoon, is around too?”
“Oh, he’ll be around. Count on it.”
As we moved to leave, my dad took one last look at Willard Johnson’s remains. He didn’t say anything. He simply frowned and shook his head.
The trip back to the ranch was tense and pretty much silent. Not a word was spoken until we headed up the lane to the house.
“Round up Spoon, would you?” Dad said to me tersely, “And meet me on the front porch in five minutes.”
It seemed to me afterward that I was out of the truck before it had actually stopped. I found Spoon in the barn tending to Smokey. The horse’s injured hind leg was wrapped with a support bandage almost up to the hock.
“He’s doin’ great,” Spoon said, turning to me as he stroked Smokey’s neck. “Doc Williams sedated him. Nothin’ but a sprain. Like your pa said, he’ll be fine.”
Swallowing hard, I said, “We’re sure not.”
Spoon looked puzzled. “Somethin’ else serious turn up over at Johnson’s?”
“Yeah. My dad found out about our run-in with Koffman and Rodue from Sheriff Woodson. Woodson’s planning on paying us a visit later today. Said he wants to talk to you in particular.”
“Then I’m thinkin’ maybe we should roll out the red carpet for him.” Spoon patted Smokey’s hock and chuckled.
“It’s no joking matter, Spoon. My dad’s pissed as hell over me not telling him about what happened, and the sheriff sounds about ready to bring his ex-con hammer down on your head.”
“Then let him,” Spoon said defiantly.
At a loss for words and uncertain what to do next, I said, “Dad’s tapping his foot out on the front porch.”
Spoon stroked Smokey gently behind the left ear, and said, “You’ll be all right, big fellow. You’re just outta the game for a couple of innings.”
Glancing at me, he said, “Lead the way, TJ. Might as well get this over with.” When he closed the gate to Smokey’s stall behind him and we headed for the house, I had the sense that a gate might have closed between the two of us as well.
My dad was a man who generally saw things in terms of right or wrong. As he stood on our porch and listened to Spoon’s description of what had happened in Hardin the previous afternoon, I could tell that he was having a difficult time assessing who had been in the wrong. To his way of thinking, if you leveled a weapon at any living creature—man, woman, or beast—you were expected to use it or suffer the consequences. By the same token, in his world, if you chose to pick on someone smaller or weaker than you and they somehow served you your comeuppance, it was probably well deserved. It was only when Spoon said, “Rodue woulda broken TJ’s wrist and enjoyed the sounds of the bones poppin’,” that I saw a hint of anger in his eyes.
Looking me squarely in the eye, he asked, “Think Rodue would’ve snapped your wrist if Spoon hadn’t showed up?”
“No question.”
My dad stroked his chin thoughtfully. “And what would you have done if he had, Spoon?”
“Woulda had no choice but to shoot the man,” Spoon said calmly.
There was a stretch of silence as the three of us stood there looking at one another and breathing noticeably. When my dad finally said, “Afraid I would’ve shot him too,” I knew that for him the issue was settled. “Wouldn’t have wanted to, but I woulda done it.”
When he turned back to face me, the look on his face said, Let’s move on.
We did so quickly. Eyeing both of us, Dad asked, “So now that we’ve dealt with one issue, at least in terms of me having a fuller understandin’ of what occurred in town yesterday, what’s your take on Willard Johnson’s death? Think maybe Koffman or Rodue might’ve helped old Willard up the stairs a little early?”
Spoon’s answer caught him off guard. “Don’t really know. No question they mighta had thousands of acres of coal reserves and millions of dollars’ worth of reasons to kill the man, but I wouldn’t be so quick to label ’em murderers. Coulda been just another freak farmin’ accident.”
“Guess it could’ve,” my dad said, still pressing. “No feelin’ in your gut about what might’ve happened one way or the other?”
“Nope.”
Dad looked disappointed. The one time it seemed to matter most, and the one time he wanted to draw on Spoon’s purported clairvoyance, Spoon hadn’t come through. “Too bad,” he said, shaking his head, “because once word about Willard’s death gets out, some folks in this valley are gonna push long and hard against any point of view that says his death was accidental.”
“Afraid you’re right,” said Spoon. “Just hope they recognize that a lot of times when you think long, you think wrong.”
“I’ll advise folks of that when Ricky Peterson meets with the coalition tomorrow evenin’. But I’ve got a feelin’ it may well fall on deaf ears.”
Fifteen
Few people in the valley disputed the Big Horn County coroner’s autopsy findings, which stated that Willard Johnson had died from a fractured skull. And some even accepted the story line supporting the possibility that the knife-edged rock that had been the death instrument could have found its way into the middle of an otherwise rockless hay meadow as the result of happenstance. Almost no one, however, was giving credence to Sheriff Woodson’s testimony, offered at a hastily called inquest, of his belief that Willard Johnson’s death was unequivocally accidental. No assemblage of photographs showing twenty-foot drag marks in the dirt, or pictures of the fresh dirt trapped beneath Willard’s fingernails, suggesting that he’d tried to crawl for help after accidentally tipping his tractor over and hitting his head, could sway the issue.
Aside from my parents, most people were convinced that Willard’s death had been orchestrated by Ed Koffman, his field security chief, Matt Rodue, and the corporate thugs at Acota Energy. Initially my dad pressed hard to convince coalition members to keep an open mind on the issue, but as the days passed, his attempts became less hardy. Angry, distrustful, and fearful, several ranchers in the valley had taken to wearing sidearms, and as a result of the tension, the coalition was slowly disintegrating.
The Demasters, harassed and threatened by several coalition members for selling out to Acota in the first place, had had two mysterious fires start on their property over a span of three weeks. The fires charred close to thirty acres each before they could be put out.
The Demasters claimed that Dale Turpin had started the fires as retribution. Angry to the point of cursing out Rulon Demaster one day in front of Lammer’s Trading Post in Hardin and threatening legal action for defamation, Turpin denounced the Demasters as pompous, privileged outsiders who’d never been welcome in our valley in the first place, suggesting before stomping off that the sooner they left, the better.
The dissension in coalition ranks escalated even further when word spread that Willard Johnson’s niece and the lone heir to his estate, Thelma Lawson, a fifth-grade teacher from Great Falls, and her husband, Jarvon, a wimpish, hard-of-hearing electrician,
were planning on keeping the ranch but leasing all of the mineral rights to Acota.
Although Ralph and Maxine Cundiff remained, at least on the surface, true to the cause, my dad confessed to my mom at breakfast the day after the news about Thelma Lawson’s intentions had leaked out that he wouldn’t be surprised to see the Cundiffs eventually cave in as well.
Only Dale Turpin held the line as steadfastly as us, repeatedly emphasizing at coalition meetings that before he leased out his coal rights, he’d rot in hell. There was a downside to Turpin’s stalwartness, however—at least for us. His ranch didn’t actually meet ours except at Four Corners, and like us, for the most part he bordered the Demaster’s land. I’d heard Ricky Peterson tell my dad during one of his increasingly frequent visits that even if Turpin held strong to his convictions, his Quarter Circle V Ranch and our Willow Creek Ranch could end up looking like two weights at the end of a barbell, connected by a narrow, strip-mined, two-mile spit of intervening Demaster land.
When Ricky appeared at the ranch a couple of days after offering that insight, toting his fly-fishing gear in one hand and a briefcase in the other, I had the feeling from the secretive, standoffish way he acted that he and my dad were hatching some plan to keep Acota out of our hair forever. When they disappeared into a mass of cottonwoods lining Willow Creek about a quarter mile from our house, fly rods and tackle boxes in hand, I felt a sense of both trepidation and envy. I knew they were looking for solace, just as I knew that their fishing expedition had more to do with business than pleasure. Nonetheless, the fact that I hadn’t been asked to come along hurt, largely because I knew that if Jimmy had been alive, they would have asked him to join them. Deflated and recalling Spoon’s earlier warning to be wary of Ricky, I decided to find some solace of my own and seek out Spoon’s advice.
