by Donis Casey
***
By the time his visitors left, early in the afternoon, Pee Wee and his men had gone over the field, buildings, and well with meticulous care, and had restored everything to its original order as best as they could. Aside from a quart or so of nitroglycerin, they had found nothing missing. But that one missing quart of explosive was worrying Pee Wee something awful.
They had lost almost an entire day’s worth of drilling, and Pee Wee didn’t feel he could afford to delay blasting the well obstruction any longer. He and his crew checked every inch of the derrick and drilling machinery for booby traps before he felt comfortable enough to proceed.
The men drew three hundred feet of tubing out of the well, section by section, while Pee Wee himself transported the remaining can of nitro from the magazine to the well. When the well was ready, Pee Wee sent the crew off to safety while he prepared the torpedo himself.
He poured water into the canister, which immediately separated the nitro from the alcohol it was mixed with, causing the explosive to sink to the bottom. He siphoned it out of the can into a smaller copper vessel, and then carefully poured it into the shell which had been positioned at the mouth of the well. The torpedo was armed with a blasting cap and a battery-powered timer, and lowered gingerly at the end of a wire down the hole, all the way to the bottom, where it detonated.
The blast went off satisfactorily and cleared the obstruction, though Pee Wee was a little disappointed that he hadn’t opened up a gusher. He smiled at his own folly. He knew that it was very unlikely the well was deep enough to strike, but the enterprise had been plagued with so much trouble lately that he thought he was owed a little luck.
It seemed to take forever for the twisters to hook up a new drill bit and replace the tubing in the well. When the rig was finally, finally ready, Pee Wee, Zip, and Deo Juarez, the Texican mechanic, walked the twenty feet from the derrick to the engine house. Muddy the dog followed on Zip’s heels at a misaligned trot, his tongue lolling out of his sideways mouth, as relaxed and hideously ugly as ever.
“Engine house” was a grand appellation for the three-walled shack that surrounded the enormous, gasoline-powered generator that powered the drill. The building opened toward the derrick, and served no purpose other than to keep rain, snow, and windblown dirt out of the engine. The fact that it afforded the drillers some protection from the elements was entirely incidental. They fired up the generator and it roared into action. Pee Wee stood at the open end of the engine house and watched with satisfaction as the drill began to rotate. The twisters prepared to attach another length of pipe to the drill as the well deepened.
Deo appeared at Pee Wee’s side. He hadn’t heard him come up, but the noise of the engine was such that he wouldn’t have heard the blare of the trumpets announcing the Second Coming.
Pee Wee might have said he liked Deo, if he had known him well enough to form an opinion. With the single exception of Zip Kolocek, Pee Wee made a practice of keeping his distance from the crew. Oil field workers were too transitory, generally unsavory, and usually too short-lived to waste emotion on. Deo was a good-natured little guy, though, and good at his job, which put him higher than most in his boss’ estimation. He had told Pee Wee that he was born in El Paso. He had such a thick Mexican accent that he was hard to understand, which in itself didn’t mean that he wasn’t American-born. But coupled with the fact that Juarez, Chihuahua, was attached to El Paso at the U.S.–Mexican border, Pee Wee had about decided that Deo was calling himself after the hometown he had fled after some unknown trouble. Pee Wee didn’t really care. Deo was good at his job.
Deo sidled up close enough to be heard over the noise and Pee Wee skewed him a curious glance.
“Where’s the oil can, boss?” Deo yelled into his ear. “One a’them journals, she getting hot. Not workin’ all day, it makes her stiff.”
Pee Wee glanced back over his shoulder at the tool shelf, where the lubricants usually were, then leaned back in toward Deo. “Well, there it is, right there, you dingbat. I reckon that in all the commotion, it either got put back on the second shelf instead of the first, or you’ve done gone blind.”
Deo’s gaze followed Pee Wee’s pointing finger, and he laughed. “I gone blind, I reckon, boss.” He retrieved the roundish, long-spouted can from its unaccustomed place on the shelf before he returned to the generator.
Deo and Zip put their heads together so the older man could explain the procedure to the younger. Pee Wee couldn’t hear a thing, of course, so he watched with interest as Deo used one finger and his opposite fist to pantomime a shaft turning jerkily in a bearing.
Most of the men on the crew had adopted Zip as a kind of pet, and it wasn’t unusual to see someone giving the boy a lesson. After all, that’s how most of them had learned the business, themselves. Pee Wee smiled as Zip leaned in as best he could, considering that a one-eared dog was lying across his feet, and listened earnestly.
Pee Wee was feeling much better, now that the effects of the vandalism were righted and they were back in production. Whatever Collins’ gang had been looking for, it apparently hadn’t been on the oil field property. Collins would probably leave him alone, now.
As for the nitro, well, whatever mischief the thief intended didn’t seem to have anything to do with the well, because they hadn’t found a trace of it anywhere on the property.
I reckon we dodged a bullet, he thought, and blew out a sigh of relief.
Deo handed Zip the oil can and pointed to the rapidly spinning axle. Zip gently shoveled the dog off his boots with one foot. He stretched his lanky body across the machinery, being careful not to touch any moving parts, and tilted the oil can carefully over the journal. For a tenth of a second, a thin stream of viscous yellowish oil descended through twelve inches of air toward the pounding engine.
Not long enough for Pee Wee’s thinking processes to engage, but it didn’t matter. There was no gap between the instant he saw that the oil was cloudy and not clear and the instant he knew that he was looking at disaster.
He just about had time to lunge forward and yell “Stop!” as the familiar, acrid smell of nitroglycerin hit his nostrils.
***
It was an easy walk to Olivia’s house, on oak-lined and graded streets, protected from the sun by the mature summer foliage that overhung the sidewalks. Martha noted that the afternoon was cool, which was a blessing. She wasn’t used to nice weather yet, after such a hot, dry summer. Grace was maniacally dashing up and back along the sidewalk, full of energy after an afternoon of inactivity. She paused once or twice to pull a flowering weed from a yard, and Martha kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t help herself to someone’s carefully tended peony.
There were some nice neighborhoods in Enid, she thought. Perhaps if I ever have a home of my own, I’ll steal a decorating tip or two from some of these houses. She pointed at the large red brick house they were passing. “Look yonder at the blue trim around the windows. Isn’t that unusual? And see how she’s got flowers and vegetables together in pots on the porch? What a good idea!”
Olivia shifted the burbling Ron to her other shoulder. “That reminds me. Don’t let me forget to water the sweet potato vine on the porch. My poor violet in the living room hasn’t had a drink in days. It’s probably drooping bad by now, if it isn’t dead.”
They turned onto Elm and approached Olivia’s white, brick trimmed house. “Your hydrangea bush in the front yard looks good,” Martha observed. “But that sweet potato vine might could use some water.”
Grace dashed up onto the front porch and pounded all around, followed more sedately by Martha and Olivia. Olivia pulled open the front screen and froze, a perplexed expression on her face.
“What is it?” Martha asked.
“The front door is ajar.”
Olivia reached for the doorknob, but Martha stepped forward and grabbed her hand.
“No, don’t! Somebody could be in there waiting for you. Let’s go back to your ma’s and ca
ll the police.”
Olivia shook her off, annoyed. “I’ll be blamed if I’m going to be afraid to enter my own house. Here, hold the baby. Y’all wait out here until I call you.”
She thrust Ron at Martha and went inside before her cousin had time to protest. Startled, Martha jiggled the baby in her arms and stood nervously waiting for Olivia’s signal, half prepared to make a run for it. “Grace, hush up that singing for a minute and come here,” she hissed.
Grace swallowed her song, wide-eyed at Martha’s tone, but didn’t move from her spot at the end of the porch.
Olivia stuck her head out the door and gestured at them. “Come in here.”
Martha sagged with relief before she followed her cousin inside with the kids in tow, but they stopped dead just inside the door, stunned.
The place was wrecked. The furniture was splintered and the upholstery shredded. Books and papers were strewn over every inch of the parlor floor, and all the rugs had been tossed into a heap. The curtains and rods had been torn down. The bookshelves in the parlor had been ripped off the wall and lay in a pile of broken wood.
Down the hall, they could see bedclothes piled on the floor outside the bedroom doors. The kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off, blowing every dish, utensil, and cabinet to shards. What was left of the counters was white with flour and sugar, and the ice box had been emptied onto the floor in a mess of mashed food and glass.
For a moment, nobody said anything. Olivia’s face was so red that Martha feared she’d have a stroke right then and there.
Grace lifted her hands and squeezed her cheeks between her palms. “Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed.
***
“Now, when last we left Mr. Pudd’nhead Wilson, he had just showed the jury how he could tell Count Luigi from his twin brother Count Angelo by just the marks of their fingers on windowpane.”
“How’s the murder investigation going?” Lester asked.
Alafair lowered the book into her lap and looked up at her brother-in-law. Lester was turned on his side, his skeletal frame almost swallowed up by the big feather mattress and pillows and the pile of quilts that covered him. How that body could still keep hold of his soul was a wonder to her, but the eyes that stared out at her were quite alive and bright with curiosity. “I think that Pudd’nhead aims to show that it was Tom who done the judge in.”
“I mean, has Chief Burns made any progress in finding out who killed Kenneth?” His voice bore a trace of irony. He knew perfectly well that she was trying to put him off the topic.
“Lester, what good is it going to do you to fret yourself over something you can’t do anything about?”
“It’ll fret me a lot more to go to my reward without knowing whether or not justice has been done.”
Alafair closed the book and took a breath. She almost said that after he passed, he’d know everything. She didn’t want to upset a dying man, but when anyone tried to keep things from her “for her own good,” she was annoyed beyond enduring. She didn’t want to inflict that condescension on Lester. “It’s early days, yet, though I think the chief is of the same mind as everybody else that Buck Collins is behind Kenneth’s death in some way or another. But if he has found any proof positive, I ain’t heard about it. I’m still thinking that Collins didn’t have much of a reason to kill Kenneth, anyway.”
“He knows I’m dying.”
Alafair blinked. “What?”
“Buck knows I’m dying. He knows he doesn’t have much time left to do me one last bad deed.”
Alafair was incredulous. “Do you mean to tell me that you think Collins killed your son-in-law just to cause you grief? Send you to your grave in misery? Ruth Ann told me something of the bad blood between you, but that’s going some, Lester! What monster would go to such lengths to cause pain to a dying man? Can anyone be so cruel?”
Lester shook his head, pitying her naiveté. “You don’t know Buck like I do. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to spite me. I’m guessing he wants me to know that he manipulated poor old stupid Kenneth and now he’s poised to take everything I built after I die.”
“Dear me! I can’t hardly credit it. It does seem that somebody is hunting for something, though whether it’s Buck Collins or not I don’t know. Seems burglars broke into the office at the warehouse and the office at the oil well, too, and tore both places up looking for something.” She didn’t tell him about what had happened at Olivia’s house. There were limits to how far she was willing to go in the interest of full disclosure.
Lester’s sunken eyes widened. “I’ll swear! Was anything stole?”
She hesitated before she said, “Nothing of any value. Mike Ed and Pee Wee reckoned that the vandals were looking for some papers, or something written down. We looked over the books at both places this morning and didn’t find anything out of place, but I think the boys plan to go through everything again with a fine-tooth comb. If they just took a page out of a ledger, or a contract, that won’t be so easy to spot.”
“Lord, Lord,” Lester breathed. “I sure didn’t plan on Olivia having to deal with anything like this after I’m gone. Old Buck is one step ahead of me, this time.”
“I’ve never found that our plans bear much resemblance to what actually happens to us.”
Lester sniffed a laugh. “That’s the truth.”
They fell silent for a long moment. The trees outside the open window behind Lester’s bed were noisy with birds that had gathered in the branches to plan their upcoming trip south for the winter.
“I only want one thing more before I lay my burden down, Alafair,” Lester said.
“What’s that?”
“To see this thing through to the end. To make sure Buck can never have power over Olivia. I mean for her to have that shipping business free and clear before I go.”
“Can you pay off the debt, Lester?”
“Only if I sell off part of the business, which I don’t want to do. Me and Russ have been putting our heads together about it, though. I only hope I have enough time.”
Every comment that passed through Alafair’s head was too trite and meaningless to be spoken aloud, so she simply leaned forward and squeezed Lester’s arm.
“You want me to read to you, now?”
“I’m feeling pretty tired, Alafair. I think I’ll sleep.”
***
Alafair walked away from Lester’s bedroom with Mark Twain in her hands, hardly aware of where she was going as she pondered Lester’s remarkable comments about Buck Collins. She had heard nothing but awful tales about Collins, and it truly seemed that most people in town feared or hated him. Yet she’d not exchanged more than two words with him. The picture she had of him was painted by others, not her own personal experience of the man. Maybe he was the monster everyone made him out to be, or maybe not. If he was so completely evil, why hadn’t he been run out of town on a rail long ago?
He was a pillar of Enid society, after all. Parks and buildings were named after him. Many people worked for him of their own free will. He had a wife and family who must love him.
No one is all bad, she thought, or all good, either. And unless he’s insane, even when a man does bad things, he usually thinks he has a good reason.
She walked down the stairs and caught sight of Lu, dusting the furniture in the parlor. She watched the housekeeper for a moment before interrupting her.
“Lu, if anybody comes looking for me, tell them I’ve gone to call on Mr. Collins at his house.”
Lu straightened and eyed her like she had just grown two heads. But she said, “Yes, Miz Tucker.”
***
Martha and Streeter McCoy, with Grace in tow, trudged up the porch steps and into Ruth Ann’s parlor in exhausted silence. Martha plopped herself down into the plush sofa and stretched her legs out in front of her. Ike the cat had met them at the door and was presently weaving about the parlor floor, waiting for everyone to settle before he chose the most likely lap.
“I’m hungry,”
Grace told her.
“I expect you are,” Martha admitted. “In all the excitement, none of us got any dinner. Run out to the kitchen and see if Lu will fix us some sandwiches. Come get me if Lu isn’t there….” She raised her voice, because Grace was gone in a blur with Ike hot on her heels. Martha chuckled and looked up at McCoy, who was still standing in the middle of the parlor floor.
“Sit down for a spell, Streeter,” she invited.
He didn’t have to be asked twice.
Martha had telephoned him at his office an hour earlier from her cousin’s house, alarmed and excited and full of news about the break-in. She hadn’t exactly asked him to come, but the moment he rang off, he had attached the sidecar to his motorcycle, jumped on, and sped over to Olivia’s to offer whatever assistance he could.
The police were there, questioning Olivia in the kitchen. Martha and her aunt Ruth Ann were following along behind the detective who was surveying the damage and cleaning up anything he told them they could.
McCoy had spent an hour hauling large pieces of broken furniture into the backyard, until Grace had had enough of being good and staying out of the way, and Martha had asked him to give them a lift back to the Yeager house in his sidecar. The trip had been quicker than walking, but it hadn’t done much to calm down an already overly excited three-year-old.
Martha withdrew her hatpin and took off her hat and put it on the side table next to her. “Wonder what he’s looking for, this burglar?” she finally said.
“Apparently he hasn’t found it.”
“That we know of,” Martha corrected him. “Olivia hadn’t been back to her house in a couple of days. Nobody really knows when her house got broken into. None of the neighbors heard anything that got their suspicions up. It could be that Collins sent someone to search Olivia’s house the same night as the warehouse and the oil field, or maybe it was earlier and we just didn’t know about it until now. What I’m hoping is that the burglar, or burglars, found the mysterious item and delivered it to his boss….”
