by Jan Dunlap
I sighed heavily.
So many birds, so little time.
A knock on my door caught my attention as I turned to grab my jacket from my office coatrack.
“Hey, Boo,” I said as the big guy leaned into my doorframe. “Thanks for help with the chickens today.”
“No problem,” he replied. His eyes fell to the jacket in my hand. “You got a minute?”
“Of course,” I said. I put the jacket back on its hook and gave him a smile. “What can I do for you?”
He returned my smile with his own big grin.
“Actually, I’m here to do something for you.”
Yes! I mentally pumped my fist. I knew it! After our bonding experience today, Boo Metternick had decided to throw caution to the winds and trust me with his secret identity.
He was going to tell me he was the Bonecrusher.
My own smile broadened in anticipation.
“Alan said you were interested in wind energy farms,” Boo said.
The fist pump vanished in my head.
“What?”
“Alan said you were interested in wind turbines,” Boo repeated.
Yup. That’s what I’d heard the first time, all right. I was evidently going to have to find something more trust-inducing than chasing down hypnotized students together to earn the big guy’s confidence.
I let out a sigh of acute disappointment.
What did Boo Metternick have to do with wind turbines?
I realized that he was waiting for me to respond while I just stared at him like an idiot.
Luce has told me more than once it’s a good look for me, by the way. And not an uncommon one, apparently, either.
“I am interested,” I finally said, then immediately wondered what else Alan had told him.
Had my brother-in-law mentioned to Boo that my interest was connected to a homicide?
Or that I made it a habit to find the bodies of dead birders when I went out in the woods?
I was well aware that Rick squealed on me all the time, but I sure hoped that Alan hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon. It would be nice to know that at least one of my close friends could keep his mouth shut and refrain from tarnishing my reputation.
“He said you had a bet going on,” Boo informed me when I didn’t offer any further elaboration. “That you bet him that turbines killed more birds than people every year. I told Alan he lost the bet because thousands of birds are killed every year, but I only knew of twenty people who’d been killed by wind turbines in the last two decades, and three of those cases were highly questionable.”
“Questionable?” I repeated, while blood rushed from my head as I tried to keep my overactive imagination from picturing what a person might look like after going through a “questionable” death by a wind turbine.
“You all right?” Boo asked. “You look kind of white.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said weakly. “White. Bob White.”
I dropped into my chair, and Boo took a seat on the other side of my desk.
“Wait a minute,” he said, sudden realization crossing his face. “It’s not what you’re thinking. I’ve never heard of anybody getting cut up by a wind turbine. That would definitely be a stomach-turner. I meant they got killed working on them while they were installing them. You know—freak workplace accidents that can happen on any large-scale construction project.”
He sat back in his chair. My vision cleared.
“Except for the three questionable fatalities,” he added. “In those cases, the guys died of heart attack or stroke, and their families insisted it was because of the turbines. The guys didn’t work on the turbines at all—they just lived in the general area and apparently told everyone that the turbines were affecting the normal functioning of their bodies. Something about an overload of vibrations or incessant humming that was interfering with their heart rates and brain waves.”
He crossed his arms over his chest.
“There was speculation that the guys might just have been nuts, too.”
I looked across the desk at Boo, suddenly aware that he’d spoken more words to me in the last few moments than he had in the last two months.
“No sliced torsos or split guts with intestines hanging out?”
Boo grimaced. “No. Oh, my gosh, no. Believe me, I never would have worked on turbines if I thought I could get caught in one. When I was a kid, I watched a doctor sew my dad’s finger back on after an accident with some equipment on the farm, and that was more than enough to convince me I didn’t ever want to come close to a spinning blade.”
“But didn’t you just say you worked on turbines?”
I felt like I was speed-dating. We were barely minutes into our conversation and I had already learned that Boo Metternick not only had a great memory for trivia, but he’d also worked with machines.
At this rate, I was going to have his phone number in less than three minutes.
Boo nodded. “I did. I spent a summer while I was in college working on wind towers in northern Iowa. All we did was put them up, though. I was on the construction crew. I never got anywhere near an operating turbine. My interest now is purely academic. Windmills make great examples of certain physics principles.”
“So I win the bet, huh?”
The bet about avian fatalities that I’d never made, that is.
I silently thanked Alan for being circumspect about my ‘interest’ in wind farms and for not sharing any more details than necessary with our new physics teacher. Becoming known as a corpse finder wasn’t my current career objective, nor did I want my weekend discovery to become the topic of the week in the staff lounge. I figured that Boo, with his own Bonecrusher skeleton in the closet, could probably relate to that same appreciation for discretion.
“You do win,” Boo assured me. “Although I’ve got to tell you, wind farms get a bum rap when it comes to bird mortality. Power lines kill birds more than ten thousand times as often as wind turbines—up to 174 million birds a year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And cats—both domesticated and feral—take out another couple hundred million birds every year. Compared to those numbers, the wind turbines’ toll of ten to forty thousand a year looks pretty small.”
Geez Louise. The man was a walking statistics report.
“But housecats aren’t killing Golden Eagles or Burrowing Owls,” I argued.
“Oh, so some birds are more expendable than others? No one’s going to miss a couple million robins and sparrows, but a thousand raptors rate special consideration.” He blew out a breath of disdain. “Sounds like avian discrimination if you ask me.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Put that way, the case for saving raptors did sound like species discrimination.
“Are you an ethics teacher on the side?” I asked him.
Boo laughed, his somber mood gone as quickly as it had come.
“No,” he replied. “I just like to argue. My dad always said I was born to start fights. If he said the sky was blue, I’d say it was green. If you’d said that the bird death count from turbines was inconsequential, I would have made a case for the specific bird populations affected, like the eagles and owls that you just mentioned.”
He rolled his shoulders and cricked his neck to either side.
“But here’s something else I would have added to the argument,” he continued. “Turbines aren’t just a problem for birds in the air. Studies for new wind farm locations now focus on the nesting habitat, which is often on the ground and might be disturbed by tower construction. You destroy those breeding sites, and there won’t be enough of those birds around to even consider flying near the wind turbines.”
He cracked the knuckles in both hands.
“And let’s not forget the damage to the bat population,” he added. “Those casualties are in the thousands, too. Did you know that some species of bats experience fatal internal bleeding as a result of the air pressure changes caused by spinning turbine blades?”<
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I studied the big man in my office. For a former seasonal construction worker, he seemed to know an awful lot about the bigger issues around wind energy.
“Who are you really, Boo Metternick?” I asked. “You’re teaching physics, you argue ethics, and now you display a keen knowledge of emerging issues in Minnesota conservation. I think you’re either campaigning for a position on the school board, or you’re an advance man for Jeopardy! Which is it?”
Boo laughed again.
“Neither. I’m just a farm kid from western Minnesota,” he insisted. “I grew up detasseling corn and riding a tractor on family land.”
“And wrestling steers,” I reminded him.
My bet with Alan about turbines may have been a convenient fiction, but I still had ten bucks riding on Boo being the Bonecrusher.
“That, too,” he said. “Our family has had that land for generations, but times are hard for an awful lot of small farmers, including my dad. These days, farmers have to get inventive with their crops to survive, and wind energy is a booming cash crop if you can get it.”
He stood up and smiled. “So it’s kind of become my hobby—learning everything I can about the wind energy industry so when my dad finally signs the contract to rent our family’s land to the utilities people, I’ll be reassured that he’s not only guaranteeing his retirement income, but that he’s doing the right thing ecologically.”
“And are you reassured?” I asked.
He nodded. “I will be, once the deal is done. Our land isn’t a bird breeding ground like the big parcel next to it that the energy company has been considering for rent, so that means the company should be knocking on my father’s door.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.
“But the energy people have some consultant who keeps insisting that it’s our property that has the breeding ground, not the one next door, so my dad’s going crazy trying to prove this consultant wrong,” Boo continued. “It seems like every time Dad turns around, this consultant has more ‘evidence’ that the birds—grasshopper sparrows, I think they are—are nesting on our land, even though my dad paid out of his own pocket for ground surveys to show our land isn’t being used by the birds. And get this—it turns out that the big parcel where the sparrows are breeding belongs to a cousin of this consultant.”
“The plot thickens,” I commented.
“But it’s still transparent,” Boo added. “The consultant is biased. He wants the rental income from the new wind farm to go into his cousin’s bank account, and he’s willing to lie about our land to make that happen.”
He placed his palms on my desk and leaned towards me.
“I don’t like liars,” he said.
I looked at his hands spread out on my desktop. They were the size of boxing gloves. Extra-large boxing gloves.
“Me neither,” I agreed.
“You were good with the chickens today, too,” Boo said. “You could pass for a farm kid from Spinit yourself.”
The name of the town sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Seeing as I’ve driven to every corner in the state chasing birds for the last nineteen years, I wasn’t completely surprised I couldn’t recall its exact location, but I knew it would nag at me until I looked at a map.
“Spinit—isn’t that near Buffalo Ridge?”
Buffalo Ridge was a big spread of elevated land that stretched from the edge of South Dakota down through several southwestern counties of Minnesota and into northern Iowa. It was also home to one of the largest wind farms in the United States.
Because I occasionally birded in the area, I was also aware that much of the ridge was privately owned farmland, some of which was rented to the energy companies for turbine tower placement. One farmer I met told me he received an annual royalty payment of $4,000 for each turbine on his land, and that he knew of others who earned up to $8,000 per tower. The bigger spread a farmer had, the more turbines he could accommodate, and the more lease money he could earn.
If Boo’s family’s land was located on the ridge, I imagined his dad could make a pretty solid bundle of money from royalties.
As long as some consultant didn’t block the deal.
“No,” Boo corrected me. “Spinit is in the west central part of the state. It’s a tiny community in Stevens County, not far from Morris. This is a new wind farm project that my dad wants to get in on. The company wants to place turbines seventy-five acres apart to minimize wind speed loss, and my dad says that would mean seven towers on our land, with a twenty-year agreement. With that kind of annual income, he and my mom could be comfortable for the rest of their lives without having to work the farm.”
He stood back up and glanced towards my open doorway, then lowered his voice.
“My dad’s a proud man, Bob,” he said with affection. “I’ve offered to help my folks out in their retirement with some money I’ve got invested from my previous career, but he won’t take it. So I told him to let me know if there was anything—anything at all—I could do to make this deal happen for him.”
“You’re a good man and a good son, Boo,” I told him. “I hope it works out for your dad.”
“Thanks, Bob.”
He gave me a little salute.
The gesture reminded me of my conversation with Red at Millie’s Deli on Sunday. She’d saluted me, too.
Poor Red. I hoped she was doing better after her fall down the stairs and that her memory had returned, because I wanted to ask her about Sonny. In particular, I was curious as to why she thought he was opposing the planned wind farm while Alan claimed the opposite was true. What had Sonny said to her the last time he was eating at Millie’s? And what exactly was her relationship with his wife, Prudence?
Once again, I found myself wondering about Red and what she might be able to tell me about the Delites. If Red was going to be working on Thursday morning, Rick and I could swing by the deli for an early breakfast on our way north. Then, while Chef Tom scrambled some eggs and fried bacon for me, I could grill Red.
“Hey, Bob?”
Boo had stopped outside my doorway.
“You guys be careful driving to Morris on Thursday. This time of year can be iffy with weather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten caught in sleet storms out there and almost ended up in the ditch … or worse,” he warned me.
I tried to remember when I’d mentioned the Morris trip to Boo, but I came up blank. I’d gradually become accustomed to the fact that my wife had an uncanny ability to read my mind, but I didn’t especially like the notion that someone I barely knew could pull off the same trick. It made me feel vaguely uneasy.
Threatened, even.
Weird.
I had to ask. “How did you know I’m going to Morris?”
Boo laughed once more.
“A little bird told me.” He held up his hand in farewell and walked away.
It didn’t take any imagination at all to guess that Rick, Officer Big Mouth, had broadcast our plans to Boo. The two men must have become real buddies since Rick had learned the truth about Boo’s past—maybe that shared secret had provided them with a bonding experience, in the same way that the hypnosis-gone-awry incident had apparently made Boo feel more comfortable with me. I’d learned as much about Boo during our brief student round-up as I had in the last two months of working with him.
Heck, if I’d known that talking to chickens was the key to opening up the channels of communication between me and our celebrity faculty member, I would have gladly demonstrated my famous turkey call for him weeks ago.
In fact, the more I thought about it—Boo’s reticence, not the turkey call—I realized that the man’s reluctance to get close to people was probably no surprise, given his former identity as a wrestling celebrity. During our back-to-school workshops, and even since classes had started in the fall, I’d noticed that Boo avoided casual conversations with the other faculty members. At times, I’d thought his silence had bordered on being spooky, th
e way he’d watch his colleagues during lunch breaks without saying a word. But now it made perfect sense. The man had lived in the glare of publicity as the masked Bonecrusher, and while he might have enjoyed his ride of fame and his reputation in the ring, he was in a different world now. I expected the last thing he wanted was his showbiz past to follow him into the halls of a high school and his future as a respected faculty member.
Notoriety wasn’t always a good thing.
Just ask Sonny Delite.
Actually, I guess you’d have to ask his widow now.
Unless Red had her memory back.
I wondered again if Rick and I would see Red on Thursday morning before we took off for Morris.
I grabbed my jacket off the coatrack and locked my office door behind me. From down the hall, I could hear some kids loitering, slamming lockers and yelling at each other. I shook my head. My day wasn’t done yet. Time to be the voice of authority at Savage High School.
But someone beat me to it.
“You. Out,” Boo said, his voice carrying back down the hall to me.
Whoosh. Those kids were gone.
Disappeared.
Vanished.
Geez.
I’d thought Boo was spooky because he’d been so quiet around other adults, but that was nothing compared to how spooky he was when dealing with students. Those kids hadn’t even stopped to breathe when he told them to leave. When I asked kids to quit loitering, they handed me a pile of excuses about why they were there and who gave them permission, even when I knew they were lying to me. Instead of compliance, I got stories, disrespect, and defiance.
The Bonecrusher got results.
Forget about getting Boo on my lunchroom shift.
I wanted him as my personal valet.
Then again, I now knew that the Bonecrusher didn’t like liars, and I had no doubt that even though a lot of students couldn’t recognize their own stupidity if it slapped them in the face—sometimes repeatedly—every one of Savage High School’s population could clearly hear the take-no-prisoners tone in Boo Metternick’s voice. I guessed that wrestling steers on his father’s farm in Spinit taught the young Boo a thing or two about asserting himself.
