by Eric Hodges
CHAPTER 11
FARM LIFE
Alice and Wheeler walked to the VW with a forced calm and casually drove away as Alice burst out like a school girl “That was AWSOME! The fur is going to fly after that stunt.” She was bouncing on the seat laughing out loud.
“This is going to be FUN!” he exclaimed, only half paying attention to driving. In his joy, he reached his arm out to pull Alice closer and said “We were a great team in there. You set it up perfectly for us.” Alice giggled and leaned up to kiss Wheeler on the cheek. He turned to look at her at just the right moment and their lips met, surprising both of them. She lingered in surprise, enjoying the mishap and after a long moment, Wheeler pulled away slowly.
“OH!” she said, realizing the implications. She did like Wheeler but had not thought about him in quite this way. He glanced back at the road to correct his small drift but Alice kept her eyes on him with am appraising look. There might be something here after all, she thought.
Wheeler glanced back at her with a big juvenile grin and said “That was nice.” He drove most of the way over to Bob’s shop with his arm around her shoulders and Alice leaning into his ribs. Her warmth was comfortable and they both felt serenity and satisfaction.
They got out of the bus in the back lot of Bob’s Fab shop and the laughter and back slapping resumed. Bob looked up from is work on the bench and said “What’s gotten into you two?”
They updated him on their morning’s activities as they enjoyed some of Bob’s shop coffee. Both Wheeler and Alice filled in details, each one drawing out more details, embellishing the others story until the three of them were all laughing. After a while, they calmed down.
“Where do we go from here?” Bob asked. “How does this help us?”
Wheeler answered “This was a spur of the moment thing, but we sure have gone on the offensive. I don’t see the coming use for this but I do see that we need to make the interests of Calvin T. Boone, oil tycoon, look urgent and realistic.” Wheeler sipped his coffee, it wasn’t that bad, and checked his internal message system. It had a picture of a hand drilling rig that he hoped Bob could build. It did look impressive.
“Bob, I need you to build something for me. It is a gasoline engine powered core drill to punch holes in the dirt and take samples. We are going into the oil business, after all” Wheeler said with a mischievous grin.
“Well gosh, I don’t know.” Bob said a bit taken aback by the abrupt change of direction of the conversation. “What does it look like?”
Wheeler proceeded to sketch on a scrap paper and before long they had their heads together engrossed in details. Alice became bored with the mechanical trivia and said “Bob, can I use your truck? I need to get over to the insurance office and settle some details about the fire. Maybe I need to go shopping too.”
“Sure, go ahead” Bob said without looking up. They did have the detail and identified a few requirements, it had to be loud, easily transportable and one man operable. “You know, I’ve seen something like this at Lee Gregor’s yard. Do you remember him? He’s the guy with the generator.”
“Sure, I remember, could you call him? We need to get moving” Wheeler said enthusiastically.
Bob called the office and got the answer machine, then tried the cell phone and got Lee and a lot of background noise. “Yeah” somebody yelled. “Hang on, I can’t hear.” A noisy minute passed and then a voice said “This is Lee.”
“Hi Lee, this is Bob, I want to talk to you about your gas engine powered drill. Will that thing drill a big hole in the ground?”
“Sure Bob, I use it for drilling fence posts in the outback. You finally are going to prop up your sagging fence out at the house?” Lee was holding back a laugh because he had been teasing Bob for quite a while about the fence he called the local eyesore.
“Something like that. Can I borrow it for a few days? Same deal as last time, I’ll use it and tune it up for you before I give it back.” Bob and Lee had evidently traded labor and repairs for some time. Small towns are like that, Wheeler noticed as he blatantly eavesdropped on their conversation.
“Sure Bob, it’s in the back of the shop in the same place, help yourself. I’m a few miles out of town so it will have to be self serve today.” Lee was pleased to help.
“Thanks Lee, I owe you again” Bob said and hung up. He turned to Wheeler “Well, if a post-hole digger looks like a core driller, we’re in. We’ll get it on the way to lunch. Are you ready for lunch?”
“I’ll say, we worked hard for it, let’s go.”
Bob cleaned up and ushered Wheeler out the back, closing the door behind them. “I just started locking the door to the shop. I don’t have a safe feeling like I once had.” Bob said as they got in Wheeler’s bus.
They were on their way back into town with the driller in the back when Bob said “We will probably meet Alice at the diner. It’s about time and we usually eat there.” They pulled into the lot in the back, walked in the rear entrance and spotted Alice having coffee reading the free advertiser at a table for four. She looked up in mock surprise, batting her eyelids “Well, fancy meetin’ y'all here! I had no idea you boys ate lunch around these parts.” She said it with a southern drawl that made both Wheeler and her brother chuckle as they sat down.
“Aren’t you just the spunky one?” Bob said, in his most fatherly tone. “Have you been out trashing around with BOYS young lady?”
“No but it was almost as much fun. I was at the department store after I went to the insurance office, and I bumped into Evelyn Morton.” She looked at Wheeler “You remember her from the delivery of the tables?” He nodded, it was a small town.
“She was bubbling and blathering about the oil wells we were going to put up. She said it would be great for the town, great for us and she asked me how to find out if she had oil on her property too!” Alice was holding back her excitement so firmly her face showed a pale blush. Wheeler thought she looked five years younger and he was moved in more than a brotherly way.
“Wow, that was fast” Bob exclaimed. “This has to be some kind of record, getting the rumor out by noon!”
“This is wonderful” Wheeler added. “The big fish have to be swarming all over our bait. We will set the hook after lunch. Alice, you and I have another show to put on after lunch. We will need to find a few places on your property that are visible from the road, or at least easily visible to the interested parties that I’m sure will be watching.”
A waitress Wheeler had not seen before took their lunch orders and brought coffee for them. The diner had no more patrons than any other visit, but Wheeler noticed this time there were furtive glances and hushed conversations at the other tables. Maybe it was Wheeler’s enhanced sensitivity but he didn’t think so. They were trying to find out more about the oil man and the soon-to-be rich family, wondering if the wealth would be spread around. Wheeler played to the crowd, tipping his head to the middle of the table and whispering to Alice and Bob when it was not necessary.
A companionable if not giddy lunch concluded and Wheeler said in a whisper “We’ll meet at the shop and check out the driller. Bob, you will have to give me a short course on operation, I have to look like a pro.”
“Those things are simple, no problem for a handy guy like you” Bob smiled.
Wheeler stood looking specifically at Alice and said in a voice a bit too loud for her ears alone “Let’s go look and see what you’ve got under that green stuff you got on your property, what do you call them, crops?” Alice and Bob choked back guffaws and put on polite smiles to the backwater oilman that knew nothing about farming.
Back at the shop, Wheeler was pleased to find out it did look like the driller he had imagined and it was easy to operate. It had an obvious drill bit, so Wheeler had Bob weld on a tube to make it look like it could take core samples. They loaded it back into the VW and headed out to the Keefer oil field. Wheeler and Alice laughed the whole way.
Alice led them to the rear of the property where
her renter had planted a short, leafy crop of something that Alice said was radishes. They slowly drove on the dirt path between the rows looking for the most visible place that would not hurt the plants. He stopped the VW off to the side so the rear doors would open on the path and he lifted the driller out, making sure the bus didn’t block the view. He tilted his head down, apparently to look at the ground while scanning the ridge and the road for visitors. “This is a good place right here” he said. He went back to the bus for his gloves but he was stalling to make sure there was time to get the observers in place.
He drilled the first hole and made an elaborate show of spreading the dirt around on his hands and knees to get a better look. Alice joined him and spread dirt of her own. They spent some time playing in the dirt to make it convincing and Wheeler jotted notes in a notebook, before filling in the hole and moving on to the next place. The notebook was Wheeler’s history of his VW repairs and part numbers but nobody could see what was inside. He even borrowed Alice’s cell phone to take ‘GPS readings’ and make careful records at each stop. Wheeler moved deliberately between locations and the whole exercise took a few hours.
They did see the occasional observer so the outing was a success. They packed up the drill rig and made it back to the shop in the late afternoon in time to catch Bob at the end of his work day. Wheeler and Alice were tired from all the drilling, loading and unloading but they were satisfied the mission was accomplished.
Bob was seated at his break table nursing a soda and raised his can in mock toast “To the returning heroes” he said. “Were you a success?”
“We made Swiss cheese out of the back 40” Alice told Bob as she reached into the refrigerator for two more sodas. “I even feel like a soil expert.” She looked over at Wheeler with more than just a pleased look.
Bob caught the look and suspected his sister had more than dirt on her mind and an optimism that had been missing lately. He was pleased that she was being distracted from Stevie, the fire, losing her shop and the uncertainty it all brings. She needed a bright spot in her life and he was not about to be discouraging.
Wheeler and Alice joined Bob and Wheeler said “We accomplished phase one perfectly, now we wait.”
“What are we waiting for?” Alice asked him knowing what the answer would be.
“This time,” Wheeler began “there are several players that have to get coordinated. We have only laid the groundwork and started process.”
“That is diplomatic enough way, I believe” Alice said with a smirk, “to say that you don’t have a clue, do you Wheeler?”
Bob chuckled, enjoying the show. It was mysterious but he was astute enough to recognize Wheeler’s pattern. Wheeler was connected to something that borders on the unknowable and he was aware of covert information. It all appeared to be relevant to a real problem, and Bob hoped the solution would end up to their benefit. It made his head swim, but all Bob could really do is enjoy the ride.
“Not really”, Wheeler said, “but it is coming together. This one is darker than I am used to but I am getting the same kind inputs. What is missing is any insight about who is involved and where this is all going.”
“I must say,” Bob observed, “I have never seen anything like this and would have not believed there was a reality to any of it. Alice and I were raised Lutheran and were taught about God but you have not said you are connected to God.” Bob paused, not wanting to encroach on forbidden territory. “Is that what you believe this all to be?”
“I really don’t know, Bob. I have wondered myself and the best I can come up with is what I can do must be a part of God, or Spirit. It is certainly for the good of the people with whom I come in contact but the information I get never has a signature page” Wheeler said, grinning to make Bob feel at ease. “Sometimes I think I am the arms and legs of some higher spirit and I do things for people that can’t hear it.”
They all jumped when they heard the front door of the shop open and the entry bell chime. Nobody used the front. “Hello? Is anybody back there?” They looked to the front in unison and saw the head of Walter Carter peering through the doorway.
