The Wind Comes Sweeping

The stranger looked younger than she was, early twenties maybe, except for those case-hardened eyes. “You talk like a biologist,” she said.

“Not exactly. But I majored in it, along with land management. I’m Jace Rainwater, your nine o’clock appointment.”

He brushed his hands off on his jeans and stood. Six-four, she guessed, even without the big hat. He paused as if waiting for her to introduce herself or offer a handshake. She did neither. She was supposed to interview him about the foreman’s job—two hours from now. Nowadays people called it ranch manager, but she figured if foreman was a good enough title for Monte, her dad’s old friend, it was good enough for whomever she hired.

“Sorry to be so early,” he said. “I drove from Amarillo and made better time than I expected.”

“You must have left in the dead of night to get here by sunrise.”

He offered no explanation. Maybe he awoke hours before daylight the way she did, worming over the things she could change and the ones she couldn’t.

“There was nobody around down there,” he said, gesturing toward the cluster of ranch buildings at the foot of the ridge, “so when I saw the truck up here I figured it must be you.”

She glanced at the eagle again. “Early would be a good trait for a ranch hand, any morning but this one.”

“At least the eagle’s a young one, probably not half of a breeding pair,” he offered.

She blew out a breath, looking across the fields to the west where the Gurdmans’ farm abutted her land. “My neighbors won’t care how old the bird is when they try to block construction on the other windmills.”

“Your neighbors object to the wind farm?”

“Those do.”

He followed her gaze toward a distant clump of trees where the glint of a white farmhouse reflected the early sun. “What for? It’s pollution-free energy and it’s quiet. Cattle can graze right under the turbines.”

“Exactly. But the windmills might emit harmful rays that cause cancer and birth defects.”

“Good grief.”

“Not to mention that the Gurdmans missed out on the lease money from Great Plains Power & Light. The company wanted only this high ground that’s not sheltered from the wind.”

“Ah,” he said. “So it’s about money.”

“That’s what I think, but they won’t admit it. All the farms and ranches out here are struggling financially. The wind farm bailed me out, and the Gurdmans resent me for it. And now, of course, they can say the windmills kill eagles.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” His attention was on the eagle again. “You need to take the carcass to the state wildlife office in Pacheeta. I’ll load it in the truck for you.”

“Thanks,” she said without enthusiasm. Pacheeta was the county seat and fifty miles away. “But I thought I’d just call the local law to come pick it up.”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t. No telling what might happen to it before a wildlife ranger got to see it.”

For a man who’d just arrived on the scene, he had plenty of opinions. She wondered if Rainwater was an Indian name. He didn’t look any more Indian than she did, with her light brown hair and blue eyes. But half the folks in Oklahoma had some Indian heritage if you traced their lineage back far enough.

He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and lifted the eagle by its feet, staying clear of the talons. And then he leaned in to smell the bird.

“What are you, the animal CSI? Don’t tell me you can tell how long it’s been dead by sniffing.”

“No. But I think this bird’s come in contact with Diazinon. That might have something to do with why it died.”

“Diazinon—the stuff you spray to kill ticks and fleas?”

“Right. It was outlawed a few years ago, like DDT before it, but lots of people still have some sitting in their storage sheds.”

“How would an eagle get hold of that?”

“Good question. Maybe by accident, but it would take an awful lot of it to be lethal for a bird that size. Even DDT usage didn’t kill the adult birds, just weakened their eggshells so the babies didn’t hatch.”

A crawly feeling rose up her back. “You think somebody poisoned it on purpose?”

“Look, the smell might be something else,” he said. “I’m just guessing. You need to have a wildlife official examine it.”

She followed him up the rise to where they’d parked, and he laid the eagle carefully on the stained bed of her truck. “You don’t happen to have a garbage bag, I guess.”

“The whole truck’s pretty much a garbage bag.”

He didn’t dispute it. “Wait a minute. I might have something.” He rummaged in a storage box mounted behind the cab of his truck and came out with a lightweight tarp. He opened it in her truck bed, laid the bird in the center and wrapped it up.

“Good idea,” she said. “I don’t need everybody in town to see my illegal cargo.”

“Not just that. We want to keep it in the same shape you found it, without damage in transit.”

“We?”

“I’ll ride with you if you want,” he said. “I know some guys in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Maybe I can help smooth any ruffled feathers.”

She made a face but he didn’t seem to notice the pun.

“It couldn’t hurt,” she said. “We can talk about the foreman’s job on the drive. Follow me down to the house and you can park your truck there.”

He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat, like John Wayne in an old cowboy movie, and walked back to his vehicle.

For the space of time it took to open Red Ryder’s mulish door, she watched him go. She’d read the résumé he’d e-mailed. He had good credentials and a background in conservation that was a plus in her view. But a résumé didn’t tell much about a man’s temperament or his character. Could she trust this guy to live within a stone’s throw of her house, with no one else around for miles?

Then she thought of the eagle again. If Rainwater was right about the Diazinon and the bird was intentionally poisoned and dumped beneath the windmills, there was no doubt in her mind who’d done it.

Chapter Two

Red Ryder burped smoke and lurched into gear. With Rainwater following, Marik zigzagged down the ridge toward the two-lane blacktop road that people around here called a highway. This time she closed the gate behind them.

The ranch buildings—her house, the foreman’s cottage and two barns—sat at the base of Killdeer Ridge half a mile from the windmills as the crow flew, a mile and a half by road. From the paved road she turned beneath a cedar-log archway with Killdeer Ridge Ranch branded into the wood. The gravel on the quarter-mile driveway was nearly worn away, the one-lane road in need of grading.

They passed the foreman’s quarters first, where Jace Rainwater would live if she hired him. The two-bedroom cottage sat vacant, its windows dark and lonesome. For months she’d resisted hiring anybody to replace Monte. After J.B.’s accident, Monte had deflated like a wrinkled balloon, his seventy years coming upon him all at once. He’d decided to retire but agreed to stay on a few months to help her get a handle on running the ranch. The few months turned into a year. Monte was her surrogate grandfather when she was growing up, a fixture at the ranch since before she was born. Without him the place didn’t feel right. Marik still held a mean little resentment toward his daughter, who’d finally come down from Oklahoma City with a U-Haul and taken Monte and his things back with her.

She parked Red Ryder in the graveled space in front of the cobblestone ranch house originally built by Stone Youngblood, a grandfather she never knew. The original structure was two-storeys and square as a shoe box. Marik’s mother had supervised several additions, including a southern-style front porch, a carport and a master-bedroom suite on the ground floor at the back. If it wasn’t architecturally harmonious, the big house was comfortable inside and definitely unique. It might have grown even larger if Julianna Youngblood hadn’t taken her plans with her to the grave when Marik was six years old.

Marik wondered if Jace Rainwater could sense the history that lived among these cobblestone buildings, or if he saw only the shabby remains of a once-prosperous enterprise.

His truck pulled in beside her and rolled to a stop. She shouldered her door open and started up the rock sidewalk to the house. “Want some coffee for the drive?” she called. On a ranch, coffee was one of the basic food groups. She’d been addicted since high school.

“No, thanks. I drank about a gallon on the drive out here,” he said.

“Then you’d better come in and use the facility before we go.”

She directed him to the bathroom, then clumped up the split-log staircase to her bedroom and pulled on cleaner boots for the trip to Pacheeta. If Rainwater had waited until nine o’clock to show up for their appointment, she might have fixed her face a bit before then. Or she might not. At any rate, she didn’t see much point in it now.

When she came back down he had gone outdoors. She refilled her thermal mug and turned off the coffeepot but didn’t bother locking the house. Her dad believed that locks kept out only honest men; a thief would break down the door or smash a window. She found Jace checking the cargo still wrapped securely in the bed of her truck.

Red Ryder’s springs squawked as he settled onto the seat, his shoulders filling up his side of the cab. Marik coaxed the truck into reverse and they wheezed down the driveway toward the highway, leaving his nice airtight truck parked by her house. She hoped the old red pickup was up to the trip.

They rattled over the blacktop, watching shadows recede across the landscape as the sun ascended. She saw him try the window handle once, but when it didn’t respond he said nothing and zipped up his vest. He didn’t talk much, which was okay with her. Her social skills had regressed since she’d moved back to the ranch; after Monte left, she often went several days without talking to anyone.

A coyote trotted along a fence, heading toward a grove of leafless trees. Far to their right, above the line of trees that concealed the Silk Mountain River, a dark swosh etched the blue of the sky. The wingspan was too large for a hawk. It was another eagle, probably scanning a pool where the water was deep enough to hunt for fish. The sight of it sent a new pang of dread through her middle.

Rainwater saw it, too. “The river is the south boundary of your ranch?”

“Correct.”

“Does it border your neighbors’ land, too? The ones opposing the wind farm?”

She nodded. “The wildlife preserve butts up to me on the south, across the river,” she said. “The Searcy ranch is to the east, and the Gurdmans’ farm on the west. The land to the north is owned by somebody who lives in Oklahoma City and never comes out here. The elk from the refuge have sort of taken over the pastureland there.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, they’re beautiful. In the fall you can hear them bugling.” Her mouth twisted. “Burt Gurdman runs ’em off his land with a shotgun.”

Rainwater said nothing, just shook his head.

Marik pulled a folded paper from above the visor and handed it to Rainwater. It had come in yesterday’s mail from the office of Earl Searcy, mayor of Silk. The notice invited local residents to attend a community meeting for the purpose of discussing the rural water system, a proposal to hire a full-time police chief and a possible moratorium on construction of twenty-five additional wind turbines on Killdeer Ridge. GPP&L had already paid half the lease money for phase two of the wind turbines. Marik had used the money to retire some of her debt and to buy a lustful young bull and a new bunch of heifers. If construction was blocked, the company might want that money returned.

The mere sight of the flyer made her angry all over again. The least Earl Searcy could have done was phone her about it in person. Silk didn’t have a mayor when she was a kid, and she liked it better that way.

Except for the Gurdmans, the Searcys were her closest neighbors and good people. Earl had been a friend to her dad. His sons, Jackson and Cade, often helped out on the Youngblood ranch. None of them had ever said anything about opposing the wind farm.

“I don’t know where they get off discussing construction on private property,” she said. “My ranch isn’t inside city limits. There’s no question of zoning or public access or any other damn thing that should concern city government, such as it is. The construction is phase two of a project that was thoroughly discussed, state permits obtained, all the legalese dotted and crossed months ago.”

He handed the flyer back to her and she stuffed it behind the visor again. “But if this eagle was killed by the windmills and some federal agency gets involved,” she said, “that’s a whole new ball game.”

“You need a necropsy on the bird before that meeting.”

She glanced at him. “What’s that? An autopsy for animals?”

“Exactly. That’s why you want to turn it over to the wildlife department instead of a county sheriff.”

Maybe it was a good thing Jace Rainwater showed up early after all.

“During the first phase of construction, somebody put sugar in the gas tanks of the big dirt-moving machines,” she told him. “Shut them down for several weeks. The site boss said they had trouble like that sometimes, but not usually in such an isolated spot. He thought it was probably teenagers, but I had my doubts even then.”

Rainwater nodded but made no comment. She dropped the subject, regretting that she’d aired her grievances to a stranger.

After a minute he pointed through the windshield toward a rocky mound in the distance. “Is that Silk Mountain?”

“Yup. That’s it. The town was named for the mountain, but people dropped the mountain part years ago and just call the town Silk.” A neat irony, she thought, for a village of maybe two thousand that was anything but silky.

The mountain wasn’t much of a mountain, either, just a geographical anomaly that had thrust a tall, red mesa far above the surrounding level terrain. Flat shale boulders stacked up like a deli sandwich that narrowed to a square, treeless summit. Between the mountain and the road they were driving lay a wide, flat plain veined by creeks that drained into the river. In the heat of summer, the creek beds dried up and stranded the resident crawdads.

“I read how Silk Mountain got its name,” Rainwater said.

She nodded. “Did the guidebook tell you about the ghost that lives up there?”

He glanced sideways, his face skeptical. “No. I guess it left out the good parts.”

“They say a young pioneer wife who lived out here before there was a town or a road, or anything, went crazy from loneliness and the unrelenting wind. One day while her husband was gone, she scrubbed the floor of her cabin, fed the milk cow and hung her only two dresses wrong side out on the clothesline. She was wearing a camisole and petticoats and farmer’s boots when she climbed to the top of Silk Mountain and jumped to her death.” Marik didn’t mention her near relation to the young wife. “Sometimes on a moonlit night, people see her ghost standing on the edge of Silk Rock.”

“Great story.” He looked toward the shale outcropping and smiled. “So have you ever seen her?”

Marik paused. “I don’t know you well enough to answer that.” It might have been just a trick of the light.

The blacktop road led them directly down the unnamed main street of Silk. It was still early, and only a few dusty pickups and the postmistress’s PT Cruiser were parked in the slanted spaces beside the street. Half of the storefronts sat vacant, sad reminders of somebody’s retail dreams gone up in dust. Around windows dimmed by gray grime, the painted facades peeled like a bad sunburn.

“There’s the P.O.,” Marik said as they rolled past, “and the grocery store–slash–drugstore, and the DHS office.”

“Every little town needs a welfare office,” he said drily.

“It isn’t just welfare. Daisy’s an area supervisor for Child Protective Services.” Daisy Gardner was the sole full-time employee at the local Department of Human Services office, and Marik’s closest friend. Actually her only friend, now that Monte had gone.

There was one traffic light in Silk, perpetually blinking yellow, never red. “The bank’s a branch of Pacheeta Farmers and Merchants,” she said. “Up ahead is the farmers’ co-op where I buy feed, and here’s our Sonic, the only fast food in town.”

“How’s the food?”

“Anything I don’t cook tastes great to me. And their cherry limeade is outstanding.”

Outside the little town the speed limit rose again. She urged Red Ryder up to sixty, its top speed, and the shimmy magically disappeared. The gas gauge jittered on a quarter of a tank; she would have to fill up in Pacheeta.

Her companion cleared his throat and segued into his job interview. “Did you have a chance to look at the résumé I sent?”

“I did, and it’s impressive. But that doesn’t tell me about your work ethic, or whether you’d have trouble being bossed by a woman.”

“Depends,” he said. “How bossy are you?”

“Huh. I’m supposed to ask the questions.”

“I see,” he said, and smiled.

“Frankly, with your background and work history, it makes me wonder why you’d want a job out here, which most people consider the middle of nowhere. You could make more money working for the USDA or even the state, in some environmental capacity.”

“That’s what I was doing in Amarillo, at the county level. Believe me, the pay wasn’t that great.” His gaze traveled across the land in front of them, from horizon to horizon. “I need more space, and I love this country. I came from Oklahoma originally.”

“So you’re not employed now?”

“I quit my job last week. For personal reasons,” he added. “I didn’t get fired.”

“Are these personal reasons going to follow you to the next job?” She glanced sideways and saw a muscle in his jaw tighten.

“My marriage is on the rocks. My wife just took a job she likes in Amarillo and she doesn’t want to move. We’re going to try separating for a while.”

He set his mouth in a way that let her know that’s all the personal information he cared to discuss. Fair enough. But a shaky marriage could mean that he’d be here just long enough to become helpful and then hightail it back to his wife.

The trouble was, the only other person who’d shown any interest in the job was not somebody she wanted on the place. She wouldn’t admit it aloud, but sometimes it was eerie living out there by herself after Monte left. And some of the work simply required more physical strength than she had. She was five-seven and strong, but even now she was nursing a strained shoulder from hefting sacks of feed into the back of the truck. She would reserve judgment about Jace Rainwater. If he could help her out of this eagle mess, that was a definite mark in his favor.

“Okay. Your turn to ask questions,” she said.

“Tell me about the ranch.”

“Twelve hundred and eighty acres, more or less. Small by ranching standards. Dad had to sell a piece of it a few years back. What’s left is about two square miles, though it isn’t square because of the river. I inherited it when my father died and my sister didn’t want anything to do with it.” She had a quick flash of Anna at the oak table in the kitchen, signing over her rights to Marik the day after their father’s funeral. Neither of them knew then that the ranch was immersed in debt.

“My sister’s five years older and escaped to California right after high school. I stayed here with Dad and helped him run the place along with Monte, the previous manager.” In those years they’d all assumed she would take over the ranch someday. But that had changed after she went off to college and fell in lust.

“Anna’s husband is a producer in L.A. and makes a ton of money. She said I deserved the ranch because I always loved the land.” Her smile twisted. “She thought she was doing me a favor.” Her sister’s jewelry alone could pay off most of the ranch’s debts, but Marik would never tell her that.

“I didn’t know how much trouble Dad was in until I moved back and took over,” she said. “The cattle market went to hell a few years back and he’d made some bad decisions. I had to sell off most of the herd to pay a note that was overdue. I was hanging on by a thread when Great Plains Power & Light came out here and proposed leasing the ridge for a wind farm. I studied the concept and really liked what they were doing. It seemed like a good use of the land, not to mention keeping me out of bankruptcy, so I signed a fifty-year lease. Monte and I thought Dad would approve.”

“The wind farm was what attracted me to the job,” Rainwater said. “I’ve always thought we ought to find a way to harness all this wind energy. It wasn’t the railroad that settled this part of the West—it was the windmill. If windmills can provide water for cattle and homes, why not electricity?”

“Why not, indeed.”

“But you still run cattle?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a working ranch, just not a profitable one. I’m slowly building up the herd again, but I can’t manage more cattle until I have some help.” She shrugged. “I paint pictures, too, and during the leanest times I started selling a few to help pay the bills. There’s a big landscape I did of Silk Mountain hanging in the local bank.”

“My mom encouraged me to paint when I was a kid,” he said. “The kitchen, the living room, the barn…”

Marik laughed. “I do some of that, too.”

They’d gone another mile before he spoke again. He cleared his throat first, and she heard the hesitation in his voice.

“I have a son,” he said. “If you hired me, I would want to make sure it was okay for Zane to spend some time with me here. Mostly weekends, maybe longer in the summer.” He looked out across the fields beside the road, as if the thought of his son made him sad. “He’s a quiet kid, not rowdy.”

Maybe that had something to do with his wanting the job—a good place in the country for his son. Marik smiled. “I like kids. I was teaching school before Dad died and I came back here. As long as it didn’t interfere with your work, I’d have no problem with your son coming to visit. How old is Zane?”

“He’s eight.”

The same age as my daughter. She squinted toward the road ahead and waited out a sensation like her insides turning over.

Somebody else’s daughter.

Chapter Three

A July morning, eight years and seven months ago…From the right seat of the single-engine Cessna, Marik looked out across a bluestem pasture beyond the runway of a country airport. The bleached tips of the grass rippled like an ocean in the Oklahoma wind. The pasture looked solid enough to walk on, but looks were deceiving; the thigh-high grass could conceal a coyote or a newborn calf, or even a person. She imagined lying down in the grass, hiding from the ache that filled her spongy stomach.

A clear sky umbrellaed the landscape. Far to the southwest, toward the ranch, a few clouds hugged the horizon. She leaned back on the padded seat and watched her father on the tarmac, going through his preflight checks. He examined the gas sumps for water, lifted the cowling and checked the oil stick. She’d done it with him dozens of times, but today she had no desire to copilot, or to be in charge of anything. She was just a passenger, sore and tired, going home without a baby in her arms.

She closed her eyes and saw a tiny face, ruddy with frowning, the puffy eyes squinted shut. My daughter, she had thought, trying on the phrase like an unfamiliar wrap. But not for long.

The alarming red imprint of forceps just behind the temple. No harm, the nurse said, perfectly normal for a first delivery. The mark would go away.

The only thing beautiful about a newborn, she thought, is the fact of its being, the miracle of its life.

Then the nurse took her away.

The attorney sat in the hospital administrator’s office, his hair streaked with gray. A crucifix on the wall of the office…the smell of furniture polish. On the desk, a photo of two small children, a boy and a girl. She glanced at them and turned away.