A Murder of Crows (8 page)

“What do you know about turbines in Stevens County?”

“Frankly, very little,” he replied. “I’m lucky if I even know what day it is. I figure I’ll have time to catch up on state news again when Louise is—oh, I don’t know—seventeen?”

“Months?” I asked.

Alan closed his eye and sighed.

“Years.”

“How the mighty Hawk has succumbed to such a tiny child,” I observed.

Both of Alan’s eyes flew open and fixed on me.

“I’m not the one who carried a sack of flour around school all day yesterday,” he reminded me. “At least my baby smiles and drools.”

“But mine made good biscuits,” I said. On second thought, I added, “Forget I said that.”

“I’m not even asking,” Alan assured me. He yawned, lifting his head from the desk and stretching his arms toward the ceiling. On their way back down, his hands smoothed over the crown of his head as my brother-in-law shook away his tiredness.

“But back to the turbines,” he continued. “As luck—and the lovely wide-awake Louise—would have it, I did happen to catch a program on public radio late last night that featured a panel discussing wind energy. Apparently, when it comes to reducing bird mortality, fewer and taller turbine towers are turning out to be a big piece of the solution out in Altamont Pass in California.”

I knew about Altamont. Set atop a ridge in central California, the Altamont Pass Wind Farm was constructed back in the 1970s as one of the first wind farms in the country in hopes of developing alternative sources of energy for a nation dependent on Mideast oil. At its peak, the farm had almost 6000 turbines in operation, making it the largest concentration of turbines in the world.

Unfortunately, its location, prime for catching electricity-generating winds from the Pacific Ocean, also was a critical corridor for raptor migration and overwintering, especially as the Golden Eagle population rebounded thanks to those same federal protection statutes that were now such an obstacle for the proposed farm in our neighboring Goodhue County. By the turn of the new century, experts around Altamont were counting 2,000 raptor deaths every year from bird-turbine collisions, in addition to some 8,000 other bird and bat victims. As a result of the carnage, alternative energy proponents and the local Audubon Society chapters determined to find a compromise that would permit wind generation with reduced avian fatalities. Last I’d heard about it, part of that compromise included replacing the old turbines with an improved design that made wind harvesting more efficient … and less deadly.

“I can understand how fewer turbines to fly into would certainly help,” I said to Alan, “but how do taller ones make a difference?”

My brother-in-law yawned again and leaned back in his chair. I thought I spotted a small dribble of dried formula on his shoulder.

“Taller towers are the reason they can go with fewer turbines,” he explained. “When the turbines are up higher where the wind is naturally faster, you don’t need as many turbines to produce the same amount of energy. For the hawks, eagles, and owls, though, taller towers are especially good news: the blades are much higher off the ground, well out of the zone where the birds fly to hunt their prey.”

“So the hawk doesn’t run into a blade that will slice him in half just as he’s diving for some dinner,” I said.

“Exactly. They’ve already seen a big drop in avian mortality at Altamont. If I’m remembering this correctly, they’re hoping for an eighty-percent decrease in bird deaths.”

The familiar sound of slamming locker doors began to echo in the school hallway. I stood up to go.

“So you’re saying that the turbine manufacturers have already been working with conservationists to come up with more bird-friendly wind farms.”

Alan nodded. “And if Sonny Delite was as sharp an advocate as you say he was, he’d know about those turbine improvements, just like the utility company would. If birds colliding with towers was the problem, Altamont’s taller towers are the solution.”

I stood to the side of the doorway as two students sauntered in.

“Which means that there had to be some other reason Sonny was opposing the construction in Stevens County,” I concluded.

“Who says he was opposing it?”

I looked at Alan suspiciously. “Red did. She said he was Don Quixote jousting at windmills. Alan, do you know something I don’t?”

Alan laughed. “I always know something you don’t know, White-man.”

“Such as?” I gestured for him to elaborate.

“Oh, let’s see … I could tell you about the formation of the Italian city states prior to the Renaissance and how their political structures—”

“Alan.” I stopped him before he got to full lecture mode. “What do you know about Sonny and the wind farm plans for Stevens County?”

He got up out of his chair and walked across the room to join me at the doorway.

“According to a news article I dug up last night—or was it this morning?—on the Internet, Sonny Delite didn’t want to take any windmills down in Stevens County, Bob.”

He gave me a soft punch in my right shoulder.

“He was on the team wanting to put them up.”

Chapter Seven

It was almost the end of the school day, and I sat in the back row of the Savage High School auditorium watching Mr. Wist the Amazing Hypnotist up on the stage telling eight students they were now chickens in a farmyard.

“This should be good,” Boo Metternick, our new physics teacher, whispered next to me. “Was this assembly your brainstorm, Bob, or did the whole counseling department come up with it?”

I assured him that my colleagues and I shared the credit for the day’s special activity.

“We wanted to make sure students took advantage of our break this week to attend some college open houses,” I explained. “Mr. Wist came highly recommended. At the end of his show, he does some trick that really motivates students to think about life after high school.”

“That would take a magician, not a hypnotist,” Boo pointed out. “The last thing high school students think about is life after high school.”

I threw a quick look at Boo. “Are you sure you weren’t a high school counselor in another life?”

Boo shook his head and lapsed back into silence beside me.

Shoot. Even if I had tried, I couldn’t have come up with a better opening line than that for my new colleague to tell me he was the Bonecrusher.

Me: “Are you sure you weren’t a high school counselor in another life?”

Boo: “A high school counselor? No way. I don’t pretend to have even half of your brilliance and insight, Bob. But I was a famous wrestling celebrity once. They called me the Bonecrusher. Melodramatic, I know, but hey, it was a paycheck.”

Instead, Boo continued to sit in silence in the next chair.

I mentally reviewed the latest I’d heard through the faculty grapevine about him, which wasn’t much at all. He was single, he was new to the Twin Cities, and he’d only been teaching for three years, the last two in a rural school district in northern New Mexico. What he’d done prior to that, no one seemed to know. But he had dropped in to play some pickup basketball with me and Rick last Wednesday morning before school, and I could personally attest to the man’s strength and agility in an athletic contest.

Oh, and there was one more thing I knew about Boo Metternick: his middle name was Charles, giving him the initials of B.C.

Bonecrusher.

Maybe I’d spend the ten dollars that Alan was going to owe me on something cute for Baby Lou.

The sound of a rooster crowing filled the auditorium, pulling my attention back to the students on stage, who were now diligently pecking at invisible grain and flapping their imaginary wings. The rooster cry was coming from a short freckled boy who had jumped up on a chair and was currently stretching his neck as far upwards as humanly possible.

“The farmer’s wife is coming to gather eggs,” Mr. Wist announced to his subjects, who began to scurry around the stage, clucking and bumping into each other. The rooster-boy crowed even louder.

“It looks like the hallway outside my classroom when the first bell rings for class,” Boo said. “Do you think we could get this guy to hypnotize my students to study more?”

Before I could answer him, a loud crash came from the stage, followed by a cacophony of chicken noises. The rooster picked himself up from the floor, crowing repeatedly in agitation as he shook out his arms.

Mr. Wist, now laying beneath the rooster’s overturned perch, was out cold.

The other seven students continued to squawk in confusion, then abruptly leapt from the stage and fled out the auditorium doors.

“Is this part of the act?” Boo asked.

Up on the stage, Mr. Lenzen made a beeline for the prone hypnotist. In the packed audience, students shifted uneasily in their chairs, while faculty members asked them to remain seated. From outside the auditorium, I could hear wild clucking. I turned to Boo.

“How are you at rounding up chickens?” I asked. “Unless I’m mistaken, until Mr. Wist gives them the release word, those kids are going to think they’re hens in a barnyard.”

“I grew up on a farm,” Boo said, already moving toward the closest exit. “If I can wrestle steers, I can catch a few student-sized chickens.”

Wrestle … steers?

I followed him out the door and spotted three of the hypnotized students making a turn into the girls’ locker room down the corridor.

“You take them,” Boo said, pointing at the disappearing students. “I saw the other kids head towards the cafeteria.” He took off in that direction at a run, his arms pumping smoothly like big pistons.

Boo Metternick, Savage’s own steer wrestler, catcher of hypnotized chickens, and physics teacher.

Aka … the Bonecrusher.

“Yup. You’re the man, all right,” I said under my breath to his retreating form. “I am so going to get you on my lunchroom shift.”

I turned and jogged down the hall to the locker room door.

Seeing the word “Girls” stenciled on the door gave me only a moment of hesitation. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to enter the girls’ facilities at Savage High in the course of my counseling duties, but it still tugged a tiny bit at my sense of propriety. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t think men belonged in the girls’ locker room.

At the moment, though, I supposed I could consider it less a girls’ locker room and more a chicken coop.

A henhouse?

Talk about politically incorrect. Our female coaching staff would tar and feather me if I ever let that one slip. And then Mr. Lenzen would get into the act. He’d probably suspend my coffee machine privileges.

Ouch. A day without school coffee was a day without … school coffee.

Something to think about there …

A loud cackle came from the other side of the door, focusing my attention back to the problem at hand. There were really big chickens in the locker room.

“It’s Mr. White, and I’m coming in,” I called out before I pushed on the door to open it.

It wouldn’t budge.

From the other side came the sounds of shrill squawking.

I put my shoulder against the door and pushed.

Again, it wouldn’t budge.

Again, more squawking. Louder this time.

Great. I was probably the first counselor in Savage High School history to be stymied by students who thought they were chickens barricading a door.

I needed another tactic.

“Oh, my,” I said loudly, hoping that the power of suggestion would work as well for me as it had for our illfated hypnotist. “What do I have here? Grain, and lots of it. I bet hungry chickens would just love to eat this grain.”

The squawking stopped. I pressed my advantage.

“Especially hungry chickens at the end of a very long school day,” I called through the door. “I wonder if there are some really hungry chickens in this locker room? If they would just open the door, those really hungry chickens could have some of this wonderful feed.”

I silently counted to ten, wondering if the ploy would work, and what else I could try to dislodge the hypnotized students if it didn’t. The idea of climbing into the girls’ locker room through a back window wasn’t on my list of things I wanted to accomplish in my counseling career, and I certainly didn’t want to imagine what kind of punishment Mr. Lenzen would dream up for me for that particularly egregious transgression.

But it popped into my head anyway: lunch room duty twice a week for the rest of the year.

Over my dead body.

I pounded on the locker room door.

“I’m going to wring your scrawny necks if you don’t open this door and do it now! I feel like chicken tonight!”

From the other side of the door I could hear a frantic rustling sound of bodies moving around the room. The squawking became a soft clucking.

I put my hand on the door and slowly pushed it open.

Thankfully, no crazed hens came flying at me to scratch my eyes out. I peered around the door.

One student perched quietly on a bench, arms folded along his sides, his nose bobbing rhythmically towards his shoulder. On the floor, the remaining two students were sitting on top of basketballs.

“Nice eggs,” I commented to the two girls on the balls.

“Cluck,” one replied, giving me a suspicious frown.

“Tell you what,” I told the hypnotized students. “I’ll carry the eggs very carefully and you can follow me back to the barnyard and sit on them there. And then you can eat the grain. Yum, yum.”

The boy on the bench cocked his head at me.

“Hey,” I told him, “cut me a little slack, will you? We never covered talking to hypnotized students, or chickens either, in my graduate counseling program. I am truly winging it, here.”

“Are you in there, Bob?” Boo called from the hallway.

“Yup. It’s just us chickens,” I replied.

Boo’s big body almost filled the doorframe to the locker room.

“We’re putting the kids in the nurse’s office until the hypnotist can release them,” he informed me. He looked at the two girls on the basketballs.

“Nice eggs,” he said.

“Extra large,” I added.