Driftless (21 page)

Days passed, and after she had searched the paper many times, the letter finally appeared, reproduced exactly as she had written it, even with one misspelled word followed by “(sic)”, with their names and address directly below. Above their letter was one about the need for prayer in schools and beneath it an auction notice.

Cora expected the telephone to begin ringing that day. Instead, a policeman arrived—one of the same policemen who had investigated the burglary. He politely handed her a notice to appear the following day with her husband before an administrative judge at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

The following day they left for Madison, and Cora took with them the Madison newspaper. On the front page began a three-page article featuring the American Milk Cooperative. The CEO, Burt Forehouse, grinned out of a half-page color picture surrounded by packages of butter and cheese, gallon jugs of milk, and bags of milk powder. Next to him stood the governor of Wisconsin. The text explained how AMC had grown from a “horse and buggy cheese factory started by hardscrabble dirt farmers before the days of milking machines, pasteurization, bulk tanks, and refrigerated trucks” into a prominent international business. There was another picture, on page two, even larger, of the twin Holstein statues on either side of the entrance doors at AMC’s headquarters. On page three was a picture of “Burt’s homeroom,” an office with rows of computers, awards on the wall, and dozens of smiling employees.

Directly below the picture, it read, “ ‘A major player in the global marketplace,’ said Burt Forehouse. ‘Farmers can be proud of what they’ve built here. Wisconsin dairymen began this business, stepped up to the plate and hit a home run. They were never satisfied with just being good. They demanded to be the best. They saw the challenge of national and international competition and responded to it. We’re second to none in value- added milk products, and first in returning to our farm patrons the highest quality of services.’ ”

When he was asked to comment on the less attractive aspects of his successful career, Burt Forehouse said, “Without a doubt the most difficult part of my job is having to tell a farmer—one of our patrons—we can no longer pick up his milk. It deeply saddens me to let someone go, and we try in every way to work with our less progressive farmers to help them adjust to the high standards demanded by the consuming public. But there are always a few who can’t make the transition from the old ways to the new economy. Some just can’t take hold of the tools of new technology. In the twenty-first century they still believe they can farm the way their grandfathers did before science learned what we know today about eliminating contaminants at all levels of production.”

In a state building in Madison, Cora and Grahm were shown into a room with a nearly bald judge sitting behind an elevated bar, a
black robe drawn securely around his neck. There was also a uniformed officer and five other men sitting at tables, but the Shotwells did not know if they were judges wearing suits, or lawyers, or who they were. No one introduced them, and the judge and men seated at the tables continued reading from papers.

After five or ten minutes the judge read Cora and Grahm’s names and asked them to step forward. The uniformed officer held open the little wooden gate separating the seating area from the other half of the room and they passed through. Cora let her arms fall flat against her sides and Grahm put his hands in his pockets. The judge explained that a departmental investigation was under way, and that he was asking everyone to refrain from making statements about matters relating to the proceedings.

“What does that mean?” asked Cora.

“It means not to talk about this case or anything related to it.”

“Not talk about it to whom?” asked Cora.

“To anyone.”

“Anyone?”

“That’s right.”

“Not even each other?”

The judge took a breath of impatience, rubbed his neck, smiled, and said, “Yes, even each other. This will seal the proceedings while they go forward and protect everyone involved. My ruling on this is final and any breach of it will be referred to the magistrate for immediate prosecution in the district court.”

“I don’t understand this,” said Cora. “How can I not talk to my husband?”

“Oh, you can talk to your husband,” said the judge, folding his hands and smiling in a fatherly way, “you just can’t talk about this case.”

Grahm glared at the judge, his hands squeezed into fists inside his pockets. He felt small. He looked around the room and wondered why everything he knew seemed irrelevant here. His understanding of animals, plants, soil, machinery, chemicals, medicine, carpentry, plumbing, his family, and people in general—all became obsolete in this room. Everything here seemed pointlessly formal, like a bad dream. The judge wore a black robe, but why? Was it a requirement? And if so, who made it a requirement? Who decided on the color?
Why did he sit behind an elevated counter? Were the carpenters given instructions to build a counter so high and wide—like the measurements of the altar in Solomon’s temple? What would happen if the counter were two inches too short, or too tall? Would that undermine his authority? And if not, why was the judge so far up in the air? Did the elevation have something to do with dispensing justice? Grahm shuddered to think of the poor souls who had stood in rooms like this and had their lives taken away from them, were severed from their families and friends and everything they understood through Rube Goldberg machinations they did not comprehend. And though the judge smiled at them and tilted his head to the side, no warmth came from his eyes. He had never even introduced himself, never said anything like, “Hello, I’m Jim Shabatz. My wife and I live in the house across from the park. We have two grown children. I was assigned to head up this hearing. My grandparents used to farm and I spent time on the farm as a boy. We’ve called you in because we needed to include you in this thing and I hope the traffic wasn’t too bad driving in.”

“Excuse me, sir, but this doesn’t seem right,” said Cora.

“Trust me, it is,” said the judge.

The uniformed officer then held the little wooden gate open again and in no time at all Cora and Grahm stood looking at each other in the parking lot.

“Do you believe this?” asked Cora.

Back at the farm, they ate lunch at the kitchen table.

“We need a lawyer,” said Cora.

“We can’t even pay our bills,” said Grahm. “We haven’t done anything wrong. And if we needed a lawyer the judge would have told us. Aren’t they required to do that?”

“That’s just it—we don’t know.”

There was a knock on the front door. Lester Rund was not in uniform, and he stamped off his boots before coming inside. Today was his day off, he said, and he carried the manila envelope under his arm.

“I’m afraid I can’t keep this, Mr. and Mrs. Shotwell. I showed it to the sheriff and he advised me to return it.”

“Why?”

“He said that keeping it could negatively involve the department and complicate an investigation taking place in another agency. So I’m returning this to you. If there is some other way that I could help I’d be more than happy to, and I hope you won’t hesitate to get in touch with me.” He then paused a moment before leaving, and said, “I hear we’re supposed to get some snow.”

FIRE IN THE FIELD

I
N PREPARATION FOR WASHING THE INSIDE OF THE REFRIGERATOR, Maxine carried all the frozen food from the freezer compartment down to the basement chest freezer. Then she cleared out the ment down to the basement chest freezer. Then she cleared out the compartments. She found many things to throw out—some on the compost pile behind the barn; the rest she put in the pen with Rusty’s old white terrier.

At around noon she answered the telephone and was asked by an operator if she would accept a collect call from Mr. Russell E. Smith. She agreed, astonished by the request. In over forty years of marriage she had never accepted a collect call from her husband.

When he didn’t speak, she said, “Russell, is everything all right?” and she encountered a long pause.

“Maxine,” he said.

“You’ll have to speak up, Russell. I can’t hear you.”

“I’m in Iowa.”

“What are you doing in Iowa?”

“We come down with Ella.”

“Who’s ‘we’ and who’s ‘Ella’?”

“Eli’s wife.”

Rusty had driven Eli, Abraham, Isaac, and the boys’ mother to Dubuque, Iowa, because of a stomach problem. She apparently had a history of seeing a doctor from there—some herbal practitioner (they had no medical insurance). Other Amish families lived in the area and Russell said he would drive them around until they found a place to stay. Then he was driving back home. He’d return to pick them up whenever Eli’s wife improved enough to come home.

“Did all of you fit in the front of the truck?” asked Maxine.

“Abe Lincoln rode in back,” said Rusty.

“Abe Lincoln?”

“That’s what I call Abraham. He don’t mind.”

“When will you be back home?”

“Soon as I get there.”

“Do you have a map? Where are you?”

“Just across the river. It’s not that far. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“You be careful, Russell.”

Maxine sat down and slowly drank a large cup of coffee.

The house was not going to be finished in time.

Rusty arrived home at around five. She saw his truck disappear into the barn, then heard the lawn mower running and watched him mowing along the edge of the fence, the white terrier limping alongside. It was after dark before he came in.

“What took you so long to get home?” she asked.

“I had to go over to Eli’s house and leave off a message for his mother-in-law.”

“How will you know when to go back and get them?”

“They’ll call from a store phone. You should see the casino they built up on the river.”

“Why were you at a casino?”

“I wasn’t
there—
I saw it from the road.”

Work on the Smith house did not resume until Thursday, and rather than progressing it seemed to Maxine to go backwards. In order to splice in the new joists in the basement it was necessary to remove part of the floor in the guest bedroom. Despite an effort to salvage the oak tongue-and-groove flooring, pieces were broken. And the two-and-a-half-inch boards—common in older homes—were no longer popular enough for the lumberyard to keep them in stock. Also, the old flooring ran thicker than modern flooring, so extra time would be needed to shim up the new stock—when the order finally arrived—to the level of the rest of the floor. In addition, the new boards would have to be stained and finished to match.

The holes through the floor in the guest bedroom provided an unobstructed view of a dank corner of the cellar, and by standing at
just the right place you could see all the way through the foundation and into the yard.

Maxine tried to reconcile herself to the bitter truth that the house would not be completed for her mother’s visit. The only question that remained was how much of the damage could be patched over. Old wood shingles covered the yard, and parts of the roof were still protected only by tarpaper. The siding presented a quilt-work of every conceivable surface—splotches of light gray primer next to new trim boards, and, worst of all, exposed insulation. From the road it looked like a rural slum.

And her optimism was not bolstered when one evening she drove the Amish workers back to their home while Rusty looked for more siding at the lumberyard. The sight of the Yoders’ mostly unpainted farmhouse and completely unpainted buildings gave her little reason to think people who lived amid such conditions would have any concern—other than a mercenary interest—in improving the appearance of other people’s homes. They didn’t share her values.

When Rusty returned home he discovered Maxine in the front yard picking up wood shingles and putting them in a tin wheelbarrow. He found a grass rake and assisted her, building a burn pile in the field north of the barn. As they worked, big flat flakes of snow began to fall like shredded gauze around them. The flakes—some as large as silk moths—drifted aimlessly in the wind before gently landing, fitting themselves to the contour of ground, and dissolving without a trace of moisture.