Cold Black Earth Read online

  “I do. And I was going to be a psychiatrist, as I recall.”

  “If I’d known I’d wind up in a bunker in Baghdad I’d have stuck with the Future Homemakers of America. Didn’t you win the Crisco Award for best recipe one year?”

  It felt good to laugh; it had been a while. Rachel laughed until the tears came, and then suddenly her eyes were squeezed shut and her shoulders were shaking and Susan had come around the table to put her arms around her. “Oh, Rachel. Honey, it’s all right now. You’re home.”

  Susan found her a Kleenex and Rachel dried her eyes. “Sorry about that. Don’t know where that came from.”

  “Well my God, I may not be a psychiatrist, but I know enough to recognize stress when I see it. You’ve been through the wringer.”

  “I suppose so. And I guess I always thought I would have a marriage to go back to when it was over. But I didn’t.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a bit of a fairy tale all along. We had three good years in Beirut. But he had a roving eye, even then. The night I left for Baghdad I remember thinking, he’s going to cheat on me. Can we survive that? And it turned out the answer was no.”

  They looked at each other over the teapot for a time, and finally Rachel smiled. “As for being home, I think the jury’s still out on that.”

  Rachel stopped at the supermarket at the north end of town and managed to assemble the ingredients for a passable lamb couscous, including, somewhat to her surprise, the couscous. Having spent so much of her life outside the United States, she was sometimes startled to find that things progressed when she wasn’t there. The most exotic item she could recall seeing in the supermarket as a girl was garlic.

  She put the groceries on the back seat of the Chevy, shoving a welter of wadded-up napkins, greasy wrappers and empty cups onto the floor to clear a space. Billy had failed to inherit his father’s mania for cleanliness, apparently, or was actively suppressing it. Rachel made a note to spend a morning soon making the car habitable.

  The sky was a gray wash above her as she drove north through the darkening afternoon. Could I capture that with watercolors? she wondered. Her hobbies had fallen by the wayside over the years. The thought that she had time now to paint excited her but at the same time gave her butterflies. The rest of my life is wide open, she thought, amazed.

  Having a cry had been good for her. She could feel the knots easing. You could only go for so long lying to yourself about how you felt before it caught up to you. Stress was only half of it; some time soon Rachel was going to have to break down and tell somebody how it had felt to be betrayed by the man she had sent all those passionate longing e-mails to, hunched over her laptop in a cramped trailer in the desert.

  She switched on the radio. “. . . Illinois State Police are saying the likelihood is that Ryle has left the county, though they warn residents to be on the lookout and to secure their homes and places of business, as he is considered extremely dangerous. Ryle escaped from the psychiatric unit at Mills Correctional Center in Warrensburg sometime yesterday and has been the object of an intensive manhunt for the past twenty-four hours. In 1998 Ryle was convicted of killing his wife and children in Bloomington and dismembering the bodies. At the correctional center, an inquiry continues into how the fifty-two-year-old Ryle managed to escape from the high-security psychiatric unit. . .”

  Rachel stabbed at the button, killing the radio. After three years in Iraq, it hardly seemed fair that horror should pursue her here. She thought again of the man on the road and decided that if Matt and the state police both thought the madman had left the county, that was good enough for her.

  When she pulled into the drive an unfamiliar pickup was parked on the gravel near the kitchen door. She came into the kitchen with her groceries to find Matt and another man at the table with beers in front of them. She plunked the grocery bags down on the table, groping for an identity for this ruggedly handsome face she couldn’t quite place. “Oh, my God.”

  “Well, I’ll be. It’s little Rachel,” the man said, rising.

  “Danny?”

  “Boy, nobody’s called me that in a while.” He opened his arms for her, a big strapping man with the frame of an athlete, gone a little heavy around the middle but still imposing, graying at the temples and in the goatee and moustache that set off his square jaw. They hugged briefly, and he stepped back to look down at her from his six-foot-three perspective. “You haven’t changed.”

  “Oh, please. I have a mirror.”

  “I mean it. You look great.”

  “Thanks. Twenty-five years ago I’d have killed to hear you say that.”

  He grinned. “Ah, jeez, don’t hold that against me. I barely knew who you were.”

  “I know. That’s what hurt.” Dan Olson had been in Matt’s class, two years ahead of Rachel, the three-sport star and the freshman girl’s dream and her first serious crush. “But that’s OK. I forgave you.” She took her bags to the counter and started emptying them. She found herself wishing she’d ducked into the bathroom first to check her face, then scowled at herself for caring. “And what are you rascals up to this afternoon?”

  Matt said, “We’re just recovering from all the hard work we did at drill.”

  “Drill?”

  “For the Rome, Illinois, volunteer fire department. I didn’t tell you I’d joined?”

  “No, I’m impressed. And what do you do at drill?”

  “Well, usually we practice first-responder stuff. CPR and all that. Sometimes we even set shit on fire and try and put it out.”

  Dan chuckled and said, “But today we just went around stringing up the town Christmas lights.”

  Rachel smiled. “Well, it’s dirty work but somebody has to do it. How’s . . . let’s see. You married Sandy, didn’t you?”

  “Far as I know, she’s fine. She’s up in Moline now with the slick bastard she ran off with.”

  Rachel grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

  Dan shrugged, smiling. “It’s all good. She wasn’t cut out for farm life. At least she stuck around long enough to get our kids raised.”

  “And how are they?”

  “The kids are great. I got a boy in the Navy out in Norfolk, a girl married and living in Seattle, and my younger boy finishes up at Macomb in the spring. They’re good kids. What about you? You home for good?”

  “Boy, that’s a great question. For good? Probably not. But for a while, anyway.”

  “You all done with government work, then?”

  “Well, I burned all my bridges at the State Department. I’d like to think there’s something I could do with my experience. Maybe teach somewhere. But I don’t have to think about that for a while.” She turned from the counter. “Now, who’s going to be here for dinner?”

  She served the couscous at the kitchen table, and she almost laughed at the looks on the men’s faces as they peered at it. Matt and Dan had added a few empty beer bottles to the ranks under the sink, and Rachel had permitted herself one. The cooking and the banter had relaxed her, and she had managed to slip away to the bathroom and check that she looked OK and wonder again why she cared.

  “This is what they eat in Iraq, huh?” Dan said, pronouncing it “Eye-rack,” the way the military guys did.

  “No. This is a North African dish. I learned to make this when I was living in Paris.”

  Dan poked at it with his fork. “You lost me there. I thought Paris was in France.”

  “It is. There are lots of North African immigrants in France, and I had an Algerian boyfriend. That’s what first got me interested in learning Arabic.”

  “An Algerian boyfriend, huh? I had a girlfriend from Aledo once.”

  Rachel laughed. “That’s pretty exotic.”

  “She had some fairly exotic sexual practices, for a nice country girl. But we don’t need to go there. You know, this ain’t bad.”

  “Thank you. I learned how to make a lot of Lebanese dishes, too, when I was living in Beirut. And that’s p
retty much all I have to show for twenty years living abroad. I can bring something different to the church potluck.”

  “Bring this to my church and they’ll gather around it in a circle and wait for the minister to try it, see if he keels over.” Dan took a drink of beer and said, “Lebanon. You sure like to go where the trouble is, don’t you?”

  “I just went where they sent me. Once I learned the language, that sealed my fate. I wasn’t going to get Paris or London after that.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for hanging out with foreign guys.”

  “I tried to tell her,” Matt said. He aimed his fork at Rachel. “It all started when you went to the homecoming dance with that exchange student we had—what the hell was that kid’s name? He was from Chile or some damn place.”

  “Oh, God, Eduardo. What a disaster that was. He was so nervous he forgot all his English. I had to grab him and kiss him at the end of the night. And then he was too embarrassed to talk to me after that.”

  “But the damage was done. You had tasted that forbidden fruit.”

  She giggled. “Oh, right. I developed a craving for swarthy pimpled youths who couldn’t talk.”

  Dan reached for his beer. “And somewhere in South America, the man-eating blondes of Illinois are a legend to this day.”

  It was absurd but it made her laugh again, and it felt good to laugh. “Well, I’m done with foreign guys now, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Dan. “We’ll get you hooked up with some nice divorced farmer around here.”

  Rachel cocked an eyebrow at him. “Slow down, Tiger. I may be done with guys altogether for a while.”

  “Did I say anything about me? I’m too old to chase girls anymore.”

  “And I’m too old to be a girl, so we should get along just fine.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Dan. Rachel picked up her bottle to clink with his, and when Danny Olson winked at her she found it was easy to give him a cool indulgent smile in return.

  4

  Winter was the quiet time, the slow time, but there was still work to be done: next spring’s seed and fertilizer orders to finalize, financing to arrange, insurance needs to analyze, machinery to repair, infrastructure to upgrade, all the things left undone in busier times. Rachel hadn’t owned a pair of work boots in twenty-five years, but she put on her sneakers and followed Matt out to the barn.

  “I been trying to figure out what to do with all this space ever since I got out of hogs. Now I’m thinking organic dairy cows.”

  “Cows? Why cows?”

  He gave her a sidelong look and a grin. “You want to know the truth? Since I got rid of the hogs, I miss having animals around. Too quiet.”

  “So what happened to the hogs?”

  Matt shook his head. “Hogs got too big. The size of the operation, I mean. When the price tanked back in the nineties, only the bigger outfits survived. Now you need a CAFO and all that shit.”

  “What’s a CAFO?”

  “Stands for ‘concentrated animal feeding operation.’ You know, a big factory building with fifteen or twenty thousand hogs penned up together. That’s what you do if you’re serious about hogs now. You take on a corporate partner, have them build the plant, become an industrial farmer. Or a serf, the way I look at it. But you can make a lot of money as a serf these days. You specialize in farrowing, weaning or finishing, and that’s all you do. Economies of scale and all that.”

  “Yuck.”

  “That’s what I say. To hell with it. I’m looking at something small and sustainable.” He pointed at the vacant north end of the barn. “I can put a New Zealand–style milking parlor in here. Start with twenty cows or so and go from there, see if it flies.”

  “What’s New Zealand style?”

  “You milk the cows in groups. Line ’em up at a trough, hook ’em up to the pumps from a pit below them. I can put in the troughs right here, dig the pit about here. Cost a few thousand bucks for all the plumbing. A lot cheaper than a conventional milking operation. So I can get into it without too much start-up cost. Turn a few acres up by the creek back to pasture, start growing some hay again, figure out the business without staking too much on it.”

  “It all sounds nice and green.”

  “Yeah, me the tree hugger. Who’da thunk it? But it makes sense. Chuck Anderson over by Bremen went all organic a few years ago. I don’t know that I’m ready to go the whole way. Ravaging the land with fertilizers and pesticides has been a pretty good deal for us. But I’m starting to fall in love with the cow idea. What the hell, it’s something different.”

  Rachel looked at her brother’s profile and felt a stir of affection, watching him survey and calculate and dream, just as their father had. “I never thought about the responsibility when we were kids,” she said. “How does it feel to be in charge of all this? You’re running this thing that got built up over generations. You ever feel the weight?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. I guess I’d feel more weight if there was somebody to hand it off to. But Billy doesn’t give a shit. And Emma’s not going to come back from Peoria to run a farm. I think I’m the last generation on this land.”

  Shocked, she put a hand on his arm. “No, don’t say that.”

  Matt turned his head to fix her with a look. “What, you mean you’re going to take up farming? Is that why you came home?”

  Rachel blinked at him. “Are you sure about Billy? You don’t think he’s going to settle down?”

  Matt shook his head. “When he does, it won’t be here. I’d be real surprised.”

  “But what’ll happen to the place?”

  “I’ll cash it in, sell everything off and go live in a condo in Florida. Don’t worry, you’ll get your cut.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking.”

  “Nah, I know.” His look softened. “What, you think I want to be a lonely old man here? Sleeping in the den for the next twenty, thirty years, whatever I got left?”

  Rachel just stared at him, ambushed by images of an unsuspected future. After a while she said, “I’m sorry, Matt. I’ve been living in a fairy tale, I guess. Where the farm goes on forever and I can always come home for Christmas and find it just like it always was.”

  “Nothing goes on forever,” Matt said, turning away. “Thank God.”

  “You don’t have any outstanding warrants on you, do you?” Rachel said, toiling at the kitchen sink.

  She had said it as a joke, but there was real alarm in Billy’s eyes as his head jerked up from his lunch. “How come?”

  Rachel nodded at the window over the sink. “Because a sheriff’s car just pulled up out there.”

  Billy shoved away from the table and came to stand beside her. Outside, Matt had emerged from the shed and was strolling toward the cruiser, hands in the pockets of his overalls. A uniformed deputy had gotten out of the car and was ambling toward Matt, adjusting the set of his gunbelt. Neither of them seemed in a hurry.

  Billy made a whiffing noise. “That’s just old Roger Wilco. If he’s here, it can’t be anything serious.”

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “Roger Black?”

  “Yup. He’s kind of famous around here for being a doofus. My dad calls him Barney Fife. Nobody takes him seriously.”

  Outside, Matt and Roger shook hands, then settled on their heels to talk, two men passing the time of day. Rachel started to laugh. “Roger Black, my God.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I went to the prom with Roger once.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No. I was just a sophomore, and I had no idea he liked me. He cornered me in the hall one day and asked me to go with him, and I was so dumbstruck I failed to say no.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “I don’t know if he’s an idiot. He was kind of quiet, not real glib. But he was a nice guy. He’s not exactly . . . what am I trying to say? He’s not Hollywood material.”

  “You mean he’s a goofy-
looking doofus.”

  Rachel laughed in spite of herself. “Let’s just say he was not well-favored by nature.” Roger Black had been an awkward, angular boy, with a long equine face and an uncertain complexion, redeemed slightly by kindly eyes and a crooked smile. Watching him now in profile, Rachel saw that he had gained weight and assurance with adulthood, but he was never going to be the type to set women’s hearts a-flutter.

  “Oh, perfect. He’s gonna come in.” Matt had motioned in the direction of the house, and the two men were coming toward it. “Gonna ruin my damn lunch.” Billy went back to his place at the table.

  When Roger came into the kitchen he and Billy traded a quick glare, and then Roger’s eye lit on Rachel and he grinned his crooked grin. “Well, hello, Rachel. It’s been a long time.”

  “Hi, Roger.” Rachel didn’t know what to expect, but to forestall any extravagant gestures she put out her hand. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”

  Roger shook her hand as if he were meeting the president. “Only about twenty-three years, by my count.”

  “That long? Wow.”

  Roger’s brow furrowed. “The last time I saw you was at the Dairy Queen up in Kalmar, a couple of years after you graduated. I think you were home from college. You were with Sue Holmgren and Tammy McMaster, I recall. I was working for Don Holland at International Harvester at the time. I came over to say hi.”

  Rachel stared openmouthed. “I can’t say I remember it.”

  “Wouldn’t expect you to.” Roger grinned again and looked down at Billy. “I took your aunt to the prom one time, did you know that?”

  “Yeah. I think that’s why she’s in therapy now,” said Billy.

  “You watch your mouth,” Matt said, scowling.

  “That’s OK.” Roger waved it off. “Billy and I have had our issues, but that comes with the territory. You keeping out of trouble, son?”

  Billy gave him a pitying look. “You think I’d tell you if I wasn’t?”

  “Billy.” Matt’s tone was flat and hard.