Читать книгу Church of the Graveyard Saints - C. Joseph Greaves - Страница 14

5

Bradley had overslept, and by the time he descended to the kitchen he could sense from the deafening stillness the house was already empty. He checked his phone for the umpteenth time, turning a circle where he stood.

A coffeepot warmed on the counter. In a cupboard he found a single porcelain mug, chipped and stained, amid a jumble of mismatched glasses.

On the porch out front he got his first sunlit view of the Red Rocks Ranch in all its autumnal splendor: Emerald fields framed by massive cottonwoods ablaze in greens and golds. Girdling walls of terra cotta rising to a sky of glacial blue. Elongated shadows, black and canted, running in chiaroscuro. He was reminded of Klimt somehow, or maybe van Gogh. The Mulberry Tree. He’d seen it once at the Norton Simon and now stood witness to that same arsenic palate of madness and wonder.

“You must be that professor.”

The old man sat in a rocker with his back to the risen sun. He was swaddled in a faded quilt while across his lap rested a twin-barreled shotgun that, by Bradley’s estimation, may well have outweighed him.

Bradley recognized him immediately, from the photo of Addie’s high school graduation.

“Bradley Sommers. You must be Mr. Olsen. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

The old man tossed a hand.

“Addie’s told me stories about her grandmother. I only wish I’d had the chance to meet her in person. I know Addie held her in high esteem.”

“You could say the feelin was mutual. My Vivian, she clucked over that girl like a mother hen. I reckon we both did.” The shotgun barrels lifted. “Reckon I still do.”

“Not for warding off suitors, I hope.”

“This? Hell no. This here is for wolves. We get packs of ’em around these parts, daytime and night.”

Bradley’s gaze shot to the Prius; to where they’d parked it in darkness some thirty long yards from the house.

“I’m funnin you, sonny. There ain’t wolf one in the whole state of Colorado. Used to be, many years back. They come clear up from Mexico. I hear where they’re bringin ’em back on the Gila. On purpose, I mean. As if gettin quit of ’em in the first place wasn’t chore enough. Ranchers down there are fit to be tied, and I can’t say as I blame ’em.” He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and half sneezed, half coughed into it and examined it closely before returning it to his pocket. “Whatever you teach at that college of yours, I hope it ain’t nothin about animals.”

“I co-chair the university’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, but my academic background is in geology.”

“Geology. You mean like rocks and such.”

“That’s right.”

“What about oil and gas?”

“That’s also part of it. And alternatives like wind and solar and geothermal.”

“And that’s what Addie’s been studyin? Environment and sustainability?”

“I believe she was a psychology major at one point, but her degree is in environmental science.”

“Huh. There any money in that?”

Bradley rested his weight on the railing and took a sip of his coffee. He nearly choked.

“Well, there’s always teaching. And research, of course. Environmental consulting and TES surveys, that sort of thing. And quite a few governmental positions. Not to shortchange the value of knowledge for its own sake.”

“Sounds like farming. If you can’t grow rich, at least you can grow food.”

Bradley smiled. “I’m guessing that’s alfalfa.” He pointed his chin toward the nearest hayfield, a darker shade of green than those beyond. “What else do you grow around here?”

“Hay mostly, all kinds. Well, mostly we grow beef, but there’s folks in these parts that grow grapes and stone fruits—peaches, plums, apricots. Some apples and pears. Did you know that the fruit from this bitty canyon took the gold medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair?”

“I did not know that.”

“There you go, professor. You learnt somethin today. They say folks is growin marijuana now, but no place I ever seen it. Course I’m not sure I’d recognize it if I did.”

“There goes my second guess.”

“How’s that?”

Bradley nodded to the gun.

“Oh. Had me a spot of trouble yesterday. Got into it with this fella and told him if I seen his truck again, I’d fill it with buckshot.” His blue eyes twinkled as he smiled. “Call me old fashioned, but I abhor idle threats.”

“What sort of trouble are we talking about?”

“Listen for a second.” He cupped a hand to his ear. “Can you hear that?”

Bradley listened. Only then did he realize that the breeze he’d heard whispering in the cottonwoods had in fact been nothing of the kind.

“What is it?”

“I don’t hear so good, but if it’s a low kind of humming, then it’s the compressor station. If it sounds like steam from a busted hose, then they’re venting that new gas well.”

Bradley set his mug on the railing and walked off the porch and around to the side of the house. The sound seemed to come from atop the high mesa in back.

“Carbon dioxide?”

“That’s right.” The old man craned his neck. “They pump it from here and pipe it clear down to Texas. Advanced recovery’ is what they call it. Say it gooses the oil right out of the ground. Claim we’re settin on the mother lode.”

“You mean Archer-Mason Industries?”

“That’s right.”

Bradley shielded his eyes with a hand, scanning the edge of the mesa. “What they say is true enough. The McElmo Dome is one of the largest and purest known CO₂ repositories on earth.”

“So that fella said. Right before I run him off.”

Bradley circled back to the porch, pausing again to survey the canyon—its lithic walls and its dizzying colors.

“Who was this fellow, exactly?”

“Oh, some Denver boy. Silverbelly hat and crocodile boots. We own this section of land outright, y’see. That’s six hundred and forty acres. That thousand acres on top we lease from the government. But the BLM, they went and auctioned off the mineral rights. Double-dipped is what they done. Leased the grazing to Logan and the minerals to Archer-Mason. Never mind that cows and compressors don’t mix.”

“Isn’t that part of the national monument?”

“That’s the damnedest part. You try and hike up from here and the BLM will cite you for trespass. You gotta stay on the trails, they say, on account of the monument. Don’t want you steppin on no pottery sherds or climbin into them cliff dwellings. As if folks ain’t been doin that for two hundred years. But if Archer-Mason wants to doze a new road or lay a new pipeline, why hell, the feds say go right ahead.”

“Or overrun it with cattle?”

The old man’s eyes lost some of their twinkle.

“That’s a different ball of wax. My family’s been runnin cows on this land since before there was a monument. Since before there was a BLM for that matter.”

Bradley wasn’t about to argue, though he was sorely tempted. The fact was that over three hundred million acres of Western public lands, including 90 percent of all Bureau of Land Management holdings—an area three times the size of California—were leased for private livestock grazing at rates well below market. The resulting litany of environmental impacts included denuded rangeland, polluted streams, evaporated wetlands, eroded soils, invasive flora, endangered native species, mile upon mile of barbed-wire fencing, and an annual bill to the American taxpayer of five hundred million dollars. In short, America was subsidizing a handful of livestock permit holders—welfare ranchers—to turn the public landscape into a private feedlot, all to provide less than 3 percent of the national beef supply.

“So this fellow we’re talking about, he’s a land man for Archer-Mason?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why run him off? I had the impression from Addie that you and her father were in favor of resource development.”

“Hell, son. I know you can’t make a omelet without breakin some eggs. That’s why we didn’t say boo when they first started drillin. We didn’t like it, but we didn’t complain. But there’s only so much you can ask a man to endure. Here, come see for yourself.”

He leaned the gun against the railing and struggled to his feet, shedding the quilt as he stood. He bade Bradley follow him down the steps and across the lawn to the western side of the house. There a tractor—a green John Deere model—rested under a buzzing nimbus of flies. A trio of magpies, screeching in protest, flapped off at their approach.

Bradley covered his nose with a hand. In the tractor’s front-end loader lay an oleaginous mass of raw and putrid flesh.

“Jesus. What is it?”

“Two yearling calves,” the old man said, rising on tiptoes. “Logan found ’em in a wash Monday morning. Not a mark on ’em, and nary a coyote nor bear nor cat track to be seen. It’s like they just laid down and died. And that’s not all. We had half a dozen stillborn before these. We normally don’t have but one or two stillbirths a year, and that’s with near three hundred head.”

Bradley stepped back to snap a photo with his phone. “So you think—”

“I don’t think, sonny, I know. Once Archer-Mason started drillin up there, this here is what’s happened. Now they say they’re fixin to double the number of wells.”

He turned on his heel and stalked toward the house. Bradley hurried to catch up.

“Methane and hydrogen sulfide are common by-products of well venting,” Bradley explained. “And carbon dioxide, although generally non-poisonous, tends to settle in low spots, displacing atmospheric oxygen. That’s probably what happened here.”

The old man didn’t answer. Back on the porch, he folded his quilt into a cushion and settled into his rocker, replacing the shotgun across his thighs.

“So what are you planning to do about it?”

The old man grunted. “This part of the ranch you see here, this hundred and sixty acres, it come with the mineral rights. On the other quarter-sections the owners sold off their minerals during the Depression. When my daddy bought ’em out he wound up with what you call your split estate.”

“Meaning you own the surface land but not the underlying minerals.”

“Denver, he’s paid me four visits so far, each time with a different deal. First it was wantin to lease the minerals under the homestead. I was neighborly about it, but I told him I wasn’t interested. Then he come back a few days later and offered more money. All puffed up, like he done me a favor. Time after that he wasn’t so friendly. Said they could force-pool my minerals with the BLM’s minerals and I wouldn’t have a say in the matter. Then the last time he said if we didn’t want a road or a well pad right here in our yard then by God we’d have to pay money to Archer-Mason. And that’s when I run him off.”

Bradley heard the dog barking. To the east he saw two riders in silhouette approaching from under the trees.

“You said Archer-Mason is planning more wells. They call that down-spacing. It means they’ve applied for permission to increase the drilling density in this particular unit. As a mineral rights owner you should’ve received written notice of that application.”

“Maybe I did. That Denver, he brung me a whole stack of papers. It’s all up there at the cabin.”

“And when was that, exactly?”

“Let’s see. That would’ve been day before yesterday.”

When the riders had reached the barn, the shape that was Addie swung down from her saddle and bent to quiet the dog.

“You’re right about one thing.” Bradley extracted the phone from his pocket and studied the photo he’d taken. “That man from Denver is not your friend. But if we play our cards right, he may have done us both a very big favor.”