The Devil's Pipeline, S. 3, Drums Along the Ogallala, Ch. 7-12

Friday, the final six chapters of Drums will be published

Chapter 7

Drums Along the Ogallala

By Michael J. Fitzerald

The three editors of the Clarion Newspaper Syndicate debated whether to nickname Jack Stafford “RR” – for Roving Reporter – just a few days after he had landed in Iowa. After only two days at The Redoubt, he had announced he would be flying to Southern California to check out the catastrophic Porter Ranch gas leak – and that he was considering hiring a recent New York college student to be a reporter for the syndicate.

As Jack had predicted, it only took a few phone calls to the district attorney’s office – and the juvenile court judge – to get Caleb quietly let out of the juvenile hall. His no-bail release came with a caveat that he was under a court order of house arrest. He was not allowed to leave The Redoubt property.

The order was no hardship. Caleb and several of the other teenagers at The Redoubt were homeschooled, also gathering as a group every day for at least two hours to work on farm or academic projects together. The homeschooling program James had set up was so good that children raised on The Redoubt, were referred to at Iowa colleges as “Osmett” kids, a reference to The Redoubt founder.

The morning after Jack arrived, Caleb followed his mother in the house with his head down. He looked exhausted. And while it was hard to say what the shower facilities were like at the juvenile lockup, it looked to Jack like Caleb hadn’t bathed for a long time. But at least he doesn’t seem defiant or angry, Jack thought, watching him come in, avoiding eye contact.

Janis had asked Jack to talk with Caleb right away, a man-to-man conversation like the ones he had so often with his grandfather. Janis told Jack that Caleb admired his pluck in taking on the energy companies. At first Jack wasn’t too sure about it, until he thought about Noah home on Vashon Island and whom Noah might need if something happened to Jack.

It won’t be that long and he won’t be a little boy anymore, Jack thought. His stomach tightened at the thought of raising a teenager – remembering what a handful he had been for his parents in Horseheads. Thank God for Anne and Cass, he thought.

Jack had taken over a card table in one corner of the living room for his laptop computer and papers – a small mobile office. There were several bedrooms available upstairs where he kept a lot of the papers he had brought along. But being downstairs felt like being in the hub of a newsroom. He was sitting at the table immersed in memories from his teens waiting for Caleb to come downstairs. Probably good for him to know everyone makes mistakes, Jack thought. But I have to be careful with that. He had a gun. A loaded gun.

The thought of the gun and how to talk about it was on Jack’s mind when a freshly showered Caleb walked in and sat down in a folding chair by Jack’s table, his head still in a hangdog attitude. “Caleb, you don’t go to a high school – which by the way I think is a good thing. But if you did, the way you look right now is like someone who has been sent to the principal’s office,” Jack said. “But I’m no principal, believe me. OK?”

Caleb raised his head and turned to meet Jack’s eyes. His eyes were red and watery, but Jack could see he was trying to pull it together and even force a smile. “I know what a principal is,” Caleb said. Then he turned his face away from Jack and took deep breath. His words poured out in a cascade of staccato phrases that came so fast that Jack could barely keep up.

“My chest hurts all the time… I’m mad at everything… I feel like … like crying whenever I think about my grandfather… I get sick to my stomach when I think about the shooting… Sometimes I think crazy stuff. You know? Like not being able to live like this.”

He paused, putting his head down into his hands. A full minute went by before Caleb spoke again. “That’s why I had that gun out in the woods. I didn’t want to shoot somebody else. I was thinking of me.”

Caleb paused again. He raised his head and looked straight at Jack, his eyes full of tears. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t.”

And I don’t either, Jack thought. This is way above my pay grade. They both sat silently for a moment. Then Jack reached out and put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “We’ll get through this,” Jack said.

Chapter 8

Drums Along the Ogallala

It was difficult, but Mayenlyn held back his urge to vomit as DeVille told his story about how he and Mars had come to terrorize the orphanage where DeVille and he had been raised. And how they had been terrorized, too.

Mars was an infant when he had been deposited on the same orphanage doorstep where DeVille had been dropped off. Their arrivals were only a few months apart. In Mars’ case, his name was written on the outside of a cardboard beer carton he arrived in, wrapped in a dirty towel.

His physical deformity – or as DeVille cruelly put it – his “Goddamned-ugly Neanderthal head” – prompted the staff to isolate Mars. “He was hard to look at from the beginning,” DeVille said. “Not as handsome as today.”