Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

Keith drove until noon, crisscrossing the county, noting some abandoned farmhouses where people he once knew had lived, rusted railroad tracks, a few diminished villages, a defunct farm equipment dealership, boarded-up rural schools and grange houses, and the sense of emptiness.

There were a number of historical markers on the sides of the roads, and Keith recalled that Spencer County had been the site of some battles during the French and Indian Wars before the American Revolution, before his ancestors had arrived, and he had always marveled at the thought of a handful of Englishmen and Frenchmen navigating through the dark, primeval forests and swamps, surrounded by Indians, trying to kill one another so far from home. Surely, he'd thought as a schoolboy, those wars were the height of idiocy, but he hadn't been to Vietnam yet.

The territory became British, the Revolution had barely touched the inhabitants, and the growing population had incorporated as Spencer County in 1838. The Mexican War of 1846 had taken a fair number of militiamen, most of whom died of disease in Mexico, and the Civil War had nearly decimated the population of young men. The county recovered, grew and prospered, and reached its zenith around World War I. But after that war and the next world war, with their aftermaths of rapid change, a decay and decline had set in, imperceptible when he was young, but now obvious to him. He wondered again if he intended to live here, or had he come back only to finish up some old business?

At a crossroads outside the town, he pulled into a self-service gas station. It was a discount place with a brand of fuel he didn't recognize, and attached to it was a convenience store, an interesting marketing concept, he thought: high-priced, brand-name junk food, and cheap off-brand gasoline of suspicious quality. He figured the Saab, like himself, should get used to a different diet, so he got out and pumped.

The attendant, a man about ten years younger than Keith, ambled over.

The man eyed the car awhile as Keith pumped, then walked around the Saab and peered inside. He asked Keith, "What's this thing?"

"A car."

The attendant laughed and slapped his thigh. "Hell, I know that. What kinda car?"

"A Saab 900. Swedish."

"Say what?"

"Made in Sweden."

"No kiddin'?"

Keith replaced the gas cap and stuck the nozzle back in the pump.

The attendant read the license plate. "District of Columbia — The Nation's Capital. That where you from?"

"Yup."

"You a G-man? Tax collector? We just shot the last tax guy." He laughed.

Keith smiled. "Just a private citizen."

"Yeah? Passin' through?"

"Might stay awhile." He handed the man a twenty.

The attendant took his time making change and asked, "Stayin' where?"

"I've got family here."

"You from around here?"

"Long time ago. Landry."

"Oh, hell, yeah. Which one are you?"

"Keith Landry. My folks are George and Alma. Had the farm down by Overton."

"Sure. They retired now, right?"

"Florida."

The man stuck out his hand. "Bob Aries. My folks owned the old Texaco station in town."

"Right. Still twenty-two cents a gallon?"

Bob Aries laughed. "No, they's closed up now. No stations left in town. Property taxes too high, rents too high, big oil companies got you by the short hairs. I spot-buy from anybody who got to dump it cheap."

"What did I buy today?"

"Oh, you got lucky. About half Mobil in there, some Shell, a little Texaco."

"No corn squeezin's?"

Aries laughed again. "Little of that, too. Hey, it's a livin'."

"You sell beer?"

"Sure do."

Aries followed Keith into the convenience store and introduced him to a stern-looking woman behind the counter. "This here's my wife, Mary. This is Keith Landry, folks used to farm down by Overton." The woman nodded.

Keith went to the refrigerator case and saw two imported beers, Heineken and Corona, but not wanting to seem like a total alien to Mr. Aries, he chose a six-pack of Coors and a six-pack of Rolling Rock, both in cans. He paid Mary for the beer as Bob Aries made small talk, then Aries followed him out. Aries asked, "You lookin' for work?"

"Maybe."

"Real tight here. You still got the farm?"

"Yes, but the land's contracted."

"Good. Take the money and run. Farmin's the kind of job you got to save up for."

"That bad?"

"What do you got? Four hundred acres? That's breakeven. The guys with four thousand acres, mixed crops, and livestock is doin' okay. Seen one guy drivin' a Lincoln. He's tight with the Japs and the grain dealers in Maumee. Where you stay in'?"

"The farmhouse."

"Yeah? The missus from around here?"

Keith replied, "I'm here alone."

Aries, realizing his friendly chatter was on the verge of being nosy, said, "Well, I wish you luck."

"Thanks." Keith threw the beer in the passenger seat and got into the car.

Aries said, "Hey, welcome home."

"Thanks." Keith pulled back onto the two-lane road. He could see the south end of Spencerville, a row of warehouses and light industry where the old Wabash and Erie tracks came through, bordered by cornfields; the place where town utilities and taxes ended and rural life began.

Keith circled the town, not wanting to go into it yet, though he didn't know why. Maybe it was the idea of cruising up Main Street in the weird car, and maybe seeing people he knew and them seeing him, and he wasn't prepared for that.

He headed out toward St. James Church.

As he drove, Keith sort of blocked out the mobile homes, the aluminum sheds, and the abandoned vehicles. The countryside was still spectacular, with broad vistas of crops and fallow fields that ran to the horizons where ancient tree lines still divided the old surveys. Creeks and streams, sparkling clean, meandered among weeping willows and coursed beneath small trestle bridges.

The land had once lain beneath a prehistoric sea that had receded, and when Keith's ancestors arrived, most of what became northwestern Ohio had been swamp and forest. In a relatively short period of time, working with only hand tools and oxen, the swamp had been drained, the trees felled, houses built, the land contoured for farming, then planted with grains and vegetables. The results had been spectacular: An incredible bounty had sprung from the earth as if the soil had been waiting for ten million years to sprout rye and barley, wheat and oats, carrots and cabbages, and nearly anything that the first pioneers stuck in the ground.

After the Civil War, whatever money was to be made in farming was made in wheat, then came corn, easier, heartier, and now Keith saw more and more soy, the miracle bean, protein-rich for an exploding world population.

Spencer County, like it or not, was connected to the world now, and its future was in the balance. Keith could see two pictures in his mind: one, a rebirth of rural life brought about by city and suburban people looking for a safer and gentler existence; the other picture was of a county that was little more than a mega-plantation, owned and operated by absentee investors for the purpose of planting the money crop of the moment. Keith could see fields and farms where trees and hedgerows had been pulled up to make room for the gargantuan harvesters. As he reflected on all this, it struck him that perhaps the whole nation was out of balance, that if you got on the wrong train, none of the stops down the line could be the one you wanted.

Keith pulled onto the gravel shoulder of the road and got out.

The cemetery lay on a hill of about an acre, shaded by old elms and surrounded by fields of corn. About fifty yards away sat St. James, the white clapboard church that he'd attended as a boy, and to the right of the church sat the small parsonage where Pastor and Mrs. Wilkes had lived, or perhaps still lived.