Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

Ludwig recognized that look: Wilbur was about to spout one of his prized little scraps of poetry.

“Alas,” Wilbur began, “what boots it with uncessant care, to tend the homely, slighted shepherd’s trade?” He looked through his reading glasses at Pendergast with evident satisfaction. “Milton. Naturally.”

“Naturally. Lycidas. ”

Wilbur was slightly taken aback. “Ah, I believe that’s correct, yes.”

“Another line from that elegy comes to mind: The hungry sheep look up and are not fed. ”

There was a brief silence. Ludwig looked back and forth between the two men, uncertain what, if anything, had just passed between them.

Wilbur blinked. “I—”

“I look forward to greeting you again in church on Sunday,” Pendergast interjected smoothly, grasping Wilbur’s hand once more.

“Ah, yes, yes, so do I,” Wilbur said, the note of surprise still detectable in his voice.

“Excuse me!” The booming voice of Art Ridder, amplified, again cut through the babble of overlapping conversations. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you would all be so kind, our guest of honor would like to say a few words. Dr. Stanton Chauncy!”

All around the Fellowship Hall, people put down their forks and turned their attention to the little man in the seersucker suit.

“Thank you,” the man said. He stood erect, hands folded in front of him like he was at a wake. “My name is Stanton Chauncy. Dr. Stanton Chauncy. I represent the Agricultural Extension of Kansas State University. But of course you know that.” His voice was high, and his manner of speaking was so crisp and precise that his words were almost overarticulated.

“The genetic enhancement of corn is a complicated subject, and not one that I can readily elucidate in a venue such as this,” he began. “It requires knowledge of certain disciplines such as organic chemistry and plant biology that one could not expect a lay audience to possess.” He sniffed. “However, I will attempt to impart the most rudimentary of overviews to you this afternoon.”

As if of one mind, those who had gathered in the Fellowship Hall appeared to slump. There was a collective exhalation of breath. If they had hoped to hear praise heaped on their town or their Sociable, or even—dared one hope?—word of Chauncy’s impending decision, they were sadly disappointed. Instead, the man launched into an explanation of corn varietals so detailed that the eyes of even the most enthusiastic corn farmer glazed over. It almost seemed to Ludwig as if Chauncy was trying to be as boring as possible. Whispered conversations resumed; forkfuls of mashed potato and turkey gravy were slipped into furtive mouths; small streams of people began moving back and forth along the far walls of the hall. Dale Estrem and the Farmer’s Co-op crowd stood at the back, arms folded, faces set hard.

Smit Ludwig tuned out the droning voice as he looked around the hall. Despite everything, he appreciated the small-town atmosphere of the Sociable: its homespun provinciality, and the fact that it brought the community together, even forcing people who didn’t like each other to acknowledge the other and be civil. It was one of the many reasons why he never wanted to leave—even after his wife had passed away. A person could not get lost in Medicine Creek. People were taken care of, nobody was forgotten, and everyone had a place. It wasn’t like that in L.A., where old people died unloved and alone every day. His daughter had been calling a lot lately, urging him to relocate nearer her. But he wasn’t going to do that. Not even after he closed the paper and retired. For better or worse, he was going to end his days in Medicine Creek and be buried in the cemetery out on the Deeper Road , beside his wife.

He glanced at his watch. What had generated these thoughts of mortality? He had a deadline to make, even if it was self-imposed, and the time had come for him to go home and write up the story.

He made his stealthy way to the open doors of the hall. Beyond, late afternoon light illuminated the broad green lawn of the church. The heat was unbroken as it lay over the grass, the parking lot, and the cornfields like a suffocating blanket. But despite the heat—and, in fact, despite everything—a part of Smit Ludwig felt relieved. He could have fared a lot worse at the hands of his fellow townsfolk; he had Maisie, and perhaps Pendergast, to thank for that. And on a less selfish note, he’d be able to write an upbeat piece about the Sociable without dissembling. It had started with a certain grimness, he felt: a stoic sense that the show must go on, despite everything. But the gloom and oppression had seemed to lift. The town had become itself again, and not even Chauncy’s stultifying lecture, which still droned on behind him, could change that. The thirty-third annual Gro-Bain Turkey Sociable was a success.

Ludwig fetched a deep, slow breath as he looked out from the steps of the church. And then, suddenly, he froze.

One by one, the people around him began to do the same, staring out from the wooden doorway. There was a gasp, a low murmur. Like an electric current, the murmur began to jump from person to person, running back into the crowds within the hall itself, growing in volume until Chauncy’s exegesis of variegated corn kernels came under threat.

“What is it?” Chauncy said, stopping in mid-sentence. “What’s going on?”

Nobody answered. All eyes were fixed on the horizon beyond the open doors of the hall, where, against the yellow sky, a lazy column of vultures wheeled in ever tightening circles above the endless corn.

Fourteen

W hen Corrie Swanson pulled up to the church, people were standing on the front lawn, huddled together in groups, murmuring anxiously. Now and then somebody would break away from one of the groups and stare out in the direction of the cornfields. There must have been fifty people out there, but she didn’t see Pendergast among them. And that made no sense, because he’d asked her to come right away. He’d been most insistent on it, in fact.

It was almost a relief to find him missing. Pendergast was going to get her into even worse trouble than she already was in this town—she could feel it in her bones. She was already the town’s A-number-one pariah. Once again, she wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself into. The money was still burning a hole in her glove compartment. He’d get her in trouble, and then he’d be gone, and she’d still be stuck in Medicine Creek dealing with the consequences. If she were smart, she’d give him back the money and wash her hands of the whole thing.

She jumped involuntarily as a black figure seemed to materialize out of nowhere beside the car. Pendergast opened the passenger door and slid in as sleekly as a cat. The way he moved gave her the creeps sometimes.

She reached for the dashboard, turned down the blaring sound of “Starfuckers” by Nine Inch Nails. “So, where to, Special Agent?” she said as casually as she could.

Pendergast nodded toward the cornfields. “Do you see those birds?”

She shaded her eyes against the glow of the sunset. “What, those turkey vultures? What about them?”

“That’s where we’re going.”

She revved the engine; the car shuddered and coughed black smoke. “There’s no roads out that way, and this is a Gremlin, not a Hummer, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Swanson, I will not get you mired in a cornfield. Head west on the Cry Road , please.”

“Whatever.” She stamped on the accelerator and the Gremlin pulled away from the curb, shuddering with the effort.

“So how was the Turkey Sociable?” she asked. “That’s like the big event of the year in Shit Creek.”