C. Box - Cold Wind

Joe nodded. He didn’t question what it was they were busy doing. “Mind if I come in?”

“If it’s about Earl Alden,” Dode said, “we don’t have much good to say.”

“It’s about him,” Joe replied, trying to see past Wes, who hadn’t moved his bulk from the top of the porch steps to let Joe by. “Your neighbor.”

“Couldn’t have happened to a better guy,” Dode Lee said.

“Mom,” Wes said to Dode, while eyeing Joe suspiciously, “the less you talk to law enforcement, the better. They can twist your words around and use it against you.”

“So you’ve had some experience in that regard,” Joe said breezily, stepping around Wes, trying not to show he was wary of the son’s bulk, size, and attitude.

“That was years ago,” Wes said, fully aware of his effect on Joe and only reluctantly letting him by.

Joe nodded and made a mental note to himself to look up Wes Lee’s rap sheet after the interview. Joe had spent years trying to read people the first time he encountered them in the field, and he had the strong impression Wes owned a mean streak a mile wide.

The home was dark and cluttered and smelled of cigarette smoke, motor oil, and dogs. The reason for the oil smell was obvious. An engine block sat on a stained tarp in the middle of the living room. Tools were scattered around it. Joe wondered why the work wasn’t being done in one of the three outbuildings, but he didn’t ask about it. People’s homes were people’s homes.

Bob Lee sat in a worn lounge chair at the back of the room next to a tall green oxygen bottle. Despite the yellowed tube that ran from the tank to a respirator that clipped under his nose, Bob held a lit cigarette between two stained fingers. Joe glanced at the decal on the side of the tank that read:

WARNING: NO SMOKING

OXYGEN IN USE

NO OPEN FLAMES

The television was on: The Price Is Right . Lee had a large frame but looked sunken in on himself, as if his flesh had collapsed over his skeleton. He had large rheumy eyes, thin lips, and folds of loose skin that lapped over his shirt collar.

“What’s the game warden want with us?” Bob asked, his voice both scratchy and challenging.

Joe removed his hat and held it in his hands. Wes came back in and sat on his engine block with his big hands on his knees and looked up at Joe expectantly. Dode hung back, not far from the door, as if she needed to be close to it in case she had to escape.

Joe said, “I was just wondering if all of you were around last week. Sunday and Monday, to be specific. I was wondering if you saw anything unusual on the day Earl Alden was killed, since his place is next to yours.”

Bob commenced coughing. It took a moment for Joe to realize the old man had started to laugh, but the phlegm in his throat made him cough instead. Wes looked over at his father, not alarmed by the reaction. Dode tut-tutted from her place near the door. Joe found it interesting that both wife and son deferred completely to the old man and waited for him to speak. Especially Wes.

“Unusual like what?” Bob asked.

“You know,” Joe said, “vehicles you didn’t recognize on the county roads. Strangers about, or even people you know who were out and about on a Sunday.”

“Maybe like equipment trucks and construction vehicles?” Bob asked, sarcasm tainting his tone. “Like hundreds of goddamned wind farm people driving through our ranch raising dust and scattering our cattle? Like engineers and politicians driving through our place like they owned it? Like that?”

Joe said nothing.

“That’s just a normal day around here,” Bob said. “It’s been like that for a year. And now we have the noise .”

Joe said, “The noise?”

“Open that kitchen window, Dode,” Bob commanded.

Mrs. Lee left her place near the door and entered the kitchen. The big window over the sink faced south, and she unlatched it and slid it open.

Joe heard it: the distant but distinct high-frequency whine of the turbine blades slicing through the sky, punctuated by squeaks and moans of metal-on-metal.

“The goddamned noise,” Bob said. “It drives the dogs crazy. It drives us crazy. Gives me headaches, I swear, and makes Dode crankier than hell. That odd sound you hear means the bearings are going out on one of the turbines. Eventually, I guess, they’ll have to climb up there and replace it. But until they do, we get to listen to it twenty-four hours a goddamned day.”

Joe nodded. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed the high but constant whine before he entered the house, but concluded it had been drowned out by barking dogs and the gusts of wind.

“That’s what we get to listen to all our damned lives, thanks to Earl Alden,” Bob said. “And that’s not counting all the heavy equipment on our roads. I suppose you saw the start of them transmission lines on the way in?”

“Yup.” Tower after tower of gleaming steel coursing across the sagebrush, power cables sagging between them like super-sized clotheslines.

“Earl was behind that. Because he owns the wind energy company, he’s somehow considered to be a utility, which means he has the right to condemn that corridor across our ranch so they could put those up. That way, he can ship his power to the grid somewhere.”

“You got paid, though, right?” Joe asked. “They have to pay you fair market value.”

Bob sneered. “Which is next to nothing. Dry land pasture doesn’t have much value, they said. Breaking up the ranch that has been in my family for four generations don’t mean nothing when it comes to the state and the Feds on a goddamned crusade for wind power.”

“Fucking windmills,” Wes said, practically spitting the words out. Joe glanced at Wes and was surprised by his vehemence. Definitely a mean streak, Joe thought. A big guy like that could easily hoist a body up the inside of a wind tower.

Bob said, “This county sits right on top of natural gas, oil, coal, and uranium. I have the mineral rights, but no one’s interested because they all think that’s dirty and bad these days. But for some damned reason, they think wind power is good . So they got all this federal money and tax credits and bullshit. Anything that has to do with wind power just gets steamrolled through. Let me ask you something, Mr. Game Warden.”

“Ask away,” Joe said, hoping to end the diatribe and get back to his questions.

“When you look at a wind turbine, do you see a thing of beauty? Is it more beautiful than an oil well or a gas rig?”

Joe said, “I see a wind turbine. Nothing more or less.”

“Ha!” Bob said, tilting his head. “Then you need to get with the damned program, son. You’re supposed to behold the prettiest goddamned thing you ever saw. It’s supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The sight of it is supposed to give you a boner.”

Wes barked a laugh and slapped his knees. Dode said, “Bob Lee!”

Joe shrugged.

“Earl Alden claimed he loved those windmills. He’d always talk up his wind farm while he was getting his government checks and getting the locals to condemn my land for the transmission towers. But you notice where he put ’em, don’t you? Right outside my window on that big ol’ ridge. He put ’em where he wouldn’t have to look at them or hear them all goddamned day, on a ridge where the wind never stops blowing. Right up against my property. They mess up my sky, son, and they mess up the quiet. I can’t take it. A man shouldn’t have to take it just so a gaggle of politicians back east can feel good about themselves.”

“I understand,” Joe said. “But that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.”

Bob leaned forward and removed the oxygen tube from his nose with one hand while raising the cigarette with the other in a well-practiced way. He inhaled deeply, sat back, and plugged the oxygen apparatus back in. Joe watched the exchange while holding his own breath, anticipating an explosion and fireball that did not come. Bob said, “So if you want to ask us if we feel bad Earl Alden got killed and hung up from one of his towers like a piece of meat, the answer is hell no.”