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Chapter
48
Circle of White Riders
White pelicans
hunted in perfect inverted V formation, a flying multi-organism
fishing net, thrown low over Pool 13 by millions of years
of success at surrounding and consuming piscine prey.
William
Vine sat with folded hands staring at the subpoena on his
desk. Emma Parker’s plane passed high overhead less than 45
minutes after the end of their meeting. As he read further,
Bill Vine was beginning to regret the weekly two gallon bucket
of trichloroethylene waste he’d had Jimmy Caldwell pour on
the pile of parking lot sand out back. Five years with the
company…it seemed a convenient temporary solution at the time.
Twelve
miles away in a narrow two-story, white farmhouse peeling
paint, a ninety year-old mother tended a son shrunken from
cancer.
“Owen?
Owen, are you hungry?” asked Grandma Teresa. Owen Murphy did
not answer. His face had collapsed on his skull, most of the
flesh seemed to have melted from under his gray white skin.
His eyes lay closed. His mouth hung open surrounded by lips
thin and dry. Day-old white stubble speckled his chin and
cheeks. Death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma moved slowly over
the farmer of nearly seventy-five years. Teresa felt his forehead
for fever.
The black-tipped
wing beats of the Pelecanus erythrorhynchos stirred the flatwater
on the autumn afternoon just enough to distort the surface
mirror image of the flyers’ swift passing.
From the
field within sight of the house where his father lay dying,
Alexander Murphy looked up for Laura Parruzzi’s old Honda
on every westward turn of the combine. The rhythm of the big
machine’s millworks and its rocking motion made him sleepy
this time of day. The early edition evening news droned in
his headset as the cornstalks plunged continually into the
four-row corn head. This was not a huge harvester, nor was
it shiny green and gold, but it was paid for and it worked.
At corn picking time, that was all he needed. Yet, today Alexander
knew no combine or corn crop, thin or fat, could save his
dad.
Seven miles
north of the farm, Laura tousled the hair of the last third
grader of the day and walked from her classroom with the boy’s
mother. A book bag on one shoulder and a balanced briefcase
on the other did not diminish the teacher's ease of movement.
She smiled at the mother and son, both out of relief at reaching
a behavior agreement, and at the thought finding the warm
air of an October afternoon outside.
Emma Parker flew her Cirrus east of
the Quad Cities, turning south, she passed first over the
Rock River, and then the Green on her path south. Emma's disappointment
in William Vine increased with each river crossing. She was
now convinced he was hiding something. She switch the headset
and microphone selector to her cell phone clipped to the instrument
panel. Emma punched Bill Vine's speed dial code.
Limestone dust whitened the dash of
Laura's car from frequent trips to the Murphy farm. She wondered
who was courting whom. She knew that farmers in spring and
fall had about as much social life as tax accountants on April
Fool's Day. Laura, nonetheless, was determined to make the
best of it, and would ride the combine for awhile to share
a striking October sunset with Alexander. She knew he was
hurting at the looming death of his father.
The aerial formation began to dissolve
when the pelican leaders read the marker flash of a shiner
minnow shoal. The birds began to lift, wheel, and land. The
summer drawdown on Pool 13 boosted not only floral productivity,
but the whole system of close relationships -- the symbiosis
of a repaired ecosystem, hands-on and doable.
The pelican net reformed afloat in a
circle of white riders around a patch of shallow river buzzing
with shiners.
Teresa Murphy turned away from the big
lounger with its shadow man so diminished. She caught a tear
in her apron, and steadied herself against the kitchen door
frame. Through the big kitchen window, she could just see
the top of the combine cab, the grain hopper, and the chute
just now deploying at the end of the row near the road. Teresa
picked up her favorite wooden spoon to stir the onion soup.
Isn't it bad enough, she thought, that
cheap food has pushed farmers off the land for 40 years, but
now the farmers' cancers are taking many more...
Bill Vine did not pick up his phone
when it rang. He could see Emma's number in the display. The
answering system took the call. Vine listened.
"Bill, I'm concerned," said
Emma Parker from her aircraft. "Are you well? You seemed
a little distracted today. The numbers aren't what we'd like.
You feel you have to reduce hours or lay people off . What
else? Call me."
Emma hung up. Bill Vine put the subpoena
in his briefcase and left the office.
Alexander watched Laura's car slow and
roll the ditchside wheels up onto the low limestone gravel
berm the grader always left between passes. He checked the
grain boom and eyed his approach to the pair of hopper wagons
waiting on the headland. Laura waved. He could see her grin,
and waved back. The corn dust boiled around the cab as the
combine turned to parallel the wagons and stopped. The corn
hissed up the chute and peppered the empty hopper. Alexander
climbed the short steel ladder to the ground. He embraced
Laura fully.
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Next... Chapter 49.
Thanks for these resources:
Pelecanus
erythrorhynchos
USGS Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center
Mississippi
River Pool 13 Drawdown Comes To An End, USACE News Release,
Oct. 7, 2003
Water
Management Center, USACE Rock Island District
U.S.
EPA Air Toxic Website; Rule
and Implementation Information for Halogenated Cleaning Solvents
(Degreasing Organic Cleaners)
National
Cancer Institute; Agricultural Pesticide Use May Be Associated With Increased Risk
of Prostate Cancer, May
1, 2003
National
Cancer Institute; NCI FACT SHEET: Agricultural Health Study; May 2, 2003
Our Stolen
Future; Organic food really does have fewer pesticides
National
Symposium: Wetlands 2003: Landscape
Scale Wetland Assessment and Management, Nashua,
NH, October
20-23, 2003
The Upper Basin Chronicles,
Chapter 48 was written and edited by John Gabbert.
Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder
Network and The Upper
Basin
Chronicles © 2003 Saint Mary's University
of Minnesota.
Your comments are invaluable. Please email feedback to The
Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 48.
The
characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither
bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent
the views or opinions of Saint Mary's University
of Minnesota.
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