Chapter 3 - Blood and Drywall
Winter came to the county with teeth. By mid-December, two feet of snow had blanketed the Miller homestead, turning the overgrown fields into rolling drifts of pristine white. But inside the farmhouse, the sound of progress was relentless.
Nate had managed to salvage the old cast-iron woodstove in the parlor, venting it through a new stainless steel chimney pipe he had installed himself. The woodstove roared night and day, fed by deadfall oak and ash we cleared from the windbreak. The smell of burning wood and fresh drywall compound became the scent of our lives.
We couldn't afford to hire a drywall crew. In small towns, contractors talk, and Ronald’s influence ran deep enough that two different drywallers had suddenly found their schedules "too full" to take on our job.
"Let 'em," Nate had grunted, hoisting a four-by-eight sheet of half-inch sheetrock against the kitchen ceiling with one arm while I scrambled up a stepladder to drive the first drywall screws with a cordless drill. "Their loss. We’ll do it ourselves. It’ll be straighter anyway."
My thumbs were cracked and bleeding from the chalky dust of the sheetrock and the cold air that leaked through the uninsulated window frames. Every morning at five-thirty, my alarm would buzz. I would pull on my hospital scrubs, work eight hours processing medical authorizations, then drive straight to the farm, change into paint-splattered overalls in the freezing mudroom, and mix mud until nine at night.
One Tuesday evening, just before Christmas, someone knocked on the front door.
Nate and I froze. We weren't expecting anyone, and our friends knew we were practically living in a construction zone. Nate wiped his hands on a rag, picked up a heavy framing hammer from his tool belt out of habit, and walked toward the entryway.
Standing on the porch in the biting wind was Mr. Henderson, the seventy-year-old farmer whose tractor Nate had repaired back in the autumn. Behind him in the driveway sat two heavy flatbed trailers loaded with tongue-and-groove pine planks, insulation rolls, and a commercial drywall lift.
"Henderson?" Nate lowered the hammer, stepping onto the threshold. "What's all this?"
The old man spat a stream of tobacco juice into the snow and pulled his earflaps down against the wind. "Well, Nate, word got around the feed store that your old man was telling tradesmen not to take your money. Ronald’s a blowhard, but he’s got friends at the county inspection office. Me and a few of the boys figured that wasn't how business ought to be done in this county."
From the cabs of the two trucks emerged three other men: Tom Higgins, who owned the local gravel pit; Pete Miller, a distant cousin of the old owner Ezra; and a young kid named Dale who worked at the lumber yard.
"Ezra Miller lent my father the seed money to plant his first twenty acres back in nineteen sixty-two," Mr. Henderson said gruffly, stepping past Nate into the warm parlor to warm his gloves by the woodstove. "Ronald Baxter thinks he can starve you out of this place, he’s got another thing coming. We got three days before the blizzard hits on Friday. Where do you want this pine stacked?"
Tears pricked my eyes, hot and sudden. Nate stood there for a second, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard, before extending a hand that Henderson took in a crushing grip.
"Kitchen ceiling first," Nate said, his voice thick. "We're losing heat through the attic."
For three days, the Miller house was transformed into a whirlwind of labor. Men who had known Nate’s late grandfather worked alongside us from dusk until midnight. Pete Miller, who was a master finish carpenter, took one look at our sagging staircase and spent twenty-four hours straight rebuilding the stringers with seasoned walnut from his own barn.
"Ezra would’ve liked you, girl," Pete told me on the third night as I handed him a steaming mug of black coffee. He was running a plane over the banister, shaving off curls of wood that fell like golden ribbons to the floor. "He hated thieves and he hated phonies. Ronald Baxter is both. Your boy Nate... he’s got Arthur’s hands. Arthur Baxter could build a church out of matchsticks and make it stand through a hurricane."
By Thursday night, the entire downstairs was drywalled, taped, and mudded. The insulation was blown into the attic, and the tongue-and-groove pine ceiling in the kitchen gave the room a warm, honey-colored glow under the temporary lighting.
When the men finally loaded their trailers and pulled out into the swirling snow, Nate and I stood on the porch, exhausted to the bone, watching their taillights vanish down Old Farm Road.
"We have to pay them back," I said, leaning against his shoulder.
"They won't take money," Nate said softly. "Henderson told me if I try to give him a check, he’ll throw it in the manure spreader. I'm doing his spring combine overhaul for free."
We went inside and locked the door.
That night, around two in the morning, the blizzard arrived with full fury. The wind screamed through the bare branches of the oak tree, rattling the storm windows.
I woke suddenly to the sound of something sharp—a metallic snap—coming from the back of the house.
I sat up on the mattress we had laid on the living room floor near the woodstove. Nate was already awake. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his boots already laced, holding a heavy four-cell Maglite in his left hand.
"Stay here," he whispered.
"Nate, no," I hissed, grabbing his sleeve. "Call the sheriff."
"Sheriff is Ronald’s second cousin," Nate whispered back, his voice deadly quiet. "By the time he drives six miles through two feet of snow, whoever is out there will be gone. Stay behind the stove."
He slipped through the kitchen like a shadow. I didn't stay behind the stove; I grabbed an iron stove poker from the hearth and followed him, my socks sliding silently across the new subfloor.
The noise had come from the pantry.
The trapdoor to the root cellar was open. A thin beam of yellow flashlight cut through the dark opening from below, accompanied by the muffled grunts of someone moving limestone blocks.
Nate didn't hesitate. He stepped to the edge of the opening, aimed his Maglite directly down into the cellar, and flicked the switch.
"Looking for something?" Nate barked.
A man jumped back with a violent yelp, slamming his head against an overhead joist. He dropped an electric demolition hammer, which clattered loudly against the concrete floor.
"Don't move," Nate said, shining the blinding beam directly into the man’s face.
The man raised his hands to shield his eyes. He was wearing an expensive insulated Carhartt jacket, snow boots, and a black ski mask rolled up over his forehead.
It was Jeff.
I stood behind Nate, the iron poker frozen in my grip, my mouth slightly open in sheer disbelief. "Jeff?"
Nate’s brother looked like a cornered animal. His face was pale, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his breath pluming in white clouds in the freezing air of the cellar. Around his feet lay chunks of shattered limestone from the north wall—the exact spot where Opal had told me to find the ammunition box two months earlier.
"Nate... Nate, listen to me," Jeff stammered, his voice cracking with panic. "Just let me explain, man. Don't... don't do anything crazy."
"Climb up those stairs," Nate said. His voice was lower than I had ever heard it, stripped of all emotion, cold as the blizzard outside.
"Nate—"
"Climb the stairs, Jeff. Before I drag you up by your teeth."
Jeff swallowed hard, lowered his hands, and climbed the steep wooden steps one at a time, his boots heavy with red clay mud. When he reached the kitchen, he collapsed against the counter, his jacket open, shivering violently from both the cold and sheer terror.
Nate closed the trapdoor with his foot and stood between Jeff and the back door.
"What were you doing down there?" Nate asked.
Jeff wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve, looking everywhere except into his brother's eyes. "Dad... Dad said there were original rail agreement deeds down here. He said Ezra hid them in the foundation. He said if we didn't find them and burn them, the county was going to subpoena his development contracts."
"Your father sent you to break into my house?" Nate asked, his voice dead flat.
"He didn't send me!" Jeff burst out, his voice cracking into a desperate whine. "He told me that if the logistics corridor goes through the Miller property instead of the north ridge, his entire land syndicate is bankrupt! He took out a second mortgage on his house, Nate! And he used my house as collateral for the equipment bond!"
I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. "He did what?"
Jeff sank down against the kitchen cabinets, burying his face in his hands. "I signed the papers six months ago. Dad told me it was just a formality. He said the logistics park was a guaranteed flip. He said we’d all clear a hundred thousand each. But he didn't tell me he leveraged my equity! The bank sent me a default warning on Monday. If Dad's deal collapses, I lose my house. Stacy’s husband is already talking about divorce because Dad borrowed twenty grand from their savings for the legal retainer!"
The complete, pathetic truth lay bare on our kitchen floor. The twenty-thousand-dollar gifts at Easter dinner hadn't been gifts at all. They were bait. Ronald had tied his other children to his financial ambitions with invisible chains of debt, using their names to secure high-risk speculative land loans, while presenting himself to the community as the generous, all-powerful patriarch.
Nate stood over his brother, the heavy flashlight dangling by his side.
"There are no deeds in that wall, Jeff," Nate said quietly.
Jeff looked up, his eyes rimmed with red. "What?"
"They're in a safety deposit box at the Wells Fargo in Des Moines," Nate said. "Recorded. Certified. The state has already finalized the preliminary route. The spur runs through our south meadow."
Jeff stared at him, his face crumpling. "I'm ruined," he whispered, a man totally broken. "He ruined us."
"No," Nate said, reaching down, grabbing Jeff by the collar of his expensive jacket, and hauling him to his feet with one arm. "He didn't ruin you. You ruined yourself because you wanted twenty thousand dollars without working an hour for it."
Nate shoved him toward the mudroom door.
"Get in your truck," Nate told him. "Drive home. If I ever see you on this property again, I won't call the sheriff. I’ll call the state bank examiner. Understand me?"
Jeff stumbled backward toward the door, nodding frantically. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Nate... please don't tell Mom."
Nate didn't answer. He simply opened the door, let the howling blizzard blast into the room for three seconds as Jeff scrambled out into the snow, and slammed the heavy oak door shut, throwing the deadbolt with a final, echoing snap.
We stood together in the dark kitchen. Nate leaned back against the door, closed his eyes, and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, his head resting against his knees.
May you like
I knelt beside him in the sawdust, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and held him as the winter storm raged outside, shaking the walls of the house we had bought for forty-one thousand five hundred dollars.
***
