Chaingang

“Sure ‘nuff. Still no word about Mr. Sam?” He looked at Mary and she shook her head, making a face of sadness. What would everyone say when they heard she'd been hiding out with Royce Hawthorne in the family's cabin? That would give the town plenty to talk about. It was the least of her troubles—what people thought of her.

“I know you've already answered a bunch of questions and so forth, but I was talking about the deal Sam had been working on—talking to Mary, you know?—and we wondered if we could ask you, in confidence, when the contract was signed, were there any riders or changes to this contract? This is the copy from Sam's files.” Royce handed a photocopied sheaf of legal-size papers to Cullen Alberson, opened to the page where it told what the “Community Communications Company” was getting for its money.

Alberson, a man close to retirement age, took his spectacles out and started reading, holding the document rather far from him and squinting, even with his bifocals on.

“We noticed that you didn't sell off any mineral rights, at least in the contract we saw,” Royce said.

“Oh, no. I wasn't about to sell no mineral rights. That was the first thing me and the wife talked about when Mr. Sam told me about the offer. I figured a—whaddyacallem?—geologist ... somebody'd done some testing and found something valuable. I made that clear from the start. He said no—I could retain all mineral rights. They just wanted that little bite out of my corner ground. At the time, I never could understand why they'd throw that kind of money on the table—but, hey, I wasn't going to look no gift horse in the mouth neither.” He shook his head, chuckled, and looked at the contract some more.

“But you never got a direct explanation out of them why they were paying so much for a small piece of farm property?"

“Yeah.” He looked up. “I felt like they were honest enough about what they wanted it for. You know how these big corporations are, they got more money than sense. They take it in their heads they want to do something, it's got to be the way they want it. Somebody out East drew a circle on a map, and I was just lucky enough to be part of the circle.” He smiled and handed the copy back. “Who'd turn down money like I was offered?"

“Not me. We just thought maybe—like you said—they'd found something like a rich gold ore deposit, or oil, or whatever. And when I couldn't find anything about you selling the rights—"

“It was the same with Lawley, ya know?” He meant his next-door neighbor to the east, Weldon Lawley, who'd sold his entire farm to CCC and the parent holding company. “He said—'Shoot, I'd gladly sold them mineral rights for reasonable money, if that's all they wanted.’ It was part of his package deal, but they didn't seem ‘specially interested in that. According to what he said to me."

The three of them talked some more, and Royce and Mary left, checking in with Mary's answering service from a pay telephone. She phoned Alberta Riley, and they made a couple of other calls, including one to Luther Lloyd's home, trying to see if anything had changed with respect to the missing persons. Mrs. Lloyd was no longer stonewalling it for the cops. Mary spoke with her, at Royce's suggestion, and the woman confided in her.

“They tol’ me not to say anything about Luther being gone and such—said I'd just be making folks panic. They're all in a panic now any which away. There was more killed yesterday—Kenneth Roebeck and Dub Olin and a feller that worked for him. Shot down in the middle of—” She caught herself, and Mary thought she'd decided she was overstepping her place to say these things. But she was weeping. Soft, muted snuffles into the telephone.

“It's all right, now. It's okay there.” She didn't know how to comfort the woman. “I've done plenty of crying, too. It's a terrible feeling—not to know.” This only made it worse, and the floodgates opened. Royce watched Mary. She teared up a little herself. Finally Mrs. Lloyd was able to get back under control.

“We don't have to talk anymore if you don't want to, Mrs. Lloyd."

“No. It's okay. I don't mind."

“Have you ever felt like there was something wrong with the deal they made to buy your ground? I wouldn't repeat what you say to me."

“I don't care if you do repeat it. Of course I've felt like there was something wrong with the thing. Luther would a never sold that piece of ground. It was slicked offa him some which away. I don't care how much money they give us, he loved the farm. It was no-account river ground that had just about been farmed out, and we could barely scratch a living off it, but by gols, his gran'daddy give him this ground."

“But yet...” She wanted to be careful how she worded it. “The contract and all ... That was Mr. Lloyd's signature on it, wasn't it?"

“I reckon so. But I went to the lawyer over in Maysburg, and he said that, aw, you know—if we wanted to try to go to court an’ that we might be able to prove that it wasn't done under the right conditions and so forth—"