The next several days passed uneventfully, despite the schoolyard incident. No police cars passed by, the phone didn't ring in the middle of the night, Baxter did not call to reschedule their showdown, and all was quiet. This was meant to be unnerving, the calm before the storm. But Keith was not unnerved.
At seven o'clock one morning, Keith walked across the road to the Jenkins house and found the family at breakfast, where he knew they'd be at that hour. Seated at the kitchen table were Martin and Sue Jenkins, a couple in their late thirties, and a teenage boy and girl, Martin Jr. and Sandra, both in high school.
Sue invited Keith to have breakfast, but he said coffee would be fine. They talked about the weather, which was definitely cool now, the coming harvest, the possibility of rain, and the Farmer's Almanac prediction of a harsh winter. Sue thought the almanac was idiotic, but Martin put great faith in it.
The two kids excused themselves to do their chores before school and left.
Keith said to the Jenkinses, "I know you've got chores, too, so I won't be long."
"What can we do for you?" Martin asked.
"Well, I just wanted to let you know about that horn honking a few nights back."
"Heard it. Saw it."
"I got into a little scrape with the Spencerville police, and they were doing some payback."
Martin nodded.
Sue said, "They have no business out here. I called them that night, but the desk sergeant said he didn't know anything about it, so I called Don Finney, the sheriff, and he said he'd check it out. He didn't call back, so I called him again, and he said nobody at police headquarters knew anything about it."
Martin added, "We were going to call you and see if you knew anything, but I figured you didn't."
"Well, as I said, they got themselves riled up about something."
The Jenkinses didn't ask what, nor would they ever ask, but Sue added, "Don is some sort of kin to Cliff Baxter, and they're two peas in a pod, as far as I'm concerned."
Keith said, "I'll try to see that it doesn't happen again."
"Not your fault," Sue said. She added, "Those people are getting out of control. Citizens ought to do something about it."
"Probably. Hey, the corn looks good."
"Real good," Martin agreed. "Good all over the damned state. Gonna be a glut again. Lucky to get two dollars a bushel."
And that, in a nutshell, Keith thought, was the problem with farming. Supply always outstripped demand and prices fell. When he was a boy, about ten percent of the American population were farmers. Now it was about two percent, and farmers were a rare species. Yet production kept rising. It was sort of a miracle, but if you had four hundred acres, like the Jenkinses and most family farms did, your overhead ate up your sales. In a bumper year when the prices were down, you broke even, and in a bad crop year when the prices were up, the yield was down, and you broke even. It was the kind of job you had to save up for. Keith said, "Sometimes I think I'd like to give farming a try."
Sue laughed, and nothing more had to be said.
Keith asked, "Do you want to sell or rent one of your horses?"
Martin replied, "Never thought about it. You need a horse?"
"I think I'd like to ride. Pass the time."
"Hell, you don't want to own one of them things. They're more trouble than a hay baler. You just take one out and ride it when you want. The kids only ride on weekends and holidays."
"Thanks, but I'd like to pay you."
"Hell, no, they need the exercise. Do 'em good. Just water 'em and wipe 'em off after you ride them, maybe give them some feed. The gray gelding is gentle, but the young mare's a bitch." He laughed. "Same around here."
Sue commented, "If I see you looking at that postwoman again, you will be a gelding."
On that note, Keith stood and said, "Thanks for the coffee. Mind if I take one of them now?"
"Go right ahead. Gelding's name is Willy, mare is Hilly. Hilly and Willy. Kids named 'em."
Keith went out to the barn and found the stable door. Inside, the two horses stood in their stalls, feeding. He opened both stalls, and the horses wandered out. Keith slapped them both on the flanks, and they ran out into the paddock.
He went out and watched them awhile. The gelding was sort of listless, but the young mare had a lot of spirit.
He found a bridle in the tack room and approached the mare, getting the bridle on her, then tied her to the fence post while he got a blanket and saddle. He saddled her up and walked her out the gate. Keith mounted and rode toward his farm, across the road, and out toward a wooded area that ran along a creek between his farm and the one to the west.
He got into the trees and rode down to the creek, which was nearly dry. He headed south through the creek bed, following it downstream toward Reeves Pond.
It was quiet except for the flowing water and a few birds. This was nice. His father never kept horses, and most farmers didn't, because they cost money and had no practical use. Now what extra money a farmer had for fun went into snowmobiles and road bikes, noisy things that went too fast for thinking and looking. Keith liked the feel of the animal beneath him, its warmth and living movement, and its occasional snort and whinny, and they smelled better than exhaust smoke.
He and Annie had borrowed horses now and then and ridden to secluded spots where they could make love. They'd joked that the only place they hadn't done it was on horseback, and Keith wondered if that was possible.
He gave the horse its lead, and it seemed content to follow the creek with a good gait.
Any thought he'd had about spending the rest of his life here, he realized, wasn't possible as long as Baxter was around. He'd let Baxter bait him, and he'd risen to the bait. This was bad strategy.
He reflected on his objective, which was not to engage Cliff Baxter in a contest, but to engage Mrs. Baxter in conversation. If nothing else, he'd like to speak to her one more time, for an hour or two, and resolve whatever issues remained between them. They'd never done that in their letters, and Keith felt he couldn't get on with his life until he understood clearly how and why they'd parted.
The next item on that agenda, of course, would be to see if they wanted to get back together. He thought she did, he thought he did.
Cliff Baxter obviously was an impediment to that, but it might be better for all concerned if Keith simply went around him rather than take him on. This was what he'd advise a young intelligence man on assignment in a dangerous environment.
The creek widened, and the trees thinned out, and within a few minutes Keith came to the big pond. No one was swimming or fishing, and it looked deserted. He used to come here a lot in the summer with his friends, to sail toy boats, to fish and swim, and in the winter people would build bonfires on the shore and skate or go ice fishing.
He reined the horse to the left and began riding along the muddy shoreline.
If this were actually a mission in a foreign country, he thought, it would be relatively easy to run off with the enemy's prize possession. But this was not exactly the same as escaping a foreign country with a codebook or a defector. No, there was another dimension to this problem.
Annie. This was not an intelligence operation, it was old-fashioned wife-stealing, not much different from what tribes and clans did in the past. But in this society, you first made sure the wife wanted to go with you.
It occurred to him that neither he nor Annie, separate or apart, could have Cliff Baxter on their trail for the rest of their lives.
Another option, of course, was to pack up, get in his car, and get as far away from here as he could. But he kept thinking of Annie standing there on the sidewalk, tears in her eyes, and all those letters over the years and the ache he still felt in his heart. "Can't leave, can't stay..." And he couldn't even declare a truce, because Cliff Baxter would just take that as a sign of weakness and step up the pressure.
Keith came around the far end of the lake and started back along the opposite shore.
Maybe, he thought, Cliff Baxter could be reasoned with. The three of them should sit down, have a beer, and talk it out in a civilized manner. "That is the answer to the problem. Right." No ugly scenes, no bloodshed, no rescues or abductions. "Mr. Baxter, your wife and I love each other and always have. She doesn't care for you. So be a good fellow and wish us well. The divorce papers are in the mail. Thank you, Cliff. Shake?"
Cliff Baxter, of course, would go for his gun. But if Cliff Baxter had the power of articulate speech, if he were in fact a civilized and clever man, he'd reply, "Mr. Landry, you think you love my wife, but more likely you're obsessed with a long-ago memory that has no reality now. Also, you're a little bored since being forcibly retired, and you're looking for adventure. Add to that the fact that you don't like me because of some childhood conflicts, and taking my wife is your way of getting back at me. This is not healthy, Mr. Landry, nor is it fair to Annie, who is going through a rough time now, what with empty-nest syndrome, the pressures of my job, and the realization that middle age has arrived. Annie and I are happy in our own way, and we look forward to my retirement and growing old together. Right, Annie?"
Keith didn't like what Baxter said at all, because it had a grain of truth in it.
In reality, there would be no such meeting, and Keith Landry, Cliff Baxter, and Annie Prentis Baxter would just stumble and fumble their ways through this, the way most people did, causing maximum damage and hurt along the way. And when it was all finished, there'd be remorse and deep scarring, and no happily-ever-after.
On that note, Keith entered the tree line and found the creek. He headed back to the farm, resolved now to pack his bags and leave home again, as he'd done twenty-five years before, but this time with less expectation of ever coming back.