D BedellAbout 6000 words 7649 Nottinghill Sky Drive Apollo Beach, FL 33572 Angel Holler An early moonrise impaled on icy windbreak trees Shines on the desecrated crypt Nishne Station Nishnabotna County is a place where meanness is a duty and most are diligent in their charge, if not zealous. The spirit of the people is captured by their favorite psalm, “It’s dog eat dog and Devil takes the hindmost.” With that in mind, it’s church on Sunday, funerals as required for the just and unjust alike. The county was carved out of Ioway and Otoe territory east of the Missouri River and west of the Loess Bluffs, acquired in the 1836 Platte Purchase, extending Missouri’s border northwest to the Missouri River. In 1837, the Ioway and Otoe were sent to Indian Country reservations in Kansas and Nebraska territories. I am Jesse Dell, publisher of the Nishne Station Gazette, circulation 1,052, diminishing with every funeral. I have a letterpress print shop for specialty jobs on handmade papers and papyrus, mostly illuminated occasion ephemera. Born at Nishnabotna Community Hospital on the very day Hank Williams died, I am a true son of honky-tonk despair in the perfect place for everything unrequited. The Dells came to Nishnabotna County in 1876 from Wapello County, Iowa, enroute to Silverton, Oregon, on the promise of land and timber. They settled in Nishne Station on the river bottom land for two reasons: Work and a little ground to go with it and rumors of Indian trouble farther west. They should have taken their chances. The ground flooded out and the work dried up, circumstances that also plagued descendants. Nishne Station was in its first decade when they arrived, rising around the depot built after the Kansas City, St Joseph, and Council Bluffs RailRoad was completed in 1868. The railroad followed the original wagon route along the Loess Bluffs from St Joseph to Council Bluffs, a road still used to connect the depots along the length of the railroad. Every depot received the produce of the Missouri River Valley and shipped it, largely to St Joseph, for market. Angel City Station lay four miles to the south and on to St. Joseph; Langdon Station four miles to the north and on to Council Bluffs. Like Nishne Station, they became obsolete in the 1960s and 1970s, casualties of truck terminals and Interstate 29. Most of the depot buildings are gone, yet the communities around them are still stubbornly withering. The depots had a perfect balance for their function, moving people and freight. The long wooden benches smooth from use and the freight wagons with iron wheels made it seem exotic. My father had a small job hanging mailsacks at Nishne, Angel City, and Langdon depots. We also took cream in cans to Angel City for shipment to St. Joe. Nishne fared a little better than most villages for a time, but eventually succumbed to abandonment. There are a dozen buildings left, occupied with varying degrees of success; I have two of them, one I bought for taxes, and one I bought from Bobby Stackwood, my neighbor. They’re both red river brick, single story, one a garage, the other a store front. I use them for the Gazette and letterpress shop. I live in the back of the store, one of a handful of residents in Nishne Station. Bobby Stackwood is a few years older than me and was in Vietnam before me. He was shot up about halfway through his tour, but not before earning a Bronze Star to go with his two Purple Hearts. He came back to Nishnabotna County and nothing had changed: He was still that Otoe fish camp boy. I was there near the end and did my time in Saigon working as a clerk-typist for Stars and Stripes. Bobby and I get along; we have the same ribbon. Bobby lives with Juanita Vasquez, an Ioway from White Cloud Ioway Reservation in Richardson County, Nebraska. She owns the Nishne Store located in the old bank, complete with vault, on Highway 111 where she sells beer and cigarettes to teenagers, as well as the necessary condoms. Some in the County, doing their duty, whisper she bought the store with money from prostitution and robbery. No one knows for certain, but she is stalwart and sagacious, cryptic, and laconic. The backs of her hands have prominent veins and she keeps a shotgun under the counter. Juanita is the granddaughter of Freddie Vasquez, a Prohibition moonshiner, and she keeps some legacy ‘shine for winter gatherings. Freddie sold moonshine mostly on the Ioway Reservation around White Cloud and no doubt contributed to the misery which is likely why he disappeared one night after being seen near the River. No one and everyone knows things can happen. She has a house for lease to hunters during deer and waterfowl seasons; deer are plentiful and Nishnabotna County is in the flyway, the fall and spring sky filled horizon to horizon with migrating ducks and geese. It is not really certain that she owns the house, but she takes care of it and so owns it as much as anybody by Nishne rules. She has regulars from Kansas City and it was one of them that made us all accomplices to misdemeanor murder. I came back to J-School at Mizzou after the Army and eventually got a student job in the Columbia Missourian pressroom. Sometimes I helped with minor maintenance, but it was mostly custodial. After graduation, I was hired by The Kansas City Star to work in their pressroom. I had visions of Hemingway, but achieved only the drinking and after a few years and a divorce, I was restless and went back to Nishnabotna County for ill-defined reasons. Having breakfast in Craig across from the old depot four miles south of Angel City, I overheard two men I might have known talking about a building being torn down for nothing more than reducing the paltry property tax. It was the old Craig Leader newspaper building and they were saying that some of the old equipment was still inside. I was curious and walked the block or so to have a look at the gear. What was left was towards the back, old, but it looked functional. I wondered if someone had looked after it. A veteran’s small business loan allowed me to buy the equipment and the two buildings in Nishne. It cost more to move the presses than to buy them, and that was just to get them in the building. Bringing them online was still more, but doable, and I knew the right people to get from Kansas City. It took about six months of weekends to get ready to print an auction flyer, but when I did, it was smooth. I quit my job at the Star right after the first run. The Gazette is a modest success, but the custom letterpress is really the staple income. The internet made them both easier and more profitable. I send the Gazette file to a printer in Kansas City where it’s printed, folded, and mailed to subscribers. Everything for the letterpress side, except the actual printing, is done over the internet instead of catalogs I used to send. It is a cottage industry in a village, no more than that, thankfully. My two employees, Robby and May Clark, a young married couple, also live in Nishne Station. They have a five room clapboard, rented from Juanita, that’s just behind the Nishne Store next to Grover Hauptman’s place. Not long out of art school, talented, and low key, I am surprised they have not moved on from Nishne, but I won’t ask. They came on a grant from a preservation society and I hired them after that money ran out. I am honest when I say they do most of the real work. They look after Grover who is infirm in his age. Winter is the best time in Nishne Station; the stark light is soothing and crisper in the mind. It was Wednesday when we got together at Juanita's store for ‘shine sampling around the stove, including, luckily, Grover. One of the hunters had showed up earlier in the day with a young woman and they had not been seen since. That changed as the girl slammed through the door, barefoot and no coat. We all stopped. “Help me, please,” she said, a sad, hoarse whisper. “What’s wrong?” Juanita demanded evenly, alert. “That cop ain’t what he says,” she pleaded. The cop’s name was Franklin and he was a Jackson County deputy, one that preyed on young girls in child protection who were transitioning out when they turned 18. The girl’s name was Carol and she would be 18 next month. May put her coat around Carol and Robby scooted a chair closer to the stove for her. The door slammed open again and the cop was there, drunk, shouting, “Don’t move, she’s in my custody!” Bobby and I stood up and the cop leveled his pistol. “Don’t be stupid,” he said, and that was when Juanita put a 12 gauge hole in his back, dropping him like a deer. I whispered, “ Juanita?” Juanita said. “Grover?” Grover spoke without a trace of feebleness, “Jesse go get your pickup. Somebody needs a ride.“ “Juanita, clean that shotgun,” Grover continued. ”Bobby, get his keys off him.” “Robby, May, get ammonia, not bleach, ammonia, and start wiping everything down. Bleach will mark the spot.” “Find a mop.” Bobby had the keys to Franklin's SUV and Grover told him to bring it around to the store. When I got back, the cop was outside on the gravel lot and the SUV was running with its lights off. Bobby and I loaded him into the bed of my pickup. Bobby got behind the wheel of the SUV and we headed to the mouth of the Nishnabotna River at the Missouri. Once we had the cop on his way downstream, I set fire to the SUV and drove back to Nishne with Bobby. Grover had burned the hunter's house while we were gone. The sheriff found the SUV on a tip and notified Jackson County authorities after running the plate. The Jackson County Attorney just happened to have an open internal investigation on Franklin, one not likely to be pursued with any more vigor than his disappearance now, but we were all cautious anyway. Robby and May took Carol in, hiding her for six weeks. The sheriff didn’t ask about the burned house. I hired Carol, when it was clear, to track paper in the shop. She got really good at it and usually had my daily schedule ready for my compliance. I turned almost everything over to Robby and May, who bought their rental house and another lot from Juanita and Bobby to put a small trailer in for Carol. They painted their house an artistic color and were making renovations a little at a time. Fall faded into winter and everything was fine until after a Wednesday sampling Robby knocked up Carol and May at same time. May wanted his nuts in a press and Carol was ready to help her, but it settled down after they talked themselves into thinking it was their art style. Robby moved to the trailer and Carol went in with May. A new generation was on its way to Nishne Station. Angel Air Service Nishnabotna County is good to fly in winter; everything is crisp and stark, even the mind behind the eyes. I climbed to 150 feet and headed northwest towards the Missouri River just past Nishne Station. I throttled my 01 Bird Dog to 100 knots and looked out at empty black dirt fields fringed with rust grasses. The Missouri gleamed in the sun, motionless. I’m heading upriver to Council Bluffs and then cutting south over the Loess Bluffs to my strip just west of Angel City. This is my last flight; I can’t pass the medical exam anymore. Who ever heard of syncope? I passed west of Nishne Station and saw a house had burned, the one Juanita Vasquez leased to hunters for deer and waterfowl seasons. My first airplane ride was at Nishne Station, technically half a mile to the west on sharecrop land. Our landlord, always chasing steady income, leased a parcel of ground big enough for a small airfield and a couple of metal buildings to a crop dusting outfit. It was set up right across the oil road from our house and I was there watching at some point every day. One day, the pilot told me to get into the front cockpit and strap in. It was a great plane and I learned later that it was a Boeing-Stearman Model 75, a biplane with open cockpits and a tail wheel. It had searing yellow paint for visibility and it was good. After that, I started helping with some of the little chores around the airfield, sweeping out the sheds, emptying trash, and being a runner. Soon, I was cleaning nozzles, checking tires, and handing tools to the mechanic. I got a few more rides and a direction in life that I hoped would take me far away from sharecropping. Work was good for the aircrew and they expanded slightly to include a full maintenance shop that would serve this field and other company aircraft. Planes started to come and go with regularity and I tried to get up the nerve to ask for a job. It was certain my father would lose his mind that I wasn’t there to farm, but I was 16 and I could get a pilot license and leave. My father proved his reputation as the village lunatic, threatening the aircrew, threatening to burn down the buildings, wanting his land back. The pilot finally had enough and knocked my old man on his ass; he crawled away like the coward he was. I had a job that proved steady, especially when I went to New Mexico with the crew for part of the season there. I got my draft notice while I was still in high school, the local draft board prize for the Vietnam grinder. I reported to Fort Leonard Wood, or, Fort Lost in the Woods, for basic training and when the Army discovered I could fly planes and do some maintenance, they assigned me Military Occupational Specialty 67B, 01/U6 Aircraft Repairman. After basic and some additional training, I was sent to a Bird Dog unit in Vietnam, the 199th Recon Airplane Company, Swamp Fox, operating out of tents on a rough field, the province of Forward Air Controllers, flying low and slow to spot targets for jet jockeys and gun crews. We flew Bird Dogs, just like the one I'm flying now. Something weird over there; I bank and drop 50 feet, circling over what looked like a burned out SUV. I radioed the sheriff and he said he would look into it. Later, the sheriff told me it belonged to a dirty cop in Kansas City who was missing and wanted for questioning. We both knew a burned SUV by the Missouri River and a missing cop meant he wasn’t missing anymore. The duty at the FAC airfield wasn’t difficult, but it was steady and the climate made it hard duty with short rations. The planes were good little machines and they were flown to the limit which made maintenance zero error. The 01 design was sound, a Cessna frame, single engine, struts, single high-wing, and a tailwheel. It was a small plane, 36 feet wingspan, 26 feet long, and just over 7 feet tall. The oversize canopy gave the pilot and observer good visibility. The top take-off weight was 2,400 pounds, including crew, fuel, and ordnance. Its cruising speed was 100 knots with a top in at 125 knots. A 530 mile range gave good onstation time. The two seats were tandem and the canopy had 360 degree visibility for the pilot who sat up high, higher still sitting on a flak jacket. If you flew, you always sat on a flak jacket for the same reason WWII paratroopers sat on their helmets in planes: The lucky shot. The backseat spotter sat lower with a flak jacket, map case, and field glasses. I had been on the field for about three months when one of the spotters had to be evacuated for appendicitis. My top sergeant knew I could read a map and fly, if necessary, and that was when I became a spotter and a maintenance tech. My first time up with my pilot, a 1st lieutenant, was uneventful which certainly was not normal and the superstitious part of me braced for impact. The impact came the next day. We were always in the air at oh-dark-thirty to be onstation at first light when everything was fluid in the grass. We were cruising when the plane started to roll and the 1st was curled into a ball, as nearly as he could in the plane. I yelled at him to get him back on the stick before we put down hard. We made it back with a rough landing. I got out first and opened the hatch. He was clutching his groin and gagging. The medics came and we got him out of the plane and into a tent while the CO called for an evac. The flak jacket had done its job, but the hit still hammered him. I looked for another flak jacket. The next months went okay and then I was short after being in a plane everyday for almost a year. I couldn’t do the FAC, but I could drive the bus for the backseat spotter who handled the comms. My tour ended and I left Vietnam with a coffee can full of seeds from Cambodia’s finest. The highlight of my tour was the telegram that said my father was killed in a farming accident. My DD 214 and MOS along with my pilot’s log qualified me for the basic Airframe and Powerplant certification and upgraded my license to commercial pilot rating. I went to work for a small charter service that flew from Kansas City to Omaha-Council Bluffs to St. Louis. After a couple of years I was looking to move on and came across an auction ad for military surplus aircraft. Three Bird Dogs were listed in the inventory and the starting bids were low. I had some money saved and bought one. The boss let me store it at the charter field while I reworked it nose to tail. The Bird Dog took some time, but I got it 100% airworthy and was happy with its performance in touch and go. It didn’t need a lot of strip and take-off speed was only 65 knots. Not long after the Bird Dog was flying the field manager asked me if I would do some charter work on the side. I had not thought about it, but I said, “OK.” That was how I met Grover Hauptman, chief courier for the Chivelli family in Kansas City. We flew mostly at night and we each made a small fortune smuggling coke, money, and weed, mostly to Omaha and Tulsa. Hauptman and I became friends, even though he was a few years older, probably because I didn’t ask questions and just flew the plane to where he said. I was flush and bought another plane, a Boeing-Stearman Model 75, that I painted searing yellow. Nick Chivelli died without a clear successor and Kansas City went into freefall with crews playing hard against each other. After years of drugs, money, and women, Grover and I decided to get out while we could before we were trapped in the war, but needed some cover in case we decided to pick up business again. I thought about charter and crop dusting and Grover went in with me to buy the gear that we used to start the Angel Air Service. Grover bought a brick river house in Nishne Station and I put a trailer on ten acres of Angel Holler bluff timber land facing west. I still had the seeds and was going to try a little agriculture on the side now that I had a place. We were ready to go for the next crop season and I was already booking services and taking orders for chemicals. I cut over to the bluffs and headed south at about 100 feet. I dropped to 50 feet and saw old game trails, supposedly buffalo, in the prairie grass that covered the bluff line. I stayed close to the line so the whole valley stretched to the loess bluffs in Nebraska and covered infinity. I thought, “Why not now?” The sheriff would say, “Joe Donnelly crashed his plane and died.” I think maybe it was a long time ago. Early in our business arrangement, we were Hauptman, a Chivelli capo, and his pilot. That changed on a grass strip west of Tulsa delivering 15 kilos of coke. Hauptman was uneasy, something I hadn’t seen. We put down and Hauptman handed me a .38 saying, “This is a setup.” I backed his play and we flew away leaving three dead, a message from Mr. Chivelli to local knuckleheads and their backers. There wasn’t any money, Hauptman called it right, and we took the coke home. My airfield is up ahead. I should go see Grover and find out what happened. A Far Place Nishnabotna County in August is Africa. Fresh sun crackles over ripening crop fields and travels pale in a cloudless sky to its pyre in the Nebraska loess hills. Heat seeps into lungs and there is no air without haze lifting from the Missouri River Valley, a great, green savannah beyond the cottonwood groves on the Old Bluff Road. The cicadas sing in the long twilight of my walk home. I know it’s Africa because I have a geography book from Nishne schoolhouse, Our Neighbors Near and Far. I read and walk the Serengeti, unknown in the tall grass. In winter, I walk the Arctic and find ruins in the snow. The Nishne Station School, according to my boss, is, “a whistlestop relic abandoned for tax consolidation and the more perfect molding of the young.” I don’t know about that because I don’t know what he means. He says some things I don’t know. The school is eight miles away in Sediment now, the county seat, down the hill from the courthouse. I went there for a while, but now I have a summer job being spotter for Mr. Donnelly when he’s crop dusting, counting the rows and holding a flag. In winter, I help Miss Juanita in her store. I have a numbers book, too, Practical Mathematics for Home Study, and I don’t have to sit next to a retarded boy to read it like I did in Sediment school. There are lots of books in the Nishne schoolhouse and I have several hidden in the barn to read by flashlight before I sleep. I keep some with Miss Juanita at her store, too. She knows I don’t linger in the house after supper; I go to my stall remembering what she always says, “See what you see, know what you know, say what you say.” It’s better to not say anything, I think. I like to walk into the cottonwoods, sycamores, and willows looming into the coming dark, the sycamores and willows holding the creek water cool while the cottonwoods cast sundial shadows to mark their time. The valley to my left slips to the river while the bluffs to my right mark the eastern edge of the Great Plains. It is the hinterland and has its own things for someone like me to see. Not everyone knows I can do this, not even that I read, except Mr. Donnelly, who taught me. I tell him some of the things I see and he always listens, sometimes he asks a question, but is mostly quiet. We talk about the books I have, too, and how some of the numbers and words aren’t really what they say. Late for supper, as usual, and there is a paper bag for me on the wash house step. I take it to my stall at the farthest corner from the barn door, where a flashlight can’t be seen. It’s a lot better than the house; I’ve heard, “All you need is a strong back and a weak mind,” too many times. I don’t need light and start evening chores by busting hay bales into mangers. My first time seeing was under an early moonrise impaled on icey windbreak trees. I was outside the yard light glare, heading to chores, when a whisper glided over me and snow stirred on the ground. Ice cracked from a limb and I saw the owl as the owl saw me, a huge, white, cigar box owl. It scared me and I don’t remember how long it was, but the owl didn’t hurt me; that was later because it wasn’t real, and I was sent to the barn to appreciate how good I had it. I was familiar with the barn. My first memory of the barn is a Christmas beating with a willow switch and being carried to the barn and thrown inside. I made too much noise at the Angel City Christian Church Christmas program that I was too young to be in. The switch left welts across my back and legs from shoulders to ankles. I don’t care about Christmas because it’s a lie, almost everything is a lie. My books and what I see are the real things: “See what you see, know what you know, say what you say.” A red-headed blackbird in the brome grass a few years later was my second see and Miss Juanita said it was an omen. I suppose she knows since she’s Ioway, but she never would say what kind of omen it was. I found the ruins of Angel Holler on a brittle January day when I wanted to be in a far place. They were red brick against the snow and buffalo grass and laid out in rooms like the Romans. I measured everything and marked it in my notebook so I could show Mr. Donnelly. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t come see it. It didn’t matter, I knew he had heard the wings flutter above Angel Holler. When I’m not spotting or exploring, I cut and split wood, usually in the bar land timber close to the river, and leave it for whoever wants it. I was on the bar when I saw the wolf as the wolf saw me, running on the river ice along the bare willows. Wolves are rare in coyote country, but I was certain. Surely, a wolf was an omen, and I was wet and cold from the river. See what you see, know what you know, say what you say. No Heroes Wanted Bobby Stackwood came home from the war and hospitals to nothing in Nishnabotna County – just as he had left it and just as his father had come home from his war. Both had gone and returned as Otoe fish camp boys from Squaw Creek, unwanted, unknown, and unnecessary to the meanness of the place that did for them. It was a frozen death on the Missouri River bank after a pint of ‘shine and too many barren years for his father. He was found holding his deer rifle at port arms and his medals earned from Normandy to Berlin scattered in the yellow snow where he had pissed on them. It was the silence of wings in Angel Holler that nearly killed Bobby. Not everyone heard wings: The Ioway and Otoe believed those who did were graced with omens and it was custom to take children to listen, hoping for acceptance. Bobby heard them with his father and took his place as one who might see, cautioned not to fall prey to himself by speaking too much, but, instead, to watch and wait quietly. Word had reached the camp and the people welcomed him in their cautious way. Remembering their own wars, they left him to make what way he would as long as he did no harm. The three room tar papered house of his father near the camp edge still stood with a battered old jon boat, a gift from the camp, laying upside down along the side. Doleful, the outhouse with harness leather door hinges also remained. Inside the house the worn linoleum floor had been swept and the windows opened to air the still strong musty odor. A pound can of coffee and a tin pot were on the kitchen table, appreciated gifts. The rifle was leaning in a corner with an open half box of ammunition on the floor beside it. Bobby used the hand pump to fill the pot, opened the can with his John Wayne, and the two burner gas stove lit on the first try. He sat drinking coffee and smoking on the kitchen chair until twilight and then walked to the river to watch the night begin. “Tomorrow,” he thought, “I will go to Angel Holler.” He caught a ride with one of the men making a whisky run to Angel City and walked from there to the brick ruins deep in the holler. Damp leaves marked the old spring and the water was cool to the taste. He scraped tinder from dead wood and gathered cedar for a small fire, the smoke an invitation to the sky and whatever was there. Once the fire was made with his flints, he took coffee, pot, mess kit, cup, and cigarettes from his canvas boonies bag. He smoked while the coffee boiled. The Corn Moon waxed over the bluffs and into Angel Holler with light pale as wing bone, the stillness seen. Bobby watched his fire fade to fragrant wisps of smoke and wondered if his own embers would follow that path. He closed his eyes to listen and wait against the brick. Nightness creeped as he slept. The sun came with coffee, cigarettes, and aches for the next three days of his seeing fast. On the fourth day, he walked back to camp buying some small supplies in Angel City on the way. The camp stayed silent, already knowing his disappointment. Even the river ceased its murmur as he stood on the bank, not yet dissuaded from the quest. He decided to care for the camp. Food was an issue for the people despite available fish and game. Their small gardens diminished as they grew older and most were growing older. Bobby wove fish traps from willow branches, setting them in the river from the jon boat. He fashioned a paddle from a piece of pallet wood, attached it to a sapling, and used it to move the boat like a raft. At first, he shared only fresh catch, but slowly began to smoke surplus on makeshift racks he set up on a sandbar. It would help with winter when ice formed in the river. Subsistence hunting was allowed for individuals and families and Bobby stretched the rule to include everyone in camp. He had a good rifle and fresh venison was in supply. Surplus smoked on the sandbar amid a growing cache of tanned hides for whoever wanted them and demand was high. It was still a silent camp, but the people began to prosper a little in their confinement with a smile now and then. The men took turns buying staples in Angel City with the rest of Bobby’s discharge money. He was grateful for the coffee and cigarettes they brought. Still the silence remained when he went during the Cold Moon and the Dogwood Moon: He began to doubt that he could see anything beyond the camp. As the weather warmed, word came from White Cloud that morels were up on Indian Island. Bobby paddled and poled the boat there to look for the camp delicacy to roll in cornmeal and fry in lard. He took a gunny sack hoping for a harvest and was rewarded with a clearing thick with his prey. He smiled a little to himself. His sack was half full when he heard something. Looking up, he saw a woman, Ioway by her look, wearing only a frayed flannel shirt. She had to be from White Cloud, another mushroom hunter most likely. “You are Bobby Stackwood ” she said, slipping the shirt from her shoulders. He blinked in the glimmering susurration of her unfolding wings and could see. Fugitives from Hope In January there is nothing between Nishnabotna County and fierce Arctic wind but barbed wire fence and crop stubble. “Not the Frozen Chosin,” Grover Hauptman thought, “but close enough.” He sipped coffee and watched gritty snow scour everything in a winter gale; it was no day to grill hotdogs. He scoffed at his enduring childhood pining for dogs and sauerkraut. Kansas City Strips from Golden Ox lost the comparison. He recalled making kraut was simple: A cabbage grater on sawhorses and a five gallon crock below to catch the shreds. A full crock was covered with a floor sack, hauled to the cellar, and left to ferment. Combined with links, it was a staple for the penurious Hauptmans: The meat was cheap, but the currency was packinghouse scars on his father’s hands. Things had changed, but his tastes remembered and had not. Korea took young Hauptman to the 1st Marine Division and United Nations operations at Changjin. After the People’s Volunteer Army attacked in the crucible of bitter Siberian cold, the Chosin Few were cast. Two-thirds of his comrades provided the cire-perdue. He took his discharge and went home to another packinghouse. Nick Chivelli brought the union to the packing company and convinced the owners that it would be in their best interest. Hauptman watched the new hierarchy emerge and learned to play ball, catching the attention of the union steward, who moved him up to organizer. The only time he touched a boning knife again was for persuasion. After a year, the steward went back to Kansas City and left Grover to run things as long as he made good for Chivelli and the union. Two years of satisfactory cash flow brought a summons to the Kansas City hub and an associate spot on a crew. He became known and things happened wherever he went, a quality liked enough to have provisional capo status for special errands. He was as made as a kraut ever would be. The twilight wind shuddered against the frame house and Grover wondered if time had made its bones as rotten as his: The cancer was deep and digging deeper. Everyone in Nishne Station suspected, and then knew. Juanita Vasquez told him, “In the Spring, you will know what you know.” At the vernal equinox, day and night separated for Grover Hauptman and he was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery, just outside Angel City. Once the words were spoken, everyone went to look at the plots Grover had bought for them around the desecrated crypt. Know what you know. No Place for Owls Nishnabotna County is no place for owls. Its farmers prefer snakes to owls for rodents in barns; snakes don’t ask names and they have no clans, only renegadoes. There are lots of owls in Angel Holler, but no one sees them; the only evidence is the bones of their feasts beneath the trees. Sometimes their wings ululate in the night and are mistaken for lamentations. The Otoe Owl Clan killed the Snake Clan and left the village in ruins for those who see to find.