Old man Jeric’s place looked like the kind of farm you would put on a 4-H recruitment brochure. In the foreground an antique tractor sat in front of a cute wooden farmhouse. Beyond that was an old barn next to a shiny new milking station. All of this was framed by towering fields of corn. That is, if you were looking from the west. From the east the whole tableau was radically changed by the backdrop of a diesel-fume-hazed industrial site punctuated with a thirty-foot natural gas rig.
A barky, but not terribly menacing, dog greeted Harry at the farmhouse picket fence. When no one came to see what the dog was making a fuss about, Harry bravely opened the gate and found that the dog preferred pats to bites. Harry knocked on the door of the house and, getting no reply, ventured further into the farm.
“Hello,” he periodically shouted, not wanting to get shot as a trespasser. All the while the black-and-white farm dog padded along at his side demanding affection every time he stopped. Harry felt increasingly uncomfortable, then as a joke to himself, he turned to the dog and said: “Go find farmer Jeric, Lassie.”
Like it was an audition for the movie, the dog ran off towards the new aluminium-sided building. Harry followed the pooch inside and found a not-quite-senior citizen, in blue jeans and a grey sweatshirt, down on his knees looking at the underside of a cow that was attached to tubes filled with milk.
“Hello,” Harry shouted, wanting to make himself known.
“If you’re selling, I ain’t buying,” the man said without looking up from under the cow. “If you’re giving, leave the samples at the door.”
“Mr Jeric, I’m Harry Cull. I’m working with the Pennsylvania State Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Mr Jeric stood up. His wiry grey hair stuck out under a cap that read “Pocono Milk Coop”. He had the kind of face that said: I may be old but I’m in good shape. “Police?” he paused for a moment, then a worried look crossed his eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“No, no emergency,” Harry said. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“Can it wait fifteen minutes, till I finish with this?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
Harry found a stool and sat while he and the dog watched the old farmer disengage his cows from their milking machines. When he was done with each cow, he gave her a pat on the rear and she sauntered away with what looked like a smile on her face.
Not until the last cow had gone her own way did old man Jeric come over and hold out his hand. “Whatcha say your name was?”
“Harry Cull.” Harry shook then looked at his hand with a grimace.
“Oops, sorry about that. I still had some lanolin on my hands. Just rub it in. It keeps hands as soft as teats. I’m ready for a break, Mr Cull. Coffee?”
“That would be fine,” Harry said.
As they walked back to the house, Harry commented on the dog at his heel. “I think I have a new best friend.”
“Oh, he’s a lovely pet. Wouldn’t give him up for the world, but he’s a crap guard dog. I swear if he could, he’d hand burglars the keys to the front door.”
“Thanks for giving me some of your time,” Harry said.
“I ain’t got much of it. Milking takes three hours. Before that I was up feeding the calves at six. After this meet with you I’ve got three more feedings today, then there’s machine maintenance, manure cleaning, veterinary stuff, then if there’s time I do crop maintenance. Finally there’s another milking at eight. No matter how you slice it, it’s a fifteen-hour day.”
The kitchen of the old-school farmhouse was as chrome and shiny as any twenty-first century interior can get. The coffee was waiting for them in a coffee maker that had a preprogrammed clock in it. Jeric poured Harry a cup and said: “Sorry if I moan but it’s part of the job. My old man used to say, ‘If you want to hear moaning go to a whorehouse or a farm. The difference being that on the farm the moans will be genuine’.”
“This won’t take long. It’s about Bill Thomson.”
The farmer smiled. “What’s the boy got himself caught up in now?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Harry said, “I would’ve thought you’d heard. Bill’s dead.”
“No,” Jeric said, sitting down harder than he meant to.
“Yes, sir, murdered.”
“Sweet Jesus Mary and Joseph. How?”
Harry summed up what he knew about the shooting.
“I… I just saw him a week ago.”
“Did he say anything about… anything?”
“He came by to schedule some harvest work. Jeez, he looked happy as a clam.” The old guy stopped as he remembered something. “He did warn me that it might be the last harvest for a while. When I asked him why, he said he had a prospect.”
“Did he say what it was?”
“No, said he didn’t want to hex it. Poor kid.” Jeric looked down and shook his head. “Ja ever see Angels with Dirty Faces?”
“The old Jimmy Cagney movie?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Remember what it was about?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Two kids try and steal something. One gets caught and grows up to be a big-time criminal. The one that didn’t get caught grows up to be a priest. Billy was always a good kid but, whenever he did any of the naughty stuff like all kids do, he was the one that got caught. Life is a lot about luck and Bill never had any of the good kind. And it seems that was true right up to the end.”
“Billy inherited some land. You know about that?”
“No,” the farmer said.
“A fracking company wanted to buy the land, but Billy said he wouldn’t sell it because of you.”
“Good for him. I’m suing those cocksuckers. Sorry about my French.”
“What are you suing them for?”
Jeric blew out a long breath. “Misrepresentation, water pollution, toxic air emissions, loss of livestock; hell, I’m trying to get my lawyer to blame them for screwing up my marriage. Come with me – let me show you something.”
The farmer led Harry to the entrance of the old barn. Inside was a long water trough with a valve at the end. Jeric turned on the valve and a powerful jet of water sprayed out.
“This water comes directly from the well. Now, when they drilled the gas well, my water went all muddy but that was to be expected. When you drill into an aquifer you’re gonna push in some solids. This happens whether you’re drilling a gas well or just a shallow water well, and it soon calmed down. But when they started the hydraulic fracturing – things got weird. The first thing we both noticed was the skin rashes, then the water started spluttering like a radiator. Gail, my wife, kept saying that there was something in the water. I had previously talked to a company geologist who assured me that all the stuff they were pumping into the ground was over a mile down and that the rocks above were impermeable. They never mentioned that the most common cause of water-table contamination was bad cement casing along the drill bore. One day the wife was at this trough and she… the word she used was, ‘swooned’. She went all dizzy and fell backwards on her butt. We took her to Doc Brogan but he didn’t know what had happened to her.
“I went over to the fracking pod and gave them what for. The manager there talked me down and said he’d look in to it. I came home and on the Internet found out about that film where the guy could set the water from his kitchen tap on fire. I tried it and burnt all the hair off the back of my hand. That was too much for Gail. She moved out. She’s living with her sister in Philly now.
“I got in touch with Keystone Drilling and none too politely told ’em that they’d better send a man out here to test the water. That was my mistake. They took a week to send a guy and by that time I suspect they fixed the casing. They said the water is fine. I got some tests done myself and found traces of all sorts of shit but, since we can’t get a list of the chemicals they use, we can’t tell if it was there before the frack job or not.”
Jeric walked outside and pointed at the fracking pod. “Not much of a wind today. Look at the smog around that place. When the wind comes from the west my eyes burn. I lie in bed at night, tears pouring down the sides of my face. Sometimes I’m not sure if it’s the irritation or ’cause my life’s being ruined. Either way it’s them that are doing it.”
Jeric picked up a rock and threw it half-heartedly towards the pod. “You know this whole area used to be teeming with dairy farms but when I was studying agriculture at Penn State the price of a hundredweight halved.”
“Hundredweight?”
“About eleven and a half gallons. Anyway, ever since then farmers either concentrated on crops or they sold out to developers. Hell, the Pocono Milk Co-op used to be hard to get into. Now they have to truck milk up from Lancaster County just to meet demand. I’m just saying it’s hard enough being a dairy farmer up here without this.”
“You mentioned loss of livestock?”
“I had a twenty per cent miscarry rate this year. Never seen anything like it. With my own money I flew in this super cattle vet from Nebraska to do blood and environmental tests. I’m gonna expose these criminals even if it bankrupts me – I don’t care anymore.”
Jeric turned away but Harry could see his jaw clench. The farmer let out something like a bark to dispel his emotions. “Sorry for going on so, Mr Cull. Just, life seems to be turning to shit. And I’m sorry I can’t be more help about Billy. Jesus, he was a good kid. I would’a had him working with me full-time if I could’a afforded it, and that’s no lie.”
Harry handed the farmer his card and said: “If you think of anything else call me.”
As they shook hands, Jeric said: “I don’t get out much and never been part of the old pine tree telegraph loop. If you find out who did this to Billy, will you do me a favour and let me know?”