Rob Tyler
A few years ago my brother Donny and I inherited some land in upstate New York from our uncle Phil. He passed away after a long illness, which was basically his entire adult life. Phil worked hard and played hard and drank hard and died hard when his heart burst as he crossed his kitchen floor barefoot, in boxers, a bowl of rum raisin ice cream in hand.
I’m not sure why Phil left the property to us rather than to his ex or his kids. Maybe because he knew we loved it as much as he did. Donny and I lived nearby when we were young and for years spent the better part of every summer hanging out with Phil, riding around on his tractor, fishing the stream, shooting tin cans off fence posts. He didn’t care if we never brushed our teeth or made our beds or chewed with our mouths closed. Or bathed regularly in his old clawfoot tub. Why bother? We swam every day in that scummy little pond that no one else would set foot in. Especially after the snapping turtle took off Phil’s big toe. Good old 9-toe Phil. I miss him.
Donny misses him more. Donny and Phil had more in common—both misfits, you know what I mean? Square pegs and all. Donny’s ok as long as he stays on his meds, but since he moved down there and started living in the barn I’ve worried about him. When he stopped answering my calls and texts, I decided it was time for a visit.
The farm—we call it the farm even though it hasn’t been properly farmed for about 100 years—is an hour drive south of my place in Rochester. The last stretch, beyond Bristol Valley, takes you down the high road overlooking Canandaigua Lake. I’m glad I can remember it the way it was last Saturday: brilliant sun in a clear blue sky, boats carving white wakes across the water. Cottages full of happy families on vacation.
In the no-stoplight town of Naples, just south of the lake, I pulled in at Bob and Ruth’s for a cup of coffee and a donut to go. I used to know some of the help, but I’d never met the middle-aged woman with dyed hair who took my order at the counter. Naomi, according to her name tag. She fixed the coffee the way I like it—double-double—and offered to warm up the donut.
There were good people in Naples.
You can’t see much of the farm from the road, it’s so overgrown. Just a couple ruts that pass for a driveway next to a mailbox mounted on top of a rusting crankshaft. That’s where I found Donny, taking a razor to the adhesive-backed numbers. I parked under the canopy of old maples and got out of the car.
It was like I wasn’t there.
“Earth to Donny, come in Donny.”
“Don’t let on that you know me,” he whispered, glancing at the sky. “It would be safer for you that way.”
I knew right away things were bad. I stood and watched, waiting for him to finish what he was doing.
“What are you trying to accomplish?”
“I’m going to ground,” he said, his eyes darting side to side.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had paranoid delusions. In fact, it was almost comfortingly familiar turf.
“And what are you going to do about Google maps? Single-handedly mount a DOS attack?”
“They don’t have street views of this road yet.”
Why did I bother? When he was in this condition, there was no winning. “Look, I brought your meds.”
“It won’t make any difference,” he said, as he turned and walked stiffly down the drive toward the barn.
“I think it might,” I said. I grabbed the bag from the car and jogged after him.
As we got closer to the barn, I could hear an engine roaring. Like he’d left the tractor running at full throttle.
“What’s that sound, Donny?”
He slid open the big door and we were blasted with a wall of noise and a blue cloud of exhaust.
At first I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. Then my eyes adjusted to the dim light: dozens of rotary lawn mowers, bolted to racks, running full bore.
Donny moved down the rows shutting them off, one by one.
This was a new type of insanity I hadn’t seen from him before.
“Centrifuges are not the big problem they’re made out to be,” he said. “It’s the gimbals that are hard to come by. I got these from a marine supply warehouse—they’re ship compass mounts.”
When the mowers were running I hadn’t noticed the hardware hanging from the ends of each blade.
“Are these beer bottles?”
“Coors long necks. Good quality—heavy glass, consistent weight. I could use some more if you have any empties.”
I moved closer to the nearest mower and peered at a bottle, which was suspended by its neck, swaying slightly. It was half full of clear liquid; at the bottom, a thin layer of brown sediment.
“Are you deconstructing beer? What’s that at the bottom—hops?
“It’s not beer,” he said. “It’s well water. That stuff at the bottom is plutonium.”
I said some things I shouldn’t have during the ensuing conversation. I unloaded on him, his paranoia and obsessions and anti-social behavior, the way he’d embarrassed the family for years and worried mom and dad into early graves. How he embraced his condition and, when it suited his purposes, defended it as an illness over which he had no control. I blamed him for the state of our relationship and expanded my rant to include my anger at him for taking over the farm, which our dear departed uncle wished us both to enjoy.
Donny remained calm as I flew off the handle. To outward appearances, I’d look like the crazy one.
When I finally tired myself out and collapsed on the ratty couch in the framed-in living space that used to be the hay loft, the sun was low over the hills. Donny handed me a Coors and quietly resumed the explanation of his irrational behavior.
“You’ve heard of West Valley? Major nuclear contamination. They’ve been trying to clean it up for over 40 years. It’s the most toxic site in New York State.”
“So?” I closely examined the contents of the bottle he’d given me before I took a swig.
“West Valley drains into the Upper Cohocton aquifer.”
This just pissed me off all over again. The way he could go from nuts to reasonable without warning. Will the real Donny please stand up?
“You’re telling me our well is contaminated with nuclear waste?”
He smiled for the first time since I’d arrived, and it gave me the creeps. “It’s not waste,” he said, “if you recycle it.”
“What are you talking about, Donny.”
“We have to send a message.”
“What kind of message?”
“The kind that makes a big impression.” He brought his fists together in front of his face, then splayed his fingers wide and moved his hands apart in slow, symmetrical arcs.
Finally, it all made sense! With lawnmowers and beer bottles, he would build a weapon that engineers with the resources of entire nations at their disposal required decades to develop. A great DIY project, except for certain death from carbon monoxide poisoning, amputation by mower blade, or perhaps total conflagration of the barn. Whatever he was doing with that sludge—whether it was plutonium or hops or most likely the iron that stained the bathroom fixtures—the message I was getting was a danger to himself or others. As Donny’s power of attorney and health care proxy, I could arrange to have him committed. No one wants to play that card, not against someone they love, but this was beyond worry and embarrassment. This called for intervention.
I finished the beer and shifted to small talk and safe subjects, told him I’d be back soon with a few cases of Coors empties. I said I’d buy him a Geiger counter at the Army Surplus store so he could measure his yield.
“You know,” he said, “they track every one of those ever made. Every one.”
His smile was gone. There was something in the grim cast of his face, his leaden gaze, that told me he hadn’t fallen for my insouciant act. He saw right through me.
“Of course,” I said.
As I walked to my car, I noticed the new padlock on the door of the old stone smokehouse. There were areas in the barn I hadn’t seen either. I wondered how much I was missing. Part of me felt I should stay and help him, however I might. But a greater part of me wanted to flee his madness, his contaminating craziness. I couldn’t wait to get home to my normal existence. A hot shower, a few hours of Netflix, maybe some Chinese takeout. And definitely better beer.
He watched, expressionless, as I backed out into the road. His hand rose slightly and fluttered in a feeble imitation of a wave. I waved back, and drove off.
I stopped again at Bob and Ruth’s. There’s a good cell signal there. As I stood outside the entrance, scrolling through my contacts, Naomi slid open the service window above the outdoor counter.
“You want ice cream?” she said.
“No thanks.”
“A lot of people do, in the evening, this time of year, especially if it’s hot. They sit at those picnic tables over there under the trees or walk around the Pioneer Cemetery and read the headstones while they eat their ice cream cones. You think that’s disrespectful?”
An older couple walked up to the window.
“We’ll have some ice cream,” the guy said. “You have butterscotch?”
“Just what’s on the board,” Naomi said, pointing up.
I turned my attention back to my phone, found the number of my lawyer, and pressed send. As I waited for an answer, I heard the old woman say, “What a lovely sunset!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the old man start. His head swiveled away from the hand-painted list of ice cream flavors to the dark sky west of town, and with a growing look of alarm, to the green and ochre glow blossoming above the hills to the south.
I should have said something then, alerted the police, sounded the alarm. But I didn’t. It was too late. I jumped in my car, shut the windows, and drove like hell north, through the garishly lit landscape, and wondered where I—where any of us—would go next.
ROB TYLER lives in a barn with a cat on thirty acres of scrubland in Upstate New York—land of the Finger Lakes, grape pie, and disease-bearing ticks. He wrote his first story in fourth grade. It was well received and he rested on his laurels for twenty years. He eventually found his way back to writing for fun (short stories, flash fiction, prose poems) and profit (a career in marketing and technical writing). The profit part is over, but the fun continues. When he isn’t writing, he can be found running hills, piling rocks, or pulling up knotweed.