The 'Cousins'

Part 102(A): Closing Out Friday

A/N: By writing the story 'on the hoof' inevitably introduces delays between chapters and with a complex story such as this, with so many characters and themes working through it, those delays get longer. The following mini-summary is intended to act as a link with those earlier chapters to avoid confusion and allow you to better enjoy the chapter. BTW- this is fiction, but there are too many families for whom this is fact.

After discovering the duplicity of his civilian clerk, Tod Mecklen, by leaking information to Felix Gleitner, Sheriff Flik Donovan is searching for Gleitner to question him, but gets called away to a domestic disturbance at the tiny hamlet of Consort, north of Bamptonville. He's surprised to find only one family remains there. The other three have been bought out by Ross Noble who has since razed their farmsteads to the ground, returning the land to open range. 

Lou Drubacker found it almost impossible to gain a livelihood from his 160 acres without help and the family dropped into deep poverty. Without money for labor, new machinery or even seeds to plant Drubacker entered into a stock rearing deal with Mitt Fawley, who put up the stock and the feed charged against the final account and Drubacker put up the husbandry and his land. The contract was heavily fixed in Fawley's favor and it charged all losses to Drubacker at the finished stock prices - notwithstanding the poor quality, and often sickly, stock he had provided. At the end of the first contract Drubacker ended owing money to Fawley with the only option of payment- another similar deal. This time it was a chicken deal using hatchery reject chicks, but in the same contract. Big losses were involved and Fawley claimed his farm in compensation, which would make the family homeless and with no immediate livelihood.

Donovan learned about all of this to his amazement  when he was called to the disturbance after Lou Drubacker took his eldest daughter Becky into his barn with a shotgun after hitting his wife.

Later, when it was over and Lou Drubacker was held in hospital with his daughter Donovan was accompanied by Maisie, the other sheriff's clerk, to check on Mrs. Drubacker. Flik blamed himself for not knowing what was going on around him and vowed to tackle Fawley for engineering Drubackers' final downfall. He realised he could not do that without taking on Ross Noble for his part in their misfortune by squeezing out the smaller farmers and reverting their land to range in his ownership. Maisie drove the sheriff home at the end of the night after one last visit to Felix's trailer to see if he was home.  Now read on:

CHAPTER 102 (Alpha):

Closing out Friday – 20th April '07.

Sheriff Flik Donovan lay in bed, grim faced and wide-awake, watching the sheers flutter in the breeze flowing into the room through the partly opened window. Unable to sleep, he lay incapable of settling into a comfortable position, or arrange the pillow to ease the crick in his neck. The sheriff was well aware these discomforts were manifestations of his personal disquiets rather than faults with his bedding. Turning onto his side, he adjusted his position with small, slow movements continuing to castigate himself for his failure to find Felix.

'What the hell are you up to Felix and where the hell are you hiding out?'

The abrupt awareness of his own slackness in being fully aware of what was happening on his patch further aggravated his discomfort.

The events of this day had overturned his complacency and the confidence with which he policed Bamptonville and Cripps County. What he discovered from the episode at the Drubacker's farm regarding the situation of small farmers, the abuse they suffered and the squeezing them out of their spreads by the bigger businessmen in the county came as a shocking surprise to him; proving how little he really knew of what was happening in the wider local area beyond Bamptonville.