Tamarack River Ghost Read Online Free Page A

Z feedlot operation in Crumpet, Missouri, one of several feedlots operated by the Lazy Z corporation.
    Bert Schmid sent Josh an e-mail after the second story. “Great story. Now we need some specifics about what goes on at the Lazy Z,” he wrote. “And we need some photos.”
    For his third week’s story, Josh’s headline read: “Missouri’s Lazy Z Feedlot Cutting Corners.” This time he described conditions at the feedlot after a recent rain. “Cattle wallow in manure and mud, many with mud caked on their bellies and up their sides. The smell is nearly unbearable.” He described in detail how workers regularly used electric prods to move cattle and how each employee was required to carry one at all times. He wrote about water troughs contaminated with manure.
    Josh managed to take several photos of manure pouring out of the feedlot and running into the dirty brown stream that overflowed its banks. One of the workers saw him and asked, “What in hell are you doing?”
    “Just taking a few photos to send to my mother back home. She doesn’t know anything about cattle feedlots.”
    “Well you’d better knock it off. Amos told me, ‘You take a picture around here, and you’re fired,’” his coworker said.
    “Thanks for telling me. I didn’t know that.”
    Now fully awake, after deciding that no one lurked in the motel parking lot with further intentions of doing him harm, he packed his bags, told the motel clerk that there was an illness in the family, and checked out. He didn’t bother to say that the window in his room needed a bit of repair. He also didn’t bother to tell anyone at the Lazy Z that they wouldn’t be seeing him anymore.
    He tossed the brick into the back of his pickup, and he was soon on his way back to Springfield. When he passed St. Louis and entered Illinois, he quit checking his rearview mirror. For a time, he was sure someone was following him, but he finally concluded it was his imagination getting the best of him. Not until he entered his Springfield apartment did he finally relax. He got on his cell phone and called his boss at home, waking him up.
    “Slow down,” Bert said in a sleepy voice. “Take a deep breath, and tell me what happened.”
    When Josh finished telling his story about the brick and the broken window, and the message written on the dirty sheet of paper, he paused for a moment.
    “Sounds like you did the right thing to get out of there. Imagine the guy who saw you taking pictures ratted you out,” Bert said.
    “I suppose,” Josh said. “Glad to be outta there. I’m gonna stink like a feedlot for weeks. Gonna throw my clothes away. Can’t get the stench out of them.”
    “It was a helluva good story you wrote,” Bert said. “And pretty fair pictures, too. We’re running the whole thing on the front page of our new edition. Jed Walker’s made quite a name for himself.”
    “Yeah, right,” Josh said. “I left Jed Walker at the Lazy Z.”

3. Fishing on the Millpond
    Oscar, you been hearin’ what I’ve been hearin’?” asked Fred Russo, Oscar Anderson’s neighbor and longtime friend.
    “How in hell am I supposed to know what you’ve been hearin’?”
    “Well I was just wonderin’.”
    Oscar had a puzzled look on his face as he reeled in his fishing line and tossed the bobber and hook baited with a small minnow back into the quiet waters of the Willow River Millpond.
    “So, what have you been hearin’?” A soft September breeze riffled the millpond waters.
    “What did you say?”
    “I said, ‘What you been hearin’?’” Oscar said, louder this time.
    “About what?”
    “What you said a little while ago.”
    Oscar and Fred, both in their eighties and retired farmers, often fished together. The Tamarack River had long been their favorite fishing spot, but for the sake of variety, they chose other places as well. The Willow River Millpond was one of them. Here, they could fish from shore for native brook trout, talk about the issues