Free Kornwolf by Tristan Egolf Page A

the afternoon, he had sat in a comfortable leather recliner being lauded with undeserved praise by a stranger—a gaunt, wiry old ferret of a man, overdressed, in a gabardine number—who couldn’t stop laughing and shifting in starts at his desk, and who hadn’t introduced himself yet, although Owen was naturally left to assume he was dealing with Editor Terrance Jarvik. That much was likely. The rest was unclear.
    It seemed that the old man had gotten a hoot out of Owen’s “reason” for leaving Gorbach—which, admittedly, sounded preposterous, but which had been at least
half
true: his boss in Louisiana, a mouthpiece for corporate land deal interests (the true half), had made inappropriate “advances” toward him—an allegation intended to ward off inquiry more than to entertain. The fact is: the charge wasn’t meant to be funny. Yet Jarvik, strangely, was all busted up by it. Stranger still, he hadn’t appeared to believe the story, and yet, for that reason, was all the more thrilled and, evidently, impressed. By admitting, thus, to horrible references, Owen had bought his way out of them—out of the need to address them.
    Or so it appeared.
    He hadn’t the first idea of what to make of it.
    On walking in, he had taken Jarvik for simply eccentric, a cracked old goat of a very-big-fish-in-an-empty-pond type, a lettered Yankee from old southern money, perhaps—with no one around him at present to pose any challenge or threat to his eminence—which, in itself, had grown flaccid, as such—full of bluster and affectation, he was.
    However, as the meeting had proceeded, the old man’s fervor began to appear less than voluntary. He must’ve been pushing seventy plus, so maybe his mind was just falling apart. But his gaze had appeared alert and attentive. And his energy level was through the roof. He may have been nearing retirement, yes, but he hadn’t seemed ready to go out quietly.
    Apparently (being the operative term), the gist of his current dilemma was this: in the previous month, an unexplained rise in disturbances—or, as the old man had coined them patronizingly, “rural mishaps,” had swept the eastern—almost a third of—Stepford County. Notably similar incidents of breaking and entering, arson, criminal trespass, robbery and senseless destruction of property had been reported across the area known, unofficially, as the Amish Basin. Accounts of livestock assault, theft and harassment were unexplainably numerous (twelve by the last count) from Laycock to Bird-in-Hand, Intercourse to Paradise and all through Blue Ball. The highest frequency of incidents appeared to be occurring in the less residential expanses of corn and tobacco fields south of New Holland, off of Route 21, along the township borders. Statistically, the area couldn’t have boasted a recent history of much less crime. Low-key barroom brawls had let out in the local taverns from time to time, and there
was
a significant biker culture, with multiple road gangs headquartered locally. But most of the resident “underworld,” so to speak, usually kept pretty much to itself. Cases of actual breaking and entering had never been filed on the present level. The willful destruction of property was almost unheard of, even toward Halloween.
    October had always been strange in The Basin. But rarely, if ever, to such extremes. The public records, according to Jarvik, reflected as much in no uncertain terms. “Trouble in Paradise isn’t the norm,” he claimed, unable to skirt the term. The Basin was characteristically dull and uneventful in most regards, to the point where even
The Plea
didn’t opt to retain a full-time farm beat reporter. Any news worth printing was normally gathered once a week by a “hack” for inclusion in Sunday’s “Lifestyles” section.That particular “hack,” it seemed, had quit the paper