Snowbound-in part
Chapter Six
As she worked, and waited for Angie to get there, Sam spent a lot of time thinking about her, knowing she wouldn’t arrive until sometime the next afternoon as she was coming from Fargo, North Dakota.
Geared up in a pair of cross-country skies she found herself once again working behind the Spencer sisters’ house, and planned to stop in for a visit.
Gladys and Inez sat on their front porch rocking away in wicker rockers in comfortable silence. Neither chose to break it with conversation until Sam opened the porch door behind them and said, “Hello. I was working out back there and thought I’d drop in and see how you were doing.” She did not scare them this time.
“Hello dear! Please come on up here and sit.” Gladys got up and went inside the house. “I’ll bring out some tea,” she said as she opened the screen door and went into the kitchen.
“Aren’t you two a little cold sitting out here in January?” Sam worried they might catch pneumonia.
“What’s going on over there?” Inez asked as she stood up wiping her hands on a hand towel she had stuck in the waistband of her apron, irritated by Sam’s show of concern. It always irritated her when younger people assumed she was so feeble minded she didn’t know how to take care of herself in cold weather.
“What are you talking about?” Sam asked, surprised. Inez looked so angry.
“I’m talking about your house, dear, your house. What’s going on over there? And please, don’t play innocent with me. It’ll never work.”
Sam blurted, “I’ve been hearing noises . . . I think. But really, it’s just my imagination. I thought I saw something, too.” Her voice trailed off as she finished speaking.
“Humph! That must have really been something! I saw you. I saw you cowering beneath the covers with Mutt and Jeff on the bed with you. Who do you think you’re fooling?’
“What do you mean, ‘you saw me?’ How could you have seen me?”
At that moment, Gladys stepped back out onto the porch with hot tea for everyone. “Here, Samantha, you take the big mug. Have a bar, too. You must be famished, working out in the cold all afternoon.”
Gladys heard what Inez had told Sam, and added, “You mustn’t be too afraid of
Inez here; she sees things in her dreams. It’s the damnedest thing, but she’s kept the two of us out of some serious trouble over the years with them dreams of hers. I tell you, if she has something to say you really ought to listen.”
Sam sipped her tea staring at her companions, who stared right back at her.
“It’s that house,” Inez said without preamble. “It wants you there. Something is going on inside it that has a direct correlation to you and another woman. She’s coming. She’s a dreamer too. When she gets here, I want to meet her. She’s a powerful dreamer—like me.”
Sam shivered, but not from the cold. The Spencer sisters had no way of knowing about Angie or the fact that she was coming for a visit. Sam had never mentioned Angie to them.
“She is powerful,” she confessed to Inez, “and when she gets here, I’ll make sure the two of you meet. Her name is Angie Eckenridge and she’s an old friend of mine from college. You and she were meant to meet,” she said staring at Inez.
Inez reminded Sam of Angie’s way of “knowing” things. It was unnerving in college when Angie, out of the blue, would say what Sam had been thinking or feeling. To find that her new friends, too, “knew” things, was also unnerving.
The sisters offered Sam a ride home that afternoon, which she accepted. She was tired. It was beginning to snow and she anxiously awaited Angie’s arrival. Visiting the Spencers was an excuse not to go home when she knew she could not concentrate on paperwork, or much of anything else. She did not want to be home alone for too long even though not much happened lately. Still, she never knew when plates would start flying out of the cupboards or knifes out of drawers from across the room.
“Don’t worry too much about Inez, dear,” Gladys confided in Sam when Inez went into the house to retrieve their coats. “She sees things, but like I said, she’s kept us from serious harm over the years. I know she wants to do the same for you.”
On the drive home Gladys, who always rode along with Inez wherever she went, told Sam the story of her house reiterating much of what Clem Johnson had already told her. But the story had mythologized over the years, so Gladys wasn’t too sure what exactly did happen and what was myth, but the house had gained notoriety for certain.
As the three women rode in Inez’s black, 1965 Pontiac Tempest, Sam told them of how she came across the farm, smiling as they turned onto River Drive and the glass packs on Inez’s Tempest rumbled. She was more than a little surprised. She never pictured them owning a car much less a muscle car in mint condition that looked and sounded like it belonged in the garage of a sixteen-year-old during the 1960’s. Inez confided, “Nice, isn’t it? It is in original condition. I know because I bought it brand new and have had it ever since,” she winked at Sam in the rear view mirror.
When asked as they rode, Sam told the women that when she found her house she had been out scouting for a likely place to continue her research; she had not been looking for a house. The pack of wolves she had been studying died; a truck hit one as it was trying to cross Highway 53, while the other fell into a mine pit one thousand feet deep and broke its legs dying slowly of starvation and infection. Sam accidentally found that cub in the spring while hiking in the mine pits just outside of Virginia, four miles north of Eveleth. The cub’s body had decomposed, so she sent it to the University of Minnesota to have it analyzed. She had to know if an irate hunter had killed it, but the autopsy showed the animal had died from the after effects of the fall. Even the alpha male had disappeared that year.
With the loss of the two cubs from the previous season, the alpha female had to have been alone when she denned up that spring. Because the alpha female stays with her litter for three weeks after giving birth, without the rest of the pack to feed her, Sam guessed she and the litter had died, too. Sam never found her. She never found the male, either. She had not seen any of the pack by mid-summer and had almost given up hope of ever seeing them again, although she continued to search for them off and on over the fall and winter.
That was why she was out looking for a new research site that beautiful spring day. She had driven south of Eveleth about twenty miles finding the area surrounding River Drive had retained its pristine wilderness, and thought it a likely place to find wolves. Warm breezes wafted pine and fresh grass scents through her open window as she drove along the old dirt road that day. Her old Ford Ranger 4x4 quietly took her back through willow brush covered lumber roads next to the St. Louis River, and on back up onto River Drive where she continued traveling east. That’s when she came upon the farm. It felt like home from the first moment she laid eyes on it.
The house, as they knew, stands back from the road a quarter-mile, but is clearly visible from River Drive. Two old northern pines stand sentry at the driveway entrance. They appear to hold court over the graceful willows that line the rest of the drive. Willow Creek runs south to north through the property emptying into the St. Louis River just north of the farm boarders a half-mile. The house stands amid apple, Northern pine, blue spruce, willow trees and lilac bushes, and for the life of her, Sam could not understand why no one else had ever been as smitten with the farm’s beauty as she was. But of course, at the time, she knew nothing of the strange goings on.
She fell in love with the rolling hills, creek, fields, timber lined property boarders, and buildings immediately. When she walked up the drive that first afternoon, it was as though she had walked it many times before, as though she were meant to be there.
The long, unattended lawn was brown with dead vegetation and still frozen over with winter’s frost when Sam first saw it. But she didn’t see that or the debris that had accumulated outside next to the out buildings, or that some of the trees in the pine grove to the north were dead and falling down. She saw green expanses, lilacs in bloom, and a vegetable garden. She saw fresh paint on everything, and a back yard fit for a queen with cobblestones and plants, many, many plants.
Since the door to the house was unlocked and no one was around, she went inside seeing it, too, as it could be not as it was. With color on the walls, a new tile floor throughout the kitchen, patio doors leading to the back yard and a good scrubbing she had completely redesigned the interior the minute she stepped over the threshold. She proceeded to look throughout the house. It was eerily familiar.
Even though she was imagining how it could be, she forced herself to look at it as it was, finding no room for complaint. With a little hard work, it would be lovely.
There was no for sale sign posted on the property that day, but when she drove past the farm only one week later there was one at the end of the driveway. Sam immediately called the realtor who placed it. The box style, four-story farmhouse with one hundred twenty acres of land and outbuildings in good shape, was selling
for a fraction of what it was worth, she learned.
Amazed at the asking price, she was not about to question her good luck, she told the sisters. Luck was how she saw it, finding the house the way she did, and having it cost next to nothing. She’d been saving for a house for years.
When she talked to the realtor, Sam Snide, about the farm, he had acted peculiar, she recalled to the sisters. Snide was pleasant and welcoming when she told him she was interested in a property he represented, up until she told him which property.
Of course, Snide knew about the rumors, knew who owned the place and had nothing but praise for Arthur Noone. Yet as he spoke, he avoided looking Sam in the eyes. He acted as if he were lying, or misleading her about something. But when it came to the farm, Snide was animated. He confided to her that Noone had just placed it up for sale with him that week and that he had counseled Noone that he could get much more for it than he was asking.
She kept her excitement in check. She did not want Snide thinking she was too eager, but she did tell him she was very interested writing out a check for earnest money. She took two days to mull over what she was considering, and found no argument with any merit against buying the place. The farm was empty, she paid cash, and though the legal proceedings had not concluded, she moved in March 1, 2000.
Sam learned at the close of the sale that Arthur Noone lived just down the road from her new farm, two-and-one half miles. She did not think anything of it at the time, although she wondered why Snide had not mentioned that fact until the deal was done. She forgot about Noone as soon as she got into the house.
In less than a month she felt like she had always lived there and all during that time, nothing eerie had happened, she said to the sisters, although at times, her pets acted strangely.
As she talked, Inez drove so slowly Sam was sure she could walk home faster than they were moving, but she didn’t really mind. She was in no hurry to get home. The slow speed gave her ample time to fill the sisters in on those first moments in her new house.
The sisters sat silently as Sam continued to tell them that her favorite time of day inside the house was at night. She chose the upstairs, east-facing bedroom for herself from which she often sat looking up at the stars in the night sky. She felt as good in her bedroom staring out the large windows as she did when she camped out under the skies in a tent.
During the day, she wandered the fields, learned the lay of the land, and looked for traces of wolf scat or kill. She started at the creek with its borders of heavy willow brush. She traveled the hills, wandered the bordering forests, all the while watching for wolf sign. She was overjoyed when she first discovered some on her own property. It was up in the Cedar swamp at the far eastern border and looked like an old dening site.
She also saw sign of deer, bear, brush wolves (coyotes), and what she thought might be a mountain lion. She saw where a moose had used the trees to brush at its antlers, and sign of rabbit, fox, and many kinds of birds, including an eagle. She listened to the sounds of the birds, the quiet of nature and drank in the smells of the earth, the fresh air.
The Spencer sisters listened quietly as Sam described the property. It was as if they were walking its expanses right along with her.
Sam told the sisters about the fish in the creek, that the soil was good for planting, and that the fields would be good for hay stumpage in years to come. She noticed that no noises from the outside world penetrated the farm’s recesses except for an occasional over-flying airplane. It felt as if she were alone in the world. She loved it.
Sam also told the women about some of the challenges she faced since moving to the Iron Range. One of which being the threatening notes left in her mailbox.
“You’re kidding!” Gladys said turning in her seat to look Sam in the eye. Sam was leaning on the back of the front seat as she talked, so when Gladys turned, they were nose to nose. “Why didn’t you tell us about that?”
“What good would that have done?” I thought it might frighten you.”
“Frighten us! Humph!” Inez said with disgust. “You heard what we did for a living in our youth? You honestly think something like that is gonna' scare us? I don’t know who to be mad at, the one leaving the notes, or you for thinking we are such big chicken shits!”
“Sorry,” Sam said feeling chagrined.
“Look here, kid. We know more about how bad it can get around here for women than anybody does,” Inez went on. “It didn’t take us long to learn that Iron Range men, in general, have few qualms about using violence to control women. Beatings are so common most men see it as their right. Them good old boy Range men ain’t too keen on women butting into affairs they think reserved for them, none neither, like hunting and trapping, if you get my drift. Heard some of their opinions about wolves too, and they ain’t looking at conservation none. Rangers ain’t too keen on strangers, neither. They’ll call you a “pack sacker” in a minute if you weren’t born and raised here.”
“Personally, I blame the iron ore mining industry for most of that,” Gladys said. “And most men up here work at the mines. Take that one in Eveleth for instance. Don’t that look like an erect penis to you?” They all laughed at the image. “Yeah, and it spews orange soot like seed out over everything, even the graveyard down below it, let me tell you! What it is, is a steel-fisted bully that seems determined to control all it surveys. Seems to me, those companies want the men’s lives from birth to death; then they work at tearing them apart, one shovel full at a time, until any man working there becomes a steel like automaton, cast in iron and steel.” Gladys was on a roll; she got angry just thinking about it. Many miners had been her customers over the years and she knew intimately what effect the mines had on them.
“Brother Structures are planted all over the Range, all of which ensnare young men into their bellies with the lure of good income and benefits. Once in, most rarely escape, becoming dedicated to the Company who, in turn, incites fear with threats of job loss and layoffs while wailing about small profit margins and imported steel.” Gladys took a long deep breath. She was not finished.
“Most mines wouldn’t hire women up until sometime in the 1970s when women gained some equal rights, forcing the mines to open their doors. Even so, many men worked to make women regret coming there. They harassed them with sexual innuendo and veiled threats of violence, including rape. Men didn’t want women working where they worked or earning the same wages they earned, and the mining companies encouraged their bad behavior because they didn’t want the women there, either.” Gladys seemed to be finished.
She did not say it but Sam guessed that she and Inez had been victims of some of that violence. Gladys also didn’t mention, nor did Inez, that they bankrolled a lawsuit against the mines supporting the women who had gone through many of the terrors of which they spoke. She learned that later from Bernice.
“So, the next time you got troubles; you talk to us. We have more clout than you might think. Now, go on with your story.” Inez never took her eyes off the road although she still was not driving any faster than 10 mph.
Sam told them then of the crying noises, how they frightened her, how the house felt like it was under a cloud of sorrow. She also told them her pets acted strange whenever anything occurred.
The sisters just shook their heads. By the time they reached Sam’s driveway, no one in the car was speaking. It dawned on Sam as they drove up her driveway, that she had made friends with most of her new neighbors, yet none of them had ever called on her, or dropped by her house for a cup of coffee and a visit. She decided that should change, so as they pulled up in the circular part of the driveway next to
“No, dear, we don’t have time today. Maybe after your friend gets her,” Inez said.
“Are you sure you aren’t afraid of my house?” Sam asked as she pulled the door handle and the back door opened.
“Now, you needn’t think anything like that,” Inez said, “but I will tell you this. I do pick up on things, more than just dreaming . . . you know?” Sam had spent so much time with Angie, she did know, and nodded her head yes. Inez continued, “Well, I ain’t ready to go in there. Gladys here has been pestering me about it for years, because of the rumors, you know. But I do know this, there are spirits in this world and some of them shouldn’t be messed with. Demons? You understand? I know we give Bernice some flack about God and all, but it’s Him that needs to be working in this house. I don’t know enough about demons to try and drive them out. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s demons you got! Maybe you got some tormented soul in there that needs some relief, but I ain’t equipped to handle that, neither. My sister,” Inez patted Gladys’ arm, “and I have gone through so much in our lives, I can’t bring nothing sinister to us now. We actually live in peace most of the time. I intend to keep it that way.”
Inez paused then turned around in the seat to look at Sam. “But you got that friend coming and something tells me if she’s here, too, I can come in. Sounds strange, don’t it?”
Gladys patted Inez’s arm and said, “In the meantime, you be careful in there and you call us if anything goes wrong. We’ll get over here as fast as we can and take you outta here; we can do that. We got some powerful friends, too, so if you need help with any of them trappers, or old Noone himself, you just let us know. We’ll sick the hounds on them.” Gladys looked like she’d love to pick a fight with Noone.
Geared up in a pair of cross-country skies she found herself once again working behind the Spencer sisters’ house, and planned to stop in for a visit.
Gladys and Inez sat on their front porch rocking away in wicker rockers in comfortable silence. Neither chose to break it with conversation until Sam opened the porch door behind them and said, “Hello. I was working out back there and thought I’d drop in and see how you were doing.” She did not scare them this time.
“Hello dear! Please come on up here and sit.” Gladys got up and went inside the house. “I’ll bring out some tea,” she said as she opened the screen door and went into the kitchen.
“Aren’t you two a little cold sitting out here in January?” Sam worried they might catch pneumonia.
“What’s going on over there?” Inez asked as she stood up wiping her hands on a hand towel she had stuck in the waistband of her apron, irritated by Sam’s show of concern. It always irritated her when younger people assumed she was so feeble minded she didn’t know how to take care of herself in cold weather.
“What are you talking about?” Sam asked, surprised. Inez looked so angry.
“I’m talking about your house, dear, your house. What’s going on over there? And please, don’t play innocent with me. It’ll never work.”
Sam blurted, “I’ve been hearing noises . . . I think. But really, it’s just my imagination. I thought I saw something, too.” Her voice trailed off as she finished speaking.
“Humph! That must have really been something! I saw you. I saw you cowering beneath the covers with Mutt and Jeff on the bed with you. Who do you think you’re fooling?’
“What do you mean, ‘you saw me?’ How could you have seen me?”
At that moment, Gladys stepped back out onto the porch with hot tea for everyone. “Here, Samantha, you take the big mug. Have a bar, too. You must be famished, working out in the cold all afternoon.”
Gladys heard what Inez had told Sam, and added, “You mustn’t be too afraid of
Inez here; she sees things in her dreams. It’s the damnedest thing, but she’s kept the two of us out of some serious trouble over the years with them dreams of hers. I tell you, if she has something to say you really ought to listen.”
Sam sipped her tea staring at her companions, who stared right back at her.
“It’s that house,” Inez said without preamble. “It wants you there. Something is going on inside it that has a direct correlation to you and another woman. She’s coming. She’s a dreamer too. When she gets here, I want to meet her. She’s a powerful dreamer—like me.”
Sam shivered, but not from the cold. The Spencer sisters had no way of knowing about Angie or the fact that she was coming for a visit. Sam had never mentioned Angie to them.
“She is powerful,” she confessed to Inez, “and when she gets here, I’ll make sure the two of you meet. Her name is Angie Eckenridge and she’s an old friend of mine from college. You and she were meant to meet,” she said staring at Inez.
Inez reminded Sam of Angie’s way of “knowing” things. It was unnerving in college when Angie, out of the blue, would say what Sam had been thinking or feeling. To find that her new friends, too, “knew” things, was also unnerving.
The sisters offered Sam a ride home that afternoon, which she accepted. She was tired. It was beginning to snow and she anxiously awaited Angie’s arrival. Visiting the Spencers was an excuse not to go home when she knew she could not concentrate on paperwork, or much of anything else. She did not want to be home alone for too long even though not much happened lately. Still, she never knew when plates would start flying out of the cupboards or knifes out of drawers from across the room.
“Don’t worry too much about Inez, dear,” Gladys confided in Sam when Inez went into the house to retrieve their coats. “She sees things, but like I said, she’s kept us from serious harm over the years. I know she wants to do the same for you.”
On the drive home Gladys, who always rode along with Inez wherever she went, told Sam the story of her house reiterating much of what Clem Johnson had already told her. But the story had mythologized over the years, so Gladys wasn’t too sure what exactly did happen and what was myth, but the house had gained notoriety for certain.
As the three women rode in Inez’s black, 1965 Pontiac Tempest, Sam told them of how she came across the farm, smiling as they turned onto River Drive and the glass packs on Inez’s Tempest rumbled. She was more than a little surprised. She never pictured them owning a car much less a muscle car in mint condition that looked and sounded like it belonged in the garage of a sixteen-year-old during the 1960’s. Inez confided, “Nice, isn’t it? It is in original condition. I know because I bought it brand new and have had it ever since,” she winked at Sam in the rear view mirror.
When asked as they rode, Sam told the women that when she found her house she had been out scouting for a likely place to continue her research; she had not been looking for a house. The pack of wolves she had been studying died; a truck hit one as it was trying to cross Highway 53, while the other fell into a mine pit one thousand feet deep and broke its legs dying slowly of starvation and infection. Sam accidentally found that cub in the spring while hiking in the mine pits just outside of Virginia, four miles north of Eveleth. The cub’s body had decomposed, so she sent it to the University of Minnesota to have it analyzed. She had to know if an irate hunter had killed it, but the autopsy showed the animal had died from the after effects of the fall. Even the alpha male had disappeared that year.
With the loss of the two cubs from the previous season, the alpha female had to have been alone when she denned up that spring. Because the alpha female stays with her litter for three weeks after giving birth, without the rest of the pack to feed her, Sam guessed she and the litter had died, too. Sam never found her. She never found the male, either. She had not seen any of the pack by mid-summer and had almost given up hope of ever seeing them again, although she continued to search for them off and on over the fall and winter.
That was why she was out looking for a new research site that beautiful spring day. She had driven south of Eveleth about twenty miles finding the area surrounding River Drive had retained its pristine wilderness, and thought it a likely place to find wolves. Warm breezes wafted pine and fresh grass scents through her open window as she drove along the old dirt road that day. Her old Ford Ranger 4x4 quietly took her back through willow brush covered lumber roads next to the St. Louis River, and on back up onto River Drive where she continued traveling east. That’s when she came upon the farm. It felt like home from the first moment she laid eyes on it.
The house, as they knew, stands back from the road a quarter-mile, but is clearly visible from River Drive. Two old northern pines stand sentry at the driveway entrance. They appear to hold court over the graceful willows that line the rest of the drive. Willow Creek runs south to north through the property emptying into the St. Louis River just north of the farm boarders a half-mile. The house stands amid apple, Northern pine, blue spruce, willow trees and lilac bushes, and for the life of her, Sam could not understand why no one else had ever been as smitten with the farm’s beauty as she was. But of course, at the time, she knew nothing of the strange goings on.
She fell in love with the rolling hills, creek, fields, timber lined property boarders, and buildings immediately. When she walked up the drive that first afternoon, it was as though she had walked it many times before, as though she were meant to be there.
The long, unattended lawn was brown with dead vegetation and still frozen over with winter’s frost when Sam first saw it. But she didn’t see that or the debris that had accumulated outside next to the out buildings, or that some of the trees in the pine grove to the north were dead and falling down. She saw green expanses, lilacs in bloom, and a vegetable garden. She saw fresh paint on everything, and a back yard fit for a queen with cobblestones and plants, many, many plants.
Since the door to the house was unlocked and no one was around, she went inside seeing it, too, as it could be not as it was. With color on the walls, a new tile floor throughout the kitchen, patio doors leading to the back yard and a good scrubbing she had completely redesigned the interior the minute she stepped over the threshold. She proceeded to look throughout the house. It was eerily familiar.
Even though she was imagining how it could be, she forced herself to look at it as it was, finding no room for complaint. With a little hard work, it would be lovely.
There was no for sale sign posted on the property that day, but when she drove past the farm only one week later there was one at the end of the driveway. Sam immediately called the realtor who placed it. The box style, four-story farmhouse with one hundred twenty acres of land and outbuildings in good shape, was selling
for a fraction of what it was worth, she learned.
Amazed at the asking price, she was not about to question her good luck, she told the sisters. Luck was how she saw it, finding the house the way she did, and having it cost next to nothing. She’d been saving for a house for years.
When she talked to the realtor, Sam Snide, about the farm, he had acted peculiar, she recalled to the sisters. Snide was pleasant and welcoming when she told him she was interested in a property he represented, up until she told him which property.
Of course, Snide knew about the rumors, knew who owned the place and had nothing but praise for Arthur Noone. Yet as he spoke, he avoided looking Sam in the eyes. He acted as if he were lying, or misleading her about something. But when it came to the farm, Snide was animated. He confided to her that Noone had just placed it up for sale with him that week and that he had counseled Noone that he could get much more for it than he was asking.
She kept her excitement in check. She did not want Snide thinking she was too eager, but she did tell him she was very interested writing out a check for earnest money. She took two days to mull over what she was considering, and found no argument with any merit against buying the place. The farm was empty, she paid cash, and though the legal proceedings had not concluded, she moved in March 1, 2000.
Sam learned at the close of the sale that Arthur Noone lived just down the road from her new farm, two-and-one half miles. She did not think anything of it at the time, although she wondered why Snide had not mentioned that fact until the deal was done. She forgot about Noone as soon as she got into the house.
In less than a month she felt like she had always lived there and all during that time, nothing eerie had happened, she said to the sisters, although at times, her pets acted strangely.
As she talked, Inez drove so slowly Sam was sure she could walk home faster than they were moving, but she didn’t really mind. She was in no hurry to get home. The slow speed gave her ample time to fill the sisters in on those first moments in her new house.
The sisters sat silently as Sam continued to tell them that her favorite time of day inside the house was at night. She chose the upstairs, east-facing bedroom for herself from which she often sat looking up at the stars in the night sky. She felt as good in her bedroom staring out the large windows as she did when she camped out under the skies in a tent.
During the day, she wandered the fields, learned the lay of the land, and looked for traces of wolf scat or kill. She started at the creek with its borders of heavy willow brush. She traveled the hills, wandered the bordering forests, all the while watching for wolf sign. She was overjoyed when she first discovered some on her own property. It was up in the Cedar swamp at the far eastern border and looked like an old dening site.
She also saw sign of deer, bear, brush wolves (coyotes), and what she thought might be a mountain lion. She saw where a moose had used the trees to brush at its antlers, and sign of rabbit, fox, and many kinds of birds, including an eagle. She listened to the sounds of the birds, the quiet of nature and drank in the smells of the earth, the fresh air.
The Spencer sisters listened quietly as Sam described the property. It was as if they were walking its expanses right along with her.
Sam told the sisters about the fish in the creek, that the soil was good for planting, and that the fields would be good for hay stumpage in years to come. She noticed that no noises from the outside world penetrated the farm’s recesses except for an occasional over-flying airplane. It felt as if she were alone in the world. She loved it.
Sam also told the women about some of the challenges she faced since moving to the Iron Range. One of which being the threatening notes left in her mailbox.
“You’re kidding!” Gladys said turning in her seat to look Sam in the eye. Sam was leaning on the back of the front seat as she talked, so when Gladys turned, they were nose to nose. “Why didn’t you tell us about that?”
“What good would that have done?” I thought it might frighten you.”
“Frighten us! Humph!” Inez said with disgust. “You heard what we did for a living in our youth? You honestly think something like that is gonna' scare us? I don’t know who to be mad at, the one leaving the notes, or you for thinking we are such big chicken shits!”
“Sorry,” Sam said feeling chagrined.
“Look here, kid. We know more about how bad it can get around here for women than anybody does,” Inez went on. “It didn’t take us long to learn that Iron Range men, in general, have few qualms about using violence to control women. Beatings are so common most men see it as their right. Them good old boy Range men ain’t too keen on women butting into affairs they think reserved for them, none neither, like hunting and trapping, if you get my drift. Heard some of their opinions about wolves too, and they ain’t looking at conservation none. Rangers ain’t too keen on strangers, neither. They’ll call you a “pack sacker” in a minute if you weren’t born and raised here.”
“Personally, I blame the iron ore mining industry for most of that,” Gladys said. “And most men up here work at the mines. Take that one in Eveleth for instance. Don’t that look like an erect penis to you?” They all laughed at the image. “Yeah, and it spews orange soot like seed out over everything, even the graveyard down below it, let me tell you! What it is, is a steel-fisted bully that seems determined to control all it surveys. Seems to me, those companies want the men’s lives from birth to death; then they work at tearing them apart, one shovel full at a time, until any man working there becomes a steel like automaton, cast in iron and steel.” Gladys was on a roll; she got angry just thinking about it. Many miners had been her customers over the years and she knew intimately what effect the mines had on them.
“Brother Structures are planted all over the Range, all of which ensnare young men into their bellies with the lure of good income and benefits. Once in, most rarely escape, becoming dedicated to the Company who, in turn, incites fear with threats of job loss and layoffs while wailing about small profit margins and imported steel.” Gladys took a long deep breath. She was not finished.
“Most mines wouldn’t hire women up until sometime in the 1970s when women gained some equal rights, forcing the mines to open their doors. Even so, many men worked to make women regret coming there. They harassed them with sexual innuendo and veiled threats of violence, including rape. Men didn’t want women working where they worked or earning the same wages they earned, and the mining companies encouraged their bad behavior because they didn’t want the women there, either.” Gladys seemed to be finished.
She did not say it but Sam guessed that she and Inez had been victims of some of that violence. Gladys also didn’t mention, nor did Inez, that they bankrolled a lawsuit against the mines supporting the women who had gone through many of the terrors of which they spoke. She learned that later from Bernice.
“So, the next time you got troubles; you talk to us. We have more clout than you might think. Now, go on with your story.” Inez never took her eyes off the road although she still was not driving any faster than 10 mph.
Sam told them then of the crying noises, how they frightened her, how the house felt like it was under a cloud of sorrow. She also told them her pets acted strange whenever anything occurred.
The sisters just shook their heads. By the time they reached Sam’s driveway, no one in the car was speaking. It dawned on Sam as they drove up her driveway, that she had made friends with most of her new neighbors, yet none of them had ever called on her, or dropped by her house for a cup of coffee and a visit. She decided that should change, so as they pulled up in the circular part of the driveway next to
“No, dear, we don’t have time today. Maybe after your friend gets her,” Inez said.
“Are you sure you aren’t afraid of my house?” Sam asked as she pulled the door handle and the back door opened.
“Now, you needn’t think anything like that,” Inez said, “but I will tell you this. I do pick up on things, more than just dreaming . . . you know?” Sam had spent so much time with Angie, she did know, and nodded her head yes. Inez continued, “Well, I ain’t ready to go in there. Gladys here has been pestering me about it for years, because of the rumors, you know. But I do know this, there are spirits in this world and some of them shouldn’t be messed with. Demons? You understand? I know we give Bernice some flack about God and all, but it’s Him that needs to be working in this house. I don’t know enough about demons to try and drive them out. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s demons you got! Maybe you got some tormented soul in there that needs some relief, but I ain’t equipped to handle that, neither. My sister,” Inez patted Gladys’ arm, “and I have gone through so much in our lives, I can’t bring nothing sinister to us now. We actually live in peace most of the time. I intend to keep it that way.”
Inez paused then turned around in the seat to look at Sam. “But you got that friend coming and something tells me if she’s here, too, I can come in. Sounds strange, don’t it?”
Gladys patted Inez’s arm and said, “In the meantime, you be careful in there and you call us if anything goes wrong. We’ll get over here as fast as we can and take you outta here; we can do that. We got some powerful friends, too, so if you need help with any of them trappers, or old Noone himself, you just let us know. We’ll sick the hounds on them.” Gladys looked like she’d love to pick a fight with Noone.