The Tower Maker

By JT Conroe

The Tower Maker - an adventure novel:

In 1929, a West Texas cattle rancher had a staggering religious vision in which he and his male progeny were commanded by God to build a tower. The purpose of the tower was not revealed. Its construction was to be a matter of faith.

Seventy-two years later, Sam Sudro continues to honor his grandfather’s commitment as did his deeply religious father, but his faith in it has been gradually eroding, especially after his wife and two sons moved away out of frustration with its suffocating influence on their lives. Now he lives alone on his ranch. The cattle were sold long ago. Only a minor oil well sustains Sam and his endless work on the tower.

Far away in a former Soviet republic lives a small ethnic community called the Scyths, supposed descendents of the ancient Scythians. Having been forcibly relocated by Josef Stalin from their original home in the Caucasus to the barren steppes of Central Asia, they subsist on the verge of extinction because of a series of ecological disasters left behind by the long departed Soviet bureaucrats.

Sam is completely unaware that his straight and narrow life is about to take a strange turn toward a place where his fate and that of the Scyths become entangled by the unpredictable winds of war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JT Conroe
• Release date: Jan 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466192638

JT Conroe

JT Conroe lives and writes in Austin, Texas.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Not long before the country lost its cool, Sam Sudro was driving his pickup along the highway from Amarillo. At one lonely stretch, a car was parked on the roadway shoulder so he stopped to see if it was someone in need of help.

He climbed out of his truck and approached the nondescript car with an Arizona license plate. There was no one inside. He looked around but all he saw were fallow cotton fields, wire boundary fencing, and a nearby storage barn -- abandoned long ago, rotting, and broke backed.

He looked inside the car and saw the back seat filled with dirty clothes and foreign looking books. An open three-ring binder lay face down on the front passenger seat. It appeared to be a pilot’s training manual for an airliner. Strewn around were candy bar wrappers, soda cans, and potato chip bags. No key was in the ignition switch.

Hello? A man’s voice from behind.

Sam turned around and saw a young man standing about ten feet away. A further ten feet back stood a second man. They were both young and looked foreign though they were wearing casual American style clothes.

The second man seemed to be extremely nervous.

What are you looking for? the first man asked with a distinct accent.

I thought maybe you needed some help with your car.

Are you a mechanic?

Not exactly.

Then why did you stop?

Just trying to be helpful. It’s what we do in this part of the country.

We don’t need help. We were just relieving ourselves over behind that barn.

Then I’ll be on my way.

The man seemed relieved. Thank you for your offer of assistance, he said in a friendlier tone.

Think nothing of it. Where you headed?

East.

Okay. Well, have a good day.

You have a good day too, Sir.

Sam climbed into his truck and drove away. Looking in the rear view mirror, he saw the two foreigners watch him go. Arabs, he guessed. Students maybe. Sure didn’t look like airline pilots, though. Too jittery for one thing.

He hit a pothole and the pile of scrap metal in back rattled loudly. From the tower’s point of view it had been a productive trip. With respect to Catherine, it had been a waste.

He came to the Plank city limit sign and passed on through the near-dead downtown. He saw some familiar cars parked at Laura Mae’s and decided to stop in. Loneliness was eating him up ever since Catherine and the boys left him. He definitely needed a conversation with some friends over a cup of coffee.

Nothing deep, of course.

OOO

Del Childress, Jim Smithers and Stevie Bob Mendenhall sat in Laura Mae’s establishment, the best and only coffee shop and restaurant in Greater Metropolitan Plank, Texas and its significant environs, according to the sign out front. There were no other customers.

There’s old Sam, Del remarked.

Through Laura Mae’s large plate glass front window, the men watched as a faded orange 1968 Ford pickup truck, its bed loaded with scrap metal from a blown-over windmill, rolled into the gravel parking lot and came to a stop. Sam Sudro climbed down out of the truck that had once been a brilliant shade of red back before he had bought it off of Cal Turner’s not exactly grieving widow for a suspiciously low price.

He don’t look exactly happy, Jim said.

He hasn’t had a happy ten minutes in a row since Catherine up and left him. Del replied.

Sam limped across the gravel parking lot toward the coffee shop and entered through the glass and aluminum front door. He was tall and lean with graying hair. His face and hands were leathery brown but he could still be considered handsome -- handsome enough to prompt Elvira Turner to give him a very good deal on Cal’s truck, not that anyone who knew Sam thought him cynical enough to have taken advantage of her loneliness. He carried himself like a man always conscious of his own dignity.

Over here, Sam, said Del. We was able to save a chair for you.

Sam, didn’t smile at the joke but he came over and sat down. A round of howdy, how-you-doing, and what do you hear that’s new ensued.

We was just discussing the future, Del said. It’s our carefully considered opinion that things are looking up.

Glad to hear it, Sam said.

You don’t sound convinced.

Sure I am. I trust you boys to know what you’re talking about, ‘specially about the future.

Del laughed. Hey, It’s 2001. We got through Y2K, no problem. We got us a tax-cutting Texan in the White House and a conservative Congress. What can possibly go wrong?

You know I don’t trust any of those politicians.

You gotta trust some of them, Sam. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Exactly, Sam replied.

Knowing from experience that it was almost impossible to draw Sam into a political discussion beyond a general rejection of the whole concept, Del changed the subject. How’s the tower progressing? he asked with an exaggerated West Texas accent.

Fine, said Sam warily, recognizing from Del’s tone that his three friends were about to launch into one of their small-town-good-ol’-boy routines.

She about finished?

Don’t think so, Sam replied flatly, hoping to cut their act short.

I say you should top that sucker off, Stevie Bob said, undeterred, and start enjoying your life -- savor the flavor, you know what I mean?

The Parker girl, a skinny teenager named Fawn, put down her pop music fan magazine, pasted her wad of bubble gum on a glass paperweight she kept nearby for the purpose and came over to take Sam’s order.

Just coffee, Fawn, Sam said.

She sauntered back to the kitchen.

Sam turned to face Stevie Bob. My life is fine the way it is, Stevie Bob, he said evenly.

Hey, it was just a suggestion.

Sorry, Sam replied. I just got back from Amarillo to see the boys. I guess I’m a little edgy.

How they doing?

Good. They’re getting good grades. They seem happy enough.

And Catherine?

Sam paused a moment. Good. She’s doing good. She has a real good job.

Del laughed at Sam’s apparent shortage of alternative adjectives and slapped him on the back. Well that’s real good, Sam. So what’s the problem?

Aware that he had sounded foolish, Sam winced. No problem. I’m just edgy. It’s a long drive over to Amarillo.

Yeah it is, said Stevie Bob. Maybe they’ll approve the new Interstate. Then you could whip over there faster’n a roadrunner with its tail on fire.

Don’t hold your breath, said Jim. Those ol’ boys in the legislature are waiting for someone to slip them a nice little campaign contribution for their trouble and there ain’t nobody around here got that kind of cash money.

That’s the damn truth, agreed Stevie Bob.

There were solemn nods all around. Fawn brought Sam’s coffee.

Del leaned back in his chair. Sam, he said, it’s time to get serious. You have got to finish off that tower, no two ways about it.

It’s not something you just finish off.

The hell it ain’t. Before, it was just an eccentric hobby, but now it’s wrecking your life.

Sam leveled his gaze at Del. What don’t you understand about commitment?

Del sighed. Catherine and your boys would come back in a second if you’d just call it quits. Everybody knows that.

It’ll be finished when it’s finished.

Well at least tell us what it’s for, said Jim in an exasperated tone. You’d think after seventy years, someone in the Sudro family could come up with a decent explanation.

I’ve told you a hundred times. My granddad made a commitment and he passed it on to my dad and he passed it on to me.

Jesus, Sam, said Del who had heard it all before.

I heard it’s an antenna for calling space aliens, Stevie Bob said, steering the conversation back to country rube mode.

Them aliens are bad dudes, Jim said. You bring ‘em here, there’d be hell to pay.

It’s not an antenna.

Well, if Earth ever gets in-vaded by UFO’s, Stevie Bob said, or some bug-eyed critter comes down in his flying saucer and kidnaps my sweet Ruthie for some kind a weird medical experiment, I’m holding you personally responsible.

Personally, I’d be more worried about the alien critter than your sweet Ruthie, Del said.

You should put up a sign and charge admission to see it, said Jim. Your tower, I mean. Tourists would pay good money to look at that thing, big as it is.

I won’t take people’s money.

Well, why not? Sudros been working on it for three generations. You earned it.

The oil company pays me enough.

If I had an oil field on my property I wouldn’t be spending the royalties on scrap iron and welding rods, I can tell you that, Jim said.

Let’s change the subject, Sam said. We been over this a hundred times.

You keeping track?

I didn’t criticize when you put up that sleazy pink plastic no-tell motel out on Route One Ten.

I also heard, Stevie Bob said, that your tower is one of them there phallic symbols -- the ‘Penis of the Prairie’ my kids call it. Anything to that?

Carefully, Sam put down his coffee cup. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard that, Stevie Bob. I would stack them up in a roll and put that roll right where it would do the most good. ‘Cept, in your case, it would probably cause permanent brain damage.

It’s just a joke, Sam.

Well, I thought those jokes died of old age while we were still in junior high.

Sam stood up, slapped two dollars on the Formica tabletop and limped out to his pickup.

Fawn glanced up from her magazine. The pink bubble swelling out from between her lips made a soft pop and collapsed.

Sam’s three friends watched him drive away. The remains of the blown-over windmill, picked up on the way from Amarillo, rattled around in the truck’s cargo bed.

They all shook their heads in sad resignation.

Maybe we better ease up on old Sam, Del said. I don’t think his sit-down with Catherine went all that well.

They each took a sip from their coffee cups.

Smart as she is, Del continued, when she first decided to throw a bridle on Sam, she never figured on just how stubborn a horse she was fixing to ride. Now she knows and I think she may have decided to move on with her life.

I don’t think Sam could handle that, Jim said.

We got some cherry pie left, Fawn called from the kitchen.

CHAPTER 2

Sam was working late. He had to make up the time lost because of his trip to Amarillo to meet with Catherine and visit their two sons. Darkness had fallen and a bitter wind swept down from the north, turning a warm sunny day into fall within a matter of half an hour.

Catherine had rejected his plea for her and the boys to return to Plank. They can stay with you during summer vacation, she had said, but I have a job I can’t afford to leave.

High in the tower’s upper reaches, he clung to a steel strut with one hand while holding a welding torch in the other. A swaying bundle of additional struts suspended by a cable hung close at hand. A tower-mounted flood light illuminated his perch. He was careful not to look down for even now, after all these years, his fear of heights had never left him. Anxiety and frustration about his failing marriage made it difficult to concentrate.

Considering its location on a lonely West Texas ranch, the tower was an enormous structure -- an irregular twisting spiral lattice rising up from out of the flat landscape, a bewilderingly complex composition of scrap metal struts and plates, festooned with winches, dangling chains, climbing rungs, harness hooks and staging platforms.

It had been under construction since the summer of 1929 when Sam’s grandfather, Seth Sudro, had a vision that had seared into his brain with the power of an exploding sun. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, Seth swore.

Sunstroke, others surmised.

Seth had sold almost all of the cattle from the ranch and began to buy steel, cement, aggregate, and dynamite. He had blasted nine holes in the grayish pink granite that was like a low dome swelling up out of the ground near the house, filled the holes with concrete and inserted the first steel columns. Construction of the tower was under way.

The discovery of a minor oil field on the ranch property -- divine proof of the validity of my vision, said Seth -- made it possible for the work to continue and the Sudros gave up cattle ranching for good.

Four hours each day on the tower, said Seth. That’s all that is required of us. We are truly blessed.

Four hours a day probably hadn’t sounded like much at the time, Sam was sure. Cattle ranching often required sixteen brutal hours a day. But four hours a day, every day, or eight hours if you missed a day, recorded faithfully in Seth’s ledger books, for 72 long years with no end in sight, under the strict rules dictated to Seth in his vision, with new rules popping up from time to time that Seth had somehow forgotten to mention the first time -- those four hours had taken on a whole different meaning.

Squinting against the cold glare of the floodlights, Sam reached out and tested his welding work. The strut was solid. It formed a triangle with two other struts which formed triangles with other struts and triangular plates in a sequence that extended all the way down to the foundations. Sam well remembered his father and Seth’s heir, John Sudro, talking about the magical power of the triangle’s three-sided geometry.

A structure consisting of triangles will not lose its shape due to stress, John had pontificated. All forces of tension and compression are directed along the axis of each component. It is a fact known to every structural engineer in the world. Any other shape will rotate at its joints and fold up. Three sides is the key -- trinities upon trinities in an everlasting spiral. This tower will never fall.

Unfortunately, it had come close to collapsing several times, for the iron and steel would often rust and need to be replaced. Much time was spent painting the structure to stop the insidious corrosion. Rust never sleeps, Seth Sudro had warned darkly many times before his death.

To keep it from toppling, the height of the tower must never exceed nine times the diameter of the base, the more technically minded John Sudro had decreed. Consequently, additional rings of foundations had been constructed over the years so that the tower had become a concentric series of mutually supportive towers within towers within towers, each one taller than the one inside.

Every few years a reporter would come out to do a story on the tower. One had quoted a Dallas art critic as saying that the tower was a valid expression of the human yearning for the ineffable, in other words, a true work of art, and should be preserved for posterity. Sam had been unimpressed. He was certain that the tower had nothing to do with art.

It was while repairing a badly sagging lower section of the tower that Sam had fallen onto the granite dome, shattering his right leg and leaving him with a permanent limp. More divine proof, as if any were needed, declared Seth, for the injury had prevented Sam from joining the Marines as he had hoped and the military duty that would have taken him away from his work on the tower, perhaps forever.

About that time, there had been a few attempts by well meaning relatives to have Seth sent away to an institution specializing in the treatment of nervous conditions but the oil money and Seth’s inherent wiliness had been sufficient to thwart all such moves.

The icy wind blew harder and the tower emitted a plaintive whining sound as if yearning for the ineffable. Sam felt the cold penetrating his clothes. His hands had gone numb.

Just as he was shifting positions, the lights went out. Somewhere, a power line had fallen. Startled, Sam lost his grip. His foot slipped and he fell. Flailing out blindly, he caught another strut just as the safety harness snapped taught and held. Panic had caused him to forget about the leather harness which he always used since his fall.

The welding torch fell into the blackness, sputtering out on the rock dome below. Sickening fear churned his stomach.

He had banged an elbow and scraped his shin. His heart beat wildly and Reno barked indignantly from the front porch where he habitually kept watch on the tower’s progress.

With a conscious effort, Sam systematically suppressed his panic and resisted an irrational urge to jump into the darkness below. He imagined the unyielding granite dome, rooted, as his father had once explained, in the planetary lithosphere and in direct contact with the earth’s liquid iron core.

Now it seemed as if the entire tower and perhaps the great stone to which it was anchored had begun to tilt in a slow but accelerating rotation. He tore his gaze from below and looked up. Revealed by the sudden darkness, the brilliant stars shimmered like diamonds.

He managed to restore his equilibrium but it was at that moment that the last lingering wisp of Sam’s faith in his grandfather’s vision evaporated into the air like the breath from his lungs.

OOO

He was reluctant to climb down out of the tower in the utter darkness. He decided to wait for a while to see if the lights would come back on.

He remembered the tower as it had impressed itself on his imagination as a child. It had been an awesome presence. There was nothing nearly so high in all of the flat land for many miles around. It loomed over the house like a gigantic alien construct. He could see it every night from his bedroom window and hear the wind singing through its vibrating structure. There could be no doubting the power of his grandfather’s blinding revelation.

Now, Sam realized that his faith had been weakening for at least a year ever since Catherine had left him, taking their two sons with her to Amarillo.

You knew I was committed to the tower when you married me, Sam had argued.

Yes, I knew, she replied, but I never guessed that anyone could be that committed to anything. Anything except family.

The tower is a family commitment.

It’s a thing, Sam! It’s not family!

Sudros aren’t quitters. Never have been. Never will be.

That’s easy to say, Sam, if there is only one damned solitary thing in the whole wide world you care about.

I swore to my father as he swore to his father that I would honor their covenant with God. They told me many times, as I told you, that the work would be hard but the reward great.

Goodbye, Sam.

In the Plank public school that he had attended as a boy, he had endured the taunts of his classmates. He had fought bloody fist fights with nearly every boy in the school, including Del, Jim and Stevie Bob. Being bigger than most, he had won almost every time. He had eventually learned how to deal with the teasing with good natured humor and a seemingly light hearted attitude. He had gained everyone’s respect and affection but not their understanding.

The local Baptist minister, Reverend Boyd, had visited the Sudro ranch numerous times. Sam had witnessed the last conversation the Reverend had had with John Sudro as they stood on the front porch.

Remember the story of the Tower of Babel, the minister said to John. In the name of God, give up this folly.

Do not speak to me of the Tower of Babel, replied John heatedly. Those men of ancient times had to build with mud bricks, not iron and steel. They knew nothing of the triangle’s inherent strength. There was no granite bedrock in the Mesopotamian plain reaching down to the planetary lithosphere.

You missed my point, friend John. It’s strength is not an issue. The Lord punished its builders. They were scattered and divided into nations. They were deprived of their common language. It was an object lesson never to be forgotten, as you well know.

No, no, Reverend. My daddy’s Tower is an entirely different matter altogether. Think about it. This is tornado country, yet not one twister has ever come near here. This tower is a great electromagnetic energy conduit drawing power from the magneto created by the earth’s rotating iron core. Notice how its spiral is directly counter to the direction of spin created by the Coriolis effect. As a result, it actually repels tornadoes! On the other hand, it attracts thunder storms like a magnet -- you should see the lightning. It’s an awe inspiring sight, I can tell you. If you are anywhere within a mile of the tower, the hairs on your head and them little tiny hairs on your arms and in your ears stand straight out. It’s the reason why this ranch gets more rain than any other ranch in the area. Look at all that sweet green grass growing all around you. Good God, man! Open your eyes!

The minister jumped back, startled as always by John’s vehemence.

We are surrounded by the evidence! Look at that pumper, John continued unabated, pointing to the black machine clearly visible on the distant horizon, its long insect-like head bobbing up and down with a slow and patient rhythm like some praying devotee of uncommon piety. It has been slowly but surely sucking up the Lord’s oil from the day it was installed right through the Great Depression when many another ranch went belly up -- you’re too young to remember those times -- through World War Number Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the general decline of civilization, all for the sole purpose of allowing us to devote our efforts to this here tower. Who can ever doubt such overwhelming evidence of the divine mandate?

The defeated preacher stepped down off the Sudro front porch, looked up at the tower’s enormous skeleton, shook his head, climbed into his car and drove back to Plank, perhaps for a surreptitious slug of something a bit stronger than his usual beverage of choice, a cold Dr Pepper with a twist of lime.

If I had half your father’s faith, the minister had once told Sam, the Baptists would have gone against everything they believe in, said, ‘this here preacher knows the Word of God’, and elected me their Pope.

Now John Sudro was dead. Although he had never experienced any of the magical visions that had come regularly to Seth, his love for the tower had been absolutely unconditional. With his dying breath he had said to Sam, Never give up on Seth’s dream, Sam. The tower is our salvation. It is the purpose of our being. It is the sole reason that we have been blessed with the means to provide food and shelter for our families. Then he had placed his withered hand, a hand which had once been massive and strong, on Sam’s. I am even more certain of it, now that I am approaching death, than ever before.

Alone now in the cold night, Sam clung to his precarious perch. He shivered violently. If the lights didn’t come on soon, he would have to climb down in the treacherous dark.

He thought of his three friends at Laura Mae’s and their good ol’ Texas boy routine that had begun to wear on his nerves. They were all his age but now, at age forty, he looked ten years older than any of them.

Del had a Chevy dealership, Stevie Bob had steady work at a computer chip factory in San Angelo and Jim had several small businesses including a billboard company and that ungodly motel on One-Ten. All three had reasonably contented wives and children who at least pretended to respect them.

One of Sam’s sisters was living in Dallas, married to a real estate tycoon. The other was in California painting seascapes. They had never been expected to assume the burden of Seth Sudro’s vision. I am forever grateful, they would often say. Thanks be to God in Heaven for Dad’s incorruptible Neanderthal male chauvinist principles.

Sam looked up to the sky hoping for a sign, giving God one last chance. Just one small sign after forty years was all he asked for.

The silent stars glittered. The wind moaned and the tower shuddered and shook. He waited a few more minutes for a sign but none appeared. He began to climb down to the ground, where Reno, an adopted black and tan mutt about the size of a German shepherd but with no clearly definable parentage, waited anxiously.

On solid ground at last, Sam patted the dog on the head. Hey, buddy. Nothing to worry about. Let’s go inside.

Reno, seemingly reassured, followed Sam into the house.

CHAPTER 3

Haven’t seen you for a while, Sam, Del said. Thought I’d come out and see how you’re doing. Your phone doesn’t seem to be working.

I unplugged it.

Oh. I guess you had a good reason.

Yep.

There was more conversation in a similar vein. Finally, Sam acknowledged that he had given up on the tower.

Hallelujah friend! Del exclaimed. That is one terrific piece of news.

Terrific that forty years of my life are gone forever -- totally wasted, turned into dust, sunk into oblivion?

Well that’s not exactly what I had in mind, Sam, when I said ‘terrific’ .

I don’t know what to do.

That’s an easy one. You reconnect your phone, call Catherine and tell her to get her butt back home. Then you take her to Hawaii. Better yet, use my phone. Jenny and I will take care of your boys while you’re gone.

She’d never go there with me.

She’d go anywhere with you that had a thousand miles of ocean between it and that tower.

Will Benton came out the other day. He said the company is going to pack it in. He said our field is about dried up and it makes no sense to keep on pumping.

Someone else will pick up the lease.

Will doesn’t think so and without those royalty checks coming in, it makes a lot of sense for Catherine to stay over to Amarillo with the boys. We sure can’t afford no trip to Wai Ki Ki.

Give me a break, Sam. You got four thousand prime acres -- all bought and paid for. You can sure as hell think of some way to make a good living off of it.

What I know about cattle ranching isn’t worth spit.

This ain’t the Sam Sudro I used to know. He could do anything he set his mind to.

That was then. Right now I got to think. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Guess not. Don’t make it a habit, though.

OOO

Sam’s next visitor was the Reverend Boyd.

I’m inviting you to visit my church this Sunday, Sam. You and Catherine used to be regulars. We want you back.

It doesn’t feel right being there without her.

I can understand that but now, more than ever, is a time to seek comfort in Christ.

I appreciate the invitation, but I need time to think.

Christ will show you the way.

There might be other ways.

That sounds like New Age talk to me. In this time of confusion, I hope you don’t fall into error. I see too much of it these days.

I don’t know anything about any new age.

The Reverend’s passion had been aroused. He drew himself up and looked hard into Sam’s eyes.

It’s the idea that all paths ultimately converge at the same destination! That salvation can be achieved without Christ’s intercession! That you have the power to save yourself!

The Reverend’s fervor failed to penetrate.

How can you ever know for sure that you haven’t committed yourself to the wrong path? Sam asked. "That you haven’t gone too far to turn