Westerly

By Michael E. Newell

Thaddeus (Taad) Aaron Lindenhall is the sixth generation of the Lindenhall lineage living in an agricultural community, Atkinsville, in southeastern Kansas. The family owns two sections of land, one of which Taad leased to others and the other being the Old World Forest. Taad is the largest retail merchant in town, and the family name enjoys a high level of notoriety and prominence in the community.

Residents and farmers in and around Atkinsville understand that the Lindenhalls have no intention to level the Wood, as it’s called by Taad, and allow local grain farmers to exploit it for farming. Westerly tips off Taad. That one local rancher-farmer, Clayton Jurkins, is determined to harvest the forest and farm it, but worse still, he aims to drive the Lindenhall clan from the area and gain control of Lindenhall’s lands.

Taad plans a defense to protect his family from Jurkins’s efforts to disrupt the peace, then (with the help of Elenore, an Overseer) discovers that someone has buried bodies in his Wood, and the hunt is on to find a psychopath in their midst.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728312620

Michael E. Newell

Michael E. Newell a transplanted thirty-year resident in “Green Country,” Tulsa, Oklahoma grew up in rural Michigan, not far from Detroit, and developed a passion for the outdoors at an early age. He finds common ground between the hardwood forests he grew up with and the lands in northeast Oklahoma. Newell is a Science and History channel addict and an avid reader of fiction, particularly those with a slant on actual historical events such as the works of Dan Brown and Steve Berry. Newell learned wilderness life by exploring the hundreds of acres of open lands, which were, in effect, his back yard. Newell, following his father’s lead, developed a keen passion for hunting, and for outdoor activities of all kinds, and trail blazing new ground. Newell with his wife, Linda, live an “empty-nester” lifestyle with their dogs, Lucy and Bravo.

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© 2019 Michael E. Newell. All rights reserved.

First Edition 2019

Edited by SMA Literary Services

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/20/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1263-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1261-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-1262-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906343

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Prologue: The Legacy of Thaddeus (Taad) Aaron Lindenhall

1 The Infamy of Dorney Dickerson

2 The Wood

3 Outlaws in the Wood

4 The Conspiracy

5 The Overseers

6 Routine is a Matter of Viewpoints

7 MO is Modus Operandi

8 Intel

9 Westerly

10 The Lost, The Found, The Missing

11 Council Cliff

12 Reunion

13 The Elders

14 Things in Motion

15 Eleanor

16 Bones

17 Boom

18 Hide and Seek

19 Detected

20 Bingo

21 Epiphany

22 Closure

23 Charges

24 Together Again

25 Ore Accounting, 101

26 Justice Rolls On

27 The Old One

28 Good Tidings

29 Sixty-Three Years Later

30 Last Day in the Wood

For Suzanne. I am so happy you cried.

Prologue

The Legacy of Thaddeus (Taad) Aaron Lindenhall

The Lindenhall clan established itself in the eastern Kansas Territory when Gabriel Lindenhall immigrated there in 1860. He was a young man then and barely twenty-years-old. He was the son of an English farmer, Henry, and a German immigrant woman, Gratian, living near Manchester England. Once landed on American shores, he arranged to travel westward into the Kansas Territory wilderness.

St. Louis, the gateway to the west, was already a bustling city and westward, Kansas City on the Missouri side of the Missouri River, had a population of less than five thousand. West Kansas City in Kansas and across the Missouri River was home to fewer than a thousand people. Further west along a well-defined route, Topeka was poised to become the capital of the new state of Kansas, which occurred a year after Gabriel arrived.

Westward beyond Topeka was wilderness or Indian Country as some called it. Gabriel resolved to homestead lands in the eastern quadrant of the Kansas Territory and south of West Kansas City and north of Indian Territory that would later become the State of Oklahoma.

The town of Atkinsville, founded in 1867 and named after one of its founders, William Atkins, began like many small towns when a cluster of established farmer-ranchers needed a conduit to access trade routes and resupply, hence, commerce seeped its way into the community. The small village of Atkinsville nestled along the north-south route of West Plank Road so named for the rough-hewn planks that covered much of the crud road. Later, Plank Road would become US Highway 169. Post-Civil War, a north-south railway was built and ran parallel to West Plank Road. Atkinsville, a small berg with little infrastructure, suddenly became highly visible, accessible and viable. Its growth assured.

Gabriel took a wife, Lenore, in 1865. Before reaching thirty-five years of age, Gabriel had acquired three additional homestead parcels making his holding a full section or six-hundred-forty acres…one square mile. Lenore birthed six children, four sons, and two daughters. Three boys and one girl survived to adulthood.

The oldest son, Dixon, born in 1872, took over the family farm. His siblings drifted away from farming. His brothers joined the US Cavalry following the Civil War and got posted to the western wilderness and deeper into Indian Country. The sister took a husband in St. Louis where she became a teacher and her husband a merchant.

Dixon acquired a ten-acre plot closer to town and built a new house; took a wife, Anna, and together raised eight children, seven of whom grew to adults. Dixon realized the growing community of Atkinsville required new infrastructure to service and supply to the local community and accommodate weary travelers arriving by rail or traveling the West Plank road or going further west toward Topeka. He opened Dixon’s Dry Goods in 1892 near his home and closer to the main road moving through town. The dry goods store featured staple retail goods and livery stables. One brother, Jeremiah, left the Army and returned to Atkinsville to work with Dixon at the store. Jeremiah urged Dixon to open a cafe inside the store, and he did so in 1894. It was a huge success and traffic in the dry goods store improved likewise.

Dixon’s three oldest children were girls, and he was concerned with the succession of the business where Lindenhall ownership might end if any of the three daughters insisted on running the family business. To Dixon’s relief, none of them did.

However, his youngest child, a son they named Nathan, born in 1898, was a natural business-minded person at a young age and was in a position to take full command of the operation in the early 20th century. His realization that "horse-and-buggy" would be obsolete by the next decade, and the need to support the agriculturally focused community, moved Nathan to change with the times. The stable operation became a feed store. The primary dry goods and cafe business was completely rebuilt and modernized in 1922.

Among other things, the new store featured a covered porch lined with rocking chairs where friends would meet, or where spouses would wait for shopping to end, and where old men played checkers. The operation also featured electric lighting, steam heating, and ceiling fans for the hot summer days. The idea of its modern amenities, and in particular the porch idea, became popular with patrons and other businesses in the small town.

Nathan enlarged the store-cafe and moved it a bit further off the main highway to accommodate automobile parking; he very much wanted to cater to those potentially lucrative patrons. The automobiles and customers came in hordes, and the business was like no other within a hundred miles. The storefront area, now dedicated to parking, was graded and expertly maintained until paved in 1924. Nathan, mindful of his heritage, renamed the business, Lindenhall’s Feed & Supply. The cafe morphed into The Lindenhall Family Diner. Alcohol in any variety was not permitted in the eatery. Christopher County, which included Atkinsville, was dry.

Nathan married Martha in 1919, and they raised four children. The oldest son, Bertram, was born in 1928. When of age, he learned the family business but ignored farming. When he had control of the operation, he leased family lands to others who were all too happy to increase their farmed productivity. The cash flow into the Lindenhall business was enormous and continuous. He married Madelyn in 1941.

In 1942, Bertram joined the Navy. After basic training, he served on the USS Rockport, a destroyer bristling with twelve-inch guns, and attached to the Pacific Naval fleet. Bertram was a gunnery mate. He and his ship were battles tested.

At the end of the war, Bertram had lost a lot of weight getting into battle trim and most of his hearing. Returning home when the war ended, it was apparent Madelyn had a flair for the business as she added substantially to the family’s bank account.

Not long after returning home, Bertram got a visit from a family friend, Harlem Simmons. He was desperate for cash. The bank was about to foreclose on his house and two sections of acreage, one of which Simmons farmed while the other sat undisturbed. The unfarmed area was a square mile section, six-hundred-forty acres of old-world forest. The bank was pressuring Simmons to part with the wooded section, but he never would. It needed to be safe he would say. It needed nurturing.

Harlem proposed that Bertram acquire the wooded section for cash with his promise to repay the debt, with interest, within five years. Bertram gave Harlem the fair market price of one-hundred-sixty-thousand dollars or two-hundred-fifty dollars per acre for the section. Harlem never made a payment. By 1950, Bertram owned the wooded square mile free and clear.

Madelyn birthed one child, a son, in 1948. They named him Mathew. Not long afterward, Madelyn developed uterine cancer. It wracked her body, and within two years, she died. The only mother Mathew knew was Shalom, a woman Bertram hired to tend to his house and child while Madelyn agonized. She stayed on after Madelyn’s death and helped raise the boy.

Mathew, like the generations before him, was an innovator. He renamed the family business Lindenhall’s in 1972 when his vision of remodeling began. The supply business was principally hardware and animal feed, with the diner side business, but they sold household items, too. A gardening center was a welcome addition and included an outdoor area substantial enough for all variety of trees, shrubs, herbs, flowers and vegetable plants, as well as fertilizers and gardening equipment intended for home use.

The cafe area of the business became a limited purpose creamery operation. Hal Halderman, a local dairyman, and Mathew developed a scheme whereby Lindenhall provided the infrastructure needed to operate the creamery and Halderman leased the facilities for pasteurizing milk, processing various cheeses, and butter, and sometimes ice cream. Everything Halderman produced was intended for local consumption. The bulk of Halderman’s raw milk found its way north to a much larger creamery operation.

Mathew decided he needed more than just dairy products to draw hungry folks, so in the general area of the creamery, on the southern wall of Lindenhall’s, he installed a deli operation specializing in custom meats and cheeses, but also specializing in making the new fast food craze, submarine sandwiches. He also introduced an array of pizza ovens and deep fryers for his Lindenhall brand of fried chicken.

Near the front of the deli-food area, and immediately to the right after entering the store, Mathew placed six modest round tables with four chairs each. For the older crowd and other local merchants, it was a lunchtime favorite. For the younger crowd, especially the teens, it became the local hangout, and even more so after Mathew installed several pinball machines and other electronic games on an unproductive wall. Revenue for the space increased by twenty-fold, and the bill-changing machine stayed busy. The device would accept ones or fives. He didn’t want his clientele going broke too quickly, but fivers were the most common denomination tendered.

By 1975, with most of the remodeling completed, there was no better place to have a quick meal, buy farm fresh dairy products, acquire hardware of all variety, pursue horticulture interests or buy feed for all manner of critters from pets to livestock.

And Mathew wasn’t done. The now massive feed, hardware, creamery, deli, garden center, fast food operation, and video game entertainment mecca, completely covered four of the ten acres initially set aside for home and business. Mathew would keep the house and five acres apart from the rest and expand the business to the south, utilizing the last free acre.

For several years, he allowed local farmers to park their heavy equipment on the vacant one-acre lot. There was all manner of tractors, seeders, thrashers, reapers, backhoes, and dozers. More recently, locals who wanted to sell their equipment parked them near the front and nearer the main road and placed for sale signs on them. The signage usually included a local telephone number and sometimes advertised the asking price. Sometimes the price was the best the market could handle, and sometimes it was "best offer." Along the main highway coursing in front of the property, the equipment for sale was impossible to miss.

Eventually, other vehicles started showing up. There were pickup trucks of every make and model. Small flatbed work trucks, too. All of these vehicles were for sale items.

It took some time and wrangling, but Mathew convinced many of the locals who parked their gear there to help him build a proper lot for the equipment. Taking a portion of the space at a time and maneuvering the full-sized Tonka vehicles from one spot to another, the entire acre got a proper grading and a beautiful bed of pea gravel. It covered the whole lot. The dirt and weed tract was gone. High fencing on three sides discouraged trespass. Strong steel gates out front secured the lot during off hours. The most massive equipment moved to the rear, and the smaller trucks were in front. He had an eight-foot camper trailer installed near the center of the lot, and it served as a sales office, which he leased to a sales contractor. The sales person was the agent for the sellers and drew commissions from them directly.

Mathew setup a monthly fee for parking idled and for sale equipment on the empty lot. Ten-dollars per month per vehicle seemed fair enough, and for local folks Mathew knew, it was an honor system deal, and most paid the modest fee. Others had to pay in advance or month-to-month if necessary. Later, automobiles started showing up, and they were hot sellers. The sales agent, James Coleman, did well providing for his family.

Mathew still had other improvements in mind for the business. Abutting the south side of the equipment lot were two dilapidated wood frame buildings on a three-acre parcel. One building was originally a bakery and the other the residence of the owner. The bakery hadn’t survived long, and the heirs of the original property owner showed no interest in selling, that is until Mathew showed up in the spring of 1977.

It didn’t take long to ink the deal, and bulldozing crews leveled the plot. Half of the space became part of the equipment sales lot, and the other half became a fully paved, coin-op car wash with six washing bays. It was the first of its kind in Atkinsville. Both operations prospered.

Mathew’s wife was Elaine, a petite and fastidious woman. She birthed three children before an inoperable brain tumor took her life in 1984. The oldest, a daughter, was Melina. She was a gifted artist. She could paint and sculpt with all manner of media, and she achieved high honors and acclaim. She and her husband, Richard Birdahl, an architect, moved to Taos, New Mexico where they raised three daughters.

The next oldest was Andrew. As an academic over-achiever, recruiters lined up with scholarship offers and inducements not mentioned in recruiting brochures. Andrew chose military service in the US Air Force. He fluidly aced his studies and training at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs and began his military career as a Lieutenant flying combat aircraft. Andrew rose quickly to higher ranks and reached Lt. Colonel and was designated Commandant of a squadron of stealth fighters based in southern California. His unit often deploys to potential hot zones, and his group earns service medals aplenty. Mathew married Carol Lochmar just after turning twenty-eight. Carol was a few years younger and was a top-level school administrator in Orange County. They have no children.

The youngest son of Mathew and Elaine, born in 1980, was Thaddeus. According to his father, his mother insisted on the archaic name.

During his elementary school years, the other kids brutalized Thaddeus’s name, a favorite sport for grade schoolers. The most popular was Thaddeus the fattiest, and he wasn’t fat at all. There were others, too.

One day, Thaddeus turned in a pop quiz he just finished and printed his name, Taad Lindenhall, at the top. He intended to print Tad, and he never understood why he wrote it the way he did. His teacher, Mr. Rickman, made a public announcement about it to the class, and from that day on, he was Taad. New rhymes arose; See Taad to get paid, or Taad is a maid. There weren’t many other rhyming options, and the few that existed did not faze Taad a bit. Soon, the razzing stopped, but the name stuck. Taad, feeling unique and special with it, told everyone from then on he was Taad.