Chapter 23: Private Road - No Public Access

I waited until we were all sitting at the table before I told everyone about the talk I’d had with Carissa, repeating most of the conversation.

The only question Wil asked was to find out why the doctors had Corinna in an induced coma, since he wondered why they would do that. When I explained it was to force her body to rest and recuperate faster, he simply nodded. During the rest of the meal he hardly spoke. It was almost as if he wasn’t there and I found that rather eerie. Then, when we’d finished eating, Wil announced that he was tired and was going to his room to pack a few things for tomorrow’s trip. After that, he said he was going to bed, purposely letting everyone know that he didn’t want to be disturbed. He did pause and turn toward me before he left, asking what time I planned on leaving in the morning.

“When I get here, I guess. I’m afraid I don’t know just when that will be, but it should be before noon,” I shrugged my shoulders. “From the sounds of things they aren’t going to be operating tomorrow under any circumstance and Corinna will still be in an induced coma. Carissa said her body has to recover and stabilize before they can do anything more, so I don’t feel there’s a huge rush for us to be there at any particular time, do you?”

He simply grunted and turned on his heel, leaving us behind as he walked away. For a moment or two everyone at the table was completely quiet, then Beth broke the silence

“Dammit. Wil is driving me nuts,” she suddenly swore aloud.

“Yeah. Tell me about it. If he’s like that for the whole drive to Edmonton, I’m going to want to strangle him by the time we get there,” I agreed. “Silence is just not Wil’s usual thing.”

“No, it isn’t. He’s always brooded about things, but normally I can snap him out of it,” Mom sighed. “I wish there was a way to snap him out of it by tomorrow, for your sake if nothing else, but I don’t know how to do it this time.”

“I don’t either. However, I’d rather not worry about that until then, okay?” I sighed. “Beth and I still have to go up the hill, then we have some work to do yet tonight.”

“No problem,” Dad said quietly. “But, I think that you and I should have a short talk before you go back to the ranch. Let’s go check your car and see what we can do about throwing a few tools in the back, just in case you have any troubles on the trip.”

I frowned slightly at that because Dad knew that I always carried an emergency toolkit in the trunk, but decided he just wanted to talk to me alone.

“Well, while you two are out there talking, I’m going upstairs with Beth so she can pack a few clothes to have up at the ranch,” Mom announced. “Beth, just leave the dishes for now. I’ll get those later. You and Chris should head back soon. He has to show you all the chores you’ll be doing and the things you need to take care of while he’s away. That’s liable to take a little while.”

As I went outside, I was wondering just what was going on, then I decided that both Mom and Dad were trying to hang on to us and yet let us go easily. That darn will of Grampa Bender’s changed everything. Outside, Dad walked right past my car and out to the barn, then gestured at some hay bales.

“Have a seat, Chris,” he sighed.

“What’s up, Dad?”

“Well to be honest, I’m not sure,” he smiled. “Things have changed around here so much and so fast lately that I thought you and I just might need some time with each other. I was wondering if you had any worries that you’d like to share after being up at the cabin now. For instance, how are you and Carissa getting along? It looks very much to us like this relationship between you two could become a permanent thing and we were wondering how you felt about that?”

“Well so far, it feels great from my point of view,” I sighed. “I think Carissa is happy too. Up until now we’ve told each other that we’re taking it slowly, but it still seems as if each day brings us closer together. Today, I’m missing her something fierce and from the way she sounded on the phone, she feels the same way about me. Don’t start digging out your Grampa boots yet though, we aren’t planning on anything permanent for a while.”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” he grinned and chuckled softly. “Both of you are just a bit young to be starting a family, although I’m not sure that you were ever as young as Wil. For a guy your age, you do things that astound both your mother and me, you always have.”

“Dad, I think both Wil and I act the way we do because of circumstance. Mama Kate died and I came along just when Wil was bonding to Mom. We grew up together and close to each other, but I think he’s always felt that I was closest to Mom. I think he got into the habit of deferring to me from the time I was born, which seems to have pushed me into playing the bossy brother’s role.”

“You know in a strange way, that makes sense,” Dad nodded. “It doesn’t help any that you even think about things like that. Talking to you is just not like talking to any other sixteen-year-old kid. You act far older than you are. It’s almost as if Grampa Bender was right and you’re a throwback to two or three generations ago when a sixteen-year-old was considered a man and had a man’s responsibilities.”

“Well, you’ve always treated me as a grownup for as long as I can remember,” I laughed softly and uneasily. “I guess being independent is just the way I’m built.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” he sighed. “Now it seems like circumstance has pushed you onto an even more independent road.”

“You mean the ranch? Dad. I’ll be honest, to me that’s still a dream. I’m certainly not ready to handle that completely on my own. Even with Beth as a partner and Carissa helping, it’s a big problem with some very heavy responsibilities. You can count on the fact that we’re still going to be running to you for help and advice.”

“That’s expected,” he laughed. “You should have seen me when I started on this farm. I was in almost the same boat as you are now, only I was older than you are by several years. There are going to be changes in your life, a lot of them. For instance, I think if you really plan on making the ranch a permanent thing, you might want to think about changing the subject of your studies when you go back to school in the fall.”

“Actually Dad, I was thinking about that. I enjoy learning about electronics, but as a rancher it wouldn’t be of much use to me. I think I’d like to take some time to think about where and what I want to study though. However, I think it’s too late to enroll anywhere else for September, after all it is July already. Maybe I should take a year and work around the ranch?”

“Well, we thought about that and decided we’d rather you carried on with some kind of schooling this fall. So, your mother and I put out some feelers for you. One possibility is a four-month long animal husbandry course that’s available at the Agriculture College at Olds and begins in midwinter. Wil is going back to Olds for the full year, so you could probably room with him for a few months.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Well, we’ll have to see about that. Right now I think a lot depends on what happens in the next while.”

“Oh, you’re thinking about tomorrow again and the way Wil is acting, aren’t you?”

“I can’t help it, Dad. I think there’s something weird going on between Wil and Corinna, something that he isn’t talking about, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Oh, didn’t anyone explain that to you? Corinna phoned here and talked to Wil the other night. She got so abusive on the phone that he hung up on her. The next morning we heard about her jumping from the church steeple. So, I think Wil feels that he might have been to blame for her feeling suicidal,” Dad simply stared at me. “I thought sure your mother or Wil would have told you about that call.”

I just shook my head. “No one said a word to me about that.”

“Oh, I am sorry. Someone should have said something.”

I just nodded, but at the same time I was thinking about the way Corinna had acted before and how Wil was acting now. Suddenly I made sense of things that I hadn’t understood previously and I felt a lot more sympathetic toward Wil’s feelings and actions.

I suppose it seemed to Dad that I drifted off and wasn’t paying any attention to him and in a way he was right. He cleared his throat after a moment and broke into my deep thoughts about Corinna and Wil.

“Going back to a previous subject, there is one thing about my talk with Toby that I don’t think came out exactly clearly when I spoke to you and Beth,” Dad said slowly.

“Oh, what’s that?” I suppose I frowned.

“Well, don’t get worried. It’s nothing bad,” he smiled as he held his hand up as if to wave off any further comment from me. “You see, effectively Toby is passing control of the lease into our hands, meaning that Tom and his family as well as the five of us will each have a say in administering and maintaining that end of the business.”

“You mean he’s giving the lease away?”

“Oh no,” Dad chuckled. “Toby is a little smarter than that, so he’s not making a gift of it. That would let the government slap a huge gift tax against the whole deal. He’s been planning this for a long time and I think he saw a lot of things coming that have happened in the last ten years. At that last meeting, over eight years ago, when everyone involved in the former lease setup signed, he had Tom and Alice as well as your mother and I sign an extra form. In effect, that gave all of us the burden of maintenance and repair of the fencing and other details to do with the lease.”

“Yeah, I knew that,” I frowned, wondering what he was talking about.

“Well, we never thought about payment other than the use we got out of the lease for running a few head of stock on that area or the hay we harvested for our own use. It seemed to us that we were getting a good deal even at that,” Dad grinned. “Toby and his lawyer used that agreement somewhat differently. What they did was to give us all a back payment of wages and interest as shares in a limited company. So in effect they made it look on paper as if we’ve been earning shares in the company that holds the lower lease. What he’s done now effectively gives us a lump sum payment of the debt that he supposedly owes all of us for work we’ve done previously.”

“Well, we owe income tax on that then, don’t we?” I frowned.

“Yeah, we do, but right now, on paper, the limited company isn’t worth much. When you work it out, it’s a lot less than the gift tax or inheritance tax for the same sort of control would be,” Dad chuckled. “Besides which, if you think about number of years when we’ve thought we were in the hole because the farm got hit by hail or drought, we hardly owe anything at all.”

“So what you’re saying is that Grampa Bender has given the nine of us a share of the lease?”

“Yes, actually he has. Between the two families, we now have about two thirds of the shares of the limited company that handles the lease, but it still leaves our individual farms completely separate. The section that the cabin is built on is the actual key to the lease and it’s still Toby’s. So, he still retains ownership of a third of the company and the upper valley is still kept separate from the family lease. Effectively he’s split the control of the lower lease and tied it to the three properties that the group owns as three individual families, but that upper lease is separate, at least for now.”

“What do you mean, ‘for now’?”

“Well, his will makes a gift of that upper ranch and the shares of the company that it controls to Beth and you.”

“But what about Wil and Tom and Jasmine, as well as everyone else? Isn’t that unfair to them?”

“Now think about that for a minute,” Dad laughed. “Those of us living down here control over sixty percent of the lease. What he’s done is to literally tie the amount of control to the actual area that the sections of the lease covers. Between all of us we still control a huge area and even you have to admit that the upper ranch is a lot less usable than the lower one. In that way it’s almost unfair to you and Beth. Eventually, when my generation retires or dies, you five might want to renegotiate things, but until then it looks to me as if the deal is darn solid and very fair.”

Dad and I talked for a while longer, but half of my mind was mulling over all the new facts about the ranch as well as trying to deal with the facts about Wil and Corinna. I think Dad realized that my attention was divided, because not long after he’d mentioned the will and its conditions, he encouraged me to go home and do my chores.

When we got back to the house, Beth had several bags and boxes packed up to take up to the cabin. In fact she even had a small dresser that she wanted to take along. We did manage to get everything into the car, but only by taking out the lower cushion of the back seat. Of course Dad and I both teased Beth about it as we fought that darn dresser into the back seat of the car, then packed all the bags and boxes around it. For once our teasing didn’t bother her at all.

Of course on top of everything else she wanted to take along her saddle, bridles and halters for her new horses. Dad and I just shook our heads in the end and let her have her way. The car was loaded, in fact we ended up with a box on the front seat between us.

As we drove out of the yard Beth was chattering like a chipmunk, but I’d dropped back to thinking about all the changes that were going on around me and how they might affect us. After we’d gone only a mile or so, Beth stopped talking for a few minutes, then reached across and poked me in the arm.

“Hey, Partner, what’s going on that’s making you so serious and thoughtful? Corinna’s problems, or what?”

“Oh, partly that,” I sighed. “Corinna and Wil to start with. Then there’s the new deal about the lease and of course there’s Grampa Bender’s will.”

“Can I offer an opinion?”

“Well, of course,” I glanced at her in surprise. “I was hoping you would. You might see something that I’ve missed.”

“Well, to start with you aren’t responsible for anything to do with Wil or Corinna, so you can’t do anything other than to offer your support. There’s not one darn thing you can do other than that. That’s all any of us can do,” she said vehemently. “So quit worrying about that right off the bat, okay?”

“Yes, Boss,” I had to say just to tease her a bit. “I’ll do my best try to put that worry to rest.”

“Good!” she said firmly, then in the edge of my peripheral vision I noticed her turn to look at me. “I don’t really understand much about Grampa Bender’s will and about the deal with us up at the ranch, so I can’t say much about that yet.”

“Well, basically he set up a limited company for the lease and gave two thirds of the shares to all of us who stayed on the farm for the work we’ve done on it in the past. Then in the long run, his will leaves the upper ranch to you and me. Well, the control of that section anyway, that’s because we’re in line to inherit the section of land that actually governs the lease,” I said slowly. “At least that’s the simple explanation.”

“Holy crap,” she sounded surprised.

“Yeah, that’s what we get for being ‘throwbacks’ who love horses,” I grinned at her.

“Ugh, me cave girl and like it,” she giggled.

“Oh come now,” I laughed. “Isn’t that going a bit far?”

“Who cares?” she was still giggling.

“Of course right now, you and I are just working for Grampa Bender. He still owns the land the cabin sits on and we’re only helping him out while he’s in the hospital.”

“Yeah, but what improvements we make on the place will be there for our eventual benefit. That means a lot to me.”

“Me too, I guess,” Then I sighed. “Another problem that’s bugging me is trying to decide exactly what I want to do in my own life. If I’m going to be a rancher, there isn’t much sense in my being trained as an electronic technician, is there? Dad was mentioning a course or two at the Ag. School that deals with animal husbandry. I was thinking of taking that instead.”

“Yeah, well I’ve been thinking about you doing that too, but what happens if Grampa Bender lives another twenty years?” she snorted. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have something else to fall back on besides the possibility of being a rancher one day? If Grampa Bender is still alive when I graduate from high school, I’m certainly going to get some training. Besides, you’ve already got a scholarship for that electronics course and you’ve bought your books for this year and everything. On top of that, don’t you want to be in Calgary this winter? Carissa is going to be studying there too and you two might even be able to live together.”

“Oh, I’m sure our folks would just love Carissa and I living together in Calgary,” I snorted.

“What’s different about living together there compared to what you’ve been doing here?” she laughed. “The two of you have just blown me away. I would have thought Mom and Dad would have said something about it, but they haven’t said anything that I know of. I guess Corinna and Wil had them so wound up they didn’t realize what you two were up to until it was too late to say anything much.”

“Well to be honest, Carissa was the one who made the decision to move in with me.”

“Oh sure. I’ll bet you put up a huge argument about her hopping into your bed,” Beth laughed.

“Well, not exactly,” I admitted with a chuckle. “Still, she didn’t really give me much chance to argue.”

“No, I’ll bet she didn’t. She’s got you wrapped around her pinky finger so tight you’re starting to look like a mood ring,” she giggled, then she paused for a second and seemed to shift gears “When you’re in Edmonton, why don’t you ask her and her folks what they think about your education this fall?”

“I sort of planned on that,” I grinned at her.

“Do it right and her folks just might be the ones to suggest you guys live together in Calgary,” she giggled again. “They might think of it as way to make the two of you come to your senses.”

“What?”

“Hey, let’s face it, the two of you are both taking crash courses, Carissa for nursing and you for electronics. That’s going to load both of you with lots of outside pressures. If you can live together through that it’ll be a good test for life after school.”

“Hmm, you’re right you know,” I glanced at her and grinned. “The thing you seem to forget is that we’ve already spent years of school together. I think we already know what to expect the other one to be like under pressure.”

I might have said more, but just then we crested a knoll in the road and I could see Mark’s bright yellow Jeep pulled off the road ahead of us.