C. C. Phillips
C. C. Phillips
The 4-H achievement day was postponed while a stricken community attempted to come to terms with the sudden and devastating loss of three local teenagers.
While driving home to the ranch, Sven Larson, Robert Milto's hired man, found the wrecked vehicle and its occupants in the ravine through which the seasonal stream known as Miller's Creek flows. A piece of the guard rail had been torn away from the old wooden bridge and Sven noticed the skid marks from the tires and saw the broken remains of a badly smashed deer lying on the road. Further investigation led to the wreckage. Dr. O'Brien, in his capacity as coroner, examined the bodies and announced that God had been merciful in that the three friends had not suffered.
The high school gymnasium served as chapel for the triple funeral, with both Reverend Franklin and Father Cloutier performing the duties. The entire community attended, filling the school and spilling out into the parking lot where a public address system had been temporarily installed for the service. Eighteen young lads served as pallbearers for the deceased teenagers.
In the ensuing weeks, Robert and Constance Milto were instrumental in organizing community members to help the grieving families with their barn chores and field work. No amount of consoling could soothe Mrs. St. Jacques and Dr. O'Brien reluctantly had her temporarily committed to hospital where she was kept sedated. Connie Milto became the stricken lady's most frequent visitor.
Les Moffat's father very nearly had a breakdown as well. The honour student and high school athlete had been Fred Moffat's pride and joy. “My only reason for living,” he confided bitterly to Robert Milto, who now spent more time working at his grieving neighbours' farms than at home.
The two men had taken a moment to rest in the shade of the tractor wheel that they had been trying to remove from the “720” John Deere which the Moffats used for most of their farm work. Robert Milto grasped the man's work-calloused hand as though he were a young child and Fred Moffat blinked sadly, allowing two tears to edge their way down his weather leathered, bewhiskered cheeks. Gazing into the honest face, he found solace in the warm grey eyes and took strength and heart from Robert Milto's assuring words. “You'll pull through this, Fred. It is a terrible blow and I can't make it smaller than it is, but I know that you will come through.”
Frustrated by his tears, Fred Moffat wiped a dusty shirt sleeve across his face, straightened his shoulders and said, “Bob, you haven't been in these parts long. I have a habit of keepin' things all bottled up inside, but I feel different around you and I can tell you now, you are the best damn neighbour a man could have.”
In an era when neighbours were, for the most part, given the highest regard, this admission said so much more than the simple words expressed. Robert Milto knew in years to come a cloud of guarded independence would settle upon the rural population and the unspoken policy of treating a neighbour with utmost respect would become less customary.
Milt Milto spent a lot of time pounding the pastures astride her big buckskin gelding. Whiskey and Chase seemed to sense the young girl's grief and they did the best their animal instincts could to help her through. Whiskey flew across the pale green, rolling hills with their bushy sage caps and ragged coats of prairie wool. He carried her up the steep sand dunes and dodged the chokecherry bluffs as if they were playing tag. Sometimes, the load lightened from the stricken girl's mind as the open country passed beneath them. Whenever they paused for a breather atop some sandy knob or knoll, Chase would inevitably catch up to them and stretch out on the short grass, panting heavily with his long pink tongue lolling out from grinning jaws.
These times were the best for Milt. The evenings when her parents talked in low tones and came to check on her in bed were the toughest. Late one night as her father held her in his strong arms trying to bring some comfort, she asked, “How come we couldn't change it? It was so hard to believe that I would never see them again. Why couldn't we have done something?”
“It's history, honey. The accident happened a long, long time ago, before we were in the picture; before you were born; almost before your mother and I were born. You know we can't change history.” Robert Milto's words seemed hollow as he spoke them and he too wondered why it had to be so.
The next morning Milt awoke to a cheery but tuneless whistle drifting in her window from somewhere in the yard. She quickly rolled out of bed and ran to locate the source. Danny Reid, his tool pouch strapped around his slim waist and slung low like a fast-draw holster, busily worked on the terminal where the underground lines branched out to several buildings within the Milto headquarters. Robert Milto requested that the steel wire pole lead be terminated at the edge of the yard and everything within that perimeter should be buried. Buried wire was a rare commodity in rural telephone installations and Danny had had a time finding a supplier to meet the Milto request.
Milt pushed the second story window farther open and called down to the whistling lineman, “You're scaring the birds.”
Danny turned and grinned up at the tousle haired teenager. “Oh, you are awake! I thought it too early in the year to be gone into hibernation, but anyone who isn't out of bed at this time of day must be a little slow in the metabolism.”
Robert Milto, hearing the exchange, appeared from around the corner of a quonset and called a greeting as he strode over to where the lineman worked. “Troubles on our line, Danny?”
“Oh, just doing some checking,” Danny said. Then, seeing the question in Mr. Milto's keen grey eyes, he added, “Vera Mitchell heard some strange noise on here the other night and I thought I should check it out before something serious put the line out of order. Have you noticed anything unfamiliar, Robert?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, just that faint, low hum which is always on these rural lines.”
A hastily dressed Milt with her dog close behind approached the pair, and Danny said, “Hello, Button, I see Chase has been up long enough to brush his hair, but yours looks somewhat in disarray.”
Constance Milto, holding a small garden trowel with fresh earth clinging to it, joined the group. After greeting the repairman, she insisted that he come into the house for morning coffee. “And you, young lady, had better get some breakfast into you before it is dinner time.”
Over cups of fresh perked coffee the conversation inevitably turned to “The Accident.”
“How's Fred Moffat making out these days?” Danny asked.
The cattleman shook his head. “It's a terrible blow for any person, but Fred and that boy of his were as close as a father and son can get. He's really hit hard, but you know these old timers around here… They're tough. Fred will heal with time.”
Danny thought the term “old timers” sounded a bit odd as Fred Moffat and Robert Milto couldn't have had much age difference between them. Perhaps he meant old timers as being long of the area.
Constance said, “Claudette St. Jacques is finally coming around. Dr. O'Brien still has her in the hospital but she is on sedation only at night to help her sleep.”
“God! What a living nightmare!” Danny said.
Milt had stopped eating the cereal she had dug out of the cupboard and tears welled up in her pretty blue eyes. “When will the nightmares stop, though?”
Connie Milto slid her arm around her daughter's shoulders and, after an awkward silence, Danny said, “Pretty hard on you too, hey, Button?”
“We should have stopped them!” Milt burst out. Seeing the reproving glint in her father's eyes, she said, “If we had known what would happen, we could have stopped them.”
Unmoved by Danny Reid's sharp questioning glance, Robert Milto addressed his daughter in a gentle tone, “Life, or in this case, death, are things which are in the hands of God and we cannot alter His bidding. What happened, happened, and we cannot change that.”
Milt glared at her father for what she regarded as insensitivity, and stalked out of the kitchen.
Turning to the lineman, Robert switched the topic. “The noise Vera Mitchell heard… has she picked it up on any of the other lines?”
Danny set his coffee mug on the table and shook his head as though trying to recall the conversation. “No, she specifically said, 'The private line,' and you are the only private line I know of outside of Stockton.
“Well, that is odd.” Robert Milto now shook his head. “We'll have to pay more attention, I guess. No complaints as far as we are concerned though.”
After thanking his hosts for the coffee, Danny went back to the pedestal and reconnected all the terminations he had cut out for testing. He briefly checked the lightning arrestor fastened to an outside wall of the big farm house, making a mental note of how many wires fed the telephones within the home.
As the young repairman drove his line truck down the shady maple treed lane, he recounted in his mind’s eye the number of telephone boxes he had installed in the Milto residence when the private line had been completed. Most everybody on the party lines only had one of the large, oak framed, magneto telephones, but the Miltos had requested a phone in the big red hip-roof barn, the machine shop and one in the house. Danny tried to jog his memory. There was an extra line installed at the time. Robert Milto asked to have an extra line run to his office in case he wanted a phone in there someday. The line had been left unconnected, but now it was attached to the copper lugs of the lightning arrestor….
“How many phones does one man need?” Danny said, aloud.
…I remember the party lines, everyone knew everyone else's business. There was one particular old lady who never failed to be rubber-necking on the line and she wasn't content to just listen in, she often butted in to give her opinion…
Submitted by Myrna and Leonard Yeast
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