The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County (36 page)

Karl took his father's hand and held it in his, and father and son looked into each other's eyes for a long time.

“Dad, I'm so happy to meet you,” Karl said, squeezing Ambrose's hand a bit. Ambrose squeezed back. Now tears were streaming down Karl's face as well. “So happy to meet you.”

A nurse appeared in the room. “Folks, you'll have to leave. Mr. Adler needs his rest.”

63

A
t 3:40 that afternoon, Ambrose Adler breathed his last. His doctor said he suffered a massive heart attack that was triggered in part from excessive smoke inhalation from the barn fire. He was eighty-two years old.

Both Karl and Gloria were absolutely devastated when they got the news of Ambrose's death later that afternoon.
If only I hadn't been such a fool
, thought Gloria.
If only I hadn't let my pride, my guilt, and my anger control my life all these years. To think that I had only fifteen minutes with the man who has made the most difference in my life, the man who gave me a son. A man who, through his writing, made me so very proud.
“Oh, what a fool I've been,” she sobbed as Karl, equally saddened by the news, tried to console his mother.

Karl had gone to the clinic when he got the news of his father's death and there met the Link Lake funeral director. “Do you know what kind of funeral you and your mother would like to have?” the man asked.

Karl told him that he didn't know, but he would check with his mother.

“Oh, I know what Ambrose wanted,” she said. She was still sobbing. “He wrote me a note with detailed instructions.”

Karl called the funeral home with the information he had gotten from his mother and turned to dealing with the media, who now had moved their attention toward Karl and his mother, hoping to interview one or both of them as soon as possible. Media cars, vans, and buses were parked along the road in front of the cabin that Karl had been renting, hoping to catch a photograph of him and his mother.

A surprise visitor arrived at the cabin in the early evening. She had elbowed her way through the hoard of photographers and reporters to the cabin door, where she politely knocked.

Karl came to the door.

“Marilyn,” he said.

“May I come in? One of the media people said my sister might be here. Is that true? Is Gloria here?”

“Yes, yes she is.” Karl walked toward the deck where Gloria sat, looking out over the lake. “There is someone here to see you.”

“Who is it? I don't want to talk with anybody.”

“Why don't you come and see,” said Karl.

Gloria, her eyes red from crying, and her usually stylish gray hair tangled and twisted, slowly got up and walked toward the door, where she stared for a moment and then said, “Marilyn, is that you?”

Marilyn embraced her older sister, whom she had not seen for so many years.

“I'm so sorry to hear about Ambrose,” Marilyn said. “So sorry.”

They stood holding each other for a long while, neither saying anything.

“I'm so glad you came home,” said Marilyn. “I wondered if we wouldn't see you once everyone found out that Ambrose Adler was Stony Field.”

Karl had been standing in the background, not interfering with the two sisters, who had not seen each other for several decades and were trying to decide what to say to each other. Gloria broke the silence. “Karl,” Gloria said. “Come over here please.” Marilyn had a perplexed look on her face, a look that said,
How does my sister know this Alstage consulting engineer?

“Marilyn,” Gloria began, taking Karl by the arm. “This is my son, Karl.”

“Your son?” asked Marilyn incredulously.

“Yes, your nephew.”

Marilyn was absolutely speechless. Karl said, “I didn't know Mom had any ties to Link Lake. I didn't know that my father lived here. I didn't know that my father was Ambrose Adler.”

“Gloria, why . . . why didn't you tell any of us about this? Why didn't you tell the folks? They would have loved knowing they had a grandson.”

“I don't think so, Marilyn. Our parents hated Ambrose. They said he was a dumb, stuttering farmer. And besides, I was a single mother. A mother with a fatherless child. Back in the '60s, unmarried mothers were not well thought of. I changed my name and made up a lie about Karl's father being killed in an accident.”

“Oh, Gloria,” Marilyn said. “Oh, so many years we've wasted because of one little incident.”

“Marilyn, it wasn't so little. Dad said he'd shoot Ambrose if we got married. I don't think that's something little.”

“I don't think he would have done that. Dad wasn't like that.”

“Well, I happened to think he would have. That's why I moved to California. I didn't want anything to happen to Ambrose. He was a good man. Lots of people didn't know that. And he was smart too. And a darn good writer. One of the best column writers the
Los Angeles Journal
had.” Tears began to run down Gloria's face again.

64

B
ack in the spring, when the doctor told Ambrose his heart wasn't near as strong as it once was, he had penned a letter to Gloria:

Gloria and Karl set a date for a memorial service a week following his death, at the park and in front of the Trail Marker Oak. Gloria traveled to Willow River, met Billy Baxter, and asked him to put a note in the
Ames County Argus
about the event. She also sent an e-mail message to her own newspaper, the
Los Angeles Journal
, to mention the service. She asked Karl to let the people at the Alstage Sand Mining Company know that a memorial service would be held at the park, and the camouflaged guards with the automatic weapons should fade into the background during the service. Karl contacted Emerson Evans directly, and Evans reluctantly agreed. “But,” he said, “I'm not very happy about having a memorial service at our mine site for the fellow that gave us the most grief about even having a mine there.”

Karl explained that it was Ambrose Adler's last request, and the whole thing would be over in an hour or so. The service was scheduled for the last Sunday in September. It was likely one of the last events to be held in the park before the mine commenced operations on October 15.

Gloria and Karl expected a large crowd, but nothing of the order that turned out for the event. Five deputies from the sheriff 's department plus a couple of state patrol officers and the entire contingent of Link Lake officers (two) were pressed into duty to direct traffic and, along with volunteers, park cars at the Link Lake High School. School buses and drivers were organized to transport people to and from the park site. Of course most of the media from across the country were still in Link Lake, which swelled the crowd and somewhat unexpectedly, but not surprisingly, representatives from almost all of the major environmental groups arrived in Link Lake to pay their respects to the one person who likely did more in his tenure as Stony Field, environmental writer, than any other single person in recent history to advance the cause of environmental protection. Gloria had met many of these people, as they knew she was Stony Field's editor. She recognized people from the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Association, the National Audubon Club, the Nature Conservancy, and several more. None of them knew that her relationship with Stony Field was much deeper than editing his weekly columns.

Emily Higgins enlisted Earl Wade as emcee for the service. Wade walked up to the microphone and looked out over the crowd, which a state patrol officer who had helped with many large events had told him numbered well over a thousand people.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Wade began. “On this beautiful September day, when the maple leaves are just beginning to show color, and the waters of Link Lake are as blue as the sky above, we gather here to honor one of our own—Ambrose Adler—farmer, lover of wildlife, advocate of living life simply, and . . . and much to the surprise of all of us, a brilliant writer with legions of readers in this country and well beyond.” Wade stopped for a moment and looked out over the lake.

“This is the kind of day that Ambrose Adler loved. He took time to enjoy the seasonal changes, to marvel at nature's splendor, to appreciate the beauty of the land, and at the same time he helped us remember how we are all tied to it. As he often said in his writing, ‘We are people of the land.' How fitting it is that we take time from our busy lives to pay respects to this great man on such a beautiful day.”

Wade adjusted his glasses and looked down at his notes. “Several people have agreed to say a few words about Ambrose.” Folding chairs were lined up in front of the podium for those who had agreed to speak at the event.

“We'll start with Emily Higgins, president of our Link Lake Historical Society.”

Slowly Emily made her way to the podium. She took a deep breath, looked out over the crowd, and began.

“I've known Ambrose Adler longer than anyone in this audience,” she began. “Ambrose was often shunned by people in these parts. Shunned because people thought he was different. Shunned because he never troubled to hook up to electricity or learn how to drive a car. But mostly he was shunned because he stuttered, and because he couldn't speak well, people thought he had little to say. He sure fooled us, myself included. Who would have thought that my old farmer friend who lived so frugally, bothered no one, and put up with being a curiosity in this town all these years was the brilliant writer Stony Field? I guess he showed us—especially those who dismissed Ambrose Adler, ignored him, and sometimes even made fun of him—that everyone can make a contribution to society. Hats off to you, Ambrose Adler. You will not be forgotten.”

The next speaker, introduced as Rex Oakley, a representative from the Nature Conservancy, took the microphone. He was tall, much taller than Emily Higgins. He adjusted the microphone and began.

“Who imagined that Stony Field had such humble beginnings and lived such a simple, uncluttered life? I for one thought that Stony Field was a college professor working on some campus in this great country, perhaps in a department of environmental studies, but no, here we have a true man of the soil. A man with limited formal education but with vast knowledge. Ambrose Adler lived his entire life connected to the land. He worked the land, but the land also worked him, for his writing clearly showed that he continued to learn, that he continued to gain new insights about nature and his relationship to it throughout his entire life.”

Oakley continued, “I place Ambrose Adler in the company of other great lovers of nature with roots in Wisconsin: John Muir, Sigrud Olson, Wakelin McNeil, Gaylord Nelson, and of course Aldo Leopold. Ambrose, Stony Field, you are in good company.”

Other speakers followed, each with another take on the tremendous contributions he, both as Ambrose Adler and as Stony Field, had made during his lifetime. No one from the Eagle Party attended the event, nor did anyone from the Link Lake Economic Development Council, including its president, Marilyn Jones, even though Gloria had hoped that she would come. When someone asked Lucas Drake if he was coming to the memorial service, he said, “Are you kidding? At last we're rid of that damned Stony Field and his socialistic writing.”