Silencing Sam by Julie Kramer Page B

than most women, so I picked it up in order for Malik to capture the scale on camera.
    About the size of the palm of my hand, the creature definitely had the wings of a bat. Its eyes were open and glassy, but it didn’t seem to have any external injuries—mysterious if it had flown into the turbine blades.
    â€œYou find dead bats often?” I asked.
    â€œNot ’til the turbines started up,” he answered. “If there’s one there’s usually more.”
    In the next few minutes, we found two more.
    â€œDid you tell this to the investigators?” I asked.
    â€œThey weren’t interested,” he answered.
    Holding up the dead bat, I recorded a short standup—thisone not generic. Insurance in case the bat angle developed into a news element. Malik started the shot tight on the frizzy corpse, then pulled wide to me with a turbine spinning in the background.
    ((RILEY STANDUP))
    FARMERS TELL US IT’S
    NOT UNUSUAL TO FIND DEAD
    BATS ON THE GROUND
    AROUND THE TURBINES … BUT
    THE REAL MYSTERY IS … WHY
    DON’T THEY HAVE ANY
    VISIBLE INJURIES?
    I would have liked to wrap the bat in some notebook paper or something, but I’d left my shoulder bag in the truck. So I simply stuffed the bat in my coat pocket to show to Noreen, figuring the animal-in-jeopardy angle would certainly make her more enthusiastic about the wind story.
    â€œSo you’ve seen people collecting the dead bats?” I asked the men.
    â€œThey say it’s for a study,” one said.
    â€œAs long as they don’t cause trouble we don’t care,” the other added. “Do you think they might have something to do with the explosions?”
    I didn’t know, but I thanked them for the bat tour and promised to let them know if I learned anything. Then Malik and I headed for my parents’ place.
    â€œCome in and have something to eat,” my mom said.
    â€œSit awhile,” Dad suggested.
    I lied and said we were on deadline and could only stay long enough to ice the bat, but Malik accepted a sloppy joe sandwich. So we were stuck there for as long as it took him to chew and swallow.
    My generation came of age when the bottom was falling out of the cattle market. When it cost more to feed steers than they sold for. I remember a stretch during my youth when it seemed like beef was all we ate for a year because we had cattle on the hoof but no money in the bank. Whenever I tell that story, my mom always insists I’m exaggerating and that we also had green beans and sweet corn.
    In fact, she offered a scoop of corn just then to Malik, who smiled and held up his plate.
    None of my siblings became farmers, nor did I. Each time one of us left the homestead made it easier for those left behind. Seems kind of brutal to call it the One Less Mouth to Feed philosophy of raising children, but it was no exaggeration to call it a hard-knock life.
    A shrink friend once speculated that’s why I put in so many hours at work: I’m afraid if this TV thing doesn’t work out, I’ll have to go back to the farm.
    Now my parents rent out the land and feedlot, watching other people sweat. Not a bad way to spend retirement while they wait to die in their sleep on the home farm. They have their funerals planned, all the way down to buying plots in the same country cemetery where their forefathers and foremothers were buried. They even have a headstone mounted on their gravesite with the dates of death left blank.
    â€œWe know how busy you get,” they had responded to my earlier questions about whether it was creepy to scheme so much about one’s own passing, “especially during ratings months.” So to make me feel involved in their pending demise, they handed me a list of their favorite hymns.
    While Malik cleaned his plate of the last kernel of corn, I looked for a small cooler for the dead bat, settling for a shoe box with ice cubes. I asked my parents if they’d