In the closing days of September, the fields along the roads of Lincoln County, Minn., like those along thousands of miles of prairie roads from Ohio to Colorado and Minnesota down to Texas, are lined with dead or dying things. Waves of leaves scuttle back and forth. The dried, crushed carcasses of birds or rabbits, victims of some speeding pickup truck`s wheels, have been picked clean by brazen crows with beady eyes and oily feathers. Some of the corn has been picked by then; much has not, and in the winds, the crisp stalks rub against one another in a strange kind of death rattle.
Driving past these fields one morning in late September, 1983, Rudolph H. Blythe Jr., the 42-year-old president and owner of the Buffalo Ridge State Bank, decided to visit the abandoned dairy farm of Jim Jenkins. It was 9 a.m., and the banker would be an hour early for his appointment there with a mysterious Ron Anderson who had telephoned the previous day, saying he was very interested in buying the place.
For three years, ever since taking the farm from Jenkins for nonpayment of debt, Rudy had been trying to sell that rundown house and 10 acres. It wasn`t the first time Rudy had lost money on a farm loan; in fact, no matter how hard bankers or farmers worked, farm foreclosures and bank failures were starting to come at a pretty regular pace all over the Middle West.
So the prospect of finally getting back at least some of the $30,000 the bank lost on the Jenkins farm was very tempting. And the bank president wanted to make sure everything looked good for the 10 a.m. appointment. With him was Deems A. (Toby) Thulin, 37, his chief loan officer.
It was raining as they approached the farm. The station wagon`s windows were closed, so neither banker heard the slowing tires swishing on the wet pavement. But two other men did. Intimately familiar with the farm they had owned and lived on for some seven years, Jim Jenkins, 46, and his 18-year-old son, Steve, ran to take up hidden positions, selecting from the arsenal they had brought with them: a .30-caliber rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a sawed-off .410 shotgun, some disarmed hand grenades, knives. ”Instruments of violent death,” the prosecutor would call them.
The events of the next few moments in the mist would make news not only in this small corner of Minnesota, but across the nation–as one of the most grisly in a continuing series of American tragedies born of the despair, fear and frustration that have gripped much of the nation`s heartland. The two murders and subsequent suicide were not the result of criminal greed or unreasoned malice, but of a waning way of life, where old solutions can no longer guarantee success, and where, increasingly, the price of adjustment can be tragic.
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It had been six years since Rudy Blythe had first driven proudly down those roads to show his wife and young son the town of Ruthton, Minn., and the little dream bank he had just bought. His enthusiasm filled the car that day in 1977, and it was magnified by his huge 6-foot-4-inch size.
The Buffalo Ridge State Bank had great promise; Rudy just knew it. Rudy was certain of a few other things, too. One, nearing age 40, he was very tired of working for other people. And, two, he could swing a large loan now. A half million dollars would do it. He`d take a floating interest rate, and cut his costs later with a new loan at the lower rate he was certain would come in a few months. After all, who ever heard of interest rates staying at 9 percent for long?
After eight years of marriage, Susan Blythe could tell when her husband was happy and excited. Rudy`s exuberance made her feel good, too, even though moving to Ruthton would mean giving up her dream of a comfortable life in a large eastern city.
Rudy`s life in Ruthton was hectic. Like all the nation`s 15,000 banks, Rudy`s was entering the dangerous Darwinian days of deregulation, when government withdrew from many areas and left the institutions to compete and succeed or perish by their own wits. What Rudy didn`t know about banking, he was very eager to learn.
Rudy had grown up on Philadelphia`s affluent Main Line as the son of a successful scientist. And Rudy, who was expected to be successful, too, rather liked being the most prominent person in this town, as small-town bankers can be.
Rudy went right out to prove he could have an impact on this little town, to give it a little spirit, some new ideas and hope. He organized the local Lions Club, got it going on some projects. He got on the Town Council. He revived a proposal for a local home for old folks. He chipped in $200 so the Girl Scouts could take a train trip to Duluth.
As those first few years passed, there were signs of trouble in the Blythes` lives and across the Middle West. Interest rates unaccountably did not fall; in fact, they inched steadily upward, putting further financial pressures on all levels of borrowers, from the farmer, who had to ante up more collateral to cover his mounting debts, to the bank president, who had to get his father to ante up more collateral to cover Rudy`s dream.
One bitter day Susan was going down to the bank. There were two sets of front doors there, making an enclosed vestibule where people stomp their boots in winter and remove their sunglasses in summer. Susan had entered the outer door and was reaching for the inner one when it flew open. The little chamber was suddenly filled with a short, dumpy man wearing a dirty jacket, glasses, a stocking cap on the back of his head and a scowl plastered on the front. His face was flushed pink.
He stormed by Susan without greeting or apology. And when Susan asked Rudy who that man was, Rudy knew exactly. ”Oh,” he said, ”that`s Jim Jenkins.”
James Lee Jenkins, 46, was slowing down some, now that he`d reached middle age. He had diabetes, was overweight, and there was something wrong with his eyes. Retinitis pigmentosa, the doctor called it, but Jim never could remember the name.
Jim was a quiet man, which is not all that unusual in the country where lone men learn from listening–to the winds, the radio and the machines. Jim was the only son of a modest farmer named Clayton Jenkins and his wife, Nina. One thing everyone remembers about Jim Jenkins, he was a very hard worker. Except in school, of course, which he quit, books obviously being unnecessary for the life he faced.
As years passed, Jim worked a few farms in the area. He married a country girl, Darlene Abraham, and they had two children, a boy, Steve, and a girl, Michelle. Jim sold one farm for a tidy profit. And he got another much smaller farm with a new mortgage from this new banker in town.
Jim Jenkins was still the boss in his own barn, the dairy cows doing what they do naturally. But in the isolated Jenkins house out on County Road 7, Jim wasn`t getting the same kind of family and female obedience that rural tradition promised.
Darlene Jenkins, whose life was becoming one sad country song, was unhappy with 20 years of hardworking, hand-to-mouth existence. And she was tired of Jim`s anger. In 1980 she announced she was getting a divorce. Jim pleaded. Jim got angry. Nothing worked anymore. Darlene was adamant.
One day that spring, Rudy Blythe`s bank got a tip that Jim Jenkins was selling his mortgaged cattle. When they called the farmer, he said yup, he was getting out. Jim walked away from the farm, declaring bankruptcy and sticking the bank with a $30,000 loss and a useless 10-acre plot of prairie. But first, Jim tore out all the plumbing. He said if he couldn`t have the farm, then no one would.
Like many Middle Westerners, Jim Jenkins drifted away from the familiar farm life into a string of jobs in small and large cities before hitting on an idea that had struck thousands of others; he`d go to the Sunbelt, where jobs were as plentiful as warm days. In Texas he could get a good job, maybe two, and save enough money to go back home and start over with another little farm –one that would surely work.
Rudy Blythe was learning about financial pressures himself; he had problems making payments on his loans. Rudy, too, needed a second job now, to hold onto his dream and its mounting payments. When Rudy bought the bank, the accountant had said the finances were fine as long as interest rates didn`t exceed 17 percent. Now, rates were passing 20 percent; some months, Rudy paid $30,000 in interest alone.
Rudy told Susan he would sell the bank, or at least try. The asking price, upward of a million dollars, struck his lawyer as unrealistic. Meanwhile, Rudy sought and got a good-paying bank job in Dallas, the booming
”Big D”–where Susan could have her beloved city life and Rudy could visit his distant rural dream once a month to oversee things, just until the bank was sold, of course.
Jenkins ended up about 200 miles from Dallas, working for Charles Snow, a salty former Army top sergeant who ran the maintenance operation of the Brownwood public schools. Jenkins took on a night-watchman`s job, too. And his son Steve, 18, joined him.
By the late summer of 1983, Jim Jenkins had a bundle of money in the big wallet he carried everywhere. He said he didn`t trust banks; one had taken away his farm. Then he disappeared from Texas and popped up back in Minnesota, where he eagerly leased farmland and bought machinery–not far from Ruthton.
By September that year, Rudy Blythe had also given up his Texas job and returned to Minnesota. His little bank hadn`t sold. Worse, the number of bad loans was increasing. His dream was in real trouble.
On Sept. 27, a cattle dealer called Rudy to check on the credit rating of a Jenkins, James L. An angry Rudy told him exactly what he thought of that fellow, a blunt report that the cattle dealer passed on to Jenkins as he flatly rejected his last hope of acquiring some cattle.
The next day, Rudy got a call from a man. He sounded like a farmer, but he said he was from up north. Name was Ron Anderson. He said he was interested in buying the Jenkins farm. It made no economic sense. But Rudy was so delighted at the chance to dump the old place that he quickly agreed to meet the potential buyer the next morning at 10 o`clock, out at the farm instead of at the bank in town. That was some of the hopeful news Rudy shared with Susan that night at her 40th birthday party.
The morning of Sept. 29, 1983, dawned gray and drizzly and hunting-season cold. One hour early, a meticulous Rudy stopped by the deserted Jenkins farm with Toby Thulin, his loan officer, just to check on everything. But when they arrived, the farm was no longer deserted. A white pickup truck was parked by the garage. It had a Texas license plate. Rudy was furious; trespassers could screw up the sale. Soon, however, Rudy would be frightened. And then he would be dead.
The first bullet smashed a hole in Rudy`s windshield. The next one came through the little vent window on the passenger`s side. It sliced through Toby`s throat and sent the father of three little girls slumping, lifeless, out the car door to stare blankly up at the prairie sky.
Rudy ran around the side of the house and across the lawn, desperately heading for a neighbor`s phone a half mile away. He got only about 100 yards. The banker`s yellow rain slicker was a perfect target out in the open. The first three bullets hit home, fatally. Rudy Blythe fell heavily to the wet ground.
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Four days after the killings, on a quiet, rainy Sunday, Joyce Hall was struggling to comb through her wet hair in the small apartment that she occupied in the town hall of Paducah, Tex. There, she doubled as mother to a precocious 10-year-old and as dispatcher for both the law-enforcement officers in Cottle County. With her ear to the police radio and her back to the open apartment door, she sat down to concentrate on curling her hair.
”Mommy,” cried her daughter.
”Mmmmm,” said Joyce, her mouth full of bobby pins.
”Mommy. Mommy.”
Then, in the mirror, over her shoulder, Joyce saw him standing there silently watching her back–a 6-foot-tall commando. His head was shaved. He looked empty.
”Is this the police department?” asked Steve Jenkins. ”I`ve come to turn myself in.”
Pursued across a half a dozen states in a massive police manhunt, Jim Jenkins and his son had few places to hide. For Steve, just a few weeks into adulthood, giving up was only the beginning of a continuing ordeal. Returned to Minnesota to stand trial for first-degree murder, he was convicted of firing the shots that killed both bankers. On May 22, 1984, he was sentenced to life in prison.
For Jim Jenkins, the bitter struggle against foreclosure, against the college-boy bankers, against the changing world that had stripped him of his land and livelihood was to end with a different kind of surrender.
That same rainy Sunday in Texas, Jim Jenkins sat in the downpour alongside a country road, his denim clothes growing dark and heavy.
With his left hand, Jenkins moved the broad muzzle of his 12-gauge shotgun up to his mouth. He slid the cold, hard barrel between his lips and teeth, and moved his right thumb to the shiny trigger.
A grazing cow or two may have raised its head a little to take note of the thunderous blast as it rolled out in all directions over the countryside. Then silence fell again over the darkening fields.
