by Jan Smolders
“Supren. What’s Supren, Mommy?” Andy asked.
“I’ll tell you later. Too much traffic here. All that dirt.”
Nearing her house, Mary noticed trucks moving on and off Harriet’s grass, leaving clumps of mud on the road, which had been reduced to a narrow, single lane. Parked vehicles and a huge van occupying three quarters of the road width stated categorically that they were in control of traffic.
Mary wormed her way into her driveway. She stopped to let Andy pick up the mail. A wave of dust-laden fumes swept into the car when he opened the door and ran out to the mailbox.
“Hurry!” Mary shouted over the noise of the engines.
Jimmy had his eyes and mouth open wide. “They’re so big, so big, Mommy!” he exclaimed. “Wow, those trucks! They—”
“Shut the door!” Mary hollered as Andy returned, his back still to the car, eyes glued on the huge vehicles.
As soon as she parked in front of their garage door the boys jumped out. “Race you, Andy!” Jimmy sprinted toward the road, looking back at his competitor.
“Wait!” Mary yelled. She ran after them, concerned, although she knew they wouldn’t get far: security would be tight at Harriet’s. The ubiquitous no-trespassing signs were already up. “Let’s go back now. Maybe we can come back later. With Daddy.”
“Yeah, when they stop working and the noise is less,” Jimmy said.
“But before dark.” Andy insisted, sounding disappointed.
“Right.” Mary grabbed Jimmy’s arm. “Let’s go, Andy,” she said.
She would have to explain that this was going to be a twenty-four seven operation. The noise, fumes, dust and eardrum-rupturing clanging wouldn’t stop; they would get much worse. Supren’s oppressive, sleep-robbing lights wouldn’t let darkness set in for months.
The boys went to play in the garden.
She entered the kitchen and dropped down in the nearest chair. She sighed, elbows on the table, head in hands. She needed a shower—a long, hot shower with lots of steam. A little pampering. She got up.
As she stared at her body in the mirror, she stood on her tiptoes to inspect her thighs. Always those thighs, although Joe assured her often—and not just before sex—that they were just right, divine. So were her firm breasts. She wanted to believe him. She heard him tell her that she was his leggy brunette. She smiled and stepped into the shower.
The soft caress of the moving water curtain teasing her skin felt like Joe’s fingernails eagerly running their course as they explored her body. She visualized her bloodstream slowly picking up speed. To hell with Supren.
She toweled off and worked herself into her brand-new, vivid blue jeans. She pulled a flashy, tight fitting yellow blouse from her wardrobe: a special welcome for Joe on this dreadful day. She reached for her perfume.
At seven-thirty, watching cartoons with the boys in the sitting room, she heard two very loud honks.
“Daddy! Yippee! We can go now! See the trucks!” Jimmy jubilated. He jumped off the worn-out couch. “Come on, Andy!”
Mary heard two more loud, long honks. She checked her hair one more time, kicked off her flip-flops and picked a pair of shiny high heels.
Jimmy and Andy had already reached the car when she made it out the door.
As she paraded over to meet Joe, she noticed that the Highlander’s doors were still closed. The boys had their noses pressed against the passenger door. Jimmy, standing on his toes, stretched his little body. “Look Mommy! Daddy found a dog! Can we keep it?” he begged.
Joe, smiling in the driver’s seat, pointed at his companion. When Mary reached the Highlander he rolled down his window. “Sorry I’m late. Look who I found. His name’s Jake.”
The dog barked.
Mary stared at an adorable, black and white Collie, not quite a puppy anymore. Jake kept barking. She thought of the countless walks, rain or shine, the cleaning, the food, the vet, the shots, the neutering. All coming her way. Just what I need on my thin schedule. Joe will take the relaxing evening walks and the rest will land on my list.
“You found him?”
“Kind of!” Joe laughed. He threw a quick glance at the kids and stepped out of his vehicle. “I’ll tell you later, Mary. Grab the leash. Jake’s still a youngster.” He whispered, his eyes lighting up, “Wow, you look great! Those jeans….”
“Okay.” She stepped gracefully to the passenger side, feeling Joe’s eyes glued to her back.
“I get the leash! I get it!” Andy shouted. “Let me!”
“Watch it!” Mary screamed and kept the door closed.
Andy looked up, surprise in his eyes.
“Sorry, Andy.” She knew it had been the unreasonably sharp tone of her cry.
As a kid, she had been bitten by a dog. That was, she had to admit, the real reason why they didn’t have one, although they lived in this rural section of Noredge. Joe had often expressed his worries about her and the kids’ safety and suggested a dog. But she’d always categorically said no.
“Okay, no dog, but you need a gun,” had been his repeated retort.
She had shot back that a gun didn’t make a home safer. The contrary was true, she had argued, citing statistics. Joe had told her they were put together by sissies. And now, here was “her” dog. She knew she would be outvoted by a coalition of three. She decided to concede silently, hoping that the boys would help her overcome her fear of Jake.
Joe opened the passenger door, took the leash and handed it to Andy. “Hold on now. He can pull hard and run fast.”
Seconds later, Andy and Jimmy sprinted away, romping and hollering.
“See, Mary. They have no fear. Jake’s no problem.” He put his hand on her lower back and raised his eyebrows.
“So, you did find him,” she said matter-of-factly, moving closer.
“Of course, sweetie.” He winked, towering over her. “I got him for hundred twenty bucks. Cecil’s a friend.”
“Cecil?”
“The pit watcher at the Devil well in Alliance.”
Amused by Joe’s little maneuver, but also resenting it, and still dreading the work Jake would add to her heavy load, Mary stared at her beaming man, then at Jake and the kids frolicking in the distance, and finally at a fait accompli. “I love him already, Joe,” she said softly and kissed him welcome home.
“I knew you would, Mary. I’m glad you do.” He squeezed her tight, one hand on her bosom. “Jake’s going to take care of you. Jake and me. And the kids and me will help you make friends with him.”
“Enough about that dog.” She had turned her gaze toward the road and reluctantly freed herself from Joe’s warm grip. “They’re watching. Across the road.” She heard no whistles. Not yet, she groused inside.
“Across the road, yeah, across the road. Has Harriet from ‘across the road’ come to see you?”
Mary shook her head, lips pursed.
“I knew this would be a tough day for you, Mary. Cecil had those two puppies for a while. He let me choose. Jake will help you, sweetie.’
“Hmm.”
“We’re going to see lots of people running around here, some of them we’ve never expected to even know where our town is. Good ones and bad ones. Not just the people on the site but many who’re drafting off this…this fracking business. People will be making lots of money, some clean, some dirty. Drug pushers won’t be far behind. Jake will be here for you when I’m not around.”
“I assume Jake promised,” she said with a straight face.
“Huh?”
“Thank you, Joe. Andy, Jimmy and I, we’re in good hands.” They embraced again. This time she didn’t turn her head to the road.
“Look at the little rascals,” Joe said, chuckling as he pointed at the boys.
Mary checked her watch. It was getting dark. “Andy! Jimmy! Time to pack it in, boys!” She waved t
hem back.
Andy put his hand up, obviously without enthusiasm or commitment.
Half a minute later three tired buddies walked up to Joe and Mary. Saliva dripped from Jake’s tongue as he panted.
Mary kept her distance.
“Now we can go to see Mrs. Woods, right? Daddy’s back. You said so, Mommy,” Jimmy reminded her.
She turned to Joe. “Can dinner wait a minute?”
Joe waved her question off, put his arm around Jimmy’s shoulder, took over the leash and headed toward the road with him. “Come on. Jake wants to meet our neighbor, I bet.”
Mary and Andy followed.
“My friends say Mrs. Woods is scared of dogs, Daddy. Her too.”
“That’s true, Jimmy,” Mary interjected and looked at Joe, who rolled his eyes and shook his head.
He smiled. “Jake will be very kind to her.”
“You know, Daddy?”
“I do, but let’s watch out now,” Joe said, taking the boy’s hand as they reached Maple Road.
Bulldozers already were busily preparing the well site: leveling, digging, hauling dirt, bushes and tree trunks. Signs and markers had been placed. Heavy lights mounted on top of SUV’s, temporarily according to Joe, provided an eerie, unreal spectacle. Two tanker trailers were on the spot and a third crawled over the grass toward the back of the house. Another truck sat next to the driveway, loaded with heavy equipment. “Generators, pumps, compressors….” Joe knew it all.
They crossed the road with Jake and headed for Harriet’s front door, up her asphalt driveway featuring a wall of no-trespassing signs on both left and right sides. They reminded Mary of the walls of snow that used to build up day by day on both sides of their driveway as they dug out after those drifts from the west.
Harriet appeared at the front door.
Joe whispered to Mary, “She looks scared of Jake, eh? Maybe we should put a lion’s wig on him.”
Her elbow hit his ribs.
He handed the leash to Andy and quietly told him to stay back with Jimmy and Jake.
“Well, the show is on!” Harriet exclaimed, hands up in the air. She looked at Jake for a moment but didn’t comment.
“It looks like. Moving along,” Joe said.
“Honestly, the people, the Supren guys and one girl, they couldn’t be nicer. So considerate.” Her voice turned fluttery. “Three of them came to see me last week to do measurements, for two days. They were so—”
“So nice. I’m sure they were,” Mary interjected dryly and looked for a smile on Joe’s face. She was amused by the quick, puzzled glance Harriet threw at her high heels. “I’ve noticed Doornaert crews months ago on your land, Harriet. Yours. Measuring. They too seemed ‘nice.’”
“Oh. Anyway, it looks like they’ll be able to save most of my pine trees in the far back and my rhododendrons to my east side. They told me today. I’m so grateful to these strong guys. Big guys.” She looked approvingly at Joe, who quickly turned away toward the kids twenty feet behind him.
Mary knew he had to be rolling his eyes. “Well, Harriet, good earplugs and heavy nightshades should help a lot. Maybe enough,” she observed, trying to sound no worse than neutral.
“Oh, they said that the noise—”
“You told me about the humming. When you came with that phone number.”
Joe looked away again. “Excuse me, Harriet. My cough.”
Harriet seemed unperturbed. She went down to whispering, as if telling a secret. “They say we may see more than one well. You see, the Watsons signed too. Fifty acres, I believe. Together, the Watsons and me, we’ll have a big spread for Supren. The guys tell me that changes the picture a lot. Twice the site but much more than twice the oil and gas. You could throw your acres in, too. We might all benefit together with an even bigger spread. I don’t think it’s any problem that we have Maple Road running between your and my land. They’ll be digging a mile deep, they said.” She stared at Mary.
“I have Supren’s number. I know whom to call there,” Mary said brusquely.
Joe frowned. “You do? Supren’s contact number? The landman’s?”
“It came in our mailbox a few days ago, with a letter. Up to sixteen hundred per acre, negotiable, whatever that means.” She enjoyed throwing that tidbit of venom at Harriet, but it was the truth.
Joe frowned.
“Really? I got only eleven,” Harriet complained.
“I know. And I got nothing,” Mary snapped back. “I think it’s bedtime for the boys. And dinner time for Joe.” She took his hand and squeezed it.
“Well….” Harriet seemed ready to continue but held back. “Yes, time for the boys. Good night,” was all she said.
On the way home, Joe seemed happy to focus on Jake but he held on to Mary’s hand. She wondered out loud how her kids would sleep during the night. Joe’s coughing was bad enough already, but it was nothing compared to the racket created by the Supren crew today. “And this is just the beginning.”
“Yeah. Harriet’s queen bee hasn’t arrived yet, Mary.”
“Who cares? Your queen’s right here, with you. Let’s walk a little faster.”
Chapter 10
That night, after the lovemaking, Joe heard Mary sigh and sigh as she tossed and turned in bed. Jake, he figured. The dog would be one more burden on her. He felt guilty. He should have asked her—at least informed her. No, she would have refused; she would have said she was scared. He had tricked his Mary. For himself, but also for her own good. In any case, it was his fault that she couldn’t sleep.
Caressing the inside of her right leg, he asked her quietly, “It’s Jake, right?” He thought he knew the answer.
Mary turned toward him. Her perfume came with her. As his fingers softly touched her cheek he felt tears. “I know it’s an additional load, sweetie,” he said. “You’re so busy already. I’m sorry. But I’m sure our Jake will be good support for you. He’ll get bigger and stronger. He’ll protect and—”
“It’s not Jake.” She sounded weak and not angry at all.
“Oh? What is it?”
“You. I don’t want to lose you.” She sobbed.
He was taken aback. “Lose me, Mary?” He pulled her over into his arms. “I’m yours, Mary. I’m yours.”
“I know. Thank you. I love you too. But Supren may kill you. Doornaert already did great damage to your beautiful body.” She ran her hand over his back. “Your coughing….” Her voice broke. “It…it scares me Joe. It may…you may get very sick. Jimmy and Andy and I, we may have to go on without you.” He felt her grip tighten.
He had shared her fear many times, but had always said, “It’s not that bad. Even less than last week.” He rocked her softly.
She sighed.
She already made me give up smoking. And now my job? He couldn’t handle the silence. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll speak with Doyle. Wherever I have to go to find him.” He couldn’t deny he was scared too; his life could be shorter than it had to be.
“You will? He has an office on Main.” She still sounded feeble and sighed, as if she didn’t really believe him.
“I know. Good. I might be lucky; he may be one of those rare bosses who’re at least willing to hear what their people have to say.” He coughed and turned briefly away. He took a tissue from the box on the nightstand for Mary’s tears and raised his voice. “Whatever kind this Doyle is, he’ll have to listen to me. I’ll demand that he put those monitoring devices and warning signals on the dirty water tanks and pits and pumps. On all of them. The systems you’ve read about for sour wells. Or that the company capture these gases before they can hurt anybody.”
“You will? Thank you. Thank you.”
“I will.”
“But he’ll say it’s too much money.”
He knew she didn’t mean it: her joyful, teasing tone told him she was ce
lebrating the success she had pursued for so long. “Whatever he wants to say. I’ll tell him it’s only fair to me. Don’t I have the right to be warned if I’m about to be gassed?”
“You’ll need to make an appointment—then he’ll dig up some excuse not to see you.”
Egging me on. “What? Refuse me? Me?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. You may be right. Okay, I’ll surprise him. Catch him on his nest. He’ll have to listen or he can do his dirty work himself,” he joked and softly poked her belly button.
“Sure!” She laughed.
“See? I made you happy.”
“You did, Joe. Surprise him.” She kissed him good night and whispered, “You must stay with us.”
“I’m not going anywhere, sweetie. You’ll be stuck with me for a very long time. Sleep well.” He knew she was thinking marriage.
When Joe opened his eyes in the morning and faced reality he was a pack of nerves; he feared he had stuck his neck out an inch too far when he promised Mary he would confront Doyle. He felt pangs in his stomach and it wasn’t because of hunger.
At her insistence, he forced himself out of bed at five. He would have a normal breakfast and then drive to the Alpha site near Rutgers Lake to pay an early visit to his friend Al, who worked the five to one shift in the chemicals lab. Next on his list was the Supren office on Main Street, where he would knock on the door no later than seven thirty to see the big boss. He figured he could be on the job by eight fifteen, driving his tanker trailer that sat at Rutgers Lake waiting for him. If by then Mike Doyle hasn’t killed or fired me.
Shortly after six-thirty, he parked his Highlander at the entrance of the Alpha site, took in the cool morning air, donned his hardhat and headed for Al’s lab, an oversized van.
Al Morton worked the chemicals. He was the man who cooked up and tested the various brews that, once blended, became a heavy mush. Supren pumped it down the pipes a mile or more deep at pressures two-hundred times as high as that in a car’s tires to do the fracking there. Joe was convinced Al had to know, more or less, what that gelatinous mixture was. Water and sand, of course, and what else? Joe didn’t want to look like a fool or ignoramus when he faced Doyle. He had to sound a little smarter than an idiot complaining about rotten eggs. Mary had read and heard about so many chemicals being mixed into that viscous stream. “I worry about much more than bad odors,” she had told Joe repeatedly with an eye roll. “Those chemicals and those dangerous pressures.”