by Brad Smith
When Carl pulled up to the warehouse with the plywood in his truck, he saw the dark blue Land Rover parked on the slope leading to the farmhouse. It was late afternoon, the day cooling off quickly as the sun descended behind the spindly pines at the rear of the barn. Getting out, he noticed Frances over by the chicken house. She was wearing red coveralls and black rubber boots and she was talking to the guy with the beard, the guy who drove the Land Rover. She gave Carl a little wave and as he nodded in her direction the guy with the beard raised a camera and took her picture. It seemed that Frances glanced sheepishly toward Carl, as if she was self-conscious about the whole thing.
Carl unloaded the plywood and stacked it along the wall. He put on his tool belt and walked over to the warehouse to get his saw and square. The building was locked. The office staff had gone home for the day, apparently forgetting that Carl was still working in the back. Frances would have keys. Carl really didn’t want to go over and interrupt whatever was going on, but he had no choice.
The bearded man was still taking pictures as Carl approached. There was a portable propane burner near the door of the chicken house, with a large stainless-steel container of water resting over the flame, steam rising from within. As Carl neared, Frances put her hand up in front of her face.
‘Enough,’ she told the bearded man. She turned. ‘Hi, Carl.’
Carl nodded and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘I’m locked out.’
‘Right,’ she realized. ‘Carl, this is Martin Benoit. Carl Burns.’
Carl made to extend his hand but the man was fiddling with something on his camera and didn’t so much as look his way. ‘Good to know you, Carl,’ he said offhandedly.
Carl said hello and turned to Frances again. She seemed even more embarrassed. ‘The keys,’ she said. She reached into her pocket, then apparently remembered she was wearing the coveralls. ‘I’ll have to go to the house.’
Martin looked at her. ‘Get the man his keys, change your clothes and come with me. Forget about bloody work for once in your life, Frances. It’s going to be a fantastic show.’
‘I told you, I promised Henry he’d have the chickens for tonight’s menu,’ Frances said. ‘He’s a good customer.’
‘Where’s Perry? Can’t he kill a chicken?’
‘Perry went home sick,’ Frances said. ‘He does that a lot when we harvest the birds. He doesn’t like the blood.’
Carl was growing both uncomfortable and impatient, waiting for the keys.
‘Tell you what, Martin,’ Frances suggested. ‘You help me with the birds and then we’ll go to the theater.’
Martin looked down at his crisp cotton pants, his pale blue shirt. ‘Not a chance. Besides, I don’t kill things.’
‘You’ve become a vegetarian?’ Frances asked.
‘I have not,’ he said defensively.
‘You’ll eat animals so long as someone else is doing the killing?’
‘This is going to turn into that conversation?’ Martin asked.
Carl had heard enough. ‘I’ll be at the warehouse, Frances,’ he said.
‘See there,’ Martin said, smiling. ‘Now you’ve upset the carpenter.’ He had yet to look at Carl.
‘His name is Carl,’ Frances said sharply. ‘Go to your revue, Martin. I have work to do.’
Martin raised the camera. ‘I love your color when you get angry. Hold that, will you?’
‘Enough with the fucking pictures,’ she snapped.
He took the shot anyway, still grinning inanely, and then backed away. ‘I’ll let you get to your important work.’ he said. ‘You’re making a huge mistake, missing this show. You can catch up later, though. Call me on my cell.’
He turned and headed for the Land Rover, looking at the tiny screen on the camera as he walked. Carl watched him. He seemed like a ridiculous man. He turned to Frances.
‘Yeah, yeah, the keys,’ she said.
Carl smiled. ‘Don’t jump down my throat,’ he said. ‘I didn’t take your picture.’
She hesitated before releasing an exasperated laugh. ‘Sorry about that. Henry Bolton from Le Bistro called an hour ago and asked if he could get a dozen chickens for tonight’s menu. Some last minute thing, he needs them by seven o’clock. Perry took a hike and then Martin showed up.’ She paused to look at Carl a moment. ‘Martin, the guy you’ve been wondering about.’
‘Not really,’ Carl said. ‘I had a nice time talking to him, though.’
She smiled. ‘I’ll get the keys. I don’t know why you don’t have a set anyway.’
She walked up to the house and retrieved the key ring from where it hung inside the kitchen door. When she got back, Carl was walking toward the chicken house from the direction of his truck. He had removed his tool belt and pulled on a pair of overalls. It took her a moment to understand.
‘You’re not going to run home at the first sight of blood, like Perry?’
‘I don’t believe so,’ he said.
‘You ever kill chickens?’
‘Ducks and geese,’ he replied. ‘I used to hunt a bit with my old man.’
Frances shrugged. ‘Close enough.’
She did the killing and Carl dunked the birds in the hot water and plucked the feathers. They both gutted. They were finished in less than two hours. Frances brought a tote half filled with ice down from the house and they piled the carcasses inside, with Carl doing a count.
‘Baker’s dozen,’ he said when he was done.
Frances nodded.
‘Didn’t you say twelve?’ he reminded her.
‘The extra one is dinner for the workers,’ she said.
‘The workers at the restaurant?’
‘The workers right here,’ she said.
TWENTY
It had been Miriam’s idea to arrange a field trip to the proposed site for the landfill, but Bud took credit when the plan was well-received. Miriam sent the invitations out and arranged the transportation. At eleven o’clock Friday morning a Greyhound bus left the city hall parking lot, headed for Talbotville and the rolling farmland beyond. On board were all of the city’s councilors, planners from different departments, a couple of waste disposal engineers and a sizable contingent of media. Of those asked along on the trip, Mayor McBride was the only name of consequence who’d turned down the invitation. The mayor insisted he was fighting a flu bug and did not want to expose the others to the virus.
‘He’s got a bug all right,’ Bud told Miriam that morning. ‘It’s up his ass.’
Miriam didn’t make the trip as she had the office to run. But she had provided all on board with a box lunch from Merkel’s Deli, along with coffee and soft drinks. Upon entering the bus everyone was given a binder titled The Talbotville Landfill Continuum, part technical primer on the landfill and part public relations flyer on the project. The cover of the binder featured a TLC logo in bold font splashed against a background of pastoral countryside.
There was something about a bus ride that brought out the adolescent in people, and this excursion was no exception. The councilors, a staid bunch at city hall, were loose and talkative with the media types, who were typically excited about the free food and drinks.
Bud hadn’t anticipated the jocular mood but he hoped it would extend to the project itself. There were eleven other councilors on board. If Bud could bring a quorum on side today, it would be time for The Mayor to announce his support of the proposal. And Mayor McBride could take his opposition and put it in his soon-to-be-required résumé.
The air of camaraderie on the bus was unexpected. Bud had never felt accepted by his peers on council, or by anybody at city hall for that matter. He had always suspected that the general consensus out there was that he’d gotten elected six years earlier because The Mayor was his uncle and had campaigned for him. In truth, The Mayor was his uncle by marriage only; Bud’s mother had been Louise Sanderson’s older sister. And if Bud thought that his colleagues in council had their doubts about him, he was quite certain that The Mayor
did as well, a fact that the old man did little to conceal after Bud was elected. Once, after being taken down verbally yet again by The Mayor, Bud had confronted him, asking why the old man had backed him for office in the first place if he was of the opinion that Bud was such a lightweight. The old man had replied by saying that he did it just to shut his wife up.
Before running for public office Bud had been, in quick succession, a university drop-out, half-assed developer, unsuccessful car salesman and consultant. The consultant title was basically nothing more than a decoy. When he ran for council he needed to tell the voters that he was currently something, and the term sounded genuine while remaining vague enough to pass muster, so long as that muster wasn’t too closely examined. During the campaign his opponent, a retired shop teacher, never once thought to ask Bud just exactly what it was that he consulted upon.
With The Mayor on the sidelines, at least until the next election, Bud had been considering of late that the landfill just might be the issue which would finally give him some credibility at city hall. As for the old man, Bud really didn’t care in the end if the old fucker liked him or not. But maybe, just maybe, he would have no choice but to grant Bud a little respect.
Hank Hofferman was waiting when the bus pulled up at the site, standing alongside the head of the engineering firm that had designed the footprint for the landfill. Both wore hard hats – for aesthetic reasons apparently, as there was nothing overhead but blue sky. A billboard version of the TLC logo had been erected on the property.
Although the day had arrived under full sun, it had rained for most of the week. The fields designated for the landfill had been tilled after the recent harvest and the area was now a quagmire. Hofferman had that morning acquired fifty bales of wheat straw from a local farmer which he and the engineer had spread over an area large enough for the contingent from the bus to gather and wander on.
Aside from the muck, the rain was actually a blessing in disguise. Hofferman, seizing the opportunity, had a backhoe on the site on Wednesday, digging a small lagoon within fifty feet of the creek that ran through the property. The clay lagoon had filled with rain water and was now holding that water. After the introductions, the engineer led the group along a straw-strewn path to the lagoon, where he proceeded to scoop a plastic pail full to the brim from the pond. He placed the pail on the ground in front of him.
‘The clay is impervious,’ he said. ‘This test lagoon demonstrates that. It’s not going to leak, any more than this bucket is going to leak. Any notions of problems with containment are groundless, and are put forth by people who are ignorant of the properties of the soil.’
As fate would have it, some of those ignorant people began to show up. Tipped off by the farmer who had sold the straw to Hofferman for three times the market price, several members of HALT arrived, parking their vehicles along the road behind the Greyhound. Frances came with Rufus Canfield, who had driven out to River Valley Farm with the news, finding Frances slogging through the mud behind the barn, loading cabbages on to a wagon.
‘So Bud and Hank have taken it on the road,’ Frances said as they walked toward the demonstration. ‘Not exactly Bob and Bing.’
Hofferman was explaining how the landfill would be divided into quadrants, with each section responsible for different types of waste. Some of the councilors took notes while the TV crews shot footage of the property, panning their Betacams over the barren acreage and back again.
‘That’ll make for some exciting television,’ Rufus said. He was taking notes as well.
Some of the reporters noticed the newcomers and began to wander their way. Frances wore a HALT button on her jacket. She was approached by a young woman from the Rose City Gazette.
‘What’s HALT?’ the woman asked.
‘Halt All Landfills in Talbotville,’ Frances told her. A few feet away, Bud Stephens was watching. He was standing beside Hank Hofferman, nodding his head in compliance with whatever Hofferman was saying. But he was watching Frances.
‘So you’re against this project?’ the reporter asked.
‘I’m wearing a button that says Halt All Landfills in Talbotville and you’re asking me if I’m against this project?’
‘OK,’ the woman said, obviously miffed. ‘Why are you against it?’
Frances gestured. ‘This is good farmland, and it’s less than three miles from the river. That creek runs into the river. You know what goes into a landfill?’
‘Um … what?’ the reporter asked.
‘Everything,’ Frances told her. ‘They can bag and bury whatever they want here. Toxic materials, paints, lead. You could tear the asbestos siding off your house and put it in a bag and it would end up here. Who would know?’
‘The on-site engineer says the clay will contain everything,’ the woman said.
‘The on-site engineer hired by Hank Hofferman?’ Frances asked. ‘Did Hank’s mom give it a thumbs-up too?’
She saw Bud approaching on a bee line, ignoring the straw path. His black jeans were muddy to the knees.
‘Hello, Frances,’ he said, smiling.
‘Doing bus tours now, Bud?’ she asked.
‘This woman was saying she doesn’t have faith in the containment assurances,’ the reporter said to Bud. She turned to Frances. ‘Um, what was your name?’
‘Frances Rourke. You’re new at this, aren’t you?’
Bud gestured to the test lagoon. ‘The proof is in the pudding.’
‘That’s pudding?’ Rufus asked, looking up from his notes.
Bud kept smiling. ‘Come have a look.’
When he and the reporter started toward the lagoon, Frances and Rufus followed. They stood by the little pond, looking at the murky water inside.
‘This lagoon is just a few feet from the creek and it’s totally contained,’ Bud said. ‘For the landfill itself, there will be setbacks of three hundred yards from any waterway. If this trial lagoon is safe at a few feet, then imagine what a three hundred yard buffer would give you.’
‘What’s with the bucket?’ Rufus asked. The plastic pail, filled with water, sat where the engineer had left it.
‘They were using it as an example,’ the reporter said. ‘Of how the lagoon held the water.’
‘So the lagoon won’t leak, just like that bucket won’t leak?’ Rufus asked.
‘That’s right,’ Bud told him.
Rufus looked around and spotted an empty water bottle in the straw, presumably tossed there by someone off the bus. ‘It could rain for forty days and forty nights and that lagoon would never leak?’ he asked, picking up the bottle.
‘You got it,’ Bud said. ‘And that’s from the best topographical engineer in the country.’
Rufus knelt to fill the bottle from the lagoon. ‘But what if it rained for forty days and forty nights – and the lagoon overflowed?’ He poured the water into the pail and the pail did indeed overflow, the water running in a tiny stream toward the creek. ‘What then?’
The reporter watched the trickling water and began writing quickly in her notebook. ‘I didn’t get your name,’ she said to Rufus.
Frances smiled. ‘Did you bring along an overflow engineer, Bud?’
Bud turned to the reporter and then, realizing he had nothing to offer her, glanced toward the main gathering across the field. ‘They need me over there. All the information is in the package you were given. Containment is a dead issue.’ He pointed his chin toward Rufus and Frances. ‘There will always be people who are against progress. They laughed at Thomas Edison.’
‘They laughed at the Wright brothers,’ Rufus corrected him. ‘I believe they marveled at Thomas Edison.’
Bud gave him another look before starting back across the field, toward the imaginary summoning he had mentioned. Frances and Rufus mingled with the crowd for another half hour, talking to whatever reporters approached them. Many did not, perhaps remembering that it was Bud Stephens who had bought them lunch and taken them for a bus ride on a sunny fall day.
Walking to the house, Frances noticed a red Camaro parked beside Carl’s truck at the warehouse. The car was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t say why. She went into the house and poured herself a glass of cider. Standing by the kitchen window that overlooked the farm, she thought about Bud Stephens, buying off councilors and media alike with a box lunch and cup of coffee. It had been a cheap day. As much as Frances had enjoyed Rufus embarrassing Bud, in the end she was left with little hope. There was real money behind it all, she knew, and that was why HALT would eventually fail. Frances had no intention of telling the members that. There was something to be said for tilting at windmills and the hope that springs eternal.
As she finished the cider, she suddenly realized whose Camaro was parked down the hill. She grabbed her jacket and started out the door.
In the warehouse, David was seated on a sawhorse and Carl was standing a few feet away, staring out the window at the muddy fields. Neither was saying anything, although the air was thick with what had already been said.
‘Hey,’ she said.
David nodded to her, but Carl never turned. Frances began to panic.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded.
‘Kate’s been following The Mayor,’ David said.
For a second Frances was actually relieved. She’d been afraid it was something worse. ‘Why?’ she asked.
David told her all that he knew, and he admitted that there was probably plenty that he didn’t. Frances kept her eyes on Carl as she listened but he wouldn’t engage her. He had taken a tape measure from his tool belt and he kept pulling the rule out and letting it snap back, over and over.
‘She’s got too much time on her hands,’ David said. ‘That’s the problem.’
Frances turned to him. ‘I think the problem’s a little bigger than that.’ She heard the tape snap back into the casing. ‘Where does she follow him to?’