by Brad Smith
‘Let me guess,’ Bud said. ‘The current mayor wouldn’t be attending this shindig, would he?’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘You think he’ll get the message?’
‘I don’t care. Everybody else will.’
Rufus Canfield was acting as legal counsel for HALT, and it was he who filed the applications on the group’s behalf for an environmental assessment on the landfill proposal. So it was he who was notified that the assessment request was suddenly a moot point, as the zoning had already been granted. A HALT meeting was called for that evening, at the River Valley Farm.
Rufus arrived early for the meeting and when he drove his old Volkswagen into the drive he saw Carl’s truck by the warehouse. He walked down the hill and told Carl the news.
‘So where do you go next?’ Carl asked.
‘Home, I fear,’ Rufus said. ‘We’re finished.’
The executive consisted of Rufus and Frances and a half dozen others. Perry always attended the meetings too, probably because Carl did not, grabbing any opportunity to spend time with Frances when Carl wasn’t around. But he rarely said anything. None of the group said much, in fact, after Rufus delivered the news. They sat around the big oak dining room table, drinking coffee and staring in resignation at the table top.
‘Hofferman had to know this all along,’ Jack Phillips said. ‘Sonofabitch. That’s why he picked that concession.’
Frances looked over at Jack, saw his red face growing redder. He was a beefy man who owned a two-hundred acre apple orchard across the river. He was confrontational by nature and not entirely rational, also by nature. As a teenager she had seen him punch a stubborn Belgian mare in the forehead. The mare hadn’t blinked and Jack went to the hospital with a broken hand.
‘Allegedly not,’ Rufus said. ‘I talked to the surveyors myself. They said it came up during the title search.’
‘Doesn’t matter one way or the other,’ Frances said. ‘Not now. It is what it is.’
‘What the hell is the ministry saying?’ Jack asked. ‘That a little town dump from fifty years ago is the same thing as a landfill that’s going to take all of Rose City’s garbage? Is that what those idiots are saying?’
‘They’re pulling a Pontius Pilate,’ Rufus said. ‘They had a problem they didn’t want to deal with. Hofferman’s got pork belly friends with influence. The ministry sees an out here and they’re taking it.’
‘Write that up, Rufus,’ Jack said. ‘Tell everybody exactly how it happened, just the way you said it. We can embarrass the assholes.’
‘But we can’t prove it,’ Rufus said. ‘And these guys don’t embarrass easily. They’ll laugh at us. People from Rose City are already laughing at us. Granola, they call us. Flakes and nuts. They couldn’t care less what we think.’
Frances went into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee. While she was spooning the grounds into the pot, Carl knocked and walked in. He was still wearing his work clothes and carrying what appeared to be a roll of blueprints.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Am I welcome at your meeting?’
‘At this point it’s not really going to matter.’
‘Kind of a defeatist attitude, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘That’s what happens when you get defeated.’
When Frances returned to the dining room with Carl she saw Perry stiffen and then glare across the table as Carl pulled up a chair and sat. Frances introduced him to the group.
‘No offense, Carl,’ Jack said pointedly, ‘but with your history I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to be here.’
‘Now Jack, are you worried we might get on Hofferman’s bad side?’ Rufus asked. ‘What do you have there, Carl – a copy of the Magna Carta?’
‘Gas wells,’ Carl said, and he opened the yellowed roll to reveal a map of the concession where the landfill would go. ‘I ran into an old-timer named Lee Cumberland a while back, drilled gas wells in this area for fifty years. This is his map. There are twenty-six gas wells on that concession.’
Everyone except Perry leaned forward to have a look. The wells were marked with small circles with double lines through them.
‘There are gas wells everywhere in the county,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve got two on my farm.’
‘What’s this about?’ Rufus asked.
‘I’ve been doing a little research on this,’ Carl said. ‘A gas well is basically a hole in the ground. There’s a steel casing that goes down eight or nine hundred feet through rock, and it runs through the aquifers that feed the drilled wells around here. Every farmer’s got a drilled well, some two or three. If the steel pipe for the gas gets old and rusted, anything that goes in that hole could contaminate the groundwater. And these aquifers are basically underground streams. One bad casing here could pollute a drilled well fifty miles away. A hundred miles away.’
‘OK,’ Rufus said. ‘So what can we do with this?’
Carl indicated the map. ‘If you wanted to put a landfill on that property, first thing you’d have to do is make sure all the old wells were properly plugged.’
‘What’s it cost to plug a well?’
‘Ten or twelve grand.’
Jack scoffed. ‘So it costs them two or three hundred thousand to plug some gas wells. We’re talking about a landfill that’s gonna make Hofferman tens of millions of dollars over the next twenty years. A couple hundred grand is nothing. I don’t think you understand the situation here, Carl.’
‘Boy,’ Perry said, shaking his head.
Carl cocked his head toward Perry before turning to Jack. ‘So Hofferman would just pay to cap all the wells on this map?’
‘It’s chump change,’ Jack replied.
‘What about the wells that aren’t on the map?’ Carl asked. ‘The ministry records only go back to the thirties. But they started drilling gas wells around here in the eighteen eighties. Lee Cumberland tells me that for every well they know of, there’s probably five or more they don’t know about. That means there’re over a hundred unknown gas wells on that property. If they were ever plugged they weren’t properly plugged, because there were no regulations back then. Sometimes they’d throw a fence post down a well and that would be it.’
‘Over a hundred wells,’ Rufus said. ‘And he can’t plug them because he has no idea where they are?’
‘That’s right,’ Carl said.
Frances looked at Perry, who had reverted to his scowl.
‘So what do we do with this?’ Rufus asked.
Carl shrugged. ‘Make it a groundwater issue. Trash disposal’s a pretty hot topic these days. But clean water is bigger.’
‘Will the old guy help us out?’ Frances asked. ‘Cumberland, is it?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Carl said. ‘He’d rather not have his name involved. I had to pry this map out of his hands. And it’s due back tomorrow. He’s nervous around this, but I think he’s on your side. And there’s something else – he showed me some archives from the early nineteen hundreds. Gas well records that are vague, which is exactly what you want.’
‘Why is vague good?’ Frances asked.
‘One entry read “Gas well drilled front field Hoover farm August 1908”,’ Carl said. ‘That’s the entire record of that well. Makes a good argument that nobody knows where they are or how many.’
‘Where’s this guy live?’
‘Right in Talbotville,’ Carl said. ‘He’s got logs, maps, contracts. All originals. Somebody’s got to convince him to hand them over.’
‘I’ll go see him,’ Rufus said.
Frances tapped her forefinger on the map. ‘OK, if we can suggest that the groundwater is at risk, we can get the health department involved. We convince them to ask for an environmental assessment. All we need to do is delay this thing for a couple of years. They’ll have to go elsewhere.’
Perry got noisily to his feet, chair legs screeching across the hardwood floor. ‘I think it’s stupid. Nobody cares about old gas w
ells. Nobody’s gonna listen to any of this. It’s stupid.’ He walked out.
‘Who shit in his cornflakes?’ Jack asked when he was gone.
‘It’s nothing,’ Frances said. ‘He gets a little resentful over things.’
‘Over gas wells?’
Frances shrugged. ‘I don’t think it was the gas wells.’
‘Is he with us or not?’ Jack asked.
‘Who knows?’ Frances replied. ‘Doesn’t matter, one way or the other.’
The weather was getting colder. Kate thought constantly now of what would happen when the pickup basketball games stopped. There had been the occasional rainy day when the girls hadn’t shown and on those days, if The Mayor showed at all, he would shorten his walk around the park before heading home. In her more optimistic moments she imagined that eventually he would just quit coming, and that the dread Kate felt regarding him and the blond girl Lindsay would disappear. But those moments were fleeting. Her gut told her otherwise.
In the meantime, The Mayor had continued his grandfatherly posturing, offering Lindsay little gifts and what Kate took to be earnest conversation. The gifts were books mostly, although one day he arrived with fudge for the whole group, and another time – on a particularly chilly day – he’d shown up with a large thermos of what appeared to be hot chocolate.
Kate had kept her distance since her encounter with the girls. If any of them had mentioned her to The Mayor she doubted he would have grounds to suspect her in particular. Presumably, the list of women who might hold a grudge against him would be long. Even so, she was now forced to keep out of sight of the basketball players, as well as The Mayor. One of them might decide to point her out.
This day Lindsay had taken the puppy for a walk along the edge of the ravine while The Mayor sat and watched the pickup game. With the changing weather the players were wearing more clothes. Sweats and hoodies, ball caps and toques, fingerless gloves. The Mayor wore a yellow windbreaker but was bareheaded. When the blond girl brought the pup back to him he spoke to her, thanking her maybe, and when he did he reached out and brushed some wind-blown strands of hair away from her face. Kate, hunkered down by the wall of the pavilion, watched the scene, the rage rising in her like a drug.
He left shortly after that. She watched as the Lincoln turned out of the parking lot, heading for the bridge, and home. Keeping out of sight of the players, she made her way down the slope to the lower parking lot, and did the same.
TWENTY-TWO
Bud walked out of the coffee shop and into the biting wind off the lake. Pulling his lapels close to his neck, he walked quickly toward his office. His cell phone began to ring and by the time he removed his glove and fished it from his pocket, it stopped. The display said Hank Hofferman. Bud called him back.
‘I just left you a message,’ Hank said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Where you been?’
None of your fucking business, Bud thought. ‘What’s up?’
‘I gotta talk to you,’ Hofferman said.
‘You are talking to me.’
‘I gotta see you. There’s somebody you need to meet.’
Bud had been looking forward to getting home, kicking back; maybe order in tonight. Deanna was in New York City with her girlfriends, spending money. ‘Come to Spinnakers,’ he told Hofferman.
‘This guy won’t come into the city. Meet me at Brannigan’s.’
‘You sound like you’re about to pop a fucking vein, Hank,’ Bud said. He stepped into a doorway, out of the wind.
‘You need to come to Brannigan’s.’
Bud sighed. ‘OK, half an hour,’ he said.
He couldn’t have picked a worse time to drive out of the city. All the ramps to the thruway heading south were jammed, and the side roads were even more congested. Bud’s nature was such that he couldn’t handle a simple thing like waiting in line at the bank. Sitting in traffic was a nightmare for him. It elevated his heart rate, made him antsy. He sat leaning forward over the wheel, as if his posture would speed up the pace, his fingertips drumming on the steering wheel.
‘This had better be good,’ he said out loud as he sat idling halfway up the John Street ramp.
It took an hour to get to the truck stop. Hofferman’s Humvee was parked in the lot, dwarfed amongst the eighteen-wheelers. The man himself was at a booth inside, and with him was a tall skinny guy in jeans and a worn plaid work shirt and a dirty cloth cap.
Sliding into the booth, Bud gave the skinny guy the once over and the man looked away, made eye contact with Hofferman and looked away again. Finally his gaze settled on the waitress who stood behind the counter, pouring coffee for the truckers sitting there.
‘My next project’s going to be a new highway out of the fucking city,’ Bud said to Hofferman. ‘OK – what’s got you all excited?’
‘We’ve got a problem with HALT,’ Hofferman said.
‘You said the zoning was a slam dunk,’ Bud reminded him.
‘It should have been,’ Hofferman said. ‘But now they’re claiming there’s unknown gas wells on the site. They’re saying there’s a threat to the groundwater.’
‘What’s gas got to do with water?’ Bud asked.
‘The piping goes through the aquifers that feed the drilled wells,’ Hofferman said. ‘If they make drinking water an issue, we’ve got problems. A review could take years.’
‘We don’t have years,’ Bud said. ‘The city won’t wait.’
‘Think I don’t know that?’
‘Shit,’ Bud said. ‘So get your buddies at the capitol to take care of it.’
‘I tried,’ Hofferman said. ‘They say this is a different animal. You start threatening people’s drinking water and everybody runs for cover. Nobody wants to be the guy to OK things, in case it goes sideways down the road.’
Bud sighed and rubbed his eyelids with his fingertips. He had been really looking forward to going home and getting high. When he opened his eyes he was looking directly at the skinny guy in the work shirt.
‘I assume you’ve got something to do with this.’
‘He brought it to me,’ Hofferman said.
‘Well, let’s hear it,’ Bud said to the man. ‘You got a name, pal?’
‘Course I got a name,’ the skinny guy said. ‘It’s Perry.’
Thinking about it afterwards, Carl knew that he should have seen it coming. He worked late at the farm Friday and when he got back to his room at the hotel he showered and changed his clothes and drove across town to Archer’s for something to eat. He decided on the special, shepherd’s pie. He sat at a table in the corner and drank draft ale while he waited for his food. He noticed Harold Sikes at the bar when he walked in, which was why he sat across the room. From what Perry had told Frances it was evident that Sikes had an over-active imagination. Carl had no intention of feeding it. Still, Sikes kept throwing looks Carl’s way, which was typical, and when he wasn’t doing that he was talking on his cell phone. Carl continued to ignore him.
The shepherd’s pie might have been very good a few hours earlier but by the time it arrived in front of Carl it was overcooked and dry, probably from sitting under a warmer. He ate it anyway and drank another draft. By the time he got up to leave, Harold Sikes was making a concentrated effort not to look in his direction. It was another red flag and if Carl hadn’t been tired he might have picked up on it.
They were waiting for him in the parking lot behind the bar, Hofferman and a guy Carl had never seen before, a short squat guy who looked like a gym rat. Carl slowed when he saw them and immediately heard shuffling footsteps behind him. He turned to see Sikes lumbering toward him, his arms swinging, chest puffed out, his face beet red.
‘Payback is a bitch, asshole,’ he said.
Carl hit him in the forehead with a hard right hand and then he hit him again, this time on the cheekbone as Sikes was going down. Carl turned at once, knowing full well that the other two would be coming on, but still he was too late. The gym rat clubbed him behind hi
s right ear with a fist the size of a ham, and then he grabbed Carl around the throat with both hands and actually lifted him off the ground before slamming him on to the hood of a car. Carl kneed the rat in the groin but it seemed to have no effect. He tried to throw punches around the massive arms that held him down but they deflected off the man’s shoulders. Then he felt other fists hitting him and he went down. The boots came next, as he knew they would. There were a lot of them, meaning that Hofferman, and probably Sikes, were joining in the fun.
The last thing he heard was Hofferman advising him to mind his own business.
When he woke up he was in the alley behind the bar, although it would take him a while to come to that conclusion. He came to with his face against the steel base of a dumpster, the acrid, rotting smell of the garbage inside the container strong in his nostrils. He got to his knees and remained there for a moment, his head swimming. The entire left side of his rib cage was racked in pain and it grew worse each time he attempted to inhale. It occurred to him that the pain was what brought him around. His nose felt as if a huge weight was pressing against it and there was dried blood in both nostrils and on his lips. He was suddenly nauseous and vomited on to the pavement before he could get to his feet.
He found he could barely walk because of the pain in his ribs, which he knew were broken. He could feel them grinding together as he made his way slowly to his pickup. Crossing under a streetlight, his left elbow and forearm pressed tightly against his rib cage, he looked at his watch and saw that it was quarter past three. He managed to get behind the wheel of his truck and drove back to the Queens.
In his hotel room’s bathroom he took his shirt off and looked at his side. The flesh over the rib cage was already beginning to discolor, yellow and red. He knew there was nothing to do with cracked ribs other than live with them until they healed. He had a piss and was relieved to see no blood in the bowl. The entire side of his body was a mess but he would live. He suspected that the kicking must have continued after he’d lost consciousness. His jaw was swollen too but didn’t appear to be broken. He had a cut, clotted over, beneath his left eye.