Abbie interrupted them. She was at the fence, a Golden jumping and licking her face and wriggling like a reptile. Abbie’s smile was a yard wide, and she was giggling uncontrollably. Brad couldn’t remember the last time she had been so ecstatic.
“Is this a girl one?” she asked. “I want a girl one.”
Henry checked. “And that’s what you have.”
“Goody! I want this one. Can I have this one, Dad? See? Isn’t she cute? And she likes me! She really, really likes me!”
“Is that one OK?” Brad asked.
“To be honest, that’s the one we had planned to keep.” Henry and Brad both saw Abbie’s face drop. She looked crushed.
“However,” he continued, “since she’s going to such a good home, and seeing as how we’ve got another litter due any day now, she’s yours, Abbie.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Abbie enthused as Brad began to write the check in the last light of day.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Friday, September 5
“Hi.”
Brad looked up from his desk. It was Thomasine, the woman Abbie had gotten so friendly with their first night at the Boar’s Head Inn.
“Hello,” he said. His voice was uncustomarily scratchy. Finding her standing there—it had surprised the shit out of him, that’s what it had done. Not that he’d spent every minute of the last eleven days fantasizing about her. But she had popped into his thoughts now and again.
Until this minute he’d assumed he would never see her again. “She told me I should see you first.”
“Who?”
“The woman at the front desk. I’m interested in an article your newspaper published this afternoon. This,” she said, tapping Rod Dougherty’s page one piece on the Morgantown Noises.
“Right. The noises. What can I help you with . . . Thomasine, isn’t it?” His jaw muscles were starting to relax.
“Yes. Thomasine Lyons.”
“And I’m Brad Gale. Father of Abbie, editor of Ye Local Rag,” he said, attempting humor, achieving cornball. “I guess you already know that.”
“I do,” she said perfunctorily. “I had a question about that article.”
Here it comes, Brad thought. The opening piece of the New Era and already we’re under attack. “Fire away,” he said politely.
“It makes repeated reference to Indian legend, and it quotes an expert in Indian affairs out of New York University—Mel Slocum, I’m familiar with his work—but it doesn’t mention any Indians living in the area today. Do you know if your reporter talked to any?”
“No, I don’t,” Brad admitted. “I’d ask him, but he’s out on assignment.”
“Do you expect him back this afternoon?”
“No, but he’ll be in first thing Monday morning. You could try him then. Excuse my nosiness,” Brad said, “but why do you want to know?”
“I expect you guys to be nosy,” she retorted. Brad couldn’t tell if she was disparaging him. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “I want to know because I’m tracking down Native Americans involved in a land suit here that ended eight years ago. The Quidneck tribe. The one your reporter mentioned. It was one of the original Indian claims in the Northeast.”
“Did they win?” He’d heard of such claims, although not this particular one. He guessed it had been major news.
“No. That’s what my thesis is about. How the Quidnecks have been impacted in the years since the suit ended and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the appeal. If they’d won, they would have been millionaires.”
“I bet.”
“But they didn’t. It demoralized them—in the tribal sense, that is. I have reason to believe it not only destroyed their tribal unity—their cultural identity—but deeply embittered them toward the white man. It was a white judge and jury, of course. But I’ve got a long ways to go before I can prove anything like that.”
“Abbie mentioned you were a student at Brown. She called it ‘a brown college.’ As if it were the color of the place.”
He chuckled. “Well, it can be a shitty school,” she declared.
Hold it right there, Brad thought. As roughly as some of his female friends spoke, especially the New Yorkers, he’d never really outgrown the silly notion that vulgarity (“naughty words” his Irish Catholic mother had called it; close his eyes, and he could still hear her lecture him) was intended only for men. That it wasn’t ladylike, as Mom had steadfastly maintained. Certainly not on first meeting someone.
“I take it you’re not exactly . . . happy there.” He fumbled for the words.
“Thomasine Lyons and Brown University don’t always see eye to eye. My thesis, as a prime example. My adviser’s a hard-ass. The way she’s been holding me up, I figure to have my Ph.D. no later than the first quarter of the next century. But you don’t want to hear all this.”
“No—I do,” Brad insisted.
“No, you don’t,” she said. “And besides, I’m not here to pour my heart out. I came because I happened to be in the supermarket and I saw your paper. This article caught my eye. As I said, I’m trying to track down members of the tribe still in the area, and at this stage I can use every lead I can get. Except for the fact that your reporter didn’t mention any Native Americans today—something I would have done had I written it—it was a good piece. This guy Dougherty has a nice style.”
The woman sure knows how to hand out a compliment, Brad thought sourly. “Thank you,” he said. “Rod’s one of our better people.”
Thomasine peered around the newsroom. She seemed to be soaking up the detail, as if she’d never been in a newsroom before. As if it were a foreign land, which it probably was, Brad supposed, to an outsider. So many incredibly messy desks, the papers and reports and notepads and phone books piled to the ceiling. He could have guessed what she was thinking: How in all this confusion can they possibly get the paper out day after day? It was a question he’d asked himself, a question he couldn’t always answer.
Brad seized the opportunity of her gazing about to do unobserved what he had wanted to do since Thomasine had walked in: stare at her. He’d thought it that first night at the Boar’s Head, and he thought it again even more strongly now: She had his kind of looks. The same long, brown hair, large eyes, small lips, and high cheekbones that had always sent a little jolt through his body. God, he liked how she looked. And dressed. She was wearing a white cotton blouse, chinos, track shoes, with a sweater tied around her shoulders. He was surprised at how pleased he was to find out she hadn’t been simply passing through that night at the Boar’s Head. To judge from what she’d said about her research, she’d probably found an apartment or a house to rent.
She turned back toward him.
Brad glanced quickly at the wall clock. Four-forty. He was already ten minutes late for his meeting with the publisher. Dexter was one man who didn’t like being stood up.
“Look,” Brad said apologetically, “I’m really interested in what you’re doing. I mean, there might be a good story in it.” Jesus, does that sound like a line, he thought.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “Anthropology can be pretty dry stuff.”
“It can also make for good reading when you’ve got an interesting project, and it sounds like you have. Which is something I’d like to discuss with you. Unfortunately I’m late for a meeting. Could we—could we maybe get together sometime, you know, whenever, for . . . lunch?”
“Lunch?” she said uncertainly.
“To . . . discuss . . . your research.”
Boy, was he floundering. Brad Gale, prizewinning journalist, take-charge editor, was getting his tongue tied in a knot. Like a goddamned eighth grader asking his first girl to a dance. But it had been so very, very long since he’d asked a woman for a—no, he wouldn’t consider it that. Because it wasn’t a date. It was lunch, that’s what it was. A purely professional function. Everything on the up-and-up.
Besides, he was sure she was going
to say no. He wished now he’d never asked her.
“Lunch would be fine,” she said agreeably.
“Really?”
She looked at him oddly.
“I mean, great.” He was fumbling again. “Do you want to set a time now? Or how about if I call you?”
“I’ll call you,” Thomasine said, “probably in a week or two. In the meantime, I can reach Mr. Dougherty here Monday morning?”
“Yes. You might even catch him this weekend if you’re lucky. We work pretty long hours around here.”
“Thank you,” she said, and left.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sunday, September 7
Night
In Morgantown eight young children had nightmares bad enough to wake them. That was twice the number of the week before. There were four villains in these nightmares: a bear, a wolf, a vulture, a snake.
Four children had stomach cramps so severe they cried out in their sleep.
Maureen McDonald threw up at quarter past midnight. Jimmy Ellis slept soundly all night long, nightmare-free. Three thousand miles away, Charlie Moonlight slept hardly at all. He could not ever remember having had a case of insomnia so bad. For some reason, he was dwelling on his nephew, Jimmy. Jimmy and Charlie fishing. Jimmy and Charlie having dinner with Ginny. All of them at Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s Christmas morning. Charlie giving Jimmy a deerskin jacket for his fifth birthday. Charlie calling Jimmy from Reno, Dallas, once from Anchorage, Alaska. Jimmy as an infant, his father dead a week. A hundred memories of Jimmy.
Jimmy dead unless he did something.
Did what?
There was no answer.
Near dawn Charlie finally slipped into sweaty, restless sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Monday, September 8
The sky was cloudless and blue, the morning warm enough for short sleeves. After a weekend of unusual cold the weather was seasonable again.
Abbie, Brad, and Maria, the new dog, were at the end of their drive waiting for the bus to take Abbie to her first day of kindergarten. Brad had his video camera balanced on his shoulder. Maria, named after Abbie’s favorite Sesame Street character, was tied to a tree, straining against her clothesline leash. The star, dressed in a red jumper and white blouse, was carrying a Sesame Street lunch box and practicing her skipping.
“Don’t get too near the road,” Brad cautioned.
“I won’t, Daddy,” Abbie said.
The puppy whimpered.
Abbie heard something else. So did Brad.
“I think I hear it,” he said.
“Is it coming?”
“I think so.”
Abbie scooted toward her father and wrapped her arms around his legs for protection.
The bus appeared, model car size at first. It lumbered toward them, impossibly slow as it moved beneath a canopy of maples and oaks, tinged with the first colors of fall.
“Hey, I thought you were excited,” Brad said, tousling her hair with his free hand. He was careful not to tousle too forcefully. He had spent half an hour getting her ready for the Big Moment.
“I am excited,” Abbie insisted. “Wicked excited. But I never was on a school bus before.”
“You’ll love it, sweetie,” Brad promised.
“Is the driver nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Will it go fast?”
“Only fast enough.”
The sound of rusty brakes, and the bus was there, just feet away, dwarfing them both. They could feel the heat of its engine, smell exhaust. The monitor, a gray-haired woman wearing a fluorescent orange traffic belt, alighted. She looked both ways once, twice, three times, then gave the go-ahead.
“OK, Abbie.” She invited her to come on board.
“She knows my name,” Abbie whispered to her father.
“You have a good first day, OK, Apple Guy?” Brad said.
“OK, Dad.”
They embraced.
“I love you, sweetie,” Brad said.
“I love you, too, Dad.”
“Be sure to have Mrs. Fitzpatrick let you call the second you get back.”
“OK, Dad.”
They were still embracing.
“Bye, sweetie.”
“Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, Maria.”
“Maria says bye.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
“See you tonight.”
“OK.”
Now she was on board, her face tiny and inconsequential against the window.
She waved.
He waved back.
The bus that had kidnapped her disappeared around the bend.
She was gone, Daddy’s little girl taking another of the giant steps that would whisk her into womanhood before either of them really knew it had happened. All morning he’d been fighting back tears, and now, now that she couldn’t see him, now that he was alone with the fool dog she had come to love so desperately, so completely, he let them fall. They spotted his cheeks, and he wiped them away, but he was not ashamed they were there.
Brad put Maria into the pen he’d constructed by the side of the garage, got into his Mustang, and drove to the school. It wasn’t enough that he’d seen Abbie off; he wanted to greet her arriving at school, too. Maybe that would make up for the fact that he’d be at work when she got through her half-day.
Morgantown Elementary was on Elm, which intersected with Main near the commercial heart of the town. If Main was Morgantown’s commercial district, Elm Street was its municipal locus—a row of six buildings: Town Hall, the district courthouse, the post office, served by the same postmaster for thirty-seven years, the fire-police station, the only one of the lot built after 1960, the Lucius F. Perry Library, and Morgantown Elementary. Until construction of a regional high school in 1965, the building had housed all thirteen grades. Across Elm was a park that bordered the Misquamicut River.
Like Town Hall and the library, which had been built at roughly the same time—the turn of the century, when it seemed one architect had a monopoly on America’s municipal design—the school was constructed of red brick and capped with a slate roof, which in turn was topped by a copper-plated cupola with a rooster weather vane that still accurately indicated which way the wind was blowing.
Quintessentially New England, Morgantown Elementary. A charming place.
Except now as he stood on the front walk with a gaggle of other parents (who were all dangling cameras of one sort or another), waiting for Abbie, Brad wasn’t thinking of either quintessence or charm.
He was thinking of asbestos and lead paint.
These goddamn museums are full of the poison, he thought with alarm.
He remembered a story he’d done roughly the same time he’d been up to his eyeballs in nuclear waste disposal research. It was about a quiet, little, all-American town in Delaware where, a major U.S. Public Health Service study had revealed, the rate of a little-known cancer called mesothelioma was triple the national average. Many of the cases had been traced to the community’s pride and joy, its grammar school, where generations of townspeople had sat for twelve straight years innocently breathing asbestos fibers that had been used in construction of the building’s walls.
He remembered what that school had looked like. Morgantown Elementary was a dead ringer for it.
As for lead paint, why, just talk to any child welfare worker about that.
Jesus, am I being paranoid or what? He chided himself.
Am I?
If his reporting had taught him one thing, it was that the modern world oozed poison. Day by day, minute by minute, on every continent, in every tiny hamlet and every city, mankind was generating an utterly mind-boggling volume of shit. Some of it was pretty tame—garbage and human feces and fertilizer, for example. But a lot of it was very, very dangerous shit. Slow-acting, carcinogenic, mutagenic shit. Lethal-with-just-one-swallow shit. Shit piled stories-deep in toxic waste dumps, slag heaps, ash pits, municipa
l landfills. Shit trickling invisibly and odorlessly through the groundwater. Shit in the rain, the soil, the ocean, nibbling away at the ozone.
The kicker was, those were only part of the threat. Because you could test water for toxics. With money and effort, you could clean up dumps and rivers and inner harbors and asbestos- and lead-laced walls of schools. You could pass laws and appropriate money for superfunds and clean water acts. You could fine the hell out of producers, send them to jail. Eventually you probably could even get nations to stop producing fluorocarbons. And while nuclear waste on first blush was the ultimate nightmare, it was not, on consideration, a never-ending nightmare. If you had faith in technology, and Brad still did, you had to believe science eventually could—no, would—find a way to render it harmless.
No, it wasn’t the inanimate shit that petrified Brad. Living poison—that was the truly scary shit. The wide world of microbes, starring those wonderfully nasty little buggers: bacteria and viruses. Especially viruses. One need only look as far as AIDS to see how real that nightmare was. Throw antibiotics and vaccines at them—if your scientists can develop them—and they will be only too happy to mutate. Maybe that was how the world would end. Man brought to extinction courtesy of some bug.
Yeah, you’re being paranoid all right, pal, Brad concluded, but a little paranoia never hurt anyone. Like that dude said, it ain’t paranoia if the bastards really are watchin’.
The beauty about working for the fourth estate was that you could take action. You could get things done, a point driven home quite poignantly, Brad thought, when the Feds had established a special nuclear waste disposal study commission in the wake of his Times articles. The Transcript would have to do a little digging, that’s all, and discover if there had ever been asbestos or lead paint in Morgantown Elementary and what steps, if any, had been taken to eliminate the risk. If none—well, that’s what editorials and page one stories were all about.
The bus arrived. He raised his camera.
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