O Beautiful

by Jung Yun

  “My mother—the one who immigrated here—she didn’t like living in North Dakota,” she says, taking a sip of coffee. “I mean, she tried to at first, but she just couldn’t.”

  Harry startles a bit. “Why’s that?”

  Elinor smiles, falling back on her instinct to make this man comfortable, even though he’s making her uncomfortable, even though she’s overwhelmed by the number of stories that come to mind if she wanted to explain. “Oh. You know…” She glances at her hands. “It was just very different here. She missed home, I guess.”

  “You’d be a terrible poker player, miss. Now what were you really going to say?”

  Elinor grew up in military housing. On the base in Marlow, families lived in a concrete gray apartment complex where all the living room windows faced a large interior courtyard. Whenever she and Maren followed their mother through the courtyard to go to town or the PX, Elinor felt watched by every nearby set of eyes. The women who frequently gathered around the picnic tables and playground equipment whispered to each other behind cupped hands as Nami passed, while men silently stared at her like a package they wanted to unwrap. At school, their children were much more direct. In outside voices, they asked Elinor and Maren why their father married a mail-order bride, was she a prostitute before they met, what did it feel like to be half-breeds—words and ideas they surely learned at home.

  “If you really want to know, people weren’t very kind to her here. And she never understood whether it was because she was Korean, or a foreigner, or a woman. Or maybe it was a combination of all those things.” She almost laughs at the thought of what she’s about to say next. “For a while, my father thought it was because of Vietnam—you know, because the military suffered such big losses over there. But my mother obviously wasn’t Vietnamese. At least I thought it was obvious. Anyway, at a certain point, it didn’t matter why people were unkind to her. The only thing that mattered was that they were.”

  Harry nods. “I’m sorry to hear that, miss, but like I said, every community has its bad apples.”

  Elinor wants to tell him don’t. Don’t explain it away like that. Nami didn’t leave because of a couple of bad apples. She left because she hated her life here. And the people who should have made it better, the people who were supposed to love and comfort and support her—namely her husband and firstborn child—treated her as badly as everyone else. But already, she’s told Harry more than she ever wanted him to know about her. She smiles again, trying to lighten the mood.

  “I guess you just got me thinking how people always want to have someone to blame when things go wrong. But there’s a tendency to oversimplify, don’t you think?” She doesn’t mention that Nami blamed Ed for bringing her to North Dakota, while Ed blamed her for not being the grateful, docile wife he thought she’d be when they married. Later, he blamed Elinor for what seemed like nothing more than being Nami’s daughter, a girl who would eventually become a woman and turn her back on him like she did. “Things are almost never that cut-and-dried,” she adds.

  “Well, that I agree with.” He wipes his mouth on a napkin and signals their waitress for the check, which she deposits on their table. “But simple people tend to look for simple answers, don’t they?”

  Harry glances at his watch and then swipes the check out from underneath Elinor’s palm. She decides not to argue with him about who gets to pay.

  “Forgive me, but I’ve got another meeting I need to run to.” He drops thirty dollars in cash on the table and fishes in his pocket for change. He adds fifty-five cents to the total, leaving the waitress a five-dollar tip. Barely 20 percent of the check, which seems cheap for who he is. “Is there anything else you want to ask me before I go?”

  She runs through her list of questions, many of which he inadvertently answered without any prompting. She shakes her head. “Not that I can think of for now. But I hope you won’t mind if I have to contact you later to follow up.”

  “Feel free.” Harry unwraps a toothpick from a sleeve of blue plastic and inserts it into the side of his mouth. “It’s been a long time since a pretty young lady called my number. By the way, who else does Mr. Hall have you talking to while you’re out here?”

  She lets the first comment pass as she thinks over the second. She’s not about to share her full list of interviews with him. But she’s curious to know if Harry is friendly with the woman she’s seeing next, another lifelong Avery resident about the same age that he is. This was something she always disliked about living on the base. Everyone was connected to each other in some direct or indirect way; everyone knew each other’s business. During the last few years of her parents’ marriage, when Nami leaned toward displays of kindness like sunlight, it never took long to hear that she’d been spotted talking to so-and-so’s husband outside the laundry or accepting a ride downtown from airman so-and-so.

  “I’m heading out to see Amy Mueller after this. Any chance you know her?”

  He looks slightly stricken at the mention of her name. “Bill’s wife, yeah. Sad couple. They got all tangled up in something I don’t think they really understood.…” He pauses. “You know, I told Mr. Hall on the phone that I didn’t want to be part of one of those big-city hit jobs that makes Avery out to be some kind of a terrible place. That’s not what you’re writing, is it?”

  “A hit job? No.” She wonders why her mention of Amy Mueller would elicit this. “But to be clear, I’m not writing a tourism piece either.”

  “Alright. Just be fair. That’s all I’m asking.”

  She’s about to ask “fair to whom?” but she thinks she knows the answer already. People from North Dakota are nothing if not loyal. Among friends and neighbors, they might complain about the state of things in their community, but God help the outsider who criticizes the place they call home.

  15

  The Mueller farm is twelve miles outside Avery, five turns off the main county road. The GPS signal is spotty this far from town—something Amy Mueller warned her about—so Elinor has to rely on the directions she emailed, which are confusingly written. It’s hard to tell whether some of the curves in the winding road are actually turns or vice versa. As she looks in her rearview mirror, not certain if she just passed a curve or a turn, she hears the noise for the first time. A thunderous boom, like a wrecking ball smashing against the side of a building, and then the screech of dozens of birds as they streak through the air, their bodies small and black against the darkening sky. She pulls over to the side of the road and waits for the noise again. A few seconds later, there’s another boom—louder than the one before—and another. She aims her recorder out the window, hoping it’s sensitive enough to capture the percussive crashes, followed by eerie metallic scraping sounds that remind her of broken machinery. When she plays back the recording, all she hears is an indistinct whir.

  The source of the noise reveals itself as she drives around a wooded bend in the road. A modest brick farmhouse comes into view. Behind it, there’s a blue-and-white-striped drilling rig rising high above the roofline. Although she knows it’s an optical illusion—the rig can’t possibly be as close to the house as it appears—the fact that she can see it at all is alarming. Farther off in the distance is an identical rig. She guesses this equipment marks the drill pads for what will eventually become Yogi Bear NE-1 and Yogi Bear NE-2, following the recent trend of naming wells after cartoons, movie characters, planets, classic cars, and animals—anything to help people distinguish one well from another.

  When Elinor parks and gets out of her car, she hears dogs barking—large, unfriendly dogs in a fenced-off area beside the barn. The screen door of the house bangs open and a heavyset woman lumbers down the front steps, drying her hands on a kitchen towel that she throws over her shoulder. When they were emailing back and forth, she imagined Amy Mueller as a smaller, more delicate woman—a petite strawberry blonde with tiny features, someone who actually looked like an Amy. But Mrs. Mueller is broad shouldered and stout. “Hearty,” she imagines
some would call her. She looks more like a Margaret or a Helen, with a bad case of rosacea and deeply etched crow’s-feet that suggest a lifetime of squinting at the sun.

  They meet halfway between the house and the barn, Elinor smiling as much as she can, Mrs. Mueller not smiling at all. She makes no effort to hide the fact that she’s giving Elinor the once-over and dislikes what she sees, as if she too expected her to look like someone else.

  “So you’re Elinor Hanson, huh? You must have married a Viking or something.”

  Such a familiar line of inquiry, she thinks. Such a familiar joke. “Me? I’ve never been married.”

  “You’re adopted then?”

  She shakes her head, annoyed by the assumption, the audacity of a stranger to say it out loud.

  “Hanson though.”

  “Yes?”

  “That means what? Your father was American and your mother was…?”

  “American.”

  Mrs. Mueller’s face twists and pulls with confusion. Elinor lets it go on much longer than she should.

  “But your parents’ people are from where?”

  “My father’s family is Norwegian and my mother’s is Korean.” A drop of rain falls on her shoulder. A few more brush the side of her neck. She tells herself to stop playing dumb. Not only is she antagonizing Mrs. Mueller, but they’re about to get wet. “I’m sorry,” she says, trying to give her a graceful way out. “Is there something wrong? I’m not late, am I?”

  She shakes her head, visibly flustered. “No. Not wrong. It’s just … I don’t know. I guess a person hears a name like ‘Elinor Hanson’ and they figure … Well, anyway, you’re the student Mr. Hall sent over to replace him, huh?”

  The car keys are still in her hand. Elinor tightens her grip, allowing the teeth to poke into her skin. The fact that Richard told everyone he was sending a student in his place is almost as offensive as Mrs. Mueller assuming she was white. It probably never occurred to him that he’d be making her job harder by introducing her like this. He didn’t have to think about earning people’s trust or establishing legitimacy in the same ways that she did.

  “I graduated last year.” Elinor wipes the beads of sweat collecting above her lip. The temperature must be in the nineties now and dark, greenish-gray clouds have gathered above them. It looks and feels like tornado weather. She wishes she hadn’t put on a black blazer and jeans that morning. The blazer covers her tattoos, but it’s made of cheap rayon and polyester, fabric that doesn’t breathe.

  “Well, alright then,” Mrs. Mueller says. “Come on in.”

  The drops of rain turn into a steady patter as they make their way toward the house. No sooner have they climbed the front steps than the deluge begins. Elinor shuts the heavy wood door behind her, glad to be inside until she realizes it’s as hot indoors as it was out. The air also feels wetter than it should, like a greenhouse or a sauna.

  “I was about to have a pop. You want some?”

  “If it’s not any trouble.”

  Mrs. Mueller points down the hall. “Go on in and take a seat, then.”

  The living room is unnaturally dim for midday because of the rain and drawn curtains. As Elinor’s eyes adjust, she sees stained glass light fixtures and wood-paneled walls; chunky, overstuffed pieces of furniture that probably date back to the seventies. She walks toward the windows and discovers that one of the curtains isn’t a curtain at all. It’s a vintage American flag. The colors are so old and muddy, the navy blue and red threads are almost indistinguishable from one another. She’s never seen a flag used as a window covering before, hanging upside down instead of right side up, no less. The sight of it actually makes her uncomfortable. She’s accustomed to flags being treated with more care. On the base in Marlow, uniformed airmen raised and lowered the central flag with gloved hands at the exact same times every morning and night. There was a whole ritual to the folding and unfolding, the hoisting up and the lowering down. If a flag accidentally touched the ground or tore because of wind or debris, it had to be disposed of. Burned, if she remembers correctly.

  Mrs. Mueller returns with two plastic cups filled with soda. She places them on the table and snaps open all the curtains, letting in what little light the sky offers.

  “I’d normally have a pot of coffee going—”

  “But this is exactly what I wanted. Thank you.” Elinor takes a small sip, getting a jolt of pure sugar from the off-brand cola.

  “You’re just being polite. I swear, this stuff will rot your teeth out fast. But there’s no way I’m using the water that comes out of the tap these days.”

  Mrs. Mueller glowers over the edge of her cup as she chews a piece of ice. She seems irritable and tense, but Elinor tells herself she was probably like this long before she arrived.

  “Do you mind if I turn this on?” She places her recorder on the coffee table, next to a Lazy Susan filled with too many remote controls.

  Mrs. Mueller shrugs. “That’s what you’re here for.”

  Elinor sits down on the sofa with her arms pinned against her sides. Underneath her blazer, her white T-shirt feels damp with sweat. She brushes her fingertips against the nap of the worn velour upholstery, which features a busy brown pattern of pheasants and cornucopias. Instead of sitting down beside her, Mrs. Mueller continues to pace, seemingly nervous now that the recorder is on.

  “So…” Elinor watches her cross the room once, then twice. “You mentioned the water here. Is there something wrong with your well?”

  “I’m not about to drink it and find out. You know people all over this area are talking about how their water tastes different after they’ve been fracked, right? Like one of these companies threw a bucket of kerosene down their well or something. Can you imagine drinking coffee made with water like that?”

  At first, it sounds like she’s asking her questions, but Mrs. Mueller continues on, clearly not in need of a response. “A friend of mine, she lives a couple towns over, and she can’t even take a shower in her own house anymore. She says the water makes her eyes burn, and her hair’s starting to fall out. You should go over there and interview her, if you get a chance. Her name’s Louise Eddy, E-d-d-y. She’s got four EnerGia wells on her property. Four! You’d get a kick out of talking to her, I bet.”

  Elinor takes notes as quickly as she can, struggling to keep up with Mrs. Mueller’s conversational pace. She glances at the recorder again, confirming that the red light is on.

  “Would you mind telling me about the noise I heard outside? Does that have anything to do with what’s going on here?”

  Mrs. Mueller shakes her head. “Welcome to my world. It was quiet for a while—you know, while the case was tied up in court—but as soon as they got their judgment, it was like, bang.” She claps her hands together. Specks of dust float through the air, visible as they pass through dim amber slants of light. “Suddenly all the crews came back, big swarms of them, like locusts. It’s almost worse now because they’re behind schedule, so instead of taking six weeks to install their wells, they’re trying to do it in four.” She knocks on one of the windows, which offers a rain-soaked view of the road Elinor just drove up. “They’re not even halfway done yet, and I don’t think I’ve slept two hours in a row since they got here. How’s someone supposed to live with those drills going twenty-four seven?”

  “They actually drill overnight?”

  “Sometimes. It’s never on any set schedule, as far as I can tell. They stop when it rains hard like this, so I might actually get a little bit of peace today. And don’t bother asking if I’ve complained. I’ve complained so much, I don’t even know how to have a decent conversation anymore. Last week, I ran into some folks at the supermarket, and they asked me how I was doing with Bill being gone, and ten minutes later, I was still talking their ears off about how I can’t sleep. All this noise, all the time—it feels like I live in Iraq,” she says, pronouncing the word I-rack. “I just can’t take it anymore.”

  Elinor isn’t the kind of per
son who can function well without sleep. The past two nights in Avery are already starting to take their toll. If she doesn’t get some decent rest soon, she’ll be babbling like Mrs. Mueller, who seems aware that she keeps going on and on, but unable to do anything about it. Now she understands what Richard meant when he said there was something a little off about her.

  “Do you want to talk about the future?” Elinor asks, trying to switch to a lighter subject. “Once the wells are up and running, you’ll probably start getting royalties for your share of the oil profits, right? So what do you plan on doing then?”

  “Are you serious?” Mrs. Mueller snaps her head back, her mouth stretched into something that looks like a smile at first, but isn’t. “You don’t know, do you? Oh, you should definitely go talk to Louise Eddy then. The way EnerGia writes their sneaky little Jew agreements, they take a whole chunk out for—what do they call it?—gathering expenses? People are lucky to get a couple thousand dollars a month after all the deductions, which is hardly enough to make up for not being able to farm the land. That’s why I took them to court. I started hearing all these nasty things about them, how people couldn’t afford to live after they went into business with EnerGia, so I sued to get a new agreement drawn up before they started drilling.”