by Jung Yun
“What…” Elinor’s mouth feels thick with cotton. She wonders if she’s imagining things, if she really just heard what she did.
“My husband, he wasn’t a sophisticated man. He saw some of our neighbors getting rich off their wells, so he signed the damn contract before he got a lawyer to look at it. He probably figured it said 15 percent monthly royalties, so that’s what we’d get. But Bill didn’t realize how all these companies do business a little differently. Some of them are fair, and some of them are just out to screw you.” She makes a fist, hitting herself in the meat of her thigh over and over again. “Honestly, I thank God every day that Bill died before he learned what kind of people he was dealing with. I’m sure he thought he was doing a good thing, giving me a little extra income so I wouldn’t have to work as hard after he was gone. But if he knew what he’d done—Christ, the guilt would have killed him before the cancer did.”
16
Their first hour of conversation is a blur. If not for the limits of her digital recorder, Elinor wouldn’t even know how much time actually passed. Mrs. Mueller has a habit of talking until she’s emptied her head of everything she wants to say on a particular subject. Most of the time, she’s not even answering a direct question, just chasing tangents like a dog that keeps finding and refinding its tail. Elinor takes the occasional note, but it’s hard to keep up. It’s even harder to listen. She’s still stuck in the moment when Mrs. Mueller said “sneaky little Jew agreements” as if it was nothing at all. Like her mother, she struggles with what to do in these situations. The more Nami’s English improved, the more she wanted to respond when people said or did things that upset her. But Ed warned her not to ruffle any feathers with his fellow airmen or their wives, as if the people they lived among were soft little birds whose necks would snap if she spoke to them the wrong way. Elinor hates it as much as Nami did—this business of going along to get along, pretending she didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary because it’s simply easier. But here she is, doing exactly the same thing.
As she swaps one recorder for another, Mrs. Mueller motions toward the window and asks if she’d like to walk around the property now that the rain has stopped. Elinor is still sweating through her clothes, so she stands up before she even answers the question, eager to get out of the house.
Mrs. Mueller points at Elinor’s shoes, a pair of black flats with thin soles. “You can’t go out there in those.”
“Oh, they’re old. I don’t mind if they get dirty.”
“Dirt’s not the problem,” she says, but she doesn’t explain what the actual problem is. She disappears down the hall and returns with an old pair of boots, knee-high galoshes made of rubber, similar to the kind she’s changed into. “Here. These are probably going to be a little big on you, but at least you’ll be covered up.”
She thrusts them at her in a way that makes the offer difficult to refuse, as much as she’d prefer not to wear a stranger’s shoes. Elinor slides her bare feet into the clammy rubber, wishing she’d also been offered socks.
The air smells like fertilizer as they walk around the side of the barn, through mud and ankle-deep puddles that swallow their boots, releasing them with loud pops of suction. The dogs she heard when she arrived—only two of them, although they make enough noise for a pack—start to bark as if another storm is headed their way. Mrs. Mueller doesn’t pet their heads or coo their names as she passes. They aren’t those kinds of dogs. Elinor can still hear them going wild in their pen as she and Mrs. Mueller continue walking toward the first drill pad, which is just past a small slope. When they reach the other side, she spots at least a dozen men dressed in hard hats and neon-green vests, moving around the rig like fireflies.
“This used to be all durum wheat, if you can imagine,” Mrs. Mueller says. “For over a hundred and fifty years, we were wheat farmers.” It’s an unusually economical thought for her to express. When Elinor turns to glance at her, she almost expects to see tears. Instead, Mrs. Mueller just looks furious.
Richard’s file included several photos of drill sites, annotated in his careful block script to identify different types of oil field equipment. Elinor has yet to understand the intricacies of how each piece works, but she understands what their presence generally means. If there are rigs, trucks, vans, trailers, pumps, water tanks, and chemical tanks clustered in an area, as there are here, the land is in the process of being fracked or drilled. If there’s only a pumpjack, the land has been drilled already and the well is producing oil that feeds into a battery of tanks nearby. And if there are long pipes sticking out of the ground, spewing amber flames into the sky, natural gas is venting out of the earth to prevent dangerous subsurface buildups, a process known as “flaring.”
Of all the new information she recently had to take in, this last bit gave her the best sense of how much money is really at stake here. In other parts of the country, the whole point of fracking is to access natural gas, which people often pay a fortune for to heat their homes. But here in the Bakken, it’s the crude oil they want. The gas is just a by-product, the waste they burn off into the atmosphere because there’s not a pipeline in place to transport it yet. Last month, Scientific American published satellite photos of the Bakken at night, the flares so numerous and widespread, it looked like wildfires had broken out across the region.
Elinor narrows her eyes at the equipment in the field, surrounded by a fence that’s at least fifteen feet high, topped with a spiral of razor wire. Before leaving New York, she contacted over a dozen energy companies and requested permission to tour one of their drill sites. Most didn’t return her calls, and those that did cited safety concerns or too many competing requests from other journalists as a justification for turning her down. When she tried to follow Richard’s advice to be more assertive, to use the Standard’s good name like a battering ram, the doors still didn’t open.
“Can we walk over there?” Elinor asks, aware that this might be her best opportunity to see a drilling operation up close.
Mrs. Mueller shrugs. “Let’s see how far we get before they try to stop us.”
Their boots continue to squish and slap through the muddy grass. When she’s not watching her step, Elinor scans the landscape, which turns from farmland into open prairies the farther out she looks. She never minded the stark, almost desolate emptiness of the countryside in North Dakota. In fact, she thought it was beautiful, how she could see all the way out to the horizon line, uninterrupted by any evidence of people. Now these companies are ruining it, the one thing she actually liked.
“So, have your opinions about fracking or horizontal drilling changed at all over the past year?”
“Changed?” Mrs. Mueller barks. “I didn’t have an opinion to change. I mean, I knew that kind of stuff was going on around here, but what did I care? I was too busy with the farm to worry about things that had nothing to do with me.”
Before her recent crash course, Elinor understood that drilling wasn’t good for the environment. But she did so in the same vague, uninformed way that she knew genetically modified foods were unhealthy or methane gas contributed to global warming. At some point, she simply internalized these ideas, accepting them as facts without understanding the evidence. If asked to explain why she believed what she did, she wouldn’t be able to, not in any level of detail. But now that she’s read hundreds of pages of articles and research studies and environmental reports, nothing about this business seems right. Companies are boring holes miles deep into the ground, turning their drills sideways, and then detonating explosives in the horizontal expanse. She doesn’t think human beings were ever meant to do this; it hardly seems sensible or safe. But this is just the prep that happens before the part that really frightens her, when millions of gallons of water and chemicals mixed with sand are pumped through the holes to force the hard shale layer underneath to crack, releasing the oil and natural gas trapped inside. Sometimes, the adulterated water contaminates neighboring wells and reservoirs, or the che
micals leach into the soil. Sometimes, entire fields drown under a viscous, toxic ooze forced to the surface from places deep underground. Despite not being particularly conscientious about the environment, it still seems so wrong to her—all this money, all this manpower to do something so wholly unnatural. Maybe what’s trapped in the shale is just meant to stay there.
“Oh, look,” Mrs. Mueller says dryly. “Here comes my favorite person.”
They’re about thirty feet away from the fence when a man starts walking toward them. He’s dressed in jeans, a company polo shirt, safety goggles, and a yellow hard hat. He looks like a middle manager of some sort, the kind of guy staying at Elinor’s hotel.
“The crew doesn’t like it when I come this close. They say it’s for safety reasons, but I know it’s because they don’t want me to see what they’re up to.”
“Amy,” the man shouts, but not unkindly. “We’ve talked about this.… You’re not supposed to walk over here.…”
“I can walk wherever I want.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s just not true.”
“This is still my property.”
“I’m not arguing with you about that, but you signed an agreement.”
Mrs. Mueller laughs. “At least once a day!” She turns to Elinor. “At least once a day, one of these bloodsuckers likes to remind me that I signed an agreement, but I didn’t sign anything. My husband did, on his deathbed.” She waves her hand at the structure looming in the distance. “Will you look at all this? Look at how EnerGia took advantage of a sick old man and now his widow is stuck with a ten-year lease and this goddamn nightmare in her backyard. Does that seem right to you?” She points at Elinor’s notebook. “Write that down so people will know. EnerGia took advantage of a sick old man.”
Elinor stands stiffly, her pencil frozen above the paper, trying to remember if “bloodsucker” is an anti-Semitic term.
“Who’re you?” The man motions toward her with his chin.
“She’s a reporter. She’s here writing a story about what you’re doing to my land.”
Elinor hopes that’s not what Mrs. Mueller really thinks the piece is about. But before she has a chance to clarify, another boom shakes the ground, like a mild earthquake that might gently rattle dishes and chandeliers.
“Are you perforating?” Elinor asks loudly, a high-pitched buzz now ringing in her ears. She hopes she’s using the term correctly. She can’t imagine what else is making the ground do this, if not for subterranean explosive charges.
“It’s really not safe for you to be so close to the pad right now,” he says. “I have to ask you both to leave.”
She’s not sure what he’ll do if they refuse, but Mrs. Mueller doesn’t push back.
“Come on,” she shouts. “I can barely hear a word anyone’s saying out here.”
Elinor removes a business card from the pocket of her blazer and offers it to him. I’m not with this person, she desperately wants to say. I’m not responsible for the things that come out of her mouth. “Any chance you’d be willing to talk to me? We can do it off-the-record if you want.”
He puts his hands in the air, as if she’s trying to mug him. Then he walks back toward the rig, leaving the card untouched.
When they return to the house, Mrs. Mueller crouches beside a spigot near the back door and turns on the water. With a garden hose, she sprays the mud off her own boots before moving on to Elinor’s. The mud washes away into a small drainage ditch filled with dead grass.
“Take a good look at that,” Mrs. Mueller says, motioning toward the ground.
In the sunlight, Elinor sees an oily, rainbow-colored film coating the water. She leans over to examine it.
“Now does that look like any mud you’ve ever seen before?” Mrs. Mueller asks. “And those sons of bitches have the nerve to tell me not to worry about my well.”
Elinor nods, not certain where the oily residue is coming from—something they walked through or from the spigot itself.
She’s about to stand up when Mrs. Mueller grabs her forearm. “You’ve got to help me,” she says. “I got screwed by that company. Then I got screwed by the judge and my lawyer. It feels like I’m gonna go crazy unless someone actually helps me.”
Now come the tears that weren’t there before, welling in Mrs. Mueller’s bloodshot eyes. Elinor hesitates, unaccustomed to seeing a woman like her cry. She reaches out, about to pat her on the shoulder, when Mrs. Mueller suddenly seems to remember who she is and blinks the tears back. Her face darkens and she releases Elinor’s arm, pushing it away roughly.
“Christ. I get so emotional sometimes.” She hits herself on the leg again, a tic that must soothe her because she keeps doing it for a while, pursing her lips together until they flatten into a hard, thin line. “Come on. Let’s go in and get your shoes.”
Elinor follows her into the house, where she changes out of the rubber boots. Mrs. Mueller looks on, nearly expressionless now, as if the outburst outside never happened. As Elinor gets up to say goodbye, she sees a large, framed photograph hanging above the fireplace, which she was sitting with her back to earlier. There are at least twenty adults standing in two rows, and an equal number of children sitting on the ground. Everyone—adults and children alike—is dressed in coordinating shades of red, white, and blue. On the barn behind them, there’s a banner that reads MUELLER FAMILY REUNION 2010. Elinor scans the smiling faces, leaning in to search for Mr. and Mrs. Mueller, who are holding hands on the far left.
“That was taken right before Bill got sick.”
“Such a big family,” she says, thinking of her own, how she and Maren would stand out in a photo like this, surrounded by their towheaded cousins.
She scans the rest of the row and pauses when she reaches the end. The blond, blue-eyed woman staring back at her is so familiar. She’s seen her face before in a slightly different form. When the name finally comes to her, it feels like someone just punched Elinor in the chest, forcing all the air out of her lungs.
“Why is Leanne Lowell in this photo?” she asks.
“What do you mean, ‘Why’s she in the photo’? That’s my nephew’s wife.”
17
On her third day in New York, Elinor spotted a sign at the flower shop next to her youth hostel: CASHIER WANTED. She had no interest in flowers and no experience in retail, but all the touristy things she’d dreamed of doing—seeing a Broadway show, dancing at the Limelight, taking a carriage ride through Central Park—simply cost too much. With the help of her fellow guests, Elinor decided to apply for the cashier job and put on the nicest outfit she could assemble. A black jumpsuit from the Danish girl down the hall, a pair of white patent heels from her German roommate, and jewelry from the wealthy Italian sisters who seemed conspicuously out of place at the gritty hostel. Whenever Elinor looks back on this day, she wonders if it was fate that sent her next door to ask for the manager, dressed in her borrowed European best. Or perhaps it was fate that caused her to bump into the woman at the register, the modeling scout who was picking up flowers for her daughter’s graduation. Whatever that particular force was—fate or luck or coincidence—it feels like it’s revisiting her again.
Leanne Lowell was married to Amy Mueller’s nephew, a fact that Elinor can’t help but interpret as a sign. Suddenly, her curiosity about this woman’s life feels validated. Her desire to learn more about her disappearance does too. But the walk around Mrs. Mueller’s property added well over an hour to the visit. Then she spent another twenty minutes trying to convince Mrs. Mueller to share her nephew’s contact information, a conversation that ultimately went nowhere. Now there’s less than an hour before Elinor’s first conversation with Lydia, and she has yet to do even the most basic prep.
After a quick rinse in the shower and a change of clothes, she searches the Internet for “Lydia Griswold editor,” something she’d planned to do the night before until she decided to go to Swift’s. Elinor assumes that Lydia is an accomplished woman—she’d have to b
e, in order to have the position she does—but the bio that emerges is even more intimidating than she initially expected. Yale undergrad, summa cum laude. Two master’s degrees from Columbia—one in journalism, the other in creative writing. Four nonfiction books on American first ladies, all critically acclaimed. Eighteen years at the Standard, its first female features editor. Award after award after award. Women like this always make Elinor feel nervous, uncomfortable in her own skin. She knows she can’t compete at their level, but the urge to compare is always there.
Whenever she googles her own name, she has to wade through dozens of search results about another Elinor first—thirteen-year-old Elinor Hanson of Colorado Springs, a swimming phenomenon considered to be a top prospect for the next Summer Olympics. Elinor’s bylines don’t begin to appear until several pages later. There aren’t many of them yet, but she always feels a small flutter of pride to see her stories listed on the screen, as well as relief that her digital footprint is based largely on her current work. Despite how many photos she took over seventeen years in the business, there are actually very few images of her available online. The handful of archived catalog photos she’s been able to find make her cringe. In the late eighties and early nineties, makeup artists often had no idea what to do with her. Some tried to accentuate her Asian features, while others tried to blur them out until she didn’t look Asian at all. The result was a portfolio of photos in which she always appeared to be someone else. Years later, when casting directors began hiring more models with an “exotic” or “ethnic” look, her agent complained that she didn’t seem sufficiently grateful for the uptick in demand. Exotic or ethnic compared to whom? Elinor always wanted to ask. Why were the white girls the norm while she was the trend?