O Beautiful

by Jung Yun

  She’s confused by the way Lydia refers to the women as “witches,” while also suggesting that Richard should be punished. The ideas are oppositional. One seems like the thing she’s supposed to say. The other seems like the thing she actually feels.

  “Do you believe them?” Elinor asks.

  “Don’t you?”

  The question has yet to be put to her as directly as this. She hasn’t even asked it of herself. “Yes,” she answers. And then once more, for good measure. “Yes.”

  It occurs to her that doubt never entered her mind after she spoke to Kathryn. Not only did she believe her classmates’ claims, she believed wholeheartedly in Richard’s capacity to do the things he was being accused of. She had seen, but not really noticed, variations of these behaviors all along. Favoring certain women, admiring them in ways he shouldn’t, extending favors and gestures that in retrospect seemed inappropriately grand. Elinor’s only resistance to Richard’s guilt was how it forced her to see her own actions in a sharper light.

  “I believe them too,” Lydia says. “That’s the problem. Because now I just feel like an idiot, dating someone—Christ, moving in with someone—who could do this. Me, of all people.”

  There’s a small measure of solace in the fact that a woman like Lydia was as easily taken in as she was. It makes for an uncomfortable sorority. But absent from their conversation are the women whom Richard actually harmed. Kathryn, Lauren, and Natalie to start. And there were probably others—surely there had to be others—who chose not to get involved because they were afraid. They haven’t spent a minute talking about what they went through. It’s easier to make this about themselves.

  “I think I was just excited by the idea of an accomplished man whose ego I didn’t have to baby. It’s hard finding one who’s interested in dating an age-appropriate woman instead of some pretty little thing that looks good on the arm.” Lydia pauses. “Sorry. I obviously wasn’t talking about you. You write. You have a career.” She laughs nervously, but then her voice catches. “You know, I asked him point-blank if you two had some sort of agreement about this Bakken article, and he said it wasn’t like that with you. What did he mean by that?”

  Elinor looks at her lap. It was one thing to have this conversation with Kathryn, someone whose respect she no longer cares to earn. But Lydia is different.

  “He didn’t … he never offered me things before we got together, as a way of getting us together. He didn’t have to. Honestly, when he called about the article, I had no idea any of this was going on in the background. I just assumed—” And now it’s Elinor’s turn to laugh, embarrassed by how moved she was that he’d contacted her, entrusting her with something so personally and professionally meaningful. “I assumed he’d recommended me for this because I grew up here. Because he thought I could do it.”

  Lydia is silent for a while. “Well, fuck it,” she says gruffly. “I think you can do it. And my name’s the one on the masthead.”

  It should be a relief to hear this, but it’s not. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction, not a full-throated or even genuine show of support. Still, it’s better than Lydia killing the piece because she wants to cut ties to Richard and anything he was involved in. Elinor keeps hearing the same words over and over again. Say thank you and good night. Say thank you and good night. She still has an assignment to work on. That’s more than she could have hoped for when Lydia picked up. The temptation is to end on this positive note, however hollow it might be. But she stays on the line, conscious of a nagging feeling she can’t ignore, something she also learned from Richard—to trust her instincts when they were telling her that she’d taken a wrong turn.

  “I don’t want to write the article he pitched,” she says abruptly. “That’s not what this should be about.”

  “Alright?” Lydia says uncertainly. “What’s the story, then?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it has to be about women—the ones who come to the Bakken looking for something. I want to write about the things that happen to them here. The violence and the misogyny. And race is part of this too. I’m just figuring out how.”

  Her inexperience is on full display now. No seasoned writer in her right mind would talk to an editor she barely knows like this. She’s essentially spitballing, something that Lydia probably isn’t used to because she seems thrown off guard.

  “Alright,” she repeats, elongating the word, sounding even more uncertain than she did before. “But you’re not still thinking about that woman who went missing, are you?”

  Thank you and good night. Thank you and good night.

  “She might be a part of this. I’m not sure yet. All I’m asking is that you let me try. If it doesn’t make sense to include her, I won’t. And in the end, if I give you a story that’s not worth telling, it’s exactly like you said. Your name’s on the masthead. You’ll just kill it.”

  Lydia scrapes the flint of her lighter again as she starts a new cigarette. So much time passes. It seems like she’s trying to smoke the whole thing before she decides.

  “Okay,” she finally says. “Go find yourself some women.”

  35

  Elinor sits quietly for several minutes after the call ends, relieved but exhausted. She looks forward to waking up in the morning, free to figure out the story she actually wants to tell. But first—sleep. Hours and hours of sleep to make up for the hours she hasn’t had. She locks her doors and crawls into the back seat, punching her bag with her fists until it forms a pillow. When she closes her eyes, she’s so greedy for rest, she thinks it might come to her easily for once. But only a few seconds pass before she notices it. A nearby light post, as bright as a klieg light. Even with her eyes closed, she can sense its white glow through the blacks of her lids. She slides her bag to the other side of the seat and lies down again, but the effect is even worse in this direction. She tells herself not to think about it, which of course only makes her think about it more. In a fit of desperation, she digs a sweater out of her bag and drapes it over her face, but it’s too hot to breathe so she yanks it away. Elinor returns to the front seat, brushing the staticky hair off her forehead as she surveys the cars parked nearby. Earlier, she noticed that all of them had their windshields covered. Most have their side and rear windows covered too. Now she understands why.

  She walks over to the gas station to buy a windshield screen, bracing herself for comments from the peanut gallery she has to pass. She’s relieved to find that most of the people sitting in front of their cars are couples, drinking or grilling their dinner, too distracted to register her presence. The stray aromas of food drift toward her from every direction. Hot dogs and cheap, fatty burgers, cans of baked beans with bacon. Her stomach rumbles, a reminder that she needs to eat soon. When she enters the gas station, there’s a rack of windshield sunshades displayed next to the door, outrageously priced at $39.95. She suspects she’s not the first person to wander in looking for one. Elinor quickly finds an inoffensive beach print with palm trees and sandcastles on it. What she can’t find so easily is food, other than junk food. She serpentines through the narrow aisles, seeing only chips, candy, and cookies—things that will probably make her blood sugar go haywire.

  “You don’t have any sandwiches?” she asks the kid texting behind the register. “Something other than just snacks?”

  “Sold out,” he says, not bothering to lift his eyes from his phone. “Next fresh food truck comes at 3 a.m. Diner’s still open though.”

  All Elinor wants to do is return to her car and sleep, so she grabs a bottle of water, two granola bars, and a fistful of beef jerky, individually wrapped in plastic. She declines the bag that the kid offers, a decision she regrets as soon as she leaves the store, the sunshade being larger and unwieldier than she expected. She drops the water bottle first, lunging for it before it rolls under someone’s pickup, which causes her to drop one of the granola bars. Halfway across the lot, her hands wet with condensate from the bottle, she drops almost all the beef jerky.


  “You need some help?”

  Elinor looks up. There’s a woman sitting in front of a VW van, an old one with a patchwork of mismatched and rusted replacement panels. The woman is younger than Elinor by at least a decade, a petite brunette who looks like she recently spent too much time in the sun. Although she’s thin, the low-slung angle of her chair, combined with her posture, make her stomach rise up like a table. On it, she’s balancing a can of beer.

  “I’m okay, thanks.” Elinor grabs the beef jerky pieces, which have fallen like pick-up sticks. She wonders what possessed her to buy so many.

  “You’re new,” the woman says matter-of-factly.

  Elinor doesn’t know if she means new to the Bakken or new to the parking lot. Either way, she’s not sure how she can tell.

  The woman introduces herself as Lisa and motions toward the chair beside her. “You want to sit and take a break?”

  Her car isn’t that far away. But Elinor hasn’t seen many women like this—young, alone, and seemingly receptive to having a conversation. If she’s a roughneck or even a job seeker, she’s worth stopping for. It’s just an unfamiliar situation. Women are usually more standoffish to her, bordering on dismissive. Damon once attempted to console her about this by suggesting that her looks probably intimidated people who were insecure about their own. It was the same reason he didn’t have many male friends, he reasoned. Although she knew he was trying to make her feel better, his logic always troubled her. Being attractive was supposed to be a good thing. It often seemed like the one true, good thing about her, given that people rarely commented on anything else. She didn’t like the idea of her appearance being a wall that was hard to get past. Lisa, however, shows no signs of being insecure, much less intimidated. She picks up the sweatshirts piled in the chair beside her and pats the vinyl seat.

  “Come hang out,” she says.

  Elinor sits down, resting the sunshade and snacks in her lap. On the ground, equidistant between them, is a miniature grill. Lisa gives the charcoal briquettes inside a sharp poke with the end of a stick, sending flecks of ash snowing through the air.

  “How could you tell I was new? Did I look lost or something?”

  Lisa motions toward the sunshade. “Everyone buys one of those when they first get here. Then they figure out that plain old cardboard works best.” She turns and points at her van, which has a cracked headlight and a Montana license plate hanging on by a single screw. The windshield has been plastered from the inside with flattened boxes that read ABSOLUT VODKA and OLD GRAND-DAD BOURBON. “There’s a liquor store down the road that’ll sell you those for a dollar apiece, which is kind of a rip-off since they were probably just going to recycle them. But at least it’s the cheapest rip-off in the area.” Lisa catches Elinor looking at the open tall boy in her hand. “You want one?” she asks, but she’s already reaching into her cooler, pulling out another.

  “That’s okay. I don’t want to take your beer.”

  Lisa opens the can with a loud crack and holds it out to her. “Too late,” she says, smiling. “Plus we have more in the van.”

  Elinor has no choice but to accept it now, not that she really minds. The can is ice-cold, a nice contrast to the muggy summer heat. She presses it against her forehead before taking her first sip, which goes down like water.

  “So what part of Montana are you from?”

  Lisa looks confused.

  “The license plate—it says Montana. You’re from there?”

  “Ohhhhh. No, we’re from Grand Forks. When we first got to town, we met this older guy who was just leaving. I guess he’d had it with this place, so he sold us his van for a couple hundred bucks.”

  Elinor is familiar with Grand Forks, where the state’s other air force base is located. Suddenly she has so many questions. Is Lisa from a military family as well? Why did she decide to leave her hometown? Who’s the “we”?

  “We?”

  “Me and my boyfriend. Hey, Travis!” she shouts at the van. “Travis! We got a visitor.”

  She waits, but nothing happens. “He’s beat. He just finished his first week on the job over at a site in Ruxton. We’re actually celebrating tonight.” She points at the plastic bags on the ground next to her feet. Spilling out of one of them is a Styrofoam tray of steaks marked a dollar off. The other contains a fat round loaf of bread and cans of something she can’t make out through the grocery store’s logo. “Travis!”

  Elinor is disappointed that Lisa isn’t alone. She drinks her beer faster, aware that it would be rude to leave with an almost full can, but she doesn’t want to intrude on a private celebration.

  “Is that all you’re having for supper?” Lisa asks, glancing at her beef jerky and granola bars. “You should stay and eat with us.”

  “Oh, no…” Elinor is alarmed by Lisa’s friendliness, unaccustomed to it. “I ate already. These are for tomorrow. Besides, I’m really tired…”

  The side door of the van opens and out stumbles a barefoot man with the worst farmer’s tan she’s ever seen. His chest is as white as a full moon, but his face and arms are the color of terra-cotta. Travis pulls on a T-shirt, nimbly stretching the collar away from the lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

  “Steak’s done already?” he asks, his voice a low mumble.

  “I haven’t started cooking yet. We have company.”

  “Company” is such a Midwestern word, a throwback to Elinor’s childhood when the apartment always had to be spotless in case company dropped by unannounced, which rarely happened. Sometimes, Elinor’s father would receive an invitation to visit his fellow officers’ homes and bring his family along, as if they were the jet trail he dragged behind him. Whenever they were the company, Ed insisted they all wear their nicest clothes—matching outfits and tight patent leather shoes for Elinor and Maren, a pretty dress and good jewelry for Nami—even though they usually arrived to find everyone else in jeans or shorts. He also made Nami carry the gift for the hostess, hoping the gesture might help her ingratiate herself with the other wives.

  “A good guest always has to bring something,” he said. “They don’t come empty-handed, like they’re just begging to be fed.”

  Elinor puts her beef jerky and granola bars on the folding table with a quiet “help yourself” while Travis pulls out another chair. It feels silly offering these things to them when they’re about to have dinner, so she pats herself down, wondering if she has anything else worth sharing.

  “Cigarette?” she asks, extending her pack.

  Travis waves her off, still finishing the last of his, but Lisa leans over and plucks one out.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  She lights her smoke and introduces Elinor to Travis, who seems neither bothered nor excited to have a stranger joining them for dinner. He just listens while Lisa puffs away and tells Elinor their life stories, which she merges together as if they’ve always been intertwined. Elinor learns that they were both born and raised in Grand Forks to civilian parents, and they’ve been dating since the age of fourteen, except for a two-week period in high school when Travis decided to chase after a new foreign exchange student. “Some skank from Costa Rica,” Lisa adds with a sly giggle, which fails to elicit any reaction from him. Three months ago, they came to the western part of the state because they were tired of jumping from one minimum-wage job to another. It seemed undignified—a word Lisa hits every beat of—totally un-dig-ni-fied for both of them to be approaching thirty and still earning minimum wage. Despite the warnings of the previous owner of their van, who couldn’t get hired anywhere, all the rumors they’d heard about the Bakken’s hot job market turned out to be true.

  “Now that I think about it, that guy must have had something really bad on his record,” Lisa says, pausing for Travis to chime in. “I mean, short of murdering somebody or being a kiddie diddler, anybody with half a brain can get hired in this town.” She glances at the van with a grimace. “I just hope he didn’t do any of that bad shit in there.”


  At a certain point, it becomes both noticeable and uncomfortable that Lisa is doing all the talking. Despite being interested in what she has to say, Elinor worries that Travis is unhappy about the presence of a third wheel, which is taking the focus off him and his special night.

  “Congratulations on your new job,” she says, raising her beer at him. “You just finished your first week, I heard.”

  He shrugs, plunking his can against hers without enthusiasm.

  “He’s full-time now,” Lisa says proudly.

  “Big deal,” he mutters.

  She pets him on the back like he’s a dog or a child. “He was hoping to land something that came with housing, but that’ll be the next job after this one. We haven’t even been here that long, and he’s already a full-time ginzel.”

  Oil workers have a vocabulary all their own for the myriad jobs in their industry. Some of the job titles sound made up. Roustabouts, chain hands, derrickmen, tool pushers. Elinor is vaguely familiar with the term ginzel, but she doesn’t think it’s a good word. It’s slang, if she remembers correctly, the kind of name guys use when they’re giving each other a hard time, though Lisa doesn’t appear to know this.

  “So what kind of work does that involve?” Elinor asks.

  Travis shrugs again. “Dirty shit.”

  She waits for him to elaborate, but Lisa cuts in again. “He means the grunt work that the higher-up guys won’t do.” She pokes the coals, decides they’re ready, and throws three steaks on the grill before Elinor can protest. “If you’ve never worked in an oil field before, you have to start at the bottom and pay your dues before companies will hire you for the really big money jobs. But it’s still way more than he was making back home.”

  She nods, hoping that Travis might have something more to add, but he’s just staring at the grill, absentmindedly pushing and pulling the tab on his beer can until it finally snaps off in his hand and he throws it—really hurls it—across the parking lot.