by Jung Yun
The volume of what she sees differently disturbs her. But then there are the women. Not just the women she interviewed but the ones she didn’t. If she ever crosses paths with Shawnalee Turner Whitebush again, she’ll tell her she knows the number now. Twenty-eight Mahua women, teenagers, and girls have been reported missing in the state over the past two years, a figure that’s both shockingly high and surely an undercount. For several hours, Elinor descends into a rabbit hole of names and faces and information. Rarely do the articles about missing or murdered Mahua women run longer than a paragraph or two. Some aren’t even articles at all, just public Facebook posts written by family members or old police reports uploaded to the Internet with a photo and a request for assistance that probably never arrived. Now she understands why Shawnalee responded so furiously when she asked about Leanne Lowell, whose disappearance received more attention than all these other cases combined. Lydia gave Elinor an opportunity to write a story, nearly any story of her choosing, about women in the Bakken. And the one she keeps circling back to is the one that everyone has already been conditioned to care about.
Elinor turns around in her chair, distracted by a nearby noise. The man who was sleeping in the beanbag when she first arrived has moved on, his spot now occupied by another man who whistles when he snores. She wakes up her laptop with a tap of the keyboard, intending to block out the sound with some music. When her notes reappear on the screen, she sees two small icons in the upper right-hand corner of her Google doc. The red circle contains her initials, EH. The blue one, the one she’s almost certain wasn’t there earlier, says RH. Richard Hall. The two of them are logged into the same document. Slowly, she scrolls through the pages until she finds the blinking blue cursor labeled with his initials. Beneath it, she types:
What are you doing here?
She waits for a response. When one doesn’t materialize, she wonders if the icon was always there and she just didn’t notice. She’s tired after all, operating on too little sleep. Maybe he left the document open on his computer and forgot about it, although that still doesn’t explain why he accessed the file. She deletes her question slowly, letter by letter, unable to shake the feeling that he’s watching her do it.
I created this folder.
She stares at his reply for almost as long as he stared at her question. These aren’t the first words she expected them to exchange after recent events.
But this is my assignment now.
Then you should have downloaded my folder to your computer instead of leaving it on the cloud.
Elinor sits back in her seat, studying his responses, neither of which sound the least bit contrite.
That still doesn’t explain why you’re lurking around in my notes.
Is that what I do now? I “lurk”?
Without seeing Richard’s face or hearing his voice, it’s hard to tell what kind of mood he’s in, whether it’s dark and morose, or sarcastic and unrepentant. She imagines it’s the latter, shaded with the former.
You’re still not answering the question. Why are you looking at my notes?
I was curious to see how you were doing out there.
Why?
Because it’s something to do.
The typing slows.
Because I’m trapped up here at the country house, about to lose my mind.
It’s rare for Richard to acknowledge anything resembling a struggle. She’s glad to hear him experiencing one now. His life has been gilded and golden for so long, with his exclusive park and expensive whiskeys and organic weed. Even his house in the Catskills, which he makes out to be some sort of prison, is one of the most beautiful places she’s ever visited. He’s probably in his study, sitting at his desk and looking out the window at the wooded green view down the hill.
Are you sorry for what you did to those women?
No pleasantries, then? We’re just going to jump straight to this?
She cuts and copies her original question.
Do you know how many of my colleagues have dated their graduate students? Some of them even dated an undergrad or two.
There’s a difference between dating and sexual harassment.
Should you really be explaining this to me? YOU?
So—clearly not sorry?
It doesn’t matter if I am or not. I think we both know that. I’m going to be erased no matter what.
So, not sorry.
The man in the beanbag mutters something angrily in his sleep. Then he shivers and curls up into a ball.
I called last night and ended up talking to Lydia.
She mentioned.
Why did you ask her to reassign your article to me? What were you hoping for?
What do you mean? Hoping for?
Did you think if I owed you something, I wouldn’t talk to Kathryn and the others? Because I couldn’t actually help them with their case. You know that, right?
I told Liddy to give you the assignment because it was your story.
She thinks she must have misread the sentence, but when she reads it again, it still makes no sense.
How was it my story?
Richard doesn’t respond for a while. She glances at his icon, confirming that he’s still logged in.
Because you were the one who first told me about the boom. You’re the reason I got interested in what was happening out there to begin with. It was your story, so I asked Liddy to give it back.
His answer should come as a relief to Elinor, but it doesn’t. Why did she never think of the story as hers before? Why didn’t she understand that he’d taken something from her until now? When they were dating, she used to read him excerpts of articles about the Bakken and imagine out loud how strange it must be for a town as historically white and segregated as Avery to diversify overnight. She didn’t realize that he’d been listening all that time. How shameful that she often assumed he wasn’t, and yet she still stayed.
Did you ever suspect Amy Mueller of being a racist?
No. Is she?
Maybe. Possible white separatist leanings.
Jesus, no. I didn’t pick up on that at all.
Why would you? she wants to ask. And then, because she knows this is probably the last conversation they’ll ever have, she simply writes back.
Why would you? You never had any reason to notice.
He doesn’t reply for a long time—so long that she imagines several things he might be preparing to write in response. All cutting, all unkind. But when he finally begins to type, the words that appear on the screen are unexpected, almost startling in their grace.
Like I said—it’s your story. You were always the one who needed to tell it.
She sits in silence with this, wishing it didn’t feel good to be reaffirmed by this man, wishing she didn’t still value his experience and advice. But despite Richard’s many sins, the uncomfortable truth is that he taught her well.
So what do you do when a story doesn’t feel right? Like you thought it should be one thing, but it’s so much bigger than that one thing alone?
If you have to ask, El, then you already know.
41
Officer Peterson wants her to guess how many emails she sent to the police department about scheduling her ride-along. She opens the mail app on her phone to count, but he waves her off.
“No, just guess.”
They’re driving along Main Street in his squad car, a Dodge Charger that smells even newer than her rental. Elinor is in the passenger seat, hugging her bag to her chest. She sent a lot of emails. She wonders if she was assigned to Officer Peterson as some sort of punishment. It’s been less than twenty minutes since they met at the station, and already, his energy is starting to grate.
“Oh, come on, guess.”
“I don’t know. Maybe four or five?”
“Nine!” he says with a laugh. “And that was before you got the town manager involved. He sent a bunch more.”
She’s not sure what his point is, except to suggest that she’s been a
pain in everyone’s ass, including his. She hugs her bag tighter, trying to contain herself. All she wants to talk about are the upside-down flags. Is it common for people in the area to fly them this way? Do they mean what she thinks they mean? Her list of questions feels long and urgent, but something tells her to hold off, to get a better sense of who she’s talking to before introducing a subject that might reflect badly on his town. A hit job, she thinks, unable to strike that phrase from her mind now.
“So how did you get picked to do this?” she asks. She scans the inspirational rubber bracelets on his wrist, the hair buzzed high and tight like her father’s, the blond sideburns almost invisible against his skin.
“They always tag me for these public affairs jobs, probably because I was born here, so I know the area. Plus, I joined the department in 2002, so I can talk about how the work changed after the boom, assuming you’re interested in that.”
She is interested, but she’s also distracted, struggling to make sense of so many competing things. She regrets not postponing the ride-along for another night, but there was no guarantee her contact would let her reschedule on such short notice. She looks out her window at the blur of passing storefronts, resisting the urge to rest her forehead on the glass. Among the thoughts she keeps circling back to is an assignment she wrote during her last semester of grad school—a profile piece about an elderly Chinese tattoo artist with a shop on the Bowery and a cultlike following that paid his steep prices without complaint. Mr. Liu was the person she’d sought out to replicate the tattoo on her left forearm, extending the pattern seamlessly from shoulder to wrist. Six months later, she returned to him to re-create the same sleeve on her right arm. Originally, Elinor had planned to highlight the similarities between Mr. Liu’s struggles as an artist and an immigrant, but the essay soon spiraled out into something else. In an effort to explain how they first met, she found herself writing at length about her tattoos, which she eventually described as a misguided attempt to create her own armor, to disinvite people from looking at her after decades of believing she was worth more if they did. The professor she submitted it to said it was a poor example of a profile, which was supposed to focus on the subject, not the writer. But he couldn’t deny that something about the piece opened up and broke free when she did.
“Hey, are you … you doing okay over there?” Officer Peterson is stopped at a red light. He’s leaning forward in his seat, looking at her.
She turns to face him, not certain how long she drifted off. “Sorry. I’m just processing,” she says, which is actually true.
He half smiles, half frowns at her. “If you don’t mind me saying, after all those emails you sent, I kind of expected you to have more questions.”
She nods, realizing this was the point he was trying to make all along.
“Isn’t there anything you want to ask me about the town? Or about the Lowell case? You said you wanted to talk to someone who worked on that.”
She doesn’t remember sending nine emails, much less what she wrote in them. But she doesn’t put it past herself to make this request at the height of her interest in Leanne’s disappearance. Although her interests have shifted now, there’s still some overlap that he might be able to address, but she finds herself resisting the urge to ask too directly. “What can you tell me about those roughnecks who were attacked after she went missing? The two who ended up in the hospital?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything, really.” She waits a beat, hoping he’ll share whatever comes to mind, but he doesn’t. “Were the people who did that to them ever caught?”
He shakes his head. “Unfortunately, no. Both those cases are still open.”
“Would the department be able to help me get in touch with them?”
“Possibly.” Officer Peterson lowers his window as they pass a church. He waves and gives a thumbs-up to the man who’s changing the letters on the sign out front. SLOW DOWN BECAUSE GOD IS WATCHING, the sign reads. “Hey! Good one, Arnie,” he shouts.
Arnie waves back.
“It might take a while to find them, though,” he continues. “I’d be willing to bet they aren’t in the area anymore.”
This seems like a bad bet to take him up on, given that the men had been attacked and beaten within an inch of their lives. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s just what roughnecks do. They move around from one place to the next, following the money. Why would you even want to talk to those guys after two years anyway? Seems like you’d just be bringing back bad memories for them.”
“Well, because the racial angle interests me.” She watches him frown again, more confused than irritated now. “My understanding is that they were targeted because they were Black and Latino.”
“Honestly, I think the papers made way too much of that. It was probably just a coincidence. The bigger issue was that they were two roughnecks in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that case kicked up a lot of bad feelings toward anyone who wasn’t from here before the boom.”
Her father had the same privilege that Officer Peterson is exercising now, assuming that race had nothing to do with the things that happened. Listening to her mother lose those arguments again and again doesn’t particularly motivate her to debate this issue with a stranger. It also confirms something deep in her gut that says he’s the wrong person to ask about the flags.
At the intersection ahead, two teenage boys are standing on the corner, shouting at passing cars. Shouting what, she can’t make out, but they seem to think they’re being hilarious. Officer Peterson pulls up next to them and lowers Elinor’s window. He leans his elbow on the center console and stares at them, not saying a word, while the boys look up and around—at the sky, the streetlights, the signage on the storefronts—desperate to avoid eye contact. When the light turns green, he revs the engine and drives on. He doesn’t notice, as Elinor does in her side-view mirror, that both boys are giving him the finger.
“That kind of public nuisance stuff was about as rowdy as things ever got when I first started. Back then, it was just me and eight other officers.” He adjusts his rearview mirror, quickly taking stock of his reflection while he does it. “Now there’s thirty-nine of us, which still isn’t enough to handle the kind of action we see here, especially on weekends. If we don’t get some money to hire and keep up with all these newcomers soon, this place is going to turn into the Wild West.”
One of the women she interviewed at the diner used this term too. Elinor surveys the length of Main Street, which doesn’t look particularly wild. With the exception of the boys they just passed, the whole stretch is actually quiet for a change, without the heavy foot traffic or long lines she’s used to seeing. The nine-to-five businesses are closed now, while most of the bars and clubs have yet to open. It’s that transitional part of the early evening when the daytime people are heading home and the nighttime people are at home getting ready.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “But it’ll pick back up. It always does. You’ll have plenty to write about.”
She gets the sense that Officer Peterson is trying to convince her how necessary the police are in Avery, probably in the hopes of securing a line or two in her article about the need for more funding. She doesn’t doubt this would be helpful. But the way he talks about the boom—like it’s a switch that suddenly flipped on and changed everything—doesn’t sit right with her.
“It sounds like you’re saying there weren’t any serious crimes in the area before all the newcomers.”
“Serious.” He hooks his fingers in the air, making quotes. “I guess it depends on how you define ‘serious.’ But it definitely wasn’t as bad as it is now. Now we’re dealing with assaults, rapes, drug trafficking. That Lowell woman going missing. Two murders in the past year alone. Things like this never used to happen here.”
This is similar to what she said to Lydia, which is similar to what the town manager said to her. But repeating a falsehood ove
r and over again doesn’t make it true.
“Everything you just mentioned has been happening on the North Fork for years. The only reason we’re talking about it now is because it’s happening to a different group of people.” She didn’t mean to contradict him so directly, but hearing his act of erasure made her own offense so stark. She doesn’t want to keep repeating her mistake or be an accomplice to someone else’s. But now here she is, stuck in the awkward aftermath, a moment that can’t possibly last forever but feels like it might. Slowly, she looks over at him to find that he’s looking at her.
“Technically, that’s correct,” he says, his words careful, his enunciation crisp. “But the tribal police are responsible for what happens on the reservation. I was just talking about the Avery PD’s jurisdiction.”
Their conversation dries up for several blocks until the radio chirps mercifully and a dispatcher requests units to an address somewhere on Sixth Street.
“Alright. We’re off,” he says, turning on his lights and siren.
She reaches for the handle above the door and grabs hold as Officer Peterson does a wild U-turn. The move seems overly aggressive given how thin traffic is. It feels like he’s being dramatic on purpose, either to put on a show for her or to make her shut up.
By the time they reach the call address—a quiet residential street lined with modest ranch-style houses—another unit is already on the scene. An officer is talking to a middle-aged man who apparently refused a Breathalyzer and roadside sobriety test. His SUV is parked on someone’s lawn, the giant tires having torn up the nicely kept grass. A broken mailbox post lies a few feet away; the mailbox itself, a few feet farther. Another officer is talking to the homeowner, a woman with a baby perched on her hip and a toddler tugging on her leg. Several neighbors are watching the commotion from the safety of their front steps. Most of them are elderly. All of them are white.
When Officer Peterson gets out of the car, Elinor scans the houses on both sides of the street looking for upside-down flags, but sees none, just the amber glow of lights clicking on in living rooms and kitchens. She wishes it didn’t have to be like this. A couple of people hang their flags upside down, and now here she is, looking for others. For the rest of her life, she’ll always be looking for them, wondering what they might mean.