Saving Cecil

by Lee Mims

  My first thought. Call the law. Gas wells and bombs don’t mix. I jerked my iPhone from my pocket, then saw I had no signal. Thinking maybe the shed was blocking the signal, I spun around to step outside but when I got to the doorway, the door slammed shut in my face!

  Since there was no window, my world went from light to pitch black. Dumbstruck, I heard a brief fumble with the bolt latch, then a clack as someone rammed it into place. “Hey!” I yelled, pounding on the door. Then I heard Tulip growling—snarling, more precisely—some scuffling noises, a smacking sound, and one startled yelp from her.

  I went ballistic, pounding and beating on the door until I heard what sounded like a car door opening, then nothing for a few seconds, then the worst sound I’ve ever heard. The sound of someone nailing the door closed.

  I continued to beat on the latched door and hurl insults at the parentage of whoever was out there, until the hammering stopped and I realized I was hollering to no one. Silence enveloped me. Several minutes went by and all I could think of was Tulip. Fearing the worst, I called out to her.

  Within seconds I heard snuffling and whimpering at the bottom edge of the door. Relief washed over me. “Tulip!” I said. “Don’t worry, girl, I’ll get out of here in a jiffy.” I heard her whine again and lean back against the door. She was sitting guard. I turned back to face the interior and tried to feel my way to the right-hand shelf. I needed to remedy the light situation right away.

  I felt around until I found the matches and one of the hurricane lamps. After a bit of fumbling, the interior of the shed bloomed into view. I tried my iPhone again. Still no signal. Either the shed was hampering the signal or I was too far from a tower … or maybe both. I pulled out a beanbag and flopped down to take stock of my plight.

  I was miles back in the woods of North Carolina and no one knew where I was … except Bud. He knew! Sort of. I tried to replay our conversation with Chris and the wildlife officers after our lunch, remembering I’d told him I’d be flagging Lauderbach #3 before I came home. That’s when it dawned on me that he wouldn’t miss me because he wasn’t coming home. He’d said he was staying at his house since he had such an early start tomorrow. Well, damn! At least when he did notice I was missing, he’d have some information to work with.

  I tried to quell my panic when I though of how long that would take and I already had to pee. Bad! I had to get out of here. If all else failed, I had my Beretta 380, my baby nine. That would be a last resort for obvious reasons, ricocheting bullets hitting me or Tulip outside. Also, I didn’t want to use bullets I might need later. After all, the jerk or jerks who locked me in here weren’t very nice and might need a baby nine lesson before this evening was all said and done.

  I pulled the little gun from its holster and checked the clip. It was full and I had one in the chamber, so thirteen in all. Then I tried to think of other explanations as to why someone would make a bomb except to destroy the well.

  Terrorism was the only other reason I could come up with but that wasn’t logical. The woods of North Carolina aren’t exactly known as a hotbed of fundamentalist radicals. No. It made more sense that the bomb was meant for the well. We’d already been subjected to a sabotage attempt. I was convinced of that. By someone who wore New Balance tennis shoes. Seemed obvious to me that someone, not being able to stop the well from being drilled, was now determined to stop it from producing.

  It’s impossible to get into the mind of anyone insane enough to build a bomb with the intention of harming people or the economy, so the why wasn’t important right now. What was important was that at this critical time, when the well was fitted with only a temporary cap, it was at its most vulnerable. Twenty thousand pounds per square inch of pressure was sitting right out in the open with only a chain-link fence around it. In a few days, the well would have a six-foot-tall piece of equipment called a Christmas tree fitted onto the casing and a sturdy enclosure built around it.

  If a bomb were to go off now … well, what came to mind was old films of the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter—the natural gas well fire that burned out of control for six months back in 1961 and could be seen from outer space. We’d definitely be wishing firefighter, Red Adair, was still alive.

  Mental images of raging gas wells sprang to mind. I got up and frantically searched the shed again, hoping to find something I could use to get myself out of the creepy little space and go for help. After thirty minutes of sifting through everything, I was as disappointed by what I didn’t find as what I did.

  I did find a small package of hobby-grade gunpowder—primarily used in making rockets. What I didn’t find was any more fuel for the lamps. I checked each of them. At most there was a few hours of fuel left in them.

  What I desperately needed was a tool of some type that I could use to prize open the door, but I didn’t find any. No claw hammer, no crowbar. Even if I could have pulled up the floor, I’d still have needed a shovel to dig my way out since the damn thing was sitting flush with the ground. There was a small amount of space where roof and rafters met and though one of the sections of pipe was about three feet long, it wasn’t stout enough to use as a pry bar. Moreover, strong as I am, I seriously doubted that I could prize the roof away from the rafters.

  I did solve the potty problem with an empty plastic drink bottle. Exhausted and suffering a raging headache from breathing unventilated air laden with smoke and fumes from the hurricane lamp, I shut off the lamp.

  Once my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see all the cracks in the shed, lit from the outside by the bright light of a full moon. I curled up on the bean bags in the back corner for a short nap but couldn’t get comfortable, so I got up, unstrapped my Beretta, and stuffed it in my tote bag.

  Before I closed my eyes, I called Tulip through a quarter-inch crack between the floor and the wall until I heard her sniffing back at me. We commiserated until I dozed off.

  My nap lasted a few hours and helped clear my thinking. I woke resolute that the only option left to me was to blow the door open. I relit the hurricane lamp and went to work.

  It took another hour to come up with a contained explosive, which I hoped would serve to simply blow off the latch as well as the board that had been nailed to the door. I made a handy dandy little bomb by pouring a small amount of the hobby-grade gunpowder into one of the short sections of pipe. A little visco fuse and some tape from my tote and I was ready. I taped the bomb to the crack in the middle of the double doors, right over the latch. Before I lit the fuse, however, I had to be sure that Tulip would be behind the shed. I went to the far corner and called her to our communication crack. “Stay, girl!” I told her in my I’m-not-kidding-around voice.

  I removed the glass from the lamp, took three quick strides to the door, and lit the fuse. Then I blew out the lamp and jumped back into my corner. To keep Tulip from going back around to the door, I counted out loud to her as I pulled the bean bags over me. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

  Nothing.

  I pulled my fingers from my ears but kept talking to Tulip. “Stay, girl, you know, fuse burn rates can vary greatly.” I lay still, but kept talking to keep her with me.

  Still nothing. Just when I was about to peek over my quickly improvised blast shield … Kaboom!

  “Whoa!” I yelled to Tulip. “That was way bigger than … ”

  “Lawd God!” screamed a familiar voice outside.

  What the hell! I threw back the bean bags and a zillion Styrofoam beads flew everywhere. Apparently shrapnel, pieces of the exploded pipe, had ripped into them. Staggering to keep my footing on a sea of white beads and swatting furiously to clear the heavy smoke from the air, I stumbled toward the light coming from the now wide open doors.

  In the bright moonlight, I saw Luther Green sprawled on the ground, a two-by-four laying across his chest and Tulip on his head.

  “Luther?” I yelled, noticing immediately that Tulip wasn’t att
acking him. She was licking him! She wouldn’t do that if he posed a threat. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  He gently pushed Tulip aside, groaned, and sat up. “Ugh. I come looking for you. I was worried when I saw your new car still at the well but you wasn’t around. Wasn’t no one around, so I went back to the house and asked Ruby what she thought I ought to do and we got to talking about all the things what’s been going on around here and … well, I was worried something bad had happened to you. Tried to think of where you might be. Checked down at the pens. Thought you might be snooping around there again. When you wasn’t there I went to the old clay works, but you wasn’t there, so I come here … ”

  “Wait. You know about the … ”

  “Them bones that Clint was digging up? Of course, I did. Ain’t nothing goes on ’round here I don’t know about.”

  “Really?” I huffed. “Well, if you know everything that goes on around here, maybe you can enlighten me about a few things. First and most important right now, whose shed is this? What are they planning to do with the bomb they made in here?”

  “Bomb …” Luther breathed as he took my proffered hand and allowed me to help get him on his feet.

  “Yes, bomb,” I said. “Check this out.” I stood aside as Luther stepped into the shed. I followed him in, relit the hurricane lamp, and pointed to the bomb makings on the shelf.

  “Oh, lawd, what has that child done now?”

  “What child? Who are you talking about?”

  “Junior,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m talking about that sad excuse for a son. A son who is supposed to take over this business. That child ain’t never been nothing but a miserable failure at everything he tried. His momma and daddy know it too. And Ruby, she’d know it if she’d jus open her eyes. But she won’t. He was the first baby born here and he might as well have been hers. She’s doted on that boy every second of his life. He can do no wrong … ”

  “What time is it?” I interrupted, checking my watch. “Jeez! It’s almost dawn.”

  I knew Bud, Chris, and the wildlife officers would soon be in place to conduct their bust of the illegal hog hunting operation. But that wasn’t important to me now. I had to reach them. I jumped back outside the shed, jerked my iPhone from my jeans, and was relieved to see that I now had a signal.

  I tapped Bud’s number and waited. Then there was a bleep and the phone cut off. I checked the screen. The battery had died!

  Great. Now what? Luther was watching me, rubbing his chin studiously. “Luther!” I snapped. “Tell me honestly. Do you really think Junior is capable of making a bomb?”

  “Yes ’um,” Luther sighed. “I ’spect he could’ve. He’s smart enough and if he’s been doing that crack cocaine … ”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Cocaine?” I wailed. “He’s a crackhead too? Please tell me you don’t think he wants to blow up the well!”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Luther said without hesitation. “I don’t have no proof and he ain’t never said anything to me, but I know from Ruby that he thinks it’s evil. He’s very religious, you know.”

  Panic shot through me like I’d stepped into an empty elevator shaft. “Give me your cell phone,” I demanded. “Mine’s dead and I’ve got to call the site foreman.”

  “I ain’t got no cell phone. Ruby does. Just to keep up with the kids, you see, but I don’t need one. Too new fangled for me … ”

  “Come on,” I said impatiently. “We’ve got to get to the well. We can talk on the way. I want the truth about the hog operation. I want to know if Junior is involved in it, too, and if so, how. Where’s your truck?”

  Luther floored the old Chevy and we careened along the dirt paths I’d never tried to navigate. Tulip and I braced ourselves as best we could on the bench seat—she didn’t seem any the worse for wear from her encounter outside the shed—as Luther told me about how Junior’s being a sickly child had contributed to everyone spoiling him.

  “Uh-huh,” I said impatiently. “Let’s skip his early childhood and how he got to be the way he is and jump right to what’s eating him now. Why do you think he built a bomb?”

  “Well, I noticed some big changes in him once he started going to college. He was home most weekends ‘cause his daddy insisted he help in the dairy. In the last couple of years, he’s been quoting scriptures to me. Avenging kind of scriptures, you know?”

  “Not really,” I said as we broke out of the woods and made a 90-degree left turn that plastered me against the window before we straightened up and skirted a field planted in winter wheat. “What’s that got to do with the well and why he’d want to destroy it?”

  “I don’t know that he does,” Luther insisted. “I’m just saying it’s a possibility because of the way he feels about it and because he’s been acting crazy lately. Like maybe he ain’t on his meds.”

  Good Lord! Can this nightmare get worse? “Meds?” I asked tentatively.

  “Yes ’um. He’s been … er, um, hospitalized several times over the years. The Lauderbachs say he suffers from depression and mood swings but as long as he takes his medication, he’s able to, you know, deal with life. But, if he don’t, he’ll fall into ranting about the devil and how everyone’s out to get him. I don’t know if there’s a name for his problem. I just know he can get real sick at times.”

  Paranoid schizophrenia comes to mind. I rubbed my temples. My head was still pounding from breathing lamp fumes. “What about the hog operation,” I asked as we rounded a corner of the wheat field and cut a sharp right into the woods that sheltered Cecil’s fossilized bones. “Was he involved in that?”

  “Now, Miz Cooper, I done told you …”

  “You can skip trying to make me think I just dreamed seeing feral hogs in some of your pens. I know all about Mr. Fred Butcher and how he organizes expensive hunts for ‘sporting swine,’” I said, making air quotes he probably didn’t see in the dark cab of his truck.

  “Don’t nobody know about that,” Luther snapped, losing his soft southern drawl. “Not even Mr. Lauderbach and it needs to stay that way. I’ve got two girls at expensive colleges and my boy gonna be attending in another year. I need extra money and what we’ve been doing ain’t hurting no one but them sorry hogs and they need killing! They’re tearing up crops, even lost a sickly calf to one.”

  “Be that as it may,” I said. “I tried to get you to tell me about it that day when I found the pens and you wanted to play dumb. When I told Mr. Lauderbach about what I suspected …”

  “You done told him about it?” Luther asked incredulously. “Now why’d you want to go and do something like that?”

  “Because in case you’ve forgotten, someone has already been killed by a hunter and I’m bringing in a team of paleontologists to finish excavating the fossil Clinton found—with the blessings of the Lauderbachs, I might add—and I can’t take a chance of someone else getting killed. Come hell or high water, we’re getting that fossil out so that kid, Clinton, will have accomplished something lasting in his life!”

  “If that’s the case, then seems to me like you’d want me to kill all the hogs. Ain’t you seen their tracks down in the clay pits? It’s a wonder they ain’t rooted that creature up by now. And for your information, Clint wanted ’em dead. He knew they were a danger to his work.”

  “He talked to you about the fossil?”

  “Yes ’um.” Luther said, pulling to a stop in front of the very hog pens where I’d been chloroformed.

  “Why are we stopping here?”

  “I got something to show you,” Luther said, climbing out and heading to the feeding shed.

  “Come back here!” I shouted, but he was gone. I jumped out, closing Tulip in the cab, and followed him into the dark shed. I grabbed his arm and shook him. “Don’t you understand? We’ve got to get to the well! What if Junior strapped a bomb on the temporary cap? People cou
ld be killed! Your boss will be wiped out financially and you’ll be out of work!”

  “Just one sec, Miz Cooper,” he said as he reached in a bag. “You need to see this.” He stepped around me and stood silhouetted in the doorway holding something in his closed fist.

  “Okay,” I snapped. “Then, please, take me to the well!” Pointedly, I looked down and fell for the oldest elementary school trick in the books. Luther tossed some type of funky hog feed in my face.

  Blinded and choking, I staggered backward and tripped over my own feet onto my butt just in time to hear the shed door slam! “God dammit!” I yelled, scrambling to my feet. “Not again! Luther! Let me out!” Rubbing my hands against the rough wood, I tried to find the latch in the pitch dark. It didn’t take long to ascertain there wasn’t one. “What’s with you people?” I yelled. “You’ve never heard of two-way latches?”

  The only response from the other side was the snap of a hasp closing, but my intuition told me Luther was still standing on the other side. Maybe he was considering whether he’d made a big mistake. Thinking maybe if I just talked to him, he’d come to his senses, I bit my tongue and sucked in a deep, calming breath.

  “Please, Luther,” I begged. “For the love of God, help me. Don’t let this day dawn on a tragedy so catastrophic it can never be set to right.” I gave him a few facts about gas well fires, how hard they are to contain, thus the need for the Red Adair types who are few and far between. The silence between us was deafening, but dammit, I knew he was standing just inches—and a stout wooden door—from me.