Dead Sand

by Brendan DuBois

  She stayed quiet as I made my way through the wet streets, then said, “Thanks for the offers.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You could have told me earlier.”

  “I could,” I admitted, “but I didn’t want to get into an involved discussion at a stop sign while you were getting more drenched.”

  I sensed a smile from her side of the Explorer. “All right. I accept your offer.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one where I spend the night on your couch. I don’t want you spending any money on me.”

  “That’s a deal, then.”

  “Oh, and just so we’re clear…”

  “Haleigh, I’ve just come from the hospital, where an old friend of mine is in shock and is being admitted. That’s all I have on my mind right now. I promise you a comfortable, warm, and safe night. That’s all.”

  “Oh,” she said again. “I’m sorry … is she going to be all right?”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  She folded her arms, then unfolded them, then ran her hands over her wet peasant skirt. “Bronson … I can’t believe Bronson is dead. I just can’t believe it.”

  Then she started crying again as I sped up the Explorer.

  * * *

  My small house is on Tyler Beach, directly across the street from the Lafayette House, an old Victorian-style hotel that’s been on Atlantic Avenue for more than a hundred years. I went through the hotel’s parking lot—situated on my side of the street—to the lot’s northern end, where some rocks had been moved away to allow a small dirt lane that leads down to my home. It’s two stories tall, weather-beaten, with a scraggly lawn and a sagging shed off to the right that serves as a garage. I pulled into the garage, and we both got out and sprinted to the front door. I got the door unlocked, we got inside, and I took our wet coats and hung them in the near closet.

  Next to the closet was a closed door that led to the small cellar, and over both doors were wooden stairs that went up to the second floor. To the left was a small living room and sliding glass doors for the rear deck, overlooking a rocky portion of the coastline and the Atlantic Ocean. Adjacent to the sliding glass doors was a tiny kitchen, and everything was small and cozy, because at one time, more than a century ago, my house had been a lifeboat station to rescue mariners out on the ocean.

  I went into the living room, turned on a couple of lights and kicked up the oil furnace, and in a few moments, warm air started cascading into the room. Haleigh rubbed at her arms and said, “Nice place.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It works for me.”

  She stepped up to the glass doors and said, “I bet when it’s sunny outside, you get a wonderful view out there.”

  “I surely do.”

  She looked through the glass, out at the rain-swept darkness. Her voice was quiet now, almost melancholy. “A view like this is a dream for most people, do you know that, Mr. Cole?”

  “Mr. Cole is what people called my father. Please call me Lewis.”

  She gave me a quick smile. There was a dimple in one cheek. “All right, Lewis … a dream, that’s what it is … and for Bronson, a way of offering a view of a clean, healthy environment, no matter where you went in this world was a dream worth pursuing, a dream worth keeping—and now he’s dead.” Haleigh wiped at her eyes. “Who do you think did it?”

  I went over to the refrigerator and opened it up, just seeing what I had to offer my unexpected houseguest. “These are passionate times, you know. The economy is staggering, jobs are hard to get, energy is expensive. Then you have something like the Falconer Unit Two project, which promises jobs and more power down the road … and you have Bronson opposing it … people’s passions rise up.”

  Another wipe to the eyes. “You think somebody who supports the power plant did it?”

  I closed the refrigerator door. “Or somebody who thinks Bronson didn’t do enough, maybe one of those Nuclear Freedom Front folks—or something else. I just don’t know. What I do know is that you’re soaked to the skin, and even with the heat on, you can’t be comfortable.”

  She said nothing, just looked at me calmly. I went on. “So why don’t you go upstairs, and at the top of the stairs is a bathroom. Duck in and take a shower. In the bathroom is a washer and dryer. Toss your clothes in the dryer, they’ll probably be dried by the time you’re done—and, Haleigh?”

  “Yes?”

  I stayed in the kitchen, behind a waist-high counter that separated us. “I’ll stay down here, and the bathroom door locks from the inside. So no worries, okay?”

  She nodded, then went upstairs, and I heard the door close, and I listened, but I didn’t hear the snap of the lock. In a few minutes I heard the humming of the dryer in action and the rush of water into the shower.

  * * *

  I switched on the television, checked the time, saw that I could probably catch a top-of-the-hour newscast in a few minutes, and then looked at my telephone and nearby answering machine, which was blinking a green numeral 2 at me. Two messages. I hit the PLAY button, and there was a whir-whir as the tape rewound, and then the messages started.

  Beep. “Lewis? Denise Pichette-Volk here. I heard about the shooting at the rally this afternoon. I trust you were there. I want some details. Call me.”

  Click, followed by another beep. “Hey, writer man,” came the low, female voice, and I smiled and the room instantly felt warmer. “Annie calling, from the campaign trail. Give me a ring, no matter the time. I doubt I’ll be sleeping … Ta.”

  I erased both messages, got the phone, and dialed a number from memory. It rang three times, and then a woman’s whisper answered. “Yes?”

  “It’s writer man,” I said. “Remember me?”

  A slight giggle. “Hold on. I need to leave this meeting.”

  In the background I could make out a slight babble of voices, and then Annie’s voice came in clear and sharp. “Whew, nice timing,” she said. “You got me out of a meeting discussing the best ways to allocate our resources to certain congressional districts and vital precincts and so forth and so on.”

  “Where are you?”

  She sighed. “If this is Thursday, then it must be Virginia—and tomorrow will be Kentucky, and the day after that … Indiana. I think.”

  “Days like these, bet you miss the quiet life of New Hampshire.”

  “Hah,” she said. “My last couple of months in New Hampshire were anything but quiet, thanks to you and the senior senator from Georgia.”

  “How’s Senator Hale doing?”

  A breath from her. “All right. The race is tightening, which is good, because that usually means it breaks for the challenger, and he’s holding up well, with all the airplane food, banquet chicken, and fourteen-hour days—as is his gorgeous and efficient staff.”

  I paused, then said, “How about the senator’s wife?”

  Annie said, “In Alaska. Then Nevada. About as far west as possible.”

  “Good.”

  “I agree,” she said. “So what have you been up to, my friend?”

  I switched the phone receiver from one ear to the other. “I was out covering an antinuke rally in Falconer earlier today. There was a shooting.”

  “God, anybody hurt?”

  “Killed. A guy named Bronson Toles. Antinuke activist and owner of a local club and restaurant.”

  “Any arrests?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Looked like a shooter hiding in the woods … and another thing. You remember Paula Quinn?”

  “Sure,” she said. “The reporter that you had a brief thing with few years back.”

  “She was standing right next to Bronson when he got hit. She got sprayed by blood, brain, and bone from the poor guy. She’s at the hospital in Exonia being treated for shock. Among other things.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Lewis, is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  Upstairs I heard the shower switch off. “Well…”

  “Go on. You’re definitely breakin
g up a long workday.”

  “Well, there’s this college coed. Name of Haleigh Miller. She’s upstairs taking a shower.”

  “Any particular reason why?”

  “She got caught in a rainstorm and was soaked to the skin.”

  “You peek in on her while she was showering?”

  “Gave that up a while ago,” I said. “Not enough of a challenge.”

  That brought forth a laugh, and I said, “She was next to me at the shooting and got caught up in the chaos afterward. Almost got hurt. She’s pretty shook up about the killing, and instead of sending her off to spend the night in a wet tent with the rest of her antinuke friends, I offered her my couch.”

  “My noble writer man,” Annie said. “How sweet—but it had better be just the couch, or I’m going to go medieval on your ass at some time.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’m a woman, with appropriate and magical powers,” she said, “and after Indiana—I’m begging for at least a twelve-hour pass to New Hampshire, where you will have the distinct privilege of wining, dining, and bedding me, not necessarily in that order.”

  My heart rate picked up a bit. “For real?”

  “For real. How does Monday sound?”

  “Sounds like a date,” I said. “No matter what nonsense is going on down in Falconer.”

  She paused, and I could hear the murmur of voices in the background, and there was a sigh and she said, “The demands of democracy are chomping at my ankles, wanting me back in the conference room. I’ll let you know later the particulars of my trip to your fair state. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Sweet,” she said. “Miss you.”

  I said the same in return, but by then, she had switched off.

  I hung up the phone, thought about the first message of the night, and decided one phone call to a female per night was going to be enough.

  * * *

  It being the top of the hour, I turned on the television and got an update from the local cable all-news channel. Not surprisingly, Toles’s death was the lead story of the hour, and there wasn’t much footage of the actual shooting. The television cameras were under the burden of taking their footage from ground level, so what one saw on the screen was a mass of people, heads and shoulders mostly blocking everything, and the upper torso and head of Bronson Toles, speaking as he did, and then the first chaos when the NFF youths jumped up and hijacked the proceedings, and then I made out Paula Quinn coming into view, followed by—

  Gunshot. The camera tilted and there was lots of movement, shouts, and cries, and then a stand-up from a reporter outside the Exonia Hospital, stating the obvious, that Bronson Toles had died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Then that was followed by a quick interview with a bulky detective from the New Hampshire State Police, who didn’t have much to say, and then by a couple of antinuke protesters, who promised to redouble their efforts to close down Falconer Unit 1 and prevent the construction of Falconer Unit 2.

  No report was made of an assistant editor from the Tyler Chronicle who had also been injured during the shooting.

  There were footsteps coming down from upstairs. I switched the television to the History Channel and got up to greet my guest.

  * * *

  Haleigh Miller came down, smiling shyly, looking about five years younger than when she went upstairs. I got up and headed to the kitchen, and she intercepted me, and after a few moments of polite give-and-take, I let her take charge in my kitchen. About a half hour later, we were eating an egg-and-cheese dish that had a number of vegetables in it and was pretty good, considering most vegetables and I aren’t on speaking terms.

  Eventually she said, “I haven’t properly thanked you, you know.”

  “For what? Shelter and a shower were pretty easy, and though I supplied the ingredients, you made the meal.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Back at the campground, after the shooting … I was trapped, Lewis. Trapped against the stage when all those people were pressing in against us, and I thought for sure that my throat was going to be crushed. You saved me.”

  “Easy enough to do.”

  She shook her head. “No … no, it wasn’t. I get the feeling that some of my buds from UNH, if they were there, would’ve stood there, shocked, but you didn’t. You moved. You took action. So thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, “and it’s my turn to thank you. Where did you learn to cook so well?”

  She dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin. “The Stone Chapel. I started working there a couple of years ago as a waitress, when I was in high school in Dover, and then I learned to do some short-order cooking, and then became sort of an assistant manager, helping out where I could. That’s when I got to know Bronson Toles, and later, his wife and his stepson, Victor. It’s … it’s a special place. Hard to believe it’ll be the same with Bronson gone.”

  “What made it so special?”

  A gust of rain hammered at the sliding glass doors that led to the rear deck. “Oh, it was a job, but it was more than that. Bronson made it feel like you were part of a family, part of a movement. I mean, we worked hard, especially when we had group nights, when musicians came in to play. We even had a softball team that played restaurants in the area during the summer. When we worked, it could get very, very busy … but other times, Bronson would just talk and we’d listen, and argue, and learn from each other.”

  “What kind of things did you learn?”

  She smiled. “It sounds strange, telling you here, and not at the Stone Chapel. It just sounds … pretentious, I suppose, to say such things in your house, but not at the chapel. Anyway, we learned about resistance, nonviolent disobedience, the teachings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mandela—and Bronson made the connection, you know? That small, safe, renewable energy is the key to changing our society. Once we’re not held hostage to large corporations, large utilities, large government, we can take control of our lives and our communities, and, well, I guess I’ve talked too much, hunh?”

  I finished off the last bit of our dinner. “No, not at all. So opposing Falconer and the new reactor—what do you hope to achieve?”

  A shy smile. “By taking over Falconer, by doing what we can to convert it to something else safer and more reliable, we hope to start a change, a revolution in the way we think and the way we make electricity. Something so simple but so right.”

  I took a sip of ice water and said, “So no nukes, right?”

  A firm nod. “Right.”

  “What, then?”

  “Mmm?”

  With my fork I pointed to the lights overhead. “Those lights, that stove, and the hot water you just used for your shower, that’s all powered by electricity, and that electricity comes from the power plant in Falconer. So does about twenty percent of this country’s electricity, produced by the splitting of atoms. So you shut down Falconer, what then? I’m sure you’re not in favor of oil, natural gas, or coal. All produce greenhouse gases.”

  “There are other sources … like wind, solar, hydro.” Her voice was hesitant.

  “Absolutely,” I said, “but there was a proposal to build a wind farm off of Cape Cod, wasn’t there? Give the Cape about two-thirds of its electricity, but the local landowners and politicians didn’t want the windmills spoiling their view—and it’s still being challenged in court. Solar is fine in some parts of the country, but look at the weather out there—not much solar can do if you have this kind of rainy and cloudy weather off and on. As for hydro, that means dams, and do you think anybody will be building any more dams down the road, disrupting the free flow of rivers?”

  Her face seemed a bit flushed. “So nuclear is the answer, then?”

  I wiped my hands with a napkin. “Depends on the question, I guess. On the plus side, the safety record in the States is pretty good, it doesn’t contribute any greenhouse gases to the environment, and—”

  She leaned over the counter. “That’s just the surface, Lew
is! There’s the destruction of the ecosystem when the nuclear power plants get built, the degradation when uranium is mined and milled and processed, the cost of the steel, iron, and concrete, the fuel from all the construction vehicles … you’ve got to look below the surface, Lewis. That’s one of the things Bronson taught all of us, that there’s more to what goes on than what we see. And—” Haleigh suddenly got quiet. “I get the feeling you’re mocking me.”

  “Not at all.”

  “You think you have all the answers, do you?”

  “Not for a second. I know I just have most of the questions.”

  She said, “I know I’m young, I know I think I know it all—but when you were my age, weren’t you committed to something? Didn’t something worry you so much that you devoted your time and life to it? Something that you were passionate about?”

  Something cold and tasteless seemed to tickle at the back of my throat. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Okay, but it was something, wasn’t it? What was it?”

  I sighed. “Something that was in this world for just over seventy years. A place that some called the evil empire.”

  Her face was a mix of curiosity and puzzlement. I went on. “The Soviet Union.”

  “Oh. So, what did you do, then?”

  “Right after college I went to work for the Man, otherwise known as the Department of Defense. As a research analyst.”

  Then she smirked, and I suppose I shouldn’t have taken offense, but I did.

  “Something funny?”

  She shook her head. “No, no, no. It’s just that the Soviet Union … for me and everyone else I know, that’s just ancient history, that’s all. It’s just that it’s hard to believe that so much energy and billions of dollars were spent on a threat that turned out to be no threat at all. Bronson once spent an evening telling us the truth about that, how the threat from the Russians was just made up by the military-industrial complex to seek bigger budgets for the Defense Department and defense companies. No offense.”