Dead Sand

by Brendan DuBois

  “Sure,” I said. His phone started ringing, but he ignored it, then rubbed at his eyes. “You heard about the special demonstration later today.”

  “I did.”

  “Laura Toles and her son, Vic, are going to be leading a march blaming us for her husband’s death.”

  “Really?”

  Ron looked at me and said, “Look, can … can we just have a normal conversation here for a couple of minutes, just a couple of guys? Not a plant spokesman or a magazine writer.”

  “You mean, off the record.”

  “If that’s all right with you.”

  I paused, then said, “All right. If you say something particularly juicy, how about I ask you about it, and if it’s okay, I attribute it to an unnamed utility official?”

  He smiled. “You know, a week or so ago, when I was getting you signed up for access, I talked to Paula and said I didn’t recognize your name, and she said you were just a columnist and were fairly new with this breaking news business—but you seem to know your way around.”

  I took out my notebook and pen. “I’ve learned from the best.”

  Another smile. “I’m sure she’d love to hear that. Sure. You hear anything earth-shattering that you want to use, I’ll see what I can do. Other than that, we’re off the record. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  He let out a breath. “Not that I’m promising anything earth-shattering, but sometimes it’s just nice to talk like a normal human being. Like the protest this afternoon. Guaranteed that Mrs. Toles and her son are going to blame us for the murder of her husband. If it wasn’t for this evil power plant and all the emotions it brings out in people, Bronson Toles would still be alive, working on a new eggplant Parmesan recipe and signing up the next great breakout folk band for the Stone Chapel. Guaranteed.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He put his hands behind his head. “Why not? We’re blamed for most everything else. Birth defects among the local population, the death of migratory birds, the lack of fish because of our cooling tunnel intakes … hell, when they started building this place more than thirty years ago, they recovered the skeletons of some Native Americans. The utility went to great efforts to rebury the remains with the assistance of local Native American groups, and to this day, we’re still blamed for building this place on an Indian burial ground.”

  “You sound like one frustrated spokesman, Ron,” I said.

  “Oh, some days,” he said, still leaning back in his chair. “You know, if we’d stop shouting at each other and stop the protests, most people would be surprised to find out how much the people who work here and the people out there demonstrating have in common.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like we both believe in conservation, for example. Better fuel efficiency for engines and vehicles. Research into alternative energy. Reduction of our dependence on foreign oil. We both believe in that—but we’re also too busy fitting into our assigned roles. The ignorant unwashed versus the corporate evildoers. Here,” he said, letting his chair come forward and spinning a framed photo around on his desk, among a couple of other framed photographs. “Does that look like a corporate evildoer who clubs baby seals on his vacation?”

  I took the frame in hand. It was a color photo of Ron wearing hiking boots, khaki shorts, and a T-shirt, holding a shovel, on a wooded trail, with two attractive young women dressed similarly and also holding shovels. “Nice pic,” I said. “Where was it taken?”

  “Up in the White Mountains, volunteering with the Appalachian Mountain Club, doing trail maintenance. Spent a glorious week up there … working hard, sleeping great, and appreciating the sights.”

  “Including the female ones?”

  He grinned. “Especially the female ones. I’ve always spent a lot of time outdoors, hiking, hunting, fishing, and when I was in college, getting my environmental sciences degree, I spent weeks up there in the White Mountains, doing research on acid rain. You know where the acid rain comes from, that kills some of our mountain lakes and ponds?”

  “Coal-fired plants out in the Midwest.”

  “Yeah,” he said sourly, “but are the protest groups out in Ohio or Illinois trying to shut them down? Nope. They’re here. Trying to shut down a power plant source that doesn’t add one molecule to the problems of acid rain or global warming.”

  He rotated slightly in his chair and said, “Not to mention adding the Russians to the mix. Christ. Decades after Chernobyl, you’d think they’d know how to run those obsolete graphite reactors. Hell, they should be shut down, but they need power so bad over there—and here? Still stuck in the 1970s. You know, most of the people out there holding the banners and flags probably think that Japan and France are the height of civilized life, with wonderful health care and employment security, but you know what?”

  “They don’t mind nuclear power,” I said.

  “You better believe it. In France, nearly eighty percent of their electricity comes from nuclear, and in Japan—which has a reason to fear the splitting of the atom—more than thirty percent comes from nuclear. And here? The so-called leader of the so-called Free World? Less than twenty percent—and we were about to kick that number up a notch when the Kursk disaster happened.” He paused, shook his head. “Fucking Russians.”

  I looked at him and said, “Still off the record?”

  “Hunh?”

  “What you just said there, about the fucking Russians,” I said. “That’d make a great quote, don’t you think?”

  Ron laughed. “What, you want me to get fired?”

  “Not particularly,” I said.

  He rocked in the chair again for a moment and said, “Tell you what. If you can keep a secret, you can attribute that quote to an unnamed New England utility official: ‘The American nuclear industry is now being crippled not because of any problem that it caused, but because of those fucking Russians.’ That way, I can get a quote out in the media that all of us here believe in, and I also get to keep my job.”

  I scribbled the words in my open notebook. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Fine.” He moved the photo around on his desk, and I noted one photograph of Ron wearing a coat and tie, standing next to an attractive woman wearing a black cocktail dress. I gestured to the photo and said, “One of your trailmates from your AMC volunteering?”

  That got me a laugh. “Clara? Only in some rural areas of the country. No, that’s my younger sister.”

  “She into the outdoors and science?”

  “Not hardly,” Ron said. “Clara’s been into music and singing since she turned twelve. Did a lot of gigs at local clubs and music halls. Came close a couple of times to breaking out and making a career out of it, but it never happened. Poor sweetie.”

  “I see,” I said, and Ron got up from his chair and said, “Look, you don’t want to be late for the next act of this circus, do you? I’ll contact security, get you an escort to the south fence.”

  I shook his hand and went out back to the lobby, where I waited for a security officer to show up. While I waited, I looked through a number of brochures in a rack by the glass doors. I picked up one brochure titled “Radiation: Our Most Misunderstood Friend” and glanced at it for a few moments until I saw the security pickup truck roll up to the entrance.

  * * *

  Back at the same outcropping of rock and dirt, there were the same lines of police officers and National Guardsmen, and I spent a few fruitless minutes looking to see if Diane Woods was on my part of the plant property, but I didn’t see her. Wearing my bright oversized press pass, I wandered over to the collection of newspaper reporters, television correspondents, and radio reporters, and I was surprised to see Paula Quinn standing by herself, staring out at the approaching crowds of protesters on the marsh.

  I went up to her, and she turned and gave me a wan smile. “Lewis.”

  “Paula,” I said.

  She said, “Let me just talk for a moment, all right? I’m doing okay. I slept a bi
t better last night, had some long talks with Mark, and we both decided that like the cowboy who falls off a horse, the best thing would be to get back on the horse and get at it again. So that’s why I’m here. Actually, I’m here for two reasons. One, to get out of my funk, and two, to get back to work. I’ve got to work, Lewis, just have to … or at my age, I have to think about starting over in something completely new, and frankly speaking, that scares the shit out of me.”

  I watched her determined face, wanting to believe every word that she was saying, but I saw only the haunted look in her eyes. “Fine,” I said. “Glad to hear it, glad to see you here.”

  She turned and looked back out at the approaching people, and I put my arm out and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze, and she leaned into me for a moment, sighed, and said, “All I know is that we’re promised something different this afternoon. You have any idea?”

  I thought about Ron Shelton’s conversation and said, “I have no doubt that they’ll blame Bronson Toles’s death on the Falconer nuclear power plant.”

  She said, “Oh, that’s not very original, Lewis. I want to see—oh, looks like it’s starting.”

  Unlike the other day, there was only one group of protesters coming to the fence. The Nuclear Freedom Front group was absent, and I had no idea what that meant. Another thing was oddly disturbing: The hundreds upon hundreds of people marching across the marsh grasses and mud were keeping silent. I didn’t hear one word. Even the banners and the balloons and papier-mâché heads were missing. All that was there was the people, coming closer and closer to the fence line.

  A shouted order from somewhere in the police line, and the police started marching down to the fence. I took a breath. I didn’t like where this was going. The other day I had thought the NFF was doing a pretty good job of being ordered and disciplined, but their opponents on the other side were putting them to shame with their own sense of power and strength.

  Paula said, her voice low, “I’m not sure what the hell is going on, but it’s creeping me out. How about you?”

  “The same,” I said, noticing that Paula was standing closer to me. Around us camera crews were focusing, zooming in on the approaching marchers. A wind came up, scattering a few dead leaves. The police marched down a slight incline to the fence. A couple of reporters tried to follow them down, but I saw Ron Shelton, in hard hat and short tan jacket, corral them and bring them back to the group. That didn’t seem to make them happy, but those were the ground rules for getting on-plant access, that one had to follow the directions of the PR folks.

  Out on the marshes, a whistle blew. The marchers halted about twenty feet away from the fence line. A few of the demonstrators, holding up orange sticks, walked up and down the front ranks of the demonstrators, dressing the line, making it more straight.

  I said to Paula, “None of the NFF demonstrators are there, see that? And the supposedly loosey-goosey unorganized group, they certainly as hell look more organized today.”

  Her voice was uneasy. “It’s like … it’s like the shooting has radicalized them. You know? The shooting … it’s changed them.”

  Sure, I thought. Changes. A lot of things had changed with the killing of Bronson Toles.

  Another blast of a whistle, and in the middle of the crowd, some of the people stepped aside, and I heard some mutters of astonishment from my fellow members of the Fourth Estate. A woman and a young man emerged from the crowd, holding hands, and Paula said, “That’s Mrs. Toles—Laura Glynn Toles—and her son, Vic.”

  Then, behind them, marching slowly and as best as they could across the uneven terrain, were six demonstrators bearing a plain wooden casket on their shoulders. Four men and two women, faces set and somber.

  “Holy Christ,” one of the newsmen with us said. “Will you look at that? They dragged that poor bastard’s body down here, just like that.”

  A woman from one of the Boston television stations replied, “I can believe that. Think of all the good coverage they’re getting for the six o’clock news.”

  Laura Toles and her son marched out about five feet in front of the line of demonstrators, and then the casket bearing her husband’s body came out and was next to them. As it had been the other day, a portable sound system was set up, a microphone placed in Laura’s hand.

  The murmuring from the press people dribbled away. I had my notebook out and saw that Paula did, too, though the hand holding a pen was trembling slightly.

  “I … I want to speak to you, to all of you, today.” Laura’s voice came out strong but quivering a bit. “I … I know that Bronson would want us to continue … that the ones … the ones who cut him down … for whatever reason … won’t be stopped … that the righteousness of our cause will strengthen us to continue…”

  She stopped and sobbed for a moment, and her son put an arm around her. Nearby a Boston television cameraman, looking through his camera, whispered, “Man, this shit is golden.”

  Laura took a breath, audible through the microphone, and pointed with her free hand to the casket. “There … in there are the mortal remains of my beloved, the one who saw things and dared to change them. My love is gone … what is left are just the bones, tissues, and remnants of what was once here, which once talked, breathed and loved and fought. His body is at peace … a body sacrificed.”

  She paused again, and it was amazing how quiet the hundreds and hundreds of people were, the ones gathered behind her, though it was easy to see that quite a few of them were weeping. “Yes … sacrificed … for I blame the powers that allowed this evil plant to be built, allowed it to operate, and still allow it to operate … though all of us know the threat it poses to us and every single living thing within miles about us. We charge everyone on the other side of that fence … charge them with complicity in the murder of my husband!”

  I thought of what Ron Shelton had told me earlier and wished I were nearer to him; I would have loved to see the expression on his face. Now the people behind her were cheering, clapping, and even booing, and Laura raised a hand and said, “Yes! Complicity in the murder of my husband, a fine man who only wanted to feed the hungry, bring music and a message to the community, and to change this place of death into a place of life!”

  More cheers, more yells, and this time, Laura allowed the noise to drift away. Her son—who looked to be in his early twenties—still had his arm around her. Laura looked back at the crowd and then to the fence line and the cops and said, “Tomorrow … tomorrow there will be a final memorial for my husband, at the Stone Chapel. Today … today we will march around the perimeter of Falconer Station, with my husband before us, to show that you may kill the messenger, you may shatter the mind that did so much for us, but you will never, ever kill the message. The messenger dies … but the message lives on! Forever!”

  The cheers rose up, louder and louder, and then the casket started moving, and the sound system was taken away, and behind the casket and Laura and Vic Toles, the people flowed along, following them, and a chant began, soft at first, but then louder and louder:

  “The people … united … will never be defeated! The people … united … will never be defeated! The people … united … will never be defeated!”

  I turned to say something amusing and pithy to Paula, but she wasn’t there.

  I looked around at the collection of reporters and cameramen.

  She was gone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I stayed for a while longer at the plant site, and when boredom set in, I left to go home. When I got there, I went to my upstairs office and wrote up the day’s events for my mistress at Shoreline magazine. I wrote about the silent crowd of demonstrators marching across the marshland, the way they opened up to display the casket of Bronson Toles, the emphatic tone of his widow’s words, and when I had wrapped up the story, I decided to throw in the not-so-gracious but entirely understandable quote from Ron Shelton about the Russians and their nuclear power program.

  About ten minutes after I had file
d the story, the phone rang, with Denise on the other end.

  “Nice piece of work,” she said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “And I love that quote about the fucking Russians. That’s beautiful. Who said it?”

  “An unnamed New England utility official,” I said. “Just like the story said.”

  “I know, but who is it?”

  “Sorry, Denise. I gave my word. No identification.”

  I waited, hearing nothing save a light hiss of static, and she laughed. “I thought you said you weren’t any good at this.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Being a reporter.”

  I said, “Just because you think I’m good at it doesn’t mean I like doing it.”

  * * *

  Later that night I sat outside on the rear deck of my beach house, watching the ocean move its way back and forth on the coast, in its never-ending motion of play. When I had finished with my Shoreline story I tidied up the joint, including wrestling with a vacuum cleaner that seemed to roll over each time I tugged on the hose. With my Martha Stewart imitation complete, I then made a quick meal of a fried ham steak and defrosted Boston baked beans, which I had earlier made from an old family recipe that belonged to Diane Woods.

  I had a light down comforter on my legs, binoculars in my laps, and a glass of Australian pinot noir in my hand. Before me was the night sky in all its splendid glory, obscured a bit by a glow to the southern and northern horizons that marked cities—but looking out to the east, the only cities were thousands of miles away. I sat and watched the slow rise of the constellations, and occasionally, when I spotted the fast-moving, unblinking dot of light that marked a satellite, I brought the binoculars up and watched the passage overhead.

  It was a little game I played with myself, to watch those speedy dots slide across my night sky. Sometimes when I observed the hard points of light, I was sure I was seeing a satellite. Anyway, I always got a kick out of seeing bits of light that grew lighter and darker as they flung themselves across the night sky, for usually that meant they represented a spent rocket booster, or some other space debris, tumbling along at thousands of miles per hour. I recalled with a smile a little story that had come out a few years ago, from a retired Soviet space scientist, who said that the millions of people who thought they had seen the first earth satellite—Sputnik—back in 1957, had in fact seen no such thing. That little point of light had been the rocket booster that had propelled the little guy into space.