The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  “This is getting more fun all the time,” Tony said, grabbing Mike excitedly by the arm.

  “We’re certainly not wanting for means, are we?” Mike said.

  “But we are for time,” Mitch reminded them.

  “Yes, we’d better get moving,” Lisa said, looking at her watch. “That guard won’t be out indefinitely.”

  “I’ll tell you what, you guys take care of this stuff, load it onto the truck, and I’ll go down and see if I can start the dozer. Okay?”

  “That sounds like a plan, Carlos,” Heidi said. “Mitch…Whit—one of you wanna start the truck?”

  “I’ll do it. Is that okay with you, Mitch?”

  “Hey, break a leg, Whit!”

  While Carlos trotted off to see if he could start the bulldozer, the rest of the group set about emptying the shed of most of its contents. With the flatbed backed up to within six feet of the doorway, coils of wire, extension cords, ropes, ladders, nail guns, the generator, compressor, even three sets of rain gear, and all the rest of it—all got tossed or hefted onto the truck. The only items that got left behind were the two kegs of nails. Having the density of small boulders, their weight proved more than anyone wanted to contend with; instead, on an impulse, Whit gave each one a solid kick, which spilled a couple thousand four-inch nails almost the length of the shed.

  Ten minutes later, they administered the coup de grace.

  Whit drove the truck to within three yards of where the property plummeted down a fifty-foot dirt slope, to a line of trees below. With the throttle depressed, he shifted into the lowest gear, opened the driver’s door, and jumped out. On its own, the truck ground forward until its front wheels hung over the edge, giving it a slight tilt. At that point it teetered for a moment, as though it might not go the rest of the way, but the material piled on it slid forward just enough to displace the weight onto the front axle. Like a sinking ship suddenly upending into a vertical position and plunging straight down, it crashed into the darkness.

  “My God, that was something,” Jody uttered more to herself than to the others.

  “We did it, though, huh?” Tony said, as awed as the rest of them.

  “We sure as hell did,” Mitch muttered.

  “Good job, Whit. You did yourself proud.”

  “Thank you, Heidi.”

  Jason lit his pipe.

  “It’s a temporary setback, of course, and I’m sure they’ll resume operations very quickly, much as though nothing happened. But it’s bound to generate a few dinner table conversations, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That would make me feel that it was all worth it.”

  “It would make us all feel that way, Heidi. We’re all a part of this, you know,” Lisa corrected her.

  “Maybe we oughta see how Carlos is doing…” Mitch suggested.

  “What time is it?”

  Mitch looked at his watch.

  “Almost three-thirty. We’ve been at it close to an hour. That guy’ll be waking up pretty soon, if he’s not awake already.”

  “I agree,” Lisa said. “We should hurry.”

  The machine Carlos had chosen to tackle resembled a squat, wide-bodied version of an early John Deere farmer’s tractor with the exhaust pipe sticking out the top of the engine hood. Known as a tilt dozer, it had a rollover protection structure that looked like a four-posted metal awning over the operator’s compartment. Compact in size compared to many other models, it nevertheless had a pair of extra wide tracks for low ground pressure in muddy areas. Its operation consisted of a few basics and, with a little coordination, could be picked up fairly quickly. The blade itself had a variable pitch capacity and could be leaned forward and back or up and down.

  Carlos’ familiarity with such a piece of machinery stemmed from his days working as a construction worker on small building projects. He had not been trained in the heavy equipment field per se, but like many individuals in the building trades, much of his experience had overlapped. Being a professional carpenter, he also knew a little about plumbing, electrical installation, cement work, and cabinetry. And on several work sites he had had a chance to operate a bulldozer.

  In the time the others had been cleaning out the storage shed and driving the contents off a cliff, after several false starts with the ignition switch, he had managed to turn the engine over. The dozer had sputtered and coughed a half-dozen times, but had finally kicked into life. He now had the choke set at a smooth idle and was waiting for the engine to warm up.

  “Where you been?” he joked. “I’m all ready to go here.”

  The others walked up and stood nearby. With the light from their flashlights, they could see what looked to them like a formidable object, parked between a pile of sand on one side and a mound of gravel on the other.

  “You got it started, huh?”

  “I told you I would. We gotta first-class battering ram workin’ for us now. And I’m gonna show ya how to do the job right.”

  Putting it in gear, Carlos backed the dozer clear of the sand and gravel and pulled it around so that it lined up with the corner of the nearest structure. Gunning the engine, he pulled a lever that raised the blade, shifted into a forward gear, and trundled ahead.

  The impact of the tank-like piece of machinery moving with inexorable force against a partially completed, two-story wooden structure had an immediate effect. As the corner post, along with five or six of its members, cracked inward, the entire framework shook and, with a prolonged scrunching sound reminiscent of fingernails raking across a blackboard, slumped off the vertical by a good fifteen degrees.

  Captivated by the demonstration of sheer, brute power, an awed silence again overwhelmed everyone, though a moment later gave way to a spontaneous outburst of whoops and cheers.

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” Carlos called out happily.

  The others quieted down and waited to see what would happen next.

  Carlos did not disappoint them. With practiced ease, he swung the dozer back and then brought it over to the opposite side of the structure. Lining it up as before, he rumbled forward and drove directly into the second corner post.

  The impact was no less than before. With almost half its supports gone, the structure staggered into a precarious equilibrium that threatened to collapse it onto its cement foundation as though it were a large beast expiring into the dust.

  Preparing for the death blow, he backed the dozer up one more time for a broadside run at the outside wall of the square structure. Maneuvering the machine into place so that it faced the wall at a perpendicular angle, he shifted into forward gear. He set his foot against the accelerator pedal and commenced to push down, but at the same moment heard a yell.

  “Whit—what the fuck ya doin’?”

  As the machine surged ahead, Carlos turned just in time to see Whit run up and jump onto the moving track. Landing on his feet solidly enough, Whit attempted to grab hold of a bar, but the machine lurched ahead. In an instant, his hand had slipped off the bar, and he toppled over backwards, falling on his head between the inside of the track and the body of the dozer. Unbelievably, the impact crushed his head like a ripe melon, and blood and brain matter squirted out as though from a small geyser.

  Carlos shut the machine off and sat there, simply staring at Whit’s body.

  The others hurried over.

  Heidi shined her flashlight on Whit’s face. She could see immediately that he was dead.

  Carlos climbed down and shined his own light on him. “The fucker’s dead,” he said. “What’d he do that for?”

  Tony came up and tentatively touched Dalt on the shoulder. He saw the blood and the brain matter, and turned away.

  The others came up and looked. No one could quite believe it had happened.

  “What the fuck did he think he was doin’?” Carlos said again. “That was crazy.”

  Reflexively, unthinkingly, Ralph took hold of Whit’s wrist and held it a moment. Realizing the pointlessness of the gesture, he let it
drop.

  “What do we do now?” Misty asked in a scared voice, taking Ralph’s hand.

  No one said anything. No one had an answer.

  “I don’t suppose we could bury him?” Mike suggested.

  “Not without shovels,” Mitch said “and we just tossed the only ones we had over a cliff.”

  The silence that followed had a frozen quality about it. For what seemed like a minute or more, no one said anything or even so much as moved. The implications for any of them, either as a group or as individuals, were as yet unknown, but the fact that they had a dead man on their hands presented a reality none of them had bargained for, much less thought about. It was as though somebody had blown a whistle in the night, and realizing they had been caught in the act, they could only stand and look on helplessly.

  “Maybe we should just take him to a hospital?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Tony,” Mike said. “They wouldn’t be able to do anything for him. He’s dead.”

  “We could just leave him there…at the emergency room entrance.”

  “It’s not like we wouldn’t be seen, Tony. And they would have to notify the police. It’d only be a matter of time before they’d track us down.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Mitch said. “Anything like that is bound to get us involved with the police. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s not something I want to go to bed tonight thinking about.”

  “Well, what are we gonna do, then?”

  “The first thing we’re gonna do is not panic, Tony…we’ll figure out something.”

  “My God! I hope so!”

  “Why don’t we just leave him here?” Lisa brought out suddenly.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “We can’t do that,” Jody said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Yeah, we can’t just go off and leave him,” Misty said, shaking her head.

  “Sure we can. Just pull him off into the woods. We can notify the authorities later.”

  “That’d be pretty cold, wouldn’t it?”

  “Do you have a better idea, Jody?”

  “No…but…”

  “Does anyone?’

  No one said anything.

  “Heidi, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But we can’t stand here all night debating it. We have to do something. So…maybe…it’s our only option.”

  “Good. Then let’s do it. We’re wasting time.”

  “Let’s take a vote on it.”

  “We’re wasting time, Jody. And a vote won’t make any difference because we don’t really have a choice here. And I’m not about to implicate myself by observing the niceties. As you said earlier, Heidi, in a war, there’s always collateral damage, and that’s what this is. We can’t be sentimental about it.”

  “Lisa’s right, you know,” Mitch said. “We’ve said all along that there’s real risk involved, and tonight proves it. So either we accept it now or we just throw in the towel.”

  “It just doesn’t seem right,” Jody persisted. “He should at least have a burial. After all, he was one of us, wasn’t he? And wouldn’t we do the same for any of the rest of us?”

  “I’m with Lisa,” Carlos said. “We’re all gonna get our ass in a sling here if we don’t make a move soon.”

  “If we do it, there’s no turning back,” Ralph reminded everyone. “You realize that, don’t you? And it’s a secret we’ll have to bear, unless we want to face some kind of manslaughter charge, along with vandalism or whatever they might choose to call this.”

  “That’s five of us, so far. What about you, Heidi?”

  “I guess I’m with you, Lisa.”

  “Tony? Mike?”

  “Count us, too.”

  “What about it, Jody? You gonna be the only hold-out?”

  “All right. But we have to do something afterwards to memorialize him. I mean, we can’t just dump him and leave him.”

  “None of us is opposed to that. We can have a little ceremony, do it up right.”

  “I think I’m gonna get drunk, myself,” Carlos said. “But let’s do it.”

  The five men lugged Whit into an area of the woods bordering the construction site and left him sitting against a tree. Afterwards, everyone stood in a semicircle and bowed their heads in a moment of silence. Mike, the Classicist of the bunch, brought out the fact that the ancient Greeks had allowed for the bodies of their fallen enemies to be retrieved from the field of battle so they could receive a decent burial. The exact relevance of the allusion escaped the others, but it did lend a forgiving touch of nobility to what, otherwise, amounted to a boneheaded stunt.

  Heidi, who had known Whit longer than the others, started to mention how devoted he was to his poetry, but Lisa cut her short.

  “We can have a memorial service later,” she said. “Right now, we have to think of the time.”

  With that, the gloomy occasion ended, and a few minutes later they were all back at the cars.

  “What do we do now?” Tony asked.

  “Go home and go to bed, Tony,” Carlos said. “Whatta ya think?”

  “I just asked.”

  Heidi intervened: “We’ve all had a rough night. It’s ended badly. Go home and get some rest. I’ll call everyone later.”

  “Yeah, Heidi, you do that. We’ll all sit by our phones and wait.”

  22

  Later that morning, after the field of battle had been cleared of smoke and combatants, two squad cars from the sheriff’s department were parked off to the side at the construction site. Several carpenters and electricians stood in small groups, smoking cigarettes and making idle conversation in low tones. Their pickup trucks and cars had been parked randomly above the construction area. The security guard’s car was in the same spot as the night before; sitting next to it was a company car, with the company logo emblazoned across the driver’s door.

  The security guard himself, with his supervisor at his side, was talking to one of the deputies.

  “You say you didn’t get a good look at the car?”

  The security guard, who normally would have been home and asleep by now, had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. He tried to stifle a yawn.

  “It was dark. It was a newer sports car, one of them really beefy kind. I don’t think it was a Corvette, though.” He sucked deeply on the cigarette and gingerly sipped the hot coffee, then continued. “I think it was black. But it’s not like we stopped to chat about it, ya know what I mean? She got me working on the tire right away.”

  “And you didn’t get a good look at her?”

  “She had a hood over her head. She was a blonde and had on a lotta makeup. But it’s not like I shined my flashlight right in her face, though, you know what I mean?”

  “How tall was she?”

  The security guard took another healing drag on the cigarette and blew smoke into the morning air. Drinking more of the coffee, he said, “About my height.”

  “Weight?”

  “She definitely didn’t have a weight problem,” the guard replied smilingly.

  The officer looked at the security guard’s supervisor as though wondering if he believed the man’s story. But the supervisor kept his expression impassive and noncommittal.

  The officer turned back to the guard. “If we showed you pictures of different modern sports cars, do you think you could identify it?”

  The guard shrugged. “I could try,” he said. “I can’t promise.”

  A second deputy walked up. He had been talking to some of the workmen and had a notebook in his hand. “What do you think, Jack,” he asked his partner.

  “It sounds like a lot of planning went into it. I think that means we can rule out vandalism. Somebody had a different motive altogether.”

  “Maybe somebody just doesn’t like condominiums, or development out in this area. Possibly an environmental group.”

  “Could be.”

  The f
irst deputy turned back to the guard. “Stick around awhile…I’ll wanna get a formal report. In the meantime, see if you can remember anything else.”

  “Man, I need to get cleaned up. I had a rough night.”

  “It won’t be too long.”

  The supervisor put his hand on the guard’s shoulder, and they walked away. The two deputies waited until they were out of hearing range; then the second deputy asked: “Was he any help?”

  “I’m not sure the guy would know which direction to go if a fire broke out in front of him. But, yeah, the little bit he gave us is something to go on. Maybe after he’s had a chance to recover, he can come up with more details.”

  “How long did he say he was tied up?”

  “Close to five hours.”

  “No shit!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Poor bastard. They oughta give him a bonus.”

  “More ’n likely, they’ll fire the poor bastard for leaving his post.”

  Both deputies laughed.

  “Let’s take a look around,” the one called Jack said.

  The two deputies walked over to the far side of the site. They surveyed the damage that had been done to the structure’s framework and with their eyes followed the tracks left by the bulldozer. Jack noticed something in the set of tracks made just as Carlos had put the machine in motion to ram the structure broadside.

  “Look at the ridges and the dirt in between,” he said. “See how it’s been disturbed?”

  The second deputy knelt down to get a closer look. He could see imprints left by several sets of shoes. Most of the patterns had been distorted by people milling about, but enough of each remained to infer the presence of more than three or four individuals.

  “I’d say maybe half a dozen people altogether,” he said, standing up.

  His partner nodded and looked at the partially destroyed framework.

  “You know, the thing I don’t get is why he didn’t finish the job. He started it, knocked out both corners, lined up the cat to finish the job, then just quit. What do you make of that?”

  “Maybe something happened. Maybe they got scared away.”

  “Yeah, something like that. You think we can get a set of prints off the cat?”