by Mark Lisac
“We should be there in ten minutes,” the pilot said.
“All right, thanks.” Becker did not start any further conversation. Underneath the boredom he felt a nagging—what? Not worry. Not curiosity. A feeling of something not quite right, something not squared up.
A security man picked him up at the bare-bones airstrip. They drove into Broken Pines past dull Quonsets with backhoes and BobCats parked outside, past a Shell station, then past a small, light blue box of a building with a “Sears Agency” sign in one window and a “Greyhound” sign in the other, and a café with a few pickups angle-parked out front. They stopped outside the Elks Hall where Stratton had arranged to set up a communication headquarters. Becker got out of the car, stretched his back and legs, and saw only two people on the sidewalk further along the block. The media would be here soon filling up space like a flock of geese, he thought.
Stratton was already inside. He had established a private space in a small room. Coffee was ready. They began laying out the agenda for the first day.
“The Texans won’t be talking to the media,” Stratton said. “That guy Winton who runs their show is a sour old bastard. He says he won’t waste time with reporters. Doesn’t want us interfering by hanging around the operation either. Doesn’t want a bunch of cameras out there. And doesn’t want any local help because his men are the best and he wants only the best. All he wants is another notch in his reputation and more money.”
“Best to let him stay out of sight then,” Becker said. “Sounds like we don’t have to pump up his ego. Is he even going to keep us up to date on how his team’s progressing?”
“He’ll brief my constituency president about mid-afternoon each day. That’s Gary Hofstra. Gary runs a well servicing company. Winton liked that. He said that way he’ll have at least some hope that someone will understand what he’s saying and he’s going to say it only once.”
“Not ideal timing. We’ll probably miss the evening newscasts. We could end up being nearly twenty-four hours late with any updates as far as the evening newscasts.”
“Can’t be helped. But the way this is going to go, there won’t be much rapid change from day to day. Just gradually getting closer to securing the cap and putting out the flames.”
Becker sipped his coffee and looked out the doorway at the drab greenish walls of the hall.
“I’ve already had the marching orders,” he said. “Report steady progress. Be reassuring. Tell the frightened public that the fumes and whatever unburnt gas is still escaping won’t kill their pet cats or give their kids lifelong asthma. I hope they don’t notice it’s all a piss-poor excuse for actually getting the capping done.”
“Heck of a thing, isn’t it? We think we’re getting into politics to take care of taxes and schools, build a few hospitals and roads. Then we find out we spend half our time being psychologists for a bunch of scared sheep.”
“Why Kendall, you usually show respect for the voters. I probably hear you talk about the grassroots more than anyone in caucus.”
“It isn’t like running a business,” Stratton said. “Customers are always right. Voters? Sometimes they have to be shown what’s right. Gary will be here in half an hour to tell you what you need to know for today’s press show. Don’t look at his left hand. He’s missing a finger. Not unusual around here but he’s been moaning about it since he got it crushed in one of his machines three years ago. He’s lucky he didn’t lose them all but he carries on like no one else has ever had that happen. Hate to think what he’d be like if he lost a leg. You may as well stay here for now. The motel was full this morning and won’t be able to let you check in until later.”
Becker sipped more of his watery coffee and was happy he’d brought along two long briefings he’d wanted to read, and the latest Larry McMurtry novel. He saw Stratton eyeing him speculatively and cocked his head to indicate a question.
Stratton seemed to want to think over whatever he had in mind. He let out a breath through his nostrils, and said, “Do you know how you ended up with this job?” Becker didn’t see any need to reply. His answer was apparently going to be wrong.
“Waschuk recommended you. That isn’t strange. What’s strange is I heard the boss mention that Frank Jeffries initially came up with the idea and planted it with Waschuk. Now why do you suppose he would want to do that?”
Becker pursed his lips, pulled them apart with a smack and kept his tongue between his front teeth as he stared through a window at the uncertain sky. He thought about laughing it off by saying “Frank always appreciates talent.” He didn’t have to as Hofstra walked in.
Stratton introduced them. The talk veered off toward the stuck-up nature of the firefighting crew, then toward how much good effect the government could achieve by enhancing its tax credits for well drilling. They agreed the Texans would have to be lived with. Tax credits were more complicated but it was clear Hofstra was not looking for anything like commitment; he was just planting an idea.
The day passed slowly. Becker had a sandwich in the hall later on and was sitting with Stratton when Hofstra came in. Becker avoided looking at the injured hand but found his gaze drifting away from Hofstra’s slightly hooded eyes, wary eyes magnified behind thick lenses. The slightly upturned corner of Hofstra’s mouth fell one condescension short of a smirk. Hofstra said the briefing for reporters was set up for 3:30 on the road to the well site. He added, “Quite the production. Looks like you’re the import TV star brought in to comment on the foreign well crew. I guess the rest of us from ’round here can just sit back and put our feet up and watch the show.”
Becker squelched the urge to look at Hofstra’s thick waist and comment that sitting back with feet up in front of a TV seemed to be par for the course in Broken Pines. Instead he said, “We’ll hope it’s a good one for the audience the next few days. This town depends on a lot of steady tourist traffic. It doesn’t want to get known as the place with the sour gas well blowout that couldn’t be stopped.” The two men traded aloof stares until Stratton began talking about how much he depended on Hofstra’s fine work with the local organization.
Afterward, Becker had the security man drive him to the motel that would be his home for the next few days. He emptied his suitcase into the dresser and the closet. Then he lay down on the bed, resting his eyes after looking through the windshield glare on the drive out, and testing how much mattress sag he would have to put up with. He was half surprised to find a regular smooth bedspread rather than one made of chenille.
He closed his eyes but did not sleep. He knew Jeffries would go along with keeping photos of the Roussel house out of circulation and preferably destroyed. It was strange that Jeffries seemed to regard that business as little more than a passing irritation, just a tick more annoying than having lettuce stuck in his teeth. But Waschuk was handling it. Not even Jeffries had ever said anything about Waschuk being incompetent. Yet the old snake had wanted him out of the way. To do what? For what private agenda?
And then he drifted, and started thinking about his own private plans. And drifted more, as he knew he would, as he had become used to doing month after month and year after year—to the point where he no longer knew whether he was circling back to the same obsession out of compulsion or out of secret and painful pleasure. Or out of guilt.
He saw her lying on the concrete sidewalk, one leg splayed out onto the asphalt road, blood seeping incredibly quickly and pooling out from under her back. He had imagined it thousands of times now, each detail set in place and refined until everything was in the place he thought it must have been in real life. He had never seen a picture of her lying dead, only dying. The television camera had missed the moment she was hit but recorded her life draining away. Two other students tried to keep her talking. One of them was trying to compress the wound and slow the flow of blood and had largely blocked the camera’s view. He knew the scene well enough from the many times the tape had shown up on TV over the years. He had seen it over and over. Then he
had reconstructed it more fully in his own mind. He had talked to two of the students who had been there, listening to the way their shock had turned to numbness as they described the National Guardsmen aiming rifles from down the street. And he had listened to their memory, half distrusted by him but insistent on their part, that a nondescript, shortish man with brushy, slightly greying hair had been at the scene with a 35mm camera. And finally, when he studied the tape carefully as he saw it replayed one night, he saw a nondescript, shortish man well back in the crowd carrying what looked like it might be a camera.
He sat up quickly, forcing himself to move and think about what he had to do now. He opened the green curtains, wondering how much dust would puff into the air if he shook them. The sky was still grey. Good, he thought. Less contrast to dramatize the televised images of the plume of smoke rising out of the fire at the well.
Stratton’s dark blue Mercury Grand Marquis pulled up in front of the motel room. Becker picked up his jacket and walked out. He turned to close the door and turned back to see the car’s passenger door opening. Stratton was at the wheel. Hofstra and the security man were in back. They drove out of town in silence.
Stratton turned south off the highway after a few minutes. Nearly twenty kilometres down a gravel road, they stopped at a roadside clearing where two government Jeeps were parked. An assistant deputy minister from the Renewable Resources ministry introduced himself. He had thinning hair and his lips were compressed by the weight of responsibility when he wasn’t talking. He briefed Becker on the situation. Essentially, the story was that the crew was gathering the material and equipment to put out the fire but that step might take two days, depending on the state of the wellhead. After that, it could take another three days to remove twisted and blackened metal, set a new wellhead in place, and turn off the gas flow. Meanwhile, everyone downwind could be assured that toxic fumes were being widely dispersed by the prevailing west wind and no one’s health was in danger.
“What about people with asthma or emphysema or unusual allergies?” Becker asked.
“The guys from Health say everyone should be okay. Of course, people with respiratory or other special concerns may want to stay indoors. They should also be urged to call their doctor if they feel any difficulty breathing.”
“Then it’s not all okay.”
“For the general population it is. We haven’t heard of any problems so far for people with specific concerns.”
Becker let the vagueness slide, knowing it was all he would get for today, even if he was a cabinet minister: “Time to get this show on the road. Where are the camera trucks?”
“Down the road about a kilometre. They’re about two kilometres from the well site.”
The short convoy rumbled down the road, vehicles spaced far enough apart to avoid most of the gravel spraying up from the tires. A handful of open spaces between the trees showed the foothills rising dark green out toward the west. To the south, dark smoke rushed into the pale sky, a dense column close to the ground, widening into a smear spreading out toward the east with the prevailing wind.
They stopped at a small clearing where a dirt road met the gravel. Becker assumed the smaller road was used service trucks headed to another well site. The junction could also be a turnaround point for snow clearing equipment.
The usual three camera trucks were already there. The reporters, already getting anxious about deadlines, gathered as the government people stepped out of their vehicles. A Resources Department communication director Becker knew as Cindy quickly set out the ground rules. Becker delivered his five sentences of update and the questions began.
He had been at the job long enough to know that the details mattered little as long as he didn’t say anything dumb. He noted that Cindy had set up the cameras and positioned him so that people would not see a roiling column of black smoke behind him. He also had his back to the surrounding bush so that they could not get behind him. The purpose was to look calm and attentive.
The words in the opening statement he’d been given included references to “flow rate” and “particles per million” and “well within guidelines.” The point was not the technical information but Becker’s serious but easy manner, the visual sense that here was someone who knew what was going on and could be trusted. He was an economist but he still had a lot of Wisconsin dairy farm in him. He had enough experience in politics now to know that being chosen to handle the task was a plausible decision. He also knew that plausibility was often a trap.
He forced his mind to snap back to business. No leeway here for a mistake. But as he answered the last two questions his gaze focused less on the reporters and more on the insistent black pillar looming behind them. It was out of the cameras’ view but squarely in his—an intrusion, a thing out of place, inspiring fear with its lazy and uninterrupted flow into the sky, a puffy scar on the green surface of the pine and spruce forest.
One question more. Becker explained the premier would not be coming out to view the blowout because there was no need. The situation was being handled by competent experts; the incident would not measure up to the two fabled oil-well blowouts that occurred right after the modern industry had got underway in the 1940s. The message: we’ve handled worse situations, and you can’t even tell now where they happened. He hadn’t looked at Cindy, knowing he was delivering the goods and not needing reassurance.
Yet he found his mind wandering again as he finished. What was he doing out here at the fringe of the boreal forest, talking to television cameras as if he’d made that his life work since he’d been in high school? How had that become part of him? In one way he was not surprised. He had noticed recently that most people, even those chosen randomly by reporters for “average person” comments, seemed comfortable with a lens pointed at them and a microphone held in front of them. Not like the early days. He remembered that well into the early 1960s ordinary people and politicians alike had talked in stilted phrasing when being filmed for the news. They hesitated over words, and spoke more loudly than normal. They acted as if they were talking on a quavering long-distance telephone line. Now he never saw that. When had people changed? How had it happened? Did it mean that television had become another familiar tool, internalized the way that steering a car went from being a conscious task to being a set of almost automatic reflexes?
As the camera operators put their equipment away and the trucks started back to town he told the others he wanted to walk up the gravel road toward the fire crew’s barricade. He thought he should get as close to source of the unending smoke as possible. As he walked he thought more about how the electronic web that people lived in had changed.
The images themselves had changed—from film, sometimes second-rate in its picture and sound quality, to smooth videotape. The first shows he could remember seeing had presented ghostly images of the past. He remembered Westerns and adventure serials that had been made in the 1930s and brought back nearly twenty years later to fill screens and the imaginations of young minds. He remembered cookie-cutter comedies, and variety shows featuring what he had later come to realize were recycled vaudeville stars. He had watched game shows, and news and weather programs that followed predictable formulas and featured avuncular men, and movies that gradually came ever closer to the current time. He remembered the original three-part Davy Crockett story on the Disney show. Amazing, he thought, how people still regarded it as a cultural phenomenon but missed its real significance. It had taught a generation of young people that heroes rebelled against authority, that the way to decide on a moral choice could be summed up in Crockett’s words: “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”
And then it had been as if television had chewed through all the past images and styles and had caught up with the present. That had happened most visibly on the ABC network, which began running shows like 77 Sunset Strip. But the trend quickly spread to other networks that began running other shows that seemed contemporary, like Route 66 and The Twilight Zone.
And then had come a lurch in time, as if television had used up the present too and was starting to drag people into the future. He remembered watching the NBC Nightly News with sober Chet Huntley and impishly wry David Brinkley. He thought that was what sparked his interest in politics. Their show had something of the vibrant modernism and awareness of changing times that people felt from the Kennedy presidency. Such impressions turned out to be only tentative. Both Kennedy and the news show were still entangled with venerable institutions, with the past.
Yet the future was just around the corner. It was uncaring. It was not as ugly as the temporary absence of civilization during the Second World War but it showed things could get that bad again because the future did not care. The break came around 1963 and 1964. He remembered getting a queasy feeling from a report on the Huntley-Brinkley show about unrest with blacks’ economic prospects in northern cities; it was clear the heroic struggle for civil rights in the South would be part of a much more complicated and intractable struggle.
He remembered the way he and his friends had reacted to the cancellation of fresh, eye-opening series like It’s a Man’s World and The Richard Boone Show. Middle-brow tastes and corporate need for money had said there was no room, not even a small corner, on television for new ideas. If you wanted something that felt like a future built on new ideas you could buy a Bob Dylan album. The future being foreshadowed on television was Richard Nixon.
He remembered the Kennedy assassination and the live-TV shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald—the one a grim reminder of the world’s ugliness and the other a harbinger of a time when you might see anything on television, old restraints gone, even the privacy of death gone. The televised Kennedy funeral procession was a decorous hold-over of traditions. Oswald’s murder—death on live television—was the future.