by Fred Stenson
For a while it seemed no one had a question, and Tom could feel Ella grow tense beside him. They could see other wives looking at their husbands, some whispering at them to speak up. Ella was not urging Tom. His cursing embarrassed her, and it was true he probably could not get through a question about the plant without some bad language.
Finally it was Ernie Dewart who rose, and Tom was glad. Ernie had fought in the war, and Tom hoped he’d mention that. I fought for this country in France and Germany. I didn’t go there to come home and have a gas plant drive me off my place. That would be good.
Ernie fiddled briefly with the knot on his cowboy scarf. “My family live a couple miles east of the plant,” he said. “We can’t see it because of the hill, but we’re getting plenty of gas. Every one of us has been sick. What I want to know is how much longer it’s going to continue.” He sat down.
Clint Comstock thanked Ernie. Then he paused as if in thought. Standing straighter and looking over their heads, he said, “Twenty-five years.”
Chairs scraped. People made various kinds of noises. A few even laughed.
“Nope, I’m absolutely serious,” said Comstock. “Twenty-five years is the answer. The life expectancy of the gas plant. I didn’t come all the way from Texas to lie to you. For as long as it’s a sulphur plant, Aladdin Hatfield will smell like a sulphur plant. However, the intent of this gentleman’s question is, I believe, how long will the odour be a problem. The answer to that is different. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to turn this over to Alf Dietz, the plant superintendent, who can speak to the details.”
Dietz rose slowly. He looked dead tired. He had a cornered look on his riven face, like a live-trapped animal.
“There’s smell and then there’s smell,” he said sadly. “I think that’s what Mr. Comstock means.” He wrestled in search of something and did not find it. “Keep calling me. I’ll keep working with the plant and trying to get a handle on things, on the wind and inversions and whatnot.”
He returned to his chair heavily. He looked at the south window, though it was just a frame full of darkness.
Comstock started up again and now he had a bunch of energy and all the answers. Showing off, Tom thought, pumping himself up at the expense of Dietz. It was poor strategy because it would be Dietz, not Comstock, who’d have to deal with their problems—like Ella said.
Tom looked down at his son. Billy’s interest had faded. He’d been looking over his shoulder at the crying baby, and now he turned all the way around on the bench so he could see more easily. Ella twisted him back and spoke to him sternly. Soon he was kicking his boots so the heels hit the board.
Tom returned his attention to the front. Comstock was spouting statistics: all to do with how much gas the plant would produce after the expansion, how much sulphur that would translate into. Tom’s eyes had started to itch. He had been up since before six, had worked hard all day, and now sleep was coming for him.
He turned to Ella to see how she was faring and saw that she was looking forward but not at Comstock. Her black eyes were sparking. He followed the line of her eyes to the young man who had come in with Comstock and Dietz. He was turned halfway and looking back at them. Just as Tom was trying to make sense of this, the fellow turned away and watched Comstock.
Tom nudged Ella. “What?” he said. She shook her head.
Comstock asked for more questions and there were two more not very good ones. The steam had gone out of the meeting. The “twenty-five years” statement hung above their heads, and nothing else could match it. People were tired and thinking about their kids at home or some chore that needed doing before bed.
Comstock got the point and thanked them for coming. The women with children got them ready for the out-of-doors. Tom went directly to Comstock.
“Evening, Tom,” the Texan said. “Glad to see you in the crowd.”
He was playing up the host business again, and Tom had an urge to say, “You’re the stranger here, not me.” But he had something to ask.
“I been thinking about pig litters and calves. In your experience, what will happen when piglets and calves have to breathe the stuff from your plant?”
“That’s a bit like asking how big a fish is.”
“Then how big is the fish?”
“How about this? If I was representing a train company, and I said there were sparks from trains and sometimes those sparks caught grass on fire, would you ask me if that train could burn your house down?”
“In other words, the young pigs and calves could die.”
“I didn’t say that, but I’ve told you that hydrogen sulphide can kill. Then again, if our men can work inside the plant and stay alive, the creatures that live downwind should be able to handle it.”
None of this was satisfying. Comstock said something about the long drive to Calgary and an airplane to Houston in the morning. Tom turned to look for Ella and found her talking to the young man from the plant. The fellow was playing a game with Billy. The boy would dodge behind his mother’s coat then stick his head out. The plant man would jump as if surprised.
Tom came up. Ella introduced them. Tom shook Lance Evert’s hand.
“Should I warm up the truck?”
“Let’s just go,” she said.
They travelled in silence until the engine warmed enough to get the heater working. “You had quite the face on you during Comstock’s talk.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were looking at that Lance like you do at me when you’re good and mad.”
“He was staring at me. I suppose he was just lost in thought but it made me mad. Gaping like that.”
“You were chummy afterwards.”
“He came to apologize. He seemed all right. Young and awkward. Billy liked him.”
“He’s not the one I’d worry about, that’s for sure.”
“What?”
“Out of those three. Evert’s not the one that concerns me. Comstock’s the problem, just like you said.” Tom glanced sideways, and, though Ella gave no sign of being interested, he spoke more. “I didn’t learn one goddamn useful thing tonight. He didn’t say whether the stink would get better or worse. No instructions about what to do when the gas gets bad. And as far as when the plant gets bigger, he didn’t say if the stink would be over by then or would be worse. Jesus Christ. If the bastard gets us all out on a winter night, he should have something to say.”
“You should have asked those questions when you had the chance.” Ella’s voice was drowsy and irritated. She hadn’t asked any questions either, but he kept himself from saying that. He wanted to tell her about his talk with Comstock about piglets and calves, but he didn’t say that either.
“Lance Evert,” she said, near sleep.
“What?”
“That’s his name.”
Then she was asleep, and Billy was asleep, and so almost was Tom as he climbed up the hill out of the Callaghan. When the road fell level, the lights and fires of the plant rose into view, more lights than a town, and so much smoke and steam. The smell was there too, the spunky fume from the deeps, the stuff that knocks birds off the perch at a coal face.
Though it had been Tom who started the note-taking, Ella took charge soon after. This morning, after breakfast, she wrote: “February 10: Gas strong in the night. Billy sick again. Nosebleed. Vomited once. Hired man, Kees, with us for 18 months, quit this morning.”
As if poor Billy wasn’t feeling bad enough, she had to wake him to say goodbye. The hired man had always been like a big brother. Billy cried, and Kees stood beside the bed strangling his cap in his big hands. He had no idea how to console Billy, so, instead, he started bawling too.
Tom had been out in the truck, waiting. When he stormed in to tell Kees to hurry up, that’s what he saw: Billy, Kees, and Ella, all with wet faces. Tom was impatient with Kees, saying the trip to the Greyhound bus in town was lost time he could not afford. It was Tom’s way when hurt to become angry
. As far as Ella was concerned, Kees was the only one of them not tied to the farm. Leaving was the smart thing to do.
After Tom and Kees had been gone an hour, Billy was still in bed—or was back in bed, having tried once to get up. Ella was brimming with anger when she finally went to the phone. To the woman who answered, she said, “I want Mr. Dietz to come to our house right away. It’s Mrs. Ryder. He knows where we live and so should you. We’re your closest neighbours.”
A half-hour later, it was not Dietz’s half-ton that came into the yard but a little car with rusted fenders. Lance Evert climbed out.
“I was expecting Mr. Dietz,” Ella said when she pulled back the door.
He was so cast down she almost laughed. But she would not let him off.
“Come in, but I’m telling you, Lance, if Mr. Dietz has the idea he can send you instead of coming himself and that will calm me down, he doesn’t know me. I’m very angry with him, with you, and with your plant. You’re going to hear about it.”
Like a struck puppy he entered, shed his boots in the porch, hung his coat on a hook, shuffled forward into the kitchen in his socks. She pointed at the children’s side of the table, and he sat there. He had yet to say a word. The coffee was low in the perk, but she poured it anyway. Let him get some lukewarm grit in his pretty teeth.
“The crew foreman told me it was a bad night. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t bother being sorry. I’m not interested in sorry. It was a very bad night. Our hired man has quit. But the worst thing is that Billy’s been sick all night again. He’s had to go back to bed. It is not fair, you know, that a small child should suffer so you people can make gas and sulphur. If you had any decency, you’d understand that letting your plant go on pumping out its sickening stuff is no better than if you came down here and beat that boy with a stick.”
Lance lost the last of his colour. It seemed fair that she had made him look sick, the way Billy always looked. He had the sense to say nothing, could probably tell from her tone that she would leap all over any excuse he made. Head down, he waited for more.
“You’re letting your coffee get cold.” Which was a laugh since it hadn’t been warm to begin with. She would have liked him less if he had taken a drink in response. He did not move at all.
“I suppose if you could do anything with your plant to make it stop stinking, you would.”
He nodded.
An odd idea came over her: that she had power over this boy. She was remembering how he had gawked at her in the community hall, seeming helpless not to. And the way he looked now, punished and sad. She wondered for a second if she’d ever had as much effect on Tom and supposed that the real answer was that she hadn’t wanted or needed it.
She wondered what might happen if she asked, “What would you do to make me happy right now?” She was almost certain his answer would be: “Anything.”
These thoughts calmed her. Having wanted to chew his ears off, she now felt something like gratitude.
“Did you eat anything this morning?”
“I had breakfast at the motel.”
“Then I know where you live, since there’s only one motel in Haultain that has a restaurant. I’ve heard the food there is terrible.”
“Bacon and eggs. Most places get that right.”
Now he was smiling, which made her focus on his mouth. His lips were so youthful, as if they had never cracked in the weather. But he had grown up in this climate, according to what Comstock said.
“Mr. Comstock said you’re from Saskatchewan.”
“Saskatoon. I started university there but thought the University of Alberta would have more about oil and gas in its engineering program.”
“And did it?”
“No. But it’s a good university. I had good professors.”
“And you did well, I understand.”
He had been looking at her. At her mention of his doing well at university, his eyes shot down.
“It’s not a crime to do well. I did.”
“You went to university?”
“To normal school. I was hoping to become a teacher but my father got ill. This is their house, Mom and Dad’s. I’m their only child. Dad became asthmatic in middle age and certain kinds of farm chores were impossible for him. Chopping grain, shovelling chop. So I came home.”
She watched the play of emotions on his face, his trying to decide on a best response. How odd to be around someone constantly wanting to say what you wanted to hear. It made her wonder what she looked like to him. Her hair was still black. She knew she was pretty, black eyes and a curve in her smile that people had always commented on. Her facial lines hadn’t deepened enough to take that away.
Normally, she followed up the story of her interrupted education with the fact that Tom had come home from the coal mines about the same time. His own father’s health had gone bad, a thing in common between them when they met at dances. When it was a romance, Tom had helped Ella and her father with the fieldwork. But she did not say any of that to Lance Evert.
“What’s going on at the plant, Lance? Is it supposed to be like this?”
“It sure isn’t. The mixture of hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, at this pressure, is new to even Mr. Dietz. I wasn’t taught anything about it at university.”
“So you’re unprepared for the problems, is what you’re saying.”
“I guess so. They built the plant out of expensive high-grade steel and that was supposed to take care of unknowns. But this gas gets right inside the steel and cracks it. Dietz has seen it before and says it’s the hydrogen does that. But it’s happening way faster in this plant for some reason he doesn’t know.”
“If it cracks steel, gas must get out.”
“That’s right. What Dietz has our men doing is puncturing the blisters on the vessels, flattening them with hammers, and covering them with gunnite.”
“What’s that?”
“Thick grey goo that dries hard.”
She put scones on the table, and he automatically took one and bit into it. She had given him butter and a knife but he didn’t use them.
“I phoned my professor in Edmonton. He says it’s called hydrogen embrittlement. The hydrogen ion gets loose and invades the steel. When I told him about the good steel they used to build the plant, he said it’s probably too good, that the molecules are too lined up. Dietz was interested in that, and we’ve started substituting old bolts for the fancy ones that fail.”
Ella was concentrating hard. She would have made notes but had a feeling that Lance would wake up if she did, would realize he was spilling the beans. She would put what she could remember in the binder later. But then she decided to push him a little more. She mustn’t be too polite.
“Is that the worst of it, then? The hydrogen business?”
He said there was something else, but then he was talking a language that made no sense to her. Foaming amine tower. Catalyst smothered in hydrocarbon overflow. She didn’t bother trying to commit this to memory, as it wouldn’t mean anything to Tom either. She drew Lance back out of his trance.
“Are there many in your family?”
“Only child.”
At once, Ella imagined an easy life, which was probably unfair. Farmers too often thought of city people as well off.
“Why did Mr. Dietz send you down here, Lance?”
This question caused his face to lose its handsomeness. It was more the boy he had recently been that came visible.
“He didn’t say why, but he’s been sending me on all the complaint calls.”
This was so easy to understand it was hard to believe Lance didn’t know. Dietz was gruff and stone faced. Lance was young and nice looking; much harder to be mad at.
“I wish he wouldn’t.” Lance blushed. “I don’t mean I don’t want to be here. It’s nice here.”
“What do you mean?”
He huffed out a breath, a burden. “I’ve been to the Gerstens’ a few times. I’m not used to places like t
hat.”
Ella tried not to smile at this but did. A city boy with no siblings going into Paul and Gertie’s explained itself. Sometimes, when Ella had been to visit, the smell in that house would have offended a dog. Poor Gertie had three children in diapers, and between feeding all those babies and the rest of it, she never caught up with her laundry. Paul had bought a wringer-washer second-hand but of course it was on sale for a reason. Last time Ella visited, it was standing lopsided outside the door. It could not be fun for a young engineer to go house to house listening to complaints, getting blamed.
“I guess it’s time we both went back to work,” she said.
He got up reluctantly. She could barely remember if she’d scolded him or not.
When he had his coat on, he said, “I hope Billy’s better soon.”
“I’m letting him sleep.”
“That’s good.”
“You can come again,” she told him, watching his mouth. “You don’t have to wait for me to be mad.”
The lips smiled. “We’ll keep trying to fix things. I’ll let you know how it’s going.”
When he was gone and she returned to the kitchen, Billy was there in his flannel pyjamas. The bottoms were twisted at the waist. She slid her fingers in and straightened them. He was pale but he wasn’t green. “Who was that?” he asked.
“Mr. Evert. The man you met at the meeting.”
Suddenly the boy had energy. He pulled a chair to the window and climbed on, caught the last of Lance’s little car circling the yard and entering the driveway. “I remember,” he said. “I like him.”
“I like him too,” said Ella. “Do you feel like eating?”
He was still watching out the window. He shook his head.
“You have to eat, you know.”
“But not now.”
When Tom got back home, Ella had a cold lunch waiting for him. Billy was asleep on the couch.