by Amy Allgeyer
“Shut up, Ash,” Dobber says.
“You shut up,” she says, but then settles into silence.
Mr. Dobber watches it all without saying a word.
“We know Peabody bribed the county commissioners to approve the expansion of the mine,” I say. “Maybe the commissioners also know the mine is causing these health issues, and Peabody’s bribing them to keep quiet.”
“So what if he is?” Ashleigh says. “It’s not like they’re going to tell us.”
“There may be documentation of it somewhere,” I say, looking around the table. Dobber shakes his head. His dad frowns, toying with the stack of paper.
“So what?” Ashleigh says again. “All that’s gonna do is maybe get the county commissioners fired. We need to get rid of Peabody.”
“Looks like we’re back to blowing stuff up, then,” Dobber says.
I groan. “To recap ad nauseam: we have no explosives, no know-how, and no viable target.”
“That ain’t necessarily true,” Dobber says. “I came on some new information recently that you might be interested in.”
I don’t like his smile. “What are you saying?”
Dobber looks at his father. “You wanna tell her?”
“I worked explosives for the mine.” His voice is quiet, serious. “Did fifteen years on a blast crew before I got a office job.”
“And,” Dobber says, a Christmas-morning grin on his face, “you might have forgotten to give back one of the keys to the explosives shed, am I right?”
Dobber’s dad nods.
My stomach drops. “Explosives?”
“Just setting there, waiting on us,” Dobber says. “Now all we got to do is fix on a target.”
I don’t like the direction this is going. At all. “Look, I just want to put some pressure on Peabody, to do the right thing: shut down the mine so people stop getting sick. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to destroy property. I don’t want to blow anything up.”
“What’s your plan, then?” Ashleigh asks. “So far, everything you’ve come up with doesn’t work.” She nods at Dobber. “I like his idea. Make Uncle Robert suffer for the way he’s been hurting everybody else.”
“Amen to that.” Dobber turns to me. “He deserves this, Lib. He brought it on hisself.”
“Yes, but there are legal ways to do this,” I say.
Mr. Dobber frowns again.
Dobber reaches across the table and covers my fingers with his hand. “Way I see it, he’s hurting a whole lotta people. We can stop that by hurting just one.” His argument sounds reasonable, but it still feels so wrong. “If we don’t do something, more people are gonna get sick. More people are gonna die.”
I continue the list in my head—more birth defects, more mutant fish, more poor people starving because they can’t eat off the land anymore. I know it’s true, but …
“He’s basically getting away with murder,” Ashleigh says.
Dobber slaps the table. “He’s breaking the law, Lib.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Which means there’s a legal way to—”
“Then what is it? Huh?” Ashleigh’s in my face, angry and yelling. “Even if he is guilty of something, who’s gonna arrest him? ’Cause it ain’t gonna be Ebbottsville’s finest.”
“That’s the God’s honest truth,” Mr. Dobber says quietly. “They been on the Peabody payroll since that very first piece a coal come out the ground.”
“That’s why we need proof—”
“There ain’t none!” Dobber’s cheeks are turning red. “Don’t you see? There ain’t no proof. And even if there was, we can’t get to it.”
“Other people have to know,” I say. “Maybe we can get some other people to come forward.”
“So their dogs can get killed?” Dobber asks. “Or their sheds burned down. Or their dad fired.”
“Well, no. But if enough people come together on this …” I trail off into silence. Even I can see there are too many roadblocks on my route. Getting people united against Peabody … it’s an impossibility. Most people aren’t like Dobber and me, with families already sick and dying, out of work, ruined by the mine. Most people have things to lose. Things more important than a shed.
“I say we blow up his house,” Dobber says.
“What?” My eyes are saucers.
“No!” Ashleigh says. “That’ll hurt Aunt Karin.”
“Have you all lost your mind?” I say.
Nobody seems to hear me.
“His car, then,” says Dobber.
“Perfect,” Ashleigh says. “He loves that stupid car.”
“Stop. Stop this now,” I say, though I have a sick feeling that it’s totally out of my control. Is this what happened with MFM? Did the cause she believed in so much just get beyond her control?
My squirming, empty stomach is trying to heave itself out. Ashleigh’s going over her uncle’s schedule and trying to pinpoint the best time for an attack. Dobber’s drawing a crude map and making circles as she talks. But his dad’s just sitting in his chair, staring at me, eyes narrowed. I have no idea what he’s thinking.
“Daddy, if we’re grabbing the explosives tonight, we better go. You ready?”
Mr. Dobber stands up stiffly, wincing, and I am reminded that he’s not well. “Reckon so.”
“Please,” I say to him. “Please don’t do this.”
Dobber puts his hands on my shoulders. “Lib, we got this. Ever’thing’s gonna be fine.”
“No.” My voice is nearly hysterical. “It won’t be fine. This is wrong.”
“Trust me, a’ight?” He hugs me fast then grabs his keys and heads outside. His dad follows, limping a little and frowning the whole way.
I’m left alone with Ashleigh—who’s looking a little less sure now that things are in motion—and the feeling that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong.
Forty
Back at Granny’s, I attempt to do homework but end up staring at my calculus book, trying to envision what’s happening at the mine right now, and getting a good start on an ulcer.
“Anything I can help with?” MFM asks.
“No.”
“Calculus, huh?”
I look up at her, frowning. “What do you want?”
“I just …” She looks around, waves her hands, shrugs. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Not my problem.” I go back to calculus.
“I’m not used to just sitting around the house.”
That’s because you were never home, I think.
She looks down the hall, to the room where Granny’s sleeping fitfully. The morphine’s not quite enough to dull the pain for very long, and we can hear her soft groans. “I wish I could do something.”
“You could go blow something up.” I meant it as a dig, but now that I’ve said it, I kinda like the idea. I’d much rather see her in prison than Dobber or his dad. “That’s the kind of stuff you do, right? Only this time, you can help people you care about for a change, instead of complete strangers.”
She gives me an exasperated look. “That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t joking,” I mutter as she wanders off to take a bath. Minutes later, opera music from her iPod floats out of the bathroom, accompanied by her horrible singing. Apparently tone-deafness is genetic.
I plug my ears against the sound, debating what to do. My moral pendulum is swinging between (a) praying the Dobbers get safely out of the mine with the explosives, and (b) calling the cops and getting them arrested before they can go through with their plan. I’m wondering if I’ll be considered an accomplice when I hear a rattle at the front door.
I look up just in time to see it swing open, and before I can scream, Dobber and his dad rush through.
I’m relieved and pissed all in the same
heartbeat. Then I see Dobber’s face. His eye is purple and swollen nearly shut. His right hand is bleeding, and he’s holding his left on the back of his head. They’re both red-faced, and Mr. Dobber’s breathing like there’s not enough oxygen in the world.
“What happened?”
“They caught us. Leaving the mine.” Dobber eases himself gently onto the couch. Mr. Dobber stands by the door. “Two guards.”
I tilt Dobber’s face toward the light. “They did this?” His black eye makes the one I gave Cole look like a tiny bruise.
“I let ’em catch me so Daddy could get the explosives to the car.”
My heart sinks. “You got the explosives?”
Dobber’s smile is grotesque, stretched out of place by the swelling in his cheek and his split lip. “Damn straight.”
“Where are they?” I ask casually. I’ll take them and hide them or cut them up into pieces or—
“Someplace safe.”
Damn. Dobber’s smarter than I give him credit for. “Please don’t do this.”
“Lib, I know you want to do this all legal. But Peabody lives outside the law. He buys cops, bribes the county, kills dogs. You seen it. He don’t follow nobody’s rules.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to stoop to his level,” I argue. The opera music floats on the air like a sound track. “We have to be better than him. Otherwise, we’re the same.”
He just shakes his head. “You gotta fight fire with fire.”
I’m saved the effort of replying by a loud knock on the door. Mr. Dobber jumps a foot before turning to check the peephole. “Looks like trouble,” he says.
He opens the door a crack. Cole pushes his way in and slams it shut.
“What are you doing here?” Dobber asks.
Cole’s hair is drenched with sweat like he ran all the way from town. His black eye is nearly gone, but the dark circles under his eyes are just as bad. It looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” I ask.
“Peabody’s guys,” he says. “They know you broke into the mine.”
“They’re coming here?” I think about Granny. And stupid MFM, completely oblivious in her opera-laced bath.
“Not here,” Cole says. “They’re headed to the Dobber’s.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“Are they watching this place?” Dobber interrupts.
“Not sure,” Cole says. “But they’ll check here eventually, and your car out front’s a dead giveaway. Y’all gotta get out of here.”
“Leave Liberty and her granny here alone?” Dobber scowls, wincing when his lip opens up again.
I never got a chance to tell Dobber about MFM’s arrival. They don’t even know she’s here.
“They’re not after Liberty. They’re after you. Dobber …” Cole stares him in the eye. “They have guns.”
My mouth drops open. This can’t be happening. No. No way.
The ominous chanting of “O Fortuna” floats down the hall.
Mr. Dobber steps forward and presses something into Cole’s hand. “Hide it. Wreck it. Whatever. Just get it off this property. I don’t want nothing happenin’ to Kat ’cause of us.”
Cole looks at his palm, where the keys to Dobber’s car lay. He closes his fingers around them and nods. Somehow, the sacrifice of Dobber’s car makes it all real. People are coming to kill Dobber and his dad. To shoot them, in cold blood. All because of some black rocks that burn nice.
“You better go,” Dobber says. “If they find you here, your daddy won’t have that job no more.”
“I don’t care.” Cole heads for the door. “I’m sick of this shit.”
“Hey, man,” Dobber says. Cole stops, his hand on the doorknob. “Thanks.”
Cole looks like he’s about to tear up, but instead he just says, “Don’t let them get you, Dob.” Then he heads out into the night.
Dobber looks at his dad. “We better go too.”
“Go?” I say. “You can’t go. They’ll find you.”
“More likely to find us if we stay,” says Dobber.
“And y’all ain’t safe if we’re here,” Mr. Dobber adds. He takes some papers out of his coat pocket and hands them to me. “These are for you.”
“You can’t leave!” I understand how them being here puts us in danger, but the idea of not having Dobber around … I don’t know. I can’t bear it. It’s like the last straw. The one thing I refuse to give up.
“Lib, don’t be stupid,” Dobber says. “Even if my car ain’t here, they’re gonna be watching the house.”
“I know that, but … but …” I’m racking my brain for some way to keep Dobber near. To keep him safe. That’s when it hits me. “The springhouse!”
“What about it?”
“You can stay there,” I say. “Nobody knows it’s there except us.”
Mr. Dobber’s rubbing his chin. “Might be good to hole up somewheres. We try to run, we’ll be out in the open.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Hole up. Disappear. Let Peabody think you left town.” My brain unhelpfully points out that they can’t live in a rock hut forever, but I can’t think about that right now. Right now, I just want to have Dobber here. To know he’s safe.
I grab some old quilts from the hall closet. After turning off the lights, we head out the back door. Mr. Dobber creeps around the house to make sure no one’s lurking before we leave.
I feel like I’ve fallen into an old Wild West show. Blowing people up. Shooting them. “They wouldn’t have actually killed you, right?”
“Why not?” Dobber’s crouched next to me beside the back porch. “Daddy’s a meth addict and I ain’t nothing special. Who’s gonna care?”
I feel a little sick when I realize he’s right. Nobody in Ebbottsville would be too sad to see them gone. Not Mr. Dobber, anyway.
“Besides, Peabody’s killing people all the time,” Dobber says. “That mine’s like a weapon of mass destruction.”
That hits me, hard. It’s a perfect analogy. I stare into the dark, listening and thinking how much like a terrorist attack that poisonous water is.
“Only one way to stop a weapon like that,” Dobber says.
“What’s that?”
“Kill the terrorist.”
Forty-One
Midnight. I lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Nothing makes sense anymore.
I hate Peabody. Hate him for what he’s done to Granny, to the people, and to the land. I can see how him being dead would be a good thing for this valley. But I can’t wish that on anybody, not even him.
But Dobber and his dad are sleeping in our springhouse right now because Peabody’s trying to kill them. That’s just as wrong. Maybe wronger. If I were some kind of God, dealing out death and judgment, I’d say the Dobbers deserve to live a lot more than Robert Peabody.
Granny groans in the other room. The door on MFR (my former room) is closed, so I doubt MFM can hear her. I creep down the hall and peek in. Granny’s trying to get the lid off a bottle of water.
I cross the room quietly. “Let me help you.”
“Thank you, sugarplum.”
I twist off the top and hand it back to her.
She takes a drink and rests the bottle next to her. “You’re up awful late. Something wrong?”
Her eyelids are already falling. As much as I’d like to tell her everything, she’d be asleep before I was halfway through. “Nothing,” I say.
“She loves you,” she says. “Y’all’s just too much alike.”
She drifts off as I realize she’s talking about MFM.
“You’re wrong,” I say. “On both counts.”
I pull the covers up over her arms and watch her face. Because of the cancer, she’s aged so fast, but I can see traces of MFM’s face in hers still.
And I can see what MFM will look like when she’s old. Me too, actually. Like Granny says, we’re soup from the same pot.
As much as I hate to admit it, there’s some truth to that. All three of us are stubborn and outspoken. We’re fighters to the death, whether it’s a political argument or a Clue game. And if I’m honest with myself, my quest for fairness and justice is just as strong as my mom’s. My former mom’s, I mean.
The difference is I’d never forget I had a kid to take care of. I’d never ignore my responsibilities just to take up some banner for strangers in China. And I’d never get involved with a political bombing and end up in prison.
Oh no. Never.
And there it is. The sickening, disgusting proof to what Granny keeps saying. We are alike, my mother and I. Sure, I’m fighting for Granny and people I know instead of Chinese workers I’ve never met or seen. And I realize MFM never intended to hurt anyone, just to get those government officials to hear what she was saying. But for whatever reason, we both ended up behind a bomb.
I stare out the window at the blackness beyond. My mother’s face stares back in my reflection. I’m so much like her, people think we’re sisters. Too much alike, Granny said. She sounds a lot like you, Dobber said. I know they’re right. I can see it, literally, in the mirror. But I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to make her mistakes. Watching myself in the window, I whisper one quiet question to the night.
“How am I different?”
The reflection offers no answers and Granny’s asleep, so I wander back to the living room and sink onto the lounge chair. Something crinkles when I hit the seat. Reaching under me, I pull out the stack of papers Mr. Dobber handed me. In the rush to get to the springhouse, I’d forgotten about them.
Curious, I turn on the lamp and stare at the first page. I know what it is immediately. I’ve seen it before, or at least one like it. It’s a water quality report. This particular one is for a property on Highway 52, near the Dobbers’ house, but there must be forty reports in the stack.
I get on the floor and spread them all out, looking for Granny’s address. Once I find it, I grab my copy from my backpack and lay them next to each other. They’re mostly identical: same sample location, same date and time, same collector. But they differ in one major way: