by Amy Allgeyer
The levels of chemicals in the water are totally different.
Digging through my backpack again, I find the notes I made about safe limits for drinking water. Looking over the new report, I see the levels in every single category—coliform bacteria, pH, iron, sulfate sulfur, chloride, etc.—are outside the acceptable range.
My hand starts to shake. The paper flutters to the floor and I pick up another. And another. Every report I look at shows unsafe drinking water.
Finally, I have the answers I was looking for.
Granny’s well water is poison. The testing report that was paid for by the mine said it was safe. Because of that, she drank it. Now she’s dying.
Somebody, somewhere falsified that report. And the proof is sitting right here in front of me. Like a bomb just waiting to go off.
Forty-Two
I call Iris at the ungodly hour of 4:00 a.m. As I wait for her to pick up, I look over my plan. Four hours of plotting, and I’m pretty sure I’ve found a way to take down Peabody without killing anyone or turning into my mother.
“Liberty?”
I can tell from Iris’s voice she’s already up. Not surprising. Iris sleeps about five hours a night.
“I need your help.” I put the last month into a nutshell. Thankfully, Iris is a journalist, with an ear for the story.
“A mine owner falsifying docs? The AP would be all over that. Mountaintop removal is a powder keg on the Hill.”
“I’m going to overnight a copy of the reports to you,” I say. “You’ll have them tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Iris says. “But what exactly do you want me to do with them?”
“Keep them safe,” I say. “I have a few more details to work out, but I’ll be in touch.”
“Roger that,” she says. “Are you okay?”
“You know, I actually think I might be.”
“Wake up, sleepyheads,” I call from outside the springhouse. There’s some shuffling and groaning inside; then Dobber unfolds his six-and-a-half feet through the tiny wooden door. “Good night?”
His hair is sticking straight up, and he has a zipper mark down one cheek. “I’m alive,” he says. “Cold but alive.”
“Thank God.” Things seem less frightening in the light of day, but I remember they still have a target on their backs. “We have a new plan.”
“New plan?” Dobber frowns and starts shaking his head.
“We’re not bombing anything,” I say.
“But—”
“No.” My chin juts out in my “don’t eff with me” pose. “No bombs.”
Mr. Dobber shuffles to the door and leans against the frame. “You look at them papers?”
“I did. You realize what they are?”
He nods. “I was in charge of coordinating them water tests for the mine,” he says. “When the results came, Peabody told me to pull out any of ’em that didn’t meet the limits and put ’em on his desk. So I did.”
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing. I thought he was gonna make it right for them people whose wells was bad.” He steps out into the sunlight and rubs his arms.
“But he didn’t?”
“Naw.” He clears his throat and spits in the dirt. “I knew some of them folks and when their reports come from the county, it said their wells was fine. Even though I seen the report that said clear as day the water weren’t no good.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to the county. Told ’em the testing company said some people’s water wasn’t safe to drink.” For a moment, the only sounds are squirrels rustling through the leaves. Dobber and I wait silently for him to continue. I can tell he’s never heard this story either. “Next thing I know, I got three broken ribs, two less teeth, and no job.”
“You’ve kept those reports all this time?” I ask.
“Naw. I wrote the test company and asked for new copies last week. It occurred to me Mr. Peabody might not’a let them know about my unfortunate job loss.” His smile is peppered with black and missing teeth—scars from his meth addiction that’ll last a lifetime. Which reminds me …
“Hey.” I stare at Mr. Dobber’s ankle. “No bracelet?”
“My sentence was up two days ago.”
“Good timing, huh?” Dobber slaps him on the back. His dad winces and puts a hand to his chest, and I’m reminded again that he still has cancer. And now, no meth to combat the pain. “Lib, you gonna tell us this plan or not?”
“Listen fast,” I say, glancing at my watch. “I need to get to school and fill Ashleigh in on the new plan. We really need her.” Those words stick a little in my throat.
I go through everything like I did with Iris this morning, and answer the same questions all over again.
At the end, Dobber’s smiling. “I had my heart set on blowing something up, but I reckon this’ll work too.”
There’s a crashing in the bushes near the driveway, and we all freeze. My blood seems to stop in my veins as I watch the shrubs swaying as someone pushes through them. Mr. Dobber stoops down and quietly wraps his hand around a dead branch. Dobber’s made fists already. I’m looking around for a weapon when a woman’s voice calls, “Liberty? Are you in there?”
MFM.
Dobber heaves an enormous sigh, and his dad drops the branch. I walk around the corner of the springhouse, ready to bitch her out for everything from yelling my name to following me around to her choice in music last night. But she interrupts me, and what she says drives every single one of those thoughts out of my head.
“Liberty.” She’s out of breath and her eyes are full of tears. “We need to call the hospice nurse. It’s time.”
Forty-Three
I’m sitting in the rocker next to Granny’s bed. The windows are open and the faded, flowered curtains are blowing in the breeze. The air smells green—no flower blossom perfume, just leaf buds, wet grass, and damp moss. The notebook with my all-important plan is lying forgotten in the corner.
Granny’s dying.
Mrs. Blanchard has been here since this morning. She says Granny’s kidneys have shut down, and it won’t be long now. There’s a morphine drip to keep her comfortable. So now we wait.
MFM is next to me perched on the edge of Granny’s bed. Occasionally, she leaves the room, unable to contain her shaking sobs. I guess I’ve had more time to prepare for this. I’ve watched it coming for months. Watched Granny sink into herself. Grow smaller. Diminish.
I realize if MFM hadn’t gotten arrested, I never would have come here. Granny would have passed away alone. We would have driven down for the funeral, and I wouldn’t have had these months with her. These terrible, hard, confusing, agonizing, precious, priceless few months. It scares me to think I almost missed out on them.
I should be working on our plan—there’s a meeting to schedule, documents to be sent, people to visit, but none of it matters right now. The whole reason for doing it all is lying in front of me, tiny and thin, a little stick woman with Jolly Rancher hair.
“Liberty?” Granny’s mind’s been really clear for the last few hours. She and MFM have been talking about old times.
I squeeze her hand. “I’m right here.”
“I want you to promise me …” Her blue eyes glare lasers at me. It’s the only part of her that hasn’t faded. “When I’m gone, this house is goin’ to you.”
“Granny, stop. Don’t talk like that.”
“Don’t bullshit me. We ain’t got the luxury of pretending this ain’t happening.”
She’s right, of course, and I nod.
“You sell the house, you hear? Use that money for your college.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t mean no community college. I mean Georgetown.”
“Sure, Granny. If I get in.” She has no idea I’m going to flunk this year, which m
eans the end of my chances at pretty much any major college.
MFM’s listening quietly to all this, and I wonder if she even knew about Georgetown. If she ever wondered at all about any of my dreams.
“The second thing,” Granny says. “Go back to Worshington, DC, and finish your schooling up there.”
I glance at MFM. We haven’t talked about what happens next, after Granny’s gone, when there’s no reason for MFM to stay here and nowhere else for me to go. But I feel like this moment, the now, while I have hold of Granny’s warm hand, is way more important than the later. Nothing matters except this heartbeat and the next, and as many more as she has.
“We’ll worry about that later,” I say.
“Lord, girl. Look at yourself. You don’t belong here.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Your dreams got nothing to do with mining or farming or anything else you can find ’round here. You gotta chase down your happy, find where it lives.”
“I don’t know where my happy lives.” My throat tightens at the idea of having to find my happy alone. “I don’t even know where to look.”
“Look inside.” Her voice is softer. Her eyes close, then open, then close.
“Granny!”
“I’m righ’chere.”
“Please don’t leave me.” The inside of my cheek is bleeding as I count to five. To ten. To fifty.
“You’ll be awright.” Her eyes stay closed. “Y’all got each other. That’s what counts.”
She sighs. Then nothing. No rise and fall of her chest. No more words. No squeeze of my hand. She’s gone.
And so am I. Down the hall, out the front door, with MFM calling after me. I’m not even sure where I’m going until the ground tilts upward and I realize I’m on the ridge trail, climbing up through the rhododendron. The world is sparkly through my tears, like an impressionist painting. At the top of the hill, I collapse onto the ground, the red mud soaking through my jeans.
Then I stop counting and let the tears fall.
Forty-Four
The house feels like an empty shell. An empty shell filled with food. Women started coming at breakfast this morning with casseroles, ham biscuits, and muffins. There’s enough on the table to feed an army already, but now the lunches are starting to arrive. Most of the women are from Granny’s church, but a few—my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Philpott—are people I know too.
After months of near starvation, we have all this gorgeous food, and I can’t eat a thing.
“Hey.”
I turn to see Cole standing in the doorway.
“Mind if I come in?”
I shrug. After everything that’s happened, being pissed off at Cole just seems like a waste of energy.
“I’m really sorry about your granny.”
I nod. I’ve found it’s easier not to cry if I don’t open my mouth.
“She was something special.”
“Yeah. I know.” I walk past him, and he follows me out onto the porch. I stare across the yard, where Myrna Lattimer’s getting out of her car with a basket of food. Even from here, I can see her eyes are red. It comforts me a little to know I’m not the only one missing Granny.
“Lib, I wanted to say … I’m really sorry. I was wrong.”
Leaning against the railing, I look down at the green splint on my finger. Punching Cole seems to have happened in a different lifetime. To a different person. It doesn’t even matter anymore. “Whatever,” I say. “It doesn’t hurt much now.”
“No, I mean for …” He nods toward the blackened scraps of the shed.
“Wait …” I look from the shed to him, and my blood starts to pound in my ears. “You did that?”
“Peabody’s orders.” His eyes stay locked on the shed.
“And the spying, the note in my locker?”
He takes a deep breath and nods, blowing it out. “All of it. And I’m sorry. It was—”
My heart stutters. “Goldie? Did you—”
“No!” His eyes close for just a second; then he looks at me. “That wasn’t me.”
“But you knew it was going to happen!”
“It’s not like I coulda stopped it,” he says. “If Peabody wants something done, it gets done.”
“You could have told me! We could have hidden Goldie. You could have … something. Anything!” I make a fist with my left hand, seriously considering punching him again. But I think for a second instead. “You warned the Dobbers.”
“Yeah …” He rubs the back of his neck. “When Peabody called us in and started handing out guns—damn. That was … Well, I realized then you were right. ’Bout him not being a good guy.”
It staggers me that Peabody had to resort to murder before Cole could see what a snake he is. And half the town still can’t see it. It makes me sick to think about it. Sick and tired. So very, very tired. “Better late than never, I guess.”
Cole looks around. “Are they safe?”
I force my eyes to stay on Cole, not to look down the driveway. I still don’t trust him. “No idea. They left after you did. I don’t know where they went.”
He stares at me for a few seconds, then shakes his head. “A’ight. Well, if you see them, tell ’em Dobber’s car’s in our barn. Keys are in it.”
He turns and starts down the steps. It reminds me of the first time he ever came here, picking me up for that party at Dobber’s. So much has changed since then. So much poisoned, orange water under the bridge.
“Cole?”
He stops and looks back at me.
“You’re a complete shithead.”
He’s still staring at me when I close the front door.
People come and go all afternoon. Some bring food; some bring flowers and cards. MFM and I move around each other in our own bubbles of grief. She’s still in the denial phase. I’ve worked my way up to depression and loneliness. I miss Granny so much I feel like a magnet whose partner is held just out of reach. I need and want her with a powerful longing, but she gets no closer. She’s gone. Forever.
I sit in the rocking chair in her room, alone. MFM’s avoided this room since the funeral people came yesterday. Maybe the image of Granny’s body being loaded onto a stretcher is too painful. For me, I feel like what’s left of her is strongest here, and I cling to the last cosmic bits of her spirit and soul. I collect a few of her hairs from her pillow, wishing they could bring her back or at least bring me some respite from the loneliness. Instead, MFM appears in the doorway.
“I took the Dobbers some food,” she says.
I’d forgotten about them. Forgotten, in fact, that there’s a world outside this house. “Good idea.”
She sits down on the floor, facing me. From here, I can see strands of gray in her hair. It’s comforting in a stupid way. Proof that some part of Granny really does live inside her. “I guess we need to talk.”
“We do.” I already know what I’m going to say. How could I not honor Granny’s last wish? With Granny’s hairs clutched in my hand, I mumble the words people have been telling me for months … only with a slight variation. “We don’t belong here.”
Her shoulders tense, but she nods her agreement. I realize hearing that hurts her as much as it does me. Not to belong in this beautiful place … I wonder if it makes her feel not good enough. A failure. Or worst of all, rootless.
I want to belong here. I want to be a part of the rocks and the crawfish pools, the honeysuckle and the morning mists. But I don’t fit. Neither does MFM. We’re different species.
“Liberty,” she says. “If you don’t want to live with me …” Tears drip down her face again. I swear there are grooves in her cheeks now, carved over the past two days. “Mommy told me how I let you down.” I’ve always liked that she still, as an adult, called Granny Mommy. “How I should have been with you more often. Your fancy meals.”
I stare at the ceiling, half-glad she’s finally realized that and half-irritated she knows I needed her.
“I’ve talked to Iris’s parents and …” She takes a huge breath and holds it for a minute. “They’re happy to let you stay there, if you want.”
This news hits me like a tidal wave, and once it’s passed, I’m surprised to find a little voice in my gut saying no.
“But I’d want to see you,” she says. “Whenever and as often as you can stand it.” Her smile is stretched across her face, too thin, too tight.
“No, Mom.” I stumble a little on the word I thought I’d sworn off. “I want to go back to DC and I want to live with you. Give us another … I dunno, another start or try or chance. Whatever.”
“Oh, Liberty.” This time the smile is full and genuine, even her eyes crinkle. “Really?”
“Yes, but things have to be different,” I warn. The next words stick in my throat like thistle burrs. Admitting weakness is not my strong point. “I need you.”
She sputters, her nose running, and I hand her a tissue. I don’t know where she got this emotional side, but it sure wasn’t from Granny. And I’m glad she didn’t pass it on to me. I sit quietly while she pulls herself together.
“There’s also the issue of school,” I say. Gritting my teeth, I tell her what I’ve worked out for myself. “Since I’m flunking my junior year here, my scholarship at Westfield will be revoked. I know we can’t afford to pay the tuition, so I’ll just go to public school and finish up there.” Bye-bye, Georgetown. Bye-bye, college scholarship.
“You’re failing?” Her brown eyes go round. “You?”
Leave it to MFM to piss me off in the middle of a touching emotional moment. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to take care of Granny all day and night, and try to keep up with school?” I’m yelling. It feels good to yell.
She looks like I might as well have slapped her. “No. I guess not.”
“No,” I say. “Because as usual, you weren’t around to—” I stop myself. This feels too familiar. Our old arguments, our old habits. If we’re going to make this work, we have to break them. We might as well start now. “Sorry.”