Heat and Light (31 page)

THE DRILLERS ROLL DOWN
the Dutch Road in the company truck, Herc at the wheel, Mickey Phipps riding shotgun. The afternoon sun is high overhead, the one advantage of starting work at dawn: at quitting time there's plenty of daylight left. Rolling landscape, green hills in the distance. Mickey is on his cell phone, talking to his daughter. Herc whistles under his breath.

“You're in a good mood,” Mickey says when he hangs up.

“I guess I am,” Herc says.

They are turning the corner onto Number Nine Road when Herc spots the green minivan idling in the Devlins' driveway. He slows as the wife steps out, followed by a blond-haired boy in a baseball uniform. Herc recognizes her immediately, the strange silent
girl they'd found sitting at Jess's kitchen table, awaiting her return like a faithful dog.

I've been counseling her for two years,
Jess told him later.
I don't think it's helping.

I met the husband when we were out there drilling. I see why she needs counseling,
Herc said.

He feels, suddenly, that he knows too much about this town. The interconnectedness of everyone and everything is making him claustrophobic. He is not cut out for small-town living.

“Cute kid,” says Mickey. “Your Levi's age, maybe. He still playing ball?”

Mickey's always trying to get him talking about the boys, as if Herc might need a reminder (maybe he does) of his fatherly responsibilities.

“Not this summer,” Herc says, hiding his irritation. “Maybe next year.” Levi is ten and, for reasons Colleen doesn't understand, losing interest in baseball. To Herc it couldn't be clearer: the kid is small for his age and not happy about it, a feeling he recalls exquisitely. His shortness is yet another paternal failing, a curse he's passed on to his son.

Right on cue, Mickey says, “I bet he misses you.”

He could've said a lot worse; Herc knows this. Still, the self-righteousness is grating, Mickey the model husband and father.

“I guess they're still having water troubles. The Devlins,” Herc says, to change the subject.

“Not our problem.”

“I know it,” Herc says, but does he? He's drilled hundreds of wells—thousands, maybe. Can he recall any one of them distinctly? His memory is like an old videotape, warped from constant reuse. He tries, again, to remember: was there anything even the slightest bit unusual about Devlin H1?

“Could be the conductor casing. I've seen it happen. Not often, but I've seen it.”

“That's the cement crew,” says Mickey. “That ain't even us. Don't go borrowing trouble.”

Herc remembers, then: his regular cement crew had been tied up with Neugebauer. He'd had to call in a different crew, one he'd never used before. He hadn't watched the actual cementing.

“I'm the rig manager,” he tells Mickey. “I'm going to feel responsible, even if it isn't my fault.”

Of course, if he
had
watched the actual cementing, he'd have seen nothing. The hole was a mile deep. The crew pumped cement between the casing and the hole wall. When it squirted up the sides, the job was pronounced finished. What actually happened downhole was anybody's guess.

“We could've run an intermediate casing.”

Mickey says, “Not our call.” As, of course, it isn't. It's a lesson Herc has learned time and again, that ten different operators will drill the same well ten different ways. Bern Little, Dark Elephant's company man, chose a cheaper and faster solution, a liner string held in place with hangers. The rig manager had no say in the matter. Why should he, when Dark Elephant was footing the bill?

They ride awhile in silence. When Herc's cell phone rings, he knows without even looking that it's Jess calling.

“You need to get that?” says Mickey.

“Nah, that's all right.” With Legrand or Jorge he wouldn't hesitate, but Mickey's basic decency unsettles him. Only around Mickey does he feel shame.

“Are you sure? It could be an emergency.”

“I'm off the clock,” Herc says—realizing, too late, that Mickey isn't talking about the rig. Again he feels the weight of Mickey's righteousness. A responsible husband and father always picks up the phone.

Against his better judgment, he does.

“Hercules?” says Jess.

Even with Mickey in earshot, her voice thrills him, warm and
resonant and somehow intimate, as though she's confiding a deep secret.

“Speaking.” He tries to keep his voice neutral.

“Change of plans here. I've had a long day and I don't feel like cooking. Meet me at the Pick and Shovel?”

“Now?” He glances at Mickey. “I thought you had to stop by the hospital.”

“The what? You're breaking up.”

“The hospital,” Herc repeats.

“Ack, you're right! It completely slipped my mind.”

“Did you say ‘ack'? I don't believe I've ever heard a person say that.”

“I'll go tomorrow, I promise. Pick and Shovel in half an hour?”

“With bells on.” He hangs up and stows the phone in his pocket. Mickey, who is Christian, stares deliberately at the road. Disapproval rises off him like fumes.

“That was a friend,” says Herc.

“None of my business,” Mickey says.

T
he night is very dark, foggy, the moon hidden. Two vehicles zip along a country road, crashing through puddles. The air is alive with fireflies. The first car, a red Toyota Prius, whips smoothly around the sharp corners. The second driver, unfamiliar with the road, lags a few car lengths behind.

Three or four car lengths. To Mack it seems a discreet distance, but what does she know? She's never followed anyone before—not in a car, anyway. Stealth doesn't come naturally to her.

But Lorne Trexler, luckily, is distracted. He drives with one hand, the other holding a cell phone to his ear. A more observant driver would have noticed the headlights in his rearview mirror, the same white pickup truck following him across campus, through quaint downtown Stirling and into the countryside beyond. Now the road—Walnut Creek Bottom, according to a sign a mile back—is nearly deserted. In the last ten minutes they have passed only one car.

Trexler hits the gas and guns it up a steep hill. Mack does the same, impressed, in spite of herself, by the Prius's acceleration. For a little car—a hybrid, yet—it has a lot of kick.

She is prejudiced against small cars the way she is prejudiced against small dogs—unapologetically, with deep conviction.

Is it possible he hasn't noticed the pickup truck following him? Mack has memorized his license plate. His face is lit by the bluish glow of his cell phone.

The prime function of bioluminescence is in sexual selection.

Forty miles per hour, fifty, sixty. The road is slick from the afternoon's rain. The Prius turns a sharp curve, too fast for conditions. Mack feels this in her body, a creeping sense of danger, as though a line has been crossed.

This is what she's thinking when the deer darts into the road.

THE DAY BEGAN WITH A LIE,
and would end with one.

That morning, after Rena left for work, Mack again visited the Stirling College website. Quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she called the phone number on the department home page.

Geology,
said a very young female voice.

Mack cleared her throat.
Um, is Dr. Trexler in?

He usually stops by his office in the evening. Are you a student?

A former student,
said Mack, the story she had rehearsed
. I'm passing through town today. I wanted to stop by and say hi.

Next she left a message on Rena's cell phone.
I forgot to tell you. I might not be here when you get home. There's a sale in Somerset.
This was true, as far as it went. At the John Deere she'd seen a notice on a bulletin board:
DAIRY CATTLE OF ALL AGES, MILKERS AND BREEDING STOCK.

Mack didn't actually
say
she was going to the auction. Technically, it wasn't a lie.

The drive to Stirling took longer than expected. The tiny campus, once she found it, looked nothing like Penn State and very much like a college in the movies: old buildings of matching gray limestone, some covered in ivy, arranged around grassy lawns. An ancient-looking limestone wall marked the perimeter. Even the trees were old. Mack located Winger Hall and parked in a space marked
FACULTY
. She killed the engine and settled in, aware of how wrong she must look in her battered farm truck, its rear end caked
with mud and decorated with bumper stickers common in Bakerton but probably not on a college campus
. NRA NOW. COOL COUNTRY FROGGY 101. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.

She just wanted to see him.

She wasn't in the habit of lying. Telling the truth was hard enough. Rena often joked that Mack's natural state was silence, a Mackey family trait. Like her pop, her grandpop, she was unskilled at idle chitchat, talking for talking's sake.

She fumbled in the glove box for her snuff, keeping her eyes on the door.

If she were a different person, she might simply have asked:
Are you in love with Dr. Trexler?
But if she asked the question, Rena would answer it. And maybe Mack doesn't really want to know.

She recognized the car immediately, the red Prius she'd seen at the Pick and Shovel. Trexler parked in the next row over and hurried into Winger Hall. He was carrying a backpack and talking on a cell phone.

Mack waited. The time passed slowly. She wished she had brought a snack. Hungry, queasy from too much snuff, she watched the door.

NOW THE DEER DARTS INTO THE ROADWAY.
The Prius slows, brakes screeching, then swerves violently in the exact wrong direction.

“Idiot!” Mack shouts, smacking the steering wheel. Whom she means—herself or Trexler—is not clear.

The Prius misses the first deer but hits the second. Mack knows—doesn't everybody?—that deer rarely travel alone.

The second deer hits the passenger side, the front quarter panel, with a sickening thud. Brakes screeching, the Prius spins out, nosing into the guardrail. Finally it rolls to a stop, its back end blocking the road.

Mack pulls over to the shoulder and gets out of the truck. “Are you all right?” she calls.

The Prius's hood has popped open. Its headlights are still on, its engine steaming in the damp. Lorne Trexler is still behind the wheel, pinned by the airbag.

“Fucking deer!” he shouts, as though the deer were at fault. The airbag fills his car like a giant bubble of chewing gum. “Can you call 911?”

As though the deer had behaved irresponsibly.

“I don't have a phone,” Mack says.

“Mine is in here somewhere. On the floor, I think. Can you find it?”

At that moment a telephone rings.

“That's my friend calling back,” says Trexler. “We were on the phone when it happened. She must have been scared to death.”

Again the phone rings.

Mack kneels beside the car and feels around on the floor, around and between Trexler's feet. The strangeness of the situation is overpowering.

Again the phone rings.

Finally she finds it, still warm, and hands it over. He waves it away, covering his face with his hand. “Tell her I'm fine. Tell her to call 911.”

“Hello?” Mack says into the phone. For a second she holds her breath, but the voice on the other end is not Rena's. “Lorne's had an accident. He's okay, but the car's in bad shape. Can you call 911?”

“Walnut Creek Bottom!” Trexler shouts. “Right past the reservoir.”

“Did you hear that?” Mack says.

After she hangs up, Trexler eyes her strangely. “How did you know my name?”

“That's what she called you,” Mack lies.

Finally Trexler wriggles out from beneath the airbag. He's lucky to be small and skinny. A man Mack's size would be trapped inside.

He scrambles to his feet. The top of his head is level with Mack's earlobe. “Jesus. This thing is totaled.”

“Doesn't look good.” Mack rolls up her sleeves. “Come on. Let's move it.”

Trexler looks dumbfounded.

“It's a blind curve,” she explains, as though talking to a child. “You don't want to cause another accident.”

The Prius is astonishingly lightweight. Piece of junk, Mack thinks, putting her back into it. Together they push the car onto the narrow shoulder. Trexler isn't much help. He's a little guy, skinny and narrow-shouldered. Mack thinks, I could take him.

(As if that would solve the problem. As if being clocked by a total stranger,
an
unidentified assailant,
would somehow keep him away from Rena.)

“That's better,” she says. “It's still in the road, but you should be able to swerve around it.” To herself she adds,
if you're not driving like a jackass.

They stand a moment looking at each other. The next thing can now happen.

IT'S NEARLY MIDNIGHT
when Mack turns down the dirt lane to the farm. The fog has lifted. In the half-moon light the barn is clearly legible:
CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO TREAT YOURSELF TO THE BEST
. In Depression times, a traveling painter from Ohio had turned it into a billboard. In return her grandpop got a free paint job and a few dollars a year.

Except for a light in the bedroom, the house is dark. In the kitchen she takes off her boots, looks in the refrigerator, chugs a
glass of water. She climbs the stairs in stocking feet. Rena is in bed, asleep but still wearing her glasses. A paperback book—
Silent Spring—
lies open on her chest.

She wakes with a start. “Where have you been? I was worried. You forgot your phone.”

“Sorry,” says Mack, who always forgets her phone. “There was an accident.”

“Are you okay?”

“I hit a deer. The truck's okay—not a scratch—but it shook me up a little.”

“Sweetheart.” Rena slides over and Mack, fully dressed, climbs in beside her. This is all she wants, all she can imagine wanting. She recalls how, standing face-to-face with Lorne Trexler, she heard an odd rustling somewhere behind her. She stepped over the guardrail and knelt in the underbrush.

“It was still alive,” she tells Rena. “A yearling.” A young male bleeding at the head, stubby antlers coming in, one back leg kicking. A fluttering heartbeat visible in the white fur of its chest.

Where are you going?
Trexler said as Mack jogged toward her truck.

I can't just leave it like that.

She came back with her Remington and placed the shot carefully, square in the middle of the animal's chest.

The report rang through the forest. A moment later Mack heard a siren in the distance.
There's your ambulance,
she told Trexler.

She got into her truck and drove away. When she looked back, he was talking on his cell phone.

THE STAR-LIGHT DRIVE-IN
is
unchanged since 1999. When Gia pulls up to the ticket booth, Darren reaches for his wallet, but the kid in the booth—a mute longhair in a Metallica T-shirt—waves
them inside. Darren wonders: Does Metallica still exist? Gia would know, but he doesn't ask her. He understands that he's fallen through a black hole, a portal to his lost youth. Asking the question would somehow break the spell.

Just as they used to, they take Gia's car. When Darren suggested taking his smart car, she laughed so hard she cried.

The crowd is small for a Saturday night. The midnight movie has already started, the second of a double feature. It is, altogether, a familiar feeling, with one critical difference: Gia's hand on Darren's, her lips nuzzling warmly at his ear.

The movie is an old one, from an endless series of bloody stories about a plastic troll doll possessed by demons. Darren recognizes the doll but can't name the sequel.

Gia is aghast.
“
You don't remember
Bride of Chucky
?”

He can taste her perfume. “Should I?”

“We saw it! The summer we were working at the Manor.”

“We did?” It was entirely possible. They'd seen any number of horror films that summer, drunk on beer or wine coolers and pleasantly stoned.

“Yep. You and me, cowboy. I can't believe you don't remember.”

“I can't believe you do.”

She reaches into her purse, takes out rolling papers and a Ziploc bag.

“Gia, come on. You know I don't do that anymore.”

She gives him a sly smile. “Yeah, I know, and good for you. Seriously. I'm proud of you. But it's been ten years, for Christ's sake! You don't get any time off for good behavior?”

“Eight,” says Darren. “It's been eight.”

“Eight years, you can't loosen up a little? You know, for a special occasion.”

The air hums between them, the long-awaited occasion, the fragile moment. He has wanted her for as long as he can remember.

“Not coke or heroin or anything. Just a joint here and there.
Something not so bad.” Gia gives him a small smile. “Don't listen to me. I'm an idiot.”

“You're not an idiot. Never say that.” Darren hesitates. “Actually, you're not far off. There is one treatment philosophy— it's called ‘harm reduction'—that recognizes a hierarchy of addictiveness.”

“I said
that
?”

“The idea is that if you're addicted to hard drugs—heroin, for example—having an occasional drink or a joint or whatever can function as a release valve, and actually help you stay clean. It's controversial,” he adds, which is putting it mildly. If anyone at work heard him talking, he'd be quickly out of a job. Harm reduction, at Wellways, is treated as the worst kind of heresy. And yet the Wellways model recognizes a place for methadone and buprenorphine. No one seems to find this hypocritical.

“Whatever,” says Gia. “I don't care if you smoke or not. I just thought it would be fun.”

He watches as she sprinkles a little weed into the paper. Her technique is still clumsy. Just as she used to, she leaves a gap in the center of the joint. The thing isn't going to burn properly. It's a waste of what smells, anyway, like perfectly good weed.

“Give me that,” Darren says.

He rolls quickly, remembering how he'd always taken the first hit.
Taking a commission,
he'd called it.

The first hit does nothing for him, nothing at all. Ditto for the second. The third reminds him of the first time he ever smoked, a complete misfire, three nervous fourteen-year-olds drinking beer at the Huffs and pretending to be stoned, on bad homegrown weed bought from Calvin Weems.

“Nothing,” he says, exhaling.

Gia laughs soundlessly.

“That's funny? Why is that funny?”

“Just: you're a born-again virgin.” Gia inhales deeply. “Girls know this. After eight years it grows back. Medical fact.”

This is much, much funnier than it should be, which should have been his first clue. He takes another hit and feels his senses dilate and is filled with gratitude.

They stare enraptured at the screen.

Ooh, Chucky,
the blond actress croons, stroking his plastic cheek. Which should not, under any circumstances, be sexy.