Heat and Light (36 page)

“I don't understand.” Heat washes over her, a hot flash to end all hot flashes. She rolls down the window. The stagnant air smells of catalytic converter, the truck's imminent demise.

“Look, I'm no doctor,” he says. “And I'm sorry, my dear, but neither are you. We deal in perceptions. Our role is to raise questions, Cassandra sounding the alarm. That's all we
can
do. And if we do it right—loudly, with great conviction—it just might be enough.”

The heat makes thinking impossible. Rena turns the key in the ignition, fiddles desperately with the vents. The broken air conditioner bathes her in lukewarm air.

“I'm a mandated reporter.” She hears the quaver in her voice. “If I suspect a child is being harmed, I have to call Child Protective Services. That's the law.”

“Of course. But it's a judgment call, right? There's a gray area. If there weren't, Ravi would have reported it himself.”

“But we can't keep
encouraging
her! Don't you see that? If she really is making Olivia sick, all this attention is exactly what she's after.”

“
If
,” says Lorne. “If.”

A horrible silence in which Rena understands:
He doesn't care.

“Look, you said yourself that we can't prove it,” he says calmly. “And if we can't prove it, neither can they.”

“They?”

“Darco. The DEP. The huge fucking propaganda machine that's telling the world fracking is safe. Trust me, Rena. You have no idea what we're up against.”

T
he nights are getting cooler. The chief shivers in his summer-weight camos. In another month he'll switch to heavier gear, long underwear. In two months he'll wonder if there's any goddamn point.

During a stakeout, the mind wanders. Three weeks ago, on a Sunday evening, the chief noticed a strange vehicle, a late-model Ford Explorer, parked outside his ex-wife's residence.

The next day, while the part-time secretary was on her lunch break, he attempted to run the plate, an operation that would have taken two minutes if the chief knew anything about computers. He was still at it when she returned. “What are you doing at my desk?” she asked.

“Running a plate.”

She sat beside him. “It's pretty easy, really.” And within thirty seconds the chief was copying down a name and a Texas address.

“Who's Bernard Little?” she asked.

“I'm not at liberty to say.”

For the next three days he surveilled, driving past at all hours. The Explorer never moved, as though it had grown roots in the driveway. The windows of the residence were always dark. On Day Four he tried using his key, and found that Terri had changed the locks.

Finally he stopped by Subway on his lunch break. “How's your mom these days? More cheese,” he told Jason through the sneeze guard.

“Pretty good, I guess.” His son, wearing plastic gloves, added an extra slice of mozzarella to the chief's usual, a twelve-inch Meatball. “She's in Hawaii.”

It was not the answer the chief was expecting. He and Terri had always been homebodies.

“All by herself?”

“Nah. Bernie took her. Her boyfriend.”

Through skillful questioning the chief learned the following facts: Bernie Little lived at the Days Inn and managed a drill rig. Terri had met him at Weight Watchers. For her birthday he'd bought them his-and-her motorcycles.

The interrogation was cut short by the lunch rush. “I have to go, Dad,” said Jason, who didn't charge him for the extra cheese.

He'd never imagined that men went to Weight Watchers.

Changing the locks was Terri's right, of course. Probably she'd done it months ago. The chief had been happier when he didn't know.

Is it his imagination, or does he hear a noise? The chief holds his breath. There is a rustle of leaves, the dry grass crunching. A flash of white catches his eye.

He powers on his NVD. The image is murky, but the movement is unmistakable. Two white males in dark clothing sprint across his field of vision. The tall skinny one carries a propane tank, the size used for a barbecue grill. The other, shorter and heavier, holds a length of hose.

For a moment the chief is paralyzed. Buzzing in his ears, his arms and legs humming. Then professionalism and training take over. He gets to his feet.

“Hold it right there.” His weapon hand is a little shaky, his NVD askew.

The meth head reaches into his pocket.

The chief will reflect later that thermal imaging would have come in handy at this point. As he has long suspected, his Gen II
isn't up to snuff. Also, he needs a sturdier helmet mount to hold the fucking thing in place.

He won't remember raising the Remington to his shoulder, only the exhilarating kickback. And, a moment later, the single ragged syllable he shouted at the meth heads.

RUN.

A soundstage at the 24 Hour News Network. At the anchor desk sits MEREDITH CULVER, blonde. She wears a suit jacket over a camisole, showing notable décolletage. Beside her is TY SLATER, a suntanned man with white teeth.

MEREDITH: Today, in our Energy Spotlight series, we'll take the temperature of the natural gas industry, where unexpected volatility has left investors in a panic. To make sense of what's happening on Wall Street, here's our in-house energy industry expert, Ty Slater.

TY: Thanks, Meredith. Boys and girls, energy is and forever will be a numbers game. Right now the numbers don't work. They don't even
almost
work. The past few years we've seen a massive rush to drill, and now we're
drowning
in natural gas. The market is so glutted they're practically giving the stuff away. Trouble is, drilling for gas in these particular formations is hella expensive. With gas at a buck ninety, they can't cover their operating costs.

MEREDITH: Let's talk about what happened last week, what I'd call the dark elephant in the room.

Ty offers a
shit-eating grin.

MEREDITH: After the very public firing of founder and CEO Kip Oliphant, the company had this to say. (
Reading
) “The board of directors would like to thank Kip for his many years of visionary leadership. We wish him well in all his future endeavors.” That's from Dark Elephant's communications director, Quentin Tanner. Ty, what aren't they telling us?

TY (
glancing at his watch
): How much time do we have?

Meredith
titters
appreciatively.

TY: Well, for starters, Oliphant is being investigated by the SEC, for running a private hedge fund out of the Dark Elephant headquarters. Which—
wait for it!—
trades gas and oil futures. Conflict of interest, anyone? Not to mention the fact that his own shareholders are suing him—

MEREDITH (
gleefu
l
): —for misusing the company jet!

TY: Look, Kip the Whip has been pulling these stunts for years. When gas was at four fifty, nobody cared what he did with the jet. But DE is undercapitalized and overextended. The Whip is on the hook for personal loans to the tune of a billion dollars. Let's review: last year he took home twenty million dollars in salary, stock, and bonuses. So why does he need to borrow a billion dollars? Does he have a secret drug habit?

MEREDITH: Ty, you're terrible! Our lawyers are going to have a field day with this.

TY: My point is, Kip Oliphant
is
an addict. He's addicted to drilling. His contract made him part owner of every well the company drilled, as long as he covered his share of the drilling
cost. He's drilled so many wells in the last couple years that he's hemorrhaging money.

MEREDITH: So he took out a
loan
?

TY: And put up his DE stock—thirty million shares!—as collateral. Trouble is, with the company's share price in the toilet, they're no longer worth enough to back a billion dollars in debt. He had to come up with hard cash, fast, so he sold some stock.

MEREDITH: A
lot
of stock.

TY: Yeah, baby! Ninety percent of his interest in the company! By the end, those shares were selling for ten bucks apiece. If you're a shareholder—and Meredith, I seriously hope you are not—your DE stock lost twenty percent of its value in a single week. Naturally you want the guy bounced. (Another
shit-eating
grin.
) Personally, I hate to see him go. Everybody in Houston has an Oliphant story.

MEREDITH: Okay, I'll bite. What's yours?

TY: Remember when they built the new corporate campus? The Whip wanted skylights in the company cafeteria. He left the architect a voice mail, and then billed his own company for design services.

From Meredith, peals of
laughter.

MEREDITH: So what's going to happen to Kip Oliphant?

TY: Stay tuned, kids. I wouldn't count him out yet.

W
inter comes early to Saxon County. At Friend-Lea Acres, cows are switched to stored feed.

Mack renews her hunting license in time for rabbit season. It arrives in the mail with a leaflet from the State Game Commission, a list of helpful tips:

          
*
    
Do not hunt around or from atop natural gas production equipment. This includes storage tanks.

          
*
    
Random shooting near drilling sites, compressor stations, and pipelines is dangerous and unlawful.

          
*
    
Identify your target and what is beyond it. Industry personnel may be wearing fluorescent orange, or may not.

Trick-or-treating takes place in a full-on blizzard. The witches and goblins wear scarves and mittens. Braden Devlin, grumbling, shares his candy with his sister, who spent the evening watching TV in her princess costume. They sort the candy into two piles. Their mother checks labels for rogue ingredients: wheat, dairy, peanuts, corn.

By the time the candy is divided, the snow is a foot deep. The calendar calls this mid-autumn, but on whose authority? Where, exactly, does winter begin on December 21?

In whiteout conditions, amid horizontal snowfall, the drill rigs roll out of town.

Rena doesn't understand, at first, what's happening. Nobody does. One by one the drill sites go silent. Roads under construction are left unfinished.
DETOUR
signs disappear. At Sheetz, shorter lines at the gas pumps; on Baker Street, a sudden abundance of parking spaces. She includes these observations in a long, complicated e-mail to Lorne Trexler. It takes her three days to write.

When he doesn't respond, she leaves a message on his voice mail.
Either I'm going crazy, or they're done with us.

Late that night, her cell phone rings, Lorne sounding jubilant.
Congratulations, my dear. We won.

He talks about the workings of democracy, the role of an informed citizenry, the awesome power of collective action. He talks and talks.

They do not discuss Shelby Devlin.

We won,
he says, but did they? The citizens' group had met twice and built a website. Their e-mail campaign—targeting state legislators, the governor, the state DEP, and the Environmental Protection Agency—had scarcely begun. Now, suddenly, the fight is over. Dark Elephant has left town and nobody, not even Lorne Trexler, knows why.

Instead drilling ends the way everything ends, inscrutably. As when the mines closed; as when Beth Steel pulled out of Johnstown and Rena's brother lost, in rapid succession, his job, his house, his wife and kids. Nobody ever tells you why.

AT THE CAMP ON COLONEL DRAKE HIGHWAY,
roughnecks are packing their bags.

“This is booshit, man,” says Jorge, who is twenty-four and caffeinated and owes child support.

Brando, who always has money, grunts in agreement or dissent.

The layoffs, as always, come out of nowhere. For the middle-aged and elderly, the shock lasts one minute exactly. Roughnecking
has forever been a cyclical business: drilling, not drilling. In a week they'll be watching college football and collecting unemployment. They will eat and drink immoderately, like athletes breaking training. They will go joyfully to seed.

In the parking lot Jorge and Brando shake hands good-bye, a series of complicated grips. Jorge gets into Mickey Phipps's truck, tossing his duffel into the bed. Mickey hunches over the wheel, looking rough. His top lip is swollen, his right eye bruised.

“Thanks for the lift, man. Jesus, what happened to your face?”

Mickey, who is Christian, can't help flinching. He sees no reason to take the Name in vain. “Nothing. It's a long story.”

They ride awhile in silence.

“How long you going to hang out here?” Jorge asks. “If you don't mind my asking.”

Mickey does mind. It's none of Jorge's goshdarn business.

“It's a complicated situation,” Mickey says.

At the camp on Drake Highway, when the last key has been surrendered, Brenda Hoff closes the front office. Denny Tilsit locks the door and activates the alarm. In light snowfall they say their good-byes. Brenda's new job, running the deli counter at the Food Giant, starts tomorrow.

“Don't get too comfortable,” Denny tells her. “My guess is, this place will open up again before too long. I'll tell them to give you a call.”

He gets into his camper van, packed with everything he owns. He'll spend the next two days driving to North Dakota. There's a new Logistix camp in the Bakken shale.

THE FLIGHT TO HOUSTON IS CROWDED.
Herc stares out the window during takeoff, Pittsburgh getting smaller and smaller, the snaking rivers, the small square houses like rows of tiny teeth.

I'll be home in time for dinner,
he told Colleen.

I'll believe it when I see it,
she said.

The flight takes three hours exactly. By the second hour he's already tanked. He lines up the miniature bottles on his tray table and rings the flight attendant for one more. His hand is a little sore, the knuckles bruised where they made contact with Mickey's jaw.

For nearly a week Jess had dodged his phone calls. Finally, in desperation, he parked outside her church on Sunday morning and waited for her to appear.

They sat in his truck a long time, watching the snow fall.

Who told you?

The letter came, unsigned, to the Living Waters P.O. Box, an address anybody might have seen printed on the church newsletter. Each Sunday Jess leaves a hundred copies on a table near the front door.

He thought immediately of Mickey Phipps. Though the whole Bravo crew knew Herc was married, only Mickey was likely to care.

My buddy wrote that letter. Must have. The one I first came to your church with. He's the Moral Majority type.

Were you ever going to tell me?

He sat staring at his hands, his silence answering her question.

So I guess your buddy did me a favor.
I guess I should thank him.

The words hit him like a slap.

Do you feel like thanking him?

Not yet,
she said.

His flight lands ten minutes early. At George Bush International the airport bars are busy, travelers crowded in to watch Texas Tech beat Oklahoma State. Herc bolts a shot of bourbon, then makes his way to baggage claim. Colleen is there waiting, in high heels and a tiny denim skirt. When he kisses her cheek, she smells the liquor on him. “I see you did a little early celebrating.”

Marriage in middle age, the sequel. Herc imagines the Hollywood subtitle:
Back in the Shit House.

He follows her to the parking garage, still warm and loose from the drink.

“I guess I better drive,” she says.

“Whatever you want.” He'd surrendered his company truck in Pennsylvania. Judging from the little pile of potpourri she keeps in the ashtray, his Bronco now belongs to Colleen.

She gets behind the wheel, the skirt riding halfway up her thighs. “Can you believe Mickey and Didi? I'm still in shock.”

“What are you talking about?”

Colleen looks surprised. “They're splitting up. I figured you already knew.”

Herc stares at her, dumbfounded. Mickey Phipps, getting divorced? Mickey who'd spent untold thousands of dollars flying back and forth from Houston. Mickey who wouldn't look at another woman if she burst into flames.

(The satisfying collision of fist and jaw. Mickey dazed and blinking, like he didn't know whether to shit or go blind.)

Colleen says, “I heard Didi met someone.”

It's a gift certain women have, that magical power to sober up a drunk man. After five minutes with his wife, Herc's bourbon flush has left him completely. It's as if the tiny bottles contained nothing but water.

He understands that this is the moment to tell her everything.
There was a lady in Pennsylvania. I fell in love with her.
Recent events have taught him the power of truth-telling, and its limits. If he doesn't tell her now, he never will.

He turns on the radio and scans the dial for the game.

AT HALFTIME TEXAS TECH
is leading by a healthy margin. They're so far ahead that there can be no catching them. Reassured, Kip turns his back to the TV.

“I need some land,” he tells the kid beside him. “I hear you're the man to help me.”

They meet, at Kip's suggestion, in a location both public and
private, an empty hotel bar near the airport. This is a strategic choice. His new office—the worldwide headquarters of Whiplash Energy—lacks certain amenities. A receptionist, for example. He's trying to keep overhead to a minimum. His main expense, at the moment, is Amy Rubin. Her monthly retainer is an investment in the future. Only a fool cuts corners on the science, a lesson he learned long ago.

Kip says, “We're on the verge of a new inflection point.”

Bobby Frame drinks soda water and eyes him levelly, unimpressed. Kip wonders what he has heard.

Kip explains that from a land perspective, the Marcellus is over. Any land worth having is already under contract. Let the others fight over the crumbs. Whiplash is looking forward, not back. The Utica Shale is theirs for the taking, the point of dynamism moving westward.

The Next Big Play.

“I want you to run my land program,” he finishes grandly.

“You're offering me a job?” Frame looks skeptical—as though he's got something better to do; as though Dark Elephant hasn't already sent him packing, along with the rest of its land team. It's a basic truth Dar never understood: the energy business is really the land business. Land is the only commodity of lasting value, the one true wealth.

“I know what you're thinking,” says Kip. “Gas is in the toilet. Well I, for one, hope it stays there.” This isn't true, not remotely. But it makes Frame sit up straight.

“As long as gas stays at a buck ninety, no one else is buying leases. We'll be the only game in town. Any questions?”

“Just one. Can you afford to pay me?”

Kip does not fluster. “I've got a half billion in financing.” It's only a slight exaggeration: he has promises. “You'd be my first hire. Right now I got nobody else to pay. I hope you're ready to travel.”

Promises from Taffy Campbell, from Personal Wealth Group. From Amy Rubin, who knows where the gold is.

Bobby Frame says, “I keep a toothbrush in my truck.”

THANKSGIVING MORNING AT WELLWAYS.
Group, predictably, runs long: Bodily Debacles, holiday edition.

Darren settles in with a cup of coffee. Everybody's got a Thanksgiving story: the family fisticuffs; the poorly timed opiate nod, face-first into the cranberry sauce. So begins the season of anguish, the High Holy Days of addiction. In the coming weeks, Group sharing will take on an escalating urgency, the pulsing shame of remembered humiliations: boozy high jinks at the office party, the inebriated pratfall on the church stairs. Christmas comes loaded with childhood memories, tender and monstrous. There is forced communion with disapproving relatives (the heartbroken parents, the smug siblings, the fucking in-laws). All leading, inexorably, to New Year's Eve—for the recovering addict, the most dangerous night of the year.

Darren's cell phone vibrates in his pocket. Gia, he thinks, without knowing how he knows.

He thinks of her at odd moments: yesterday, absurdly, when a hearse passed him in the street. Driving to work, he's stopped listening to the radio. Nearly any song released in a certain era is attached to some memory of her.

She won't leave a message. She never leaves a message.

The session ended, his clients linger, reluctant to leave the safety of the room.

In the hallway he bumps into Patricia. She looks surprised to see him. “Darren, sweetie, you better get on the road. Seventy is already backed up. I saw it on Traffic Cam.”

“I'm not going anywhere.” Like every year, he will eat Thanksgiving dinner at Wellways. The cook makes him his own tofu turkey, a solid mass the size and shape of a man's shoe.

Patricia frowns. “Oh, funny. I don't know why I thought you were going to Pennsylvania.”

Thanksgiving in Bakerton: his father's silent house, his mother's empty chair. Even without Gia Bernardi, it's much, much more than he can handle sober.

“Maybe next year,” he says.

LONG AGO, WHEN JESS PEACOCK WAS A PASTOR'S WIFE,
every holiday was a performance. Each year after his service, she and Wes had hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in the church basement. Some years half the congregation attended: families, elderly widows, lost souls like Shelby Devlin who fit into no category Jess could identify. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with her healthy husband, toasting with glasses of grape juice, Jess lamented the overcooked turkey, the lumpy mashed potatoes. Only later did she understand that those were the best Thanksgivings of her life.

This year she canceled her Thanksgiving service. If anybody minded, she hasn't heard about it. She isn't feeling particularly thankful.

She wishes, now, that she had kept the letter. That she hadn't, in a fit of blind rage, burned it in the sink.

           
Dear Pastor,

           
I am writing in the spirit of Christian friendship. There is a person in your life who isn't what he appears to be.

Jess refills her wineglass and glances at the clock. In her current state, driving to the Devlins' is a bad idea. Had she really intended to go in the first place? The Devlins will have a houseful of people. Maybe her absence won't be noticed. Still, she really ought to call.

           
This man has a wife and children in Texas.

Calling the Devlins is only going to get more difficult. A second bottle is chilling in the refrigerator. She hadn't expected to need it.