Private affairs : a novel (48 page)

"Drive—" Elizabeth bit her tongue. Do not tell him to drive carefully, she ordered herself, and then heard herself say, "Watch out for the other drivers."

Holly and Peter burst into laughter, and Elizabeth joined them, and so, with laughter buoying him up, Peter pushed in the clutch, shifted gears, and drove away.

The dust was thick and choking on the road to Nuevo and heavy trucks rumbled around the narrow curves that led to the town. Dynamite blasts echoed off the mountains; pneumatic drills, like deafening machine guns, rattled through the valley; the roar of engines and warning beeps of trucks as they backed up was heard all day long.

Elizabeth hated to make the trip—a drive she had once looked forward to as an escape into a lovely timeless serenity—but she knew it was worse for Isabel and Maya and the others who lived beside the construction site. And so, at least once a week through the red and gold days of September, she gritted her teeth, rolled up the car windows to keep out as much dust as possible, and went to see them.

In almost every way, Nuevo was being transformed. Saul had kept his promise and hired a lawyer to try to get the court to stop construction

until the dam could be studied more fully, but that had failed: reports on four years of study had been submitted to the Committee on Land Use and Development; it had studied them further, then recommended approval to the legislature, which had duly approved it. There was no reason, the judge said, to grant an injunction. The work could proceed.

And so construction headquarters were set up on the high ground at the narrow end of the valley, where an abandoned farm had been sold long ago to Terry Ballenger. Office trailers, equipment sheds, portable toilets, and fuel tanks sat helter-skelter near a bulldozed parking area for cars and trucks. Below the headquarters, crews were digging a channel to divert the Pecos River from its normal course through the town. The channel would lead the river in a sweeping turn around the town and the dam site, forcing it into a tunnel blasted through the rocks on one side of the narrow exit from the valley. From there the river would connect with the riverbed below the Nuevo Valley. The following summer, when the dam was built, if all went according to plan, the diversion channel would be closed, the river would return to its original course—and when it was stopped by the dam it would overflow its banks, flooding the town and the lowest part of the valley, and form a lake.

"But of course nothing will go 'according to plan,' " Cesar told Elizabeth. "We're taking care of that."

And that was another way Nuevo was being transformed: it had become Isabel's campaign team. In almost every house, in Gaspar's General Store, in Roybal's Maintenance Shop and Gas Station, the people of Nuevo were mimeographing letters to voters, addressing and stuffing envelopes, lettering posters, lining up private homes where Isabel could meet voters and talk to them, arranging campaign appearances in village squares and crossroads of small towns.

Cesar was in charge of the campaign, but in a few weeks Maya had become his best helper. She knew nothing of political campaigns, but she knew everyone in the valley and she soon learned that her small wistful smile could convince someone to work another hour or seal another hundred envelopes and her solemn black eyes could make someone willing to do the dullest job. Soon, with the ideas she picked up from Saul and Elizabeth, the newspapers she read every day, and her fierce belief in Isabel, she became more confident, taking on whatever tasks she was given. She was finding a place for herself.

Nuevo worked for Isabel and fought the dam, but in other towns and valleys voices were raised in argument. As the summer wore on, Isabel campaigned in a district that was becoming sharply divided, because for the first time in years there were jobs in the valley.

Most of the people in Nuevo knew nothing of the politics behind the dam, the new roads, and the resort; what was important to them was that the companies doing the work were New Mexican, using local workers. Months earlier, in the spring, hiring had begun; young people, hearing of jobs, came back to Pecos and Nuevo and other small towns that had been dying, and engineers and foremen from Albuquerque added to the growing population by setting up house trailers for the season. Roybal was making twice as much money in his gas station as the year before; business tripled in Gaspar's General Store; and in July Hector Corona reopened the restaurant and bar he had closed five years earlier.

"Boom time in Nuevo," said Isabel wryly, handing a paper plate to Elizabeth and settling with a sigh on the grass beside the river. They were at the far end of the valley, away from the town. No longer could they eat in lawn chairs beside Isabel's house, talking in low voices and listening to the cry of a jay overhead; the jay and their voices were drowned out by the noise of construction. Even where they sat, more than a mile from the site, they had to stop talking when the warning siren sounded, and, a few minutes later, when dynamite was set off.

"It could lose me the election," Isabel went on, gazing at the cloud of dust over the distant town. "Even if I win, I might have to support the dam and everything that goes with it because that's what the voters are beginning to want."

"Enough of them?" Elizabeth asked.

"Maybe. Most people in the district think we're being screwed and they're sorry, but in private they probably thank the Lord it's us and not them. Almost everybody in Nuevo wants me in the legislature so I can stop these guys from destroying a town just so they can get rich from a private resort—"

A siren sliced through the valley, short high bursts of sound warning everyone away. "Here comes another one," Isabel said. "And every explosion changes the shape of the valley. That's something we'll never be able to undo."

A few minutes after the siren, the dynamite blast shattered the rock, seeming to rattle whole mountains, making the ground tremble. Elizabeth refilled their glasses from the thermos of lemonade. The deafening noise, the army of trucks and workers, and the fact that Isabel was right— mountains that had seemed eternal were being reshaped before their eyes —made the immensity of the forces at work very real and seemingly unstoppable. "You're only one person, Isabel," she said. "Do people really think you can stop all this if you're elected?"

"Some do. But I've stopped making promises because I'm stuck. I

don't know what to say. Isn't that something? Isabel Aragon stumped for words! But what the hell do I say to people in the towns and valleys where they're getting jobs without losing their homes and farms? They won't fight the dam; why should they? Nuevo loses everything—even the ones who are making money now, Roybal and the others, will be gone by next spring when our twelve-month grace period is up—so of course it fights the dam. And I'm in the middle. Which is nowhere."

Elizabeth stood up for a better view of the trucks and the small figures of workers scurrying about. "I wonder if there is a middle," she said thoughtfully. "Something we've missed. A way to have the dam and the resort and still have the town. And jobs and money coming to the townspeople. ..."

"What is this? A fairy tale? Nobody but fish will live in Nuevo when the dam is built. And money . . . what the hell, Elizabeth, you know the compensation they'll pay us won't be enough—"

"I didn't mean compensation."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I meant maybe we ought to think about using the dam instead of fighting it."

"Another convert—my dearest friend, who owns land in Nuevo which, of course, will be flooded. How can I hold out if even you switch sides?"

"I'm not; I'm looking for a compromise. I'm thinking about the real world, Isabel: what we do when things don't turn out the way we'd like. What we can salvage when it seems we won't get our heart's desire."

"Are those the words of an expert?"

"Those are the words of experience." Elizabeth sat down again and drank her lemonade. "Now tell me about your campaign, and what I can do to help. I wanted to interview you on television but my interviews have to be completely different from Tony's, and since his guests are all in the public eye, mine can't be anywhere near it. Maybe later, if people like me, I can interview anyone I want."

"No mail yet? You've been on two weeks."

"A few phone calls. Nothing much. Tony says it takes a while. Matt said the same thing about newspaper columns."

"Speaking of Matt—"

"Let's not."

"Oh. Sorry."

Elizabeth put her hand on Isabel's. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to cut you off. I've been so jumpy lately: I can't get used to the house with just Holly and me in it, and I never seem to have enough time for everything. I

could handle three columns a week and a taped interview, but I've been going to Los Angeles every week, just overnight—"

"Holly told us. On a private jet, no less."

"It belongs to the show; Tony uses it more than anyone. And it saves time, because I don't have to go to Albuquerque; it lands at the municipal airport in Santa Fe. But I have less time with Holly, and my mother expects us to have dinner at least once a week, and Heather wants to talk about Saul, and on top of everything it's so awful coming here and seeing what's happening to the valley. . . ."

"Yes indeed." Isabel put her arms around Elizabeth. "We'll have to cheer each other up. Shall we go to a singles bar and check out the scene?"

Elizabeth burst out laughing. "Where did you get that?"

"Luz and Holly were talking the other day—"

"Luz and Holly! They aren't planning to do it!"

"Far from it; they said they'd never consider it unless they were old and hadn't found anybody interesting."

"How old?"

"Twenty-five."

Their laughter drowned out the sounds of trucks and drills, and for that moment, when they could pretend everything was the way it had always been, they felt better; they felt that whatever was wrong could be made right.

And maybe it can, Elizabeth thought later, driving back to Santa Fe to pack for a flight to Los Angeles. Why not? Give us time to plan, and to choose the right direction, and if we really believe in ourselves, who's to say we can't make things right?

Before she left, she called Saul to tell him she'd be back the next day for their weekly meeting. "In the afternoon, unless something is urgent enough for the morning."

"Nothing is urgent," he said. "You know how quiet it is after the Fiesta. I may even take a vacation, if I can convince my fiancee to come along."

"Why don't you marry her?" Elizabeth asked abruptly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You stopped talking about setting a date a long time ago, didn't you?"

"I did. I communed with nature in the forest near Nuevo, before dynamite made communing impossible, and concluded that one person can't force another to feel desire. You can perhaps make someone like you, feel grateful to you, even love you. You cannot make someone desire you or your presence on a permanent basis. I don't want Heather marrying me

because I've exhausted her or made her feel guilty about putting me off. I want her to want me on a full-time basis. If she doesn't desire that enough to overcome her reluctance, I don't desire it either."

"Not true," Elizabeth said.

"Of course not. But I'll grow old waiting until she wants it as much as I do. And she was right, you know, a long time back when she said we have good times together. We're great in bed and we're good friends. I count myself lucky; how many married people have all that? Or am I asking the wrong person?"

"Probably. I'll see you tomorrow, Saul."

She'd sounded wistful, Saul thought, and was wishing he could tell Matt what he thought of him, when he saw the assistant printer through the glass wall and went out to meet him. "The repairman showed up?"

"He just . . . appeared," the assistant said. "I was in the other room and when I came back, he was there, working on it."

"How'd he get past the front desk?"

"Search me. The back door, maybe?"

Scowling, Saul walked down the hall to the pressroom. "How the hell did you get in?" he demanded of the two legs stretched out on the floor behind the printing press. "You're a day late as it is, goddam it, and then to prance in here as if you own the joint—" He stopped short as the repairman stood up and he found himself face to face with Matt, holding out his hand with a grin.

"I do own it—I think. Anyway, my key still opens the back door."

"I'll be damned." Saul shook Matt's hand. "You just happened to wander in when we needed a repairman?"

"That was just luck. I wanted to look around without running the gauntlet of the newsroom and the kid who was here thought I was the repairman and cheerfully answered all my questions about the presses. Lousy security, Saul; he didn't know me from Adam. He's not very bright, either; wouldn't he wonder why a repairman would be wearing a pinstripe suit? Where's the pressman?"

"Home with the flu. I knew that kid wouldn't last. Did you fix the press?"

Matt grinned again. "A true editor; worry first about the press. I think so. Shall we try it?"

"Sure." Saul looked at him as they pulled out the crumpled paper that had been caught in the press and adjusted a rack of new paper. "Your pinstripe suit may never be the same."

Matt glanced at his sleeve. "Probably not. But it's a good idea to get

grease on a suit now and then; otherwise you can forget what a pressroom feels like, smells like. ..."

"Maybe you can. I can't."

Matt set a lever and pressed a button and they watched the press begin to run. "I guess I haven't lost my touch. Was that a criticism, Saul?"

"You're damn right it was. Your wife is a friend of mine, Matt. I care about her."

"Saul. You're out of your territory."

"Bullshit. If a friend can't talk to you about your wife, who can?"

"My wife."

"Your wife is on her way to Los Angeles and I've been itching to tell you—"

"Saul, we'll stay better friends if you drop it."

"We'd stay better friends if we talked more often. Or wrote. I'd even settle for smoke signals. Do you ever read the reports I send you?"