by Jan Smolders
“Soon he’ll be playing soccer again. I’ve seen him with the kids,” the man kept shouting back.
“I hope so.” She pointed at Dan and said, “My thanks to this courageous, generous man for organizing this event! For daring to speak up so clearly. Let’s give him a big hand.”
Dan waved and said, addressing the crowd forcefully, without mike, “I’m the one who must thank all of you for coming.”
Applause followed.
Dan bowed and added loudly, “All except that bastard we just kicked out!”
A standing ovation ensued.
Mary spoke as soon as she felt she could be heard. “This gathering isn’t just about Joe. We’ll have many more spills and Joes in this state—in the country—if we don’t stand up and act. The fracking industry already has engulfed major parts of Ohio. There’s nothing we can do about that: the harm is often irreversible. But we can fight to save many of our beautiful towns and neighborhoods where fracking’s greed hasn’t yet fouled our woods, our land, our air, our water, and yes, some of our souls.”
A woman raised her hand. “You’re from Noredge,” she said, “and so am I. Isn’t it too late to save our town? Supren’s got two sites and two more on the way.”
Mary nodded. “You’re right. I’m sure they’re planning even more for our town. To answer your question, time is running out for Noredge. We must stop them in their tracks. Now. I propose we draft a petition: not one more site in Noredge! A ban on fracking in our beloved town. I’ve been offered a lease for my acres three different times. Each time the price went up. But I haven’t budged and I won’t.”
“Why not shut down the first two as well? They barely started.” It was Rudy who yelled loudly. “Sierra can help to draft the text for Noredge, and it can be used for other towns.”
“Sierra? Could they? Would they?” Mary actually knew this wasn’t the first petition the Ohio Sierra chapter would write.
“I think so. I’m studying chemical engineering in Cleveland, but I’m from Canton. I talk to the Sierra scientists on and off.” He showed her a pair of wide eyes and nodded.
Mary looked at Dan, then at Frank, who smiled incognito.
“Mr. Clark and me, we could throw together a first draft,” Rudy went on.
Dan nodded.
“Nick, too. And then we’ll have to find people to go door to door to collect signatures. Let’s try Noredge first.” The youngster seemed determined to strike while the iron was hot.
Dan kept nodding.
Mary gave Rudy a thumbs-up. “Good. We have no time to lose. I know that tons of oil industry dollars are flowing into the campaign coffers of judges and congressmen. Big oil wants a state ban on local bans. Some states already have it. It’s a race against the clock.”
“Who’s going to put his signature under the text?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Who? Who? Everybody!” Nick laughed and acknowledged applause and shouts.
Dan raised his voice to ask, “Who’s from Noredge?”
Twenty or thirty hands went up.
“Wow! And who’s prepared to sign?”
“All of us!” a woman shouted.
He showed a rascal smile. “And ring doorbells in Noredge?”
A joyful back and forth erupted within the enthusiastic crowd.
Mary looked for Frank but his seat was empty. It’s gotten too hot in here for him. She coughed into the mike and said, “Thank you all. Joe should’ve heard you.” She broke down.
Dan pointed in the direction of his house. “Friends,” he shouted, “See those three tables? Lydia’s got beer and pop on ice. Beef jerky too. Anybody thirsty?”
A huge chorus roared. “Everybody!”
Staring at the tables and swept up in the euphoria, Mary asked a beaming Dan, “Who paid for all of that?”
“The state of Ohio, of course. Tree-hugger Governor Kasich. Who else?” Dan’s eyes sought appreciation for his joking.
“I should’ve known,” she played along.
He whispered to her, “A guy named Frank Anderson footed the bill. Called me last night and asked whether this wouldn’t be too much of a burden. My apologies for not consulting you on this.” He winked.
“Apologies? Too late! Let me try that jerky before I accept them.” She embraced him.
Chapter 22
“I hear it still has great atmosphere and food, Mom. We’ll find out soon,” Frank said as he swung his Altima onto Cleveland Massillon Road in Bath. He was headed to Lanning’s. That stuffy place wasn’t his kind of restaurant, and quite a ways from Noredge, but his widowed mother, retired in Boca Raton, insisted she should have dinner at her Lanning’s one more time.
“It’s numero uno, the best of the best,” she had said, kissing her fingertips and sounding convinced she knew what she was talking about. “I just love the place. ‘See Naples and die,’ they say. For me, just give me Lanning’s and…. I’d better leave it at that.”
He smiled. Mom and her superlatives. “Good thing you hit the brakes just in time, Mom. You’ve got many good years ahead. Your health’s good, your spirit strong. We’ll do many more Lanning’s.” He knew she wasn’t telling him everything about her doctor visits and the load of vitamins and pills she had to swallow, but he wanted to make this a great evening. Mom didn’t make it too often to Noredge, although she had a son and a daughter there. She was staying at Sonya’s.
“Yes. And it’s cheaper than Naples,” she said, laughing. “Particularly for a guy without a job—just kidding.” She pinched his leg. “I didn’t mean Naples, Florida, you know.”
“I’ve got a good severance payment coming, Mom. It may hit my account before I get my next Visa bill.”
Frank had spoken jokingly but his thoughts went back to the event he had attended in Dan Clark’s barn less than two hours earlier. In doing so he had publicly disregarded some of the stipulations in his severance agreement, but he had felt he owed his support to Mary Jenkins and the well-meaning folks of Noredge. He had tried to cover up as much as possible with a hat and sunglasses and had taken a seat in the darkest and farthest corner. He had slipped away early, hopefully unnoticed.
It’s unlikely that Mike ever finds out I was at that meeting, he reasoned as he turned into the parking lot of the restaurant. He hadn’t opened his mouth in the barn. A damn good event it was. He chuckled inside.
Mother and son entered the dimly lit restaurant. Frank knew the place but again it struck him as sedate, old-style. It was, however, Mom’s undisputed favorite. Chairs were comfortable and richly padded, brown and deep. Table lights glowed orange, corners dark. It was six-thirty. Only three of the fifteen or twenty tables were taken. A good listener could discern a trace of a classical piano concerto being played. Frank’s fingers itched.
The maître d’ asked for the name on the reservation, took a thorough look at the twosome and ushered them politely, his voice barely audible, to a corner near the entrance. He held Mrs. Anderson’s chair when she was ready to sit down. She thanked him.
“Awfully quiet,” Frank half-whispered as he adjusted his glasses, but a woman two tables down looked up and frowned.
Mrs. Anderson apparently had noticed: she pointed at her hearing aid. “No need to shout, Frankie.”
He showed her an affectionate nod.
By the time his watch said seven-thirty Frank was half-way through his inch-thick, juicy filet mignon, and his mother was having the time of her life with her Plank of Liver. The waiter had silently looked askance at Frank a few minutes before when he came to check the contents of their bottle of Cabernet. Frank had used his palm to signal they were going to take it easy on the alcohol.
“This liver is just too good, Frankie. Epically delicious.”
He frowned. “Mom, how did you develop that taste? Liver?”
She shrugged. “As a child. And this dis
h has been a Lanning’s specialty for I don’t know how many years. You won’t find liver anywhere else this good. My friends in Boca turn up their noses at it. ‘How can you eat that, Audrey? It tastes awful and your cholesterol….’ I just wink. In Boca I can’t even find it on the menu. Gluten free, low sugar, organic, cage free. That’s what we have to settle for there.” She gave Frank a deprecatory glance.
“You’re a free spirit, you—”
“Look at me, the sinner, the dessert nut.” She opened her palms so they faced him.
She had a point. She was doing all right. No one would venture to guess even close to her age. At sixty-five she had the figure, the healthy-looking blonde hairdo, the gait, the skin as well as the attitude of a fifty-year-old. She didn’t wear glasses. Cataract surgery had taken care of that. “My hearing is as sharp as my mind,” she would joke, pointing at her hearing aid, but sometimes Frank had his doubts about that.
“You’ll have to come north more often, Mom, I think—” He paused abruptly and, head down, turned forty-five degrees in his chair, away from the entrance.
She held up her fork, motionless, its teeth deep in a sauce-coated chunk of liver. “What’s the matter? Stomach cramps?”
“Quiet. Eat,” he said, his voice hushed.
“Huh?” Mrs. Anderson sounded puzzled.
“Just wait.” He knew he was acting rudely but kept looking down.
“What for, Frankie?”
He turned back, puffed, and whispered, “Whew. I shouldn’t have seen what I saw. Got enough trouble already.”
“Could you explain?” she asked, looking concerned.
“Just a minute.”
“Oh. Yes. I know. Sometimes I’m a little slower nowadays.” She winked.
He waved her off. “The jerk who fired me walked in with the wife of the guy who replaced me.”
His mother glanced in the direction of the new arrivals. “Hmm. You make it sound complicated, but I get it. Maybe that woman’s husband is parking the car.”
“It’s all valet, Mom.”
Frank finally looked up. He saw the couple standing about thirty feet away with the maître d’, who pointed at a table in a far corner. Doyle nodded at the man. Petite, blonde Mrs. Davis, complete with impossibly high heels and tight-fitting yellow blouse over what looked like designer jeans, stood next to Doyle. He had his hand low on her waist.
“Oh. But that jerk—”
“Mike Doyle,” he whispered.
“Whatever. He doesn’t know you saw him, does he?”
“He may, but he didn’t make eye contact.”
“And the woman?”
“I don’t think she knows me.”
“See. Don’t worry. You show discretion and you’ll be okay. He has a problem, not you.” She turned her attention to the liver.
Right. He barely listened. He thought of the twenty thousand dollar raise Doyle had given Vince days ago, according to Joanna. Despite his boss’s generosity poor Vince had complained bitterly about him in Canton. “How would you like this, Frank?” he had started his lament. “First he tells me how indispensable I am in Carrollton and in the next breath he sends me on a useless trip to Columbus to ‘smooth things over’ or to Chicago to check on the latest waste removal equipment and technology. Or to Washington. I’m never at home. And my poor wife sits home alone twiddling her thumbs or watching soap operas.”
Frank threw a quick glance at Mrs. Davis in the dark corner. He had always wondered why a smart driller like Vince had been taken off the Beta job at Harriet’s at such a critical stage of the project. Why did it have to be Vince for Carrollton? Why hadn’t Doyle called up the most experienced clean-up crew in Houston? In the country? So much was at stake for Supren. And why did he keep sending Vince out on thinly justified trips while the work piled up in Carrollton?
Mrs. Anderson put her hand softly on Frankie’s. “Stop brooding,” she said soothingly. “It’ll make you old before you…before you find yourself a girlfriend.”
Not again. Frank frowned. “Mom—”
“Or is it that job search that keeps bugging you? You won’t have any problem with that either, once you put your mind to it. I know my son.” She looked proud.
“Thanks. I hope you’re right. And I’m on my way to taking care of all of that. Not kidding. I’ve got a job more or less lined up with a top Houston company, and I’m working my butt off to win the heart of a jewel of a girl I’ve set my sights on.”
“Oh? Who is she? From here? Why didn’t you bring her along?” Disappointment overpowered the initial excitement in his mother’s voice.
He leaned forward, looked briefly in the direction of Mike Doyle, and said, his voice hushed, “Joanna, a Puerto Rican American, from the Noredge area, beautiful and sweet.”
“I don’t doubt that but why didn’t you invite her tonight? Why are you whispering?”
“I couldn’t bring her. That man,” he pointed his head in the direction of Doyle, “shouldn’t see us together anywhere.”
“Or?”
“Joanna would lose her job.”
Mrs. Anderson threw her hands up. “Come on. Why? Is that any of his business? And are you such bad company for her? Or she for you?” Her tone suggested she knew the answer to all three questions.
He put his index finger to his lips. “He’d assume she’d tell me too much about his…discussions.”
“Hush-hush discussions?”
“I guess so. Some, anyway.”
She shrugged. “Don’t you have a picture of Joanna? I must approve her, you know.” She giggled.
“Here you are.” He showed her a selfie with Joanna on his iPhone.
“Wow! You went to the ocean with her? Or is that Lake Erie?”
“I took her far enough away from here. Safe. Galveston.”
She rocked her head slowly, her voice fluttery. “Together to Galveston—sounds romantic. Your father and I, we had to behave, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. But did you follow orders?”
“Mostly.” She smiled.
“I also remember that, when I would be leaving on a trip, you always told me to behave.”
She nodded.
“And that I always would answer, ‘No way!’”
“That too, and I had to hold back to not tell you, ‘Attaboy.’” She studied the picture. “She looks beautiful. I’m tired of waiting for you to get off the street. I hope to meet her soon.”
“You will, Mom. Your liver’s getting cold.”
When they finished their plentiful entrees and their bottle, Frank was happy to hear that his mother wanted to skip dessert and move straight to the Courvoisier ritual, to “get it all moving in here.” She had rolled her eyes.
They swirled their drinks and clinked glasses.
“To Joanna,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I thought I just heard wedding bells.”
He had only taken a few sips of the digestive when she finished hers.
Mike Doyle and his companion were engaged in a close and intense conversation as Frank quietly asked for the bill, signed it and sneaked out, his hand on the shoulder of his slightly unsteady mother.
Chapter 23
On Tuesday, the week after the event at Dan’s barn, Mary got a call from Frank.
“Could you meet me in half an hour, for a quick lunch at McDonald’s?” he asked. “I’d like to explain my sudden departure from Dan’s place, and apologize. And a couple of other matters.”
Mary knew why he had acted that way at Dan’s but she agreed to meet. Jimmy and Andy were enjoying one of their last vacation days at a friend’s house. “No need to apologize,” she said. “But we should keep it short. Half an hour. I’m doing laundry. Noon?”
As she slipped into a loose flowered dress she wondered about the “other matters.”
At the rest
aurant, Frank looked nervous. He checked out the nearby tables before he said to Mary, his voice hushed and robotic, “Sorry for taking your time. And my apologies for my disappearance last week. I had my mother in town.”
She frowned. That’s the big deal?
He covered his left cheek with his hand. “Sonya heard that you and I have become the talk of the town. An item. We’re seen together too often while poor Joe lies in the hospital suffering.” He rolled his eyes.
She laughed, but just for a split second. “It’s a joke, right?”
His face told her no.
“But it’s a shameless lie. They’re nuts!” She made a disparaging gesture and started tapping her forehead with her index.
He nodded. “Quiet. Of course they are, but what can we do to stop that silly gossip? It’s out there.”
She sighed. “That slander, you mean. What could I…I know what you could do. You could tell it all…but no, Doyle shouldn’t know that the real ‘item’ is you and Joanna.” She stared at him, not knowing what to say. “I have no idea, Frank.”
He threw his hands up, swore through his teeth, and waved the topic away. “Something else, and this isn’t gossip,” he said. “Seems Mike’s spending money like crazy. Flaunting it. His wife’s mad as hell regarding the new boat he bought, the Porsche he’s looking at—”
“How do you know?” She had stopped stirring her coffee.
“Joanna. Mrs. Doyle let it all hang out to her in a fit of anger. I wonder how much Supren’s paying the man. Must be a fortune.”
“Okay. And then? He’s got a big job.”
“Sure. But I keep wondering.”
“About?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. Maybe I’m crazy. I just don’t understand.”
The thirty minutes went by fast. Mary stood up and smoothed her dress. “Let me know when you figure it out, Frank. I wonder how my laundry’s doing. By the way, I think you’re not crazy, but part of a beautiful ‘item.’”
Later that afternoon, when the kids were back home, playing outside, Father Bianchi came to Mary’s house. He extolled the virtues of Mr. Doyle, a faithful Christian who meant well with Noredge; he also had nice words for Sonya and Frank Anderson. But he spoke that last name very slowly, with emphasis. Then he discretely warned that some citizens or parishioners frowned at late night visits by “that good man Anderson” to the Jenkins home on Maple Road. He did fully understand that Frank’s intentions were praiseworthy and his character generous. “But appearances matter,” he concluded with a shy smile.
