The Devil's Deep

by Michael Wallace

  Around the room, residents finished their breakfasts and headed back to wash up before going to the bus.

  Becca stood up. “Guess I should get going.”

  Wes got up and followed her until they were out of earshot of Carolina. “You still have time off this week?”

  “Five days starting Wednesday.” Becca looked disappointed. “Guess I should tell Saul I’ll still be around. Unless someone runs me off the road first.”

  “You got a passport?”

  She gave him a sharp look. “Yeah.”

  “Because I’m going to Costa Rica.”

  “You’ve been here how long? And you’re already taking a vacation?”

  “Come on, Becca. I’ve got to go.” He shouldn’t be surprised that this was the first thing to cross her mind. “And it’s only two days. The other three I have off anyway. We can find someone to fill my shifts.”

  “I won’t be filling anything. You want time off, you’ll have to ask around. But, okay.” She paused. “What does that have to do with my passport?”

  “Want to come with me?”

  And now her eyebrows raised. “To Costa Rica? Are you serious?”

  “I’m serious. I know the country and can speak Spanish. We can go digging around the Osa Peninsula until we find the Solorios. See if Rosa went home, or what they know.”

  “You don’t need me for that.”

  “Sure I do. What if Rosa doesn’t want to be found? I could walk right past her on the street without recognizing her. And even if I do find her, she might talk to you before she talks to me.”

  She hesitated. “No, I can’t go. To Costa Rica? On a lark? How about if I keep looking around up here while you’re gone. Then, when you get back—”

  “A lark? Don’t you know me better than that by now?” He kept his tone light. “Like taking a job at Riverwood? Costa Rica too far beneath you Ms. Bigshot QMRP?”

  “Touché.”

  “Besides, I know what’ll happen if you stay here. You’ll be too stressed about the inspection stuff to stay away and your boss will keep calling to bug you about stuff. You’ll probably end up working all your regular shifts. Am I right?”

  Her lips tightened and he thought he’d pushed too hard, that she was going to dig in her heels. But then her expression softened. “You know what? Why not? Yeah, why the hell not? They have good food in Costa Rica?”

  “No, not really. You’ve got beans and rice and when you’re tired of that, rice and beans. A bit of chicken, usually tough. Good fruit, though. Best you’ll ever have.”

  “How about seafood? I love seafood.”

  “Yeah, they do fish pretty well,” Wes said. “Especially when you catch your own. And Costa Rica’s warm. Much as I like skiing, sun sounds great this time of year.”

  “No kidding.” She broke into a big smile. “Yeah, I’ll go. Thanks for asking. Well, I’d better get going or we’ll never get these guys on the bus in time. Call me later.”

  Carolina was watching him as Becca walked away. Wes wondered how much she’d understood.

  While Carolina and Wes wheeled and walked their residents to the lounge, the other residents moved in spurts toward the front doors as their HTs helped them into coats, gloves, and hats. Calm descended on the lounge and dining room. But the residents started to return less than ten minutes later.

  Some were quite pleased, others, like Wes’s brother, grumpy. “What’s the matter, Ruk?” he asked, stopping Eric as he passed.

  “No work, Wussy. No work today.”

  “There’s too much snow and the bus can’t get out of the lot,” Eric’s HT explained. “The driver called the city and said it would be another hour, hour and a half for the plow. By that time, it’ll hardly be worth it, so Becca is calling the job sites to tell them we won’t be coming.”

  Becca appeared a moment later and gave him a raised eyebrows, wide-eyed look of the “please shoot me now,” variety. The state inspectors, however, could barely conceal their delight. Something had gone wrong and now they could see how this place really functioned.

  It was like a Nor’easter, when the weather patterns clash, and the end result is towns buried in snow, beaches washed away, and power outages. Half the residents were delighted to be home, the other half irritated. And all, torn out of their routine, acting out.

  There were two stripping incidents, a resident caught feeding her blanket down the toilet, flush by flush, multiple tantrums, and, of course, Dale used the distractions to stagger-walk toward the nearest exit.

  Only Becca’s heroic efforts kept things from collapsing. Watching, and occasionally helping put out fires, Wes was struck by just how good she was. Residents and HTs alike gave her respect. And, all cynicism aside, she cared about these people. Surely, the state inspectors would see as much.

  He’d happily reclassified her as something other than cynical burnout, the rather unfair niche into which he’d put her on their first meeting. He liked her.

  Question was, did Becca’s own classification system still label him under the heading of ‘asshole?’ Well, maybe not. She’d just agreed to go with him to Costa Rica.

  Chapter Ten:

  Eric chanted in delight when he saw what was for dinner. “Meatloaf! Meatloaf! Meeeeeeeeatloaf!”

  Wes grinned as he turned the meatloaf onto a plate and brought it to the table. “Hey, Ruk. You mean you like meatloaf?”

  “Love meatloaf!”

  “Then you’ll love this one. I made it out of ground up worms and pig snouts.”

  “Pig snouts!” Eric roared with laughter as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Worms and pig snouts. And worms.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I ran out of boogers for the sauce.”

  “Boogers!”

  Dad was at the playhouse again but promised he’d be home before Eric had to go back to Riverwood. Wes had put the meatloaf in the oven and Mom brought home some side dishes she’d picked up at Shaws.

  She groaned as she finished setting the table. “Don’t you guys ever get tired of that game? At least it’s not farts and bum-bums again.”

  “Farts and bum-bums!”

  Wes wanted to talk to his mother before Dad got home. “I called Brigham and Women’s,” he told her. He dished up food for Eric. “Legal still has the opening if I’m interested.”

  “Really?”

  “I figure it doesn’t matter for the project, but Brigham and Women’s would be better for my résumé.” He hoped she couldn’t sense the lie. “I’m driving back tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad to hear it.”

  Her relief only made him feel more guilty. And then he remembered her own lies and that made him angry. “Mom, what’s going on here? Don’t give me that look, you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Really, I don’t,” she said. She put down her glass of milk. “What do you mean?”

  “Mom, listen to me. One of the HTs disappeared from Riverwood and I went to check out her apartment to make sure she was okay. Someone attacked me. Told me to lay off or he’d kill me. Can you believe that? Now, I want to know. What’s going on?”

  She spoke slowly. “Wes, why do you think this has something to do with me?”

  “This is where you freak out, Mom. ‘Oh, my god, you were attacked?’ But look at you, all calm. Almost like you knew already.”

  “Wes.”

  He continued, “I know you told someone I was working at Riverwood. I don’t know who you told, but I have my guesses.” He shook his head. “I can’t figure out what’s the big deal. I got a job at Riverwood. I wanted to keep an eye on my brother. Why would anyone care? I don’t know and I don’t care. What pisses me off is that you’d lie about it.”

  She sighed and didn’t speak for a long time. “Wes, you think the world is so simple. That you can take a knife and cut right through it. Put everything good on one side, and all the yucky, nasty stuff on the other. Well, it’s not that simple.”

  “Why don’t you try me? You migh
t find I’m not as simple-minded as you think.”

  “You’re not simple-minded,” she said. “You’re simplistic. That’s a different thing.”

  “Damn it, Mom. He rose to his feet and started clearing his dishes, appetite gone. He had to do something or he’d be throwing them across the room. “Someone knocked me to the ground with a stun gun. Do you have any idea what that’s like? I was scared and angry. Is it possible that you know something about this? Jesus.”

  Eric looked up from his food. “No fight.”

  She started crying. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

  “Mom, please.”

  “Just go back to school.”

  “I am going back to school. That’s what I just told you. But I’m not going to forget this. My god, my own mother…”

  “No fight,” Eric said again, more insistently. “No fight!”

  Wes said, “Eat your meatloaf, Eric. It’s getting cold.” He turned to go.

  “Wesley, don’t leave like that. Please.”

  “I have someone else to talk to before I leave, Mom. I’m sure you know who.”

  “Wesley.”

  But he was already heading for the door, getting his coat and gloves and checking his pocket for his keys. Only when he got to the car did he have second thoughts. It had been one thing to go to Aunt Charlotte’s house at night, another to go find Uncle Bill. Because his distrust of Bill had been growing in his mind all day. Uncle Bill had been at Riverwood, doing something. What?

  He’d feel better confronting Uncle Bill at work after Wes finished his shift at Riverwood tomorrow. He had a couple of hours before the flight.

  But he didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to see Eric or Dad, and certainly not Mom. The next fight, when it came, would be an ugly one. He wondered if this is what it had been like for Mom when she’d fought with her father and brothers. That particular fight had led to twenty years of estrangement from the Carter family. Was he prepared to burn bridges like she had?

  So instead Wes drove through Waterbury until he got to Route 100, then headed south, toward the Mad River Valley. For a moment he thought about continuing south, cutting over to White River Junction and taking the freeway back to Massachusetts. Write them all off. Finish law school on his own.

  But he thought of Rosa Solorio. Of the man who had threatened him and the truck that had nearly run Becca off the road. Those thoughts fed his anger and determination. And so when he reached Hancock, he turned around and retraced his steps and planned how he would confront Uncle Bill.

  #

  Northrock’s main office was a modest brick building north of Essex Junction, next to an open air gravel pit. Tuesday afternoon, after finishing work, and an hour and a half before he was going to meet Becca at the Burlington Airport, Wes pulled into the parking lot. He watched gravel and rock pass from a loading bin, through a crusher, and along a conveyor belt to pour onto a mound higher than the office building itself.

  An articulated loader sat on a slab in front of the building with a plaque memorializing three construction workers killed in an accident. Someone had carefully brushed both the machine and the plaque clear of snow and ice and shoveled a path to its base. Wes wondered what his grandfather would have thought of using old equipment as industrial art.

  Wes’s grandfather had started as an uneducated laborer. The Carters had been a canal boat family, freelancing cargoes along Lake Champlain and through the canals of New York State. When the railroads destroyed the canal system in the late Nineteen Century, the Carters sold their boat for scrap and descended from poverty to abject poverty.

  Elwin Carter’s first job had been flipping pancakes in 1915, at the age of ten. He’d spent a year in Maine working in the mess of whatever work crew his father had joined. He came back to Vermont, attended school for two years, then went to work as a laborer himself. He worked a year at the granite quarry in Barre, Vermont, then got a job with a road crew. With no vices like smoking or drinking and an ability to work older men into the ground, Elwin saved almost four hundred dollars by the time he was eighteen. He bought a draft horse and a scraper and went into business for himself three months after his eighteenth birthday. He was twenty-five and employed a dozen men when the Great Depression hit.

  The Depression destroyed most businesses. It was milk and honey to Elwin Carter. Elwin’s competitors owned buildings, overhead, and bank loans, while he had none. He bought equipment from the bankrupt for pennies on the dollar, and cherry-picked the best men from the unemployed. He had already built a reputation for being on time and under budget and by 1935 was a millionaire who employed almost two hundred men. President Roosevelt invited Northrock’s young founder to the White House as an example of how the nation could pull itself out of the Depression. Northrock expanded and prospered through the New Deal projects, the war years, and the 1950s boom, when the nation built the interstate freeway system.

  And now, with Uncle Davis dead, Wes’s mother having sold her company stock and been disinherited for fighting with her elderly father, Bill Carter ran Northrock. Its expansion years were behind it, its founder dead, but the company still won hundreds of millions of dollars in annual contracts throughout New England and into Quebec and Upstate New York.

  After some resistance from the receptionist, Wes made his way back to Bill Carter’s office. His uncle motioned him in. Civic awards decorated the walls, together with pictures of Grandpa Carter as a young man with FDR, then with Eisenhower, both men wearing hard hats as they surveyed hundreds of men and their equipment. Most curiously, Wes noted a framed, hand-painted sign that read, “Home of the Moose Hollow Widow.”

  Uncle Bill had risen from his desk as Wes entered and noticed him eyeing the sign. “A souvenir from your Grandma Carter.”

  “Moose Hollow. Isn’t that the town in Maine cut off by the mudslide?”

  “Exactly. Took us two months around the clock in the middle of winter to reopen that road. We blasted away half a mountain, moved millions of tons of rock and earth. My brother and I—even your mom—were working fourteen hour days and still my dad wanted more. As you can imagine, Grandma didn’t see much of my Grandpa for awhile. She hung this in the window to shame him into spending more time at home.”

  “Did it work?”

  Bill chuckled. “What do you think?” He sat back down and indicated for Wes to take a seat on the other side of the desk.

  Wes obeyed. “It was just a road. Wasn’t as important as his marriage.”

  “Are you kidding? Just a road? That town was cut off from the world. The only other way into Moose Hollow was a dirt trail over the mountain, impassable in winter.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t need Grandpa around the clock to get it built, did it?”

  “Really, it did. If it was going to get built in two months in the middle of winter, then yes, absolutely.” Bill leaned back in his chair. “So what’s this about, Wes?”

  His uncle carried an aura of power that would have been tangible in any situation. Here, behind a massive desk, walls decorated with trophies of his success, and overlooking Northrock’s gravel pit, Wes felt doubly intimidated. “I don’t know if my mom told you, but I’m going back to Massachusetts.”

  “Glad to hear it. Looked like you were getting sidetracked.”

  “I thought you said it was a good idea.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Wes took a deep breath. “I don’t know what’s going on, Uncle Bill, but I wish you’d leave me and my brother out of it.”

  “Better back up, Wesley. What are you driving at?”

  Wes paused, as if trying to think and not quite making a connection. “The way I figure it, you’re still angry at my mother. And you’re trying to scare her by threatening Eric and me. Well, stop. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  Instead of answering, Uncle Bill turned his chair toward the window. “Look at that gravel pit, Wesley. We have bigger pits—although in this day and age it’s damn tough t
o find new sources, what with all the environmental crap—but this is the first one. Whenever I get a moment, I look out that window. I think how my father and his men shoveled gravel by hand from that very hillside, loading it into mule-drawn wagons. You know, all that gravel was left by the glaciers, and now we’re turning it into roads.”

  “What do roads have to do with it?”

  “Roads have everything to do with it. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you’ll figure out life, Wesley. The strength of a nation comes not from its armies, but from its roads. The roads move the armies. They bring trade and prosperity.” He nodded. “You know, it was roads that made the Roman Empire. And it was Roman roads, still in use hundreds of years later, that kept the lights on in the Dark Ages. When people neglected their roads, they fell to starvation and ruin. Those few places that maintained the Roman roads managed to fight off the barbarians and the bandits.

  “A thousand years from now, this country will be a memory,” Bill continued. “Forests will reclaim our cities or invading armies will burn them to the ground. Our buildings will collapse or be scavenged for building materials. But whoever lives here will still use our roads and remember who built them. The greatest monument of American civilization will by the Interstate Freeway System. And you know what? We built those roads. Northrock.”

  Wes blinked, not sure if his uncle wanted him to respond. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying this company means everything to me. And I’ll do anything to protect it. To keep building roads.”

  He still didn’t understand. Did Uncle Bill blame his mother for something? Is that what had happened? A power struggle between his mother and his uncle for control of Northrock? And his mother had come up on the losing end, and now Bill was trying to explain why he’d been so ruthless? Whatever it was, Wes didn’t know as much as Uncle Bill thought he did.

  Bill flipped open his day planner and pulled out his checkbook. “This is what I want you to do, Wesley.” He wrote out a check. “I know you’ve got Grandpa Carter’s trust to pay for school, but your mother said you were going to do an internship this summer to get some experience and make money for housing, or your car, or whatever. I want you to come work for me, instead.” He pushed the check across the desk.