O Beautiful
Page 13
Man camp 18, also known as Simon’s Lodge, is supposedly “the gold standard in the Bakken.” Richard’s contact there said so in an email, which she quickly dismissed. But as she pulls into the visitor’s lot, she realizes he wasn’t just throwing marketing copy around. Simon’s Lodge is at least four times the size of the other camps she passed. Instead of individual trailers, there are dozens of huge, modular buildings that resemble barracks. If she didn’t know what she was looking at, she’d assume it was military field housing. Each barrack has a number painted on its side in navy blue, which contrasts sharply against the almond-colored fiberglass. When she gets out of her car, she checks her phone again for a signal, which it still doesn’t have.
Her contact, a young man named Brian, is waiting for her outside the main building. He’s Black, and the fact that she’s surprised by this pinches her with guilt. Only yesterday, Elinor was annoyed with Mrs. Mueller for assuming she was white, the very same offense she just committed. She tells herself that at least she has the sense not to talk about it, although Mrs. Mueller’s approach, however problematic, might actually be more honest—to have the thought and then admit that she did.
Brian looks all of twenty-five, with acne-scarred skin that he’s liberally doused with aftershave, a grandfatherly scent that reminds her of leather and pine. She can tell that he’s former military because of the way he holds his chin up and his chest out as he shakes her hand, referring to her quaintly as “ma’am.” As he leads her into the building, he quickly limps to reach the doors before she does so he can hold them open for her. Elinor studies the lower half of his right pant leg, which appears deflated compared to the left. He’s young to be wearing a prosthetic. She suspects she knows why he has to.
“Do you mind if I ask … did you recently serve overseas?”
“Yes, ma’am. Twenty-first Infantry Division, headquartered out of Baqubah. Were you in the service too?”
“No. My father was though. He was stationed in Marlow. That’s where I grew up.”
“This place must look pretty familiar to you then.”
They pass a laundry room, which has several washers and dryers, none of which are running, and then a room with a closed door that says CHAPEL.
“Our parent company was actually founded by former marines, so you’ll probably see a lot of military influence in the design of this community. Our residents returning from active duty say they feel right at home here.”
It’s been less than a year since the US withdrawal from Iraq. How strange to leave that landscape and come to this one, she thinks. But many newly discharged servicemen apparently did just that, trading the skills they learned in the military for high-paid work in the Bakken. If Elinor was less tired and more lucid, she might pause to untangle the irony of people trying to make their fortunes in oil after fighting a war that some think was caused by it.
They continue walking down the long, brightly lit hallway, passing an impressive gym outfitted with every possible piece of equipment. Next door is a basketball half-court with the shiniest wood floors she’s ever seen. Both spaces are empty. The hallway too. Occasionally, she hears the sound of a car outside or an air conditioner kicking on. But no conversation, no people coming and going.
“Where is everyone?” she asks.
“It’s the middle of second shift right now, so most of our residents are either sleeping or on the job. Some might be doing errands in town. In a couple of hours, these halls will be completely full during the changeover.”
Her father would have liked Brian. Ever the perfectionist, Ed liked anyone who did his job well. Brian seems to take his very seriously. Elinor dutifully asks the first two questions on Richard’s list and he answers in great detail about the construction of the lodge, which has twenty-eight buildings that house 687 men from all over the world. He shows her a model VIP unit, which has a full-size bed, a small desk with a mini fridge wedged under one side, a narrow closet with two shelves, and a flat-screen TV mounted to the wall. Behind an accordion-style door is a private bathroom too small to poke her head into without feeling claustrophobic. Everything in the room is new, but cheaply made of pressboard, nylon, and polyester. It looks like a bad college dorm or a very good prison.
Next to the model unit and the leasing office is a computer room with four workstations. There’s a red-faced man sitting at the computer closest to the door, not quite asleep but not fully awake either. He’s holding his head up with a fist, staring blankly at his screen.
“Hey, man,” Brian says with a wave.
There’s something unusually friendly, maybe even a little performative, about his greeting. Elinor wonders if he always interacts like this with the residents, or if he’s simply doing it because she’s there. The man doesn’t seem to recognize him or care when they stop in the doorway. He just continues staring. Elinor notices at about the same time that Brian does. He’s watching porn. On his screen, there’s a woman splayed out on a filthy-looking bed and two guys shot from chest down going at her from each end. The volume is on mute, but judging from what they’re doing to her, Elinor assumes the woman is trying to scream, or wants to.
“Hey, man,” Brian repeats, quietly this time. “The signs say you’re not supposed to be doing that.”
Above each workstation is a laminated sheet of paper, peppered with bright red “No’s.” Elinor steps off to the side to get a better look.
NO SKYPE WITHOUT HEADPHONES
NO DOWNLOADING PROGRAMS OR FILES
NO WATCHING TV
NO PORNOGRAPHY
“Peter wrote you up for this already,” Brian adds.
“And?”
“And I know he told you—the first time was just a warning. We’re not in the business of giving second warnings around here.”
“You mean Pedro? Half the time I can’t even tell if that beaner’s speaking English.”
Brian pauses. She wonders if she looked similarly pained when Mrs. Mueller said, “sneaky little Jew agreements.” Brian probably has battles of his own to fight here. Does he have to fight everyone else’s too? He waits a few seconds longer. “Hey. We’ve got a lady present.”
The man glances at Elinor. His eyes are completely dead. “So?”
When the man turns back to his screen, Brian says “hey” again, his voice no longer amiable and salesman-like, but sharp and forceful. Suddenly the man jumps to his feet, so quickly that he sends his chair skittering backward on its casters. He stands over Brian in the doorway, looking down his nose at him.
“Hey, what?” he barks. “Hey, what?”
Elinor tugs on Brian’s sleeve and says the first thing that comes to mind. “I need to use the restroom. Can you show me where the restroom is?”
The two men continue staring at each other like boxers in the seconds just before a fight. Brian isn’t small, but he’s small in comparison. He’s about to get hurt.
“Please,” she says. “I have to go.”
Elinor tugs harder, which seems to snap him out of the state he’s in. “Okay,” he says, blinking at her. “Okay.”
Slowly, they walk away, not turning to look at the man or each other. Elinor worries that Brian is about to get jumped from behind. He seems to think so too because he doesn’t say a word to her, not until they’ve gone some distance. When they turn the corner at the end of the long hallway, Brian removes the radio from his belt and asks security to report to the computer room for a resident eviction. After a squawky voice confirms his request, he continues on, following the signage toward the cafeteria. “You didn’t really need a restroom, did you, ma’am?”
She shakes her head.
“Then can I interest you in a cup of coffee?” He pushes open a set of double doors. “Or maybe some dessert?”
“No,” she says. She means this in more ways than one. No, she’s not going to eat dessert and no, she’s not going to pretend that everything is fine. “You do understand that I have to ask you about what just happened, right?”
The long, narrow dining hall is filled with round tables, most of which are empty. Elinor and Brian sit off to the side, far from the two dozen or so men absentmindedly eating while watching one of the TVs hanging from the ceiling. He cuts into his pie, which is blueberry. The filling oozes out onto his plate, a broken dam of purple. He rakes it back and forth with his fork, first in rows, then in circles.
“So, you must have to deal with fights like that all the time with so many men living under one roof.”
He chuckles. “Have you ever seen a fight, ma’am? That’s not what that was.”
She doesn’t appreciate the way he answered her question, as if she didn’t just witness the same thing he did. “I’m pretty sure you were about to get punched. Would you have considered it a fight then?”
He takes a small bite of pie, which seems like a prop, something he picked up just to keep his hands and mouth busy. “Ma’am, I know what you’re probably thinking. But we’ve got seven hundred men living in this facility. Most of them work really long hours, doing dangerous things, so they’re tired and stressed out twenty-four seven.” He brushes a crumb from the side of his cheek. “Unfortunately, guys blow their top from time to time, like you just saw. But we’ve got rules to keep things from getting out of hand. No drinking, no drugs, no women. Absolutely zero violence. And we enforce the hell out of those rules, excuse my language. It’d be chaos if we didn’t, so I hope you don’t let that one incident give you the wrong impression of this place.”
“What—” It feels like she missed something. “What impression would you like me to take away?”
Brian shrugs. “You seem surprised that things got a little heated back there. But given the stress these men are under, I think the bigger surprise is that it doesn’t happen more often.”
19
She returns to Avery, driving eighty because she can. The only other cars on the road are off in the distance, which is fortunate, given her distracted state. Elinor keeps circling back to a strange thought she had about the man in the computer room. In some ways, it would have been better if they’d caught him with his pants unzipped and his dick in his hand. She might be able to understand a badly timed attempt to masturbate, followed by an embarrassed display of testosterone. But all he was doing was sitting there with his bloodshot eyes and open mouth, too tired to even jerk off. That’s the part that disturbs her. That, and the video he was watching, the way the camera zoomed in on the woman’s face as mascara-stained tears dripped from her chin. Fuck you, she should have said. Fuck you for watching that as entertainment.
Elinor has gone home with more men than she can count, some of whom liked to play rough. It embarrasses her that that’s what she thought sex was for a while. Although she participated willingly, she never invited that kind of aggression. She didn’t particularly enjoy it, but no one talked about consent back then. It wasn’t even a choice that she realized she had, not until much later when every other encounter felt like something to regret. Most of them took place when she was young and indiscriminate, and a night out usually ended in a stranger’s bed. At first, it felt liberating to cast aside other people’s ideas of appropriate female behavior, ideas that never belonged to her. The smoking and drinking, she liked. Still likes. Some of the drugs too. But sex eventually became the least pleasurable thing that she did.
When Elinor was leaving Simon’s Lodge, she saw two uniformed security guards escorting the man from the computer room out to the parking lot. All of them were carrying large black garbage bags. The only explanation she could come up with for the bags was that they held the man’s belongings. She wonders what will happen to him now, if he’ll end up in trouble with the company that rented him the room, or if they’ll simply move him elsewhere because his skills or services are too valuable to do without. She tries to recall his face and finds that she’s forgotten it already. His features weren’t particularly memorable. He was just a guy. White, thirtysomething, average. The thought of this is alarming—how she could cross paths with him again and not even know it. Brian seemed to suggest that evicting him was a good thing. But he was only thinking about his job, his facility. If Simon’s Lodge is a microcosm of the Bakken, how many men like this are out there, human powder kegs just waiting to be lit?
She speeds past a construction site where a large truck stop is going up, a lone building that will likely be joined by others as Avery’s sprawl continues north. She still can’t get over it. This entire stretch used to be a no-man’s-land. Soon, it will be nothing but men. What’s stranger? she wonders. How different the area is, or how she barely recognizes herself within in it? Everything she hated about this place when she was younger—the tightly knit communities, their isolation from the rest of the world, the boredom and piercing quiet—she suddenly misses because they’re gone. However small or stagnant life was, she used to feel safe here. No more though. She’s never felt less safe anywhere. She thinks about Ned, the man in the diner who accused Harry Bergum of changing Avery for the worse. She understands his anger now, even if it was somewhat misdirected. She understands what it means to lose a way of life and want it back.
When a sign appears, marking her return over the county line, Elinor checks her phone again. Richard still hasn’t called, but there are two new texts from Maren.
I have to drive into Avery today. Any chance we can meet up?
Then fifteen minutes later:
Leaving now. Going to stop by your hotel. Really hope to see you.
She wondered how long her sister’s patience would hold out. Maren’s invitations to the farm have become increasingly persistent, making it harder and harder to respond. But these latest messages are different. She’s no longer suggesting that they should see each other when it’s convenient. She’s not even asking or insisting. She’s just coming to town. A visit from Maren is the last thing Elinor needs right now. If Richard tries to reach her and she doesn’t answer, he’ll be that much more upset when they finally do connect.
Her phone keeps cycling between no signal and a weak one. When two bars of service appear, she pulls over onto the shoulder of the road and speed dials Maren. The line immediately drops. She tries a few more times, frustrated that the call either won’t go through or goes straight to voice mail. She gets out of the car, walking ten feet this way, then twenty feet that way, holding her phone in the air, as if that will boost the signal. Eventually, she decides to give up. What would she even say if she reached her now anyway? Sorry, it’s been years since I saw you last, but please don’t come. I’m expecting a call from my ex. Elinor takes off her jacket, letting the sun warm her skin. The thought of spending time with Maren again makes her anxious. It’s too much of a distraction from her work, from the argument with Richard that she knows is coming. On her list of priorities, Maren ranks low, which makes her feel both guilty and sad.
She leans against the hood of her car and tries to light a cigarette, scraping the flint of her lighter roughly against the metal wheel. When the flame finally catches, she looks up and sees something moving in the tall grass, about twenty feet away. It’s a doe and two fawns, walking slowly toward the road. She hasn’t spotted deer in the wild like this in some time—living and breathing instead of roadkill on a highway or images on a screen. They’re as beautiful as she remembered, lithe and long-limbed, with eyes black as coal. She could never understand how people hunted such graceful animals for sport, turning their insides into meat.
She shakes her head and takes a long pull from her cigarette. She doesn’t like that memory. She was certain she’d put it behind her, so far behind her that she’d almost gotten rid of it for good. But now it all comes back to her at once. The ramshackle Hanson family hunting cabin near the Canadian line, handed down to eldest sons for generations. Ed’s insistence on going there by himself every autumn when the weather tur
ned cold. The blood-purple bags of deer meat he always returned with, some to freeze and others to give away to grateful neighbors.
Elinor saw the cabin only once, shortly after she turned twelve. Ed decided to bring the entire family at the last minute, a strange decision considering his claim that hunting should be a solitary activity. At first, Elinor was overjoyed. She thought it would be fun, like a vacation. But the one-room cabin was frigid and barely inhabitable. And there was nothing to do there. No TV or stereo. They weren’t even allowed to wander around outside for fear of being mistaken for prey. Years later, she learned that Ed had dragged them along because of rumors that Nami was becoming too friendly with a local man, someone she’d met while taking driving lessons. According to Maren, he wasn’t about to leave his newly licensed wife at home to do God knows what, giving people even more reason to talk about their family. Elinor doesn’t remember her parents arguing about this, not specifically. What she remembers is the noise.
She can still hear Ed returning to the cabin from a daylong hunt, shouting at all of them to come out and see. Tied to the roof of his car was a large deer, its lifeless head dangling over half the windshield. Nami took one look and went back inside, but at their father’s urging, Elinor and Maren stayed behind. Ed cut the ropes and enlisted their help moving the deer to the ground. Then the three of them used a tarp to drag it to the shed, where he strung up the carcass from a long wooden beam that creaked and bowed under its weight.
“I haven’t bagged a ten point in a while,” he said proudly, using his index finger to count out each antler tip.
That was the moment when they should have left, when they could still pull themselves away. But suddenly Ed was running a knife down the deer’s midline and all the blood began spurting out. It filled two whole buckets before eventually slowing to a trickle, then a drip.