by V. K. Sykes
Kerwin Fell had been silent so far but obviously had reached his limit with Joe’s speech. “Joe, you’re my friend, but don’t you get it? We need stiffer regulations for that exact reason. We need them to protect our land from folks who can’t see past the ends of their selfish, self-absorbed noses.” He stared at Dalton.
Dalton sprang to his feet, jostling Teddy. “You want me to come across this table at you, Fell? You don’t say shit like that to Joe and me. Not in my house!”
“Sit down, Dalton!” Teddy yanked at his belt, trying to force him back into his chair. “You’re embarrassing everyone.”
Fell started to rise but Noah clamped a hand onto his arm and said something to him in an inaudible voice.
Teddy’s father directed a glower down the table. “Yes, take it easy, Dalton. And, Kerwin, you need to put a lid on that attitude, too. We’re all neighbors, aren’t we? And neighbors stick together, no matter what.”
“You people want to keep living like it’s the damn 1950’s,” Dalton complained as he sat back down. “We’re talking about jobs. Good-paying jobs. And finally getting some decent stores up here. There’s a rumor that we might even be getting a Walmart soon,” he said, as if that were tantamount to reaching the Promised Land.
Teddy sighed. She loved her brother, but it saddened her that he had so little commitment to the land he grew up on.
“Maybe this would be a good time to take a break?” Noah said, raising his brows at Teddy.
“Good idea.” She pushed up to her feet. Maybe coffee, lemonade, and some of Chrissie’s apple strudel would help lower the heat in the room. In any case, she needed a break. Her nerves were strung as tight as violin strings. Noah, on the other hand, appeared to be taking the noisy debate in stride.
Then again, he was a professional, used to performing on a public stage. What he truly thought under that apparently calm demeanor was something Teddy was impatient to find out.
* * *
“Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,” Noah said, grabbing Teddy’s arm after he excused himself from the group that had surrounded him.
She led him out of the kitchen and onto the spacious, enclosed porch where Toby and Sadie were snoozing. As soon as Toby heard door swing open, he bounced up and scrambled over, quickly followed by his littermate.
“No, you’re staying right here, you big goofs,” Teddy said, bending down to snuggle them both. “I’ll take you for a nice walk before bedtime.”
Noah slid his hand to the small of her back and guided her out the porch door into the dusk-softened backyard. The sun was dipping below the horizon, leaving behind streaks of orange and purple that fought a losing battle against the advancing darkness.
“Let’s go down to our little creek,” Teddy said, leading him across the lawn between the metal-roofed barn and the old, Victorian-style farmhouse. “The path’s right over there.”
She pointed the way, but Noah couldn’t see much except for a line of tall oaks and some bushes. At least it was cooler out here than in the kitchen. Her dad’s house obviously had no air conditioning, and the small crowd of neighbors had made the meeting as hot as Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on a sultry Texas summer night. And in more ways than one.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said as they walked side by side. “You looked like you’d rather be just about anywhere else than in this meeting.”
She gave a soft laugh. “That obvious, huh?”
“Totally.”
Teddy kept her gaze locked on the path ahead of them. “I keep thinking that I shouldn’t have asked you to come here, given how scattered and angry the discussion has been so far. I’m sorry I put you on the spot, Noah.”
He gave her shoulder, smooth and bare in her sleeveless polo shirt, a little squeeze. “I think these people needed a chance to vent, if nothing else. Don’t feel bad about it. I don’t.”
She flashed him a brief, grateful smile. “You understand now, don’t you? That’s why I reacted the way I did when you first told me about the publicity campaign. This is all so close to home for me.”
“I understand that better after tonight. But I hope you’ll keep trying to understand what I have to deal with, too.”
Teddy gave a jerky nod then lengthened her stride. Noah let her be alone with her thoughts for a few moments before catching up to her.
Together, they walked in silence until she stopped at the banks of what truly was a little creek—maybe ten feet wide at that point. Not much water flowed through the nearly dry bed. Still, he could see the appeal. The grass was soft and thick under their feet, and the banks were lined with what looked like wild rose bushes. He couldn’t help thinking of the ranch where he’d grown up. It had a creek too, and a water hole where he and Levi had gone swimming in the summer. Even though he rarely visited the place these days, he understood the importance of home and why Teddy fought so hard to protect what she loved.
When she breathed a tiny sigh as she gazed out over the creek into the darkness, Noah had to clamp his hands at his sides. It was all he could do not to slide his arm around her, reaching up under the long hair that fell in gentle waves down her back. His hands practically shook with the need to caress the soft skin exposed by the sleeveless shirt and navy shorts that barely reached past the very tops of her sleek thighs.
It didn’t matter how rocky things were between them, he always wanted Teddy. Always, and that was something new. The pull she exerted on him wasn’t something he could explain. It was mysterious and crazy. It just was.
But he resisted. She probably wouldn’t welcome a move on his part, not with the brittle tension of the evening hanging heavily between them.
Teddy stared straight ahead toward a rolling pasture barely visible in the fading light of the summer evening. “Honestly, Noah, I can’t wait for this to be over. I’m worried Dad won’t be able to keep everyone under control.” She glanced at him. “I don’t want to make things worse for you.”
“You won’t, but those people sure are passionate,” he said in a light voice.
“On both sides, obviously,” she added, “as you can tell from my brother’s reaction.”
“I can see how the debate is generating a lot of heat between neighbors. Probably even turning the whole countryside upside down, right?”
“It’s been crappy, for sure. It’s even splitting families down the middle—like mine.” She turned to him with a tentative smile that held a lot of melancholy. “I’m glad you get that. At least the meeting accomplished that much.”
“I do. It’s crystal clear. So, can we leave now?” he said, only half-joking. He hated to see her so upset.
She managed a little laugh. “I hear you. These crazy people would go at it all night, but I’ll tell Dad to wrap it up in another half-hour or so.”
“Thank you, Lord.” Noah smiled to make it clear he wasn’t really bothered. He got how important the issues were and how passionately people believed in their own point of view. He had no doubt that the influx of fracking rigs was dramatically and permanently changing the area. But as far as he was concerned, everybody was coming at it from different and valid perspectives. There were no blacks and whites, not in his field of view, anyway. Just a whole lot of grays and unanswered questions that would take time to play out.
His only true regret was that Teddy seemed to insist on seeing the issue as a virtually insurmountable obstacle between them. To his mind, that was simply nuts.
“We’re still heading up to Janie Dillon’s place tomorrow morning, right?” Teddy asked. “Before we head out? I really think you need to see for yourself what’s happened to their water.”
And there’s my sweet little hell raiser, never letting up for long.
He gave her a wry smile. “I keep my promises, Teddy. We’ll go first thing in the morning. Then we’re heading straight to Cooperstown. That was the deal.”
She bristled a bit. “I keep my promises too, Noah Cade.” Then she glanced back up at the lights in the
kitchen. “I think we’d better get back now.”
“Or people will talk?”
“Well, I think we’d both like to preserve our credibility, wouldn’t we?”
Noah wasn’t too concerned about that, but he got where Teddy was coming from. As for him, he had a lot more on his mind than what the folks around that table might think about him personally. His career was racing downhill like an out of control bobsled, and he was caught between his family and the woman he was pretty sure he was falling in love with.
And piled on top of that was a life-changing decision he didn’t want to have to make.
- 24 -
Teddy winced with guilt at the way Noah kept shifting in the old wooden chair. His back muscles were obviously in spasm, partly explaining his grim expression. The Dillons’ sofa and chairs were practically relics and felt the way they looked—old, creaky and uncomfortable. She’d offered Noah her comfy bed last night, insisting she’d sleep on the saggy living room sofa. Gentleman that he was, Noah had refused.
And this morning his back was obviously paying the price for that display of manly gallantry. Though he was managing not to full-out grimace, she knew him well enough to be able to read his discomfort. As much as she wanted Tom and Janie to have a full chance to speak with him, Teddy knew it was best to get him on the road to Cooperstown with the least possible delay.
Despite her nerves, she found she was looking forward to the trip. The intensity of last night—both the meeting and the walk outside with Noah—had drained her. Maybe a little time in Cooperstown would relax her, though she had to admit that it was fraught with danger too, especially to her emotional equilibrium.
“Pendulum drilled their first well on our land about a year ago,” Tom said. “You must have seen it when you crested the hill half a mile away. Not long after that, they put up an impoundment a few hundred feet behind the well.”
“What’s an impoundment?” Noah asked, putting his cup down on the end table. Like her, he’d said yes to their offer of coffee after Teddy assured him that the Dillons now had drinkable water.
“It’s a huge pond of fracking fluid. Ten millions gallons or more of the stuff. We’ve seen photos from the air and it’s a bright orange color, if you can believe it. Or, in some other ponds around the county, pea green.” Tom made a disgusted face.
“Trucks are coming and going at all hours, too,” Janie said in a sober voice, leaning against her husband as they sat side by side on the sofa. “It’s noisy and dirty and a real mess when it rains. I can’t even hang my laundry outside anymore, what with all the dust. I wish we’d never signed those stupid leases.”
“Sometimes that pond smells like raw sewage,” Tom said. “It stinks up practically the whole valley. And you just know it’s full of toxic chemicals, no matter what the companies say.”
Noah’s eyes narrowed, more from interest than pain, Teddy thought. “Have you had any spills, Tom?”
“Not yet. We know people who have, though. And everybody’s worried, because you know what’s keeping all that toxic fluid inside the impoundment and off of our land?”
“Just a synthetic rubber liner,” Teddy said, since she was sure Noah had no intention of guessing.
Tom snorted. “Exactly. A lousy rubber liner. Not much comfort in that, is there?”
“Tell him about the water, Tom,” Janie said impatiently. “That’s what Teddy said he wants to hear.”
“And see, too,” Teddy added. “You’ve still got the samples, right?”
When Tom wrapped his arm around his wife’s plump shoulders, giving Janie an affectionate little squeeze, something inside Teddy tightened with envy. The pair were in their mid-forties, childless, and as in love as any couple Teddy had ever known.
Janie sat up straighter. “When Pendulum started fracking the well, the ground below us shook like crazy every time. It was really bad, Noah. That alone told us something awful must be happening down there underground. It’s not right to have mini-earthquakes going on all the time.”
“We say a lot of extra prayers,” Tom said.
Janie nodded. “About a month or so after fracking started, our well water turned a brownish color.”
A small, skeptical frown creased the space between Noah’s eyebrows.
“It’s true,” Janie insisted. “We wouldn’t drink it after that. We just couldn’t. No way.”
“It even left stains on our clothes coming out of the washing machine,” Tom added.
Noah’s brows went straight up. “Jesus, really?”
Tom gave him a sharp look.
“Sorry,” Noah said, obviously remembering—if belatedly—that the Dillons were fundamentalist Christians.
Janie gave him a forgiving smile before continuing. “We stopped drinking the water but kept on using it for everything else. I mean, what were we supposed to do? Then we had it tested by the state and they found high levels of methane and aluminum. Then they did another round of tests later and the levels were even higher. At that point, the government ordered the well shut down. Not Pendulum’s gas well, of course. Our water well.”
“I’m really sorry,” Noah said. His grimace was clearly one of sympathy, not pain. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been. But did the government people determine it was the fracking operations that caused the contamination?”
Deep lines carved grooves around Janie’s lips. “They said there was no real way to prove it. Well, I don’t need proof. Not when the water was perfect before the fracking and ruined afterwards, and we did absolutely nothing else that could have caused it. That’s all the proof I’ll ever need.”
Noah nodded. “Teddy was telling me that Pendulum trucks in water for you now.”
“Yeah, isn’t that just grand?” Tom said with heavy sarcasm. “We’ve got clean water again, but our land is worth nothing. No one would ever buy this place now.”
“We can’t have children, you know,” Janie said. She rubbed the corner of one eye. “I suppose it’s just as well that they don’t have to inherit this…this mess.” The poor woman suddenly looked exhausted.
Teddy stood up, wanting to move it along so she and Noah could get out of the couple’s hair. This was stressful for all of them. “Janie, can you show us the samples you kept?”
The four of them trooped into a fifteen by twenty storage room behind the kitchen where the Dillons kept everything from potatoes to sacks of fertilizer in metal storage units bolted together along the walls. Janie pulled a pair of quart mason jars down from a shelf and handed one to Noah and the other to Teddy.
Noah stared at the jar in his hand. The water was a cloudy, yellowish-brown.
“I’d get dizzy when I took a shower,” Janie said, her hands on her hips. “I thought at first that I had a virus or something, but then I figured out it was the water.” She gave a sad little chuckle. “I guess the smell should have tipped me off.”
“What did Pendulum have to say about all this?” Noah asked. “They agreed to truck in clean water, but did they say anything else about what happened to your well?”
Tom shrugged. “Oh, they claimed that the contamination could have come from problems with our well that were entirely unrelated to their drilling. Or from something else going on underground that had nothing to do with fracking. But the timing was a little coincidental, wasn’t it?”
Noah nodded. “I hear you. But so far there hasn’t been an ironclad linkage between fracking and water contamination anywhere, at least not as far as I know.”
Tom shook his head, looking morose.
It was the sad truth. Teddy hated that the companies had armies of both scientists and lobbyists working night and day to ensure that what had happened to the Dillons and other families was explained away with little or no mud sticking to the oil and gas industry or to the technology of hydraulic fracturing. She couldn’t help wishing that every one of those people, and the company executives too, had to live right beside a fractured gas well.
S
he’d bet a lot of money that their tunes would change then.
“What about you, Noah?” Janie asked. “How would you feel about living here or someplace else where there was a gas well a few hundred feet away? Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t be just as worried and mad as we are?”
Teddy’s stomach tightened as she watched Noah slowly turn the jar of water around in his big hands. Would he smoothly skate around Janie’s blunt question like the gas industry spokesman his father wanted him to be? From the troubled expression on his face, she could tell how much he disliked being put on the spot.
Noah handed the jar back to Janie. “No, I can’t tell you that. Frankly, I don’t see how anybody couldn’t be worried. And mad, too. At least about the lack of answers you’ve been given.”
Teddy sensed that some kind of “but” was on the way.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m convinced that fracturing is the sole cause of the problem,” Noah continued, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans as he quickly looked down at the floor and then back up at Janie again. “Because I just don’t know. As far as I can tell, nobody knows for sure.”
Teddy held her breath since she could tell he wasn’t finished.
“I do know one thing for sure, though,” he added.
“And what would that be?” Janie said, sounding both hurt and defensive.
Noah took a step forward and touched the woman’s shoulder. “Janie, I know that every single oil and gas company CEO should see that jar of water and every other jar like it across this country. They owe people like you some answers. Honest and complete answers. And they need to do everything in their power to ensure that whenever and wherever they drill in this country, they darn well make sure they’re not destroying people’s homes and livelihoods.”
“Amen,” Teddy echoed.
She had no doubt that Noah was sincere or that he would take the message back to Adam Cade. But what did his words actually tell her about his future and the decision he needed to make?
Sadly, not very much.
