by Dakota West
“You live with your brother?” Jules asked as she drove them out of town.
“My youngest brother. Zach,” Seth said.
“How many do you have?” she asked.
“Just two. Zach’s the one I live with, and Garrett leaves us voicemails sometimes. I even get to talk to him about once a year.”
This isn’t the time to get into your relationship with Garrett, Seth told himself.
“The house is beautiful,” Jules offered. “Is it old?”
Seth nodded in the dark.
“Remember Hiram, who made the deal with the devil?” he asked.
“I could never forget Hiram,” Jules said.
“He built it, and it’s been in my family ever since. I grew up there, my mom grew up there. All the way back.”
“That’s amazing,” Jules said. “Do your parents still live there, too?”
Seth turned and looked out the truck window for a moment. He didn’t particularly like bringing up his parents on a first date — it was too morbid, and of all the emotions he hoped to inspire in Jules, pity wasn’t one of them.
But she’d asked, and it wasn’t like he was going to lie to her.
“Nah, they died when I was seventeen,” he said. “They were trying to take a shortcut through a canyon up to highway 260, and their car slid off the road.”
“Oh, my god,” said Jules. “I’m so sorry.”
Her green-to-brown eyes flicked to him.
Seth shrugged, never sure what response people expected him to have. It was over, it had happened, and it had sucked, but all that was past.
“I was about six months away from being eighteen, so the court let me become Garrett and Zach’s legal guardian instead of tossing us into the foster system. And we had the house, so we had a place to live. It could have been a lot worse,” he said.
“You must be close now, at least,” Jules said, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like maybe it’s a good thing that your parents died, that was rude.”
Seth chuckled.
“No offense taken at all. You wouldn’t believe the shit some people will say to a teenager who’s just lost his parents. And yeah, Zach and I are close,” he said.
Garrett, not so much, but that’s a topic for another time, he thought.
Jules hit the brakes and turned into Seth’s driveway, the mesa looming in the middle distance. For a few minutes, they jostled along in silence, and then Jules parked the truck and turned it off, suddenly blanketing them both in starlit darkness. Seth looked over at Jules. In the dim light, all the colors were muted except her eyes, which were as vivid as ever.
She unbuckled and looked at him, like she was about to say something.
“Wait,” said Seth.
He leaned toward her, unbuckling his own seatbelt, letting it clank against the door.
“Let me kiss you before anything else ruins it,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
He could have sworn her eyes flashed, but before he could think her lips were on his, soft and warm and pliant, and he cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand, her warmth sending a shock through him, her hand tentative on his shoulder, like a bird that wasn’t quite sure whether to stay or take off.
When their lips separated they hovered close for a moment. Seth didn’t want to pull away — he didn’t think he ever wanted to pull away — he just wanted to stay there, close to her, forever, and then she closed the space between them one more time, pressing against him a little harder now, just a little more insistent.
This time, when they separated, they both sat up straight in their seats, and Seth felt like his heart had grown wings and might simply fly out of his chest as he looked into her eyes, feeling like the entire world had shifted in some subtle way he couldn’t exactly name.
“Stars?” Jules asked, after a long pause.
Seth just nodded and got out of the truck.
As promised, they sat on the front porch in the warm night air, feet up on the railing. Seth had offered Jules orange juice — it was the fanciest thing they had in the house at the moment — but she declined, laughing.
“Next time, I’ll get sparkling grape juice,” he said.
He thought he saw something pass over her face, and he remembered: she was leaving soon.
Then she tried to smile, but it didn’t quite make it to her eyes.
Finally, she spoke up again.
“Is that big dark thing Copper Mesa?” she asked.
“It is,” said Seth, and then he went silent, glancing her way. Jules wouldn’t meet his eyes, just staring at the mesa, like she was thinking hard about something.
Does she even know what’s happening? He wondered.
Then a much more insidious thought struck him.
What if they sent her on a date with me to see if I had the document? He thought.
It was a completely insane thought, but he was feeling pretty crazy at the moment.
“That’s actually why I didn’t call you last night,” he said, careful to keep his voice neutral and even.
“The mesa is?” she said. She still wouldn’t look at him.
Seth took a deep breath.
Fuck it, he thought. I know that she knows that I know and all that.
“You work for Quarcom, right?”
She nodded.
“They’re going to build a giant mine right next to the mesa if I can’t prove that we own it,” he said. “I was up until two in the morning on shitty dial-up internet trying to figure out how land ownership even worked in 1870s Utah, while Zach went through all the legal stuff from my parents’ will again, trying to see if there was something in there.”
Jules just shook her head, her posture stiffer than before.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
It’s not her fault, Seth reminded himself yet again, but now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop the floodgates.
“A mine there would wreck the whole town,” he said. “I work with a guy who used to live in Tinville, and the same thing happened there. Huge open-pit mine, made the whole place basically unlivable.”
“Did your family ever own all this land, or was it a legend?” Jules asked. “It seems like there’s a lot of legends around.”
“I don’t know,” said Seth, beginning to feel a little helpless. He was no closer to saving the mesa, and now Jules had gone brittle.
I can’t believe I wrecked a perfectly good date so badly, he thought.
“You don’t have any ideas, do you?” he asked. “Any way I can stop this, whether it’s about ownership or just about environment stuff or, I don’t know, some kind of technicality?”
“You should probably take that up with Quarcom,” she said. Her beautiful eyes dropped to the driveway, and she looked at her truck. “I just test dirt, really.”
“I’m desperate,” he said.
“Desperate enough to take me on a whole date?”
Seth sat up straight.
“No,” he said. “That’s not what happened at all, I never would have gone through all this just to ask you about the mesa.”
Jules stood, crossing her arms in front of herself protectively.
“Look,” she said. “It’s shitty what they’re doing, but I can’t help, and honestly, it’s getting late and I’m tired so I think I’m just gonna head back now, okay?”
“Please don’t,” Seth said. “Please stay.”
She shook her head, seeming more sad than angry.
“I’m leaving in two days anyway,” she said. “If I find out anything about the mesa I’ll call you, okay?”
“Jules,” he said, watching her walk down the porch steps.
“I had a nice time,” she called over her shoulder.
“Don’t go,” he said, but she couldn’t hear him anymore.
As she drove away in the truck, Seth felt like his heart was driving away as well.
Chapter Six
Jules
As Jules got into the truck, he
r face burned, and she gritted her teeth together, determined not to cry until she was at least out of Seth’s eyesight.
It’s Taylor Kimball all over again, she thought. He wants the mine out of his backyard and he thought the chubby dork would be so excited to go on a date with him that I’d somehow be able to dissuade a company like Quarcom.
She twisted the key in the ignition, jammed the truck into reverse, and promptly stalled it out.
“Fuck!” she yelled at the interior of the truck. The last thing she wanted to do was look like an idiot in front of Seth.
She started it again and managed to make the three-point turn this time, before jamming the truck into first and driving down the bumpy driveway as fast as she dared.
In the rearview mirror, she could still see Seth, standing in the driveway in front of his house.
He looked completely heartbroken.
What if I’m wrong? She thought. Then she shook her head, letting the tears fall down her cheeks.
When she woke up the next morning, Jules felt like there was sandpaper in her eyes. The night before, she’d just gotten into the RV, thrown her clothes off, and gotten into bed without even brushing her teeth or taking out her contacts.
Hell, she didn’t even have any alcohol, because she was stuck in Utah, which was basically TemperanceLand, USA. Beautiful, but dry.
She heaved one more sigh and got out of bed, crossing into the tiny bathroom where she peed, brushed her teeth, and took her contacts out, then put her glasses on, blinking at herself in the mirror.
Thank god glasses are cool now, she thought.
Also, thank god for lens technology.
In high school, her glasses had been almost coke-bottle thick, which hadn’t made her any more attractive, but now lenses were thinner, so she just looked like a regular nearsighted person.
Jules stuck out her tongue, and her face in the mirror stuck out its tongue too.
I’m pretty cute, she thought. Why the hell doesn’t Seth like me?
For a moment, she thought of him in her rearview mirror again, and she started to feel bad.
By ten, Gilbert was in town and wanted to meet at Dot’s, the restaurant that wasn’t Big Mary’s. Dot’s was open from 6 a.m. To 3 p.m., and Big Mary’s from 5 p.m. to 8p.m. Neither was open on Sunday, so if you were hungry from 3-5 or on a Sunday, you were just screwed.
When she got there, he was already seated in a booth. Even though he was dressed in his field clothes — khakis, hiking boots, and a button-down plaid shirt — he still looked as out of place as a new Ferrari in a junkyard. The other patrons kept glancing his way nervously, and the waitress called him sir.
“Just coffee,” Jules told her, and the waitress bustled off.
“Good morning, Juliana,” Gilbert said.
“Good morning,” she answered, pulling a notebook and pencil out of her bag.
“Obsidian’s a charming place,” he said, looking around. Jules could tell that he didn’t mean it. He’d be out of there as soon as he could leave — that night, if not earlier.
“It’s got breathtaking scenery,” she said.
The waitress brought her coffee along with a handful of creamers, and Jules poured three of them in and took a sip. The coffee wasn’t very good.
“I’ve arranged for a final walkthrough at noon with the chief engineer,” he said. “He’s flying in from Denver as we speak, and should be here by then.”
Jules looked down at her coffee, then straightened her spine.
“Gilbert, I have some serious concerns about this project,” she said quietly.
His face darkened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I was trying to tell you on our call, but the connection wasn’t very good. Honestly, I think you might be wasting your time.”
“Go on,” he said.
“It’s much too close for the river for a project of this magnitude, for starters, especially since the plans call for extracting the molybdenum from the raw ore on-site. Even a tiny leak would have catastrophic effects downstream.”
He sipped his coffee, his facial expression unchanging.
“Are you going to tell me something about rocks, Juliana? Because I believe I hired to you tell me about rocks.”
Jules bristled, but went on.
“The sandstone here is much too soft, and the rhyolite layer protecting it isn’t thick enough,” she went on. “It’s so porous that anything that spills will go right into the river, and there’s a good chance that the moment we begin strip-mining the mesa, if we make one wrong move, an entire side will come crashing down, and that’s huge risk.”
He was still watching her, his eyes cold.
“But there’s molybdenum,” he said.
Jules took a deep breath.
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s all as composite rock, mixed together with molybdenite, and probably also copper and lead. Anyone who worked on the mine would run a risk of lead poisoning, not to mention the town.”
He put up one hand, indicating that she should stop.
“That’s best discussed at the site, I think,” he said.
Jules didn’t say anything and just nodded.
If it weren’t me, it would be someone else, she thought. Just cash the paychecks and don’t feel too guilty.
Hard not to, though.
Jules and Gilbert drove to the site, speaking only to find a radio station and adjust the AC so that it suited them both. The closer they got to the mesa and the river, the worse Jules felt: about the town, but also about Seth.
Now, in the light of day, she wasn’t sure at all that he’d been trying to use her. The way he’d looked at her — the way he’d kissed her — weren’t like that at all. At some point, she’d noticed that his eyes lit up whenever she laughed, and it made her laugh more, just to see him so pleased.
But then again, there were cold hard facts: he was about to have an enormous mine in his back yard, and she worked for the company responsible for it.
Even nice people will try a Hail Mary like that, she thought, as they stepped out of Gilbert’s luxury SUV. She secured her very large hat on her head, then walked toward Rick Flynn, the engineer. He was a little friendlier than Gilbert, but just as fundamentally greedy.
They all shook hands, and then Rick spoke up.
“Everything’s going according to plan,” he said, sweeping his arm along the expanse of red rock that cascaded down to the river. “As long as your buyout works.”
“It’ll work,” Gilbert said.
“It’s risky,” said Rick, frowning as they walked toward the mesa. “We’ve sunk millions into this already, and we don’t need it derailed by some inbred desert folk finding their great great grandpappy’s land deed.”
Gilbert cast a quick look at Jules, but she looked up at the mesa, pretending to watch a bird of prey circling high above them.
“The chances of someone being the owner of this land are minute at best,” he said. “Most of the people who settled here never bothered to actually register with the land office, since it was all the way in Salt Lake City.”
“Still,” said Rick.
“I’m not finished,” said Gilbert. “The archives burned down in 1903, and while they did their best to recover all those records, only about a quarter ever made it back to the office.”
Rick raised his eyebrows, the hint of a smile playing at his lips.
“So, if anyone ever owned it, the deed is gone by now and there’s no proof,” he said.
“Not unless the inbred desert folk have been keeping meticulous records themselves,” Gilbert said.
Now Rick’s smile had expanded into a full grin.
“We ought to use this more often,” he said. “I’ll have Christina work on a list of land use offices with archives that have burned down in the past hundred and fifty years. What a fantastic idea.”
Jules picked up a rock and pretended to examine it, mostly to hide her fury and astonishment.
I have to tell Seth, she
thought, swallowing her pride. Maybe he was trying to use me and maybe not, and anyway it doesn’t matter because I’m leaving, but he should at least have a fighting chance.
Not that it sounds like he does.
As the two men walked on, they changed the subject to cars, what they drove, what they wished they drove.
Before the end of the afternoon, Jules tried to voice her concerns, but all it came down to was whether something was legal. Since Utah was one of the less regulated states, and mesa-removal mining so new, there were no real laws about it, and Gilbert and Rick couldn’t see anything besides dollar signs.
By the time she was back at the car, Jules felt defeated. She couldn’t stop the mine from ruining an entire town — no, the entire ecosystem of a river, across two states — and she’d been shitty to Seth. Maybe he had only asked her out to get her help, but after spending some time in this beautiful, wild place, she was less angry. After all, people would do anything to protect their homes.
As their SUV approached town, Jules’s phone suddenly buzzed in her pocket, then it buzzed again and again. She pulled it out to discover that she had seven missed calls and two new voicemails.
All from Seth.
I guess we were out of cell range, she thought.
“Can I just drop you at the RV park?” Gilbert asked. “I’d like to get back to the hotel before it’s dark.”
Jules managed not to roll her eyes, and just agreed.
She was in the RV and listening to the voicemail before Gilbert had even pulled back onto the highway.
“Jules, I’m so sorry,” the first one began. “To be honest, I’m not really sure what happened, but if it was something I did, just tell me what it was and I’ll apologize. I swear. Other than that, I had a really good time last night, and thought that maybe I could see you again before you left, though I have to drive to Salt Lake City tonight, so tonight’s out. Call me back. Please.”
Next voicemail.
“Hi, Jules, it’s Seth again. I’m leaving for Salt Lake as soon as I get home from work, but I wanted to see if I could reach you before then. If you get this, give me a call, please, and if I don’t answer I’m probably just not in cell range.”
