Friendswood

by Rene Steinke

  “We’ve done extensive testing, and we’ve found with our scoring systems for near-term decisions, there’s no real risk to human health from these chemicals. We’ve done a cumulative risk assessment choosing a subset of environmental stressors. And now we can confidently give permission to build on those adjoining acres.” She seemed too sunny to be human.

  Lee raised her hand. “I have some new evidence that gives a different picture of things.” She grabbed her photos of the container and started walking to the front of the room.

  The woman held up her hand to stop her. “Excuse me?”

  “I have some photographs here that prove something else might be going on, plus I have evidence from a soil study last year showing that concentrations of benzene have actually only declined five percent since the chemicals were buried. I have charts and data on the cancer rates of residents, most of them living within two miles of Rosemont. They are five times the national average. How the hell can this not be a threat to human health?”

  The woman nodded aggressively, her mouth screwed tight. “I have not seen your report. Can you have that sent to me? What we are saying is that we can’t determine that the small amount of chemicals still being released from the former Rosemont area have any effect on human health. Cancer rates, as you know, can be deceptive. There are many factors . . . other health stressors such as nutrition, smoking habits, an older population.”

  Lee held up two photographs, and turned to show them to people in the metal folding chairs, some looking bored, some grimacing in alarm. “Do you know what these are? These are photographs of a rogue container of toxins that came up out of the soil. Pushed right up from the water table. After the hurricane. Right there, next to the building site.”

  “May I ask how you got those?” said Ms. Dawson, smoothing her sleeve.

  “Well, do you really want to know? To hell with it. I broke into Banes Field, and I saw it myself, took the pictures with my camera.”

  Mayor Wallen stood up from his seat and stomped the dais. “Ms. Knowles.” He directed his gaze over the crowd as if looking to signal someone. “Your trespassing aside, would you let Ms. Dawson give her report?”

  Lee used to be able to act nice, to command a crowd, but she’d been worn down by so much flatness, so much indifference. “I’ll let her do it alright,” she said. “I only want to add to it. Look, I’m not a scientist, it’s true. But I have data. I’ve collected it. And, goddamnit, I can look at things with a degree of common sense.”

  “Alright, there,” said Councilman Burns, holding up his hand. “We’re very familiar with your work, Ms. Knowles. And we’ve established that there was no container on the site the day after you supposedly took those photographs.” His skin seemed to have a green tone.

  “Well, familiar. I’d say so,” she said.

  Mayor Wallen would not sit down. “I don’t guess you heard me.”

  Lee wished that she had something more. “How many times have I been here saying the same thing? Twenty times? Thirty times? A hundred times? Well, that’s right, and I’ll say it again. You’re looking at me like I’m angry, well, you’re goddamn right, I’m angry. Because no one goddamn listens.” When she sat down again, the chair scraped the floor.

  Ms. Dawson looked back at Burns, and he nodded and winked. She addressed Lee directly. “We have our study. I’d be happy to take a look at your results.”

  Lee hadn’t been able to keep her cursing in check, and now even her reasonable tone made her sound like a nutcase. “I’ll be happy to send it to you, Ms. Dawson. Just give me the address, not just the general EPA one, but yours in particular.”

  Ms. Dawson held her face very still, then calmly blinked her eyes. “I will do that.”

  When the meeting broke up, she met Avery Taft in the hallway as she came out of the ladies’ room. He was tall, getting pudgy around the middle, but his ruddy, sharp face bore a greasy, unlined sheen. “Ms. Knowles, I sure do like your snazzy shirt.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “And I sure wish you’d stop hurting my business.” The pitch of his voice went higher at the end, a question that wasn’t a question. He’d adopted a flourished, slightly feminine way of talking. “People need work. Times are hard. And, damn it, they still need houses. Affordable ones.”

  “They don’t need to get sick ten years down the line because Avery Taft sold them a pretty colonial.”

  “Weren’t you just sitting there in the meeting, or am I mistaken? Did you not hear the report from the lady? You can’t get any better than that. What more do you want?”

  “More,” she said.

  “Oh, man.” He chuckled, shaking his head. Then he smiled and pointed at her, making a clicking sound with his tongue. “You’re good. You better watch yourself.”

  THAT NIGHT, Lee opened the cabinet under the sink and lay on her back with the flashlight and her tools. The pipe had been leaking onto the kitchen floor, dampening the bottles and scrub brushes she kept down there. With the flashlight, she found the dull green pipes and felt along each for cracks, then with her fingers encircled on each washer, she felt for the loose one. She used the wrench to tighten it. The metal ridges were worn down, it was so old, and soon she’d have to replace it, but for now, it would do. Sliding herself out of the cabinet dark into the light, she felt a small satisfaction. To be able to fix things relieved her, and when she was calm at night, she could feel her body come alive again. In bed later, she might even be able to summon up a version of Jack, his face unshaven and lamplit above her, his body moving ghostlike into hers.

  She’d only had sex with one other man since he’d left. Hadan, who installed heating systems and sometimes played cards over at Rush’s. It had happened suddenly one night after a dinner party when he drove her home and they stayed up drinking and watching an old movie. She had the feeling, as she sat with him there in her living room, how nice it was not to be alone, even if he had a snort sometimes in his laugh that irritated her, and liked to call her “little lady” as if she were a child. His big stomach pushed against the buttons of his shirt when he sat down next to her on the couch, his thighs wide and meaty, and despite herself, she spread her hand there on his jeans, and they were kissing, and he pulled her shoulder out of her shirt and started rubbing it. She didn’t remember much after that, but she was glad when he hoarsely said good-bye in the watery blue dark of the morning. He called her later that day, with little to say, and she was embarrassed. She’d wanted to keep the memory pure with Jack’s hands on her, their weight and warmth, and after that time with Hadan, it took a long time for her to get the memory back.

  In the middle of the night, she woke up seeing an email line glowing in the dark before her: YOU ARE A LIAR. It was in her dream, a message on the screen from Avery Taft, her computer also oddly an oven where strips of bacon fried in a black pan and a fire burned in the next room. She wrapped her legs in the sheets and tried to settle herself down. She stared into the vague shapes behind the dark.

  Rush called in the morning to see what had happened at city council. “I showed them the photographs, I said my piece, and it didn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference.”

  “Well, you tried. How about you come out to New Braunfels with us next weekend?” Rush told her about the country house, the walk along the river, the German beer house where there was dancing.

  But to leave now, that would signal a collapse. “Maybe in November?”

  As she hung up the phone, her eye caught on the bright green letters of a binding on the bookshelf. Idly, she took down the book. Ecological Defense Manual. A guy from Texas Green League had sent it to her in the mail ages ago. She had been speaking with him on the phone about the solvent levels that Professor Samuels had found, and the guy had been apologetic, but said he didn’t think they’d have much traction with his boss at the agency. “Look,” the note that arrived with the book had said, �
��here’s the real deal. Tells you how to do everything. If you’re really angry (ha!) . . .” He’d sent it as a joke, to give her some perspective. Aside from the typography, the cover was the color of a brown paper bag. There was a quote from Thomas Jefferson on the first page: “To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself.” She’d heard about these ecos, come across their exploits and missives on the Internet, but until she started reading now, she hadn’t understood how practical the strategies were: tree spiking to prevent loggers, plugging the discharge pipes of polluting factories, taking out survey stakes in land marked for development, disabling building equipment. There were photographs and diagrams demonstrating each act, and there were lists of what to wear, what to bring, as careful and efficient as a Boy Scout’s guide. The longest chapter was on security. “We may repeat ourselves here. That’s purposeful to protect us from the greedheads. Security protocols are crucial. Above all, do not get caught.”

  The book was ridiculous, with its misspellings, illustrations like panels from a comic book, a cheerful fierce tone like a cruel teenager’s. The pot-smoking guy from Texas Green League had wanted her to get ahold of her rage. She had a problem with her anger—she knew that—she and Jack had been over that a hundred times. But what the hell was she supposed to do with it? Tame it and put a bow on it and trot it out like a pet?

  DEX

  ON THURSDAY Ben Lawbourne invited him to his house for lunch and because he hadn’t done his homework for Munson, he decided to skip class and go. His mom had written him a couple of spare notes for times like these, which he kept in his locker—so he could leave school if he needed to. She trusted him that way. He was only supposed to use a note if he was tired or needed to study for a test, but she wouldn’t have been too mad to know he was hanging out with Lawbourne and Weeks—she liked those guys. Still, to cover his bases, he decided to tell her he’d left to get her prescription filled at the pharmacy, rather than after school, when he had practice.

  He walked into Braun’s Pharmacy and handed the slip to Eugene, whom he’d known his whole life.

  “Howdy,” said Eugene, taking the paper. “It’ll just be ten minutes.”

  “Fine,” said Dex. He sat down at the old soda fountain. There were only three stools, but they were all empty. While he waited, he looked at a magazine, read an article about one of the actresses on a TV show he’d never heard of—she only drank a special kind of water blessed by a psychic and said she liked to taste the blood of her lovers.

  “Ready,” said Eugene from the window. “You say hi to your mom for me, alright? No school today?”

  “I’m on my way to an appointment is all,” said Dex.

  Eugene winked at him.

  Dex looked down at the typed sticker on the little bag. “For diabetes only. Take two tablets daily.”

  First his mom got diabetes, and now the doctor was worried about her heart. She must have gained a hundred pounds since his dad had left. When he was getting ready for school that morning she was eating doughnuts out of a box, her hair lopsided, her nubby bathrobe awry. He wanted to grab the box away from her, but then he felt sorry for wanting to deny her sweets.

  THE LAWBOURNES’ HOUSE was a big brick two-story with twelve windows, a three-car garage, and elaborately trimmed bushes, and Mr. and Mrs. Lawbourne were off in the Caribbean. By the time Dex got there, Louder was so drunk he couldn’t walk across the living room without stumbling on the fur rug.

  “Look, it’s Dexterous Dex,” he said, his words purring together. “You have any more fly moves for us, Dex?” It was an old joke by now, but Louder wouldn’t let go of the night Dex drank six shots of Jim Beam in the bathroom at a school function and got up on a table to dance by himself. Louder started clapping at an uneven beat. “Work it, man!” That same night Louder had put his hand through a window and went traipsing through a party waving his bloody fingers at swooning girls, but no one teased him about that now.

  “How much have you had to drink there, Louder?”

  “Not as much as Holbrook. He’s got a girl up there, in the flesh.”

  “The shark bites again, huh?” Dex was too used to his bullshit to take this one.

  “Dex, Dex, Dex.” Louder shook his head, slapped him on the shoulder. No one paid any attention.

  Three guys he recognized but didn’t know sat at the kitchen table, flipping quarters into a pitcher of beer. Kyle and Trace played pool, Trace screaming, “Damn! Damn! Damn!”

  There was definitely a rich lady behind the decorating of this living room—with its cowhide pillows, leather couches, the deer head on the wall, the table that seemed to be made from a tree stump but polished until it looked wet. All of it was rapidly falling into a mess, but it felt like the lady’s presence was still there. He wanted to let loose and have fun, but the room got him thinking of his mother again.

  Charlie sat on the couch with his feet up, watching the football game. “Hey there, Dex,” he said lazily. Dex sat next to him, surprised to see him there, but surprised to see himself there too. Eyes lowered, feet up, Charlie seemed in a game trance, the TV showing replays of a tackle from different angles. Dex opened a bottle of Lone Star and took a sip, but he felt distant from the whole scene, worrying. His mother had been fat for a while, but this morning he noticed her ankles were so swollen, her leg poured directly into her shoe. He couldn’t get that image out of his head. She had to stay cheerful, and junk food helped her keep her sense of humor. This morning, she’d said, “I’ve got my Weight Watchers later.” She always acted as if she were dieting, as if she were losing weight rather than gaining it.

  Dex wanted to take care of her, but he couldn’t force her to eat what the doctor told her to eat. Even if he tried, she would just laugh and wave him away.

  Snow came in through the grand entryway, grinning and slouching. He sat next to Dex and Charlie, took a beer from one of the six-packs and opened it in one fluid motion. Behind them on the kitchen island, there were ten or fifteen bottles of liquor. Snow took two brown prescription bottles from his front jeans pocket and set them down on the table. “Have at it—potluck. Valium and Klonopin. Straight from Bishop.”

  Dex took small sips of beer. He’d gone to practice drunk before, but it was four times as hard, carrying shoulder pads and helmets, having to write down the plays the coach rattled off to him and trying to look at him straight on, hoping his eyes didn’t look as raw as they felt. If Coach Salem guessed it or saw it, he’d automatically lose his job. And he needed to deliver the diabetes medicine to his mom.

  “Just got a copy of that Aristo,” said Snow. “Have you played it yet? It’s exactly as if you’re in the desert shooting Arabs, and it gives you this burning shock if you miss. Sand blows up the screen. Very fucking cool.”

  “Yeah?” said Charlie. “Do the bodies blow up? You know, they use that game in training camp. It helps your reflexes.”

  At that moment Dex wanted to drink as many beers as he could hold. He understood why his mom couldn’t stop eating, how sometimes you just wanted the thing you wanted until you drowned in it.

  Louder and Weeks were playing some game with a frilly pillow, throwing it back and forth. “This is why you can never get laid—you smell like a fart-making machine. And you’re telling me you wear cologne? Fuck!”

  “Your nose is stuck in your own asshole.”

  Someone had built a small tower of fancy throw pillows, pony skin and brown velvet, with a lone potato chip on top. There was a gathering of bottles on the table with wads of paper towel stuck into the mouths like crumpled white heads.

  Jim and Rick had joined Trace at the pool table, and the room was dark except just the lamp shining down over the table in a little temple of light. When one of them leaned in to shoot, the face looked flattened and white as a paper mask.

  Louder came crashing down over the couch, grabbed Charlie in a mock emb
race, started singing loudly, “All my exes live in Texas.” There were five empty bottles of Jim Beam sitting on the mantel, Dex noticed, their black-and-white labels official looking, efficient, and old-fashioned. It was only then that Dex realized all at once that every single guy there, Snow and Charlie included, though he was quiet, was dead drunk. Dex kept his eye on the TV, listening to the cue hitting the balls on the table, a loud Brad Paisley song about alcohol back in the kitchen, Rick singing angrily along. They listened to country music as a gesture to their parents’ tastes, fakely sincere, pretending cowboy honor—but inside the joke they could puff out their chests and sing as if it mattered. Dex felt different—those singers so often sounded like his dad, or a version of his dad his mom liked to sing along to.

  The sliding glass door opened, and Bishop came inside. He flipped his hand in Dex’s direction. “Who invited you?”

  Dex didn’t answer. If they still thought he’d had something to do with telling Coach about the goats, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  Brad passed too close to the couch, glared at him. And again, the thought of drowning came to Dex.

  He needed to just leave and get back to school, maybe even study for a few minutes before the science quiz he was supposed to take in sixth period, but he felt sluggish amid all the frenetic talk and the guys swaying around him.

  Brite came in the glass door, dripping wet, his boxers stuck to him like damp newspaper. “Towel?”

  “Try upstairs!” Bishop yelled, and Trace and Rick started cackling from the pool table. “Yeah, upstairs, dude!” There was a round of laughing and a couple of silly hoots.

  “We’re like the last three cowboys, dudes up against the Indians,” said Snow, grinning, a bulge of Skoal in his lower lip, so he had to talk out of the side of his mouth. “They think they’re going to kill us with their arrows, but only because they don’t know we’ve got guns.”