The Missing Place

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Nobody around,” Shay observed, taking her time deciding where to park. She drove to the end of the two-block cluster of buildings and made a wide U-turn before coming back and parking in front of the Indian Affairs building. “Of course, the fact it’s ten degrees out might have something to do with that.”

  “Who do you want to talk to?”

  “I thought maybe I’d take a break from talking.” She touched her mouth gingerly; the flesh above her lip was swollen and puffy. With her tongue, she could feel the ragged place where her teeth had cut her cheek. “I haven’t been all that effective so far, have I?”

  “Well, but what are we trying to accomplish here? How can we get anyone to talk to us if there’s as much hostility up here as Roland said?”

  Shay didn’t answer. The headache that had arrived on the heels of being hit wasn’t the worst she’d ever had, but combined with a lack of sleep and the anxiety from what she’d discovered online, it was all she could do to keep from biting off something sarcastic. Besides, why did she have to have all the ideas?

  Colleen seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion because she started tramping over the snow to the entrance. A bell affixed to the inside handle chimed when they opened the door.

  A woman sat at a desk with a sheaf of papers in one hand and a mug in the other. Talking to her with one hip resting on the edge of her desk was a man dressed for the outdoors, his unzipped parka being the only concession he’d made to indoor heat. Both stopped talking as the women entered.

  “Hello,” Colleen said loudly. “My name is Colleen Mitchell and my son is missing. He worked on a Hunter-Cole rig until two weeks ago, and no one has seen him or heard from him since. His friend is also missing. This is his mom, Shay. Our sons are twenty years old. We heard a rumor that there’s a lot of bad feelings about Hunter-Cole up here, and I don’t have time to apologize to you for everything that is wrong in your world, so can you please tell me how to figure out if anyone around here knows anything about our kids?”

  Shay was surprised and impressed, even if Colleen went a little wobbly there at the end. The man edged his ass off the edge of the desk and stared at them, saying nothing. The woman cleared her throat and moved her mouse an inch.

  “I just got hit in the face by some Hunter-Cole asshole,” Shay said. “If you got some issue with them, you won’t get any disagreement from me.”

  “I don’t got issues with them specifically,” the woman said grimly. She looked about fifty, with a no-nonsense haircut that made her look older. A silky floral top over a turtleneck concealed her extra pounds. “But I don’t know anything about your sons.”

  “Can you help us find out who to talk to?”

  “How about fuck-off-dot-com?” the man said. His face had darkened with anger. His graying hair was cut short, making him look ex-military. “You figure your boys got into trouble, they had to have had help? You don’t think they could have gone off the rails themselves, so you come up here to point the finger?”

  “I’m doing no such thing,” Colleen said. “I’m trying to explore every avenue. Look, I’m from Boston. In the past seventy-two hours I’ve taken a shower in a truck stop, slept in a motor home, and eaten more fried food than I’ve had this whole year. Now I’m on an Indian reservation. I haven’t done any of those things before and frankly if my son hadn’t disappeared I doubt I ever would have. But I’m running out of ideas and it’s been thirteen days, and I don’t know who to talk to. One of the men from the rig said there were rumors that workers who get hurt are being bought off and the ones who complain are getting into trouble, all because Hunter-Cole is trying to hold on to leases on your land. And he says there’s a lot of bad feelings about outsiders making money off what’s rightfully yours. Maybe my son got in a spot, made someone mad. I doubt he meant to, if that was the case.”

  The pair exchanged a glance. “City council convenes once a week. It’s open to the public. You want to know more about all of this, you could show up.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Friday mornings at ten. They’re usually there until lunch.”

  “It’s Sunday,” Shay said. “You honestly want us to come back in five days?”

  “Look, I don’t know what else to tell you. I guess you can go around knocking on doors if you want. You’re going to hear the same thing, though.”

  “Can you at least tell us who around here’s the type to make trouble?” Colleen said. “People who can’t seem to stay out of it . . .”

  “Yeah,” the man said. “Me. I did, anyway. I’m forty-eight years old, and twenty-five, thirty years ago I used to knock heads the last time people tried to get their hands on this land. ’Course, last time they didn’t sell our rights out from under us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A hundred and fifty years ago we had twelve million acres up here. Thirty years later the government had taken all but a million, and it didn’t take long for white farmers to steal half of that while the government sat on its ass. In the 1950s they took a third of what was left to build the dam.”

  “That’s all too bad,” Shay said. “But I don’t see what it has to do with oil.”

  The man regarded her evenly. “When the first oil boom came around in the seventies, speculators started trying to pick up mineral rights cheap, and a lot of families around here didn’t know what they had and practically gave them away. I guess you could say it was their fault for being a bunch of dumbass prairie niggers, but the way some people up here look at it, you take it up the—”

  “Hey,” the woman at the desk said. “Enough.”

  “Sorry.” The man blew out a frustrated breath. “There’s only so many times you can lose everything, is all I’m saying. People are angry, but we got traitors on the inside trying to sell us out, we got plenty of other problems to deal with. Your boys come over here to raise hell at the casino, yeah, there’s going to be trouble. But if they stayed on their own patch, any trouble they got into, nobody around here knows anything about it.”

  Colleen reached into her purse and took out her fussy floral notebook and carefully tore out a piece of paper. “I’m going to write down our information,” she said. “I would consider it a great favor if you would keep us in mind if you think of anything—anything at all—that might help us. If you could spread the word that we are trying to find out what happened, and we’re no friends of Hunter-Cole. That’s all we’re asking.”

  “All right,” the woman said tiredly, rubbing the pouchy skin under her eyes. “I can’t promise you anything. But we can do that.”

  The room was dense with grim pessimism while Colleen wrote.

  THEY WERE ALMOST all the way back to Lawton when Shay’s phone rang. She picked it up and squinted at the screen. “Don’t know who it is and no idea what that area code is. Answer it, okay? I don’t want to end up in a snowbank.”

  Colleen took the phone. “Hello?”

  “This one of the ladies from the rig today?” A male voice, thick with a Southern accent, polite.

  Colleen’s fingers tightened on the phone. “This is Colleen Mitchell. Paul’s mom. Whale’s mom.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He sounded disappointed. “I wanted to talk to the other one. Fly’s mom.”

  “Don’t hang up. Please. She’s driving, the weather’s bad and we can’t pull over. We’re in this together.” Colleen blinked; it was the first time she’d said it out loud, the first time she’d claimed it. “Maybe you can talk to me? What’s your name?”

  “No, ma’am, no names,” he said quickly. “I got enough trouble as it is. I’m on probation right now, I could lose my job ’cause I reported a violation last month. I’m calling you from the crapper so I got to make this quick.”

  Colleen blushed. “I—I appreciate your candor. You knew Taylor?”

  “Yeah, me and him worked together last summer and then we got put on opposite shifts. I only met Whale the one time. He seemed real nice, Mrs. Mitchell. What I want yo
u to know, the day them two went missing, me and Fly was supposed to go fishing. But he canceled on me because he said something came up. I thought it was because he knew what I wanted to talk to him about. I was trying to get him to go to the authorities with me. See, there was this accident the month before when the rig crowned out. One of our guys got hit with a thirty-pound piece of drill pipe and ended up in the hospital with permanent brain damage. Taylor actually saw it all. He told me how it happened, but he didn’t want to say anything because they had this meeting where the bosses said they were taking care of Morty, he’s down in Alabama where he’s from, they set up a whole fund for his medical and his kids. That’s what they said, anyway. In the meeting they said what happened was a driller lost his concentration and hit the top of the rig with the blocks. But Taylor, he said there was a problem with the crown saver that had been reported but they hadn’t done anything about it, they didn’t even check it at the start of the tour. So what I said to Taylor, this shit’s gonna keep happening as long as management gets to write the reports any way they want. Safety compliance crew hasn’t been out since November, it’s a joke.”

  “So you were going to go to the authorities, and you wanted Taylor to go with you?”

  “Yeah, I told him we couldn’t trust Hunter-Cole management. So my idea was, we’d go straight to the state Justice Department. I even called in advance, didn’t identify myself, asked if we could set it up so we could conference-call and our identity would be protected. Taylor was real insistent that unless we got some sort of guarantee we couldn’t do it, because they already shit-canned a few guys for complaining. I mean, that’s why I got written up.”

  “They can do that? They can discipline you just for reporting a violation?”

  “Well, they don’t call it that, Mrs. Mitchell,” the young man said. “The way they did me, it was for coming in late. Reason being there was a couple times I forgot to punch my clock. I was there on time, my shift supervisor knew it, everybody knew it. But I get another one, I can be fired. They want to go after someone, you can bet they’ll find a way.”

  “And Taylor . . .”

  “He’s got a mouth on him sometimes, I guess you know that. He got written up for real, way back last fall, time he got into it with this assho—excuse me, ma’am, this fellow we worked with. So he had that on his record and he was real worried about losing the job. I just thought if we went fishing, had some time to sort it out, I could talk him into it.”

  Shay was motioning to Colleen to hold the phone closer so she could hear. “Listen, I got to go,” the young man said. “There’s somebody waiting to get in here, and they’re standing outside in the cold and I already been in here a long while and everybody’s all tense around here since you came by.”

  “Can we call you? If we need to?” Colleen said in a rush.

  “I really would rather you didn’t. I’m sorry.” And then the phone went dead.

  “What the hell?” Shay demanded.

  Colleen did her best to fill her in on the conversation.

  “And he never said who he was?”

  “No, but I have the number on my phone now. If we need it, we could call back. It shouldn’t be too hard to find out who got hurt, if we go back and look.”

  “Taylor told me about that one,” Shay said. “I knew he was downplaying it because I’d worry. I looked it up, though. Crowning out is bad, but it happens all the time because you got all that heavy machinery in motion combined with all that well pressure. Taylor acted like it was the guy’s own fault, but the floor just isn’t that big, there’s no way you could get out of the way if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  They rode in silence for a while, each lost in her own thoughts.

  “What we have is a lot of hearsay about the safety problems,” Colleen finally said. “But if we could get a look at the leases, that would be something concrete. If we could see exactly what Hunter-Cole is up against.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. They’re public record.”

  “They are?” Colleen wanted to ask how Shay knew. In a way, she was afraid it would be one more detail Taylor had shared with her, that Paul had never told his own parents. Another bit of proof of the distance between them.

  “Yeah. Maybe we can get someone at the library to help us.”

  “You think they’re open? Back home, our library closes at four o’clock half the time due to budget cuts.”

  “In a state with three percent unemployment? Hell, yes, they ought to be open—state assembly probably can’t spend their money fast enough.”

  seventeen

  THE LIBRARY, A pleasant 1970s facility that seemed to be half children’s area, was indeed open until seven. Colleen stayed outside to make a call while Shay went inside.

  It was a call she had been dreading—not because she didn’t want to talk to Andy, but because she was afraid of what he might say. But she couldn’t look at Shay anymore without remembering her expression when she confronted her about Darren Terry.

  Colleen found an alcove on the side of the building where the winds didn’t reach. The ground was tramped down and littered with cigarette butts; this was clearly the smokers’ retreat. She hoped none would come while she was on the phone. It was almost six thirty in Sudbury; Andy would be home, putting dinner together from whatever he found in the fridge. Or maybe the dinner brigade that Laura had set up had dropped something off. Helen with her famous lasagna, maybe; or if it was Vicki—

  She’s been down here practically since you left. Wasn’t that what Andy had said? Working on the Internet and creating the flyer and making calls. Keeping Andy company, offering solace, reassurance . . .

  “Colleen.” Andy sounded out of breath. “I’m glad I heard the phone. I’m out here shoveling the drive. We’re getting another three inches tonight. How are you doing?”

  Terrible, she wanted to say. She pushed thoughts of Vicki from her mind, but it was impossible to pretend that she wasn’t failing here. She hadn’t succeeded in getting any closer to finding Paul, other than opening up possibilities that might make things even worse.

  She was going to have to tell him about Shay finding out about Darren. Besides, she needed someone now. Andy was Paul’s father. They ought to be drawing on each other’s strength, comforting and supporting each other, talking and listening. Even if things had been less than perfect between them, Andy would be better than what she had now: a virtual stranger, who was hostile and suspicious, sharing a freezing-cold motor home with no shower.

  “There’s something I have to ask you,” she said. Better to get straight to it, or she might lose her nerve.

  “Sure, anything.”

  “That Wednesday last August, before Paul left . . .”

  “Oh.” It came out as a groan, and Colleen knew it pained Andy as much as it did her to remember.

  The three of them had argued over breakfast, the same tired fight they’d been having ever since Paul came home from Syracuse in the spring, having gotten two Ds the first semester of his freshman year and withdrawn from the second semester when it became clear he was going to fail several classes. Andy’s last words to Paul that morning had been along the lines of, “Considering I just sent Syracuse a twelve-fucking-thousand-dollar deposit, you’re damn well going back.”

  Paul had stood up from the breakfast table, and for one terrible moment Colleen had thought he was going to hit Andy. He was that close, that angry, his hands clenched into fists. But instead he had said, his voice strained, “Why do you even want me to go back if I let you down so bad last year?”

  And Colleen had started to protest, to remind him that he’d been able to withdraw from the worst classes, so he still had the 2.6, he didn’t have a failing grade on his transcript, and if he retook algebra and met with the tutor like they’d asked him to . . .

  But neither Andy nor Paul paid her any attention. Andy got out of his chair and faced Paul down, and Colleen realized that Paul had passed Andy s
ometime that spring, he was now slightly taller. And muscular from the garden center job he’d taken, it seemed to Colleen, to spite them. If it did come to blows, Andy didn’t stand a chance—then she felt terribly guilty for even thinking it. Disloyal to both of them.

  “Please,” she begged, but they didn’t listen.

  “You didn’t let me down,” Andy said, in that irritatingly condescending voice of his. “You let yourself down. You let yourself down every time you don’t study, every time you give up because it’s too hard, every time you don’t go to office hours or call the tutor. Those are choices, Paul, and if there’s one thing I wish you’d get through your thick head it’s that you get where you end up because of the choices you make along the way.”

  “I’m not you, Dad,” Paul retorted. “I can’t do those things. I can’t be who you want me to be.”

  “Fine,” Andy said in disgust. “You know what, I can’t stand to have this conversation one more time. So you win. You’re right. Effort wouldn’t make a goddamn bit of difference. You’re doomed to fail. None of our suggestions are worth shit.” He slammed his coffee cup down on the table, spilling over the edge. “I’m late. Somebody’s got to earn a paycheck to pay for you to go up there and sleep through your classes.”

  Seconds after Andy stomped out the door, Colleen raced after him, but he’d already pulled out of the drive. She didn’t want to be alone with Paul, with their argument, and instead she went straight to the school, where she spent the next six hours in the literacy office, preparing for the returning student evaluations.

  When she got home, she entered the house with a sense of dread, ready to take up the terrible talk again, to try to intervene on behalf of Andy, to apologize to her son for his father. But Paul was on his knees on the kitchen floor. He had a bucket of soapy water and a rag and he was washing the floor under the cabinet. When he looked up, his eyes were puffy from crying.

  He admitted that after Colleen and Andy left, he’d broken every dish on the breakfast table, hurling them all to the floor, the juice and milk upturned, the syrup pitcher smashed. When there was nothing left to break, he sank to the floor and sat there long enough, Colleen gathered, to remember how much he loathed himself. He stripped, leaving his clothes in the kitchen, showered, and changed. Then he went to Target and replaced everything he’d broken, using the money he’d earned at his job, and came back and started cleaning.