Drift

by Jon McGoran

  I hung back a step, letting Nola take the lead. “Hi,” she said with a big smile. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” he said brusquely. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  Nola stopped, her smile stuck on her face like she didn’t know what to do with it. As the silence dragged out, I was about to jump in, but she toned down the smile by half and continued. “Moving?”

  “Goddamn right I’m moving. This town is going downhill fast, between the Mexicans and the hippies and the yuppies and the city folks. I got a once-in-a-lifetime deal to sell and get out of here, and I’m taking it … unless someone fucks it all up.”

  I stared at the guy’s face, wondering if he was the one who had been making the calls.

  “Who you selling it to?” she asked.

  He snorted. “You know who I’m selling it to. Same folks who wanted to buy your place.”

  “Redtail?”

  He nodded and stiffened, looking at me then back at Nola. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

  “I’m just trying to find out who owns the land next to my farm. I want to talk to them.”

  His shoulders slumped as he stifled a cough, and his belligerent eyes suddenly looked tired and vulnerable. “I don’t know about any of that, but I’m asking you please don’t fuck this all up. If you don’t want to sell, don’t sell, I don’t care. But don’t start any other trouble that’s going to mess this up.”

  * * *

  She was quiet as we drove away, maybe wondering if he was her midnight caller, maybe thinking about the quiet desperation of the other property owners, trying to escape the burden of their farms. Maybe she was questioning her decision to keep her farm, thinking about the implications if it caused the deal to fall through. Maybe she was questioning her decision to buy the land in the first place.

  As we drove, the terrain grew hillier and the green wall disappeared behind a swell of pale green fields. A couple of times, Nola told me to slow down for an access road or driveway, but each time, it was gone, graded over or filled in. The road twisted and turned, and I was starting to lose my bearings when we came upon a big yellow farmhouse with a leather-faced figure in overalls and a John Deere hat sitting on a rocking chair on the porch.

  We pulled up the driveway, and when Nola got out, the old man sat forward.

  “How you doing?” she asked.

  “Morning,” he replied. “Can I help you?”

  “Is this your farm?”

  “It’s my house.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “I sold my land. Now I just own the house. Kind of nice, I can still look out my window and see the land, or parts of it. Kind of sad, cause it reminds me it ain’t mine no more.”

  “You mind if I ask who you sold it to?”

  “You another developer?”

  “No.” She smiled and shook her head. “No, I own a small farm over on Bayberry.”

  “You’re that organic girl.”

  She smiled and looked down. “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

  He sat back. “Makes good sense to me. I never did much like the idea of all those chemicals and whatnot.”

  “So who did you sell to?”

  “Company called Baker/Anderson. Man by the name of Rogers. But that’s not who owns it now.”

  “Who owns it now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Nola looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I just shrugged, but I got her point; it may have looked like a lot of undisturbed farmland, but someone had bought it all up, and no one seemed to know who.

  “How do you know it’s not Baker/Anderson?” she asked.

  He smiled sadly. “Had a change of heart a few months after I sold it. Wanted to buy it back, or part of it. I found out who they sold it to, but they’d already sold it, too. I got sick of digging, figured maybe sitting on this porch weren’t so bad after all.”

  26

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s totally creepy,” Nola said, giving the old guy a cheerful wave as we drove off. “These companies are out here buying up huge tracts of land, the whole area, and no one seems to know who they are or what they are doing.”

  “No, you’re right.” I didn’t want to feed into her paranoia, and those types of land deals probably go on all the time, but it didn’t feel quite right. “I’m sure they’re not up to anything nefarious but I’m not crazy about the fact that no one seems to know who they are. It makes me wonder what they are hiding.”

  “Exactly, and don’t be too sure it’s nothing nefarious. These people will do anything to make a buck, mountain top removal mining, or massive livestock operations, or whatever. The communities always end up devastated.”

  A half hour later, we came to another cross street. Nola sighed and informed me it was Bayberry. We were almost home. I flicked on my left turn signal.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  I shrugged, but my stomach growled.

  “Make a right,” she said. So I did.

  We drove in silence for ten minutes, until we approached a sign that said HAWK MOUNTAIN.

  Nola said, “Turn in here.”

  “Mountain climbing?” I asked as we turned into a large parking lot. I was wearing sensible shoes, but I was tired and sore and I wasn’t prepared for an expedition.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s a picnic.”

  We parked next to a small visitors’ center, and I followed her up a wide trail that narrowed as we climbed. Small wooden signs pointed at side trails leading to lookouts and other landmarks, but we were headed to the top.

  The incline was gentle, but the top was impressive—a rocky outcropping with a sheer drop and an expansive view. It was barely a mountain, but it was the biggest one I’d been on. The land was dense and green beneath us, except for a white scar of exposed rock. To our left was a patchwork of farm fields. A set of train tracks cut across them, looking like a not-very-realistic scale model.

  The height was dizzying, but more striking was the sight of dozens of hawks circling below us, soaring on the air currents.

  “Wow.”

  Nola smiled. “Pretty cool, isn’t it? This is a major migration point for hawks and all sorts of raptors. I used to come out here all the time, but it’s been awhile.”

  We stood there side-by-side for a few seconds, taking in the view. I had just put my arm around her shoulder when we heard voices and turned to see a woman in a brown Girl Scouts T-shirt followed by a small group of girls climbing up behind us. Nola rolled her shoulder out from under my hand.

  “Not only hawks,” the guide was saying, “but also monarch butterflies, which are also migratory. Can anybody tell me where they are headed?”

  One of the girls shouted out, “Mexico!”

  Why don’t you join them, I thought as another moment with Nola slipped away.

  “That’s right,” the guide said. “These butterflies are just passing through. Who can tell me what states they will be passing through?”

  The girls’ hands shot up into the air, and they started shouting out names of states.

  “You’re all correct,” the guide told them. “Monarch butterflies are amazing creatures. Sorry we couldn’t get the larva this year to raise some ourselves, but luckily we have thousands of them coming right through our area. These butterflies will cover thousands of miles, passing through twenty states on their journey south to Mexico, where they will meet up with their cousins who are covering just as much territory on the west coast. And after the winter, what happens?”

  “They get eaten by birds,” I whispered into Nola’s ear.

  “No, they don’t, smart aleck,” she whispered back, giving me a swat on the arm. “They’re bitter and poisonous.”

  “They fly back!” the girls shouted.

  “Well, their grandchildren do, but I’ll give you credit.”

  “That’s like me, bitter and poisonous,” I whispered. “It’s a self-defense mechanism. My plumag
e, on the other hand—”

  Nola gave me another swat and pushed me away, but her eyes sparkled as she stifled a laugh.

  The guide pointed down toward the treetops below us. “If you look closely, you can see monarchs migrating right now.”

  I couldn’t resist looking where she was pointing, and saw a few butterflies fluttering around the treetops, then a few more. It was like looking for fireflies; the more I looked, the more I saw.

  “It is pretty cool,” Nola said. “You look at them and you think ‘delicate little butterflies,’ not an army on the move across two thirds of the country.”

  As the guide led the Girl Scouts away, I moved my arm back toward Nola’s shoulder, but she was already clambering over the rocks, off to the side of the peak.

  “Come here,” she said, grabbing my sleeve. “I want to show you something.”

  I followed as best I could, very aware of the sheer drop.

  She put the picnic basket between two boulders and took out two sandwiches, handing me one. It was tuna salad, but made with egg and celery and slathered on some kind of toasted sourdough bread. It was very good. We ate in silence for a minute, enjoying the view and the steady breeze. Then Nola reached into the basket again and took out a pair of binoculars.

  She edged farther out and reached out a hand for me to join her. I picked my way closer and sat next to her on a small rock, our bodies pressed together.

  She scanned the horizon with the binoculars, looking for something. Then she handed the binoculars to me.

  “There,” she said, pointing off to the west. “See if you can find a white church spire, then follow the road behind it to the right.”

  I found the church, then the road. “Okay, what am I looking at?”

  “See that white house, with the porch wrapping around it?”

  “Hey, that’s my folks’ house! And there’s yours, right across the street.” I could see the thick green hedge behind Nola’s blue-corn patch, and from this angle I could even see the rows of corn behind it. Beyond the corn, barely visible in the hazy distance, was a long, low white building. “What’s that white building?” I asked, handing back the binoculars.

  She put the binoculars back up to her face. “What white building?”

  “Behind your house. On the other side of the fence, past those corn fields.”

  She looked out through the binoculars for a moment. “Looks like some kind of tent … It’s huge.” She let the binoculars slowly fall away from her eyes. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “If that’s a tent, maybe Moose is right. Maybe it is some kind of GMO thing. Sometimes they use tents to prevent drift.”

  “What drift?”

  “Pollen drift, remember? When the pollen from one plant pollinates another plant. You get a mixture. Usually not such a bad thing, unless you’re growing something rare, like my heirloom corn, or if it’s some kind of GMO stuff.”

  “So the tent is to prevent pollen drift?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You think it’s a GMO?”

  She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  “So, shouldn’t something like that be registered somewhere?”

  She looked at me with sudden clarity. “Yes, it should.”

  “So how would you find out if it is?”

  She looked at me for a moment, but before she answered, her phone chirped. She glanced at it, then quickly closed it and slipped it back into her pocket. A crease formed around her mouth.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let me see it.”

  She glared at me for a second. Then her shoulders slumped, and she handed me the phone. It was a text message: “Sell.”

  I handed her the phone back. “Call the police,” I told her. “Right now.”

  “I will,” she said. “Later.”

  “That was a threat, and they can trace it.”

  “It wasn’t a threat.” She started packing up the picnic, stuffing the food back into the basket. Just as she closed the wicker flaps, her phone chimed yet again. She looked at it, more confused than angry.

  “It’s a photo,” she mumbled, squinting at the screen.

  I stepped up next to her, looking over her shoulder at the smudge of bright yellow and orange on her screen. I couldn’t make out what I was looking at, but Nola seemed suddenly to recognize it.

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed, her voice breaking as she pulled the binoculars out of the basket, scattering the remains of lunch across the rocks. “No!” she sobbed, as she scanned the horizon.

  That’s when I saw it—a little ball of black smoke in the distance, rising into the air over Nola’s house.

  I took the phone out of her hand and looked again at the picture, a wall of orange flame, her front porch barely visible through it.

  She called 911 as we sprinted down the mountain trail, but we got to her house before the fire trucks anyway. The smoke obscured the house as we approached, but as we bounced up into her driveway, we could see that the house itself wasn’t damaged. For a moment, Nola’s face showed relief, but as her eyes welled up I followed her gaze. The heirloom patch was gone. The only thing left standing was the little chicken wire fence that surrounded it. Everything else had been reduced to charred, smoking ash, flames still licking up here and there. The air was thick with the smell of burnt corn and gasoline.

  She got out of the car, pulling her shirt up over her nose against the strong smell of gasoline. I went after her, but she only managed two steps before collapsing to her knees and sobbing.

  I knew it was futile and I was uneasy at the proximity of fire, but I stomped out a few of the hotspots until my shoelaces caught fire and I retreated, swatting at my feet with my hands.

  The sirens grew in the distance, but the last of the flames were already flickering out on their own. I knelt down on the gravel next to Nola and put my arm around her. I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound trite and hollow.

  As the sound of Nola sobbing was drowned out by the deafening sirens, now almost on top of us, I realized how much she already meant to me, and how much it hurt to see someone hurt her. In my chest, I could feel my muscles tightening and hardening in a rage that wanted to lash out. But before I could let it, I had to find out who was responsible.

  27

  The firefighters doused the field with water, trampling what little had been left unconsumed.

  “You’re just trouble, aren’t you?”

  I thought it was an odd thing for a firefighter to say to a grief-stricken victim, but it wasn’t one of the firefighters, and he wasn’t talking to Nola.

  It was Chief Pruitt, looking down at me through his signature aviators.

  Nola looked up at him, too.

  “You might not want to get too close to this one, ma’am,” he told her. “He’s nothing but trouble.”

  I got to my feet and looked down at him. He smiled.

  “This is arson,” I said flatly.

  “Oh, you think so?”

  “She’s been receiving threatening phone calls. Whoever did this texted her right before it happened, then sent her a picture on her phone.”

  “Is that right, Ms. Watkins?”

  Nola nodded.

  “And you don’t have caller I.D.?”

  Nola looked down and sighed.

  “The number was private,” I told him. “She uses the phone for business, so she couldn’t block it.”

  “Is that right?” he said.

  She nodded again.

  “How long has that been going on?”

  “About six months,” she replied quietly.

  “And you never reported it?” He said it with enough doubt and accusation that Nola’s head snapped up to look at him. He shrugged. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “I mean I never heard of any of this trouble.” He flicked a finger in my direction. “This was a q
uiet little town until this one showed up.”

  “A quiet little town?” I said with a laugh. “You’ve had two meth houses go up in flames in the last six weeks.”

  Pruitt’s face turned a deep red, and his cheeks started to quiver. “Those houses were not in my jurisdiction.”

  “Oh, I get it. So if it’s just outside your jurisdiction, it doesn’t concern you, is that it?”

  “It was outside my jurisdiction because those scumbags wouldn’t dare try to pull anything like that in my town.”

  I laughed again. “You’ve got known drug dealers driving around your quiet little town, as recently as this morning. But I guess you’re not concerned about that, either.”

  “The only drug problem I know of around here is that little pothead over there.”

  As if on cue, I heard the screen door slam across the street and turned to see Moose stumbling down the steps, blinking in the sunlight.

  “And as for these imaginary drug dealers, well, nobody else is seeing any trouble but you.”

  I took a step closer. “Well, maybe people aren’t telling you about it because they don’t think it’ll do any good.”

  “Better be careful, Carrick,” Pruitt said. “I know all about you and your anger issues. Be a shame to slip up and get kicked off the force for good, now, wouldn’t it?”

  Nola looked up at him, confused. She had stopped crying.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Watson, didn’t you know? Detective Carrick here is suspended. Apparently he assaulted a fellow officer and interrogated a suspect by putting a gun to the kid’s head. Isn’t that right, Carrick? He’s supposed to be in anger management class, too, but I don’t think he’s going.”

  Nola looked over at me, her eyes filling with the same cold anger I had seen when she stormed out of Branson’s. “Doyle, is that true?”

  I started to deny it, but Pruitt had his facts right, even if he was ignoring the subtleties of the situation.

  “Yeah, I’ve been doing my homework on you, Carrick,” he continued, “and you better not try to pull any crap in my town.”

  Moose walked up, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. “What’s going on?”