Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  Furious to find myself treed by livestock, I made smoochy noises at the lousy mutts, lest they think I was truly scared. Which I was. My whole body was beginning to tremble with the let down from the adrenaline that had just hammered through me.

  Half a minute later, I was still sitting there cussing at the dogs, getting cut in half by the edge of that girder, hanging on with one hand and beginning to probe at a trickle of blood on my knee with the other, when I became aware that I had more company than just two canines.

  Matthew Karsh stood just inside the door, feet planted and chest heaved up under his sloppy chin in a burlesque of pridefulness. His face was cruel with triumph, his lips retracted from his mossy teeth in a grimace of horrific glee. It was a child’s pose distorted onto the body of a man, that defiant “gotcha” posture so popular among preschoolers who need to get even. He shifted excitedly from foot to foot, showing himself to me, but keeping his bulk carefully inside the doorway, his victory display for me and me only.

  I tried to look casual, unimpressed, even though the girder was beginning to cut like a knife. “Hi, Matt,” I said. “What’s the haps?”

  “I’ve got you,” he replied, in a deep, nasal voice.

  I shrugged. “Nah, let’s not play that game.” I shifted on the girder, dangling one foot toward the top of the ladder.

  “I wouldn’t do that. They could eat you.”

  On cue, the brown dog raised her growl to a sharp bark and leapt at the ladder again.

  Matthew rocked far enough that his face loomed for a moment out of the shadow. His eyes were agleam, the whites visible all the way around the irises. It was not a pretty sight.

  Okay, I counseled myself, you’re in a bit of a bind here. You’ve been treed by a pair of neurotic dogs who answer to a psychotic master. So what are you going to do about this?

  I was surprised to find that I felt charged up, stimulated by the challenge. Now that the tension of possibility was broken by action, life had become suddenly simpler, more defined. I let this insight sink in while I tried to craft my next move.

  Move, that was it: I was playing chess, getting a perverse thrill out of this experience. I wasn’t proud of that.

  I was just thinking that the best maneuver might be to climb down the ladder far enough to incite the dogs into a fit of barking, in the hope that someone else might hear them and come find us, when Matthew threw a switch mounted in a big metal box by the wall.

  The floor shook and moaned as the Archimedes’ screw began to turn, its four-foot gullet and polished metal edges slithering like a hungry snake. The screw made a grinding noise as the great spiral blade pulsed toward me. As if the suggestion of sexual violence was not obvious enough, Matthew began to rub the front of his pants with one giant paw. Then his head whipped around, ears alerted to a sound I could not hear. Then he was gone.

  A moment later, Will Karsh reentered the room. Seeing what was making the floor shake, he slapped the switch off, bringing the screw to a halt, but the dogs still paced wildly, patrolling the base of the ladder.

  “Could you get the dogs down from there, please?” I yelled.

  Will Karsh jerked his head back in search of the source of my voice, eyes squinting into the darkness. When at last he saw me, he did something I found almost as disconcerting as what his son had done: he just stood there. Eyes blank. As if watching TV.

  “Okay, I’ll just start down, then,” I called, and swung myself onto the top rung. “You can just call these dogs off any time you want.”

  The brown dog leapt at my bootheel and sank her teeth into it, dangling for a split second before she dropped. “Now, Mr. Karsh!” I hollered, my voice rising into a scream.

  He just stood there.

  A high, bright whistling came from the doorway. The dogs dropped back to all fours and turned toward the sound, then scrambled back down the stairs. The redhead had entered the building, all smiles and jangling jewelry. Sizing up the scene at a glance, she awarded me a cheery smile. “I see you’ve met our girls!” she called. “Coco, Tina, you come. Come!” she commanded, snapping her fingers and pointing at the floor to either side of her spike heels.

  The dogs fell all over each other in their hurry to do her bidding. She petted them, giving them lovies and talking to them like they were a couple of slightly unruly two-year-olds: “Now, girls, you been chasing the nice sample person? That’s not nice. You’re only supposed to scare thieves, and they come at nighttime, now don’t they?” She trailed off into some choice ookum-snookums stuff and then, glancing up toward me, she added, “It’s okay to come down now.”

  By the time I’d gotten down the ladder and descended the stairs, Mr. Karsh had wandered out the door, eyes blank, as if nothing unusual had happened. I turned to the redhead, who was now holding each dog firmly by its collar. “What was that all about?” I demanded. “He just stood there, didn’t even try to call them off.”

  “They don’t mind him much.”

  “Oh, no? Then why does he keep them? Doesn’t he worry about the liability of keeping attack dogs around that he can’t control?”

  “Well, it’s usually not a problem.”

  “And why’s it a problem today? Some little detail about that psychotic son of his?” I spat.

  “Oh, Matthew? Like I said, he’s harmless.”

  “He set those dogs on me!”

  “You think so? Huh. Well, you didn’t get hurt, did you?”

  I gasped for words, trying to figure out how to explain to this woman that her words weren’t making sense. But then I looked more deeply into her eyes, and realized that what I had mistaken for frivolity was an illusion generated by the featurelessness of those soft brown lakes. “No, I didn’t get hurt.”

  “Well then, you’d better get back to work, hadn’t you?” She massaged one dog’s neck sensuously with her thumb, her grip growing threateningly slack on its collar. The dog began to growl.

  “Sure. Why not,” I replied, letting my face reflect her hostility. “But you lead; I don’t want your little pals getting any ideas.”

  With a withering smile, she turned and left, the dogs trotting beside her like outboard motors.

  I waited a moment, brushing myself off and straightening my clothes, and checked my knee gingerly to make sure the bleeding had stopped. Then I realized that Matthew must have left the room via an inside door, which probably meant he was still in there. Still inside and watching from a safe distance. Watching and smiling as he saw that his father and the redhead were sweeping away his tracks. Yes, I could complain about this, but they would gloss it over, say it was really my fault; that much was clear.

  I hastened back outside, uncertain which way to turn my back to protect myself. Suddenly the wet and windswept driveway seemed the warmest place in the compound.

  In my absence, the drum had filled to the brim. Contaminated water was now sluicing down the sides in quantity, puddling in the gravel, and sinking into the ground. I glanced at my watch. I’d missed two readings.

  And Adam was just coming around the building.

  12

  When Adam saw the overflowing barrel, he jammed his fists onto his bony hips and snarled, “Say the three words, Hansen!”

  “Which are?”

  “You fucked up.”

  So much for my career as an environmental geologist.

  “And what the fuck happened to your knee?” he spat, as if my injury were another personal insult to him.

  “Adam, honeycup,” I sighed, “what can you expect from a fuckup like me?”

  My head was heavy with anxiety and exhaustion as we drove back to Santa Rosa. Adam gave me the silent treatment the whole way. I had disappointed him. Woe betide me. I was too upset by what had happened in the apple shed to care.

  Back at HRC, Adam drove around to the back of the building and hoisted one of the roll-up doors and barked, “You! Help me unload.”

  Fine, I thought doggedly, I’ll help you get your gear out of this truck. And then you
leave. I have work to do. Records to search. I’m going to stay here all night if I have to, and find out what, if anything, Janet Pinchon did to piss off the Karshes. I jerked open the back of the camper shell and hauled cargo boxes off over the tailgate of the truck. Adam stacked them on the shelves where they belonged, cussing under his breath the while. When we were done, he turned to me and said, “You just head on out the back way here.”

  “You go ahead, I’ll just walk back through the office,” I asserted. “My truck’s out front. See you Monday.”

  Adam pointed one skinny finger. “The back way. I have orders.”

  Suggesting that someone above him did not trust me was downright insulting. Never mind that what I was planning warranted that distrust. “Someone gave you orders? Who?”

  Adam pinched his face up like he smelled something putrid. “Rauch. He said don’t let the new girl alone in the building. You don’t really work here. No W-4 form, no nothing. You live in a motel,” he sneered. “I know; I had to phone this morning to find out where in hell you were and I get a Mex broad says, Wagon Trail Motel, what room do I want! Rauch probably thinks you’ll fall down in here and sue us.”

  I laughed mirthlessly. Rauch had been content to send me out on a job site with no OSHA training and no clear insurance status; surely my personal well-being didn’t worry the son of a bitch. So that meant there was something inside the building he didn’t want the new person to see. But whatever it was, it was going to have to wait. I wasn’t willing to mug Adam Horowitz for the right to stay; I might get rabies.

  After being ushered out the back way, I walked around front toward my little blue truck in the dark, trying to figure out a plan B. I was just in time to see Pat Ryan fumbling with his keys by the front door. “Evening, Pat!” I called.

  Pat stopped, wobbling like a bear dancing on its hind legs. “Well, why, Em Hansen, isn’t it? How is every little thing?”

  “Fine. I got the job, thanks to your coaching.”

  “So I hear. When do you start?”

  “I already did. I just came back from pulling my first tank.”

  Our paths had now converged at the front door, and a gentle breeze carried the light perfume of an early evening beer to my nostrils from Pat’s lips. “Yanking tanks,” he said. “Oh, that you should sink to such humble labors from the greater glories of the oil patch.”

  “I’m a big girl, my ego can take it.”

  “Saint preserve!” Pat caroled, as he spied my ripped and blood-caked knee in the glow of the security light by the door, “Mymymymymy, whatever happened to your knee?”

  I set my jaw, uncertain what to tell him. “Just had a little bad luck,” I finally answered.

  “Let Uncle Pat take a look.”

  “No, really, I’m fine. Say, are you heading inside? I don’t have a key yet.”

  “Em, my dear, as it happens, I left my attaché by my desk. Did you leave something inside? May I get it for you?”

  I thought quickly, fashioning a likely story. “Well, actually I just wanted to get into the library, maybe borrow some books, get a leg up on contamination and groundwater, that sort of stuff. If you can just let me in, I could lock the door behind me when I leave.”

  “Library? No such a beast,” Pat said mournfully. “Consulting firms aren’t very interested in educating their employees. You’re used to the oil patch, where employers understand that a well-educated, up-to-date employee finds more of the commodity in question. Here in environmental services, you are the commodity. They wouldn’t want to lose time educating you: that time they can’t charge for.”

  “Well, I—”

  “But I’ll tell you what, you’re in luck after all; Pat Ryan will look after you. You just wait a moment while I retrieve my attaché, and I’ll take you home to Mother.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have such books at my place, dear lady. You wouldn’t turn down a steak grilled expressly for you by none other than Patrick John Ryan, would you? I just happen to be at liberty for the evening, you see, and—”

  Steak? Food? “I’ll just get my truck and bring it around by yours,” I said, preempting an offer to give me a ride, certain his blood alcohol was already pushing the legal limit. “I’ll follow you home.”

  * * *

  PAT RYAN WASN’T kidding. The man could fry a mean steak. As I leaned onto the railing of the tiny balcony of his apartment nursing a beer, he delicately seared two fine chunks of T-bone over a tiny hibachi. I looked on lovingly, mapping out just which bite I would present to my molars first, and which one second. I love the tender bit on the north side of the bone. To hell with my arteries, I was raised on a cattle ranch.

  As the meat sizzled, Pat hunkered down and took a warm wet washcloth to my knee. It stung a little, but the cuts proved shallow, and after daubing a bit of antibiotic ointment on them, Pat declared me fit for service.

  When the steaks were done, he shoveled them onto paper plates and whisked them onto the little Formica-topped table in the dining nook off the kitchen. Russet potatoes emerged from the oven and turned thick pats of butter to golden liquid, and somewhere in the proceedings he had rustled up a couple of crisp green salads and had heated some sourdough bread in the oven.

  My knife sank through the steak with almost no resistance. I poised a morsel between my lips. I bit. I chewed. I moaned. I was in heaven.

  Pat smiled happily at my appreciation and spirited a bottle of wine out of a cupboard. From a drawer under the kitchen counter he retrieved a cork puller. The only other thing in the drawer was an inexpensive bread knife. In fact, there was very little in the entire apartment, at least in the parts I’d seen; just a plain-Jane couch and cheap coffee table in the tiny living room, a small TV, the table, and two plastic-upholstered chairs with tubular metal legs. “You live alone?” I asked rhetorically, taking a seat at the table.

  Pat worried the tines of the cork puller into the neck of the bottle and eased out the cork. “Here in Santa Rosa I do,” he said, making a study of the cork with eyes and nose. “My wife lives in Fresno. I commute down to see her most weekends. We have a very nice house there, and she has a very nice job.” This he said without rancor.

  “I take it there’s not much work for geologists in Fresno?”

  “Not for this geologist.” He poured the wine into two plastic tumblers, picked his up, swirled the ruby liquid, and stuck his nose into the vapors at the top of the glass. “Mmm. Davis Bynum. Nice little vineyard up along the Russian River. Not far from here. Do try a sip, my dear.”

  Sip, I did. Beer, I know, a little bit, but wine may as well be tart grape juice. “Mmmm,” I murmured, pretending to have an oenologist’s palate. It was good; good enough to strike me as darned good tart grape juice.

  I set my glass down and studied my host. Here he was, a connoisseur and something of a gourmet, well dressed and cleanly groomed, a decent, warm human being living in a depressingly barren apartment far removed from a wife he clearly loved, just so he could call himself employed. That was dedication. “I bet she misses you.”

  Pain tensed his face. “And I her. But I suppose I won’t be here much longer.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Oh, my, because the young Turks have yanked almost all the tanks. Something will have to give.”

  “The young Turks?” The alcohol seemed to be helping keep Pat Ryan’s conversation on track, but I still had trouble following his verbal shorthand.

  Pat carved into his steak. “You remind me of a woman named Janet Pinchon, who … used to work for HRC.”

  An odd combination of warmth and sadness swept over me. I found myself wanting to say, But I am Janet. Don’t you know me? Realizing that the wine must truly be getting to me, I settled for asking, “How so?”

  A bemused smile warmed Pat’s face. “I don’t know. You’re put together the same way physically, I suppose; you could be … not exactly sisters, maybe, but certainly cousins. But there’s more. Something in the intensity. Full of
questions. Nothing was straightforward with Janet. Each answer just spawned another question.” He laughed to himself. “I used to feel like a sheep around her. She was the sheepdog, snapping at my heels.” With his fingers he pantomimed a dog’s jaws. Snap, snap, snap. He bent back over his steak and carved.

  Okay, if I was a sheepdog, I now had two conversational sheep to chase: the young Turks and their tanks, and Pat’s conversations with Janet. I’d just have to herd one and then the other. “Who are the young Turks?”

  “A figure of speech, my dear. The reformists. I use the term advisedly. H, R, and C. They used to work for Jones and Roux. Big firm. Didn’t like the way they were treated there. Few people do, of course; Jones and Roux run a fully draconian shop, complete with torture specialists who pile on unpaid work on the one end, and bean counters with righteously tight sphincters who cut salaries on the other. So H, R, and C said, ‘We can do better, be ethical and considerate, create a decent working environment, what ho.’ A nice dream, eh? So they went out on their own during the tank-yank boom back in eighty-six, eighty-seven, thinking they’d outdo Jones and Roux in their own backyard, really show those bastards. They did pretty well for a while.”

  “What changed all that?”

  “Well, for starts, my dear, if your favorite seasoning is spite, it’s hard to keep the dish from spoiling.”

  I remembered the vanity and avarice in Fred Rauch’s eyes and put my fork down for a while. “So they’re bad businessmen?”

  “Well, define ‘bad business.’ It’s kind of redundant, isn’t it?”

  “Are we bitter?”

  “Are we answering a question with another question? Besides, the success or failure of a business is based on external causes as much as internal talent. Coming from the oil business, no one should have to explain boom-and-bust economics to you.”

  “Supply and demand. So have most of the leaking tanks already been yanked?”

  “Let’s say most of the ones in HRC’s bailiwick. There will always be tanks to yank and replace, as long as gas stations pump gas, but most stations are owned by big companies nowadays, and they hire a big firm to look after them, someone bigger than an HRC. The HRCs are fighting to the death over the last few ma-and-pa and ag tanks.”