Stolen

by James Hunt

  Kelly ripped her arm free and slapped his face, the loud crack echoing through the office. The sting lingered on Jake’s cheek, and he felt the anger swell in him, and he watched Kelly’s eyes turn to fire. The next attack put her lips on his, kissing him hard enough to draw blood.

  Jake tried to pull back, but the heat of the moment only drew him in, and he matched her passion, triggering a moan from her. Hands groped one another, each reaching for the other person’s belt. Caught up in the moment, Jake tagged it as another regret to add to his growing list.

  8

  The morning passed quickly, and the afternoon even faster. Lena, Janine, and a few volunteers had spent most of the day preparing city hall for the vote. Once the majority of the preparations were finished, both she and Mark went home to change. They checked on the girls, both of whom were glad to be missing school, though Kaley was more vocal about her appreciation.

  Lena changed from the shirt and jeans she wore in setup and put on her business suit, which she again complemented with the flag pin given to her when she was sworn in, a gift from Jake. She stared at the beaten face in the mirror, the makeup unable to hide all of the effects of the wreck. It was a face she barely recognized, but one that had neared the finish line.

  Both Lena and Mark remained quiet on the final ride into town—every word they needed to exchange was done through the tight grip from their intertwined fingers. It was nearly sunset when they arrived, and though the meeting was still two hours away, cars had already started lining the streets. Mark parked by Lena’s office, where she met with Janine, and the three walked to the town hall with Deputy Longwood.

  “Where’s my brother?” Lena asked.

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen him since last night.” Longwood kept his eyes vigilantly on the encroaching vehicles, especially the large rows of trucks with a number of oil workers who’d arrived fresh off their shift with the company. “I can try him on the radio if you’d like.”

  “I’m sure he’ll show up sooner or later.” The thought of Jake’s absence made Lena uncomfortable. With the attack last night still fresh in her mind, she needed all the support she could for the town hall.

  Janine entered through the front doors once they arrived at city hall, while Lena and Mark diverted around to the back, away from the growing crowds. Inside, they ducked into one of the rooms backstage and Longwood waited by the door.

  Lena took a seat at the table while Mark paced the floor with his head down. She closed her eyes, going through her opening statements and the rebuttals for the questions she knew were coming, but there was something she needed to tell him first. “Ken Lang knows.”

  Mark stopped and looked over. It took him a moment to realize what “it” was, but that didn’t take long. “How?”

  Lena shook her head. “Maybe one of the executives blackmailed somebody.” In regards to her former addiction, there were only a handful of people outside her immediate family that knew about it. It remained under wraps during the campaign, and once she was elected she thought she’d dodged the bullet.

  “You don’t think Nick—”

  “It doesn’t matter now.” The mention of her junkie ex-husband wasn’t a topic she wanted to flood her mind with at the moment. “If I don’t denounce the bill, then he’s going to run the story in every paper in the state tomorrow.”

  Mark took a seat at the table next to her. He gently grabbed her hand, rubbing his thumb over the indented lines of her palm. “You nervous about it?”

  “For the girls, mostly. It’s nothing Gwen doesn’t know, but Kaley never had to go through it. She looks at me differently than Gwen does.” Lena’s eyes turned glossy. “I don’t want to lose that.”

  “Gwen just needs time. And Kaley loves you too much to let anything some paper prints stop that, and so do I.”

  The sincerity was genuine; it was a trait she had always appreciated about him. The two lingered in the room, no sound except the growing murmur of the crowd in the main hall. It seeped through the concrete like a storm in the distance. Each rumble of thunder growing louder and fiercer than the clap before it.

  A tight ball gathered in the pit of Lena’s stomach, and she felt it pulling her inward. Sweat gathered on her forehead and neck. She hurriedly unscrewed the cap of a water bottle and doused her dry mouth with water.

  Time crawled forward and sped quickly in random intervals as she repeatedly checked the time on her phone. And then, at 8:55 p.m., she rose from the chair and buttoned her jacket. She paused at the door, taking a breath before stepping out. She closed her eyes and recited the names of the children still in the hospital, and of the men who’d died in the oil fields, and the dozens of other families that had sought her help. For them.

  Mark took his seat among the crowd, and when Lena stepped onto the stage the crowd grew silent, but only for a moment. She found her seat at the far end of the table, where the five members of the city council were already seated. All but one supported the bill, and it was no secret who had lined his pockets with cash to make it so.

  “I call this town hall to order.” The head city councilman, Raymond Burch, smacked the gavel and shuffled some papers. The normal proceedings of the town hall were handled first, taking care of prior business, calling roll of the members present, and fifteen minutes later the main course of the evening was ready to be served. “Up for vote tonight is resolution forty-five-C, which would strengthen regulations against entities currently drilling or seeking future drilling rights in the state of North Dakota’s shale deposits.”

  Lena watched the crowd, each side of the room mixed with supporters for the bill and those that wished to kill it here and now. She saw the dirty faces of the oil workers who had come straight from work. She watched the mothers of the sick children in the hospital clasp their hands with one another across an entire row of chairs. They all had something to lose, and they all had something to fight for.

  “We will hear from those that wish to speak now, but I will reiterate that anyone that is found using this evening’s platform to evoke any type of violence will be escorted out of this building immediately.” Burch pointed to the door, and the sheriff deputies that lined the edge of the crowd, with the head of his gavel.

  Lena again looked for her brother, but amid the hundreds inside she couldn’t single his face out. The same tight ball from earlier returned in greater force as Burch called the platform open for statements. The first taker, an oil worker, stepped up to the microphone. The grease from the day’s work highlighted the lines of anger carved on his face, and he locked his gaze on Lena as he approached.

  “Yeah, I just want to say that this bill is bullshit!” A cheer from the opposing side roared its approval, and Burch smacked the gavel, calling for order. The oil worker thrust his finger at Lena and looked back into the crowd. “I’ve lived in this town my entire life. And I’ve worked my ass off every day just to try and make ends meet for my family and me. And when the oil company came, it gave me a chance, gave us all a chance, to earn a little something extra for ourselves. And now they want to take that away? Well, I say no!”

  Another round of cheers erupted from the opposition, while those who favored the bill shook their heads, casting disapproving glares at the ruckus.

  And so it went. For the next hour nearly sixty people spoke their piece, some in favor, some against, but all of them afraid. The mothers of families were afraid that their children would get sick, and the workers were afraid they would lose their job. Fear guided actions on both sides, and every speech only doused gasoline onto an already raging fire.

  Then, Lena watched Carla Knox slowly get up from her seat, her head down and her arms and hands huddled close to her body. She looked so small, so delicate, a shell of the woman she knew before all of this started two years ago, back when her daughter first became ill.

  The microphone squealed feedback when she approached, and every head in the room winced. “My name is Carla Knox. Most of you know who I am and k
now who my daughter is.” She fiddled with her hands, squeezing them tightly as she looked at the floor when she spoke. “She’ll be eight next month.” A smile graced her lips, and a glassy film covered both eyes, shining under the fluorescent lighting of the hall. “The other day her father and I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. We’d both been trying to save up to make sure we could get her something.” She paused again, her lip twitching, but she retained her composure. “I thought maybe she’d ask for a new doll or toy. A pony, maybe.” A nervous laugh flitted through the air. “But she didn’t want any of that.” Tears rolled down the side of her face. “She told me she just wanted to go home.”

  The air was sucked from the room and Carla dabbed the corner of her eyes with a tissue. “It’s so hard looking at your child and having to tell her that the one thing she wants more than anything in the world is the one thing you can’t give her.” Carla cried, the control over her grief evaporating. “And I know what a lot of you are thinking, that what this bill will do is hurt our town. But it won’t. Our town is already hurt. Our children are sick. And if you think that what happened to me can’t happen to you, then you’re wrong.” She drew in a breath, finding her strength once again and glanced back to the oil workers. “All of you know my husband. You know how hard he works. And right now he is in a coma, with burns over sixty percent of his body, fighting for his life!” The mic echoed a high-pitched feedback whine from her scream. “Is that what you’re fighting for?” She thrust her hands in the air. “Is that what you want for yourselves?”

  With the final outburst Carla nearly collapsed at the podium. One of the deputies escorted her back to her seat, and a few more people spoke, but their words were dulled and quick. Burch smacked his gavel, and Lena felt her palms grow sweaty. “We will now hear from Representative Hayes, the bill’s sponsor. Mrs. Hayes, you have the floor.”

  “Thank you, Councilman.” Lena leaned forward into the mic, her eyes drifting over the crowd, taking in the faces that looked to her for salvation and damnation. “Everyone, and none more so than our own Carla Knox, has spoken what they feel is right for themselves, and right for their family. But as I have sat here for the past hour, listening to everyone, I can’t help but sense the great swell of fear that has gripped us all. A fear of the unknown that is tomorrow and keeps us frozen in the present at the cost of our future.”

  A few nods mirrored back, and Lena found Mark in the crowd. His eyes were locked on hers, and Lena paused, taking in a breath, knowing that the moment it was out, there was no putting the lid back on. “The lengths to which New Energy Incorporated have gone to ensure that this bill doesn’t make it to the governor’s desk have been nothing less than extreme. My family has been bullied, beaten, and just last night I was shot at and nearly killed. Those tactics will not stand in this community, on either side of the law.” She swallowed, her mouth dry as the desert. “Many of you saw the article that was run the other day about my accident, and while the doctors at Barta General found my blood-alcohol level to be zero, the article stated that I had been drinking and driving. And this morning, I was told by one of the oil companies consultants that if I don’t vote against my own bill another article will run.” A nervous tremor took control of her hand and she gripped the microphone to hide it. “They had a knowledge of my past that I was afraid to let people know. And they wanted to use that fear against me, much like the fear they have leveraged on you with their slander of taking away your jobs!” She slammed her fist into the table, and the mic squealed. “But it’s a fear that I will not let control my decisions and the beliefs that I hold.” She lifted her chin, straightened her back, and drew in a breath. “For nearly six years I abused alcohol and narcotics. I have been sober for over a decade, but there isn’t a day that goes by where that itch doesn’t beg to be scratched.”

  There wasn’t a pair of eyes in the room that weren’t glued to Lena. Some people smiled, others frowned, but the majority wore a mask, their stoic expressions holding tight to whatever thoughts streamed through their minds. She hoped to reach their reason, to help them see that New Energy had blinded them with their promise of fortune but at the cost of their souls.

  Lena reached for a few of the papers stacked to her left and skimmed to one of the statements she highlighted in her preparation. “There have been six independent studies on the groundwater near the drilling sites where families just like Carla Knox have homes, and this is what they had to say. ‘While the majority of the chemicals used and the amounts in which they are frequented into the soil during the fracking process is still unknown, it is clear that elements of unnatural and cancer causing properties have been found in the groundwater.’” She set the paper down. “And this is just one example of hundreds”—she picked up the stack of files and lifted them into the air for the room to see—“that we have collected over the past two years that all point to the clear fact that what New Energy is pumping into the ground is dangerous. This bill will change that. It will force the company to tell us what they’re using in their chemical mixtures and how much of it they’re pumping into the soil. It will ensure that regular safety inspections are mandatory to avoid accidents like yesterday that left Rick Knox burned and in a coma. Will this bill cost money? Of course, all legislation does. But will it bankrupt New Energy or any other oil companies that choose to do business in our state? Absolutely not.”

  The entire room leaned forward, and Lena felt them in the palm of her hand. “Fear, ladies and gentlemen, is what people feed us when we’ve pinned them in a corner. And if we give into that fear I can tell you from personal experience there’s only one thing at the end of that road. Pain. Our community deserves better. Our families deserve better. Our children deserve better. Thank you.”

  Sporadic cheers and applause erupted throughout the crowd, and a few of the family members with sick children broke down, but a large fraction of the room, most of them in New Energy uniforms, were unmoved by her words.

  “Very well, then.” Burch cleared his throat and looked down at his document. “We’ve heard from everyone, and now it’s time for a vote. Due to the response that this bill has evoked, we will be holding paper ballots in lieu of our normal yea-and-nay procedure.” A few volunteers passed out slips of paper, watermarked to ensure the authenticity of the vote. “Mark your paper with a yes or no, and then distribute it to one of the baskets with volunteers in the red shirts. We have privacy booths set up in the next room with pens. The lines will start by the doors.”

  With the crowd having said their piece and Lena hers, all that was left now was to wait. She found Mark in the crowd, and the two stood in line together. A few people approached her, but for the most part everyone kept to themselves. The nerves of every individual seemed to filter into the air and hover like a storm cloud.

  The lines moved quickly, and Lena dropped her folded paper into the basket and waited for Mark by the door. He walked up, smiling, but then scrunched his face. “So, did you vote yes or no?” Lena punched his arm, and he laughed.

  The crowds slowly returned to their seats, and Lena walked back up to the desk, where the rest of the council was waiting. Burch placed a hand on her arm and smiled. “You did very well tonight, Mrs. Hayes.”

  “Thank you, Raymond.”

  “How do you think it’ll do?”

  Lena observed the crowd filtering in and out of the adjacent voting room. “I think people will do what they think is right. Whether that passes or vetoes the bill, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “It took balls to jump out in front of that drug scandal.” Gregory Finks, another member of the city council, polished the lenses of his glasses before placing them back on the large beak that was his nose. “You’re going to have a hell of a day tomorrow in the press.”

  “And hopefully it’s because the bill passed.” The idle chitchat continued for a little longer, and Lena noticed the absence of Jerry Smith, the only city councilman who had openly opposed her piece of legislation. Sh
e searched the crowd and saw him in the back, speaking with Ken Lang. But before she had any more time to dwell on the matter, Burch touched her on the shoulder.

  “Looks like they’re wrapping up. Better take your seat.”

  When Lena turned back to where Jerry and Ken had spoken, Ken had disappeared, while Jerry had already returned to his seat. Whatever those two had to speak on couldn’t have boded well for Lena or the bill.

  The baskets of votes were carried in ceremoniously by the volunteers and placed in front of Burch’s chair at the table. He plucked the first vote out and leaned into the microphone. “The tallying of votes will now begin. I will remind everyone in the room that the same rules of order and civility apply.” He dipped his glasses to get a better look. “One vote, no.”

  Lena winced. With every strip of paper Burch pulled from the basket she felt every fiber of her being tense like the chord on a guitar string, each vote that was read plucking a note that was either in or out of tune.

  A mixture of yeses and noes were pulled from the bag, then followed by a long string of nays, then a long string of yeas. Lena kept tally the entire time, the tick marks on both sides equal to their counterpart.

  Near the end, approval of the bill jumped ahead six votes, and Lena saw that there were only a handful of slips left in the basket. But the next vote pulled was a no, which was then followed by two more nays. Four pieces of paper remained, and Lena recounted the tally just to make sure she didn’t miss any, but she was only three ahead.

  “Nay,” Burch said, and Lena etched another tick onto the losing side. Only two ahead. But only one of the remaining three needed to be a yes. Burch unfurled another piece. “Nay.”

  The tight ball of nerves in her stomach irritated the still sensitive rib cage. Lena kept her eyes glued to Burch’s hand as he reached for another piece of paper. The past two years flashed through her mind in the blink of an eye.