Critical Reaction (17 page)

A twist in the road brought lightning flashes of sunlight reflecting off the Columbia River directly into Poppy’s eyes. He winced in pain, pulled the brim of his cap lower, and reached into his breast pocket for his sunglasses.

He’d seen the article in the
Sherman Courier
a few days before that said Covington had released a new investigation
report implying a stabilizing engineer on duty that night might have turned a valve and deliberately caused the explosion. That was hard to imagine: why would somebody do something like that? But it didn’t change anything. All Poppy knew was that Covington was acting like no contractor before in its handling of this explosion. And somehow he’d gotten right in their crosshairs as a result.

He couldn’t complain to Darter Security—they wouldn’t buck Covington and risk their subcontract, even if they thought he was getting treated poorly. He could complain to the union, but they were in wage negotiations with Covington and the subs and weren’t likely to back him very aggressively. Besides, the union didn’t have the clout it used to back in the day.

The headache was coming on again and Poppy’s chest was filling up once more. He was just starting to wonder if softball was a lousy idea when the park came into view.

Poppy stopped the truck next to the field fence, grabbed his glove from the passenger seat, and walked slowly around the dugout to the dusty third-base line. The Hanford Security Guards team was warming up on the field.

“Hey, Poppy,” somebody shouted from the outfield. “Great to see you.” The greeting was echoed across the diamond. Poppy felt his enthusiasm rising. He shrugged off the pain in his head and the thickening in his chest, pulled on his glove, and trotted out for warm-ups.

It was fun for a few minutes to be shagging balls again. Still, all the jokes from his teammates about how rusty he was—all the pats on the back as they ran by—didn’t erase the worsening headache and growing roughness in his throat. By the time he jogged into the dugout for the game to start, Poppy turned down a chance to take first base. “I’ll come in later,” he shouted back at the offer.

Three innings passed. Poppy’s eyes were strained—even with the sunglasses. He squinted across to the opponents’ bench at
their mixed team of engineers and radiologic techs, his frustration mounting.

The coughing was unavoidable now. The first was little more than clearing his throat, but a hacking cascade followed that left his chest aching and his eyes teared.

“Poppy. You okay?”

He rubbed his eyes and looked out on the field. Craig Westin, the security guards’ union steward and softball team captain, was shouting from the pitcher’s mound. Everyone from both teams was watching him.

Poppy waved Craig off. “Fine,” he called out, then rubbed his chest at the pain from the effort.

He passed again on an invitation to play the next time the guards took to the field. As play resumed his thoughts meandered until he sensed the field quieting. He looked up.

The game had halted as everyone stared toward the other dugout. Another ballplayer had arrived: a young man, broad in the shoulders, with blond hair fringing his cap. Through his narrowed vision, Poppy watched as he stepped down into the opposing dugout by first base and sat at the end of the bench.

The ballplayers in the other dugout didn’t greet their new teammate. Still, every eye on the field and on the other bench was staring at him like he’d been delivered from the sky.

The umpire called, “Play ball,” and Craig turned slowly back to face the latest batter. On the third pitch he lined out to the shortstop for the third out.

The guards team filed back into the dugout. Westin sat next to Poppy, manhandling a water bottle and glaring toward the other bench where the newcomer still sat after his teammates took the field.

“What’s going on, Craig?” Poppy asked. “Who’s the new guy?”

Craig shook his head. “It’s that kid—Kieran Mullaney,” the shop steward said, his voice sharp-edged and low. “The one
suing about the LB5 explosion last fall—and now it turns out he caused the explosion.”

Poppy looked back at the far bench. So that was the tech in the Covington report. Several of Poppy’s teammates were still looking in Kieran’s direction as well.

“The kid was a newbie,” Westin went on. “Had a little over a year on site before the explosion. Can’t believe it—starting a lawsuit when he made it happen at LB5. Now he’s got the guts to show up here.”

The other team was still warming up for the inning as Westin set his water bottle down. He took the three steps out of the dugout, striding over to the third baseman, who turned at his approach. Craig spoke with him for several seconds before returning to the dugout.

Poppy watched the exchange with growing worry. As he came back to the dugout, Westin cornered several of his teammates at the other end of the bench for a whispered conference. After a moment, Craig came back and sat down again beside Poppy.

“He’s just a kid, Craig,” Poppy said. “Let it go.”

The steward turned on him. “You were at LB5 that night, you went to the hospital. I can hear you’ve still got something going on in your lungs. You didn’t start a lawsuit, did you? And you sure didn’t pull any sabotage out on the grounds.”

“No,” Poppy said quietly.

Craig looked away. “Of course not.”

As the security guards finished their turn at bat and took the field once more, Poppy surveyed the field through the fog of his headache. He watched as Craig shifted Hank Carisella from center field to first base. At six foot four and weighing over two-fifty, the former tackle on the Sherman football team was the biggest man in the guards’ union. Craig then walked over to the first-base umpire—Terry Wolner from the machinists local—for a whispered discussion, before stepping back to the mound.

Poppy sank back into the cloud of his headache, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall. He listened to the occasional chatter on the field, the thump of throws hitting leather. Then the field grew quiet again and he opened his eyes. Kieran was striding to the batter’s box.

Poppy felt his stomach twist. He looked younger than Michael.

As the young man took practice swings, Poppy watched the guards’ outfielders each shift up, as though to get a closer look at the specimen at the plate. In that same moment, Hank Carisella took a step in tight toward first base.

Craig eased a straight, fat pitch across home plate—big as a basketball, Poppy thought—and the boy stepped in and hit it sailing far out over the center fielder’s head.

Kieran dropped his bat and sprinted toward first, but the center fielder was just jogging for the ball, more intent on looking across his shoulder toward first than fielding. Poppy watched, mystified, as the umpire turned
away
from the play—but he was the only one, because the rest of the fielders and the whole of the opposing dugout were fixed on the young man gathering speed down the chalked line toward first. As he approached the base, the mountain at first didn’t step away, but forward—raising a shoulder and elbow and leaning in as though he were charging a ball carrier racing for a touchdown.

The thud was so loud that Poppy found himself standing as Kieran’s feet went up and his body went down, as hard as if he’d hit a telephone pole. Then it was silent again—as quiet, Poppy thought, as that moment before the sirens went off that night on the roof of LB5. He glanced around: twenty other faces, including the umpire’s, were joined with him in a silent chorus of stares at the boy writhing in the dirt, his hands cradling his face.

Kieran’s moans were audible across the field. The kid was stupid coming out here this afternoon, Poppy told himself over the agony of the sound. Not a single one of the boy’s team
mates was coming to help him up. The hostility from his fellow workers had to be as thick as oil: how could he miss it? Poppy cursed the stubbornness or stupidity of the boy as he rolled to his knees with blood pouring from between the fingers over his face. He wanted to be angry, but what he really felt was guilt and a welling of shame so powerful it crowded away even the throb of his headache.

The boy was up on his feet now, with Hank Carisella stopped only a yard away and others around the field coming closer. Worse yet, the kid had dropped one bloody hand to his side and was staring at the first baseman, showing no signs of leaving.

Poppy came out of the dugout, jogging across the field as Carisella took another step toward the boy. He pushed past Craig Madsen and the catcher, approaching the kid from behind. The gap between the boy and Carisella was down to a foot when Poppy reached the kid’s shoulder and squeezed between them.

“What’re you doin’, pops,” a voice called out. Carisella pulled back half a step and stared down at him, perplexed.

Poppy stared back. “Keepin’ a bunch of fools with
security clearance
from losing ’em by starting a brawl,” he said, grabbing the boy’s arm and pulling him out of the shrinking scrum.

Relief flooded Poppy when the boy let himself be dragged away. All the way to the parking lot, with the kid in tow, the tension from the field felt like a target centered on Poppy’s back. He knew they wouldn’t touch
him
—but he didn’t want to test how far he’d go for this boy if they tried to drag him away.

Only once he’d started the truck and begun to drive, with the boy seated beside him, did Poppy feel himself begin to relax.

CHAPTER 17

They were already two miles away from the field when the boy spoke for the first time.

“I’ve gotta get my car.”

“Get somebody to drive you back later,” Poppy said. “It’s not such a great idea to go back to the field right now.”

He glanced at the boy. The nose was definitely broken, though the bleeding had slowed. “You’ve gotta get that straightened,” Poppy said, nodding toward his face. “I’ll take you to the ER.”

“Later. I just want to go home,” the boy answered.

Poppy shook his head. “Trust me. You want it straightened now. Before it starts to heal—and before you let folks at home get a look at it.”

It was nearly an hour and a half at the hospital before they were back in the car, the boy holding an icepack to his face and muttering directions to his house. Poppy had kept his peace until now, but knew he had to ask. He opened his mouth—when Kieran spoke up again.

“Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Sure.” He paused. “I’m Patrick Martin.”

“Kieran Mullaney.”

The ice broken, Poppy couldn’t hold it back. “Did you do it?”

The boy looked at him from behind the pack. “You mean LB5? No.”

Silence.

“If you thought I might’ve done it, why’d you get me out of there?” the boy asked.

Poppy thought about his own experiences the past month—how nothing about the explosion was making any sense. Maybe he believed the boy’s denial just because Covington clearly didn’t. Was that why he’d helped him? Then Poppy pictured his own son facing off against that crowd at the game and realized he didn’t have a single answer to share.

“Listen,” he said, ignoring the question, “why’d you go to the game? I mean, you must’ve known there’d be some hostility after what they printed in the paper.”

Kieran shook his head. “I got a call from somebody on my team saying they were short. I thought it’d be okay.”

Someone inviting him to the game? That made no sense. There wasn’t a friendly face on the field from either team when the boy arrived.

They pulled up to a stop sign. Kieran raised his hand to point toward a spacious-looking rambler half a block down to the left. Before driving over to it, Poppy reached in the back of his cab, pulling out a spare work shirt he kept behind his seat and handing it to Kieran. Then he reached back again for a bottle of water.

“You’ve still got some blood on your neck and hands. Clean yourself up a bit. And the shirt’s large, it ought to fit you.”

Kieran looked at him cautiously, then moved to comply.

The boy was still sitting in the truck, looking down, pouring water on the edge of his own bloodied shirt to wipe his hands, when a white van pulled across the front of Poppy’s truck, drawing to a stop in front of the boy’s rambler. The side windows were opaque, denying Poppy a view of the driver as it passed.

Two men appeared from the far side of the van, both wearing jeans, ski masks, and work gloves. One carried a dark bag: he ran up the lawn, disappearing on the side of the boy’s house. The other stayed close beside the rear fender of the van.

Poppy watched, stunned. The man at the rear of the van scanned the quiet neighborhood—his eyes coming to rest on Poppy’s truck.

Within seconds, the other man came back around the house—the bag now crumpled and empty in his hands. With a final lingering stare at Poppy, the watcher at the rear of the van joined his partner, disappearing around the far side of the van. Poppy heard the thud of a sliding door.

“What the . . .” Kieran muttered, facing up now—then he was out the passenger door. Poppy threw open his own door and tried to chase after as the van screeched away from the curb, turning left at the next block.

Kieran followed the van at a sprint, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to get close. Farther back, Poppy slowed his own jog, coughing from the effort. Then he turned back toward the side of the house where the man with the bag had disappeared.

The house was bordered by a long, narrow vegetable garden. Several vines twined around metal trellises, some bearing tiny tomatoes. Poppy glanced around.

A patch of black caught his eye, nestled against the concrete foundation of the house. Poppy leaned closer. It was three dead crows buried head first in the loamy soil, their black feathers splayed around them. Wrapped around one was a medallion attached to a chain.

Poppy was bewildered at the image, but he knew instantly what the medallion was: a standard-issue radiation dosimetry badge. He reached down to turn it over and see the coloration—green for safe and deepening hues of red for radiation.

He stood and stepped back. Even in the shade, the bright red of the badge’s surface was as scarlet as a freshly opened wound.