Death in the Pines (27 page)

“I hate those goddam things,” Elaine said.

“All the inconveniences of home,” I agreed.

Elaine took a delicate bite of food and gave me a speculative look. “So. Gina says you're a detective.”

“Retired,” I said. “Temporarily.”

“Temporarily?”

“I'm thinking of starting my own agency. A small one.” The mock eel was really delicious. I trapped another mushroom with my chopsticks.

“Isn't that—forgive me—an occupation that's kind of dangerous?”

“I don't think of it that way,” I told her. “In school I was always the kid who tried to break up the fights. I never liked seeing bullies gang up on a little guy. I guess I haven't changed much.”

“We're on a pretty big playground now,” she said. “A lot of bullies out there. Sometimes you get hurt if you interfere.”

I felt a small sharp pang, not from my wounded shoulder. “Sometimes,” I said quietly, “somebody has to interfere.” I drank some tea. “Somebody who is awake enough to know what's going on.”

She looked at me with a faint, puzzled expression. Gina came hurrying back, her face heavy with news. I knew what she would say before she said it: some anonymous computer guy had flooded several different federal agencies with e-mails between Caleb Benson and Jerry Smith. She did say that, and more: Benson had just been taken into custody by federal
marshals. The EPA was hurrying to a site in the woods to learn how much decontamination had to be done.

“I've got to go to work,” she said. She punched in a number and said into her phone, “Hi, it's Gina. Listen, all hell's breaking loose. Can you meet me in the newsroom? And get Jerry. What?
Jesus!
Are you sure?”

She switched off the phone and looked at us with dazed eyes. She whispered, “Jerry Smith is dead. He poisoned himself.”

Elaine put her hand on Gina's forearm. “Are you all right?”

Gina almost jerked at the gentle inquiry. In a taut voice, she said, “Yes. No. I don't know. I've got to get back to the newsroom.”

“I'll drive,” Elaine said. She gave me a pleading look.

“Go ahead. I'll settle the bill.” I watched the two women walk out of the restaurant.

It was a lonely drive back to Northfield, along a snow-blurred highway. My shoulder throbbed abominably. Before I got there, a cop pulled me over and cited me for not having taillights. I'd have to get that fixed. Maybe Darryl would do it for me. He was a fair mechanic, and I still had a few of Jeremiah Smith's dollars. Maybe Darryl could settle down and do something he was halfway good at, maybe he could make something of himself. Marie needed a father. Wanda needed love.

And that made me think of Jerry, Eva, and Caleb. I brooded over the old triangle of corruption: money, sex, power. The primal stuff of the human condition. I did not look forward to spending the night alone in my cabin. It was haunted by too many memories, too much death. I knew with a certainty that I would lie there sleepless unless I drank myself into a stupor. I did not want to drink.

But when I made the turn onto the old logging road, something astonishing happened. At first it was just puffs and drifts of snow chasing each other through the headlight beams, traveling diagonally across my path, right to left. Sitting in the Jeep, I paused, like Frost's enchanted sled traveler, to watch the woods fill up with snow. And then in utter silence the first one emerged from the forest. And then another and another. And before my eyes a herd of a hundred, five hundred deer, crossed before me, many pausing and looking at me with gentle eyes. There couldn't be that many deer in Vermont, I thought.

And I somehow knew that if I climbed out of the Jeep they would all vanish and become a trick of the light, a secret of the night, no more than drifting wisps of snow. And in the morning light I would find no tracks, not a single one.

Something huge and dark brought up the end of the long procession, too far beyond the headlights' reach for me to see the Grandfather Bear shape.

I switched off the lights and sat in the Jeep for a few minutes more, feeling that I had been given a vision, a blessing, and perhaps even unearned forgiveness. Then I got out and headed uphill to the cabin.

I knew now that I'd be able to sleep.

T
hanks to David Heron of the USDA, Kirk Waterstripe and Charles Redon of Soil Foodweb Inc., Brian Halweil of Worldwatch Institute, and in particular Dr. Norman C. Ell-strand of the University of Texas for help and information on everything from genetics to mycorrhizae.

And to Dr. Elaine Ingham and Dr. Michael Holmes for discovering, back in the 1990s, the plan to release the genetically modified
Klebsiella
plant-root bacteria that almost killed the world—yes, it's a true story—and for Dr. Ingham coming on my radio show to share it. We ignore their warnings at great peril to ourselves. For more information, visit
http://online.sfsu.edu/rone/GEessays/Klebsiellaplanticola.html
or just run a web search on their names.

I was informed and inspired by listening to brilliant Abenaki storytelling by Joe Bruchac, and later by his son, Jesse Bruchac, on several public occasions in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I lived in Northfield and Montpelier, Vermont, and by the wonderful people at the Abenaki Center in Swanton. Any errors in this book about the Abenaki are entirely my responsibility, and I hope I have represented them respectfully. And it's worth noting that shortly after the point in time at which the book is set, in 2006, Vermont officially recognized the Abenaki.

Thanks to Hal and Shelley Cohen for sharing that decade's Vermont journey with us.

Thanks to Carol Bedrosian and Little Bear, Ari Ma'ayan, Kurt Kaltreider, and Lewis Mehl-Madrona, for all they've each taught me about Native American culture. And to authors Rupert Ross and the late Peter Farb for their books
Dancing with a Ghost
and
Man's Rise to Civilization,
respectively (among many others; these are exceptional).

Special thanks to Rob Kall for being such a good friend and sounding board on this book, and to Bill Gladstone for his brilliant work as my agent.

To Brad Strickland, one of the finest writers in print today, for decades of friendship and one of the finest editing jobs any author could ever ask for. Brad helped me shape this book into its current form.

To Anita Miller, Devon Freeny, and Kristi Gibson for finding all the nooks and crannies, plot points, and details that I'd overlooked and made no sense. To Mary Kravenas and Caitlin Eck for their work marketing and publicizing this book. And to Cynthia Sherry, Anita and Jordan Miller, and Academy Chicago Publishers and Chicago Review Press for bringing it into print.

THOM HARTMANN is a former psychotherapist, progressive radio talkshow host and liberal commentator, and bestselling nonfiction author. He is an innovator in the fields of psychiatry, ecology, and economics, and is the originator of the hunter vs. farmer theory on ADHD. He lives with his wife, Louise, in Washington, DC.

Cover Design: Joan Sommers Design

Cover Photo: John Richburg

Author Photo: Louise Hartmann

Printed in the United States of America