Heat and Light (12 page)

She closes the medicine chest.

Because there's no reason not to, she wanders into Shelby's bedroom. The bed is neatly made with a quilted coverlet. Atop the bureau are framed photos of the children and one of Shelby's wedding. Nineteen years old, and happy. She was a beautiful bride.

Roxanne stands very still, listening. From the kitchen she hears the sound of frying, like rain on a tin roof. Because there's no reason not to, she opens the top bureau drawer.

Her daughter's underwear depresses her—the plain white briefs, the ugly bras with thick elastic straps, more bra than Shelby actually needs. (She has never been voluptuous.) Roxanne riffles through the drawer thinking, What a waste.

Roxanne herself keeps an envelope of cash in her underwear drawer, an old bartender habit. For most of her life she has lived on tips.

A waste of a cute figure, a good-looking husband. She'd like to grab Shelby by the shoulders and shake her. To make her understand how quickly these things will disappear, Roxanne who is no longer young.

She feels around, but there is no envelope. She is closing the drawer of sad underwear when the bedroom door creaks open.

“Mommy?” The tiny voice, the small blond-haired girl in a flowered nightgown: for a second, really just a second, it is her Crystal, in the yellow nightie she was wearing when she died.

Roxanne nearly weeps.

“No, baby,” she says, recovering herself. “It's just your granny Rox.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just putting away some laundry, to help your mommy. Go back to bed now.”

“Okay.”

Olivia closes the door behind her. Only then does Roxanne notice Shelby's pocketbook hanging from the knob.

T
he forest is a century old, mixed hardwoods, trunks thick as rain barrels—the childhood gymnasium of four generations, prime real estate for tree houses and tire swings. The forest ringing with war whoops, high-pitched laughter,
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.
There have been epic games of Red Rover, Red Rover; hide-and-seek invitationals that lasted for hours. There have been acts of boyish heroism, stealth attacks on tree forts, death-defying climbs. It is a province of children, a place adults do not venture—the coffee-drinkers and newspaper-readers, the taxpayers and insurance-buyers, the wearers of lipstick and ties. A kingdom governed by ancient laws, passed down through the ages, Dibs and Three Strikes and Tag, You're It.

From the surrounding neighborhoods—at suppertime, at dusk—come the distant calls of parents. Among the kids there is an unspoken protocol: the first two calls are to be ignored.

Endless summer days.

The forest is cut with a Chisholm 600, the industry standard. From a distance it resembles a giant's power sander. It severs each trunk at ground level, with a blade the size of a merry-go-round.

Above the blade, mechanized claws grab the cut timber. They toss it aside like Mothra having a tantrum, the temperamental star of a Japanese horror film.

The earthmovers come next, to dig the containment pond—a
half acre wide and nine feet deep, larger than the town swimming pool. Finally they carve out a clearing the size of a shopping mall. The bare space waits patiently, like a throne for a visiting dignitary. This is where the drill rig will sit.

The drill pad is leveled and laid with gravel. Then the well is dug.

A well starts with a cellar, a hole six feet deep. From the cellar a deeper hole is dug. If witnessed more than one hundred times, this operation may seem natural, commonplace. If witnessed fewer than one hundred times, it will look and sound obscene. The low whine of the augur, its throaty mechanical pleasure. The giant grooved phallus boring ninety feet into the earth.

Into the hole goes a length of conductor pipe.

Two more holes are drilled, staging areas. The rathole holds the kelly. The mousehole holds, on standby, the next section of drilling pipe.

A pit is dug to hold the cuttings. A cutting is an earth turd, a chunk of dirt that goes flying. A cutting is whatever spews from the hole once the drilling has begun.

The mud pit is half the size of a football field—Olympic-size, if there were an Olympic event that involved mud.

CO DEVLIN IS FINISHING HIS ROUNDS
when Gary Rizzo buzzes him on the radio. “Sorry, man. She says it's an emergency.”

In the front office he picks up the phone.

“Where have you been?” Shelby wails. “I kept trying your cell phone.”

“It's in my glove box. Where it always is. For Christ's sake, what's the matter? Are the kids okay?”

“They're fine.” She inhales sharply, a moist snotty sound. “The trucks are here. It's—oh God, I can't describe it. The noise is unbelievable. They're cutting down all the trees.”

His heart soars.

For weeks he's carried a scrap of paper in his wallet, inscribed
with his own jagged handwriting:
Honiger 8 yrs old 40K.
Beneath the words, the phone number of the dairy farmer in Somerset County, a number he now knows by heart.

Devlin's exit strategy, his plan for the future. If the Honiger is still available. If he's not too late.

HOW IT ALL CAME TO BE
is a question worth asking. One rainy morning just before dawn, Rena Koval heard sirens. She rushed out of the milk parlor just in time to see an ambulance race down Number Nine Road. It turned the corner onto the Dutch Road, in the direction of Cob Krug's trailer.

She found Mack in the barn running the footbath. A few of the girls have chronic heel wart. “Something's happening over at Cob's,” said Rena. “Nothing good.”

He'd been dead just a few hours. That his body was found so quickly—that it was found at all—is a story already famous, destined for years of repetition around the bar at the Commercial Hotel. The discovery is credited to Cob's dogs, a couple of mangy German shepherds. Later versions of the story will have them running to a neighbor's house, barking urgently like Lassie on television, but this is apocryphal. In fact they were simply seen running loose through Jim Norton's woods. Jim's wife knew—everyone did—that Cob loved those dogs like children. Sensing trouble, she called 911.

Cob's death—a heart attack, though it might have been anything—surprised no one. The surprise was the sudden reappearance of his wife, whom he'd driven off thirty years before. They had married young and briefly, so long ago that the town had forgotten her name. And yet there it was, on the deed to Cob's trailer and his forty acres:
Lynette Jean Krug.
They had never gotten around to divorcing. At his funeral she rode in Rocco Bernardi's hearse. At the graveside, Dick Devlin handed her a folded flag.

The funeral was surprisingly well attended. Men in suits offered the widow their condolences. Several asked to meet with her pri
vately, but Bobby Frame—that morning at the Days Inn, where Lynette was also staying—had beat them to it.

THE LADY PREACHER LIVES
in an ordinary rancher, a split-level or split-entry—Herc can never remember the difference, if there is one—wrapped in aluminum siding, its living room perched atop a double garage. He notes the immaculate yard, the novelty mailbox shaped like an old-timey barn and marked with her name,
PEACOCK
, as though a miniature species of that bird might live inside.

His new sports coat is tight in the shoulders. He rings the doorbell and waits, holding a yellow box. A plane buzzes overhead. In his guilty imagination it flies south and west, with one empty window seat, the nonrefundable ticket to Houston he paid for but did not use.

He studies the box in his hand.
It's no surprise that our Whitman's Sampler® is America's favorite box of chocolates. A special treat for any occasion!
He was raised never to arrive empty-handed, and yet you couldn't exactly bring a bottle of wine to a preacher. Flowers, too, seemed risky, all that business about what the different colors were supposed to mean. The color, in Herc's view, is beside the point: unless she's in a hospital or a cemetery, bringing a woman flowers of any color means you're hoping for something. At least it used to, back when he was single and had some insight into such matters. After fourteen years of marriage his instincts have withered from disuse. For instance: the lady preacher offered to cook him dinner. In his single days, that meant only one thing.

Movement in the house, a curtain shimmering. The door opens. The pastor is flushed, a little breathless—barefoot, in blue jeans and a tank top. It's the way his wife dresses while cleaning the house.

“Welcome! Oh, lovely,” she says, taking the box from his hand.

“I overdressed,” he says, feeling like a jackass.

“Not at all. You look great. Please come in.”

He follows her up a short staircase, struck by the weird intimacy
of the situation. (Her shoes lined up along the steps—worn flip-flops, a pair of sneakers with balled-up sweat socks tucked inside.) Also unsettling: she is taller than he remembered. They stand eye to eye, though she is barefoot and he wears cowboy boots.

“This is a beautiful house,” he says, though
beautiful
isn't the right word. Comfortable, maybe. The living room is lined with bookcases. Photographs and framed diplomas—Hambley Bible College, Calvary Theological Seminary—decorate the walls. All the knickknacks and personal memorabilia make him slightly claustrophobic, though probably his perspective is skewed. He works outdoors, sleeps on motel sheets, eats in restaurants. He can't remember the last time he set foot in an actual person's house.

“I'll give you the tour after dinner. There's a whole finished basement. I do pastoral counseling down there.”

“That must be—interesting.” Once, years ago, Colleen had dragged him to a marriage counselor. He'd sat mostly silent, answering in monosyllables. They never went back.

“Sometimes.” She gathers up books, papers, a pair of eyeglasses left on the couch. “I was just working on my Father's Day sermon. I don't suppose you have any thoughts on the subject?”

“I doubt your congregation would appreciate my thoughts on the subject.” He speaks without thinking, his last conversation with Colleen still rattling around in his brain.

I don't care if you hate Father's Day. The boys don't care either. They care that you're not here.

The pastor smiles broadly. “I know, right? I'm not a parent, of course, but I've always thought it was a bogus holiday. I hope you like fish. I made salmon.”

“Yes, ma'am. I like everything.” He is conscious of her bare shoulders, an errant bra strap. He didn't expect to see quite so much of her. Flummoxed, he turns to the bookshelves.
The Historical Jesus. Scripture in the Modern World.
“You sure have a lot of books.”

“My personal stash is in the guest room. Those are mostly textbooks. You'd find the same ones in any pastor's house.”

“I'll have to fight you on that one. My daddy was a pastor. Except for the Bible, I don't think we had a single book in the house.”

This seems to delight her. “You're a preacher's kid? I should have guessed.”

“Why's that?” His shirt collar is very tight, strangling him. He feels the flush spreading across his cheeks.

“You're very—polite.”

“I was raised to respect the cloth. Daddy was the Pastor. That's what my mother called him.
The Pastor is very disappointed in you, Marshall. You'll have to talk to the Pastor about that.
So, you know, I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to call you.”

“How about ‘Jess'?”

“Well, now. I'm not sure that's proper.” He leans in to study a framed photograph: a much younger Jess, arm in arm with a pale dark-haired boy. They wear identical gray sweatshirts, lettered in navy blue:
HAMBLEY
. “Your brother?”

“My husband.”

His face must have betrayed something, some shame or horror or mortal regret, because she adds quickly: “I'm a widow. That was taken when we were in college. He died seven years ago.”

An awkward silence.

“I'm sorry,” Herc says. “I don't know why I thought he was your brother.”

“A lot of people did. I guess we did, you know, look alike. Wes and Jess.”

He studies the photo. In fact the resemblance is a little creepy: the same goofy smile, the same warm brown eyes. They look too young to be college students. In the matching sweatshirts they might have been fraternal twins, raised by a doting mother who insisted on dressing them alike.

“Thyroid cancer,” she says.

“Beg pardon?”

“People want to know, but they never ask. Wes had thyroid cancer. He was—we both were—thirty-four.”

“Good Lord. That's too young to be a widow.”

“It was. You know, I used to avoid that word. Now—” She shrugs. “It's just what I am.”

The table is already set, salad and potatoes and, to his relief, a sweating bottle of wine. She opens it effortlessly, spinning the corkscrew with practiced ease.

“I've been hoping for months that some of you guys would wander into my church. You and your friend were the first takers. He never came back, though.”

“He was a little—surprised. You know, a lady preacher.”

“A lot of people are. Have a seat.” She reappears with a platter of salmon. “Me included. I sort of backed into it, if you want to know the truth. I was perfectly happy being a pastor's wife, until Wes got sick.” She fills their wineglasses. “He wouldn't give up his church, so I did what I could to help him. By the end I was writing his sermons. After he died, I went back to school. I needed something. It seemed like the natural thing to do.”

Herc drinks deeply, relaxing a little. “And then you started the church?”

“Not right away, no. Nobody was going to hire a female minister, so I started a Bible study group out there in the living room. In the beginning it was all women. Eventually a few husbands got dragged along.” It was one of the husbands, she explains, who convinced her to rent the old Friedman's Furniture and, recently, to buy an actual church. In Bakerton such buildings were cheap and plentiful, the local Catholic diocese having closed a half-dozen small parishes. Living Waters had bought the old St. Casmir's at auction for almost nothing, a bargain despite its settling foundation, its leaking roof.

“Right now we're raising money for the renovation. Car washes and bake sales.” She grins. “You're a preacher's kid. You know all about this stuff.”

“Yes indeed,” says Herc, recalling years of Youth Group fund-raisers: magazines and cookware, raffle tickets and hook-a-rug kits, chocolate bars, scented candles, Christmas decorations, and blocks of cheese. “There's more I'm forgetting, but those were the major ones. It's a miracle I didn't end up a salesman.”

She loads his plate with salmon and potatoes. “Have you always been a—what is it called?”

“Rig manager. I guess I worked up to it. I've been roughnecking since I was a kid.” Twenty-three when he first started, younger than Brando or Jorge. It makes him tired, and somehow sad, to think how long ago that was.

“You must like it, then.”

“It's all right. But, you know, there's more to life.” He nearly tells her how, a few years back, his brother Dinky proposed going into business together, hiring themselves out as fishing guides on the Brazos. The startup costs would be minimal: some gear, a few repairs on Dinky's boat. Herc was already making good money at Stream Solutions, but the constant travel wore on him: his boys growing up without him, his whole life racing by like so much scenery, the blurry view from a high-speed train. He'd been all set to raid his 401K when Colleen put her foot down
. Dink can catch a fish, but that doesn't mean he can run a business. You Bonner boys! Neither one of you has any sense.
In the end Dinky did it without him, and proved Colleen right, losing all the money he'd borrowed and more besides. Yet Herc can't shake the feeling that things might have turned out differently; that if his wife believed in him even a little, he might be capable of more than running a drill crew. As a young man he'd been full of ideas. He hasn't thought of himself that way in years.