Heat and Light (7 page)

The smell clung to Shelby and her sister, their hair and clothes. She learned this one day while riding the school bus next to Patti Wojick who, to Shelby's horror, leaned over to sniff her and said, “You smell like French fries.”

Now Rich comes home smelling the exactsame way.

Shelby understands that he isn't really a bartender, that he is only helping his father. Still, she doesn't particularly want to watch.

They were clever girls, resourceful, independent. On summer afternoons they haunted the town swimming pool. Later—sunburned, chlorine-smelling—they roamed the neighborhoods and made fast friendships. The new friends had curfews and allowances, grassy yards, bicycles. They had kind mothers who sometimes cooked extra, delicious casseroles and meat loaves served at a table, on matching plates.

Sturdy girls, practical, resilient. Uncomplaining, because complaining got them nowhere. Roxanne was immovable, a slab of granite. Small sicknesses did not impress her. To colds and bellyaches her response was predictable:
go to school, you'll feel better.
The girls went to school with mumps, with strep throat, with pinkeye. Shelby infected her entire second-grade class with chicken pox.

And so it's hard to say when Crystal's illness actually started. She was a docile child, sweet tempered; a fair-haired girl whose sunburns turned to rashes, whose fingertips went blue in the cold. When, at eleven or twelve, she became suddenly and permanently tired, achy, and listless, she went to school but did not feel better. Shelby was awakened in the night by Crystal's fevers, the heat rising off her in waves.

After Crystal died, it was Shelby who studied the class pictures, taken each year by a visiting photographer in the first week of school. In her fifth-grade picture Crystal looked healthy and suntanned. A year later the red stain was visible across her cheeks. The butterfly rash was the signature symptom of lupus. A responsible mother would have noticed. But by the time Roxanne took her to a doctor, Crystal's feet were swollen, her kidneys failing. Overnight, everything changed. Three times a week, Buzz Wenturine drove Crystal to the county hospital twenty miles away, which had a dialysis machine.

Buzz Wenturine was Roxanne's boyfriend, a big bald-headed
man with a handlebar mustache. Like most men, he had been a miner. More recently he drove a yellow bus, which Shelby and Crystal had ridden to middle school. Back then Roxanne had a different boyfriend, and so the girls paid little attention to the nameless bus driver, a gruff man who never changed his clothes.

When Roxanne brought him home, three or four years later, he was wearing the exactsame green plaid shirt.

Buzz Wenturine's car smelled of aftershave and breath mints. For the first week Roxanne rode along beside him. Then the treatments were rescheduled for late afternoon, after school let out, so that Shelby could go in her place. Buzz drove in silence, hunched over the wheel in his camouflage jacket, listening to a ball game on the radio. The sisters sat together in the backseat, speaking in whispers, pretending he wasn't there.

The treatment room was blocked off with a plastic curtain. Shelby sat in the armchair beside Crystal's bed. A treatment took four hours. While her sister slept, Shelby watched the tiny television bolted to the ceiling,
The Young and the Restless
and
As the World Turns
.

At the hospital Crystal was showered with kindness. The Ladies Auxiliary offered home-baked cookies. Candy stripers dispensed small gifts—lip balm and chocolate bars, a pocket-size book of crosswords—from a wheeled cart.

Every Friday after her treatment, while Crystal saw the doctor, Shelby did homework in a waiting room down the hall. The waiting room was often crowded. She saw children and even adults crying, as though something tragic had occurred. Over time she recognized certain faces. A particular small, slight man was often present, dressed in a cardigan sweater. He sat with his head bowed and spoke in a soft voice. Weeks passed before Shelby understood that he was praying. She had never witnessed such a thing.

He didn't care if you were a man, woman, or child. He bowed his head and took your hand.

One Friday he spoke to her. “What are you writing?”

The waiting room was crowded and he had sat beside her, their shoulders nearly touching. He was pale and handsome, his eyelashes long as a girl's.

“A report. For Pennsylvania History.” Unused to such questions, she wondered how much of an answer was required. “It's about Colonel Drake. You know, the oil rush.”

He leaned close to her and read from the notebook on her lap: “
When the world's first oil well was drilled in right here in western Pennsylvania, Colonel Edwin Drake was given all the credit.
That's very good,” he said, smiling. “How is your sister feeling?”

Shyness overcame her. “How did you know she was my sister?”

“You look just alike.”

This pleased her unreasonably. Shelby was not unpretty, but Crystal was a beauty. Everyone said so, and Shelby accepted it as fact.

“Dialysis is grueling. She's lucky to have you with her.” His voice was gentle and melodic, a step away from singing.

“She has lupus.”

“It's a terrible illness.”

They sat for a long moment, staring at the television, tuned to a local channel that aired announcements.
SAXON COUNTY FAIR TRACTOR PULL CONTEST. FIREMEN'S FESTIVAL BATTLE OF THE BARREL.

“I'd be happy to pray with you,” said the Reverend Wesley Peacock.

He said, “It must be very difficult for you.”

He had no idea. The cookies and crosswords, the cooing volunteers who smoothed Crystal's hair and called her
sweetie.
Shelby was a starving child forced to watch another's gluttony.

As she'd seen him do with everybody, he bowed his head and took her hand.

Her mother slept late on Sunday mornings, and so it was easy enough to sneak out of the apartment wearing the one nice dress she
hadn't outgrown. Fourteen and still growing, a late bloomer; Roxanne could barely keep her in blue jeans. Shelby's old clothes were handed down to Crystal, who would never wear them. Who would spend her remaining days in shortie pajamas, under an afghan on the couch.

That first Sunday, Shelby chose an unobtrusive spot in a middle row. The church was full of families, parents and children praying together. They seemed unsure what to make of her, a young girl sitting alone.

From the pulpit Pastor Wes spoke to her directly. “I'd like to welcome all those new to our congregation. We're very glad you're here.”

After the service, in the vestibule, he had a smile and a word for everyone. Shelby studied them from a distance, Pastor Wes and the woman at his side. His sister, Shelby thought at first. She had the same shiny dark hair, the gentle brown eyes.

Pastor Wes seemed delighted to see her. “Jess, this is Shelby, the girl I told you about. My wife, Jessie.”

He was a grown man, a pastor with his own church. Of course he was old enough to have a wife.

“We have a little social after the service,” he told Shelby. “You can meet some of the other young folks.”

“I need to get home,” she stammered. “To my sister.” It wasn't true, not remotely: Crystal would spend the day sleeping and watching television, whether Shelby was there or not. But Pastor Wes gave her a look of such melting kindness that she was glad she'd said it.

“Crystal is on dialysis,” he told his wife. “Shelby is by her side the whole time. You've never seen a more devoted sister.”

At home Shelby changed out of her church clothes. Her mother, still asleep, hadn't even noticed she was gone. Deceiving her was so effortless that Shelby could have done it forever, if not for the day at Rite Aid.

Because only an adult could refill Crystal's prescriptions, Shelby
and Roxanne went to Rite Aid together. As she always did—in stores, the bank, the post office—Shelby pointed out the
NO SMOKING
sign.

As she always did, Roxanne lit a Virginia Slim.

A moment later Shelby saw him. They passed side by side through the automatic doors, Shelby and her mother through the
IN
door, Pastor Wes through the
OUT.
Spotting Shelby, he grinned and waved.

“Who's that?” Roxanne said.

They dawdled a moment on the threshold, their weight on the rubber mat holding the door wide open. Finally they went into the store and, awkwardly, turned around and came back outside.

Pastor Wes was waiting for them on the sidewalk, a crisp shirt and tie under his cardigan sweater. “Shelby, is this your mother?”

“Who wants to know?” said Roxanne—in cutoff shorts, braless, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

Shelby offered a clumsy introduction. Roxanne took a final drag of her cigarette and ground it beneath her heel.

“I don't like him,” she told Shelby later as they waited at the pharmacy counter. “He looks like a preacher.”

“He
is
a preacher.”

“He's a grown man. What does he want with you?”

“He's teaching me scripture.”

Roxanne seemed disappointed by this explanation. Shelby wished, too late, that she'd invented a better story.

“He helps me with my homework. My Colonel Drake report. Anyway, he has a wife.”

“They all have wives.”

After that there was no need for sneaking, though Roxanne occasionally teased her:
Are you going to see your boyfriend?
Though some months later, when he offered his church for Crystal's funeral, Roxanne changed her tune and pronounced him
harmless—
as though it were a personal failing, an irreparable character flaw.

Was a man supposed to be harmful? Except for silent Buzz
Wenturine, Shelby didn't know any men. She'd lived her whole life in a two-room apartment where you could shower with the door open, it didn't matter, because they were all girls.

Even Roxanne had to admit that the service was beautiful. Pastor Wes's eulogy was full of personal anecdotes, as though he'd known Crystal all her life. In fact they had never met. He simply remembered what Shelby had told him.

Buzz Wenturine sometimes left bruises on her mother.

Pastor Wes remembered everything Shelby told him, and had never left a bruise on anyone. She knew this beyond all doubt.

Of course he'd never met Crystal. Shelby's sister was desperately shy, timid around strangers. The treatments left her too weak for visitors. These excuses and others, Pastor Wes accepted without question, and remained Shelby's alone.

Yellow carnations, an all-purpose flower. She lays the flowers on his grave.

T
here are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. Rich's wife is constantly spouting such truisms.
Horseshit,
he tells her, though he wishes he were wrong. And maybe he is: because one afternoon, as he's coming out of the stockroom at the Commercial, he spots Bobby Frame sitting alone in a corner booth, tapping out a text message on his cell phone.

“Hey,” Rich calls.

Frame looks up, startled. The detritus of his lunch sits before him, saltine wrappers, a crumpled paper napkin, a half-eaten pickle.

“You don't remember me, do you? Rich Devlin. You were at my house. I signed a gas lease.”

“Sure I remember,” he says smoothly. “Nice to see you.”

Rich ignores the pleasantry. “I'd understand if you don't, because that was a while back. A year ago in August. Coming up on two.”

“That sounds about right.” Frame smiles warmly, but his eyes look panicked, as though he's been accosted by a crazy person. As, in a way, he has.

“I'm surprised to see you here,” says Rich. “I figured you were long gone by now.”

“I was. I came back to testify in a court case. Never mind that. That's not important,” Frame adds hastily. He eyes the pickle with regret, then opens his wallet and leaves a bill on the table. “Take care, Mr. Devlin. Give my best to your wife.”

“Whoa, wait a minute.” Rich nearly puts his hands on the guy—not to hurt him, just to keep him from running away. He's having a hard time expressing himself. “About my lease. What exactly is the holdup? My neighbor Wally Fetterson got drilled a year ago.”

“Have a seat, Mr. Devlin. This is going to take a minute.” Frame reaches over to the next table for an unused napkin. “You have, what, sixty acres? If I remember correctly.”

He takes a pen from his breast pocket and sketches a quick map.

“So this is you.” He draws a square, marks it with the letter
D.
“And this, to the south, is your neighbor Mr. Neugebauer. Mr. Kipler is a ways over to the west. All three of you have signed leases, which is great news. What we'd like to do—what we need to do—is drill all of you from the same well pad.”

“Okay,” Rich says.

“But here's our problem.” Frame draws another square and shades it with cross-hatching. “This here is Friend-Lea Acres. Owned by your neighbors, the Mackeys. Their farm sets right smack in the middle of where we'd need to put that pad. And the Mackeys refuse to sign.”

It is the great, deflating lesson of Rich's adulthood: nothing, but nothing, is simple. “I don't get it. Can't you just put the pad on my land?”

“Mr. Devlin, I'd love to. Nothing would make me happier. But for just sixty acres it isn't cost effective. Now Mr. Kipler, over here”—he draws a long rectangle—“has four hundred acres. If we absolutely had to, we might could bring in a rig just for him. But the smaller properties—yours and Mr. Neugebauer's—we'd need to bundle them somehow.” He draws another square at the edge of the napkin. “This here is your neighbor, Mr. Krug. Now if we could get him on board—Devlin, Neugebauer, and Krug—that's a decent parcel. That might be worth our while.”

Rich is suddenly tired. It figures perfectly—it's just his luck—that the deal hinges on Cob Krug, a known crackpot, an angry
crank who scares small children, a notorious hermit and hoarder. A man of complicated opinions, paranoid theories that require much explaining on
Open Mike,
the local radio station's call-in show. Cob is the sort of eccentric who gets stranger with age, and he's been old as long as Rich can remember.

Cob Krug, of all people, holds the keys to his future.

“Let me guess. Cob wouldn't sign.”

“Said no and meant it. Damn near blew my head off. I don't think there's any changing his mind.”

“Which leaves Mackey.” Mack and Rena—the lesbian dairy farmers who run Friend-Lea Acres—are locally famous, though nobody in town actually knows them. In the way of rural neighbors, Rich sees them only at a distance, barreling down Number Nine Road in their battered pickup truck. He knows nothing about them beyond the local gossip.

“Bingo. And they're—well, I only met the one. She's a pretty stubborn lady. Believe me, I've tried.” Bobby gets to his feet. “You're not the only one, if that's any consolation. Your neighbors are all in the same boat.”

“So there's nothing I can do?” The injustice stuns him: his entire future—his kids' future—wiped out by a neighbor's whim.

Bobby Frame eyes him with pity. “Look, I get it. If I was in your shoes, I'd be aggravated, too.” He claps Rich's shoulder. “You want my advice? Go have a talk with the Mackeys. I did my best, but I'm just some guy from Texas. It will mean more coming from you.”

MACK IS DREDGING THE CREEK,
up to her ankles in cold water, when the truck turns down the lane. It's an old Chevy with round headlights and a wide smiling grille, like the face of a friendly dog. At the wheel is her neighbor Carl Neugebauer. Beside him is a younger man she doesn't, at first, recognize: Hank Becker's grandson, her neighbor to the south.

The three sit on the porch drinking cold beer from the can. Mack is barefoot, her boots on the brick stoop drying in the sun. She is happy about the beer, the company, the simple animal pleasure of dry feet. The afternoon is hot and still.

Carl Neugebauer has aged, his wrinkly throat like something hanging off a turkey. He is closer to eighty than seventy. Mack hasn't seen him in a couple years. Except for rare trips to town—Amway, barbershop, hardware store—she is a homebody, though she's always glad to bump into a neighbor she's known since childhood, the vanishing cohort of old-timers who knew her pop. She has always preferred the company of men.

Carl takes a can of snuff from his pocket and offers her a pinch. “How you been, Susan? I never see you around town.”

It's a name no one calls her, a name she's always hated. But Carl was a friend of Pop's. He can call her whatever he wants.

Hank's grandson is named Devlin. Mack has seen it on his mailbox.

“Busy,” she says. “The vet was here all morning. Second time this week.”

It's as much small talk as either can muster. The pleasantries out of the way, Carl wastes no time. “I guess you've made up your mind about this drilling business.”

“Pretty much.” Mack takes the spit can from under her chair and places it on the table, equidistant from them both. Devlin, she notices, does not chew.

Carl nods gravely. “I wonder what your pop would say. He was no kind of businessman, but he never would've left that kind of money setting on the table.”

Mack flinches, insulted on Pop's behalf. And yet she knows it's true: he left Friend-Lea Acres in a precarious financial position. If he'd lived five more years, he'd have run the farm into the ground.

“They'll pay you fifteen percent over the life of the well,” says
Carl. “More, if you play your cards right. I guess Wally Fetterson has made a million already. A million dollars without lifting a finger.”

To Mack the sum is unimaginable. You couldn't argue with that kind of money—though Rena, if she were here, would try.

“We're not asking anyone to agree with us,” she says. “We never have.”

“I guess that's true,” Carl says.

Better that Rena isn't here. Even if she could hold her tongue (unlikely), her simple presence would make Mack uncomfortable. To sit side by side on their porch swing, in the presence of neighbors, would be revealing too much of themselves.

“Seems like you're the one trying to talk
us
into something.” Mack reaches for the spit can. “We want the same thing everybody else wants. To run our farm in peace.”

Carl seems to consider this.

“You girls run a clean operation. I respect that. And if you want to pass up an opportunity, well, I guess that's your business. But once you start taking money out of my pocket, I got to say something.” He spits deliberately. “Your land sets right in the middle of where they need to run them wells. I'm getting wells, Richard here is getting wells. Hell, even Jim Norton is getting wells, with the little spread he has. But until you sign that paper, none of us are going to see a dime.”

Mack glances skyward. The sun is sinking, the unmistakable slanted sunlight of late afternoon. Rena will be home any minute, in her Monday mood. On Monday evenings anything is possible, Rena weepy or angry or brooding after her visit to the prison, the agonizing hour she spends with her son.

Mack puts on her boots, warm inside, and gets to her feet. “Well, I should get back to it. Thanks for stopping by.”

She walks the men to their truck. Devlin, who hasn't spoken a single word, shakes her hand.

“Will you at least think about it?” says Carl.

“Sure,” says Mack. “Sure I will.”

The old truck bounces down the lane, raising dust.

IN THE WEEK BEFORE THE INCIDENT,
there were warnings. Nothing so dramatic as a flaming shitbag left on their doorstep, but clear signs that something was amiss. Rena explains this to the town cop, Chief Carnicella. They are sitting in the police station, a square wood-paneled room in the basement of Saxon Savings and Loan, just large enough for a desk and two chairs.

“Signs.” The chief doodles on a yellow legal pad. His stubby fingers grip the pen like a hammer or screwdriver. He hasn't, so far, written anything down. “What kind of signs?”

They are dressed illustratively, like life-size dolls. Their clothing explains who they are and what they do. His navy blue pants and uniform shirt, which gapes between the buttons. Her baggy smock and faded scrub pants, freshly laundered, a blank canvas for whatever the ER has in store for her—blood, urine, vomit, tears.

Chief Carnicella listens, frowning. His hair, what's left of it, is darker than it should be, longish and wispy, combed over his bald spot and pasted into place. In high school he was a star wrestler, the sort of boy who seemed older than everybody else—like many of the young Italians, the victim of a spectacular early puberty. In the team's yearbook photo he is the only freshman with chest hair. By graduation he had a receding hairline and a five o'clock shadow, like somebody's dad.

Behind Rena the door clicks open. The borough secretary sticks in her head. “I'm going to lunch, Chief. You need anything?”

Chief.
All of Bakerton calls him this, without irony. In fact he is the entire police department, its only employee. No one but Rena seems to find this comical.

“Nah, I'm good. Sorry,” the chief tells Rena. “Continue.”

The first sign came last Monday, the neighbors' visit. “They were nice about it,” says Rena, “but they weren't happy. ‘Until you sign that paper, none of us are going to see a dime.' Those were his exact words.”

The chief frowns. “That's a true fact?”

Rena nods.

“It don't seem right.”

“That's not the point.” She sees, already, that the conversation is going nowhere, which is not surprising. Filing a police report was Mack's idea, Mack who believes in law and order. Rena, personally, has no faith in cops.

The second incident came last Tuesday. Late for her shift at the hospital, she'd backed halfway down the lane before she realized her front tires were slashed.

Finally the chief writes something. “What was the total damage to the vehicle? I'm going to say two hundred a tire.”

“Sure. Whatever,” Rena says.

The third incident was the fire on their doorstep. Mack had stamped it out, cursing, realizing too late what was inside the flaming bag. It might have come from a neighbor's cow, or even one of their own. A stranger might have stepped through their fence and filled a sack with it. There are a half-dozen dairy farms in this part of Saxon County. Cow dung is in plentiful supply.

“It's harassment,” says Rena.

The chief looks unimpressed. “You're saying there's a connection. A common perpetrator.”

“Well, no. It could be different people. But they're all sending the same message.”

“Which is?”

“I explained this already. They want us to sign a gas lease.” She has a sudden, powerful urge to muss his lacquered hair. “I mean, what else could it be?”

“From a law enforcement perspective, my professional opinion
is you've got some bored juveniles making mischief.” He pauses significantly. “How's your boy?”

“He's fine.”

“They treating him good up there?”

“He's fine.”

There is a silence. Finally the chief gets to his feet.

“Sorry, Rena. I wish I could help you. I can file a report on the vehicle. But from where I sit, this looks like a couple unrelated acts of vandalism. Nothing much I can do about that.”

SO, FINE. YOU TOOK POSITIONS
that were unpopular. Not a new situation, Mack and Rena reminded each other.

As if they could forget.

They live on the farm as though it were an island. Periodically one of them—Rena, usually—rows to shore for supplies. On the farm it's Mack who is truly indispensable. Rena's most valuable contribution happens elsewhere. It's Rena who brings home the steady paycheck, who has, once again, a full-time job at Miners' Hospital. Which demands that, five days a week, she row to shore.

Five days is a recent development. Until last summer she worked part-time. They got by on her smaller salary, just barely. Then, in October, their fuel costs doubled.

“
Doubled?
How is that possible?” Despite years of habituation, Mack is always surprised by bad news. Rena is never surprised. It's Rena who grapples with each month's bleak mathematics, confronting in the end an untenable equation: the volatile dairy market on one side, the hundred small and large expenses, constantly fluctuating, on the other.