Prophecy (18 page)

“Name?”

“Robert Vern.”

The guard repeated the name into the phone, then nodded, handing each of them a set of earphones and a hard hat.

“There’s a self-service elevator just inside the door. Take it up to four.”

As Rob and Maggie entered the building, a barrage of heat and noise overwhelmed them. It was like a huge warehouse, filled with gargantuan, roaring machines that dwarfed their human masters. Men could barely be seen within the maze of twisting tubes and gleaming tanks that shot steam and glowed with heat as they processed crude timber. The temperature was easily a hundred degrees; Maggie was struck with nausea as they waited for the freight elevator to arrive.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “How do people work in here?”

The elevator arrived and they stepped in, the doors clanging shut around them. As they ascended, their eyes fell upon a row of gas masks. A sign beneath them read: “Use in the event of warning bell. Proceed immediately to the outside.”

The elevator jolted to a stop and the doors opened, revealing Bethel Isely. He was dressed in a suit and tie, wearing a hard hat and a genuinely welcoming smile.

“You can take the earphones off!” he shouted as

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he extended his hand to them. “It’s nice and quiet up here!” Then he took them to his office where a secretary offered coffee. Both Rob and Maggie refused; Rob was eager to survey the plant.

“I want to know how everything works here,” Rob said firmly. “From start to finish. I want to know about the entire procedure.”

“No problem. It’s real simple. You want to follow me?”

The tour began on the roof of the factory, where they stood at a handrailing, gazing down at stacks of cut timber piled as high as mountains. Men below fed the timber into a conveyor belt that ran up the side of the building, bringing the short sections of barkless logs onto the roof, where they splashed into a tank of water, then floated across the length of the roof in an artificial stream.

“This stream is called the flume,” Isely explained as they walked along the length of it. “All the wood that’s unfit for lumberyards is cut into four-foot sections and fed down this channel toward the grinding machines. We use stone grinders to turn the logs into pulp. Once we’ve got pulp, we bleach it so the color will turn from brown to white. Then we press the pulp into paper. That’s really all there is to it. It’s a very simple process and a very conventional industry. With the exception of volume, it’s no different today than it was sixty years ago.”

“What is the volume?”

“At the moment?”

“Peak capacity. How many logs can you process in a day?”

“Five acres, maybe.”

The answer fairly knocked the wind out of Rob; Isely was quick to lighten the blow. “That’s if we wanted to rush. But we’re in no hurry..”

“How long in terms of a single tree? How long does it take for it to turn into paper?”

Isely could see that Rob was upset. “I never timed it.”

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“An estimate.”

“You know, the primary goal of any industry is to be efficient …”

“You must know, then.”

“What I’m trying to say is, it’s something we’re proud of.”

“I asked you a simple question.”

“Ten minutes.”

Rob was staggered. The trees that were being fed down this stream toward the grinders had been standing on the earth for perhaps ten centuries. Now, within ten minutes they would be rendered into a condition where they could be written on, or wrapped around something, or used for someone to blow their nose on and then thrown into a trash basket. Man’s powers to undo were mind-boggling.

“I want to see the rest of it,” Rob demanded. “All of it.”

“You can see whatever you like. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

Rob took Maggie’s hand and they descended a narrow metal stairwell to the third floor, where massive grinding machines chewed the logs into pulp. The noise level was thunderous. Isely had to shout directly into Rob’s ear to be heard.

“The logs are crushed mechanically in there! No chemicals! We break them down with heavy stones!”

“Then you bleach it?”

“What?”

“Do you bleach it next?”

“We bleach it!”

“I want to see!”

They descended another stairwell to the second floor, where the dark brown pulp spilled into steaming vats and emerged on a conveyor belt, its color transformed to white. It was from here that the acrid stench emanated; the air was barely breatheable. Maggie held her hand over her nose and mouth; she was beginning to feel woozy again.

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“You all right, Mrs. Vern? You can sit over there by the door.”

Maggie nodded gratefully and went to a fire exit, where she sat on the stairs and gasped for breath. Rob watched her for a long moment and determined that she was all right. Then he turned back to Isely.

“Why do you bleach it?” Rob shouted over the din.

“With the exception of grocery bags, no one likes paper that isn’t white. Don’t ask me why. Just a quirk that people have. I wish they didn’t. It would save us a lot of money.”

“What do you bleach it with?”

“Chlorine. But it stays right here in the plant. It’s a hazard for us, because the chlorine can turn into gas. It would be a lot safer for us if we could pump it out into the water, but we know it would play hell with the environment. And the last thing we want to do is disturb the environment.”

“It doesn’t go into the water?”

“Not a drop. It’s easy to test for. You’re welcome to test the water. We do nothing here that isn’t recommended by the EPA. We follow your rules religiously.”

“I want to see more.”

“This way.”

Maggie followed as they descended the last stairwell down to the main floor, where they had initially entered. The heat level was more intense here than anywhere else in the factory. It was here that the white pulp was put into pressers that looked like steamrollers, and emerged as a huge, continuous sheet of paper.

“That’s the whole of it!” Isely said. “Once the pulp gets down here, it’s pressed into sheets and dried into paper.”

“How does it turn into paper?”

“The pulp is fibrous. When it’s pressed, the fibers entwine, creating a solid.”

Rob looked around at the huge machines, his face

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betraying frustration. “And the only chemical you use here is chlorine?”

“Yes. No, excuse me. There’s a caustic agent mixed with the chlorine. It’s biodegradable, recommended by the EPA, and stays with the chlorine. It does not go into the watershed.”

“Just as clean as a whistle, huh?”

“Beg pardon?”

Rob turned to him, assessing him with a wary eye.

“Something wrong?” Isely asked.

“What happens to the logs before they get here?”

There was something in Rob’s voice that alerted Isely. It was more an accusation than a question.

“They get floated down the river to the plant.”

“That’s it? You just float them directly to the plant?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t hold them anywhere? They don’t stop anywhere along the line?”

“Sometimes. If we get stacked up …”

“Where do they stop?”

“They normally don’t:’

“But sometimes they do. Isn’t that what you just said?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you hold them?”

“Various places.”

“Ponds? Do you hold them in ponds?”

“Probably. It softens them up to soak them.”

“So soaking is part of the process.”

“They get soaked coming down the river.”

“But extra soaking is more desirable.”

Isely was beginning to take offense at the interrogation. “As a matter of fact, it’s not. If they soak too long, they sink and get algae on them, and the algae goes into the pulp.”

“All right, let’s back up a minute.”

“What is this? The third degree?”

“I’m just asking you some questions.”

“I’m happy to answer your questions.”

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“I’m glad to hear that, because I have a few more.”

Maggie looked at Rob in an effort to calm him. She was becoming uneasy with his anger.

“You say that ‘sometimes’ the logs are held in ponds?” Rob challenged.

“Yes. When we’ve got too much surplus to process.”

“I saw mountains of cut logs out there. Would you say you have a surplus right now?”

“Yes.”

“And how often is that the case?”

Isely didn’t respond.

“This is easy for me to find out,” Rob warned.

“What are you getting at?”

“How often do you have too much surplus?”

“Fairly often.”

“Maybe all the time?”

“I don’t know.”

“But more than occasionally.”

Isely was beginning to bristle. “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you in charge here?”

“I’m in charge here, but I don’t know everything.”

“It’s your job to know everything!”

Isely leveled his eyes into Rob’s. “I’m new to this, Mr. Vern. Just like you are.”

Rob stiffened with anger; Maggie touched his arm to calm him.

“Do you soak the logs in chemicals?” Rob demanded.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re out of my area on this. The transport is handled by a private contractor. We have no jurisdiction over what he does.”

“I asked you a question!”

“And I answered it!”

“You are responsible for whatever effluent comes out of this process!” Rob shouted. “You hire the contractor, you sell the product, you are accountable for whatever goes on here!” He pushed his face close to

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Isely’s. “Now, I want to know what chemicals you’re using.”

“I want to ask you something!” Isely shouted back. “How many pages in that report you’re going to write?”

“Answer my question!”

“How many pages? A hundred? A thousand? And how many copies? Five hundred, maybe?”

“I want to know what chemicals you’re using!”

“We’re talking about five hundred thousand sheets of paper just for your report. Am I far off?”

“I asked you-”

“And how many sheets in the rest of the filing cabinets in Washington?”

“You’re not answering-”

“I am answering. I supply, and you demand! You’re responsible, too! Unless you want to start filling your filing cabinets with rocks, and wiping your nose with cactus-”

“What chemicals are the logs soaked in?” Rob shouted over him.

“None!” Isely snapped.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then test the water!” Isely raged. “That’s what we do! If the logs were soaked in chemicals, it would squeeze out in the pulping process right into the watershed in front of this plant!” He was fuming; his face reddened with anger. “We take samples out there every tenth day, and there’s not a damn thing floating in that water that we don’t know about, and that isn’t perfectly safe for this environment!”

“Why are there dead fish out there?”

“If you knew more about your work, Mr. Vera, you’d know the answer to that! The water’s overused in this section of the river. There’s not enough oxygen to support aquatic life within a half-mile radius, and that’s perfectly acceptable to the EPA and has no effect on the rest of the water. And it has nothing to do with chemicals.”

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The tirade silenced Rob. It was plain that Isely knew what he was talking about.

“Do you know how to test water, ‘Dr.’ Vern?”

“I know how to test water.”

“Then test it! We’ve got nothing to hide!”

Isely turned on his heel and entered the freight elevator, the doors clanging shut on his angry scowl. Rob sagged with fatigue and took Maggie’s hand; they exited into the cool outdoors.

Outside the factory, the muted sun was hovering low against the horizon. Rob and Maggie walked to their boat in silence, wading into the deep mud and crawling with effort over its side. Rob used an oar to push the boat out of the silt drift and into the narrow channel, then started the motor and headed back down the river. Within minutes they had reached the mouth of the Espee River, where it spilled into Mary’s Lake. Rob noticed the body of a dead beaver tangled in one of the nets.

The sun was beginning to set; the bats had come out to feed on the profusion of insects given birth by the rain. They dove and swooped against an orange-streaked sky as silently as butterflies in a field of flowers.

The irony of this land was that it looked so unconquerable. Regardless of what havoc was churning beneath the surface, it maintained a calm and implacable face. It was the sum of all of its parts and had a kind of collective courage; all the more difficult to dissect because everything was so inextricably entwined.

As their small boat cut across the calm surface of the lake toward the island, they sat in silence, inhaling the tranquilizing fragrance of pine trees. In the heat and noise of the paper mill, Maggie had experienced a stirring in her stomach that was unlike any feeling she had ever had before. It felt like movement. But not the kind of pleasant movement she had heard described by other pregnant women. It felt sharp and rebellious, as though her insides were in conflict. It was subsiding

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now, the tonic of fresh air and quiet soothing her nerves.

From her position in the stern of the boat, she turned and faced Rob, noting the despair in his eyes. She knew he was unaccustomed to defeat, and she wished there were some way she could help him.

“Isn’t it possible that tadpoles can sometimes grow big?” she asked meekly.

“The roots were coming out of the ground, Maggie. The foliage there was different from anywhere else in the forest. The color of the water was wrong.”

“Does it have to be from the lumber mill? Couldn’t it be something else?”

He shook his head in despair. “I don’t know.”

Maggie noticed that her boots were covered with a thick layer of grayish-brown ooze. It had gone all the way to her boot-tops and leaked down to her toes. She dug her fingers into the narrow space at her boot top and grimaced at how slimy the mud felt as she rolled it between her fingers. “Ick.” Then she washed it off her hand by trailing it in the water. She repeated the motion, scraping mud, then washing her hand, ritualizing it with a kind of unconscious rhythm.