Whatever Lola Wants (19 page)

At seven in the evening the train arrived, the railway siding transformed into a delivery port for their equipment. Now Charlie took charge. Flatcars bore flexible piping, derricks, two Rolls-Royce jet engines, compressed air canisters, three gas turbines, fuel cars, Carney tank tractors with built-out rear ramps. Ten rail cars, each carrying three immense basins with lids.

Soot-covered, impressed, puzzled, the mayor watched. His brain burned: so much equipment. Despite the heat he shivered, watching tax dollars by the hundred thousand drain the municipal balance red. “What're those things, those round hoppers?”

“Mixing bowls.”

“Oh.”

For combining sand, clay, foam, and water. The mixing bowls stayed on the flatcars, back from the fire. Against the intense heat all team members wore heavy protective suits.

The derricks, each with a parallel jet engine, were set up at the fire's edges.

Next to the bowls sat a huge blender. The bulldozers dug sand and thin clay, and dumped it into the basins.

Two hoses attached to the storage depot hydrants flushed water in.

The blender blades descended, spun, and whipped up a creamy mud. At the blender's side an extension arm emptied a foam canister into the soup. More blending. A lid lowered and was snapped shut. A compressed air capsule slid into its moulding.

The forklift raised the readied bowl from the flatcar and eased it onto the back of a tractor. The tractor treaded its way to the fire's north edge. Beside the derrick Carole and Jude lodged the bowl in the depressed module at the jet engine's side.

The derrick was rigged with plastic piping, lashed tight with steel hoops the length of the thirty-nine-meter crane. At the top a supporting curve formed a hundred-and-thirty-degree blast angle.

Carney watched from the derrick cab as piping was plugged into the hopper. Hand raised, forearm cocked: all in place. The moving parts and his concentration interlocked. No longer the embrace of a Moment, but viable.

He swung the crane above the nearest flames and aimed. The jet roared to life. The canister valve flicked open, air forced a rush of muck up the tubing. He could feel the weight as the crane bent. The cab strained forward. Foamy mud surged from the nozzle, gray-brown in the smoking light. The ooze splattered into a couple of square meters of yellow base flame, the flame fizzed, steamed, disappeared under the baking clay. The canister emptied. The cab settled back in its anchors. A tenth of one percent of the fire was dead.

Another canister sat in place. Aim, release. Shoot, replace. Again.

The other team, Charlie in charge, had raised the second derrick. They worked the south edge of the fire. By sunrise eight percent of the tire surface was encased in hot clay.

The nozzle of the first derrick blew off at two in the afternoon. They lost an hour lowering the crane arm and replacing it. Toward midnight a length of pipe ruptured and had to be replaced; nearly three hours lost.

They slept, four-hour shifts, in two of the box cars. By the third morning the foam-mud had the fire ringed. Still bleeding oil, hundreds of barrels-worth, but down by sixty percent.

For the fire's central section they had to increase the blast power and thin the spray; the tires were stacked too high for machinery to approach. A thaw was coming on, a day or so away, maybe rain too. The last thing they needed.

Carney was working the second derrick when, three meters below the tip, the pipe separated from its lashing. It hung, precarious and heavy, in danger of breaking off. He muttered, “Shit.” Below, Dave raised his arm, then angled it down from the elbow. Carney nodded. He lowered the crane arm a degree, two, five. There it jammed.

The culprit proved to be a crack in the base cog. They'd have to drop the arm by releasing the cab's anchor millimeter by millimeter. The cab would upend as the arm came down. Then they could prop the cab in place, remove the crane arm, relax the cab down, replace the gear, relash the piping, reraise the arm. A tricky job. And long, ten hours easy.

Or they could relash the pipe in place and fix the base cog later. Charlie had done this twice. But he was asleep, he'd been on, despite regulations, for twenty-two hours straight.

Carney said, “I'll go up.”

“I'll do it,” Diane said. “You haven't climbed in, what, six months?”

How clear their memory. “And you never have. Get me a sling and belts.”

Carney climbed, his face masked and his hands gloved. Wish yourself into a Moment, Carney. Inside a Moment he could do no wrong. Trouble with Moments, they happen. Or, increasingly, not. They don't arrive by wishing.

The crane rose at a fifty-five-degree slope. It reached out across charred tires. Carrying the rope sling Carney slithered, belly to steel, doubly belted to the girder arm. At each cross-support he released the first belt, swung it above the support, relashed himself, pulled himself up, released belt two, pulled, relashed. Fifteen, twenty, thirty times.

Dave and Carole unrolled double sheets of air-pocketed asbestos foam up the clay-foam surface, staying beneath Carney's climb.

At first it went fast, one double lash every two and a half minutes. The girders grew hotter. Two-thirds of the way up the heat demanded double mitts and goggles on top of the face mask. Each relashing took four minutes plus. At the loop break, steel temperature hit 195 degrees Celsius.

Below, Dave spread the asbestos quadruple thick.

Carney, twenty-one meters up, lowered the end of his rope. Frank tied on pulley and cable. Carney drew it up, affixed the pulley, sent down the cable end. And felt tight in the throat. Below, baked mud. Smoke. He dragged up replacement coils and binding crimps, reached for the loose piping, hooked it, levered it in place, clipped it. His throat, hard to swallow—

The smoke and heat. Normal up here. He loosed his first belt, shinnied up, snapped himself in. Fought off the throat choke. Loosed the second belt, shinnied—

Maybe the first belt wasn't in place, maybe the heat made the clip slip. Maybe you weren't concentrating, Carney.

Carney hung by his right hand. Through the glove the girder scalded. He kicked his legs and swung out. His left hand touched. It caught. His right glove slid along steel. And off. He lunged, he dove. He squeezed his eyes shut and protected his head. He hit the asbestos, elbow and shoulder, then hip. His breath came in hard gulps, his eyes stayed closed.

Carole, beside him now, her face white, whispered, “Carney—?” Dave called for a stretcher.

Carney whispered, “I kinda like flying.” He twisted, lay on his back, opened his eyes, gave Carole a weak smile.

She squeezed his mitted hand. She knew he'd fallen before, from derricks, oil platforms, a range of precipices. Many of them had. Later, mouthy as usual, she'd swear he bounced five times before settling, saying, “Can't keep a good man up.” But right there, she shivered.

They walked him down the asbestos to solid ground. The team gathered around. How'd he feel? He looked real graceful on the descent.

He was fine. He'd go right back up.

But one of his few absolutes was precaution: after an accident, a medical check. Which would prove he'd displaced his left shoulder. Which he swore he didn't feel. The elbow was swollen, but no breakage there.

The commotion brought Charlie from the box car. He was rested, he'd climb. He checked Carney's sling and belts, found no apparent deficiency, went for another set anyway.

From the ground, Carney watched. Last time he'd free-flown, more than a year back, it felt like an arm had set itself tight on his throat, dragging him down. This time hurt more. At one point while Carney worked for Adair, Red had said, “The greatest freedom I enjoy is the freedom from life insurance salesmen.” Carney too had taken this as his armor.

Except right now the armor felt thin. And falling weakened it further. The failed Moment, its tinny surrogate, tasted sour. So, Carney, concentration going too?

It took four hours to get the blaster working. The rain held off. Thirty-eight hours later the fire was out. The boring of weeping-drain shafts would take the best part of a week.

First the storm, then the wind had spread toxins over hundreds of square miles. Much of it had touched ground as carbon snow, more would drift and rain to earth. Underground, water would carry oil to distant wells and irrigation lines. It would take fifty years to disperse.

A disaster. But without Carney and Co. it could have been far worse. Only thirty percent of the tires had burned. With weeping drains as much as half the oil could be recovered. Cost of the operation would exceed $8 million. Cheap at the price, the media exclaimed, growing the Carney myth.

Adulation gave Carney no pleasure. His bandaged-tight shoulder ached through the painkiller. The elbow stayed tender. Blow up at a mayor who nickel-and-dimed his budget? At a dump owner (who didn't even show!) taking on ever more tires? Jail them all.

Charlie Dart drove him in the Jaguar through a blue frozen morning up to central Vermont. The equipment would go by train back to the depot near White River Junction.

At the farm Dart turned Carney over to the care of Mrs. Staunton.

“You don't look good, Boss.”

“You never look good, Mrs. Staunton.” Carney scowled. “I'm getting more like you.”

“You should be so lucky. You want a drink? The mail? Bath?”

“All of them. In reverse order.”

Wet heat eased the elbow and shoulder. He breathed away surface memories of tires. He dried and dressed. In the living room he put a match to the fire Mrs. Staunton had set, poured himself a Scotch, sat behind triple glazing, and stared out. His house, a hundred forty years old, all wiring and plumbing revamped, sat on the rim of a shallow ravine. In warmer seasons a stream flowed down there. Three summers back he'd studied his beavers as they built their dam, the pond they'd formed running to eleven feet, water deep enough for trout to survive the winter.

East across the way, rolling horizon soothed his glance. On his four hundred and thirty acres, snow-smooth fields led to a stand of forest. The earth's shadow glided toward and up his hills. The peace was unwordable, its hold near strong as a Moment.

Damage control was his success. His Moments, his thorough absorption in them, had been part of his means. He was distilling his fame from his clients' greed, growing rich enough. What he needed came his way. Except the pleasure of falling in love again, its uncomplicated joy. Jennifer was a pleasure, lithe of mind and quirky quick when she put her body to it. She was not love.

Later he played his cello. It was clumsy, his shoulder and elbow hurt, but for half an hour thick chords and the light of burning logs drifted up to the beams. Pain retreated, cheer filled his arms and chest, his privacy as fine as that rare thing, the best human contact. He no longer played even okay, but for him the sound was pleasure.

In mid-January a bad chemical fire near Taos took the Co. to the southwest. Three cargo jets flew their equipment down. With Carney's shoulder mending slowly, Charlie took on the job.

Carney had been in pain often. It had never stopped him from heading up a serious job.

•

Lola stared over the edge with unseeing eyes. She turned to me. “But we know he's going to be okay, don't we?”

“Carney?”

“You've already told me about him, how he is now.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes of course I did.” But for the moment I'd forgotten. I've never before told stories, not consciously anyway, by seeing and hearing old memories.

“Ted?”

“Yes?”

“Is anything new happening with him now? With Carney, I mean?”

I looked down. Carney was playing his cello again. On his desk, piles of file cards, and a dozen notebooks. “Not much,” I said.

“With anybody?”

I stared down hard. “Nope, actually. All I can see are a few more memories.”

She grinned. “Any spicy ones?”

“Hmm,” I said.

•

2. (1987)

Two years ago, when she
was fifteen, Sarah had told her parents she'd had sex with seven different guys. And yes, she liked them all. She loved sex, every bit of it, from the tiny eye-catch to the graceful flirtation, from the first setting down of her silent rules of power over the boy or the man—her oldest partner, Donald, just twenty-six; her youngest Cam, thirteen a year back when she was fourteen—from her power over their higher and lower brains to her incessant demand they teach her new ways, to her laughter on learning from him or him or him, from her dismissal of those who knew nothing original to treat her to.

She loved sex in part because even then, nearly two decades after the great late-sixties love-ins, for the many puritans out there such sexual forays were still dirty, nasty, illicit. She knew Milton and Theresa saw sex as a normal part of life, and that a range of delights were her birthright, gentle Milton urging she give as good as she got, St. Theresa of the Whirlwind referring to the range of cautions she had shared with Sarah age twelve, insisting that you engage in sex for love and pleasure, that you need at least one of those or it's no good.

Sarah knew her mind. She knew Milton and Theresa accepted her daily life, and her convictions. So why did she tremble a little as she imagined their reactions? Because she realized she was about to make them, each in their ways, deeply disappointed in her.

It had to be told. It could not be undone.

She'd already spoken to Milton, alone. She had sat with him in the living room, each in one of the blue easy chairs in front of a large warming fire. Theresa, at a conference in Genoa, would be back in four days. “Milton,” Sarah had said, “I have to tell you this. I'm pregnant.”

He'd stared at her, for seconds no words. Then a nod. He stood, came over to her, kissed her on the forehead. Suddenly she was standing also, and hugging him, hugging hard, holding on. Slowly they released each other, and Milton returned to his chair. She sat on the ground at his feet. He said, “You've not told Theresa.”