Chapter Six
Only the second day on the job and the potential civil suit is imploding: in the morning, I find out that two of our half dozen complainants, the Davies and the Ioccos, have now withdrawn their complaints. Rich Iocco is coach of the local Little League team, and funds for new uniforms and a bus to away games mysteriously dried up after Optimal learned he was planning to talk to us.
Which means that either we might be onto something or we might be running straight toward a brick wall.
Unfortunately, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I send Portland out to speak to some local GP’s, to swing by the hospitals and befriend the nurses—brutal, often fruitless work, but he’s easy on the eyes and his beard should make people feel at ease. Portland and Flora will head up the door-to-door canvass to try to suss out potential support. A handful of farms top the list of water usage per acre, so I direct them to start there: if anyone should be worried about supply, it’s the people whose livelihoods directly depend on it. Farmers don’t get their subsidies from Optimal, and may be easier to persuade. It will be my job to track down Carolina Dawes, whose kid has been complaining of rashes.
Joe and Raj get to geek out on data: two years ago Optimal subcontracted IBC Waste to deal with hazardous chemical disposal and environmental protocol.
In other words, they passed the buck, big time.
“Even if we prove Optimal is pumping goddamn uranium into the kiddie pools, they will just point the finger at IBC,” Joe says.
It’s not even nine thirty, and already, my mood is cracking. I take a deep breath. “So we’ll have to show that Optimal had direct knowledge. We’ll have to prove they’re the ones behind the steering wheel.”
Joe sighs. “Hooray. Two cases for the price of one. I always loved me a twofer.”
Carolina Dawes lives in a converted hunter’s cabin in what counts for a zoning error: just beyond it lies a now-defunct dump within shouting distance of the shore of the reservoir. The only car in the driveway is mounted on cinderblocks.
I have to wedge my car in behind a rust-eaten Geo Tracker so filmed with dirt the original color is impossible to measure. Someone has written Wash Me on the rear window with a finger. Real original.
When I step onto the porch, a Chihuahua starts freaking out, pressing its nose against the screen and yapping incessantly. A woman hushes it sharply.
“Chucky! Shut it!” she says. A second later she shoves open the door so hard I have to jump back. “Sorry. Damn thing’s all swelled up.” She is enormously fat, wearing teal polka-dot stretch pants and an oversized shirt with a Carhartt logo across the chest. Cigarette smoke rises off her like a mist.
“Ms. Dawes?” I ask.
“What do you want?” She says it not rudely, but as if she’s genuinely curious.
“I’m Abby Williams. I work with the Center for Environmental Advocacy.” This means nothing to her, obviously. “A few days ago, one of our team members was going door to door and you mentioned you’d had some kind of problems with your water…”
“I didn’t say that.” For a second, my heart drops, until she adds, “I said my kid Coop has been getting rashes. At first I thought it was ringworm like from one of the other kids but when I went to the clinic the doctor said no that wasn’t it. Then he asked me about what kind of laundry detergent I use and where we get our water from, so I put two and two together.”
“Does your son ever swim in the reservoir?” I ask her, and she nearly hacks up a lung.
“He don’t know how.” She pounds her chest, loosening whatever’s rattling around there. “Sorry. I worked over at Optimal for fifteen years. That’s why the cough.” She lights a cigarette.
“Is that why you left?” I ask.
“Didn’t leave. I got fired.”
My heart sinks: any good defense lawyer will blow holes through her story, claim she’s looking for revenge and a payday. Still, I persist. I kind of like Carolina Dawes and her polka-dot stretch pants.
“You have well water, don’t you?” I ask her, and her expression folds up around her cigarette, like she’s trying to suck herself down it, not the other way around.
“We should,” she says. “But how things been going…this is the third year straight running with a drought…” She taps her ash angrily onto the porch. “So I figure why not take a little something free?”
Suddenly I understand. The PVC piping, the hoses rigged like laundry lines in the backyard: she’s been tapping the reservoir.
“But that’s when Coop started having all those problems, when we decided to try and give the well a rest…”
“Do you have pictures of his rash?” I ask her, and she grinds the cigarette out into the railing, exhaling a long plume of smoke.
“I can do you one better,” she says, and then turns her head to shout. “Coop. Coop! I know you hear me, so get your little butt down here. He’s a little shy,” she adds, as someone moves in the darkness behind the screen door. “And all that itching and nonsense ain’t helping none, let me tell you. Come on, Coop. It’s all right. This nice lady’s here to help.”
A little boy, maybe five or six, edges carefully into the light. He is unexpectedly beautiful: big blue eyes, blond hair, perfect features. Cherubic. Half his face is still in shadow; half his face glows in the sun.
He steps right up to the door and places a hand to the screen. Then he turns and leans his cheek against it, and the sun catches the scabrous raw sores on his cheek and jaw and neck, the desperate marks where he has scratched his way through the skin.
“It itches,” is all he says.