Max Collins - Midnight Haul

“You’re a grad student. You don’t know shit. How high a suicide rate is that, exactly?”

“About ten times the national average.”

“I thought you’d be back,” Boone said. “But I didn’t think you’d bring your suitcase.”

She was standing in the doorway with her arms folded, properly smug.

“It looks like I might be around for a few more days,” Crane said. “I can’t afford the motel much longer. Can you put me up?”

“I can put you up,” Boone said, not budging in the doorway. “The question is, can I put up with you?”

“Right. I’ll just go back to the motel and stay till my money runs out.” He turned to go.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You needn’t pout. Come on in.”

She led him upstairs, took him into one of the rooms, a big, completely empty one — nothing but smooth white walls and dark wood trim and polished light wood floor.

“I told you my ex took all the furniture,” she said, shrugging. “The only two beds in the place are mine and Billy’s.”

“I can guess how your son would feel about sharing a bed with me.”

“Right. About the same way I would.”

“That’s not what I’m here for.”

“I know you’re not. That wasn’t fair. I have a sleeping bag you can use, and there’s a desk in Billy’s room with a chair, which we can bring in and make this nice and homey.”

“Thanks.”

He followed her across the hall to a small room with a window and a big metal desk and not much else. To one side of the desk was a two-drawer gray steel file; on the other a couple wastebaskets. On the desk was a manual typewriter, around which were scattered notecards, tape cassettes, pages of rough draft and pages of manuscript. Above the desk was a bulletin board with newspaper and magazine articles pinned to it: “DO ‘AGENT ORANGE’ HERBICIDES DESTROY PEOPLE AS WELL AS PLANTS? THE EVIDENCE MOUNTS,” “THE POISONING OF AMERICA,” “KEMCO PROFITS UP.”

“To which you no doubt say, ‘Up Kemco Profits,’ ” Crane said, looking back at her archly, where she stood watching him take all this in.

“You will, too, once you hear the story,” she said.

Crane poked around her desk a bit, just tentatively, waiting for her to stop him. She didn’t.

“You can’t be working on just an article,” Crane said. “There’s too much here for that. Is this the manuscript, so far?” He hefted the box of typescript. “There’s a couple hundred pages, here.”

“It’s a book,” she said.

“How long you been working on it?”

“Since Patrick and I split. Year and a half.”

“Is it for a publisher? Do you have an advance?”

“It’s on spec. I won’t have any trouble selling it.”

“How do you live?”

“Alimony. Child support.”

“From Patrick? Who gets his money from Kemco?”

“I see it as ironic.”

“I see it as hypocritical.”

“Fine, coming from somebody who’s freeloading in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, you’re right. That was uncalled for. Sorry. You wouldn’t happen to have some coffee or something?”

“Herbal tea.”

“That’d be fine. Can we go someplace where there’s furniture? I’d like us to sit and talk, awhile.”

“Sure.”

Downstairs, he returned to the faded red sofa of the evening before, and she brought hot tea for them both, and sat next to him.

“Why did you come back, Crane? Why are you staying?”

“Because I don’t think Mary Beth committed suicide. That’s been my instinct from day one. And now I’ve learned something that convinced me.”

“I suppose you found out about the other suicides.”

“You mean you knew ?”

“Of course. If you hadn’t been so quick to classify me as a loon, I’d have been able to tell you that by now. I’ve been doing research into Kemco for a long time, Crane. I know a lot of things that you don’t.”

“What do the suicides have to do with Kemco?”

“All five suicide victims were Kemco employees.”

“Jesus.”

“Of course that could just be a coincidence. A lot of people around here work for Kemco.”

“Jesus. Maybe they did kill her...”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“ Why would they do it, Boone?”

“I don’t know exactly. I may know. But I can’t be sure.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

“The book I’m doing... it’s called Kemco: Poison and Profit ... it mostly centers on what working at the Kemco plant near here has done to the residents of this and half a dozen other small towns, whose workforce Kemco draws upon. What I’ve come up with is a pattern of miscarriages, birth defects and cancer, among Kemco employees and their children.”

Crane sat and thought about that for a while.

“And Mary Beth knew about all this,” he said.

“Of course. You know, I was in high school with Mary Beth’s sister, Laurie, and Laurie and I were good friends back then, though we long since drifted apart. But even in those days Mary Beth was a sharp little kid — she was in grade school and way ahead of her age — and we used to talk. Then, this summer, we got together again and got kind of close. She was interested in my writing, my research, and I felt, considering how close she was to this, considering the tragedies in her own family, which related to the Kemco thing, it, well, seemed natural to let her in on it.”

“No wonder she was depressed about her father... and little Brucie... she was seeing them as symbols of something larger...”

“It explains why she was blue, Crane, but it doesn’t explain suicide. Because she didn’t commit suicide. Not unless you believe it’s possible for Greenwood to have ten times the national suicide rate.”

“That’s exactly what Roger said.”

“Roger?”

“Friend back home. I called him, earlier this afternoon. When I told him there’d been five suicides here in a little over a year, he said that was about ten times the national average... without taking into account that rural areas have a ‘markedly lower rate,’ he said. Less pressure in the lives of ‘rural residents’ as compared to ‘city dwellers.’ ”

“He talks like a sociologist.”

“That’s what he wants to be when he grows up.”

“How about you, Crane? What do you want to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re supposed to be a journalism major. Why don’t you dig in and help me with this goddamn thing.”

“Your book? No. No thanks. That’s not what I have in mind.”

“I know it isn’t. But you came here, to me, because you know we share a common purpose.”

“I came here because you seem to know more about what’s going on than the Greenwood cops do.”

“The cops here are a joke. They’re nothing.”

“The guy I spoke to seemed competent enough.”

“If they were competent, they wouldn’t swallow these phony suicides whole.”

“They’re not all phony. One of them was a guy who shot his wife and kids — and then himself, in front of a cop.”

“Fine. He’s the one suicide Greenwood is statistically allowed. What about the other four?”

He looked at her. Nodded. Sipped his tea. It was still warm.

“Okay, then,” he said. “You still have to explain some things. What was Mary Beth doing, where Kemco was concerned, that could’ve gotten her killed?”

“Maybe she stumbled onto something.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What aren’t you telling me?”

Boone got up and began walking around the braided rug, pacing, as she explained.

“You’ve got to understand,” she said. “The book I’m doing deals with a lot of things. Agent Orange, for one. I’ve talked to dozens of Vietnam vets who came in contact with it, corresponded with another twenty or twenty-five. But I haven’t come up with anything new, really... much of what I have on Agent Orange is secondary source material. You’re a journalism student, Crane, I don’t have to tell you that firsthand, primary source material would carry more weight.”