Max Collins - Midnight Haul

“Go back to Iowa. You can take your cause with you, if you want. Go to Charles City, Iowa. That wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

“Charles City?”

“Familiar with it?”

“I have an aunt living there.”

“Charles City. That’s where a small pharmaceuticals manufacturer dumped its wastes for years, into a landfill that for some time’s been leaching out arsenic, benzene and forty or fifty other poisons into the Cedar River. Know it?”

“My parents have a cottage on the Cedar River.”

“That’s nice. They’ll have a good view of the water source for eastern Iowa getting contaminated. Nothing much is being done to stop it: that small pharmaceuticals company doesn’t have the fifty million or so it’ll take to fix. You want to help fight this fight? Go home. Fight it there. I’ll work on New Jersey, thanks.”

“They killed Mary Beth. They all but killed Boone. They tried to kill me.”

“They. Who the hell is ‘they’? Kemco? You’re wrong, Crane. Kemco’s negligent, and has been for years, and if we can’t make ’em clean up their act, we’ll shut ’em down, eventually, but they aren’t going around faking suicides. It’s silly.”

Crane made fists out of his bandaged hands. “They tried to kill me!”

Hart sighed, patiently. “Who?”

“Kemco, goddamnit!”

“Specifically, who?”

“Two truckers. The ones Boone and I saw.”

“Could you describe them to the police?”

“They... had masks.”

“Would you recognize them again?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. No.”

“Did you ever consider the truckers may have done this on their own initiative?”

“What? Why?”

“You and Boone took photographs of them, didn’t you? In the act of dumping waste illegally?”

“Yes...”

“Well? There’s your answer.”

“Don’t be an asshole! This is all related; can’t you see? The suicides. The midnight dumping. Burning Boone’s manuscript. What happened to me last night. The landfills the school and playground are on. Hart, you have got to get those landfills checked! They’re poisoning that town! Take some soil samples. Do something!”

Hart stood. “I promised Lt. Dean of the Princeton P.D. I’d call him, when you came around. You can give him your statement. It’s best it be on the official record. Then, if the doctors’ll let you go, I’ll put you on a bus back to Greenwood.”

“Why won’t you listen? Why won’t anyone listen?”

Hart shook his head and left the room.

In the bed behind the plastic curtain, an old person was moaning.

Crane closed his eyes.

When he got back to his motel room, in Greenwood, the gun was on the bed.

He shut the door. Slipped out of the oversize green jacket they’d given him at the hospital, from their unclaimed lost and found, and walked over to the bed and sat down.

The gun lay in the middle of the bed.

He touched the barrel.

The last time he’d seen it, it had been in the hand of one of the truckers, the skinny one.

What did this mean? A warning? Had the truckers or somebody else from Kemco made a special trip to his room to leave the gun there as a reminder that they could, anytime they liked, reach out and bury him? Or had the truckers, after putting him in the drum in back of their pick-up, tossed the gun back in his room before they left last night?

If they were trying to scare him, it was pointless. After last night, he was past fear. He was past just about everything, except his feelings for Boone, and his feelings about Kemco.

He picked up the gun.

He checked to see if it was still loaded and it was.

He put the gun in his belt, grabbed the hospital’s jacket and left.

The night was overcast and chilly. There was still snow on the ground. It was only nine o’clock, but there were few cars on the street.

He knocked on Boone’s door.

Patrick answered.

“Crane?” He squinted behind the wire frames, as if not recognizing him.

Crane grabbed Patrick by the front of the shirt with both hands and dragged him off the porch and around to the side of the house and tossed him on the snowy ground against some bushes.

“Jesus Christ! Are you crazy? Crane, what’s...”

Crane got the gun out of his belt and pointed it at Patrick. Patrick’s mouth was open.

“They buried me.” Crane said.

“Crane... what...”

“I was dead. Do you want to be dead?”

“I don’t know what... I... Crane...”

“They buried me. They burned Boone’s book, shoved pills in her. They murdered Mary Beth.”

“Crane, you...”

“And you’re part of it.”

“I’m not... Crane... please...”

“You’ll be dead when they bury you. That’s something.”

“Don’t do this, Crane!”

“Why not?”

“ Daddy !”

Billy’s voice. From the porch.

Patrick looked at Crane.

Crane looked away.

“Daddy, where are you?”

“Stay where you are, Billy!” Patrick yelled. “Daddy will be there in a second.” He looked at Crane. “Won’t I, Crane?” Softly.

Crane lowered the gun.

Patrick got up. Dusted the snow off him. “I’m going inside to be with my son, now, Crane.”

Crane said nothing.

Patrick went.

Crane walked back to the motel room and sat on the bed. He sat there for two hours.

Then he got up and went into the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror: he was wearing a loose-fitting green jacket, a dirty T-shirt, dirty jeans; he was unshaven; his hands were bandaged; he had several bandages on his forehead. He took his clothes off and the bandages too and had a long hot bath.

Then he got out and sat naked on the edge of the bed and dialed the hospital in Fair View to see how Boone was. Today was the first day since he’d gotten back that he hadn’t been to see her. It took a while, but finally he got the doctor and the doctor said her condition was unchanged.

He dialed Roger Beatty, in Iowa City, but there was no answer.

He called his parents. It was an hour earlier back there. His father answered.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Son? It’s good to hear your voice. We’ve been so worried about you. Your mother is so worried...”

“Is she home?”

“No, bridge club. She should be home any time. She’ll be so upset she missed you. Son, please. You have to explain what this is all about. We’ve got your letter, here, saying you’ll be in touch with us, to explain, but...”

“Dad. Don’t worry about it.”

“I... don’t want to sound like a father, but we’re not very happy you dropped out of school. It’s your money, of course, and your life, but...”

“Dad. I can’t talk about that now. Don’t worry about that.”

“Well. We’re not very happy about it, son. Your mother’s not very happy.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t really call to talk about that, Dad. I just called to let you and Mom know I miss you both.”

“Well, we miss you, son. Can you give us an address? A phone number?”

“Tell Mom I love her, Dad. And I love you, too.”

He hung up.

He sat naked on the edge of the bed.

He was sitting there with the gun in his hand, finger on the trigger, looking down into the barrel, when somebody knocked on the door.

Patrick.

Standing in the doorway of the motel room in a light tan corduroy jacket that wasn’t warm enough for this weather, hands in jacket pockets, shivering, his wire frames fogging up.

“Can I come in, Crane?”

Crane was standing there in jeans he’d pulled on, his chest bare, the gun in one hand.

Patrick noticed the gun. “That... that isn’t necessary, is it, Crane?”