Dig Too Deep (13 page)

I look back at the men and see Peabody handing Hennequin an envelope. He opens it, and thumbs through it. Peabody smacks him on the arm and Hennequin slides the envelope into his jacket.

“Holy shit.” I look back at Dobber. “Is that really what it looks like?”

“Let's get out of here,” Dobber says.

But it's too late. Even as I sink down in my seat, Peabody looks around and sees Dobber's car. Whether he knows who it belongs to or can see us inside, I'm not sure. But he's coming this way.

“Dammit.” Dobber fumbles with the key.

“Stop!” I hiss. “What are you doing?”

“Getting us outta here.”

“If we run away, he'll know we saw that payoff.”

“We did see it!”

“But he doesn't know that.” Peabody's halfway across the parking lot now, with Hennequin a few steps behind. I'm thinking as fast as I can. Once he gets to the car, he'll know we're in here. How can we make him believe we weren't paying attention to them?

“Dobber,” I say. “Kiss me.”

Twenty-Three

Dobber's head turns so fast I think he might break his neck. “Huh?”

“Now.” I reach across the center console and pull him toward me. “Pretend we're making out.”

“Oh.” He leans toward me, puts one hand on the side of my face … and the other hand over my mouth. Then he kisses his hand.

I look up at him, thinking,
Really? Would it have killed you to have actually kissed me?
I try to pretend that feeling squirming around inside me isn't disappointment.

Dobber's eyes are wide-open, staring past me. Peabody must be almost to the car by now. I put my arm around his neck and whisper. “Have they seen us?”

“Yep.”

Someone knocks against the window. I jump so high I nearly hit my head on the roof. Dobber keeps his arm around me, but leans over to look up at Peabody.

“What?” Dobber yells.

Hennequin peers in at us, wrapped together, and says something quietly to Peabody. But Peabody shakes his head and keeps staring.

I can't tell what he's thinking. I mean, bribing a public official—that's prison time. And I'm a hundred percent sure Peabody doesn't want to go to prison. I'm wondering how far he'd go to keep us quiet.

“What's your problem?” I ask, rolling down the window. “Do you two get off sneaking around, watching people make out?”

Hennequin shakes his head, chins wobbling. “Oh for Pete's sake.”

Peabody stares through me. I search his eyes for some idea of what's going through his mind. But they're just empty, like the glass ones in a mannequin. There's no humanity in the man.

“Watch yourself, Miss Briscoe.” He smiles, lots of white teeth but no warmth. It's a jackal sneer.

I muster up my best impersonation of Ashleigh. “Is that a threat?”

He doesn't blink. “Only if you turn it into one.”

“I'll be sure not to do that then.” I roll up the window. My hands are shaking as they walk away.

“Dammit,” Dobber says. “You think he knows we saw?”

“I think he's worried we did.”

“That's just as bad.”

“If he thinks we saw his payoff, maybe we can bargain with him,” I say.

“Bargain? With Peabody?” Dobber snorts. “Ain't gonna happen.”

“So he'd rather go to jail than stop the MTR mining?”

“Naw, he'd rather shut us up than risk us telling the cops,” Dobber says. “Not that the cops'd do anything. They're in his pocket like ever'body else.”

We watch the men as they walk across the parking lot, still talking.

“I better go,” I say, pointing to Granny's car a few spaces down.

“Wait till Peabody leaves.”

“Why? You think he's going to follow me home?”

Dobber doesn't answer.

Peabody gets into his car and pulls out of the parking lot. I'm rattled. Having stared into the depths of Peabody's soul, or lack thereof, I know our situation is bad. I start playing out different scenarios in my head. All of them ending in suspicious car wrecks.

“We're in danger, aren't we?”

It's a while before Dobber answers. “Naw,” he says finally. “I reckon if somethin' happened to you and me after that meetin', it'd look pretty funny.”

“But there were only five people at the meeting,” I say.

Dobber grins. “Word spreads fast around here. You speaking out against the mine? That's gonna be all over town tomorrow.”

“Fantastic.” I can only imagine how that'll affect my popularity at school.

“It's good actually.”

“How so?”

“If we turn up dead, Peabody'll be a prime suspect.”

“Again. Fantastic.” But I see what he's getting at, and it does make sense in a morbid sort of way.

Dobber laughs and the sound of it relieves some of the tension. “Lotta folks put up with Peabody 'cause they have to. But I reckon most all of 'em would draw the line at him murdering kids.”

“Great. All we have to do to get people on our side is die. Brilliant plan.” The lights on the Kroger flip off, closing up for the night.

“I ain't saying that's the plan. I'm saying it'll keep Peabody from hurting us.”

“I hope you're right.” It wouldn't be hard for him to come after me. Granny and I, alone in a house with no front door lock, two miles from the nearest neighbor, and no weapons except our sharp wits. I doubt even Granny's sarcasm would hold up against some thug with a baseball bat. Or worse.

“So, what
is
our plan?” Dobber asks. “Can we go to the state?”

I sigh. “Who knows?” I explain what the lady at the EPA said about the maze of agencies and regulations we have to navigate just to figure out who to talk to. “And even if the EPA does have jurisdiction, it's unlikely they'll revoke Peabody's permit. They've only done that once in the history of forever.”

“Don't matter. Peabody don't live by the rules anyway,” Dobber says. “We ain't gonna stop him that way.”

I look over at him, lit only by the lights from the dash. “That's really quite deep. I didn't realize you were so smart.”

He glances at me and grins. “What? You thought I was a ignorant redneck just 'cause I don't speak Shakespeare-like English?”

I'm uncomfortable with how close to the truth that is.

“I get straight As,” he says. “I just don't go bragging on it.”

“I had no idea. Okay, brainiac. You come up with a plan, then. How do we get the mine shut down?”

“Illegally.”

“Illegally how?”

“I dunno. We need, like, a environmental group to come in and blow ever'thing up.”

My stomach lurches sideways. “God no.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing, just … nothing.”

“You got something against environmental people?”

“No,” I say. “Just bombers.”

“Right.” Dobber laughs. “How many bombers d'you know?”

“Just the one.” I'm not at all sure I want to tell this story. But I look at Dobber and think about his dad. It seems only fair that I finally come clean. “She gave birth to me.”

“Wait … Your
mom
?”

I nod in the darkness. “The woman
formerly
known as my mother.” I stare at the dark windows of the grocery store, take a deep breath, and tell him the three words I haven't said to anyone here. “She's in prison.”

He whistles quietly through his teeth. “Reckon we got somethin' else in common then.”

“Reckon so.”

“What'd she do?”

“One of her millions of political protests went wrong.” I repeat the basic gist of what she told me. “Somehow their
controlled explosion
turned into a car bomb that injured five people.”

“That sounds like a accident.”

“Well, maybe. But why'd they use explosives to begin with? Why couldn't they just tell their side of the story? Petition the government. Write letters.” I stop short of mentioning flyers. “Why was she there in the first place? Why wasn't she home with her daughter, acting like a mother for once in her freaking life?” I'm embarrassed by how whiny my voice is, but I can't seem to rein it in.

Dobber's quiet for a few seconds after my rant. “I see.”

“See
what
?” I snap. “What, Dobber? What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just … I know what that's like.”

That stops me in my tracks. Of course he knows. Complaining about my mom to Dobber is like complaining about being poor to Mother Teresa. “Crap. I'm sorry.”

“Naw, I get it. It sucks. Sucks donkey balls.” He plays with the loose cording on the steering wheel, wrapping it around and around, trying to tuck it into place. “He was a awesome dad. Before …”

I try to imagine Mr. Dobber cleaned up. “I heard he used to coach baseball.”

“Yeah. I used to watch him play and I'd think,
When I grow up, I'ma be just like him
. But then Peabody fired him. He couldn't get a job. Found out he had cancer.”

I want to ask
why
Peabody fired him, but the timing isn't right. “I'm sorry.”

“Docs gave him some medicine to deal with the pain, but it didn't work so good. So he started selling his pain meds to pay for meth.” Dobber's hands are quiet now, resting on the steering wheel. “I hate it, but there ain't much I can do. It's a big ole mess.”

Yep. Another mess caused by Robert Peabody. I want to make him pay. For Granny. For the Dobbers. For everybody.

“Maybe your mama can help us,” he says. “I ain't against blowing something up. So long as it hurts Peabody.”

“
What
?” I back away, into the door. “No way!”

“He deserves it, Liberty. Look what he's doing to ever'body. Look what he's done to your granny.”

“Yeah, but …” I stammer, trying to put the revulsion roiling in my gut into words. “I wouldn't ask that woman for anything. Not for advice, not for help, nothing. And in case you didn't hear me, she's in
prison
for what you're proposing. Her choices were wrong. She's got no moral compass. She's a waste of skin, frankly.”

“Ouch.”

I reach for the door handle. “She deserves that, trust me.”

“Why? 'Cause she cares about stuff? 'Cause she gets riled up about stuff?” He shrugs. “That don't sound so bad. Kinda sounds like you.”

Twenty-Four

I'm lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, while all the things I wish I'd said at the meeting swim through my brain—along with all the things I wish I
hadn't
said to Dobber. After he told me MFM sounded a lot like me, I called him every bad name I knew plus a few I made up on the spot, like brainless wormhole. And fetid zombie carcass. And poop clown.

Dobber was pretty pissed off when he drove away, which I feel bad about. I'll have to apologize tomorrow at school, which is actually today, since it's 4:00 a.m. I stare at the clock ticking off numbers, ticking off minutes of my life. Of Granny's life. One of these could be her final minute, and I wouldn't even know. I wouldn't know my life had changed until I woke up in a different one.

At some point, I doze off. In my dream, I'm sitting on Tanner's Peak with Granny, watching the sunset. It's almost summer, and the honeysuckle is blooming in the thickets around us.

“I do truly love that smell,” Granny says. “Your granddad used to make me a wreath of honeysuckle ever' year for our anniversary. It never lasted more'n a couple hours, but it surely smelled nice.”

Behind us, I hear a motor of some kind, a car or a machine, I can't tell. And then the dogs are barking. I keep trying to shush them, but they won't be quiet, and I realize that part isn't a dream. I sit up fast and look around in the gray morning light. All three are at the door, yapping like crazy. Not their normal, morning I-gotta-pee bark but a loud, somebody's-out-there kind of bark.

I run through the house and open the front door. The dogs take off around the house, still barking. The morning air is thick with mist, pressing the smoke from our chimney down into the holler. It's acrid and stings the inside of my nose, making my eyes water. Trying to see anything through the fog is impossible, so I stand on the porch and listen. Aside from the dogs, I hear a ticking sound coming from the side yard. I walk to that end of the porch, listening. It's more of a crackle, actually, and about the same time I recognize the sound, I see the orange glow through the haze.

The shed's on fire.

I climb over the railing, turn on the hose and drag it as far as it will reach, my splinted finger hindering the whole process. Once I get close though, I realize it's too late. The structure is completely engulfed in flames. The roof caves in and showers of sparks fly out, sizzling when they hit the wet ground. Something inside explodes, the gas for the lawn mower probably, and I back up fast, not sure what else Granny might have stored inside.

Staring into the flames, I recognize this for what it is. A warning. This time, it was the shed. Next time, it could be the barn. Or the house. Keeping my mouth shut is payment for not waking up in an inferno.

“Fuck you, Peabody.” It'll take a lot more than this to shut me up.

The flames are lower now, and my bare feet are turning to ice in the cold mud. There's not much left of the shed so I go inside to call the police. The same police who, according to Dobber, are owned by the person who set the fire.

This should be interesting.

It takes the cops about thirty minutes to show up. They ask what happened, if I heard anything unusual, if I'm fighting with any of my friends.

“Robert Peabody,” I say. “Not that he's a friend.”

The older police officer shakes his head and wanders down the driveway, where the firemen are deciding whether to risk their truck on the muddy drive.

The younger cop pauses in his note taking. “You're the girl who stirred up all the trouble at the county meeting last night, aren't ya?”

News travels fast. “I presented some statistics. That's all.”

The cop, who can't be more than a few years older than me, gives me a disapproving frown. “I heard you claimed the mine was poisoning people's water.”

It would be pointless to get into an argument with this guy, so I just shrug. “It's happened at a lot of other MTR mines.”

“Well, it ain't happening here,” he says. “People need those mine jobs.”

The complete lack of logic in his argument pisses me off. “What if it is happening here? What if the mine's giving people cancer?”

“It ain't.”

“How can you be sure?”

“There's all kinds of regulations on that mine.”

“Really?” I've been researching that for weeks, trying to figure out how the EPA keeps tabs on what the mines are doing. So I play along. “What kind of regulations?”

“They gotta send in samples and reports to the EPA all the time.”

“Samples of what?”

“The containment pond. Water from creeks downstream. All kinds of stuff.”

“How do you know so much?”

“My brother works in the mine office,” he says. “Trust me. If they weren't following the rules, they'd get shut down fast.”

“I guess you're right,” I say. But what I'm really thinking is,
How's Peabody getting clean results for all those samples? Bribes? Threats?

“Listen, I don't know who did this.” Officer Smiley Face glances over at the smoldering black posts sticking out of the ground. “But you ain't making yourself any friends by bad-mouthing the mine. You get me?”

Oh, I get it all right. “Yes, Officer.”

He hands me his card that says Stuey Hanford. I think Stuey's a pretty ridiculous name for a cop.

“If you have any other trouble, you let us know.”

“Right.” Because you've been so successful at tracking down today's bad guy.

Since the blaze is basically out, the firemen decide against risking the driveway. The police drive off down the road, and Granny and I are alone on the porch with the dogs. Around us, we have eleven acres of forest and the knowledge that Robert Peabody's angry enough at me to burn our buildings. The phrase “out of the frying pan and into the fire” seems creepily apropos.