Who by Fire (29 page)

Some laughed; others didn’t. Looking at her neighbours, Ella knew which ones would never back the lawsuit. Ones too tight with money; others who would never say a negative word about anyone in power. It was an old-country thing, a fear of soldiers coming in the night and setting fire to your house and barn. Coming to this meeting was about all they could bear. Going to court, being mentioned in the newspapers—not a chance.

But, in this look around the room, she saw something else that caused a cold prickling on her skin. After all these years of believing Tom was chasing his tail, she was suddenly not sure. Several faces in the room had a helpless look, the look you get when you are dragged off your moorings and set afloat. Husbands and wives were facing each other, having silent arguments.

Out of the eleven couples, five seemed to be in that condition. If ten people went for it, plus Bertha and Tom, that would be enough. It sent Ella scrambling in her own mind to think what she would do, how she would think and act—whether or not she really wanted to punish the company.

And money. Whatever Geoff Purcell said about money, the idea that the suit might happen gave Ella a worried feeling. A sum like a thousand dollars might not be much to Purcell, but it was a fortune to them. And she knew Tom would be willing to spend more than she was.

Purcell talked on, something now about a killer fog in Belgium in 1930. Ella started to hear the creaking of folding chairs. She tried to get Tom’s attention, but he was riveted to the lawyer, listening to every word.

It was Billy, finally, who saw her waving. She mimed drinking coffee and pointed at his dad. Billy pulled Tom’s sleeve and whispered,
and Ella started for the kitchen. But when Tom stood up, interrupting Purcell to thank him, Purcell interrupted back, said he had one more thing to say.

“Thing is, folks, though Tom Ryder has suggested you might do me the honour of asking me to represent you if you go up against Aladdin Oil—”

Tom and Bertha clapped. Purcell signalled them to stop.

“No, no, please. The thing is, friends, there is no possibility of that. Frankly,” he chuckled, “I can’t afford another pollution suit like Dry Fork.”

Ella came back and stood behind the chairs. There was a terrible silence in the room. The couples that Ella had seen coming around were sour faced now. Tom had a red stripe across his cheekbones.

“I’m sorry if that’s unwelcome news. But something more promising is that Ross Beattie is here tonight. Ross is a brilliant young lawyer. His marks out of law school are some of the highest I’ve ever seen. Ross was admitted to the bar a couple of years ago, and he has a very strong interest in pollution law. I asked Ross to come with me tonight and speak to you.”

The young man stood up and talked. Everyone listened, but it meant nothing, Ella knew. It was not their way to invest money in a man this young. The true sign of what a failure the evening had been was that half the people did not stay for coffee. Some even left the free copies of
Silent Spring
on their chairs.

Tom was not a calm man but sleep usually came to him quickly. It was odd to hear him silent. Maybe she was imagining it, but she thought she could feel tension and anger pulsing out of him.

“You awake, Ella?” he asked after a long time, maybe an hour.

“I’m sorry, Tom. I know you had your hopes up,” she said.

But in an excited voice, he said, “I’ve been thinking about tonight.
Remember Geoff saying the hardest part was knowing how the sulphur plant worked?”

Ella felt a grab of irritation that Tom called him Geoff. Pathetic to assume that he and the lawyer were friends—after Purcell had turned him down flat in front of their neighbours.

“I was thinking about that letter you got from the engineer,” Tom said.

“What are you talking about?”

“That letter Lance Evert wrote you. He said things about how our plant worked. About the problems they had while he was here, and how things were done better where he went afterwards.” Tom rolled over. She felt his breath on her face.

She wanted to knock this thing out of the air before Tom could say more.

“What if you were to write Evert back and ask him questions? Things about sulphur plants. Get him to go into detail. The kinds of things Geoff wants to know and can’t find out.”

“Mr. Purcell said he wouldn’t help us. That wasn’t about information. That was about money. He can’t afford us, is what he said. A letter from Lance Evert would serve no purpose.”

Tom moved again. He’d lifted himself onto an elbow.

“It would, though. Geoff is close to going to court but doesn’t have an expert. If he had an expert, the folks down at Dry Fork could win. What if I was to say to him, we might be able to help you with your expert, if you change your mind about representing us? It would be a trade.”

“No,” she said.

“No to what?”

“To all of this. To your horse-trading foolishness. Just because Lance wrote us a letter years ago doesn’t mean he’d go to court against a sulphur plant.”

“Let’s get something straight, once and for all. Lance Evert didn’t write
us
a letter. He wrote
you
a letter. I think he might go to court for Dry Fork, and for us, if you asked him. Even if he wasn’t willing to speak for us in court, we would still have any letters he wrote to you. Inside information.”

“That’s dishonest.”

“There’s not much fair or honest in this situation, is there?”

“I can’t do what you’re asking.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“Who’s us, anyway? Dry Fork? Where we don’t even live?”

“No. It’s your husband and family. Help us. Be loyal to us.”

She was suddenly as angry as she’d ever been. “I
am
loyal! If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

She turned her back, clung to the bed’s edge. She heard nothing but the pulse in her temple tacking against the hard pillow.

Waddens Lake

BILL STAYED IN
the Chateau Borealis for the first three nights after Donna’s visit. In the middle of the third night, he was awakened by a heavy thud. The metal hangers in his closet jangled. The clock read 1:04 a.m. There were shouts in the hallway.

“What the fuck?”

“Earthquake, man!”

Bill had been in Chiapas in 1976 when, across the border, an earthquake destroyed Guatemala City. The hotel bed under him had bobbed and danced like a boat in a wild sea. This was no earthquake.

He got up and stood listening. Cold needles from the electrical outlet sprayed against his bare ankles. He threw on his full winter battle gear, was twisting open the lock on his door when, behind him, his cell phone vibrated on the dresser.

“I just got a call from the plant.” Theo Houle.

“I’m at Borealis. It woke me up.”

“I’m in Calgary, waiting for a driver to take me to the airport.”

“What did they tell you?”

“Don Kruger says the hydrotreater blew up. That doesn’t sound right. It must have been a leak. Vapour cloud, maybe.”

“Was anyone in the unit?”

Houle blew on his phone. “Somebody outside was knocked off a catwalk. Broke his shoulder. An insulation maintenance crew was scheduled in the hydrotreater unit. It’s too dangerous to go in and see. You’ll be there soon, right?”

“Leaving now.”

“Kruger’s in the control room. Guide him through.”

Bill dropped the cell into his pocket. In the passage to the front door, crazy exchanges ricocheted off walls. Men as white as mushrooms stood outside their doors. Tattoos, fancy gaunchies.

Insulating maintenance, Bill thought. Johnny Bertram.

Beside the road to the upgrader, the haloed lights of Waddens Village bounced across the lake ice. A slight wind shifted snow snakes on the road. Ahead, the treetops were visible against a nimbus of yellow.

At the main gate, he could see the thrashing flames. Vehicles with emergency flashers bore down on him, and he pulled to the side to wait. First came a fire truck, then an RCMP cruiser, its LEDs stabbing. By their extra light, he saw men lining the outside of the fence. Somebody was marching past them with a clipboard in his mitts. Bill couldn’t hear above the sirens but imagined the guy yelling names. Something about the gate was strange. Only half of it was standing. The other half lay twisted in the ditch.

Someone in a snowsuit and traffic vest crossed the road to him. A flashlight beam bored through the windshield into his eyes. Bill buzzed down the window and held up his ID card. Inside the hood was a woman’s face. She looked angry, but when her flashlight hit the card, her expression melted.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Pretty bad.”

“There’s a guy hurt, right?”

“Knocked off a scaffold. Ambulance took him to Mac.”

“Anything about an insulating crew?”

“That, I don’t know.”

“I better get parked.”

“Your unit and parking lot are off limits.” She pointed to some vehicles with their grilles to the chain-link. “I’ll meet you there.”

Bill parked at the end of the line, groped on the floor for his hard hat.

“Don’t put it on yet,” she said. He’d opened the door and she was standing there, waggling an air mask.

Bill got out of the truck and waited while she straightened the straps.

“Is evacuation complete?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s a mess. Only the upgrader personnel were supposed to evacuate but some of the contract bosses told their crews to go. Everybody came to the gate at once, and I was supposed to stop them. I got a call from my boss to take down names and check inside.”

“Contraband check? You’re kidding.”

“That’s what they asked for. I did it while the other guy took names and swung the gate. Everybody was so pissed off. One guy got out of his truck and yelled right in my face. I told him to get back in. He called me a cunt. He was the one who drove the gate down. Bunch of trucks went through after him.”

“Sort of screws your count. Is Don Kruger still in the control room?”

“Follow the ribbons.”

The lens of his mask was gletzed, as if a kid had played truck with it in a sandbox. He walked toward the flashing lights. The fire truck was hooking into a hydrant. A flat hose started to fill. Water python. When the spray hit the end and launched, the men holding the nozzle fell backward. The climbing water churned geysers of
steam and smoke. Wherever water hit the cement, it turned instantly to ice. Scattered around were bits of insulation, burned back to glass. He pictured Johnny Bertram. Elmo, Shirley’s skinny son.

He kept moving toward the control room, aiming for a convergence of yellow fluorescent tape. Gid Couture, festooned with masks, appeared out of one drape of smoke and disappeared into another.

A fresh explosion whacked Bill’s ears and the murk became total. Solid flecks were hitting his mask.

A flashlight came burrowing. Another big man, not Gid, pushed Bill in the chest, blocked him backward. The light bored in through the lens.

“Ah shit. Sorry, Mr. Ryder.” Bill felt himself being turned around, then a guiding push. The control room door appeared. Bill imagined bodies on the checkerboard tiles, faces mashed into keyboards.

In the bright room, men sat before the banks of computer screens and others stood behind them. Marion was also there, taking sniffer readings in the corners. When Bill pulled his mask off, Henry Shields was looking at him. Bill took a step toward Don Kruger. Kruger’s skin was lumpy with old acne. He regarded Bill coldly. Most screens were solid blue. A couple had messages in capital letters explaining that nothing means nothing. The hydrotreater screen was dead.

On his own unit’s readout, some lines wiggled faintly, dying sperm under a microscope. Everything to do with sulphur,
H
₂
S
, and hydrogen was sending distress messages. NO FEED.

He looked at Henry.

“I got most of it,” he said.

Bill rolled up a chair and poked some keys. Most of the upgrader was down, the rest shutting down. Henry had done their unit except for small things that Bill pulled the pin on now. He tried to
remember who else was working. He saw Clayton, stabbing keys on his smartphone.

“Don’t text me, Clayton. I’m here.”

Bill caught Kruger’s eye. “Have the government guys arrived yet?”

“Two. They’ve given us a stop-work order. I think we could keep one train going but they’re not interested.”

“What about the insulation crew in the unit?”

The change on Kruger’s face was slight, a sort of drawing room response, as though Bill were forcing him toward an indelicacy.

“No way to know,” he said. “Camera in the hydrotreater unit kakked when it blew. I’m not sending anyone in there till it cools. Government guys can go in if they want.”

“How big an explosion?”

“Blew off the walls if that tells you something. The guy who got hurt was outside on a catwalk. Big sheet came flying. Smashed up his shoulder when he landed. Paramedics took him. Something else blew a minute ago. I’m trying to find out what.”

“Did the insulation crew sign in at the gate?”

“There was a fuck-up. Gate guy was sleeping. Something was written in his book while he was dozing but nobody can read it. Suggests someone’s in here and we don’t know who. Could be the insulation guys.”