Damn his failing memory. He’d have Ruthie look it up next morning. No, this was Friday. He’d ask her about it Monday. She’d had plenty of time to go through the files. And there was that tantalizing something about Gwen Ferrier. She reminded him of something, and there was a nagging feeling of curiosity there, as if it were something interesting. Well, Monday, then. He’d ask her for sure, on Monday. He’d even write it down. Couldn’t do it driving, although he kept a notebook in his coat pocket. Next stoplight. He’d write it down.
At the next stoplight he reached for the notebook just as a car made an illegal left turn and demolished two expensive fenders. By the time the excitement was over, he’d forgotten his notebook.
For Jack Flores, things were getting to be too much. First of all, it was hot. The early August temperature readings were setting all-time records for the state, and with the humidity, it was hell on Flores. He was used to the baking heat of the desert, where the sweat evaporated as fast as it formed. Here, it was like living in a fucking steam bath. Then you walked into the main construction office and the air conditioning hit you and dried the sweat and you shivered. He was reading the first draft of a report by the company’s tame egghead, a youthful Ph.D. in Oceanography who had come in answer to an ad. Jack’s immediate superior was seated across the desk, drinking a Coke and looking at Jack’s furrowed brow.
“The sonofabitch is selling us out,” Flores said, throwing the paper down onto the desk. “What are we paying him for, to give the nuts more ammunition against us?”
“It’s not all that bad, Jack,” the supervisor said.
“Bad enough.” He sighed, leaned back, and lit up a Lark. “Producing marsh, shit. What does that marsh produce besides marsh grass and mud?”
“We’re caught in the middle of a fad,” the supervisor said. “All of a sudden people are in love with every acre of salt marsh on the eastern seaboard. But I don’t think we have to worry. The new recommendations should handle all the federal boys’ objections. They want a change here.” He stabbed at a map of the canal route, indicating a salt-water creek. “They say we can’t run right down the creek line, that would be altering the natural flow of a navigable waterway or something.”
“Listen, you can’t get a rowboat up that creek except on high tide. And if we move over, we’re going to take that tobacco farm here.” He pointed.
“Actually, we’ll be better off. The engineers have come up with some new estimates,” the supervisor said. He smiled. “In fact, I was the one who told our tame scientist to suggest that the creek was worth saving.”
“Any particular reason?” Flores asked.
“When we move to the west, onto solid ground, we’re getting an anchor for the canal. If we come down the middle of that marsh, she’s going to be floating in the middle of a sea of mud. We’d have to go down thirty or fifty feet to anchor the dikes.”
“Well, actually, it won’t make much difference to me,” Flores said. “We’re not down to that point yet with the clearing. I can get the survey party out—”
“They’re already out.”
“Good.”
“Go ahead with it, Jack. The thirty day injunction is just a nuisance, that’s all. It should give you enough time to finish the clearing and get the diggers going. When we get the go ahead from the federal people, we can concentrate on the marsh.”
“Right.” Flores rose. He was already thinking ahead. He was halfway to the door when he was stopped.
“What’s this about losing four dozer pushers over on the island?”
Flores said, “Goddamn.” He turned. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Are you trying to cover up something, Jack?”
“Hell, no. I’m just trying to head something off. You know what a stupid bunch of shitheads construction bums are.”
“I heard a group discussing it,” the supervisor said. “I’m afraid you’ve got a legend going, whether you want it or not. The men are saying that something is happening to the operators over on Pine Tree Island.”
“Yeah,” Flores said. “They’re bugging out.”
“Are you sure, Jack? Four of them?”
“Hell, you don’t know these bums like I do. Cramer will probably be back. When he really goes on one, he’s good for two weeks and then he’s so fucking messed up he can’t work for another week. The first two were just drifters.” He sighed. He didn’t mention the kid. That one he couldn’t figure. The kid had had an opportunity to pick up a good, solid piece of extra cash with overtime, and he’d looked damned interested. Then he’d bugged out, after working late Friday and all day Saturday, without even turning in the time.
“What are you going to do about it?” the supervisor asked.
“Put two men on the machines tomorrow morning. We’re not pushed over there.”
“Do you think it would be a good idea to send a guard along?”
“Hell, no.”
“The men—”
“The men do what I tell them to do,” Flores said. “They know the country’s full of construction bums.”
“Jack, we’re in the red on this project as far as accidents are concerned.”
“Fights, stupidity.”
“I don’t think a man falling into the reactor hole was the result of a fight,” the supervisor said. “And it was stupid of that fellow to get under a fresh load of cement, all right, but the fact is, we’ve had too many fatalities already. This company has always been proud of its safety record. We’re able to get men with that record and I don’t want it ruined. And I didn’t like the way those men were talking about the four fellows who have disappeared from the Pine Tree clearing area. I think I’d feel better if you sent along a guard.”
“And admit that we think something might be fucked up over there?”
“What if we lose another man or two?”
Flores shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
“Not out on the site,” the supervisor said. “But if you like, you can say that I wanted the guard.”
“I could just tell them to work within sight of each other.”
“Do that. And tell the guard to stay close to both of them.”
Flores gave in. He was already wet with sweat by the time he drove back to the work shack and checked his boards. He made his choice, sent his notices, called security, and told them to detail a man to the Pine Tree site at seven o’clock. Then he said fuck all and drove over to check out the newly surveyed route for the canal cut.
14
Tommy Promer, aged thirteen, held front stage center. He’d kept his secret as long as it was possible, because Don had told him that they had a good thing going and there was no sense messing it up, even if she did keep asking them to send or bring friends.
You can only listen to guys brag for so long without opening up to tell them that even if some of them are older, they don’t know beans about it.
Don was off with a girl. Tommy had ridden his motor bike to the Leaning Pine Fishing Pier. The August night was perfect for sitting out on the end of the pier, in the glow of light from the last lamp post, listening to the ocean moving restlessly underneath, washing the barnacle-studded steel pilings as it pushed low swells toward the strand. Tommy liked to watch the waves from the backside. He spent a lot of hours on the pier, day and night, watching the waves and figuring them out so that the next time he was down there with his surfboard he could know which one to take and which ones to let ride under him. At night the waves looked sort of spooky. The lights of the pier glowed on them and made them look bigger than they were and they’d disappear into the darkness between lamp posts and reappear and then, near the strand, they would hump up and get steep on the front and then fall into the white of surf.