"It's all in a pile. There must've been some kind of a storm. Why isn't anyone out here to clean it up?"
Lauren thought a collapsed wall was a good cause for emergency and attention. She thought a fallen wall reason enough to summon work crews and equipment. But she found only silence, and the sound her closing car door echoed off the inner walls as she jumped from her vehicle. Lauren gaped at the disarray. Her knees trembled. There was no wall, no temporary tarp or curtain to block her view into that den where Lauren used to spend hours scraping crayons across coloring books. There was nothing to obscure her view into that living room where she could remember spending her earliest Christmas mornings grinning at the tree that stood in the corner. Nothing concealed what had been the housekeeper's private quarters, a chamber Lauren never dared intrude upon when she had been that young girl visiting her grandfather's home.
Large splotches of water-stain ruined the inner wallpaper of the dining room. The porcelain of bathroom toilets turned brown. The wooden floorboards were warped and faded. All those books in the library seemed ruined. Lauren's mind choked in confusion. The damage suggested that the inner chambers had been exposed to the elements for years. It all implied that the rear wall had collapsed long ago. Yet how could that be? Shirley Ross mentioned that her cousin Max was responsible for the estate's care. How could he allow his family's home to crumble? Why would Max allow the inner chambers of their grandfather's home go exposed to sun, wind and rain? What was the condition of Roscoe's mind? Was he helpless amid such disrepair? Lauren recalled how a glass of water left set on an end table without a coaster was enough to send him into rage when she was but a girl. What happened to Roscoe to allow his home to suffer such a condition?
Lauren looked upwards and stared into Roscoe Turner's third-story bedroom. The collapsed wall revealed the contents of her grandfather's closets and left a tattered suit fluttering in the breeze. She frowned as a tall mirror reflected the sunlight. She nearly dropped when her eyes drifted upon that bed. Strangely, the bedding appeared clean and bright, immune to the ravage that marred the rest of the home. Her eyes moved towards the headboard, and she gasped upon seeing the head resting upon a pillow.
"Grandpa Roscoe? Is that you?"
The head didn't move.
She raised her voice. "It's Lauren! It's Jackson and Kaitlyn's girl! What's happened to your home?"
Still, Roscoe didn't move.
Something was wrong. Was Roscoe ill? Had he been forced to live in such a collapsed home? Had the elements planted pneumonia in his lungs? Or had exposure to the sun brought on a heatstroke? Perhaps Grandfather Roscoe had fallen while navigating the rubble between his bathroom and the stairs, and if so, had infection set into a fractured hip that made it impossible for Roscoe to rise from his bed? No one deserved to live surrounded by such squalor - especially not Roscoe Turner, the man whose enterprise built Owensville.
Lauren started to scramble over a pile of bricks to pull herself into the kitchen when she heard the cellar door creak. She froze. What could possibly rise from the basement?
"Hang on, Grandpa Roscoe! Help is coming!"
A plump and pale face covered in a sparse beard rose from the cellar's dark, and Lauren immediately recognized the man. He wore a sunhat to shade him from the sun, with black socks pulled all the way to his knees. His thin legs ran into a tight pair of shorts that struggled to uphold the girth that hung from the man's waist. The sunhat cast a shadow over the man's face, but Lauren recognized the features well enough. She knew that fat chin. She knew that limp to the man's walk, how those shoulders slumped forward with each stride. She used to share afternoon, imaginary tea with the man who rose from Roscoe's cellar. It was her cousin Maximillian Turner who quickly approached her. Thirty-five years hadn't dulled any of the apprehension she always felt in her cousin's company. Max did nothing to deserve such unease, and Lauren didn't feel proud as she felt herself wish that someone else might've risen from that cellar to help her tend to Roscoe.
"Max! I'm afraid something's wrong with Roscoe!"
Max held up a hand, as if trying to calm his cousin. "You should've called me before you travelled out here, Lauren. I wish Shirley Ross hadn't traveled all the way to your father's visitation. I wish she would've remained as anchored in Owensville as the rest of her neighbors."
Lauren frowned. Max didn't seem at all alarmed.
"I'm sorry you're not excited to see me, Max, but this isn't the time for an awkward reunion. We've got to help Roscoe."
Max shook his head. "There's nothing we can do. There's been nothing to do for a very, very long time."
"Look at him up in that bed! His head hasn't moved since I arrived. I don't think he even hears me shouting."
"Roscoe can't hear anything at all."
Lauren swallowed. "What's wrong with him? What's wrong with this place?"
"Come with me and get out of this sun. Come with me to a place where I might better explain."
"I'm not going anywhere unless you tell me something."
Max drew a long, rattling breath, and the words that followed dripped from his mouth like oil.
"Roscoe's dead, and he's been dead for a very long time."
* * * * *
Chapter 5 - Consequences
The county seat of Smithton sat sixteen miles west of Owensville. That village's downtown was nearly as dark as Owensville's, and because substandard bricks had been employed in the construction of Smithton's shops, residents there refrained from walking on the sidewalk on windy days for fear of the collapse of another empty structure.
A troop of heavy, middle-aged men dressed in tan slacks and navy jackets nonetheless gathered on a windy day upon a downtown sidewalk to smile for the high school intern the county's weekly newspaper sent to snap their photograph. They stood before a refurbished, brick building, gleaming shovels in each of their hands serving as ceremonial emblems of construction, though the odds of any of those men having ever welded such a tool for anything more than planting shrubs or scooping up dog poop were very slim. The newspaper intern did her best to arrange those men by height before collecting their pictures on her smartphone.
It was a happy day for Smithton. A new downtown tenant, the first in nearly seven years if one didn't count the cigarette shops that opened and closed so regularly in Smithton, occupied that refurbished building, and those men grinned for hoping that fresh enterprise would attract further business, and so save Smithton's downtown from crumbling any further. And should that new enterprise fail to attract new commerce, those men would at least appreciate the convenience of being spared the hour and a half drive to the medical facilities another two counties further down the highway. All those men, with their faces flushed red for the ties constricting their necks, suffered from the ill health of that land, suffered from the blight that for years continued to seep across their county.
They celebrated the opening of a dialysis clinic. They made a festival of another health clinic arriving to a market brimming with disease. They smiled, thrilled that help came to care for them as something within the land slowly killed their kidneys. The facilities would filter and replenish their blood. The machines would give new energy to those men gripping ceremonial shovels. The tubes would help them live long enough to witness the day when their community rose from its grave. The tubes would help them live long enough to see the drive-in movie theater rebuilt on the town's outskirts, or see the car dealership return, or see another watchmaker open a jewelry store downtown. The family grocery markets would reopen. The hardware stores would return. Family restaurants would once again serve fried chicken and pecan pie. The medicine shop would once more sell fountain sodas. And, perhaps most importantly, the high school basketball team would again reign supreme during the holiday tournament season.
Those men hoped that day would come soon. None of them knew how long the dialysis machines would clean their blood. Though they smiled for that high school intern and her smartphone, they worried those machin
es would fail to prevent their skin from turning green long enough to see their community find another life.
If that clinic failed to save them, what else might? They could not combat the shadow that expanded across the land and tainted their blood. They could not fight the ghost that kept planting toxins in their country.
* * * * *
"This will only take a second, dear. You won't feel anything at all."
The small girl didn't flinch when the nurse employed by the county health office pricked her finger to draw blood, two drops of red the nurse splotched onto the test kit's white paper. The nurse would send that piece of paper to the lab located many miles away, no matter that the nurse feared she already knew what the results would show.
The small girl's mother whispered. "How long until we know?"
The nurse wrapped a smiley-face band-aide around the girl's finger before answering. "We'll get the results in a few days. We'll contact you if the test shows anything to worry about."
"And if I don't hear from your office?"
The nurse did her best not to sigh. The mothers always heard from the office.
"Then your girl doesn't show unhealthy levels of lead exposure, and there's absolutely nothing to fret about."
The nurse smiled. She wouldn't have been able to do so if it hadn't been for all her experience administering the lead tests all the boys and girls were required to take before attending preschool. She smiled, so that she didn't give that mother another reason to worry. Mothers in their county had too much to worry about when it came to raising children in a land so desolate and sick. Something tainted the county, some kind of poison from a source the nurse couldn't name. The nurse was sure the returning test results would force her to call that mother and confirm that her girl's blood was corrupted. The nurse knew she would have to once more explain the effects of such corruption - nervous system damage, cognitive impairment, shunted spinal development, even cruel cancers. The nurse would have to explain to another mother how their poisoned ground was changing their children - turning their skin pale, shunting the growth of their limbs, shortening their lifespans. The nurse hated knowing how she would again be forced to explain how the land doomed a mother's offspring. The nurse hated knowing she was powerless to fight something she couldn't see or name. She hated that she could do nothing more than gather blood and distribute brochures.
The nurse had drawn those two drops of blood from small fingers for too long, and so she could manage a smile instead of a sigh.
* * * * *
"I'm very sorry, Ms. Bourne, but it is what it is. I wish science was more compromising, but it sadly is not."
Alice Bourne fidgeted behind her desk, again wondering if she should've accepted the governor's appointment to represent her district in the state legislature. No one within the district that included the communities of Owensville and Smithton chose to run for the office, and thus Alice Bourne filled the role before finishing her final, five-page term paper to complete a degree in business administration. She believed a stint serving as a state legislature before the age of thirty would be a wonderful bullet point on her r?sum?. She certainly loved that photograph of herself shooting clay pigeons with a shotgun that provided her such great exposure on all the brochures mailed throughout her district. She loved dressing up and attending all the social functions. But Alice never expected to be constantly badgered. She never dreamed that so many people would disagree with her. She couldn't understand why it was so hard for so many of her constituents to live a wholesome, patriotic life. And sometimes late at night, when her resolve was at its weakest following a difficult day, Alice did wonder if she might've lacked the experience and wisdom required to occupy her post, like so many of those disgruntled guests to her office claimed. But then, she would take another peek at that picture of herself shooting clay pigeons and realize that she was, indeed, the best person to represent the countryside that included the communities of Owensville and Smithton.
Alice smiled and nodded at Humphrey Behrens who sat on the opposite side of her desk. She wondered why the man couldn't show her a little more respect by wearing an ironed shirt and a crisp tie whenever he visited her office. Humphrey came often enough, and he seemed to wear the same pair of wrinkled corduroys on each of his visits. The man always wore that battered, baseball cap and his unpolished work boots. The man always looked as if he came straight out of the field, like he didn't so much as stop to clean his hands following his day testing water and soil samples for the state's office of conservation. Alice believed Humphrey could've at least made an effort to look presentable if he cared as much for his cause as he claimed. She thought Humphrey Behrens might've at least trimmed his wild beard. Alice Bourne believed in first impressions, and impressions, more often than not, were only skin-deep.
Alice leaned forward. "I understand all about science, Mr. Behrens, but can we really say that the science involved here is established? I'm aware that there's much debate among the scientific community regarding this issue."
Humphrey nearly showed his teeth when he growled. "Ms. Bourne, I promise you that the science is very established. And I don't know who may have informed you to the contrary, but there's no debate at all within the local, scientific community about the situation facing this county. I've been tracking these numbers since you were in elementary school, and they're screaming a very clear message, regardless if you want to hear them. The tap water in many of your constituents' homes is flammable. Toxins continue to spread through the ground and into the water supply. If you won't think about the health of the residents in this county, then at least consider how these pollutants will decimate our agricultural industry if something isn't done."
Alice's eyes suddenly sparkled. "I'm a staunch supporter of our nation's farming families, Mr. Behrens. Believe me, my commitment to the ideals of our farming founders is unwavering."
Humphrey rolled his eyes. "Ms. Bourne, I haven't come here to listen to another political rally. I don't want to sit in this chair any more than you want me to. But I'm desperate. I have to get someone to listen. I have to get someone to take action before it's too late. Look, there's just no easy solution left anymore. I wish there was. But, Ms. Bourne, the consequences are only going to get worse the longer we sit on our hands."
"I'm sure you've worked hard to gather your numbers, but I must represent all my constituents. I cannot only consider the biological and environment sciences when making policy decisions."
"Ms. Bourne, everything depends on those biological and environmental sciences. Like it or not, science will not compromise. Don't just look at my numbers. Look at what's coming from the health department. Consider the spike in the number of school children in your district suffering the effects of all kinds of toxin poisoning."
Alice's eyes again sparkled. "I believe in school reform that holds teachers and schools accountable so that no student is allowed to fall through the cracks."
"My God, it's like talking to a mannequin."
Alice didn't like Humphrey. She deserved more of his respect. She possessed a college degree. She was a member of the rotary club. She attended church services each Sunday morning, and she always wore a flag pin on her jacket's lapel. Did Mr. Behrens take the time to have his picture taken with the women of the local quilting club? Did Mr. Behrens walk and wave in all the festival parades on all those hot and humid days of summer? Did Mr. Behrens bother at all to network? What did he do other than gather bottles of murky water and cartons of dirt?
"What would you have us do, Mr. Behrens?"
"Tear it down. All of it. Level the Turner glass factory and quarantine the pieces before it ruins the ground any further. Relocate the residents of Owensville before they turn any sicker."
Alice's jaw drop. "How much would that cost?"
"It will cost a fortune," Humphrey didn't wink, "but there are state and federal resources that can help in that kind of clean up effort. But we need you on board to pursue then, Ms. Bourne."
r /> Alice shook her head. "But I'm firmly opposed to further spending of tax dollars. Too much is spent as it is, and I won't place any additional tax burden on my constituents. Think about the debt our nation is accumulating. Think about what we're leaving behind for our children."
"That is exactly what I'm thinking about," Humphrey snarled.
Alice stood from her desk. "But you're talking about people's homes. You're talking about an entire community. I've spoken to those residents of Owensville. They're proud of their old glass factory. To you, that building might only be a kind of empty, poisonous shell. But it means so much more to them. It reminds them of a time when they worked. It reminds them of a proud time, a time I think the rest of us could learn from. I can't approve any plan to simply tear it all down. Excuse me, but I must get going if I want to make the pork sandwich fundraiser being thrown to afford new shoulder pads for the high school football program."
Alice found herself dwelling on Mr. Behrens' visit as she drove to the gymnasium in Smithton to attend that fundraiser. The gym was very hot on that late, summer afternoon, and Alice felt her skin flush in the humidity as she thought about how Mr. Behrens had slammed closed her office door on his way out. A person had every right to feel strongly about his convictions, but no one had the right to treat her with such a temper. Why were there always those who simply couldn't understand the proper way to do things? Why couldn't Mr. Behrens realize how his proposal would be such a terrible intrusion upon the rights of Owensville's residents? How could Mr. Behrens not respect the Turner family's right to do whatever they wished with the glass factory they built with their sacrifice? Perhaps, Alice thought, the surviving Turners, wherever they may be, might be more encouraged to bring life back to that old glass factory if men like Mr. Behrens were not always placing such burdens upon their efforts. Perhaps they might build new jobs if men like Mr. Behrens were not always taxing their earnings. How could Mr. Behrens fail to appreciate what he owed to entrepreneurs like Mr. Turner, whose toil provided their country with heart?