Radclyffe - Homestead

Most of the business was the usual affairs of a small town—what roads were on the docket to be resurfaced and which ones would have to wait until the next year, a proposal to ban the dumping of discarded oil and gas tanks and heavy machine parts in the local large-refuse area, another to enforce the long-ignored ordinance against butchering game on private property. The arguments flowed back and forth between those who opposed regulating what a person could do on their own land and those who insisted the practice was a health risk and some who just enjoyed a good squabble.

Finally everyone agreed to table the more contentious items and investigate what neighboring counties had done to resolve similar issues.

Tess listened with half an ear, knowing that nothing major would be decided and any changes would be small and not likely to substantially alter the way of life in the local community. No one really wanted anything to change, at least not the kind of change that might threaten the independence everyone prized. Sometimes progress was slower in coming, but most people valued the benefits of preserving what mattered most—the vitality of the way of life the community had known for hundreds of years. Everyone enjoyed a good gossip about who was doing what where and maybe with whom, but in the end, live and let live was more than an empty aphorism.

Finally, the Grange president, Sybil Worth, a widow who now ran the family franchise, rose and said, “I think it’s time we talked about the issue that I know a lot of you are here to discuss. That’s the drilling that’s about to go on around here. We’ve debated the pros and cons in the last few years, but until a thing is about to happen, that’s all it is—talk. Now we might need to make some decisions.”

Pete Townsend stood up. “I don’t think there’s much deciding that’s necessary. This drilling could endanger the livelihoods of most of the people in this room.” He looked around, his gaze lingering on Tess for a moment before moving on. “We need to stop them before they get started.”

“And how do you plan to do that, Pete?” Herb Brown, the owner of a big brush clearing business, called out from the back of the room. “Shoot ’em?”

“By any means necessary.”

“Well, I don’t think we all agree with that,” said Don Walsh, a dairyman from the eastern part of the county, standing up and facing Pete. “Some of us have made agreements with NorthAm. They’re willing to pay us good money for limited access on our land, and I for one think that the money they’re gonna bring into the community—and you can bet there’ll be a lot of it—is gonna be good for all of us.” He turned to Tess. “You’ve got a big spread right close to NorthAm’s main camp. They’ll be drilling near you or on your land, if you’ll let ’em. What do you think about it, Tess?”

She stood, the gaze of everyone in the room shifting to her as she rested both hands on the back of the wooden chair in front of her. She gazed around at her friends and neighbors before facing the town board and Grange president. Nothing like the looming advent of fracking had divided community sentiment since the move to reforest clear-cut pastureland and preserve some of the mountainous areas a century before. Whatever she said, she’d make some people angry.

“The most important thing to me is that my land stays clean and the water stays safe for my herd and my crops. Right now, I don’t know how to judge what the danger really is. I’m no chemist or geologist. But bringing the fuel company into our lives is about more than whether some people make money or whether the community benefits with new roads or if there’s a real danger to some of us that might not ever actually happen. We need to make smart decisions now so we don’t box ourselves into a corner in the future—for or against drilling.”

“Well, how do you expect to get that information?” Pete said, his tone and body language a challenge. “You sure as hell can’t expect NorthAm to provide it.”

“That’s not the case.” Tess tried to keep her anger from showing in her voice. If the discussion deteriorated into bickering, they’d get nowhere. “Clay…Clay Sutter, the head of the project, said her team can look at the water table and backflow projections and give me a risk assessment affecting my land. I imagine anyone else who wants to get—”

“And you trust her?” Pete scoffed. “Why in hell should you? Why do you expect Sutter to tell you the truth? All her and her company care about is getting what’s under the ground. She won’t care about what happens to those of us who have to stay here when NorthAm has its wells and she leaves for the next project.”

“I don’t think you can automatically assume that NorthAm, or the people who run it, don’t care about what happens here.” Tess wasn’t sure how she found herself arguing for Clay’s side of things, but she didn’t like being pushed into corners, and she didn’t like making decisions without all the facts. And she especially didn’t like the way Pete seemed to be singling out Clay, making her the face of the enemy. The decision came easily when she thought about what she wanted—the truth. “I’m going to let them run their tests on my land.”

“Well, you can help them out all you want,” Pete said, “but there’s no reason any of the rest of us have to believe what they say.”

“What I would suggest,” Clay said from the back of the room, “is that you also get an independent group to verify our findings.”

Every head in the room turned toward the back as Clay walked confidently down the aisle. Tess doubted anyone but her, and probably Ella, would know Clay was holding herself stiffly. Her gait never faltered and not a flicker of pain showed in her face. Clay smiled at Tess for an instant before stopping in front of the table and turning to face the room.

“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to talk to any of you before this. I’m Clay Sutter, and I’m in charge of the NorthAm project here. I know we’ve taken a lot of you by surprise, and I hope that I’ll be able to answer all your questions over the next few weeks.” She looked at Pete, nothing showing in her face. “Even yours.”

A few people laughed and Pete scowled. Tess slowly sat, watching the cool, confident, commanding woman slowly charm most of the people in the room with her candor and willingness to listen to their concerns. After spending days trying not to think about Clay, Tess finally admitted she wanted to know everything about her.

Facing the room full of mostly suspicious farmers, Clay resisted the urge to lean back against the table that sat on the edge of the low platform behind her. Couldn’t look tired this early in the game. She stood straight and fielded questions, ignoring the thinly veiled accusations of greed and dishonesty that underlay some of the comments. She answered what she could, admitted what she didn’t know, and offered solutions. And she made mental notes on which speakers were the most aggressive in challenging NorthAm’s drilling rights and practices. She couldn’t help wondering if the driver of the pickup truck was in the room.

After forty minutes, her patience was starting to thin, her head felt as if a platoon of machine gunners were trying to shoot their way out, and the fleeting glimpses of Tess she caught every time she looked in that direction were becoming more and more distracting. Tess always seemed to be looking at her, as if memorizing her face. As if she were a stranger who oddly fascinated her. She hated being someone Tess no longer knew, not that she could expect anything else. She’d broken promises, walked out of Tess’s life, and stayed away out of remorse and guilt. No wonder Tess didn’t want to meet her halfway.

“When are we going to know where you plan to dig?” a woman asked.

“I can’t give you specifics tonight,” Clay said, “because I don’t know yet. We’ve only just begun our on-site assessment, and that will take us at least a month. Much of what was done before was based on noninvasive geological surveys—radar, sonar, geothermal imaging. What we’ll be doing now is an intensive physical survey to decide where to set up our drilling rigs. Once we get our project center operational and all our permits and filings taken care of, we’ll collect core soil samples and run geochemical profiles, test the composition of gas effluents, and chart underground water flow. That will take some time, and the more of you who let us sample—”

“The more chance we might end up contaminating our own land or someone else’s,” Pete Townsend shot out.

“One thing I never do, Mr. Townsend, is provide facts before I’m very sure of what I’m saying. There’s no room for guesswork in my business.” Clay remembered him in the tavern when he’d had his hand on Tess, had loomed over her as if he’d been trying to intimidate her. Tess hadn’t backed away from him, but the tension around her eyes signaled she was uncomfortable. Clay didn’t like people who made Tess uncomfortable. She gazed at him steadily for a long moment until the room grew suddenly quiet. Men like him would see her directness as a challenge, and she wanted him to. If he planned on bothering Tess, she wanted him to remember her face. And it was time to send the rest of her message to everyone else in the room—she had come to do a job and she planned to do it. “I don’t make empty promises…and I don’t run from threats, empty or otherwise. I don’t ask for trouble, and drilling indiscriminately is the fastest way to run into it.” She kept her eyes on Townsend, whose mouth had curled into a snarl. “I don’t much like surprises. When I sink my drills, I already know what I’m going to find.”

She glanced around the room and saw less animosity and suspicion in the faces looking back than she had before she’d started talking. The decision to crash the meeting had been worth it, no matter how much the cost in pain. “I appreciate you letting me interrupt your meeting. I’ll leave my cards at the back of the room with my number. Any of you can reach me if you have questions or anything else you’d like to discuss.”