Sadie's Mountain (16 page)

“I know you ain’t been with no one else. It had to be that way so I could be with you all these years, in yer mind. You just didn’t know it was me yer supposed ta’ be with. I been waitin’ fer my chance again. Always knew where you was. I kept track ‘a ya. Looks like you’re back in my territory. I’ll be comin’ to take what’s mine.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Why you always fightin’? That’s why you got hurt. But if that’s the way it has ta be. I can take care a’ that fer you,” he says, softly but completely clear. “I’d rather you was dead than with him.”

I take the last bit of coffee hovering at the bottom of my cup into my mouth. It’s sour and sweet at the same time—kind of like right now.

I’m not scared of him for the first time since he took my old life away from me in that shed. I can almost picture the rope he’s just tied around his neck with his own tongue.

 I casually toss the cup into the trash. Run my fingers through my hair, turn to him, and with fervent charm, I deliver the line I’ve let take refuge in my brain for ten and a half years.

“Good boy,” I say, and walk away.

Chapter Thirteen—Hawk’s Nest

As my feet propel me forward, I feel a rush of fear, then a wave of astonishment, then a rumbling of adrenaline. It’s as if I can feel his eyes stabbing into my back like hot lasers. I find my seat and plop down clumsily and then try to straighten myself without making a scene. I feel hot all over. I feel dizzy and euphoric.

I want to check my phone so I can make sure I got all of what he said. It feels hot pressed up against my stomach as if it’s begging to be dealt with right away. I need to give it a minute or he’ll know what I did and try to take my phone away from me, or worse.

I don’t want to go to the bathroom to check because it’s not safe in there. He could follow me.  My eyes dart over to him and he’s looking at Dillon.
Oh! Dillon is talking
. I forgot.

“Thank you, folks, for inviting me to come out and talk to you. Does anyone have any questions?”

“So, how long ‘til we can use this algae you’ve been makin’ for fuel?” asks a man sporting a long beard whose sitting up near the front row.

“Well, facilities are capable, it doesn’t require we change any of our vehicles, as algae runs through engines just like petroleum based fuels. Gas stations won’t have any trouble offering it as an option. What’s holding us back is just the fact that we don’t have enough algae production plants as of yet,” Dillon explains.

“Well, I wanna try it!” yells a woman with obvious false teeth who sits two seats over from me. “Is it cheaper?”

“I think it will be, since we’ll be making it ourselves and won’t have to drill for it,” explains Dillon.

“That’s nice an’ all, but what I’m worried about,” says a middle aged man near the middle row wearing a deep blue sweater, “is flash flooding if any of the old abandoned mines or tunnels in the area, like the Hawk’s Nest are breached. I mean, has anybody thought about that?”

“I can’t speak to that,” Dillon apologizes. He looks to the woman who announced him.

She stands up. “Yes, sir, it is possible that there could be some old mines that are capable of caving. The company would be required to do all in their power to avoid...”

“But you can’t promise us nothin’, can you?”

She looks stunned. “No, sir, I cannot.”

The crowd begins to rumble again.

 “What about if the blasting will send clouds a’ dust into the air,” yells a woman standing at the back row. She’s got two little kids holding onto her thighs. “What’s that dust called? The one that’s real bad for us ta breathe?”

“Silica-laden dust,” replies the announcer.

“Yeah, that one. What about that?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is very likely that some silica will be released during the blasting phase.”

“This is wrong!” she yells, as she grabs a hold of her children like a mother trying to brace them for an accident.

Dillon walks down the aisle toward me. I can’t help it that I’m relieved to be near him once again. As he sits down, I take in his scent. It makes me warm. When he’s near, I’m home.

“I told you people!” yells the old woman who earlier had screamed that her father had been killed by a chemical. “And that’s the one that killed him, silica. Chronic silicosis. You should’a seen him trying to breathe at the end. Worked so hard, he done come home covered in dust. It took him a year ta die. I was just a little girl back then. Makes me sick to my stomach.”

I grasp a hold of Dillon’s rigid arm and nuzzle it. His body is filled with tension. He’s looking at the woman who’s remembering about her father, but he puts his hand over mine as if to ask me not to move it away.

“Much shorter exposures at higher concentrations can result in a very deadly type of the disease called acute silicosis,” Dillon says. “This can happen after a single heavy dose or brief exposures to very high concentration of silica dust,” Dillon explains. “Children are especially susceptible to this type of exposure.”

“It can kill?” asks the mom holding her children for dear life.

“Yes, ma’am,” Dillon says.

The nice man with glasses on his nose who earlier had silenced the other man in the ‘Ansted Coal’ jacket stands up. “I think I speak on behalf of most of the people here tonight that the citizens of Ansted are opposed to the permit being issued for mountaintop coal mining. Can we put it to a vote?”

“Sir, this is not being voted on,” says the announcer.

“Nevertheless, we’re allowed to show our numbers in opposition, right?”

“Certainly, Reverend,” she replies.

“Well, then all of us who oppose the permit please raise your hand.”

I’m not surprised when almost every person in the room raises their hand. A photographer is taking pictures, the chirp of the flash like little bursts of lightening.

A tear falls down my cheek before I realize that I feel anything remotely close to the feelings that usually move me to tears. I raise my arm, too. Dillon’s is already up. Donnie’s is not.

“Thank you,” says the woman. And in a placating tone she adds, “We will keep this in mind as we make our final decision.” Her fake smile does not deceive me.

The crowd rumbles. It didn’t work on them either. She waves to them and makes her way off the podium. Dillon stands up with me in tow.

“How are you?” he asks.
I want to look at my phone.

“Fine,” I say, looking up into his eyes. They look like uncertainty.

“I’d like to talk to Revered Morris before we go,” he explains.

“Okay,” I say as he grasps my hand in his, where it feels like it should be for the rest of my life.

Dillon shakes the man’s hand. I knew he must have been a pastor. “Reverend Morris, I’d like you to meet Sadie Sparks, the author I was telling you about earlier.”

“Oh, yes,” he says, putting his hand out to shake mine. I smile and shake. I’ve really grown accustomed to this. I’m great at the meet and greet. “I hear you’re interested in helping our cause,” he says, kindly.

“Yes, sir. I am. I’d like to help as much as I can before I need to go back to California.” Dillon tenses as if he’s just remembered I would leave him again someday soon. “Have you heard of Hands Across the Sand?” I ask.

“Uh, no. I’m sorry. I haven’t,” he says. His eyebrows shoot up in the hopes that I’ve got some useful information.

“Well, this group met up all along the coast to protest off-shore drilling by grasping hands in unity. I mean, it didn’t stop anything from happening but it was great at getting publicity.”

“It didn’t stop it though,” he says, disappointed. He needs something real, not some show of opposition.

“No, you’re right. But what just occurred to me is that we could get enough people to go up to the blast site and create a human barrier so that they couldn’t detonate without actually killing someone. It might work,” I explain.

His eyes light up. “Yes, yes. This might actually work.”

Because I’m scared to death of Donnie, I’ve actually kept track of his whereabouts the entire time I’ve been talking, as if I’m plugged into him by an imaginary string. I notice that he’s talking conspiratorially with the man who’d yelled
“Don’t turn your lights on!”
to the woman with the father who died in the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Tragedy.

The man tries to hand Donnie a thick envelope from inside his jacket pocket. Donnie pushes it back and leans into the man’s ear. It looks like he’s in trouble. I don’t think anyone else just noticed.

I knew it!
He’s involved in this. He’s helping out the coal company. That man’s trying to pay Donnie off.

“Sadie,” Dillon says. I look at him and it’s clear that I’ve missed something.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He looks to his left where I’d been watching Donnie almost take a bribe and it looks like he realizes that I had been looking at his brother again. He shakes his head.
Please don’t put this together. I’ve got this.

“Reverend Morris was just asking if you would come to the meeting tomorrow night and tell the others about your idea.”

“Of course. No problem at all.” I nod at the Reverend and shake his hand before he excuses himself. I feel like I’m caught. I better quit watching Donnie or Dillon’s going to figure this out.

“Are you ready to go?” he asks. His eyebrows are furrowed. He does not look pleased. A man as smart as he is must be figuring all of this out. My only hope is that he’s in denial. People never want to realize the truth about their own family members.

“Yes, I’m exhausted.”

He takes me by the arm as we walk by Donnie. I swear he cuts across his neck with his finger so slyly that only I would notice. I squint my eyes.

What he doesn’t know is I’m the one holding the ‘knife’ this time.

Once in the car, it’s clear that Dillon is brooding. He’s not turning on the music like he usually does. Maybe he can’t think of a song that asks, ‘
Is my brother your rapist?’
He’s not talking to me. My phone feels like it’s growing wings and needs to fly into my hand to be checked to see if I captured that conversation.

When I get back to my momma’s house, I’m going to have to upload it to my computer and get it online somewhere so that it’s safe and cannot be destroyed.

“What were you and Donnie talking about?” Dillon asks. Oh crap!

“Mostly about my Momma being sick. He asked about my book and wanted to know when I was going back to California.”
Detour this conversation to me leaving instead?

“When are you going back?”

Phew, it worked.
“I’m going to help out with the mountain, but I’m going to have to go back at some point after Momma, you know.”

“Still,” he says, as if he needs time to understand.

“That’s where my life is, Dillon.”

“I’d just thought. I thought maybe, I don’t know,” he’s stumbling over his big huge heart.

“I can come back to visit.”
What would I do? Could I stay here if Donnie couldn’t hurt me anymore?
I can write from anywhere. I would just have to go back and forth for meetings about the movie. I just can’t fathom the idea of living here where Donnie will be able to stalk me, watch me, threaten me constantly. I don’t think he’ll ever just go away. But, the recording could be a game changer. There’s just too much to think about.

“It’s just, Sadie, I’m having trouble with the thought of dropping you off at your momma’s house, let alone seeing you get on a plane for who knows how long.”

“I know.”

He shifts in his seat and puts his left arm resting on the doorframe, his fist up to his mouth.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” he asks.

“What?” I blurt.

“Please, I don’t want to leave you alone. I have this uneasy feeling and I want to... I don’t know. I mean, I won’t try anything with you, Sadie. I promise.”

“We cannot do this, Dillon.”

“Sadie, would you tell me if something was wrong, if you weren’t okay?”

No
. “Yes,” I lie.
I’m protecting you this way.

“Something’s wrong. I know it. You always told me everything when we were kids. All you have to do is say the words. I can help you.” I hear his breath hitch in his throat. “Was he there?”

“No.” I concentrate on looking like I mean it.

“You don’t need to go stand by a cop all night to be safe. Let me help you.”

Oh, he thinks I was standing near Donnie to be safe from someone else. He knows my rapist was there, but I was right. He’s in denial. We’re pulling the car up the driveway making mincemeat of all the tiny pebbles under our path.

“Will you stop this if I let you stay?”

“You won’t tell me then?”

“I can’t.”
That’s being as honest as I can be.

His chin starts to tremble. His jaw is tight and his mouth in a thin line as he parks the car in front of the brown house that always wanted to be brighter.

“Then yes. I’ll stop asking if you let me stay with you and protect you.”

I won’t lie, I’ve wondered most of my life what it would feel like to lie down in my childhood bed with this man. I’d imagined him there many times in secret thoughts that went nowhere.