Silt, Denver Cereal Volume 8 (28 page)

Surprised, Heather blinked at Tink.

“
You’re sending me back!
Just say it. You’re sending me back!”

Tink grabbed Heather by the arms.

“
You made me go up to bed
so you can call them.”

“
Uh . . .”
Heather started.

“
I didn’t mean to do it. I
really didn’t. He was grabbing me and you saw the bruises on my
privates and . . .,” Tink said. “Don’t send me back.
Please. I’ll try harder. I’ll . . .”

“
I was going to make some
coffee,” Heather said.

“
Don’t lie to me,” Tink
said. “You’re going to call as soon as I’m upstairs.”

Heather held up the coffee filter in her
hand.

“
Coffee,” Heather
said.

“
You can’t have coffee!”
Tink said. “You’re just covering
up . . .”

“
Decaf. I’m making decaf,”
Heather said.

“
Oh,” Tink looked at
her.

While Tink watched, Heather got the beans
out of the cabinet and filled the grinder. She ground the beans and
put them in the coffee filter.

“
What are you going to do
when the coffee’s done?” Tink crossed her arms over her
chest.

“
Drink it,” Heather
said.

“
Oh.”

Tink turned on her heels and went upstairs.
She slammed the door to her room. Ivy groaned. Heather listened
until she heard Tink get in bed.

“
You get the child you
deserve,” Heather chuckled, and went to read her email.

~~~~~~~~

Thursday morning—6:59 a.m.

“
How was dinner?” Jacob
asked Aden.

He leaned against the seat of the restaurant
booth.

“
Dinner was food,” Aden
said. “After dinner was heaven. Thanks for the
suggestion.”

Aden waved Blane over to their booth.

“
What’s a friend for?”
Jacob smiled. “And the apartment?”

“
God, I love that place,”
Aden yawned.

“
Mmm,” Jacob
smiled.

“
Why do you look like the
Cheshire Cat?” Blane asked.

“
I had a date night with
Sandy,” Aden said.

Blane took Jacob’s coffee cup away from
him.

“
It’s decaf,” Jacob
reached for the cup. Blane took a drink.

“
It’s not,” Blane
said.

“
Ok, it’s not decaf,”
Jacob smiled. “But . . .”

Blane gave Aden a sly look, and Aden
laughed.

“
Any ideas why we’re
here?” Blane asked.

“
None worth sharing,”
Jacob said. “There’s Dad.”

Jacob stood up so that his father could see
him. Sam came over to their booth. The waitress appeared to take
their order.

“
What’s going on, Dad?”
Jacob asked.

“
You know I asked our site
managers to ask their employees and get back to me personally,” Sam
said.

“
I remember you fired a
bunch of site managers,” Jacob gave him an irritated
look.

“
Yeah, I guess that caused
a crunch,” Sam said. “But your
mother . . .”

He glanced at the men’s faces and
laughed.

“
Oh hell, they were
assholes,” Sam said. “You’re just irritated you didn’t get to fire
them yourselves.”

They laughed.

“
So, as the kids say,
here’s the word,” Sam said.

“
I don’t think anyone says
that anymore,” Jacob said.

Sam scowled at Jacob, and he shrugged.

“
I’m sorry Dad,” Jacob
said. “Too much coffee.”

“
Coffee or no, you’re
going to want to hear this,” Sam said. “The employees out at the
site are saying they’ve been approached by a couple other
contractors. They’ve been offered jobs.”

“
Doing what?” Aden
asked.

“
Their same job,” Sam
said. “That’s what’s crazy. They’ve offered our employees their
same job on the same project. They were told we’re going out of
business.”

“
Us?” Jacob looked at Aden
and at Blane. “Know anything about this?”

“
No,” Aden
said.

“
Nothing,” Blane
said.

“
Anyway, we’re meeting
with everyone in a couple days,” Sam said. “I just thought you
should know that people are pretty . . . mad, I
guess. They feel like we’re going to pull the rug out from under
them.”

“
Why wouldn’t they just
ask me?” Jacob asked.

“
That’s the thing,” Sam
said. “These other companies tell them they won’t hire them if they
talk to you about it.”

“
We could lose our entire
crew,” Aden said.

“
We could. The employees
said they asked their site managers, you know those guys I let go
of yesterday? You know what they said?” Sam looked from face to
face. “They told the employees to keep their mouths
shut.”

Jacob, Aden, and Blane were quiet as they
thought it through. The waitress bought their breakfast and they
started to eat.

“
You know what I think we
should do?” Jacob asked.

The men looked up from their plates at
him.

“
I still own around fifty
percent of the company,” Jacob said. “Val owns about fifteen. Dad,
how much do you own?”

“
About ten,” Sam
said.

“
Aden?”

“
Maybe two percent,” Aden
said.

“
Blane?”

“
About the same,” Blane
said.

“
So that’s enough, I
think,” Jacob said.

“
To do what?” Sam
asked.

“
I think we should pull
out of the job,” Jacob said. “Tell the state ‘Thanks, but no
thanks,’ we changed our minds. If we want to, we can tell them
about our concerns over fracking and the fault lines.”

“
And then what?” Aden
asked.

“
And then we build the
same job on my land,” Jacob said. “After I move those houses, of
course.”

“
What about the
employees?” Aden asked. “We’ve killed ourselves this year trying to
teach everyone how to run a company. We’ve sold them shares. If we
do that, we really are pulling the rug out from under
them.”

“
No we’re not,” Jacob
said. “We need to ask them what they want to do, but only after we
know what we can do.”

“
What?” Blane asked.
“You’re not making any sense.”

“
We send out our teams to
the other site, where the original city was planned,” Jacob said.
“We survey, map out, and get everything set. We can do that based
on our ownership of the company. When we have the information, we
can present it to the employees.”

Aden and Blane nodded. His father
scowled.

“
We don’t hide anything
from anyone,” Jacob said. “We do it all out in the open—clear
communication and transparency, like we promised. We tell the site
managers that we’re looking into an expansion project, something a
little extra. That site is not so far from this one so eventually
it would be developed anyway.”

“
We line up every duck,
have a meeting to vote, and pull the trigger,” Jacob said. “We’ll
be out of this project before those other guys know what hit
them.”

No one responded. Jacob scowled.

“
We have to do something,”
Jacob said. “We’ve wasted a lot of time, energy, and resources in
this stupid conflict that gets us nowhere. We have to get out of
the cycle. This is a way.”

“
It just might work,” Sam
nodded.

“
Aden?” Jacob
asked.

“
It’s crazy,” Aden said.
“But it’s worth a try.”

“
Blane?” Jacob
asked.

“
It’s going to look like
you set the whole thing up,” Blane said.

“
Who cares? I
will
set it up so that
Lipson could make a killing,” Jacob said. “What do you think? Are
you in?”

“
I am,” Sam
said.

“
Me too,” Blane
said.

Aden stared off into space.

“
Aden?” Jacob
asked.

“
It’s so Aikido,” Aden
said. “We’re kind of sidestepping all this hostility. I like that.
So I’m in.”

“
Great,” Jacob said. “So
you’ll tell Tres?”

“
No,” Aden
said.

“
Not me,” Blane
said.

Sam gave Jacob a long look.

“
Fine,” Jacob said. “I’ll
tell him when we get back.”

“
Good man,” Sam clapped
Jacob on the back.

Jacob swallowed hard and concentrated on
eating his breakfast.

“
What’s hard for me is
that they always seem one step ahead of us,” Blane said. The men
turned their attention to Blane. “I mean, what if the whole point
was to pick off the high stock owners or . . .? I
don’t know. I guess, I’m tired of playing a game I don’t know I’m
playing and I never seem to know what the rules are.”

The men went back to eating their
breakfasts. After a while, Jacob looked up.

“
You know what? You’re
right,” Jacob said. “Let’s come up with our own plan based in our
own ideas and our own values.”

“
Going back to us making
decisions and everyone following is just us owning the company
again,” Sam nodded.

“
Right,” Jacob said. “I’ll
talk to Tres. Dad, you can call a meeting of the employees this
afternoon. We’ll get their ideas and make our own plan.”

“
It’s risky,” Aden
said.

“
Blane’s right. We’re
losing the business as it stands,” Sam said. “If we don’t make our
own plan—not what the state wants, not what we think someone else
is going to do—we’ve already lost.”

On that grim note, Sam got up and left the
restaurant. Jacob grabbed the check, nodded to Aden and Blane and
left.

“
You ready?” Blane
asked.

“
I don’t know if I can get
out of this booth.”

Laughing, Blane got up and dragged Aden to
his feet.

“
Sandy gave you a tough
workout?” Blane asked.

“
Oh yeah,” Aden
said.

Blane laughed.

~~~~~~~~

Thursday mid-day—11:59 a.m.

Sandy’s last client hugged her and left the
shop. On her own cloud after last night’s adventure, she wandered
to the back of the shop to get her lunch. She’d just pulled a
yogurt container from her little refrigerator when she heard the
bell to the door.

She peeked out of the back to see who it
was.

Sergeant Aziz stood at her door. He cupped
his hands and peered in to try to see her through the mirrored
glass. She scowled and was about to go back when she saw a young
man peer out from behind his back.

She’d always liked his little brother.
Groaning to herself, she went to the door.

“
What do you want?” Sandy
asked.

“
You have every right to
be like that,” Sergeant Aziz said. “But . . . we
need some help.”

Sandy caught a look of desperation on his
face. She stepped back and let them in.

“
It’s my lunch hour,”
Sandy said.

“
I know,” Sergeant Aziz
pushed his brother forward. “We brought you a salad.”

When the boy got close to her, Sandy saw the
bruising around the boy’s neck.

“
What’s going on?” Sandy
took the salad and guided them to the back.

“
Tell her,” Sergeant Aziz
said to his brother.

In a low tone, his brother told Sandy his
whole story from going along the first time to trying to get out of
it to sending Charlie the video. He didn’t look up until he was
done.

“
Why are you telling me
all of this?” Sandy asked.

“
Because I don’t know what
to do,” Sergeant Aziz said. “I’ve been trying to protect him, but
by saying nothing, I’ve left him . . . in the hands
of these . . . monsters.”

“
It sounds like he’s a
little monster himself,” Sandy said.

“
Yes ma’am,” the boy
said.

“
Why do you think I know
what to do?” Sandy asked.

“
Because you’re O’Malley’s
Goddaughter and you know that Homeland Security guy, the big one,
and the blonde guy,” Sergeant Aziz said. “Nothing would be
happening if he and the blonde guy hadn’t gotten
involved.”

“
Why is that?” Sandy
asked.

“
Red Bear is a weirdo,”
Sergeant Aziz said. “And I . . .”

He gestured to his brother.

“
You’ll be suspended,”
Sandy said.

“
Better than,” Sergeant
Aziz gestured to his brother’s neck. “And I don’t care anymore.
He’s really in trouble. He tried to tell me, but I was too scared
of losing everything to listen.”

“
And now?”

“
I’d rather lose
everything than lose my brother,” Sergeant Aziz said. “He screwed
up and this is bad, but he can’t get out of it. Not on his own, and
I don’t know how to fix it.”

“
Why should I help you?”
Sandy asked. “Why should my friends help you?”