“I don’t like it. I don’t want to believe it. But yes. I think she killed herself.”
“No...”
“Yes.”
“What about all the other ‘suicides’?”
“They were suicides. I talked with Mrs. Meyer today. She’s fiercely loyal to Kemco; feels they’ve done right by her. I found something out from her that you didn’t, when you interviewed her for your book: her husband had a long history of mental illness. He had very deep emotional problems that didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with Kemco.”
“Ten times the national suicide rate, Crane!”
“That’s just a fluke. I talked with Mrs. Price, too, and her husband was an emotionally disturbed person, headed for a breakdown. Headed for suicide.”
“Crane, Mary Beth knew something. It’s Karen Silkwood all over again. She was killed because she had something on Kemco.”
“What did she know? About the midnight dumping? We know about it. We’re still alive.”
“What did you say to Patrick about last night?”
“Nothing.”
“Does he know about it?”
“If he does, he didn’t indicate it.”
“Maybe they don’t know about us. Maybe we weren’t seen last night.”
“Fine, but that shoots your theory about the truckers stealing your camera, doesn’t it? You can’t have it both ways. To steal it, they’d have to know about us. And if they know about us, our lives are in danger.”
“Well maybe our lives are in danger.”
“I don’t think so. If a decision had been made to add us to the suicide rate, why would Patrick bother having me out for a talk this afternoon? No, Boone, it doesn’t make sense. It’s all very confusing, but there’s nothing sinister going on here at all.”
“Dumping hazardous waste in an ordinary household dump, in the middle of the night, isn’t sinister?”
“It’s criminal, Boone. You’re right about that. I don’t doubt for a moment that Kemco is a criminally irresponsible company, but...”
“A baby girl with a cleft palate, Crane. That sinister enough for you? Liver disorders? Nervous conditions? High miscarriage rates? High cancer rates? Any of that strike you as sinister?”
“It strikes me as depressing, and since you exposed Mary Beth to your crusade, as you have me, it’s no wonder she was depressed, living in the house where her father died of cancer, living in a house where across the hall little Brucie in his crib paws the air with no hands, and you come along and fill her with your bleak vision of a chemically contaminated America, it’s no wonder she slashed her wrists.”
Boone sat quietly for a moment, staring into the redness in her wineglass. Without looking at Crane, she said, “So. Finally it comes around to this.”
“To what?”
“To it being my fault. Mary Beth’s suicide.”
“No. You’re wrong. I don’t blame you.”
“You’re just too fucking generous, Crane.”
“You’re right about one thing: it was suicide. I believe that now. I don’t like it. But I believe it.”
“Then maybe you better go back to Iowa.”
“Maybe I better.”
She rose, slamming her glass down on the coffee table, splashing wine. She looked down at him, giving him a cold, sarcastic look, the likes of which he hadn’t seen from her since their early, off-on-the-wrong-foot moments together.
“Go back to school, Crane. Learn something.”
“All right.”
She walked toward the stairs.
“Boone...”
She stopped; her back was to him.
“Is this the way it has to be?”
“I don’t know,” she said. There was no sarcasm in her voice, now. It sounded very small.
“Your book, Boone. It’s good. It’s more than good: it’s important. What you say about Agent Orange and its effect on the Vietnam vets. Your study into the effects of Kemco on its workers and their families, their town. The midnight hauling story. That can go into the book. Our staking out the Kemco plant; your camera maybe being stolen, that can be a nice ambiguous touch... all of it. You’ve got enough, Boone. You don’t have your smoking gun, exactly, but what you’ve got is good. But Mary Beth killed herself, and so did the others. Accept it. Leave it behind. And go ahead and finish your book and publish it and tell your story on Donahue. Wake America up. But be a journalist. Don’t be a conspiracy nut.”
Without turning, she said, “I’m going to bed.”
“I still believe in what you’re doing.”
“That’s nice.”
“Boone.”
“What?”
“What about this morning?”
“What about it?”
“Why don’t you come over here and sit down with me.”
“And what?”
“And we won’t talk anymore.”
“And it’ll be just like this morning? At the motel?”
“I hope it will.”
“Your timing sucks, Crane.”
She went upstairs.
He sat on the couch all night, without sleeping.
In the morning she drove him to where he could catch the bus that would take him to the airport. She didn’t say anything the whole way, but just as he got out, she leaned over and kissed him, and then drove away and left him.
Part Four:
Crane
Chapter Twenty
The Mill was a late ’60s time warp. The booths were displaced church pews; stained-glass panels hung behind the bar; a folksinger was doing something by Phil Ochs. During the folksinger’s break, somebody put money in a jukebox that still had “Big Yellow Taxi” on it and when something by Sting came out, it seemed like a mistake. A waitress in sweater and jeans took an order, then spoke to her black boyfriend for five minutes before turning it in. Two guys with ponytails and facial hair sat facing each other, leaning across one of the tables scattered between the pews and the bar, making a conspiracy out of a dope deal as if anyone still cared, saying “man” a lot, like it was fifteen years ago in California, and not today in Iowa City.
Crane hated the Mill.
But his friend Roger Beatty and Roger’s girl Judy had talked him into coming along. The food at the Mill was good, particularly the antipasto salad, and afterwards they would go to the Bijou Theater for a John Wayne movie, The Searchers. Roger said it was a great movie, so Crane had consented to come. He hadn’t been out much since he got back from Greenwood. He hadn’t been out at all, really. Maybe it was time he did.
Roger was explaining some things about the movie to Judy, who was listening patiently, or pretending to. Judy usually didn’t go in for these old movies, and Crane wondered why she was here.
Judy was a thin, pretty girl with a short dark cap of hair and dark blue eyes with long lashes; she gave Crane a slow sideways look, while Roger babbled (“doorways in the film represent civilization”) and gestured with both hands, the eyes behind his thick glasses lost in themselves.
Their antipasto salads came, and they ate, Roger continuing his critique of the film they would be seeing, Crane beginning to feel uncomfortable with Judy’s eyes on him. He knew her well enough to know she wasn’t putting the make on him. So why was she staring?
Finally Roger, who liked food even more than films, shut up and ate.
Judy said, “I’m glad you’re getting out tonight, Crane. You needed it.”
He managed a smile. “Who needs to see a movie, with Roger here to tell it to you.”
Roger looked up from his salad. “I was just giving you some background.”
“Like the ending,” Judy asked, with a not unpleasant smirk.