having you and Kate here helps a lot. We’re going to call Dad this weekend. That will make him feel older, to be a grandfather.”
As least, Char thought, even with Tess’s childhood abduction, her little sister was obvious ready for this. She evidently considered Cold Creek a safe place now, but Char wasn’t so sure.
* * *
After leaving the Fencer farm, Matt drove around the big fracking site on the old Hear Ye cult grounds. The continual clash of sounds, human and mechanical, grew louder as he approached. He saw the tall iron framework in the shape of an obelisk Joe had mentioned. From it, thin guy lines spreading out like tentacles attached it to the earth. Near that, a maze of massive pipes three times as tall as the trucks snaked around each other. Since the crew worked day and night shifts, tall pole lights studded the area. More than once Royce had said that work did shut down for a while on Sundays—his “gesture” on the Sabbath in an area where most people still went to church.
Though he’d taken an early tour of the site before it was really up and running—and had to admit, he’d boycotted it since—now he noted new, huge, round silos for storage and numerous wellheads cluttering the ground near a series of metal trailers. Big, noisy tanker trucks, some with their diesel engines running, surrounded the site, and men in hard hats hurried here and there. And in the midst of it all was an artificial lake, nearly as big as a football field. The main fracking lagoon had been dug from the earth and lined with gray polyethylene.
As a tanker drove up behind him, he went past the site, turned around and drove back. If he remembered right, the massive lagoon held recycled water that had been treated and collected to be forcibly injected into the deep shale beneath the surface. From this angle, the water looked golden brown. Matt knew the polluted flowback from the drilling had to be stored in steel tanks before being taken away to be treated and returned. Remembering Woody’s claim that such sites could taint local wells and springwater, he decided to walk down to Cold Creek to take a look for any signs the water was being polluted. Joe had said there were paths near here. If the beavers were still building, maybe he’d bring Char down to see them.
He parked and found a path down to the river everyone called a creek. Had it been smaller when the pioneers in these parts had named it, or did Cold Creek just sound better than Cold River?
He saw a cluster of beaver dams but didn’t get too close as they were busily building. The noise from the fracking site didn’t seem to faze them, so there was one sign the environment wasn’t being seriously damaged. He jumped and hunkered down when he heard what sounded like a gunshot nearby. For sure, way down here, off the road, that wasn’t a truck backfiring. Considering his recent record for getting in harm’s way, he stayed put a moment, scanning the ground beneath the leafless trees. It reminded him of his search Thursday morning for a spot where someone could have shot that arrow into Char’s door.
As he moved out of his hiding place, he saw there was a dead beaver over on the creek bank. People trapped, not shot, beavers, and it wasn’t hunting season for them. He didn’t want to risk hanging around here, walking out in the open to check it. He knew vultures would make short work of it.
He headed out of the valley, staying hidden in the trees, but he saw something strange. He approached what looked like a black metal ladder attached to a tree. It was a tree stand for hunting with a seat about fifteen feet off the ground overlooking where deer could come to drink or the beavers worked and lived. But someone shooting from here would be shooting down so the bullet would seem to come from the sky.
“Damn!” he muttered. “Like that arrow.”
With a last glance up at the hunter’s stand with its empty seat and shooting rail so someone could steady a
As least, Char thought, even with Tess’s childhood abduction, her little sister was obvious ready for this. She evidently considered Cold Creek a safe place now, but Char wasn’t so sure.
* * *
After leaving the Fencer farm, Matt drove around the big fracking site on the old Hear Ye cult grounds. The continual clash of sounds, human and mechanical, grew louder as he approached. He saw the tall iron framework in the shape of an obelisk Joe had mentioned. From it, thin guy lines spreading out like tentacles attached it to the earth. Near that, a maze of massive pipes three times as tall as the trucks snaked around each other. Since the crew worked day and night shifts, tall pole lights studded the area. More than once Royce had said that work did shut down for a while on Sundays—his “gesture” on the Sabbath in an area where most people still went to church.
Though he’d taken an early tour of the site before it was really up and running—and had to admit, he’d boycotted it since—now he noted new, huge, round silos for storage and numerous wellheads cluttering the ground near a series of metal trailers. Big, noisy tanker trucks, some with their diesel engines running, surrounded the site, and men in hard hats hurried here and there. And in the midst of it all was an artificial lake, nearly as big as a football field. The main fracking lagoon had been dug from the earth and lined with gray polyethylene.
As a tanker drove up behind him, he went past the site, turned around and drove back. If he remembered right, the massive lagoon held recycled water that had been treated and collected to be forcibly injected into the deep shale beneath the surface. From this angle, the water looked golden brown. Matt knew the polluted flowback from the drilling had to be stored in steel tanks before being taken away to be treated and returned. Remembering Woody’s claim that such sites could taint local wells and springwater, he decided to walk down to Cold Creek to take a look for any signs the water was being polluted. Joe had said there were paths near here. If the beavers were still building, maybe he’d bring Char down to see them.
He parked and found a path down to the river everyone called a creek. Had it been smaller when the pioneers in these parts had named it, or did Cold Creek just sound better than Cold River?
He saw a cluster of beaver dams but didn’t get too close as they were busily building. The noise from the fracking site didn’t seem to faze them, so there was one sign the environment wasn’t being seriously damaged. He jumped and hunkered down when he heard what sounded like a gunshot nearby. For sure, way down here, off the road, that wasn’t a truck backfiring. Considering his recent record for getting in harm’s way, he stayed put a moment, scanning the ground beneath the leafless trees. It reminded him of his search Thursday morning for a spot where someone could have shot that arrow into Char’s door.
As he moved out of his hiding place, he saw there was a dead beaver over on the creek bank. People trapped, not shot, beavers, and it wasn’t hunting season for them. He didn’t want to risk hanging around here, walking out in the open to check it. He knew vultures would make short work of it.
He headed out of the valley, staying hidden in the trees, but he saw something strange. He approached what looked like a black metal ladder attached to a tree. It was a tree stand for hunting with a seat about fifteen feet off the ground overlooking where deer could come to drink or the beavers worked and lived. But someone shooting from here would be shooting down so the bullet would seem to come from the sky.
“Damn!” he muttered. “Like that arrow.”
With a last glance up at the hunter’s stand with its empty seat and shooting rail so someone could steady a
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