“That’s the tailings pond,” Mitch said.
“Pond?” Petty said. “Back home we call that a lake.” Then she nudged her shoulder into me, something she’d never done before, and it sent tingles up my arm, to my annoyance. I didn’t want to feel that way about her. A certainty that we would soon part ways and probably never see each other again filled me with gloom.
“Break it up, you two,” Mitch said, jovially, but with an edge. He was the proverbial dad with a shotgun on the porch.
“What’s tailings?” Petty asked, her face red.
“It’s what’s left over after the ore has been processed,” Mitch said. “This tailings pond is special, if you can call it that. It’s one of the deepest in North America at over seven hundred feet, so you can imagine how long it took to build that berm out there.”
“What’s the pond for?” Petty said.
“To collect the contaminated runoff from the mountain,” Mitch said. “What you’re looking at is some of the most acidic water found on earth.”
“Why’s it taken so long to go into remediation?” I said.
“Money, of course,” Mitch said. “Lawsuits have gone back and forth to see who’s responsible.”
“What does remediation mean?” Petty said.
“Cleanup,” Mitch said. “Water is released a little at a time through that treatment facility over there. See it? It will take a long time to clean this up. It’s a very delicate operation. But that’s job security for me.”
He started toward the water. “Let’s walk down by the pond.”
I followed several steps before I realized Petty hadn’t moved. I turned.
“You two go on ahead,” she said, loitering by the sign.
I recognized but didn’t understand the fear in her eyes. I walked back to where she stood. “Come on,” I said.
She shook her head.
“It’s okay.”
“I’m not going down there, no matter what you say,” she said.
“Everything all right?” Mitch called.
Petty’s hands were shaking.
“Okay if we just go back to the cabin?” I said to Mitch. “This altitude is kind of getting to me.”
“Oh,” Mitch said. “All right.” He looked disappointed but began trudging toward the car.
Once we were all buckled into the Taurus and driving down the mountain, Petty said, “I didn’t care about coming to see the mine, but you’re right, Dekker. This is pretty interesting.”
Petty was agitated, eager to please her dad, I could see. I felt embarrassed for her.
“How long have you worked here?” I asked Mitch.
“Almost twenty years.” He pointed at a little building a ways from the tailings pond. “There’s my office, such as it is. Gets pretty lonely up here.”
“I’ll bet it does,” I said.
We drove in silence for a while, and I watched the towering pines slice the sky through my window. This would be an amazing place to live.
“When we get back to the cabin, I’m going to take a nap,” Mitch said.
“And I’d like to go for a run on that dirt road by the cabin,” Petty said.
“A run?” Mitch said.
“Yes, sir—-Mitch. I run every day I can.”
“If Michael Rhones had let her go to public school,” I said, “she’d have been the star of the track team.”
The back of Petty’s neck got red.
“Is that right,” Mitch said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ve got a bit of a wildlife problem—-bears and mountain lions.”
“Where would be a safe place I could go around here?”
Mitch stared at her. “There really isn’t one, darling.”
This term of endearment, seemingly out of nowhere, disturbed me, but I didn’t know why.
We pulled up to the cabin.
“Do you have any pictures of my mom?” Petty asked.
Startled, Mitch said, “Of course.”
“How about family photographs?” I said.
He fixed his small eyes on me from the rearview mirror. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” I said. “Of you and Marianne and Petty.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“How come you don’t have any of them hanging up in the cabin?”
His eyes went flat and he didn’t answer right away. Then a big cheery grin replaced the look. “Well,” he said. “Aren’t you quite the interrogator?”
He didn’t answer the question, but I let it drop. It was always weird to me what different -people thought was too personal.
Mitch got out of the car, and Petty and I followed. She was the last one through the front door.
Mitch stood in the hallway and stretched. “I sleep with a box fan going year--round, so don’t worry about being quiet on my account.”
“Okay,” Petty said.
“But no funny business, mister,” he said, wagging his big finger at me.
I tensed.
He glanced at his watch. “It’s eleven now. See you around four. Then I’ll make you all a nice dinner.”
He went into his bedroom and closed the door.