Even Jen Keeler had questioned what his stake was here. Truth was, he hadn’t met a single person, other than Watkins’s daughter, Kelli, who even wanted him to stay. It wasn’t just the people who’d been killed. Like Jen said, they were only names. People he had never met. But what was clear as the sky was the look on Watkins’s face two days before. At first, it just told him to go, to let them get on with their grieving. And then it told him something more, something painful and familiar and close enough that even after all these years it still shook him.
Maybe it never went away, he thought, turning onto the gravelly road along the fence of Watkins’s farm. Hard as you tried to cover it up or paint over it. Maybe when he got up every morning and looked in the mirror even now, that was what he still saw. Stared at. The guilt he still felt.
No, it doesn’t go away, Hauck should have told him. It never does.
It just hides.
He spotted the farmer in the fields on a tractor with a couple of workers, the portable sprinklers drizzling a thin sheet of water on a row of crops. They were digging a makeshift irrigation ditch. The man was tough and Hauck knew exactly what he must be carrying inside him. What he was burying.
Hauck left the car along the road and climbed through a gap in the wire. Watkins was backing up his tractor, pulling away a large rock from the earth. Two or three farmhands were helping. When he spotted Hauck in the field, the farmer’s face turned sour. “Lupe, Diego, take a few minutes,” he said to the hands. “I’ll be back in a second.” He put on the brake and jumped down from the open cab. He said to Hauck, “Guess working with these guys, my English must be out of practice. I thought we made it clear—”
“I know why they killed Trey,” Hauck said.
“—not to come around here anymore …” The farmer’s voice trailed off. “Do I have to call the police on you, mister, or what?”
“They did it to get you to back down. From the lawsuit you were filing against the town. I spoke with Jen Keeler. She showed it all to me, the suit, the other names on it. And it worked. You did back down, right? And there’s not a person in this world who would blame you for having done it. Not one.”
“So you’ve been here for all of two days and you think you’ve got it all sized up, huh …?” Watkins’s eyes shone with intensity and he took off his cap and crumpled it against his side.
“I know one thing I’ve got sized up,” Hauck said.
“What’s that?” The farmer glared.
“What was on your face the other day. I told you, I lost a child as well.”
“And I’m real sorry for that, Mr. Hauck. I am. But you and I are different people, and there’s nothing that’s happened here that’s even about you.”
“My little girl”—Hauck stepped up to him—“she was playing in our driveway and I backed over her after an argument with my wife. I was impatient and my mind was elsewhere. She was five. It cost me my job and my marriage, and about three years of my life, until I realized, it was all just an accident. A stupid, tragic accident that should never have happened and that I didn’t cause, no matter how many times I told myself that I did.”
“Why are you going through this with me, mister?”
“Because I know what it’s like to look in that mirror. I know what it’s like to feel responsible.”
“You want absolution, Mr. Hauck …?” Watkins took out a rag from his pocket and wiped his hands. “I’ll see you in church on Sunday. Trey was a grown man and we’re all different here. So don’t come around and tell me you know what I’m feeling or what you think you saw …”
“There was a contractor RMM uses with military black ops training who was on that river the same time as your son. I know about the intimidation and the paying off, and the whole town being in the oil company’s pocket. I know about how they’re sucking the whole region dry of water. And I know what you were trying to do.”
“I’m going to call my boys over now, if you don’t just turn around.” His crew had heard the ruckus and one or two stood up waiting for the sign. “You’re on my property and I’m asking you nicely, one last time. So which is it, Mr. Hauck? What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to continue on with that suit. I can bring people in who can protect you.”
“Protect me …?” Watkins laughed. “You …?”
“You want to spend the rest of your life carrying around the belief that your boy died for nothing? Like I have all these years. That he wasn’t worth grieving for. They killed him, Mr. Watkins, sure and clear. Because what you were doing threatened them. But it won’t be for nothing if you stand back up. If the other people stand up with you. I want to help you carry it through.”
“You want to help me, son …” Watkins spat in the earth. “Leave.”
“You asked if it went away? What you were feeling. Well, I carried the grief of my daughter’s death around with me for years. But it wasn’t just grief. That was just a mask. It was guilt. And shame. And it ate me up. Like poison inside. Because I felt responsible. And that’s what I saw on you, Mr. Watkins. You can’t bring your son back, there’s nothing you can do about that now. But you can make what happened mean something.”
Watkins’s hostility seemed to shift. “What could possibly mean something anymore?”
Hauck stepped up to him. “Stopping them.”
“You come here and talk to me like you think you know.”
“I do know,” Hauck said. “I know everything you feel.”
The farmer’s eyes lost a little of their hardness and his fist opened around his cap. He gave Hauck a vague nod, looking past him at the fields. “They said if I ever brought it up again, they would …”
“They would what?” Hauck asked him.
“They told me I ought to be happy.” He sniffed. “’Cause I was actually lucky.”
“Lucky how …?”
“Lucky that they took the one that I didn’t …” He gritted his teeth, mashing something in his jaw. “That if I kept at it, there were two more and they’d go after them, too. The ones I did …”
“The ones you did what?” Hauck kept on him.
The farmer twisted his mouth. “Loved. The ones I loved. Is that what you wanted me to say?” His Caterpillar cap hung from his fingers.
“Who said that, Mr. Watkins?” Hauck looked at him.
Watkins averted his eyes. Shame had now come into them. “You know what they did, so just be done with it. I have two more.”