1. Sludge and Feathers

Keep your cool, keep cool, stay cool, don’t die here, Maeve snarls to herself as she weaves her lime-green pickup through a convoy of semis on the last stretch of freeway into downtown Oil Land. She’s driven all night from the oil mines work camp at Tailings Pond and is nearing the end of her mad-dash trip to Real Rush Energy headquarters. The morning sun stings at her eyes as she tries to focus between the juicy bug splats. Cool, stay cool. Words tumble in her head. Dead flippin’ ducks. I get blamed. Right!? I go down for this? Gravel rakes at her windshield from the bare wheel well of a jacked up Jeep. Or will my crisis training kick in? She hopes her crisis training kicks in but fears that she’s goin’ down.

Ducks lying dead at Tailings Pond, what a disaster. Her truck’s undercarriage makes a terrible rattle, must have hit a rabbit or something. Over the roar of the traffic and the tumble in her head of pitbull jaws snap me like a twig, Maeve steadies herself with a breath. She grabs her headset, punches at her jerry-rigged onboard phone system and commands, “Dial Real Rush. Harry Jones.”

Harry picks up her call right away. “Maeve, ah—?” He has no time to answer back when she shouts, “No way those alarm horns coulda scared that flock off Harry forget it. Couldn’t get ’em set up fast enough anyway. Duck corpses everywhere.” She swerves in and out the diamond lane and past a smelly livestock trailer.“Yeah, flocks and flocks of ’em... banked and landed right on top of Tailings Pond, what a cesspool... what were we supposed to do? Flap our arms around at ’em and pray? God knows we tried.” A merge moves her out onto the final Memorial Trail to town. “What?? How can you know about it already? How did you find out?...What station?... You tell Mailcoat yet?... Give me five minutes, I’ll be right there.”

Maeve tears off her headset and slaps down the sun visor, snatches at the same time for her aviator glasses and pokes out one of the lenses in the process. With one eye closed, she drives head on into the flaming sun toward downtown Oil Land. She’s got a pretty good idea that Harry will give JB the heads up about the dead ducks. Not a great mood setter.

Her breath sharpens into a rasp and she catches herself groaning in gasps and moans. Breathe, steady yourself. She punches at her playlist, takes a big breath and sings along to a song about calming down and not being so loud. Fat chance she can follow that advice.

It took three months with Real Rush to figure out that Lucas was right all along — she’s selling out. She’d told him, “I’ll do a great job at Tailings Pond, then you’ll see, I’ll dazzle JB Mailcoat and his Real Rush directors with those renewable energy experiments we’ve been testing, you’ll see.” Lucas said without a trace of empathy, “You’re kidding, right? That pitbull will eat you alive.”

When she accepted the job, Maeve thought she’d be working in the lab, combatting climate change through renewable energy but instead, JB assigned her to chase wildlife away from Tailings Pond. The dazzling presentation she’d planned was likely to turn into don’t fire me, I have to pay off my stupid debts. Nothing I did kept those ducks off the toxic water. Don’t you believe me? As she heads towards the inevitable crunch with JB Mailcoat and his snapping jaws at Real Rush headquarters, she drives and chants, keep your cool, Maeve. Pull yourself together. Do not be afraid.

At that same time, JB Mailcoat, President and CEO of Real Rush Energy, cracks his morning cola and kicks his scuffed cowboy boots up on the shiny walnut desk. He surveys the corporate landscape of Oil Land and the shining mountains that stretch beyond the walls of his glass palace on the 38th floor. As he sucks an errant morsel of breakfast steak from between his teeth, he reflects on how much easier life would be if there was a big ocean out there, dotted with oil tankers instead of peaky mountains and stacks of unused pipeline.

JB pries his thousand-mile stare off the sweeping horizon and swings his long legs up and away from the top of the desk and onto the floor with a thud. A flurry of dog whines and scratches from a blanket under his hobby table in the corner of the room prompts him to hurl a big rawhide bone in the direction of his black lab Lucky, who jumps out at it from across the Persian rug with a rip and a salivating snort. JB reaches out to scratch Lucky behind the ear, drawling out “Who needs a harbor, Daddy needs a harbor,” and “Who’s gettin’ a raw deal? We are,” but a rap at the door provokes barking and lunging that knocks JB off balance, upsetting both his train of thought about needing harbors, and the pile of coins he had stacked up on the corner of his desk.

A muffled voice from behind the big oak door says, “Excuse me, Mr. Mailcoat, um, twenty-five hundred dead ducks, um, Tailings Pond—”

JB, momentarily distanced from his aura of command, slides around on a sea of collapsed coinage as he grabs Lucky’s collar. Harry Jones opens the door a crack, saying, “We may be facing a disaster.”

“What do mean, disaster? ”

“That’s what Dr. Wong said, JB. I’m just repeating —”

“Listen, Harry!” JB strides across the room, points a square finger and yells out. “Chernobyl was a disaster. Fifty rigs out five hundred days hittin’ fifty dry holes is a disaster. Little girls talkin’ global warmin’ is gettin’ up there.” He stamps his foot. “Who is this Dr. Wong anyway, calling this a disaster. Dead ducks ain’t nothin.’”

As he punches at the television remote, Harry answers, “Yeah, I’m with you, JB.” The channels flip from the twangy country music channel to JB’s default favorites: the Fishing Network, ESPN, and Modern Miracle News. He looks up to see JB scowling. “You’re pushing on an open door, JB, on a scale of one to ten, dead ducks is a minus one hundred and ninety-three.” Harry, besides being a pretty good slide guitarist and a native Oil Lander, is a world class suckhole.

“Okay,” Harry exclaims, “Here’s the coverage, on the Veritable Network.” The screen springs to life with images of dead and dying ducks and a news ticker that proclaims AntiTox’s discovery of the catastrophe. JB, true to his hard-stubble cow ranching and oil patch roots of Texahoma, swings into crisis mode. “So what are you people doin’ about these ducks. Tell me. Right now!”

• • •

Maeve pulls her muddy truck up in front of the Real Rush Building, flips on the hazard lights, jumps out, flashes her lanyard at security, and catches the elevator up to the 38th Floor. Struggling to control her hammering heart, she closes her eyes and a scene from the stinking mire of muck comes flooding in. In her head, she has the courage to remember­— oil-soaked duck, bewildered, trying to scream, flapping crippled wings and tail feathers. Ding. 14th Floor. Grabbing the desperate thing, slipping and sliding in the filth, scooping it up. The poor creature spraying ooze all over me. Ding. 25th Floor. Oh God, the ooze is still all over me! I must smell like a cesspool. Ding. 31st Floor. Lucas — pirouetting out by the busted air cannon, holding his camera up over his head, connecting with the Veritable Press satellite. “Lucas, Don’t rat me out. Please!!” Shouting “Sorry Lucas. I’ve whored myself out to Real Rush Energy and now I’m in deep. Don’t rat me out! Do you hear me? I don’t want to go down for this!” Ding. 38th Floor.

Maeve slides past the inner sanctum secretarial sentries, gorgeous in their stiletto heels and butterfly false eyelashes, spots the bronze door plaque reading “JB Mailcoat CEO,” and barges right through. She’s covered in grease, her hair pulled back with a motorcycle bandana and coveralls rolled down to her waist, exposing a tar and feather-smeared Tapperlite Folk Festival t-shirt. Lucky, the dog, thunderstruck by her appearance, retreats to gnaw on his rawhide. Hey, so far no pitbull, just a black lab. She thinks. Not kind but not deadly either.

JB spins away from the television, reeling with the twin realization that shareholders’ investments are in jeopardy and that there is a strange, disheveled FarEastern woman in the office. He yells out, “Harry, goddammit, who the hell is this?”

Harry, tripping over his words in his haste to defuse the situation blurts out, “JB, this is Dr. Maeve Wong, our new environmental scientist. We hired her away from post-grad field work at the copper smelter disaster down in Tapperlite. She can give you some of the, um, some of the—”

“Yeah. Spit it out Harry, Some of the what?” snaps JB.

Maeve, not wanting to further embarrass anyone, interrupts with, “Good morning, Mr. Mailcoat, sir.” She removes her oily glove and extends her hand but JB just glares at her. Maeve recoils her hand, using the motion as a chance to reach into her coverall pocket for her phone. The screen brightens up with sad pictures of dying ducks. She holds the phone up to JB’s face saying, “Sir, birds died. Lots of birds. This isn’t the first time either.” With a click and a scroll she finds the stats she is looking for. “Records show that between four hundred and fifty-eight and five thousand and twenty-nine birds died last year after landing at Tailings Pond.”

JB is, on the one hand, appalled at one so unfeminine — like a Silk Road ninja, no makeup, holy shit — and, on the other, impressed that she had come to them from the copper mine smelter disaster zone. “Listen, lady I heard it all before. Duck hunters shotgun thousands a’ ducks outta Oil Land skies every year—” Maeve wants to wind up and give him a stiff kick in the butt with her steel-toed boot, but instead chants to herself stay cool, survive this life, don’t die here. JB is still yelling, “...a hellava lotta feathers hit the deck all kinda ways. A couple a’ thousand gettin’ a messy death at Tailings Pond? Not a big deal.”

While he is yelling, she bites her tongue, leans over to pick some coins up off the floor and stacks them back up onto the coffee table in what she hopes is perceived as a demonstration of cooperation. But JB isn’t finished. Raising his voice to the feared heights of admonishing pitbull he continues. “I heard wind turbines nail over ten thousand birds a month. And what do you think them AntiTox types serve at their annual piss-ups? Roast dead duck with orange, I’ll bet. Look lady, we’re not talkin’ about dead babies here!”

“The problem is, JB,” Harry interrupts. “The problem is that with Dr. Wong’s guidance we’ve made dramatic improvements to our bird-deterrent system—”

JB spins around and yells, “So why the hell don’t they work?” He kicks the waste basket across the room and the office fills with an earsplitting clang. Maeve looks over at Harry and sucks in her cheeks, hoping he interprets her exasperation.

Harry says, “The problem is, JB, this new duck incident has made headlines again around the world only this time it’s Real Rush and not our competition that’s between the crosshairs. Videos of oil-drenched migrating ducks are going viral. It’s a nightmare.”

Maeve perceives that Harry is making the problem worse rather than better. She says, “Mr. Mailcoat, sir, let me explain. Birds land on the pond water. They think it’s a lake but there’s oil on the surface.”

“Lady, whose side are you on?!”

Sensing an imminent blowout, Harry thinks of grabbing JB another cola but instead scurries over to the office wetbar and delivers him a shot glass of Cuervo Gold. The tequila brings JB back to memories of Panhandle cantinas and dirt tracks to remote well sites. His eyes reflect a fleeting moment of calm.

Harry takes advantage of this to explain, “You may recall the shareholders’ annual meeting? Questions were raised about the ponds? That was when the committee of concerned shareholders suggested Real Rush have ecologists and environmentalists monitor the wildlife?”

JB hurls the empty shot glass at the trash basket, only to have it bounce off the side, hitting Maeve’s carefully constructed tower of coins and peppering Lucky with a ricochet of rebounds. The dog whimpers and slinks over to Maeve who pats him and whispers, “I’ll bet you don’t like gunshots either, hey Lucky, or fireworks.”

JB spins around toward Harry and blows hard, shouting, “What the devil are you talkin’ about? I don’t recall any such shareholders’ meetin’.”

“I think, in fairness, JB, you left the meeting early that day to take Governor Currey out to your Land Westohere fishing lodge and—”

“Damn rights. If I’d been there with the shareholders instead of entertainin’ Lena Currey, we wouldn’t be employin’ no granola gropers in this man’s company.”

Maeve stands her ground. “We can’t sweep this under the table, sir. Our press releases report that we are committed to protecting wildlife, that we are glad to discuss bird monitoring and reporting with responsible agencies, and we continue to seek better ways to protect wildlife and our feathered friends —”

“Jeeze, Kid, gimme a break. We’re in the resource business, not the Bambi and Daffy Duck and Squirrel Nutkin business.” At this point, Maeve’s phone beeps but JB continues, oblivious to the interruption. “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I like pets, hey, my kids down home had some of them birds, parrots ’er somethin’ when they were little. And a cat.”

Maeve checks her phone, nodding her head as if she tolerates or, God forbid, even agrees with JB’s opinions about Bambi and Daffy. She mumbles, half hoping JB hears her, I’m twenty-five years old, don’t call me Kid! then reads the screen aloud. “Sir, more news since the ponds disaster—” JB’s wincing and snorting huffs over the word ‘disaster’ gives her a chance to re-read the text message. “Sir, our people in the field have announced the premature deaths of some additional twenty-five hundred ducks at our Tailings Pond. Another huge flock that got past the air cannons had to be euthanized.”

“Euthanized? Like, offed? Five thousand ducks total? Is someone countin’ these birds, one by one? Maybe it’s one hundred and thirty, maybe it’s five thousand and one. Hello, I found another one: this is an ex-duck! Duck? Ex-duck! Like I said. This ain’t news.

Harry scours the breaking news ticker for information about the additional carnage but so far it hasn’t hit the media. “Sir, please remember we have announced our fullest cooperation with the regulatory authorities, and are working to minimize waterfowl losses, exercising due diligence about cleaning up the Pond.” After another quick look at the screen the anxious EA adds, “Our written press release attributes this statement to you, JB.”

“Ain’t I the responsible citizen!”

Harry looks at him and makes a last-ditch attempt to smooth things out with some fake news, knowing his job might be on the line. “Sir, there might have been what we characterize as ‘unusual bird activity’ due to freezing rain in the area, which makes it difficult for the birds to fly and forces them down. They were easily approached, indicating that they were drunk on berries or fatigued.”

Maeve hides her face in her hands as JB explodes. “Fatigued? All this energy and due diligence and runnin’ round in circles, and you’ve figured them birds just got rained on, tuckered out and fell outta the sky! This is what I’m payin’ you for? And what about them regulators, Harry. I thought you got ’em pieced off.”

“Trouble is, JB, the enviros are now permitted routine ride-alongs with the inspectors by the government.”

“They what? Enviros spying at Tailings Pond?”

Harry quails. “A not-so-bright idea of Governor Currey.”

“That phoney balony! She wouldn’t know her ass from a duck’s ass.”

Maeve walks over to Harry, gives him a weary smile and takes over the television remote, cranking the volume. “Speaking of whom, well, Mr. Mailcoat, she’s live on location.” Governor Lena Currey fills the screen from onsite at Tailings Pond. The camera pulls back to reveal her holding and stroking a pathetic oil-covered duck.

“I cannot express how disappointed and frustrated I am that this regrettable incident occurred,” she intones, reading with poppy eyes from the teleprompt, “Oil Landers deserve answers to why this bird carnage happened, and we will do everything we can to get these answers quickly.”

JB snorts. “Who voted for this idiot? Who donated to her?”

Governor Currey continues: “State officials ensure that Real Rush is preventing further flocks of birds from landing. Air cannons are said to be operating, but their deployment has been sporadic and dilatory—”

“Sporadic… and what? Harry, turn that thing off.”

“Mr. Mailcoat,” interrupts Maeve, “it’s a feather in our cap that we’ve been able to control most access to the toxic water by other wildlife — elk, moose, bears, coyotes, and,” she relays a half-truth that gives her moral compass a spin. “We have done all we can to deploy extra air cannons, flare guns and horns to try to scare the ducks away too, but with no luck so far. The entire region is a busy migrating route for ducks, I’m afraid.”

“You’re afraid? I ain’t afraid. I want this problem and this rotten publicity squashed, right now. As for climate change, freezin’ rain and drunk birds—”

“JB,” says Harry, “enviros are calling Tailings Pond a duck killing ground, it’s getting a lot of media play, and it’s catching on everywhere. The buzz is that all Real Rush and the other operators get is a slap on the wrist. That they do anything they want. You know who is getting a lot of mileage out of this? AntiTox.”

Maeve, remembering the sighting of her boyfriend Lucas Vandam at Tailings Pond with his camera and satellite phone upload gadget, jumps at the chance to change the subject but just makes things worse, “…and AntiTox says the tar pond—”

JB shouts, “The what?”

“Sorry, Sir, I meant the Tailings Pond, of course.”

“You been brainwashed like them AntiTox types, ain’t ya lady?”

She flinches at his insult. “This is an urgent matter. Research postulates—”

“Pustulates? Ya’ mean like pimples?” JB tilts back his head and snickers at his pun, waking up his sleeping dog who leaps up and sniffs around for a place to relieve himself.

Maeve, speaking out over Lucky’s pathetic whining, says, “Sir, our industry reports say—”

“Kid, think I ain’t heard all this before? JB mumbles to himself, “Ducks de-ducks. Duck re-ducks.” Then he yells with a laugh, “Hey! Ducks Redux. Would make a great horror movie with new scenes — like Apocalypse Now. The horror, dead ducks, with extra scenes.” He makes a mock salute. “Don’t get off the boat or you’ll get covered in sludge and feathers, Cap’n!”

“Mr. Mailcoat, I appreciate your idea of adding extra scenes to this sad story if they can help explain duck deaths, but don’t let your imagination run away with you. For now, let’s strategize a real commitment to protecting wildlife.”

He scoffs and walks over to the door, leading Lucky by the scruff of the neck and booting him out into the hall so his toilet needs become someone else’s problem. Then he strides over to the bar to pour another tequila. For some strange reason, he thinks of offering one to Maeve but is stopped by what he considers to be the dumbest idea he’s ever heard.

Maeve is not deterred. “I suggest that Real Rush support the establishment of a bigger environmental research team. We’ll visit the field in a scientifically defensible manner.”

“Scientifically defensible? Harry, what the hell?”

“Perhaps, JB, we might excuse Dr. Wong at this time, with our thanks, and we can consult further after she has had a chance to explore our corporate options in consultation with her colleagues on staff.” He nods at Maeve to beat a hasty retreat. As she starts to leave, JB shouts out after her, “You’re not wigglin’ out of responsibility for this. Park your truck, clean up in my gym and I want you back here in an hour! My sentry out at the front desk will give you the keycodes.”

As Maeve opens the door to leave the room, Lucky makes his ballistic re-entry. Amidst the canine bluster, she is shocked that JB catches her eye and steadily holds her gaze.

Maeve is glad to be gone from JB’s office, but the warm glow that has flushed her face catches her totally by surprise. What was JB’s look all about? I hate guys like Mailcoat with their right-wing values and beer bellies so what do I see in that look? Is he looking at me like a lover? That would be so MeToo weird. Is he thinking he’s like my dad? Is he just curious, never met a FarEaster? Is there a booger in of my nose? She discretely checks her nose, no booger.

A stunning executive assistant with fake eyelashes like butterflies looks up from her phone and passes along JB’s keycodes saying, “Gym’s down the hall and if you want some clean clothes, there’s some in a basket marked Tricia above the water cooler.”

Maeve computes what she’s heard but her main thoughts spring back to her truck’s blinking hazard lights out front of the building and how her battery is due to die any second. “Parking garage?” she asks Tricia. “Easy,” is the answer. “Just key in L-U-C-K-Y.” Tricia joins JB’s other sentries as they field phone calls pouring in as dead ducks hit television and social media all over Oil Land and beyond.

Maeve sheds greasy mud clumps as she races across the lobby and out the front doors to save her truck’s battery from certain death by hazard light. The old Tacoma grinds a bit to get started and the exhaust pipes make a new kind of racket she hasn’t heard before. She mumbles Better get someone to look at that muffler, winds down the ramp to executive parking, enters the L-U-C-K-Y code, and pulls up beside the fleet of Real Rush Suburbans and lanky Hummers. She kicks her muddy steel-toed boots onto the passenger side and for the second time in less than an hour, catches the elevator up to the 38th Floor, this time in her sock feet. As she closes her eyes, the scene from JB Mailcoat’s office comes flooding in again. Why did he look at me like that? What’s my attraction to him, the allure of his power? Jeeze, he’s old enough to be my dad. Ding. 14th Floor. I didn’t even have a chance to talk to him about renewables. Will I ever? Ding. 25th Floor. Will he ever call me Maeve or should I just be The Kid to him forever? Ding. 31th Floor. Is Lucas still at Tailings Pond with AntiTox? Will he ever even speak to me again after what I have done?— Ding.