Flux, chapter 9
Chapter 9: Fluid Dynamics
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Mid-September 2009, Dragonfly Farm
During a water break, Grace rests with her back against an oak tree, eyes closed, thinking of herons nesting in swamp oaks. The rookery of bulging twig apartments clumped in bare branches rivaled Dr. Suess’s wildest imaginings. The year she turned eight, Grace counted sixty-four nests. The Great Blues claimed the highest branches. The Snowy Egrets, Little Blues, Tricolored, Cattle Egrets, Green, Black-Crowned and Yellow-Crowned crowded among lower branches. Pairs partnered equally in homebuilding and sex and children.
Miles lights beside her, singing and chattering nonsense. Grace plucks a blade of grass and presses it tight between her thumbs. It’s been years since she’s done this, but her whistle pierces the air on the first try. Miles matches the mad-duck scrooch with his own screech of laughter.
“Is it real?” he asks, eyes bright with enchantment. He yanks a fistful of grass and tosses it on her lap, demanding to be taught. After a few failed attempts, he chomps on his green ribbon and insists that Grace try it too. They compare teeth marks and collapse in laughter.
Some diehards continue working. They press cob balls around the perimeter of the flat surface of firebricks. Charles had explained that the bricks would form the floor of the oven. So, everything they’ve built so far is just the base? Grace still doesn’t see it.
People press the cob balls into a 4-inch-high ring around the entire edge. Inside this, they begin to dump damp sand. Miles jets off and returns with a yellow plastic beach bucket. He knocks it into Grace’s knee to summon her, then helps her fill it once before joining a game of tag. She dumps the sand with the others, mystified. Many hands form an eighteen-inch-high mound of sand in no time. “Oh! I get it!” she blurts in sudden understanding. “It’s the oven’s dome!” She still doesn’t see how they’re going to hollow it out to make space for the oven, without the sand collapsing.
Some of them laugh. Grace laughs, too, surprised by the bloom of looseness inside her, a light long hidden. The light of a child who roamed the margins of a sinking island immersed in wonder.
Charles demonstrates the next step, to cover the sand mound with wet newspapers. “This will act as a bond break with the layers of cob that come next,” he says.
Grace works with the others to form and press layers of cob over the damp newspapers. They add more and more straw to the final layers. “Straw is a fantastic insulator,” Caroline says.
The result is a chocolate macaroon igloo about as tall as Charles. “In a few weeks, once this dries and cures,” he says. “We’ll scoop out the sand and, voilà, there’s a hollow domed space inside.”
“The oven,” Grace whispers to herself.
A kettle of homemade summer vegetable soup appears. Carrots, onions, garlic, mushrooms, and yellow and green squash float in sweet-smelling broth.
“Wash hands,” Miles sings from beside two buckets of water: one soapy and one clear for rinsing. The small table beside the buckets holds a basket of spoons rolled in a rainbow of cloth napkins.
Grace is starving. She’s never tasted better soup, something about the still-firm texture of the vegetables, the nutty grain balancing the bright flavors. Charles tells a questioner that the grain is emmer, one of their heirloom varietals. Caroline holds forth on her favorite mushrooms in the soup—shiitake, oyster, and Reishi—and the many others she cultivates. “They’re brilliant medicine.”
The wind shifts, carrying a pungent whiff of wood smoke that Grace thinks she’s imagining. But here come two smiling women, each with a large wooden board spread with fresh-baked pizza.
“Surprise!” Caroline says. “We wanted to reward you for all your hard work today. So we fired up our old oven and Natalie and Melissa here have been baking pizza. There’s plenty to go around, and maybe even to take home with you.”
“Right on,” says the dreadlocked guy.
“Notice how you feel after today,” Caroline says. “How it feels to go barefoot in the mud and make something with your own two hands. Working together.” She smiles as everyone nods bright, happy faces. “This is an act of defiance in our tech-addled world.”
Caroline is so at ease in her own skin, so comfortable, so commanding yet gentle, Grace feels a pang of envy. Handshakes, hugs, and high-fives all around as the others leave.
Grace follows Caroline, Miles, and Charles into the large farmhouse kitchen. At one end is an enormous round oak table scarred from decades of hard use. The table is bare but for a lazy Susan in the center with ceramic chickens labeled S and P, and a small basket of cloth napkins. There’s a blue spiral-bound notebook across the table. Caroline and Charles sit together by the notebook. He motions for Grace to sit opposite. Miles curls into a threadbare blue wing chair against the wall and falls asleep. His snuffle snores make Grace yawn.
Her arms and back ache. Her mouth is dry and the headache is back. She pushes away thoughts of the grading she’s weeks behind on and the data to be crunched and the paper she’s drafting for peer review.
“So, I’m studying methane emissions from the gas drilling around here,” she says. “I’d like your permission to set up sensors to monitor the air on your property.”
Charles crosses his arms and sits back, his expression veiled.
“The energy company kept bugging us last year,” Caroline says.
“They called it an invitation,” Charles says, brows arched.
Pfffft escapes Caroline’s lips. “Oh, sure, the honor of their invitation to lease our land. They actually wanted to drill. Here.” She stretches her arms wide. Her elbow catches Charles’s shoulder. “As if.”
“That was an easy no,” he says. “Didn’t even both to poll our co-op members.”
A cross-stitch hangs crooked on the wall behind them. The secret to change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Such either-or sayings irritate Grace. Do they really believe they’re the exception? That their chipped and flaking sign is a magic portal insulating them from the world?
“I’ve outlined everything here.” Grace pulls a manila folder out of her backpack. She flattens its bent corners. Her fingernails are caked with dirt. So much for a professional impression. “Given the proximity of neighboring wells—”
“Those ill wells have nothing to do with us,” Charles says. “Let’s keep it that way.” He fixes her with wary dark eyes. He looks exhausted.
Grace opens the folder and shuffles the papers. She’d kill for caffeine. “They can drill beneath your land. Horizontally.” She demonstrates with a hand motion.
“But that’s a mile down, right?” Charles says.
“How can that even be legal?” Caroline asks. “Are they doing it here?”
“It’s legal because men got together in a room and made it legal,” Grace says. “As for whether it’s here, I can’t say for sure, but don’t rule it out.” She suppresses a yawn and pulls a map out of the file.
Grace is creating a definitive map of emissions from United Energy’s wells in this part of the county. Dragonfly Farm is the largest tract of land not under lease for methane extraction. She needs to sample their air as a baseline, to contrast and highlight methane hot spots from the well sites.
Barbara mocks her, calls it Grace’s Precious Map. But ever since the inspiration hit, Grace has been convinced of its genius. This farm is a unicorn in a county that’s 92% leased for drilling.
“I’ve plotted this, based on my samples to date and on the seismic data. I’ve also gamed out a few scenarios.”
“Gamed,” Charles says in a flat voice. He cocks his head, presses his hands into the table, leans in and sighs. “Interesting choice of words.”
“Predictive models, sorry.” Why did she apologize? She’s tired, on edge. Desperate to get this over with.
Last month, she submitted an abstract to the American Geophysical Society’s upcoming conference. Her map is the centerpiece of her presentation, “Marcellus Methane Fluxes: Methodologies and Findings.” It’s certain to cause a sensation. The field is wide open. Hers to claim and define.
“What Charles means is—”
“I’m right here, Caro,” he says with equal parts fondness and frustration. His eyes settle on Grace’s forehead. “It’s been a long day. None of us has the energy for this.”
The mud workshop was a mistake. This should’ve been a simple ten-minute meeting, not a day Grace will never get back. Even pizza, nature’s most perfect food, isn’t worth it. “This won’t take long, then I’ll be on my way,” she says.
“Who wants tea?” Charles crosses to the far end of the kitchen.
Grace’s tension eases with the promise of caffeine. For her conference proposal, she and Barbara scoured the meager pickings of published papers on methane flux in the Permian and Eagle Ford shale formations in Texas, the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana, and the Niobrara in Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Nebraska. They found so few peer-reviewed studies that Grace went hunting for industry reports. She amassed a collection of leaked conference proceedings, slide decks, and investor briefings. Barbara found some nutty whistleblower blogs with surprisingly useful information. Grace is baffled that methane is such a well-kept secret. Why are so few doing this vital research?
Nearly there, she tells herself. Just get through this meeting, get them to sign, and get back to your life.
At the other end of the kitchen, Charles conducts an orchestra of tea-making sounds: wooden drawers scrape and clunk, spoons clack on saucers, a home water cooler glugs.
“Our spring water made the best tea,” Caroline says. “But it’s been off for weeks.” She fixes Grace with a pleading look. “Maybe you could help us. Test our water? See what’s in it?”
Grace shakes her head. “Water’s not my area.”
Caroline blinks. “Huh. Okayyyy.”
Grace orients the cover sheet of her proposal facing Caroline and pushes it across the table. She summarizes the proposed testing spots and protocol. “There’s no cost to you. I just need your signature to access periodically. This release is standard for research.”
“We have some questions,” Caroline says. “We’re curious. Your email is from the university and this proposal—” She spears the slim stack of paper with her index finger—"is on their letterhead.”
Grace waits. What now?
Caroline opens the blue notebook and pulls out a magazine. “But you work for this company? The drillers?” She offers the magazine to Grace. It’s folded back to a full-page ad.
Grace’s stomach lurches, threatening to expel the bowls of soup she just wolfed down. She leans forward to take the magazine and sets it on the table without looking at it. In what world do these hippies read Forbes magazine?
Her funding came with what James Cowan lightly called “strings attached.” More like a noose. A PR campaign as United Energy Holdings’ science mascot. His people told the photographer to “make her look smart.” As if she doesn’t already look smart all day, every day. When they gave her the ad mockup, she threw up in her mouth.
There she stands in a white lab coat emblazoned with their logo, arms folded, chin tipped up. A slight downward gaze says serious / approachable / confident. In the background, four children of diverse skin tones cavort in a field of yellow sunflowers as windmills march along a ridge against an unreal blue sky. The caption, I’m helping United Energy build a better tomorrow today, hovers at her waist. It's been running since July as a full-page ad in Forbes, the Economist, the New York Times, and USA Today. For all she knows, it’s on bus shelters in Manhattan.
“I can explain.”
“Oh, please do.” Caroline sits back with crossed arms and raised brows. “Charles, you don’t want to miss this.”
“I’m good,” he calls.
What the hell? Grace thinks. Is this whole thing a set-up? Anger sweeps all clarity from her mind. She squeezes her eyes closed and clears her throat to buy time.
“I’m employed by the university. My research is housed there, funded in part by United Energy.” That part is over ninety percent, but they don’t have to know that. She taps the ad with her fingertips. “Funny story—”
“Is that an important distinction?” Charles asks from the stove. A blue flame blooms beneath the kettle. “Where you work, versus who funds you?”
“Yes,” Grace says. Her anger returns on the wings of resentment. Who are they to question her ethics?
“Assuming that’s true,” Caroline says. “Why study something that’s objectively terrible? That we know already is toxic. Why not put your effort into stopping it? What happened to first do no harm?”
“That’s doctors,” Grace says without thinking. Stupidly impulsive. She needs to get this back on track. “Scientists study and measure—"
“Why not use your talents, your knowledge to repair the damage? If that’s even possible.”
“Which it never is,” Charles says.
Grace fights her way up through the growing miasma of frustration. If only she felt as confident as that Forbes magazine pose. “Which is why I need this data. To map it. To prove the problem exists. To pinpoint causes.”
“Prove to whom?” Charles arrives with a battered wooden tray crowded with a flowered teapot, mismatched china cups on saucers, and three cloth napkins of various vintages. Cookies mound a chipped plate that teeters on the edge.
Caroline unloads the cargo. “Oatmeal raisin from our oats, our grapes, our butter, eggs, and milk. They’re a day old but still yummy.”
Grace bites into a cookie to gather her thoughts. She closes her eyes to focus on the splash of flavor in her mouth, the feel of the textures. A quick memory plays in her head. Her grandmother—
“We were just asking, who are you proving what to?” Caroline’s expression is penetrating, intent.
Grace swallows her cookie. “The energy company. I’ll be able to show them the methane leaks, precisely where they’re wasting the resource. And, potentially endangering ecosystems.”
“Potentially, eh?” Charles says. He and Caroline exchange a look. “And that information is useful to them? Is it even welcome?” He finishes a cookie and starts on a second.
Caroline pours out tea that smells of ginger, cloves, and summer grass clippings.
“It’s early days yet,” Grace says. “I’m six months in with at least six more to go.”
“Meanwhile, the drilling rolls on,” Caroline says. “You’re testing for, what, methane?”
Grace nods.
“And have you detected it?” Charles asks.
All these questions. Buzzing flies. Grace fights the urge to swat them away. “Yes, recently.” It was really on Day One. Grace doesn’t know why she’s dissembling. Data is data. No reason to be embarrassed. She hates that she’s defensive with these nosy strangers. God, these people are annoying. Maybe she doesn’t need them for her map. She could extrapolate historic air quality numbers. She could walk out of here with her dignity intact. Mostly.
Charles’ hand hovers over the last two cookies, then withdraws after a look from Caroline. “Why not blow the whistle, then? If you know the wells are leaking.”
“It’s . . . complicated.” Grace could launch into a tutorial on the scientific method, replicability, calibration of results, peer review, credibility. Or she could eat another cookie. She reaches for it and holds it under her nose, thinking. Her mouth waters. She imagines Caroline saying, Our own cinnamon, and fails to stifle a smirk.
“This is funny to you?” Caroline asks, sounding hurt.
“Why are you helping this company put lipstick on their pig?” Charles asks.
What an ignorant thing to say. “I’m not,” she says, but stops herself. She reaches for the sheaf of papers. “I can see this is a bad time. Forget it.” She’s not here to be accused of greenwashing by a couple of hippies.
Caroline presses her hand on the pages and shakes her head.
“We get more value per acre farming than fossil fuel extraction ever will,” Charles says.
“By what measure?” Grace asks. She can’t help herself. “Maybe carbon sequestration, but that’s not a fair fight.”
He frowns, shakes his head. “Is that all you see when you look around here? Another thing to measure, another data point to crunch?”
She feels dirty, guilty, ashamed. “That’s not—”
Caroline sighs, fixes Grace with a pitying look, like, You sweet summer child. “We’re creating present and future value. Living wages. Soil that’s alive. Clean water. Healthy food.” With each example, she slices the air with a long-fingered hand.
“For everyone,” Charles says. “Regardless of ability to pay.”
“Good for you. I need—”
“We all know that company will not pay one thin dime to clean up whatever’s leaking,” Charles says. “Or to repave the roads they’ve destroyed with all their trucks. Then there’s the unfixable. Like, asthma. Which is rampant now at Elk Lake Elementary since they started the drilling.”
“Kids at the ER all hours, absent from school, parents missing work, medication expenses. Who pays for all that? Not the drillers.” Caroline drains her teacup.
“That’s for damn sure,” Charles says.
“I was trying to explain. It’s impossible to connect any of that to the drilling without hard data.” Grace’s bones feel so heavy she can’t imagine rising from the chair.
Caroline rubs her forehead. “They know already. They know it’s awful and they do it anyway.”
“There’s a well right in that school’s backyard,” Charles says. He glances at Miles. The boy’s thick lashes lay on his cheeks like resting caterpillars.
“Looming over the playground like a . . . like a . . .” Caroline trails off.
“A damn pedophile,” Charles says in a hard voice. “And it’s loud, like standing under an airplane engine. Right there, yards from the kids’ playground.”
“Teachers have to cancel recess when the cursed thing is flaming out.”
“Flaring,” Grace says, too exhausted to restrain her pedantry. She does a quick calculation. She might be able to triangulate with monitors on the neighbor’s property line. This isn’t worth the brain damage. The tea leaves a bitter taste in her mouth with none of the hoped-for caffeine kick. Her throat is chalky with the stuff and drier than ever.
“Why don’t the drillers have to prove to us that it’s safe?” Caroline asks in a near whisper. “Which we know they can’t.” She sighs. “Think I just answered my own question.”
Grace resists the urge to explain the Precautionary Principle. The game is rigged so it doesn’t apply here. And she has no wish to extend this already intolerable interview.
“You know that town south of here that’s been burning underground for decades?” Charles asks.
Oh, god, not another detour. One of Grace’s colleagues went there and raved about it. A genuine zombie hellscape, he’d said with weird relish.
“About my proposal—”
“Was that company ever held accountable?” He emits a rough laugh. “Fuck no. First they expected the town to put out the fire, then the state, until finally the feds had to move everyone out. Forty-two million bucks up in smoke.” He whistles long and low. “Imagine how many hungry kids that would feed.”
“Or daycare centers,” Caroline says. “Or prenatal care.”
Grace forces one last effort. “With my data, you could make them pay.” No guarantees, but it could be a leverage point. If only she hadn’t signed a non-disclosure with UEH. Apart from publishing in scientific journals, they basically own her data.
Charles rolls his eyes. “No thanks. We’ve got better things to do with our time than get swept up in another legal battle with the great Goliath.” His eyes drift down to a point on the table near the tea tray.
“Let’s at least have a look, Charles,” Caroline says, pulling the papers toward them. “Maybe she can help us.” Grace watches their two heads huddle as they read. They seem to have a good relationship, maybe a great one. She wonders how long they’ve been together. The longest relationship Grace has had lasted seven months. Longer than a heron pairing. No kid, though, despite a couple of scares.
On instinct, she pushes up out of the chair. Best to make her exit, leave them to their deliberations. “You know how to reach me.” She pockets the last cookie.
The couple exchange a long look. Caroline nods, then meets Grace’s eye. “Charles wants to show you something.”
“I really need to get going.”
“Oh, this won’t take long,” he says, striding to the big white farmhouse sink.
“Go on,” Caroline says, giving Grace a light push from behind.
Charles opens the tap. The water is white and bubbly, like carbonated milk. It smells like eggs rotting in an open sewer.
“It doesn’t always smell like this,” Charles says.
“Some days it’s more like paint thinner,” Caroline says.
Charles pulls a long-handled grill lighter from a drawer. He touches the lighter to the stream of water. An orange-yellow fireball erupts from the faucet.
Grace jumps and gasps, barely able to process what she’s seeing. As long as the water runs, the fire boils on, a hellish fountain.
Caroline reaches with care around the hell-cloud to shut off the tap. A blue tongue of flame disappears up the faucet’s mouth, a snake returning to its lair.
“We’re under siege, you see?” Caroline’s voice breaks on you see. “They’re poisoning us and you want to measure the air. Surely you see that we can’t trust you. You’re on their side.”
“Even if you are neutral as you claim, it’s too late,” Charles says. “You can’t help us.”
It was never Grace’s purpose to help them. Her insides feel hot and hollow. She’s a user, a despicable monster. She wants nothing more than to get away from here, to go back to her messy life where at least she knows the rules. Her world where United Energy needs her data, where James will change things, where she’ll make a splash as the face of methane flux.
The smell of burning rubber lingers. Caroline and Charles lean against the counter, stricken, defeated. With a hasty, “I’m sorry,” Grace backs away.
At the door, she freezes. Miles snuffles and moans. She watches him curl and resettle his mud-crusted body like a beloved dog allowed on the furniture. She steps into the velvet night, her heart aching and her head full of stars.
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I love the arc of this chapter, Julie. We start with Grace feeling a part of this community and by the end she’s not just separate, but in opposition. You’ve done a beautiful job of creating this conflict and grounding it in vivid detail.
I love the character of Miles in this chapter. I also love how Grace sort of loves the process of the oven build, even though she also resists giving into the "lost" time. The twist at the end with the water... the guardedness of these farmers is so warranted... they do need to be sure she isn't just another taker... and is she? Such hefty tensions developing.