Omega’s Fold (Prime Match #7)

Chapter 1

The folding chair rocks every time I shift my weight but I don’t move to another seat. I chose this one on purpose. It’s in the corner in the back row, corner and near the side door. If I need to leave, I can leave.

The Linden Group’s man is on the stage at the front of the hall, doing his thing. I’ve seen him twice before. Once when he offered for the ranch, the second in a town hall meeting just like this one.

He doesn’t look like he belongs out here. It’s the gray suit and tie, his shiny black shoes and designer stubble. I don’t know about watches to value the one on his wrist but I’d bet it costs thousands.

His name is Brent Payley and he’s been droning on about community investment for what feels like forever.

There are another two Linden Group personnel beside him, both looking as out of place as he does. The woman at the end of the row is smiling constantly, as if she can project cheer onto the rest of us by sheer will power.

“—and what we want you to understand,” Payley is saying, in the warm voice he uses for this part, “is that Linden Group isn’t just a developer.

We’re neighbors. We’re investing in this town for the long haul.

Construction jobs. Local contracts. We’re not hiding the impact too.

We know there are going to be some people impacted by the development and that’s why we’ve put together our mitigation package.

And even then, we know that we don’t understand everything about life out here.

That’s why we had it independently reviewed.

We are proud to stand behind it. I’m proud to stand behind it. ”

Sure, you are, I think. I don’t know if he believes his own crap. Certainly, no one else in this room does.

Nobody claps.

I breathe through my nose and keep my eyes on the scuffed tile between my boots. The hall smells like pine cleaner and the scent of bodies packed close on a still evening. I wish I didn’t have to be here.

Ray Hegenbach is chairing. He’s standing off to the side of the stage in his usual heavy plaid, arms folded across his chest. He’s the mayor because nobody’s ever been stupid enough to run against him, and he’s been mayor for as long as I’ve been alive.

His wife Donna was my mother’s maid of honor at her wedding.

I’ve known them both my entire life. He’s never said a word to me about my father leaving, for which I am grateful.

He’s a good man and a competent one, but I think even Ray is feeling out of his depth.

Payley finishes. The smiling Linden woman steps half a pace forward like she has something to add, then doesn’t. Payley steps back.

“Thank you, Brent,” Ray says, in the dry voice he uses when he means the opposite. “Now, it’s time for the public comment portion of the evening.”

The woman’s smile falters for a split second.

The room stirs.

A man stands up two rows ahead of me. I know him like I know every single person in this room who isn’t part of the Linden Group.

“I’ll say it,” he says, already half turned so he’s addressing the room rather than the stage.

“I’ve got two nephews been out of work since the cannery closed.

I’ve got a son-in-law drives ninety miles a day to a job he doesn’t like.

Construction is construction. I’m not saying the rest of it doesn’t matter.

I’m saying jobs matter too. That’s all.”

He sits back down.

Someone at the back of the room gives a half-hearted clap then it peters out.

“Anyone else?”

A woman stands up near the middle, and her voice is steadier than his was. I know her too. She taught my brother Matthew last year.

“My father’s well silted up last month,” she says.

“First time in my mother’s memory. I had the hydro people out.

I had the county out. They all said the same thing.

The water table’s dropping, just like we knew that it would.

” She’s looking at Payley directly when she says it.

“So, I would like to know, please, where in your mitigation package it says he gets paid for about a hundred and eighty feet of new casing, which is what his driller quoted to reach the new level. Because I looked at your summary, and I didn’t see it. ”

She sits.

Payley starts to answer, and Ray holds up a hand. “Public comment first, Brent. You’ll get your chance. Anyone else.”

I keep my eyes on the tile.

Don’t call on me, I think, at the top of my head, as clear as if I were saying it out loud. Don’t call on me, Ray. Don’t you dare.

“Wyatt Briggs.”

Damn you, Ray Hegenbach. I did not put my hand up and you know it.

I don’t move for a second. My ears go hot, the way they always do, instant and traitorous.

“Wyatt.”

I stand.

The sound of the chair scraping back feels like the loudest thing in the hall, and I can feel every face turning toward me, forty pairs of eyes I’ve known my whole life.

I keep my gaze locked on the stage on a point just past Payley’s shoulder where the faded American flag hangs off its pole.

I pick a knot in the pole and I look at the knot.

My jaw’s set wrong. I work it once. The inside of my mouth has gone dry.

Damn you, Ray, I think again. I’ve never been a talker, Ray knows that. But I’m also the one who is worst impacted by this devil of a corporation. Of course, Ray wants me to speak.

Everyone is looking at me.

“South well,” I say.

My voice is too quiet. I clear my throat, and the sound is enormous in the silence of the hall.

“South well on my property,” I say again, and this time it’s louder. “Last summer the pump ran a little over an hour a day to fill the main trough for the cows. This summer it’s running five. And last week, it ran dry.”

I stop. I was going to stop there, and I make myself go on instead, because if I’ve come this far, I might as well finish it.

“Twice last month I trucked water in. Never done that in my life. My mother never did it. My grandfather never did it. No one ever did in this town. Never needed to. You can bring jobs in and I don’t have no argument with that, but every single parcel of land will die without the water.

That’s cos of you. And that so-called mitigation package won’t mitigate a thing of that. ”

I don’t look up, because if I do, I’m going to lose my nerve.

“That’s all,” I say.

I sit down, and the chair rocks on its bent leg. My palm is damp. I wipe it on my thigh and I don’t look up for a count of ten.

When I do, Payley is watching me, then he smiles, that professional smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Ray looks like he wants to punch him in the face. I half wish that he would. It would make this entire mess far more entertaining. And maybe the Linden Group people would be far less smug.

A few more people stand and speak, mostly on the same theme. Someone else mentions his well. Another person says they’re concerned about pollution from the new commercial park that comes with the development.

Finally, the complaints die down but when it’s Payley’s turn to speak, he looks at me first.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I was called on to speak. Maybe, because at twenty-three, I’m the youngest person affected and he thinks I’m more easily mollified.

“I hear you, Wyatt. I want you to know that. And I want everyone in this room to know that the concerns you’ve raised are exactly the kind our mitigation package is designed to address.

Now, I can’t speak to specific wells tonight, for the record, but I can tell you that the package includes everything you should need, along with a direct line to our community liaison, who’s in this room with us tonight. ”

The smiley woman lifts her hand halfway and puts it down.

“We are committed,” Payley says, “to being good neighbors.”

Bullshit. They don’t care. The only thing they care about is covering their own asses enough that we can’t sue them successfully.

I want to tell him that but I don’t. I’ve done enough talking for one night and it wouldn’t change a thing.

I look at the tile and I breathe.

Eventually Ray says, “We’re not going to resolve this tonight. I want to thank Mr. Payley and his team for coming out. I want to thank all of you for speaking up. This conversation will continue. Meeting adjourned.”

I’m out the side door before he’s finished the word adjourned.

The parking lot is full, and I have to cut between two pickups to reach mine. The air outside is cool and smells like cut hay.

“Wyatt,” a female voice says. I stop with my hand on the truck door.

Ray’s wife Donna comes around the tailgate of the pickup to my left, handbag on her shoulder, reading glasses pushed up into her gray hair.

She’s shorter than me by a head. She was a friend of my mother’s for longer than I’ve been alive.

She’s taken me on as her own personal project.

Sometimes, I love that. It’s good to know I have someone there for me, but sometimes it’s a bit much.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You’d say that either way, sweetheart. Have you eaten?”

“I’ve eaten.”

She looks at me, just looks.

“I will eat,” I say eventually. “When I get home.”

“You did well in there,” she says, softer. “I know Ray put you on the spot but you needed to say your piece.”

“I know.”

She puts a hand on my arm, warm through the denim of my jacket, and then she takes it off again before I have to decide what to do about it.

“Drive safe,” she says. “Tell Caleb I said hello. Tell Matthew I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell them.”

She walks off toward her own car. I get in the truck and I sit for a second with both hands on the wheel, not doing anything, just breathing, before I turn the key.

The road home runs past the Linden site.

I could take the back way. I could go up over the ridge road and come out at my own gate from the north, but I don’t.

The site is lit up like a stadium. They’ve put portable floodlights on poles, and you can see from a quarter mile out. I can hear the pumps before I can see them, a low continuous thump I’ve been feeling in my molars for weeks now.

I don’t slow down or speed up. I hold the truck at a steady forty past the site, and I make myself look at it.

A mile past the site, on my own road, the floodlight glow fades out of the rear-view, and the pump noise drops off, and the dark comes back properly.

The kitchen light is on when I pull up to the house.

My brother Caleb is at the table. He has his biology textbook open and a notebook next to it with three lines of writing on the top of the page. His hair’s getting long again.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

I hang my jacket by the door and drop my keys in the bowl.

“Matthew in bed?”

“An hour ago. He tried to stay up for you, but I made him go to bed.”

“Okay.”

I go to the sink and run the tap and fill a glass, and the water takes a second longer to come clear than it should.

“So?” Caleb says behind me.

I turn. He’s watching me over the top of the textbook.

“So what?”

“How did it go?”

“It went.”

“Wyatt.”

“They did their pitch. Payley did his routine. Ray opened it up. A few people spoke. Meeting ended. Same bullshit.”

I shouldn’t curse. Caleb is sixteen so it’s not like he hasn’t heard the word before, but I’m the adult in the house. I should be setting an example.

I sigh. “It was fine, Caleb. I said my piece. I sat down. Other people said theirs. Nothing got decided. There’ll be another meeting in a month.”

“Did Payley have an answer?”

“Nah.”

He huffs, and it’s almost a laugh.

“You better get to bed too.”

He rolls his eyes at me but shuts the textbook and heads up the stairs.

The stack of mail is on the end of the table where it’s been since yesterday. The top thing on the other pile is a heavy cream envelope with an embossed seal in the corner.

I pick it up.

Omega Match Bureau.

I put it in the trash under the sink without opening it. I registered a few weeks ago at the feed store. They’d offered a stipend to do it and I wasn’t going to turn down free cash. The letter is probably nothing, just a list of alphas they want to match me to. I don’t have time for that.

The next envelope is worse: Western Mutual, logo in their specific shade of blue. I turn it over in my hands, once, twice. Then I put it back down on the pile, still unopened.

I sit at the kitchen table alone for a while, just looking at the envelope. The fridge hums. The clock on the wall ticks. Somewhere out in the pasture a cow calls to another cow, and the other cow answers.

My phone buzzes against my thigh and I almost hit the ceiling. No one I know messages me this kind of night.

I take it out. The screen is too bright in the dim of the kitchen and I have to squint at it.

Prime Match found. Compatibility Score: 97.2%

I’m not doing this tonight. Not at all.

I swipe left on the notification, delete it. I’m not dealing with this. I’ve got enough trouble.