The Giver of Stars(93)

And then she looked down and cursed.

Three vast slurry dams stood behind the ridge, accessible only via a gated tunnel through the mountaintop. Two were full of dull, inky water, still swollen by the rains. The third was empty, its muddy base stained black, and its embankment crumbled to nothing where the slurry had burst out and down the other side, leaving a brackish trail along the winding riverbeds towards the lower end of Baileyville.

Of all the days that Annie could pick to suffer with her legs, this was just about the most inconvenient. Van Cleve muttered to himself as he waited in the booth for the girl to bring his food. Across from him Bennett sat in silence, his eyes sliding towards the other customers as if he were even now trying to gauge what people were saying about them. Van Cleve would have preferred a few more days steering clear of the town, but when your maid wasn’t there to cook a meal and your daughter-in-law had still not seen sense and returned home, what was a man to do? Short of driving halfway to Lexington, the Nice ’N’ Quick was the only place one could get a hot meal.

‘Here you are, Mr Van Cleve,’ said Molly, placing a plate of fried chicken in front of him. ‘Extra greens and mashed potato, just like you said. You was lucky you ordered when you did – cook’s nearly out today, what with the deliveries not getting through and all.’

‘Well, aren’t we the lucky ones!’ he exclaimed. Van Cleve’s mood lifted at the golden, crispy-skinned sight of his dinner. He let out a sigh of satisfaction and tucked his napkin into his collar. He was about to suggest Bennett did the same, rather than fold his on his lap like some damned European, when a gobbet of black mud dropped through the air above his plate and landed with an audible slop on his portion of chicken. He stared at it, struggling to register what he was seeing. ‘What the –’

‘You missing something, Van Cleve?’

Margery O’Hare stood over his table, her colour high and her voice shaking with rage. She held her arm extended, her fist blackened with slurry. ‘That wasn’t floods took out those houses round Monarch Creek. That was your slurry dam and you knew it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

The restaurant fell silent. Behind her a couple of people stood up to see what was going on.

‘You dropped mud on my dinner?’ Van Cleve stood, his chair pushing back with a squeal. ‘You come in here, after all you’ve done, and drop dirt on my food?’

Margery’s eyes glittered. ‘Not dirt. Coal slurry. Poison. Your poison. I went up on the ridge and I saw your busted dam. It was you! Not the rains. Not the Ohio. The only houses destroyed were the ones your filthy water ran right over.’

A murmur went around the restaurant. Van Cleve wrenched his napkin from his collar. He took a step towards her, his finger raised. ‘You listen here, O’Hare. You want to be very careful before you start throwing accusations around. You’ve caused enough trouble –’

But Margery squared up to him. ‘I’ve caused trouble? Says the man who shot my dog? Who knocked two teeth right out of his daughter-in-law’s head? Your flood almost drowned me, and Sophia and William! They had near on nothing to start with and now they got less! You would have drowned three little girls if my girls hadn’t got there to save them! And you swagger around here pretending like it’s nothing to do with you? You want arresting!’

Sven appeared behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder but she was in full flow and shook him off. ‘Men die because you prize dollars over safety! You trick people into signing away their own houses before they understand what they’ve done! You destroy lives! Your mine is a menace! You are a menace!’

‘That’s enough.’ Sven now had his forearm around Margery’s collarbone and was pulling her backwards, even as she pointed at Van Cleve, still yelling. ‘C’mon. Time to go outside.’

‘Yes! Thank you, Gustavsson! Take her outside!’

‘You act like you’re the goddamn Almighty! Like the law doesn’t count for you! But I’m watching you, Van Cleve. For as long as I have breath in my lungs, I’ll tell the truth about you and –’

‘Enough.’

The air in the room seemed to have disappeared into a vacuum as Sven steered her, still struggling, out of the restaurant door. Through its glass panel she could be seen hollering at him in the road, her arms flailing as she tried to free herself.

Van Cleve glanced around and sat back down. The other diners were still staring.

‘The O’Hares, huh!’ he said, too loudly, tucking his napkin back in. ‘Never know what that family’s going to get up to next.’

Bennett’s eyes flickered from his plate and back down again.

‘Gustavsson’s sound. He knows. Oh, yes. And that girl out there is the craziest of the lot of them, right? … Right?’ Van Cleve’s smile wavered a little until people started to drift back to their food. He let out a breath and motioned to the waitress. ‘Molly? Sweetheart? Could you – uh – get me a fresh plate of chicken, please? Thank you kindly.’

Molly pulled a face. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Van Cleve. The last of it just went out.’ She eyed his plate, wincing slightly. ‘I have some soup and a couple of biscuits I could warm up for you?’

‘Here. Have mine.’ Bennett pushed his untouched meal towards his father.

Van Cleve ripped his napkin out of his collar. ‘Lost my appetite. I’ll get Gustavsson a drink and we’ll head home.’