Heat & Light by Haigh Jennifer

Author:Haigh, Jennifer [Haigh, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Historical, Adult
ISBN: 9780061763298
Amazon: 0061763292
Goodreads: 24584923
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2016-05-03T07:00:00+00:00

7.

They meet in the basement of the Bakerton Public Library. The small room is crowded, loud with chatter. Neighbors call greetings to one another. They eat Rena’s oatmeal cookies and drink coffee from styrofoam cups.

You could come with me, she’d told Mack, knowing it would never happen; knowing better than anyone Mack’s horror of attracting attention, her outsize fear of crowds. Fifty years old, and self-conscious as a teenager. In any social situation, Mack froze like a deer.

At five after seven Rena takes the podium. Lorne Trexler stands slightly behind her, waiting to be introduced. On tiptoe, she speaks into the microphone. “Thanks for coming, everyone.” Her knees are actually shaking.

“Speak up, honey,” someone yells.

Rena checks the microphone and sees that it isn’t turned on. She turns it on.

“That’s better. Now can everyone hear me?” There is a chorus of no’s from the back of the room. She leans closer to the microphone, which makes a humming noise. “The purpose of this meeting is to talk about our experiences with gas drilling, positive and negative.”

From the back of the room, a hoot.

“Okay, not so much positive. If they were positive, you probably wouldn’t be here.” She is making a mess of this; she is.

Lorne Trexler reaches around her to adjust the microphone. “Relax,” he whispers. “They’re just your neighbors.”

It’s exactly the right thing to say. Rena picks out a janitor from the hospital, her second-grade teacher, Peachy Rouse from down the hill.

“Anyways, you didn’t come to hear me,” she says, more calmly. “Dr. Trexler is a geologist with a special interest in the Marcellus Shale. He is co-chairman of the Geology Department at Stirling College and a founding member of the Keystone Waterways Coalition. He’s here to talk to us about what they’re doing to our land, and what we can do about it.”

She takes a seat in the first row as Trexler adjusts the microphone. A lock of hair falls over his brow.

Lorne Trexler is obsessed—this is clear from the start—with water. “Fracking isn’t good for our land. It isn’t good—you already know this—for our quality of life. But what it does to our water is truly criminal. So let’s start there.”

Pennsylvania, he explains, has water everywhere, eighty thousand miles of streams and rivers. “We have so much water that we take it for granted. Out west—they’ve fracked the hell out of Colorado and Wyoming—folks pay attention to water, because they have to. You mess with their water, and people get mad.” He is an effortless talker, relaxed and charming. He talks the way sprinters run and dancers dance, an elite athlete. He talks as though he was born to talk.

At the back of the room, the door swings open. “Come on in,” he calls. “We’re just getting started.”

Heads turn as the latecomer, Shelby Devlin, creeps in on tiptoe, blushing violently. Sorry, she mouths. She is dressed for business: high heels, a skirt and jacket. The rest of the crowd wears gender-neutral shorts and T-shirts, blue jeans, flannel shirts.

“Welcome. We’re glad to see you.

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