Spinning Dixie (26 page)

The crowd dispersed to warm news coverage of Claudine's performance. She was described as “hospitable” and “genteel.” The phrase “steel magnolia” was sprinkled liberally throughout the reporting. Several reporters had expressed surprise at how calm and nonconfrontational the affair had been.

Our latest spectacle had been completed, and now it was time to dig again.

I had never met a metallurgist before, but if I had been asked what one looked like, I would have described Oliver Shackley. In his late twenties, with sandy blond hair and an impish grin, Shackley had evidently done work for the intelligence community before. He alluded to a prior trip with Marcus to Central America. One learns not to ask.

Alternatively guarded and insightful, Shackley drove Marcus and me to a valley deep within the plantation's grounds. It was a valley I had encountered—and run from—many years before, although I had not shared the details of my memory with either of them.

“Marcus tells me you were hoping to find buried Confederate gold,” Shackley said with a wink below his Tilley field hat.

“Marcus exaggerates,” I said.

“It's my job,” Marcus said.

“Well, gents, sorry to disappoint you, but I didn't find any gold in the area I inspected.”

“Did you find any other precious elements?” I asked.

“That's an interesting way to put it, Jonah,” Shackley said. “I did find some other elements, but they weren't precious.”

“Go on.”

“Are you familiar with phosphate?”

“Honestly, no.”

“It's a mineral used to make fertilizer. Phosphates are mined around here. Big industry, especially where agriculture is heavy.”

“When you say around here, are you saying it's mined at Rattle & Snap?” I asked.

“No,” Shackley said. “Phosphorus is processed in Tennessee. The problem is, it's highly toxic, and I'm finding huge readings down in this valley.”

“What would explain that?”

“I had one of our satellites do some imaging of the grounds. The phosphorus contamination is pretty much concentrated in this particular area. In fact, the rest of the plantation is quite clear.”

“Oliver,” I said, “the Hilliards, who own this land, have a lucrative phosphate business.”

“Marcus told me that.”

“Why would there be high phosphorus readings here in the middle of a plantation. I mean, the Hilliards have factories.”

“The best I could do, Jonah, is speculate.”

“Fine.”

“There were dirt roads at some point down in this valley. They haven't been traveled in years, but they were here. Somebody was moving cargo in this area. Phosphorus is a very serious chemical. Disposal is a heavily regulated process, it has been for years. It's also expensive.”

“I saw some activity out here in this valley in nineteen eighty,” I surrendered. “Late in the evening.” I hadn't wanted to divulge this until I knew more. I knew more.

Shackley nodded. “Nineteen eighty, huh? Well, that was around the time of Love Canal, guys. Environmental regulation really took off around then. I'm thinking that if the Hilliards wanted to dispose of phosphorus waste on the cheap, they could have exported diluted, benign waste out of their plant for inspectors to see, but set up some kind of makeshift processing or transfer station out here where the rough stuff got done. If nobody was watching, they could cool the chemicals, transfer the nastiest waste, and sneak it out of here without being noticed. The Mafia used to provide services like these before the Feds cracked down. It's going on big time in Russia, other unregulated places now.”

“Oliver, I don't know much about chemicals, so bear with me,” I said. “If there was such an operation like that out here—cooling and transferring—what would it look like?”

“Man, if they were playing with phosphorus, you could see it, baby.”

“But not if it was far away at night, down in this valley.”

“The hell you couldn't. When phosphorous cools, Jonah, it glows.”

EBS News's next edition of “Rebel Voices” featured a thirtyish suburban Nashville dad reflecting on a recent family confrontation.
“I was visiting my brother and his family in Connecticut. We got to talking politics. Big mistake. I said I voted for Truitt. Well, my sister-in-law says she couldn't believe Truitt got elected. She said, ‘I don't know anybody who voted for him.'

“I said, ‘Do you realize how insulting that is? There's a whole country outside of Connecticut!' No sale. She said Truitt was elected by a ‘handful of religious nuts in Mississippi.'

“I'm here to protest prejudice of a different kind—to say that there's a whole country here of decent people who believe in God, but who aren't nuts, and who are proud of our heritage, but aren't racists.”

 

The moment I heard Oliver Shackley utter the word “glow,” I knew my move: Get J. T. Hilliard over here. Oliver gave me a quick course in chemistry. Phosphorus for Morons.

Claudine called J.T. the following afternoon. She told him there was a situation at the plantation. When he arrived, visibly disgusted by the burgeoning encampment, he confronted me beside the rear stairwell.

“Where's Claudine?”

“Tending to the wounded.”

“Yeah, well, what do you got?” he asked, more characteristic of Jersey bluntness than Dixie charm.

“You're not a Hilliard at all. You're a Hicksen from Pulaski. You're no more Southern gentry than I am. Your clan came down from the hills just in time to escape the film crew for
Deliverance
. Your family bought off the Polks. Your old man kept buying their land, set up shop way out in the fields on private property, far away from the beady eyes of the Environmental Protection Agency. Love Canal, all that pesky scrutiny. Your father had officials sign off on the contents of your waste when it left Hilliard property. Then the Hilliards brought it out here to Rattle & Snap, boiled it down, or cooled it off, or whatever, and transferred it to the Marcellos in New Orleans, who took it away, and dumped it God knows where.”

“First off, friend, that's all bullshit. It's true, I own the mansion, but the land around it is owned by a trust. I have nothing to do with it.” Self-satisfaction suffused J.T.'s face. “Someone can only be held liable if they own the land, which I don't, Eastman.”

I nodded mournfully, and let him rejoice in his flash of cleverness.

“But you do, J.T. Your father created the trust in the late 1970s through a mobbed-up law firm in New Orleans, Moscowitz & Forelli. Your father executed a document a long time ago granting the law firm authority to manage the lands bought from the Polks. It means your father directed a huge scheme for which you are the beneficiary.”

“That kind of technicality won't hold up in court and you know it!” His face was burning orange.

“My guess is that you'd probably be acquitted in court after a long, nasty trial. But there's a law called Superfund that holds a company responsible for things that go back a century. Right now, there are conglomerates filing for bankruptcy because a squirrel got diarrhea on a parcel of land owned by a subsidiary they forgot they had during the Great Depression. Mammoth companies have teams of lawyers, technicians, consultants, and flacks who can spend millions of dollars over many years battling the government to a tie—at best—once they're targeted. If you boys did half of what I think you did, you could be bankrupted or go to prison. The E.P.A. is wading in the Duck River as we speak. They've got some questions about disturbing pH readings. Or, of course, they can just go home.”

“You can't prove—”

“You don't know what I can prove. For one thing, I can attach you to property where we found toxic residue that any sane jury would believe came from your plant. There's not a civil jury in the world that won't give your many victims a blank check drawn on your account.”

“What victims?”

“
What victims?
When this news gets out, everybody below the Mason-Dixon line who misses their beloved mama who died at the age of ninety-two will stand in line to get a piece of you. Science won't matter. You could bankrupt your company on legal fees alone just to prove you're an upstanding Southern gentleman.”

“These stunts of yours, Eastman…don't you think they would make a hell of a story: Fired, mobbed-up White House mouthpiece gets big shots in Washington to bully an old rival for a girl? Talk about dirty tricks.”

“It sounds far-fetched to me, J.T. A great story line, I'll grant you that, but it would take a lot of evidence to connect those dots. Could take months—if ever—to break it. It's the kind of story that gets editors fired, so they'd take their time on the research. Claudine, on the other hand, has the press camped out here today, right this very minute. What she's got on you can be all over the news in”—I glanced at my watch—“about ten minutes. Just in time for the E.P.A. to storm your offices and Boston Capital Holdings to change their underwear about that buyout you've been negotiating. I could be wrong, but I don't think they want Superfund on their docket. Yeah, we know about that, too.”

J.T. affected one of those smiles Tom Wolfe writes about, the false, tight bureaucratic grin of the damned. I could see, however, that the arteries in his neck were filled to capacity. This was not a man accustomed to playing cool.

“I deal with the government and nervous partners all the time.”

“C'mon, J.T., are you still an eighteen-year-old hothead? You're running a multi-billion-dollar company. This isn't about who's the bigger man, it's about business. You've got a business decision to make. An easy one, I might add. You sign over a property worth several million to save an empire worth billions. Your father wouldn't have needed a calculator.”

“It's not about the money, Eastman.”

“Then, what's it about? Love?”

“What it's about is none of your business.” J.T. narrowed his eyes. “So, I leave, and you move in, is that the plan?”

I instinctively laughed, but it came out a snort. “Is that what you think? That this is checkmate from twenty-five years ago? No, J.T., this is not an assault on your rebel masculinity. If you sign those papers, I'm gone.” I sat on one of the steps. I softened my tone, as I wanted him to feel strong, and stand above me. “Look, you've got a girlfriend. You're never here. I'm not a factor. What—”

“Since I was a little kid, I dreamed about living here with Claudine, Eastman. Those are a lot of memories.”

His honesty disarmed me. I downshifted again, this time into a mode I was familiar with: punctured self-delusion.

“They weren't memories, J.T.,” I said fraternally. “It was an obsession. An enzyme that got caught in your head. One your dad passed down to you. This house and that woman”—I pointed to a faraway place—“ordered your life. Mine, too, for a time. Maybe even now, a little, to be honest. You don't give a rat's ass about the Civil War, and you'd rather be with your girlfriend, or out on a golf course. I'd rather be with my family and teaching school, so I don't judge a man's time allocation. You don't want this Moby Dick of a house, J.T. Claudine and Six, though, it's all they know.”

“It's my heritage, too, Eastman.”

Be cool here, Jonah. This was no time to tweak Sallie's paternity, castrate him with it, imply that his home was now my heritage. Suddenly, the light caught J.T.'s face in a way that made him refract differently in my brain. I felt sorry for him. He was my nemesis, but also my Brother in Sorrow. Claudine Polk had been our Messiah, Rattle & Snap our Land of Milk and Honey. Only Claudine hadn't delivered us from torment, she
was
our torment.

“Rattle & Snap is your heritage like the White House is my heritage,” I said, with regret lodged in my throat. “The White House is where I got to. Felt tables and bathtub gin are my heritage. The Hicksen heritage is chemicals, plastics, and phosphates. Maybe some bathtub gin, too. Take that heritage, call it Hilliard, and run with it. I know a lot of people, myself included, who'd take it anyday. My only advantage over you, J.T., is that I've been in the gutter before. You had diamonds on your crib. For me, falling is a part of life. For you, it's a novelty. You're too old for a novelty like that. Me? It's all I know.”

“You're bluffing, friend.”

“Bluffing? Tell me something, J.T., if the chances are a million to one that I am holding a full house, is it worth losing everything so you can tell your old frat brothers that you pimp-slapped your wife.”

“You're extorting me—”

“I'm just extorting what you stole. Show me some professional courtesy—one hustler to another. You've got a lot on the line,” I said.

“You want me to declare that I've learned my lesson, is that it?”

“People don't surrender because they learn lessons, they surrender because they are overwhelmed. The last thing you need is a government panty raid.”

“And you could make that happen?”

“Seriously, J.T., listen.” I pointed to my ear.

“Listen for what?”

“Let's go outside and listen there.”

I pressed Tigger on the speed dial of my mobile phone.

“It's me,” I said, standing on the steps, staring down on J.T. (Man, he had a lot of hair.) I inquired as to whether or not J.T.'s friend Senator Hunter had called the president (“Did Jethro reach out for Mr. Drysdale?”)

“Negative.”

“Then put the file in play.”

“Are you sure, Wonderboy?” Tigger asked.

“Yes.”

I motioned J.T. to follow me outside. He did. About twenty Confederates, including Six, were playing cards and horseshoes outside near their tents. J.T. shook his head in disgust.

“If I can bring this spectacle to Claudine's doorstep, I can bring it to yours.”

“A handful of loonbird Confederate wannabes isn't much of a spectacle.”

 

The call Tigger made did not come from the White House. It came from a Verizon pay phone outside of the McDonald's where Bill Clinton used to scarf down Egg McMuffins after a run. It was near the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventeenth Street. The recipient of Tigger's call was the Panamanian's assistant, Linda. Linda clacked something into her computer, which was transmitted to a satellite pirouetting above the Philippines. This satellite, in turn, relayed coordinates to a room deep within the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Sangamore Road in Bethesda, Maryland. The function of the windowless colossus was to provide the U.S. military with the precise coordinates—and satellite photos—of a target anywhere around the world that the president of the United States in his own wisdom had decided to vaporize.

“Arnold, over,” a voice in Bethesda said.

“This is Arnold.”

Arnold is considered a milquetoast name. It conjures up an accountant doing a plumber's taxes at an H&R Block outlet in a strip mall in Secaucus.

Not this Arnold.