Church of the Graveyard Saints. C. Joseph Greaves

OLSEN DECKER

      MAY 12, 1964 – AUGUST 4, 1998

      BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

      “Do you even remember her?” Bradley asked after doing the math.

      “I’m not sure. I was only three when she died. I have these memories, these sort of phantom images, but I don’t really know if it’s my mother I remember or Grandma Vivian or someone else entirely.”

      “What images?”

      She shook her head. “Nothing I can describe. Just … like holding a hand, or running ahead of somebody. Having my shoes tied. That sort of thing. The problem is, I’ve tried so hard to remember for so many years now that I can’t even say what’s real anymore.”

      “Does it matter? I mean, as long as it’s real to you?”

      She took a moment to reflect on that.

      “You find yourself wondering how your life might’ve been different,” she said. “I mean, I know it’d be different, but … would I be the same person? And if not, then who would I be? Would this version of me even like that version of me? Would we even recognize each other?”

      “I imagine you’d be the same person but with a few different memories.”

      “No, I don’t think so. I mean, is a person with different memories really the same person? It’s like having this other life moving in parallel with your own but no matter how fast you run you’ll never quite catch it. It’ll always be out there, just beyond your grasp.”

      “The life you would have had if your mother had lived?”

      “Psychology tells us that maternal interactions are the foundation on which the rest of our lives are built.”

      “And yours is built on a dream?”

      “A dream, a figment. Thin air.” She turned to face him. “If you’ve only—oh! Here.” She dug into a pocket. “Your nose is bleeding.”

      More flowers had arrived with the casket; great clouds of lilies, carnations, and colorful hyacinth spilled from the living room through the dining room and into the kitchen where ovens hummed and crockpots bubbled and bustling women in sensible shoes fussed over plastic tubs of potato salad and coleslaw and cling-wrapped platters of deviled eggs, the warm aromas of the cooking and of the coffee in rented urns reminding Bradley it had been nearly six hours since he’d eaten.

      Dabbing his nose with the tissue, he eased his way through the crowded dining room and into the high-beamed living room where he positioned himself by the grandfather clock at the foot of the staircase to watch and wait for the men who smoked and laughed and ate from paper plates to achieve the desired alignment.

      Addie was still in the kitchen. Her grandfather Jess stood by the fireplace with one hand on the mantle and one foot propped on the hearth. Logan with Waylon beside him had been cornered by a gaggle of women near the open hallway to the rear of the house. Hawkins, meanwhile, was orbiting clockwise, slapping backs as he went. As the big man approached the nodal vector of the mounted elk’s head, Bradley pushed off from the wall and headed in his direction.

      “Hello, son! You must be Addie’s new beau I been hearing about.”

      Bradley had to switch hands with the tissue to shake Hawkins’ meaty paw.

      “Mile-high elevation and 5 percent humidity will do that to your nose. I warn out-of-towners all the time. On the plus side, you do get your money’s worth from the liquor.”

      Bradley slipped the phone from his pocket and swiped to the image. He handed it to Hawkins without speaking.

      “What the hell is this?”

      “Yearling calves,” Jess said, butting into the conversation. “Dropped dead on their feet by that new gas well up top. The professor here says it was carbon dioxide from the venting what done it.”

      “Bullshit. Carbon dioxide never hurt a fly. It’s what comes out of our mouths when we breathe, ain’t it?”

      Bradley examined the tissue to confirm his bleeding had stopped.

      “In cases like this,” he explained, “carbon dioxide isn’t the proximate cause of death. It’s suffocation from lack of oxygen when the CO₂ settles in creekbeds and arroyos. Have you ever heard of Lake Nyos? It sits in a volcanic crater in Cameroon, in central Africa. In 1986, a huge bubble of carbon dioxide burst out of the lake and settled in the surrounding valleys, killing over three thousand head of cattle. It also killed seventeen hundred people.”

      “Well, hell,” the big man said, returning the phone. “Sounds to me like some kind of a freak accident.”

      “Oxygen displacement is the least of your problems. I understand you’re involved with the Cattlemen’s Association. Out of curiosity, have you had any members who graze near a drill site complain of an uptick in stillbirths?”

      “Well. Now that you mention it.”

      “We had half a dozen this year,” Jess told him. “All since they started their drillin.”

      Hawkins’ eyes narrowed on Bradley. “And you think it’s the carbon dioxide?”

      “No. It’s either the hydrogen sulfide or the methane, depending on the well. Or maybe it’s sulfur dioxide, or benzene, or any of a dozen other VOCs. The point is that it’s happening, and until there are independent testing protocols in place you’ll never know for sure what you’re dealing with. Do you happen to know any midwives?”

      “Any what?”

      “Midwives. Or neonatal nurses. Anyone dealing with newborns.”

      “What’s that got to do with the price of cheese in China?”

      “If you’re seeing stillbirths at this rate in cattle, you might also see them in humans. Not as frequent, of course, but doubly important to monitor.”

      “There was that nurse in Durango,” Jess said. Bradley shook his head, and Hawkins took up the story.

      “That was around ten years ago. Some drill monkey came into the ER at Mercy covered in fracking fluid. He turned out to be fine, but the nurse who treated him damn near died from organ failure. Spent something like thirty hours in the ICU. Her doctors wanted to know what she’d been exposed to, but the operator wouldn’t say. Claimed it was proprietary, like the formula for Coca-Cola. Never mind that the woman had one foot out the door.”

      Bradley remembered the incident. He also recalled that when Colorado’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission proposed a rule requiring such disclosure, Halliburton responded by threatening to pull all of its fracking products from the state. Faced with the loss of some twenty-nine billion dollars in taxes and royalties, the commissioners backed down.

      “Look,” Bradley said. “If you own only the surface estate, and if an operator decides to run a pipeline through your hayfield or an access road past your front door, what legal recourse do you have?”

      “None to speak of,” Hawkins admitted. “It’s a problem, I’ll grant you that. But most operators in these parts have been willing to work with the ranchers. We’ve had a few ruffled feathers, but nothing we couldn’t smooth over.”

      Bradley looked to confirm that Addie was still in the kitchen.

      “And what happens when they double the well density, making those compromises harder to come by? Or when they double it again? What happens when the resource plays out and the responsible operators are replaced by the fly-by-night outfits?”

      “I see your point. But oil and gas pays the bills around here. Archer-Mason alone makes up half the county tax base. We’d be tarred and feathered if we did anything that might chase ’em away.”

      “Away to where? The McElmo Dome isn’t moving. They can’t take the resource with them.”

      “He’s