Payoff Pitch (Philadelphia Patriots) (36 page)

Noah wasn’t too concerned about that, but he got where Teddy was coming from. As for him, he had a lot more on his mind than what the folks around that table might think about him personally. His career was racing downhill like an out of control bobsled, and he was caught between his family and the woman he was pretty sure he was falling in love with.

And piled on top of that was a life-changing decision he didn’t want to have to make.

Teddy winced with guilt at the way Noah kept shifting in the old wooden chair. His back muscles were obviously in spasm, partly explaining his grim expression. The Dillons’ sofa and chairs were practically relics and felt the way they looked—old, creaky and uncomfortable. She’d offered Noah her comfy bed last night, insisting she’d sleep on the saggy living room sofa. Gentleman that he was, Noah had refused.

And this morning his back was obviously paying the price for that display of manly gallantry. Though he was managing not to full-out grimace, she knew him well enough to be able to read his discomfort. As much as she wanted Tom and Janie to have a full chance to speak with him, Teddy knew it was best to get him on the road to Cooperstown with the least possible delay.

Despite her nerves, she found she was looking forward to the trip. The intensity of last night—both the meeting and the walk outside with Noah—had drained her. Maybe a little time in Cooperstown would relax her, though she had to admit that it was fraught with danger too, especially to her emotional equilibrium.

“Pendulum drilled their first well on our land about a year ago,” Tom said. “You must have seen it when you crested the hill half a mile away. Not long after that, they put up an impoundment a few hundred feet behind the well.”

“What’s an impoundment?” Noah asked, putting his cup down on the end table. Like her, he’d said yes to their offer of coffee after Teddy assured him that the Dillons now had drinkable water.

“It’s a huge pond of fracking fluid. Ten millions gallons or more of the stuff. We’ve seen photos from the air and it’s a bright orange color, if you can believe it. Or, in some other ponds around the county, pea green.” Tom made a disgusted face.

“Trucks are coming and going at all hours, too,” Janie said in a sober voice, leaning against her husband as they sat side by side on the sofa. “It’s noisy and dirty and a real mess when it rains. I can’t even hang my laundry outside anymore, what with all the dust. I wish we’d never signed those stupid leases.”

“Sometimes that pond smells like raw sewage,” Tom said. “It stinks up practically the whole valley. And you just know it’s full of toxic chemicals, no matter what the companies say.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed, more from interest than pain, Teddy thought. “Have you had any spills, Tom?”

“Not yet. We know people who have, though. And everybody’s worried, because you know what’s keeping all that toxic fluid inside the impoundment and off of our land?”

“Just a synthetic rubber liner,” Teddy said, since she was sure Noah had no intention of guessing.

Tom snorted. “Exactly. A lousy rubber liner. Not much comfort in that, is there?”

“Tell him about the water, Tom,” Janie said impatiently. “That’s what Teddy said he wants to hear.”

“And see, too,” Teddy added. “You’ve still got the samples, right?”

When Tom wrapped his arm around his wife’s plump shoulders, giving Janie an affectionate little squeeze, something inside Teddy tightened with envy. The pair were in their mid-forties, childless, and as in love as any couple Teddy had ever known.

Janie sat up straighter. “When Pendulum started fracking the well, the ground below us shook like crazy every time. It was really bad, Noah. That alone told us something awful must be happening down there underground. It’s not right to have mini-earthquakes going on all the time.”

“We say a lot of extra prayers,” Tom said.

Janie nodded. “About a month or so after fracking started, our well water turned a brownish color.”

A small, skeptical frown creased the space between Noah’s eyebrows.

“It’s true,” Janie insisted. “We wouldn’t drink it after that. We just couldn’t. No way.”

“It even left stains on our clothes coming out of the washing machine,” Tom added.

Noah’s brows went straight up. “Jesus, really?”

Tom gave him a sharp look.

“Sorry,” Noah said, obviously remembering—if belatedly—that the Dillons were fundamentalist Christians.

Janie gave him a forgiving smile before continuing. “We stopped drinking the water but kept on using it for everything else. I mean, what were we supposed to do? Then we had it tested by the state and they found high levels of methane and aluminum. Then they did another round of tests later and the levels were even higher. At that point, the government ordered the well shut down. Not Pendulum’s gas well, of course.
Our water well
.”

“I’m really sorry,” Noah said. His grimace was clearly one of sympathy, not pain. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been. But did the government people determine it was the fracking operations that caused the contamination?”

Deep lines carved grooves around Janie’s lips. “They said there was no real way to prove it. Well, I don’t need
proof
. Not when the water was perfect before the fracking and ruined afterwards, and we did absolutely nothing else that could have caused it. That’s all the proof I’ll ever need.”

Noah nodded. “Teddy was telling me that Pendulum trucks in water for you now.”

“Yeah, isn’t that just grand?” Tom said with heavy sarcasm. “We’ve got clean water again, but our land is worth nothing. No one would ever buy this place now.”

“We can’t have children, you know,” Janie said. She rubbed the corner of one eye. “I suppose it’s just as well that they don’t have to inherit this…this mess.” The poor woman suddenly looked exhausted.

Teddy stood up, wanting to move it along so she and Noah could get out of the couple’s hair. This was stressful for all of them. “Janie, can you show us the samples you kept?”

The four of them trooped into a fifteen by twenty storage room behind the kitchen where the Dillons kept everything from potatoes to sacks of fertilizer in metal storage units bolted together along the walls. Janie pulled a pair of quart mason jars down from a shelf and handed one to Noah and the other to Teddy.

Noah stared at the jar in his hand. The water was a cloudy, yellowish-brown.

“I’d get dizzy when I took a shower,” Janie said, her hands on her hips. “I thought at first that I had a virus or something, but then I figured out it was the water.” She gave a sad little chuckle. “I guess the smell should have tipped me off.”

“What did Pendulum have to say about all this?” Noah asked. “They agreed to truck in clean water, but did they say anything else about what happened to your well?”

Tom shrugged. “Oh, they claimed that the contamination could have come from problems with our well that were entirely unrelated to their drilling. Or from something else going on underground that had nothing to do with fracking. But the timing was a little coincidental, wasn’t it?”

Noah nodded. “I hear you. But so far there hasn’t been an ironclad linkage between fracking and water contamination anywhere, at least not as far as I know.”

Tom shook his head, looking morose.

It was the sad truth. Teddy hated that the companies had armies of both scientists and lobbyists working night and day to ensure that what had happened to the Dillons and other families was explained away with little or no mud sticking to the oil and gas industry or to the technology of hydraulic fracturing. She couldn’t help wishing that every one of those people, and the company executives too, had to live right beside a fractured gas well.

She’d bet a lot of money that their tunes would change then.

“What about you, Noah?” Janie asked. “How would
you
feel about living here or someplace else where there was a gas well a few hundred feet away? Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t be just as worried and mad as we are?”

Teddy’s stomach tightened as she watched Noah slowly turn the jar of water around in his big hands. Would he smoothly skate around Janie’s blunt question like the gas industry spokesman his father wanted him to be? From the troubled expression on his face, she could tell how much he disliked being put on the spot.

Noah handed the jar back to Janie. “No, I can’t tell you that. Frankly, I don’t see how anybody couldn’t be worried. And mad, too. At least about the lack of answers you’ve been given.”

Teddy sensed that some kind of “but” was on the way.

“But that doesn’t mean I’m convinced that fracturing is the sole cause of the problem,” Noah continued, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans as he quickly looked down at the floor and then back up at Janie again. “Because I just don’t know. As far as I can tell, nobody knows for sure.”

Teddy held her breath since she could tell he wasn’t finished.

“I do know one thing for sure, though,” he added.

“And what would that be?” Janie said, sounding both hurt and defensive.

Noah took a step forward and touched the woman’s shoulder. “Janie, I know that every single oil and gas company CEO should see that jar of water and every other jar like it across this country. They owe people like you some answers. Honest and complete answers. And they need to do everything in their power to ensure that whenever and wherever they drill in this country, they darn well make sure they’re not destroying people’s homes and livelihoods.”

“Amen,” Teddy echoed.

She had no doubt that Noah was sincere or that he would take the message back to Adam Cade. But what did his words actually tell her about his future and the decision he needed to make?

Sadly, not very much.

Through pairs of stately white columns, Noah gazed straight ahead across sparkling Otsego Lake, ringed by low hills in full summer green. Despite the heat of the late July weekend, the air felt a whole lot fresher to him on the terrace of the grand old hotel. He thrust his legs out, settling into the comfortable rocking chair, a tall glass of iced coffee in his hand and an old friend at his side. For the first time in quite a while, a small semblance of peace crept over him.

Charlie Clancy had dragged him straight out to the terrace as soon as they met in the lobby. They’d agreed to get together at two o’clock so Noah could have time for lunch with Teddy on the lakeside patio beforehand. He’d figured that while he was with Charlie, Teddy might want to spend some time checking out the shops on Main Street. Instead, she’d opted to visit the Fenimore Art Museum just up the road from the hotel.

The drive up from the Dillons’ farm had been a little tense at first. Teddy had obviously been anxious to nail him down about both the meeting last night and the visit with Tom and Janie. He wasn’t biting, though. Except for his pronouncement to Janie this morning, which he sincerely believed, he intended to keep his counsel until he’d had a chance to think through everything he’d heard and seen and put it all into context. To him, the issues were complex, no matter what sweet, ardent Teddy might believe.

Fortunately, Teddy had cut him some slack and switched gears before they even hit the New York border. To his surprise, she’d spent the rest of the drive—and some of their lunch—peppering him with questions about baseball.

She’d even claimed to be excited about going with him to the Hall of Fame, an abrupt but welcome turnaround. Noah had responded to her questions by rattling on about baseball heroes past and present, especially the Hall-of-Famers he’d played with and against earlier in his career. Again and again, he’d gone off on lengthy tangents about all the wild and wonderful things he’d seen and done while playing the game he loved. The discussion reminded him all over again why baseball was so important to his life.

The easy conversation had been exactly what he’d needed, and he was damn sure Teddy had cottoned onto that. He’d have plenty of time and opportunity later to demonstrate exactly how appreciative he was—in actions instead of words. How receptive she was going to be to that, though, remained to be seen.

“Noah, it seems to me your options are clear,” Charlie said, his chino-clad legs splayed wide in the rocker to accommodate the spread of his belly. Retirement had been a little unkind to Charlie in the weight department, Noah had to admit. Still, he seemed pretty much as sharp as ever. “You can go ahead with the surgery and probably be out for a year. You can rest the arm a while and hopefully be able to pitch the rest of the season as a reliever. Or you can retire. Have I got it right?”

Noah couldn’t help a grimace as Charlie repeated in concise terms what he’d just taken twenty minutes to outline. Those were the choices all right, and every one of them was full of question marks. “You got it.”

“Okay, then, a bunch of questions come to mind.” Charlie’s hand wavered a little as he carefully raised his iced tea to his lips. “They’re not softballs either.”

“Shoot,” Noah said, eyeing his old mentor. He hoped like hell that Charlie’s slight trembling didn’t signify some serious problem.

“Okay, let’s start with whether or not you’re prepared to undergo surgery and another year of rehab, knowing there are no guarantees that you’ll make it back to top form. What do you think of that option?”

That question had been dogging Noah since the preliminary diagnosis. But how was he supposed to answer? It felt like a dark, dangerous mist he couldn’t see his way through. “That’s the big one, isn’t it, Charlie? And I really don’t know the answer.”

Charlie gave him an understanding smile. “Ah, but that
is
an answer, isn’t it?”

Noah supposed he was right. If he couldn’t say yes, then the answer was probably no. He merely nodded in response.

“All right, then. Second question. And this is going to hurt a bit.”

Noah gave his old friend an
I can take it
look.

“Can your ego take being the third or fourth or even fifth guy coming out of the bullpen, Noah? Because that’s the role you’d be looking at, at least for now. A middle innings guy. Likely no more magazine spreads for you, I’m afraid.”