To Drink from a Stream

By Xavier Somerfield

Residents of a settlement of poor mountain people living along a rustic stream are mysteriously dying. They look to Ray Quentin, an Environmental Enforcement Officer, who finds a major source of pollution and determines there are grounds for a criminal case. Fearing his arrest, a local businessman hires former prison inmates to put an end to the investigation. A hastily organized state environmental agency fails to adequately protect Quentin and fellow officers. To Drink from a Stream is a novel about the dangers faced by these officers in the early years of environmental enforcement.

Xavier Somerfield is also the author of: Coming Through the Wintersweet, 2006, ISBN 1-4241-2511-1; Analemma Days, 2006, ISBN 1-4241-5344-1; Ridges of the Clouds, a Civil War novel, 2008, ISBN 1-4343-6766-2; Finches in the Gloaming, 2008 ISBN 978-1-4389-1375-9; Summer on Shallow Point, 2009 ISBN 978-1-60749-557-4; A Gift of Path, 2010 ISBN 978-1-4489-5695-1; Amoss Fire, 2010 ISBN 978-1-4512-3540-1

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456744939

Xavier Somerfield

Xavier Somerfield, an award winning author, continues to see success as a novelist as he releases his fourth novel and second mystery. “Because I grew up in rural Appalachia, you will see that influence in my writing, particularly my poetry,” Somerfield says. He currently resides and writes near Nashville, Tennessee.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The kids were going to die. Their legs were beet red. Red like they had socks on. They cried. Wailed. Fanned their legs to stop the pain. Ran back into the icy stream to wash the fire away. Screamed. Flailed their tender little arms.

Please… I am here to help you…where’s your mom or dad? Ray Quentin asked.

Up t-there, the shivering little boy pointed, p-please Mister my feets are burnin’.

The little girl’s clothes were wet. Her lips trembled, M-M-Mama is g-g-gonna give us a thrashin’.

Ray looked upstream. Small white trailer in a clearing. Old tires and rusted appliances strewn about the yard. Bertha Pumphrey sloppily painted on a black mail box that appeared as if it was going to fall with the weight of the next postcard. As part of the complaint investigation, he took a Polaroid photo of the empty cans strewn about the creek bank. The kids clawed at their legs. Raked their skin. Oily rainbow sheen on the stream. Fish jumped through holes in the ice to get out of the fire that raced through their gills like acid. Ray ran back to his vehicle and radioed for an ambulance. In his short career as an Environmental Enforcement officer, he had done that only once before when he found a logger pinned beneath a fallen tree. He scooped up the two children and raced up the hill with one in each arm. Years of smoking made his lungs hurt. He saw red stars in his eyeballs from the hard breathing. A curtain pulled back a as he came into the yard. A big woman threw the door open and snatched the wailing kids from his arms.

Git inside! she yelled without examining them.

She kept a watchful eye on the man in uniform who was standing before her.

Big woman. Strong. Beastly. Big breasted woman with stains on her shirt. Cigarette in her lips. Shotgun. She meant business. Agitated by the sirens that wailed in the distance. More action in her yard than she wanted. Her Soaps interrupted. She snapped both barrels of the shotgun into place and raised it up. Ashes fell off her cigarette. She puffed deep and exhaled hard. The children desperately tried to get her attention.

Youngens git back in the house and you, Mister, git yer ass off my property! Brown teeth. Evil scowl.

Ma’am, your children are in need of medical attention.

I am their mother an’ I‘ll decide what they need.

The ambulance arrived. Bertha motioned with her shotgun directing Ray toward the gate. She screamed at the responding medical personnel, you all git back in yer trucks an’ git on out of here. She closed the gate and secured it with a heavy chain.

But ma’am… Ray insisted.

Ray! Bob Richards, the paramedic yelled. Ray! Let it go or we’ll be puttin’ you on this stretcher.

Ray shook his head. He turned to the paramedic and pushed back. Look at these cans! They poured this shit in the stream. It’s burning their little legs.

So? Bob dismissed.

They need medical attention…

If the people don’t want medical attention, we can’t force them to accept it. That’s just the way it works. We’ve been up here to Bertha Pumphrey’s place a dozen times.

Coumaphos, Ray yelled.

Couma – what?

It’s a bug repellent. Farmers soak ropes in the stuff then hang ‘em out in the field. The cows rub the ropes on their backs and it keeps flies off them.

Well, all isn’t lost, maybe she has some cows that need medical attention.

Ray wasn’t amused, blow it out your ass.

Bob got out of the ambulance, cupped his hands into a megaphone and yelled for the mother to come back. Momentarily Ray felt better. Bertha, Bob yelled.

I done told you all to git gone!

Bertha you need to sign this refusal form, you know that.

I ain’t signin’ nothin’.

Ma’am, if you don’t sign this, I can bring the state police out here.

Well who is that guy right there? she asked pointing to Ray Quentin whose tan shirt and army green trousers resembled a state police officer’s uniform.

No, he’s with the environment. Just sign this refusal form and I promise we’ll get out of here.

She signed the form by making a double x on the signature line. Turn them flashin’ lights off and the whole bunch of you get gone now.

They obeyed.

I have six counties and the phone doesn’t stop ringing, Ray Quentin told a fellow officer, Larry Brice while talking outside the Goose Creek offices the next morning. It’s a lot worse since the hiring freeze hit.

Do you know I got three 911 calls this weekend? Larry complained. Man they’ve got to do something about this setup. One of those calls was a pretty big spill – it’s still going on over there on Grady Creek. An anonymous caller said they saw a tanker truck dump something in the stream and it’s killing thousands of fish. Wildlife is over there. ‘Course they have plenty of money in their budget.

I had a 911 call yesterday, Ray commiserated. It was a couple of kids playing in a stream. When I got there, these two kids were screamin’.

Screaming?

Yeah, they took some chemicals from a tool shed and emptied the cans in a stream. Unfortunately, they were standing in the stream when they did it.

What was it? Wasn’t it too cold to be in the stream? Larry asked.

Coumaphos.

Couma – what?

It’s a bug repellent. Farmers use it on livestock. But they dilute it with water. These kids had the concentrated stuff.

Why were they screamin’?

’Cause it was burnin’ the hell outta them. They were breaking the ice with rocks and they must have been putting the stuff down to melt the ice or something. But they fell into the water and got it all over them. I got on the radio and called for an ambulance. Boy was that the wrong damn thing to do.

What do you mean? I didn’t know we could do that.

The mother came outside with a damn shotgun. Anyway, when the ambulance pulled up, out she came. She was madder’n a damn hornet. ‘Who in the hell called the ambulance?’ She yelled. I had to tell her it was me. The only reason she didn’t shoot me was because she saw my uniform and thought I was a state policeman.

She let them play in the stream in this weather?

Oh yeah. They had been sledding, I think. That little boy, he must’ve been about seven or eight, he looked like he had bright red socks on. Right where the water level came up on his legs was fire engine red. The ambulance driver also got a cussin’ from the mother. He just looked at me and shook his head. Then he got in the ambulance and drove off. I met him down the road a little later and he just put it on the line.

What did he say?

He said you can’t help ignorants if they don’t want to be helped.

’Course I told him I thought there was abuse involved and we probably should get the Child Advocates involved.

Larry interjected, Oh man, you’d be in a heap of crap if you did that.

Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, the EMT in the ambulance just looked at me and said, ‘don’t you have a tree that needs saved or something?’

You’re kiddin’.

Not for a moment. That’s how my weekend went. Ray knocked the mud off his boots and tried to clean them on the wet grass.

You’d think Berghof would hire us some help up here.

Berghof ain’t gonna hire anyone. The governor has cut state jobs and spending to the bone. Well, Berghof’s the governor’s boy, you know that. They go back a long way.

I like the work, Larry said, I like being outside most of the time. ‘Course our salaries aren’t anything near what those people make in the Ivory Tower down there in Willston.

Yeah you got that right; those engineers are pullin’ down about sixty thousand a year.

Yeah, compared to our twenty seven thousand. ’Course we have other benefits like the free vehicle… and we get to take time off for working those late hours. I’m going to take off this Friday for some time I spent on a diesel spill the other night.

Ray was one of the best employees in the environmental protection business and his fellow workers knew it. He had a four year degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry. So when he went out to a spill and saw NaOH painted on the side of a truck, he knew what he was dealing with right away. But Ray had a problem. He couldn’t stand inefficiency in government. Which was okay if his frustration ended there, but it didn’t. Ray was always the first one to criticize management. That left a lot of people in the Ivory Tower pretty pissed off at him. They didn’t call him in for meetings and they didn’t care enough to review his findings or to listen to his suggestions. They wrote him off. That’s what they did. They were through with him. Ray believed they were wasting time on management reports and inspection counts. He frequently reminded management that the new Environmental Enforcement charter recently passed by the legislature charged him with putting a stop to the assault on the streams and forests. Now when someone burned a pile of tires or threw trash in a stream Ray Quentin had the power to arrest them.

Did you arrest that woman for dumping the Couma- whatever that stuff was in the stream?

No, hell no. I wanted to. The Sheriff told me she would just go beat the hell out of her kids if I did.

What did you do?

I put a boom in the river just downstream from the spill and left the whole matter alone. You see they tell us we are obligated to write charges against people who do these things but they’re not out here in the field.

Didn’t you do a write-up?

Oh yeah, but I just left it in my desk. I didn’t mail it in.

Oh man, Berghof is gonna get your ass for that.

How can he? I did what I was supposed to do. I wrote up the report. I signed it and logged it in.

He’ll find it when he reads your travel logs.

No he won’t. He doesn’t read the travel logs.

He doesn’t?

Nope. I hear nobody reads our daily work reports.

Jeees. I thought someone always read accounts of our laborious work.

Well, I am guessing that they don’t really care that we’re out here harassing loggers, trash burners and other polluters. I wonder why I care sometimes. I want to have a peaceful Christmas holiday and I hope I don’t get any calls.

I hear you. Larry started his vehicle.

It was starting to snow. Ray brushed the powder from his windshield. It was time to forget this crazy job and head home to his wife and family.

Chapter 2

Ray Quentin was captivated by the beautiful smooth hills that rolled back into winter’s long shadows. Dark trees still waved a few brown flags leftover from the fall. Fence rows of Rosa multiflora easily contained the spotted cows that milled about on sage laden hillsides. Blue smoke rose up from chimneys where families huddled awaiting Christmas. Ray had come to appreciate the hard work of the farmers who wanted to live close to the land. But there was an assault on their way of life. There were new malls. Settlements. Massive interstate projects. Urban creep. Slithering in like a copperhead in the name of progress. He wanted to keep it in check.

Christmas day was punctuated with the laughter of children and the dizzying whirlwind of wrapping and ribbons. It was bewildering how quickly the holiday passed and how much Ray and Sharon had spent on the children. Cold arctic wind brought down a heavy snowstorm on New Year’s Eve. The new year. What would it bring? Ray started his vehicle and headed back to work.

The Ivory Tower had no expectations for what the new EEU was supposed to accomplish. In fact, there were no expectations for their performance at all. Well, maybe one: keep the wolves away. The knee-jerk reactions of management complicated rational response to most environmental situations. Ray Quentin had a problem coping with this. He finally realized that management expected him to behave at all times in such a manner so as to insulate the governor from the onslaught of new environmental problems arising from the upsurge in construction and development- the very platform upon which he based his gubernatorial campaign. And so this new layer of government called the Environmental Enforcement Unit was up and running. Learning as they went.

Monday, January 16, 1989. Ray Quentin was trying to defrost his windows and get himself warm in his state issued vehicle when the radio operator called his ID.

8830…8830.

Ray took off his glove and grabbed the microphone. 8830, go ahead.

8830 Public Service Bill Clark at 434-4198 regarding a complaint on the Left Fork of Laurel just north of Medina.

10-4.

Ray stopped at the nearest pay phone and used his state calling card to phone Mr. Clark.

Hello.

Bill Clark?

This is Bill Clark.

Bill, this is Ray Quentin with the Environmental Enforcement Group out of the Goose Creek Substation. You have a complaint for me up on the Left fork of the Laurel?

Ray? Did you say that was your name?

Yeah. Ray Quentin.

Ray, I’m president of the local Ducks Unlimited and I was out scouting around last Friday and I ran into a horrible pollution problem.

What kind of pollution?

You know where this is, right?

Oh yeah. I know where it is but it’s miles from nowhere.

Yeah, you know the place. Anyway, there’s a humongous sawmill operation going on up on Thrice Mountain…

Ray interrupted, using a tone of disbelief as if a sawmill was wasting his time, a sawmill?

Okay, okay. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that a sawmill is a sawmill.

Well, I’ve never seen a big problem with a sawmill…

Hold on, hold on, Bill insisted, look I’m an outdoorsman. I have a membership of 246 men in my organization. I’m calling you because I have a no-nonsense complaint…but if you’re going to make light of it…I’ll call someone else…

No. No. Bill, I apologize if I sounded relaxed about this complaint in any way. I suppose I was thinking about the weather we’ve been having. Didn’t we get a foot of snow last Friday?

Oh hell yes it snowed. I was out there tracking anything that moved. It got colder by the minute. Hell it’s cold out there now. I think it’s about two below zero.

How did you get into that place? Ray asked.

I drove up a little logging road that runs up along one side of the river, but I’ll tell you, it’s a treacherous road when it’s frozen.

Where is this road?

Oh yeah. The road. You have to drive up Route 9 to the Newman county line. Well almost. If you get to the bridge that crosses the river at the county line, you’ve gone about a quarter mile too far. If you go upstream there, you’ll get into a little settlement. So turn around and drive back about a thousand feet and you’ll see a road with a black gate that leads up behind the sawmill- they never close it this time of year. Deer Hunters flock there in the fall. You just have to go up that old road about a mile then you have to hike another mile to get in behind the sawmill. This new environmental law gives you the right of entry on something like this.

Yeah, we have right of entry until we get shot, they laughed. What was the pollution? I mean what did you see?

Well, first off, the water is black.

Black? Ray scribbled ‘sulfides’ on his note pad.

Yeah. And it has the odor of sewage and something burned my eyes. So I don’t know what that was.

Can you actually see the sawmill from that point? Ray asked.

Oh yeah you’re right behind it at that point. But you’ll smell it long before then.

You smelled it on an icy day?

Yeah, it really stunk.

I bet it stinks in July.

Oh, I’m sure. The sawdust pile is huge. I bet it covers twenty acres.

What? Ray was definitely interested now.

Twenty acres and it’s probably two hundred feet high.

What?

I’m not kidding. The sawmill sits up on Thrice Mountain and for fifty years they have been blowing sawdust over the side of the mountain. I’m telling you it’s unbelievable.

Well, Ray thought for a moment, well, I’ll get up there and check it out as soon as I can get away.

Oh, I get it, Bill punished, you’re not going up there until spring are you?

…I…I need to do some planning, Ray returned.

Planning? Just get in your truck and go up there. Take some pictures and arrest those bastards, you’ve got the power to do that, Bill’s voice raised to an annoyed level.

Ray thought for a moment then carefully worded his response. Bill. Bill, calm down a second. I have to make sure I have everything all lined up before I go up there. If I have to go a District Attorney, I have to know what county I’m in and I have to be careful how I collect my evidence. But…I’m telling you right now…you can count on me, Bill. I’m the right one for this job. Don’t get upset if you don’t hear from me for a few days. Who else have you told about this site?

No one. Well, my wife.

Have you brought it up at any meetings or told any of your hunting buddies?

No. Haven’t told a soul.

Bill, that’s good. Keep it that way. You know I can’t promise to keep your name anonymous in this complaint.

I don’t care about that. Hell, put my name on it. Put it in big letters. I want to know what the hell they’re going to do to clean this stuff up.

Chapter 3

I can’t figure this out, Ray questioned aloud to his long time friend and mentor, Steve Harris, having told him the whole story. Ray trusted Steve to give him an experienced answer. Instead, Steve just cussed his dog for pissing on the floor.

You little bastard. Git outside! Ray, I’ll call you back in about five.

Ray hung up the phone and laughed. He watched his children cozying up to the wood stove in their old farm house. He wondered how he was going to pay all the charges they ran up for Christmas. The phone rang. It was Steve.

Ray, you know I just thought of something.

Yeah, what’s that?

I think that sawmill is owned by that guy Jack Worley.

Jack Worley? Who’s that?

He’s not too well known ‘cause he keeps his head below radar. Seems to me that he went back up there in the woods and opened that sawmill after stealing timber from half the mountain people in Newman and Grice counties. He’s a real bad ass. You don’t want to get involved in that. You need to give that over to someone else.

Oh yeah, like I can give that to who? The state police? Maybe I could give it to you! You still owe me a favor for saving your ass during that snowstorm.

Yeah. You’re right, I do owe you one. But I don’t want this one. Maybe I’m thinking about someone else but I think Worley is involved. I tell you who to talk to. Talk to Don Schultz. He had a run-in with that guy. You might learn something.

Great. It was beginning to look like a real piece of crap, this complaint. Ray wondered if he was equipped to handle this heavy of a load. In addition to all these complaints, he had certain environmental inspections to do. Package plants. Small sewage treatment systems on every carwash and restaurant in every corner of the six counties he was responsible for. Logging jobs. They were everywhere at all times of the year. Just what he needed now. A criminal case.

Tuesday, January 17. Ray called Don Schultz early in the morning.

Don?

Yeah.

Ray Quentin.

Ray, how’re you doin’ over there? Don wasn’t long on conversation. He had been burned pretty good by the Ivory Tower also.

It’s crazy. I can’t get above these complaints, really. Which…which is why I called you.

Okay, what’ya got?

It’s a complaint. Steve Harris told me to call you. Got this guy Jack Worley involved in something.

Jack Worley?

Yeah.

Jack Worley…yeah seems like I remember that name. He’s a real bad ass. I got him on a loggin’ job on Spike Mountain. He went in one night and cut about three acres of virgin cherry on this guy’s property while he was on vacation.

I’m not worried about it if he’s just a wildcat logger. I got a sawmill complaint up on Thrice Mountain. Seems like he’s got a big sawdust pile up there or something.

Thrice Mountain? Well that would probably be him. There’s property owned by his wife’s family up there. But if it’s just a sawmill complaint, I don’t think I’d fool with it if I was you.

Yeah, I might not, actually. Berghof says we’re behind on our inspections.

To hell with Berghof. I hope you’re not listening to that jerk.

He’s still the head guy. I’ve got a bunch of kids to feed. I don’t want him getting down on me for getting behind on my inspections.

Inspections? I tell you what you should be looking at. You should be inspecting the water plant at Shockley and the Hipponsville Prison. Ever since they gave you some of my territory, I notice you haven’t been over to those places in months.

Yeah you mentioned that to me before. But getting back to Worley for a moment. How is he connected?

I don’t know for sure. But he’s connected all right. If you talk to the State Police you might find out who he knows. He’s almost untouchable so I have it figured that he’s close with a Senator or the Governor.

Don, I have to run. Thanks for your help.

All I have to say is be careful Ray.

Thanks.

On Wednesday, the 18th , it was eleven below zero when Ray got up. He decided to put chains on his truck before he headed up the cold highway to the Left Fork of the Laurel River. Where the highway snaked through the dark shadows of the mountains, snow had packed into