Chapter 1: a photo
The wind softly whistled through the sea of amber-gold wheat, stretching for a mile around me. It was a breathtaking sight, only enhanced by the evening light that was shining through the stalks. My kid sister to my left was running along the path, pretending she was flying, her hands waved across the tops of the soft brush. It made me happy to see her play, her innocence of childhood intact. I was so lucky to be sisters with this little bundle of joy.
Crouched behind the grain, I could hear the incessant humming of the monstrous power lines suspended above. They ran across the plain and convened with a towering plant across the field, spewing black plumes against the purple sky. Colossal smoldering smokestacks made up the backdrop for not only this particular field, but the entire surrounding county, and when you couldn’t see them, you were made aware with thundering clanks ringing out day and night.
I looked through a long lens pointed at the bottom of the towering building. Employees of Frigate Oil Company were unloading what looked to be heavy barrels of crude oil from the back of an 18-wheeler. Workers lifted them with forklifts and wheeled them through solid metal doors. Industry seemed to be booming.
The strangeness of this particular scene occurred to me: The Beautiful field, the crickets chirping, and then, the monstrosity on the horizon. I heard a click as the shutter on my camera snapped shut. and then a mechanical whining sound as I cranked, readying for another shot.
Industrious plants like this polluted the Nebraska skies and water, and the sulfurous stench never left your nostrils. To me it was normal, all I knew. But my mother never missed a chance to remind me “The sky used to be so blue, Isa.” and that all changed when a local farmer’s prize cow sank deep into a pool of oil.
A bellowing horn emanating from the plant boomed across the valley. Dinner Break. The majority of the town was employed at these factories, and so dinner was almost universally observed before the night shifts started. Was it really 6:00 already?
“Mia, Let’s go. Mom will be worried.” Crickets in response.
I stand and glance around me. Mia is nowhere to be seen. “Mia?” I call out. There is only two places she could have gone: The wheat trodden path leading back to the road from where we came; or farther along the path, toward a rushing canal.
“Mia!”
I could feel panic begin to set in, my mistake clear. I should not have brought her here.
I rushed down the path and onto a wide concrete slab that bridges across the murky rushing water. There are no guardrails. “Mia!” I could hear the fear in my own voice, my palms sweating.
“Over here, Isa!” I whipped around. Mia was standing just twenty feet away, sticking up out of the tall grass, a big grin on her face, waving enthusiastically. “Did I scare you?” She laughed.
Relief. “Let’s go, mom’s going to be mad.”
I, in fact, was right. Upon returning to our small apartment and stashing our bikes under the stairs, we snuck quietly through a cracked door. Our mother was waiting just inside, swaying back and forth in her favorite rocking chair. “Isatou.”
It only took my name to know where I stood.
Mia giggled, bashfully looking up at me. “You’re in trouble…” I swatted her out of the front room and down the hall before sinking into the loveseat across from my mother. There was no point avoiding this conversation. Mother had left Mia and I to work on homework assignments, and I, the older sister, instead led us out on an afternoon adventure. I was guilty of the crime.
My mother, However, was not interested in a conversation at all. Instead she stood, turned on her heel and promptly walked down the hall to her room before closing the door loudly behind her.
I sat in the chair for a few moments, unsure what this would mean for me in the morning. Surely nothing good.