CHAPTER TWELVE

Helen Taylor, the mayor of Dexter Springs, stepped out of a freshly washed Lincoln Navigator at a city park few remembered and even fewer frequented.

The linear park was formed along a decommissioned railway that led to a timber bridge with privately owned land on the other side. During the summer, the shaded rails-to-trails recreation area shielded Helen’s daily sprints from the glaring Oklahoma sun, the same sun that faded awnings and shopkeeper advertisements in downtown windows and gave her the type of natural tan that came only from hours on the golf course.

Now, though, Oklahoma was deep into fall on a Thursday morning, and there was no need to hide from the sunlight that shone weakly as Helen pushed the key fob and heard the familiar beep that let her know the Lincoln was secure. Not that anyone was out here to steal anything, but still, the prospect of secretly meeting Horace-Wayne Holder without the benefit of a crowd made her nervous, more than anything she’d set out to do so far.

If she pulled this off, they’d all be rich. It was going to plan. And she was going to keep it that way.

Running the trail had become a priority, in part because mornings were now uncomfortably cold for golf. There was another reason too, and it was one of her best ideas yet. And, oh, she had ideas.

She tucked the keys into an interior pocket of the windbreaker she wore with black Lululemon tights and red Brooks running shoes. Red not because she loved the color, but because it showed school spirit in Dexter Springs. She would signal her support of anything that would bring her goodwill come election time.

Helen pulled her hair back and felt the ponytail swing pleasantly across her back as she ran, her feet falling on a soft layer of damp leaves and, beneath that, the pea-sized gravel she’d insisted the city council have installed two years ago. She could smell the fecund odor of decay, but it was a welcome and earthy change from the carefully conditioned air of her office in city hall.

When a deer crashed out of the trees just as Helen reached the wooden slats of the old bridge she startled sideways, then clutched her knees to draw a few deep recovery breaths.

The deer stood frozen, a living and breathing barrier to her path. At fifteen yards, she saw the points of its antlers and the twitch of its ebony nose.

When she’d moved to Dexter Springs nine years ago, she’d had toddler twins, and a husband, Dan, who had convinced her that running the family’s historic gas station was not only a job but a calling. She hadn’t been fully on board with their move to Dan’s hometown on the Kansas-Oklahoma border, but he’d been happy enough—and she’d been exhausted enough—that she left her corporate job in Kansas City.

At first she was content to spend more time with her children, Rayne and Ryan, as Dan whistled off to the area’s only operational filling station still standing on Route 66, that iconic highway that in 1926 realized the American initiative of connecting rural and urban areas. Her housewife era didn’t last long. The ceaseless rounds of crackers and juice, the Cocomelon videos and a hundred other quasi-educational cartoons, the inanity of “Baby Shark” on repeat…the loneliness…

Six months after moving to Dexter Springs, she was volunteering at the local animal shelter, then the chamber of commerce. Then she volunteered to head a fundraising campaign for the public library, and finally…finally…she’d found her place among her husband’s people when she ran for city council. It was a natural leap to a mayoral campaign, and here she was, days from a vote that would secure her second four-year term as mayor.

“Shoo,” she said, waving her arms at the deer. “Go on.”

The deer leapt into the trees and the birds resumed their raucous twittering. The sound of Helen’s feet striking the worn slats of the bridge produced a rhythmic echo. Spring River, from which the town took inspiration for its name, was placid below. The current shifted slowly, the water tired after millennia cutting through stone.

She knew Holder was waiting a quarter of a mile past the bridge, where the trail took a right-of-way turn through a corner of his land.

During the time she’d known him, he’d become not only her most generous campaign donor but also underfoot, and this proximity engendered a familiarity that served both their agendas. While Holder had been chivalrously aiding the widows of area farmers so he could buy their land in private deals, Helen had been steadily expanding her domain too.

The town charter, which had not been updated in any serious fashion since its 1889 adoption, offered considerable influence to anyone who held the elected position of mayor, and Helen had little by little exercised this right of office. Her power grab had been accomplished steadily and without need of formal action, which meant that now she could largely act on her own. She could make decisions that she felt benefited the town without being hamstrung by the city council. City council members, for their part, didn’t mind relinquishing the heavy lifting. They were elected volunteers, after all, and between their careers and a full slate of games at the baseball diamonds, most were happy enough to leave the budget up to her. She’d put an end to review sessions, and everyone was a bit grateful to learn they’d suddenly been freed of several long days’ worth of decision-making every quarter.

Her strategic plan had all fallen into place since then, with a lauded expansion of city hall and public safety, and with several new housing developments and even plans for a new multimillion-dollar industrial complex. The trick, she’d learned, was to toe the tax line.

If she could prevent any tax increase that took money directly from residents’ pockets, she found that those residents would, by and large, support any project that appeared to benefit the community. That’s how she’d managed to railroad the funding, along with all the right motions and approvals, to construct a new city hall, a project the whiny amateurs on city council hadn’t even been able to get out of committee in the last two decades. She got things done. Good things. Community things.

And what she had in the works would be her biggest accomplishment yet. But she had a few funding discrepancies to eliminate.

That’s where Blackstream Oil came in. The deal between the rez and the drilling company wouldn’t work without the access roads she was building via the city’s coffers. Antell at Blackstream Oil knew this, so much so that he was willing to grease the wheels. It meant she’d be able to replenish the 350 thousand dollars in tax funds she’d siphoned off over the last four years. Once she’d deeply buried any financial wrongdoing—embezzlement was such a dirty word—she could seek higher office. Currently she was manifesting a US Senate seat, but she might be willing to consider the statehouse. If the kickbacks were right.

But she’d never get to phase two if the Blackstream Oil deal fell through with the rez. And that’s why she had Holder. It was his job to manage any of the behind-the-scenes matters that might gum up the works, so to speak. In return, the city would pay a hefty easement fee to construct the new access roads through his land bordering the reservation so that Blackstream could ferry its workers, equipment and, most importantly, its gains. Holder was a frustrated, land-hungry rancher willing to do just about anything to amass a fortune. She was counting on his greed.

The terrain changed as she returned to the cushion of the trail. She felt the pulse in her neck. Barely elevated, she thought, and smiled to herself.

She was in the best shape of her life. Nothing was going to stop her now, especially not whatever problem Holder was clucking about this morning. He was like an old hen sometimes, ruffled by rumor or supposition, and he came to her with complaints so frequently that for the last few weeks they had been meeting out of sight on this little-used trail.

This morning Holder had called to report that he’d spent the last few days surveying the proposed oil field and access points, all the boundaries where the land he owned butted up against the reservation. Nothing but jackrabbits and Russian thistle blowing past, he’d said, and then laughed at his own joke: You know, tumbleweeds?

She’d been willing to go along with his Hee Haw sense of humor because she suspected she needed a true local, a Dexter Springs lifer, with his nose to the ground like a bloodhound, ferreting out any holdouts or complications, either in town or on the rez.

Then he’d said the words she’d never wanted to hear. There might be a threat to the reservation’s side of the deal.

Now she knew she’d been right about Holder. He was going to prove his usefulness.

“Hola,” he said when she spotted him up ahead, leaning on a fence post and using his pocketknife to scrape under the fingernails of one hand. “We got a little girl out there, could be a problem. Could be a real monkey wrench.”