One of the things I love about the Midwest is that you really can see to the horizon. I’ve spent time on both coasts and, except for the beach, the cities and suburbs are densely packed and obstruct your sight lines. Here on the prairie, though, the eye sweeps across the landscape, and you can see for miles.
Mac and I were driving through farmland in central Illinois the following Monday. The occasional metal silo and cell phone tower glinted in the sun, reminding me I wasn’t really that far from civilization. The ground shimmered with the pale growth of early summer, and when I rolled down the window, an earthy, damp aroma poured in. In a few months, the growth would be thick and sturdy—not quite lush, but our version of it. For now, though, everything was tender and green and very Norman Rockwell.
Mac is Mackenzie Kendall the Third, and he owns a video production studio in Northbrook. He pretends to be an aging hippie, and he rarely changes out of jeans and sandals. A jagged scar down his cheek used to make him look dangerous, but he’s older and grayer, and the sharp planes of his face have softened. A year ago he added a silver hoop earring. Rachel, who knows about these things, promptly told him he’d pierced the wrong ear.
Despite his idiosyncrasies, Mac is a talented director and a shrewd businessman. We’ve worked together for fifteen years. He also employs Hank Chenowsky, one of the best video editors in the solar system. I’m convinced Hank grew up in a dark room with a computer monitor as his only source of light, because he works magic with my shows, making them look like they have twice the budget they do.
“So we’re finally going green,” Mac said as we cruised down state highway 136 in his Ford Expedition.
“We?” Mac’s van probably sucks down gas at the rate of ten miles per gallon. “Speak for yourself, white man.”
Mac threw me a look. “Can you spell significant business expense?”
“You’re polluting the planet.”
“They have these trade-offs, you know. Maybe you’ve heard about them. You get credits when you do something that conserves energy, demerits when you don’t. Linda drives a Prius, so we balance out.”
Linda was Mac’s wife.
“And what about your new boyfriend?” he went on. “Doesn’t he have his own plane? Now there’s a real energy saver.”
“Don’t bring Luke into this. Everyone has to do their part. It’s people like you who...” I stopped myself. “I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
“You’ve done it.” I glared at him. “You’ve gone and become a conservative when I wasn’t looking.”
Mac kept his mouth shut.
“My father always said a person gets more conservative when they have something to lose. Are you going to register as a Republican?”
Mac let out a long-suffering breath. “You know, it is possible to accumulate assets without losing one’s humanity. Or becoming a hypocrite.” When I didn’t answer, he added, “It might even be possible to run a business ethically. Aren’t we going to scout one right now?”
• • •
“I am delighted that such a lovely woman as you made time to visit our humble operation.”
I knew I was in trouble as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Fred Hanover, the man who would be showing us the Voss-Peterson ethanol plant, wasn’t much to look at. He had small recessed eyes, a middle-aged paunch, and a smear of a mustache that looked painted on. What little hair he had was slicked back with something that reminded me of Bryl Crème. In fact, with his starched white shirt, striped seersucker suit, and red bowtie, he looked like a door-to-door salesman from seventy-five years ago. But his manners were impeccable, and when he opened a door for me and called me “ma’am,” I couldn’t resist a smirk at Mac.
“Now, ma’am,” Hanover said with a rueful expression, “I am so sorry to muss up that lovely hairdo, but you’re going to have to wear this.” He handed me a yellow hard-hat. “The ladies hate these,” he said as an aside to Mac. I absently touched my hair, wondering who’d told him that—his wife? a secretary?—and put it on.
“Does it fit all right, Ms. Foreman? Because I have another size.” He looked concerned.
“It’s fine,” I centered it on my head. He handed another to Mac and clamped one on himself.
“Well, then. Let’s go.” He rubbed his palms together and led us outside. We’d been in a utilitarian one-story building set back from the road. Behind it, railroad tracks ran past a series of stainless steel tanks and metal-roofed sheds, all connected with pipes of various diameters and lengths. All the equipment gleamed and looked antiseptically clean, but its unfamiliarity made me think some alien society had somehow jettisoned it from their spacecraft and plunked it down on the prairie late one night.
“You know, you needed top secret clearance before we could let you in here,” Hanover said with a chuckle.
Had the man been reading my mind?
“We had to make sure you were on the up and up. Both of you.” He glanced at Mac.
“Why?” I asked.
“The process I’m about to show you is proprietary,” he said. “Can’t let in any industrial spies, can we now?”
“I thought ethanol production was generic—like petroleum refining.”
“Not at all. Our competitors are always looking to see what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. We use a dry milling process, but there’s a wet one, too, which is very different. We have to be careful.” He grinned. “Then again, if I’d known I would be in the presence of such a lovely woman, I might well be forced to reveal our secrets.”
He chuckled and rubbed his palms together in little circles. I smiled painfully. Mac kept a straight face.
Hanover walked us over to the train tracks which led into a small warehouse and out the other side. “Basically the grain comes here in covered hoppers, unless it happens to be trucked in. Then it’s unloaded, and transferred to these.” He gestured to several tall silos behind the warehouse.
I peered inside. “We could get a great shot from the rail car going into the shed,” I said to Mac. “You know. From the POV of the rail car, shooting up.”
Mac nodded. Hanover looked perturbed at being interrupted. “The grain is ground into powder and piped into tanks where it’s mixed with water and enzymes and forms a mix we call a slurry.” He guided us past a group of huge cylindrical tanks. “And this is where the mixture is fermented.”
“Like beer?” Mac asked.
Hanover nodded. “We let it sit for forty-eight hours. Then, after it’s distilled, which happens here...” Hanover gestured to another group of tanks, “... the alcohol is separated from the solids. At that point, it’s ethanol. One-hundred-nintey proof.”
Mac whistled. I visualized vats of Jim Beam and Johnnie Walker, and wondered whether they had any place in the video.
“The alcohol is siphoned out the top while the stillage goes out through the bottom for further processing. Then the alcohol mix is dehydrated, where it becomes two-hundred proof ethanol,” Hanover turned to Mac. “That’ll do some damage, won’t it?” He chortled. “Make you as stiff as a board.”
Mac pasted on a smile.
I checked my watch. Hanover had been talking for half an hour. I didn’t know how much more I could take. As we walked, his hand touched the small of my back. I recoiled, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“The finished product—ethanol—is ultimately transported in tank cars to processors that mix it with gasoline,” he said cheerfully. “Today we’re processing corn, but tomorrow, who knows? Our scientists are working on other grains and prairie grass. Even garbage.”
How had Hanover ended up a tour guide flunky? He had to be pushing fifty, a little old for PR. Was he a ne’er do well son-in-law or nephew? The guy they couldn’t fire? Maybe they couldn’t find any other place for him.
He prattled on about state-of-the-art vats and silos while we walked back to the office. He introduced us to the plant manager, a taciturn man with a bulbous nose and gray stubble, who answered my questions in monosyllables. Hanover seemed to realize the guy might not be a great interview and offered to do it himself.
“We can decide that later,” I said, trying to be politic.
“Anything I can do, just ask.” Hanover rubbed his hands together again. “Well, I just don’t know when I’ve had a better time on a tour. You are certainly the most charming thing that’s been around here for a while.”
“Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls.”
• • •
A few minutes later we were driving gratefully back upstate through tiny towns like Funks Grove and Shirley. We’d skipped lunch, and both of us were famished, so we stopped at a place whose outdoor sign advertised “home cooking.” The menu was on a board above the counter; it featured sandwiches on one side, hot meals on the other, and a Pepsi logo in the middle. Mac went for the pork chops. A tired-looking woman told him it would take ten minutes. Mac said he’d wait and smiled. She smiled back, but when I ordered a tuna sandwich, her smile faded and she pursed her lips. Did I insult her by not ordering a hot meal? Or was she just flirting with Mac?
“I’ll probably need to bring in some extra crew to handle the lighting, you know,” Mac said as we sat at a small, grimy table.
“Why can’t we just go with available light? Everything at the plant sparkles.”
“Not inside. And what if it’s an overcast day?”
“I suppose.”
“I’ll also bring in a dolly to get some shots moving around all those pipes and tanks.”
“What about a steady-cam?”
“We’ll be okay without it. Nothing really shakes that much, except the rail car, and that’ll be somewhat contained. But that plant manager wouldn’t be my first choice for an interview. I’d rather go with your new boyfriend.”
I shuddered. “Unfortunately, he’s the right guy. The plant manager, I mean. Why don’t we give him a shot, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll use Hanover.” Our meals came, and I took a bite of my sandwich. It was surprisingly good. “There’s a chance we won’t have to use either of them. We’re going to interview the CEO of Voss-Peterson. Maybe he can give us enough for a voice-over.”
“Doubtful.” Mac dug into his pork chops. I generally don’t eat pork, but the aroma from whatever seasonings they used was seductive. I looked over longingly. He slid his plate closer to his side of the table. I sighed and went back to my sandwich.
We were back in the van heading north on back roads rather than Interstate 55 when we passed a field with a barbed-wire fence. A sign on the fence said “Restricted Area—No Unauthorized Personnel.”
“That’s weird,” I said.
“What?”
“The sign. You don’t see that kind of thing in farm country.”
Mac slowed so he could take a look, but a berm at the edge of the field obstructed our view.
“What do you think is back there?” I asked.
“Who knows?”
“Maybe it’s some top-secret agricultural facility,” I said. “Maybe Voss-Peterson has a super-secret program where they’re cloning animals.”
“In central Illinois?”
The fence stretched about half a mile, a long distance even for the countryside. Beyond it was nothing for another half-mile except a field of trees and prairie grass. “With my luck, they’re probably cloning Fred Hanovers.”
That got a smile from Mac.
We were just turning onto the interstate when the opening bars of “Honky Tonk Woman” rang out. Thanks to Rachel, I have personalized ring tones for everyone who calls my cell. Rachel claimed the Stones tune, based on her adoration of Keith Richards. I fished the phone out of my bag.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Hi, Mom. I wanted to tell you I’m going to Iowa for the Fourth of July.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m driving with Becky. We’re gonna spend the weekend there.”
“Where will you stay?”
“At Becky’s apartment.”
“We must have a bad connection. For a minute I thought you said ‘apartment.’ You mean ‘dorm room,’ right?”
“Mother, you are so retro. Everyone lives in an apartment now.”
“You’re not everyone. And since the condom incident—”
“I told you it wasn’t me. It was Mary.”
A stony silence ensued. Then, “It’s okay, Mom.” Rachel’s voice was suddenly honey. “I know how much you’re gonna miss me next year. By the way, Luke called. He said to tell you he’s coming this weekend. So, you see, it’ll all work out. You guys can have some ‘private time.’”
I wondered if she could sense me blushing.
“And, oh... I almost forgot. The woman whose kid was kidnapped called too.”
I straightened up. “Christine Messenger?”
“She wanted you to call her right away. She said it was important.”