Chapter 1, Episode 3

Leo Kennedy came through the front door and into the kitchen. He was not a tall man, but he was stocky and muscular.

"'Lo, Em," he said.

"Hi, Dad. Sell any solar panels today?" said Emily.

"As a matter of fact, I signed two contracts," said Leo. He was proud of his new line of solar panels; 'the most cost effective on the market,' he told everyone. He often took prospective customers to a house in Moonville that was returning energy to the grid. Emily explained to her class one day that you could actually see the utility meter spinning backwards, which always amazed people. Unfortunately, the early home systems had been so pricey that it was a hard sell. Leo's new line was inexpensive enough that homeowners could recover their investment in a few years if they were moderate electricity users.

"The power plant's going to start hating me," he said after downing a glass of water. "I'm going to have half the county on solar. You watch."

Emily grinned. She liked her father's attitude, but she knew that her mother would say something like 'Only if you stick with it, Leo. Customers don't knock on your door asking for business.' That would usually mark the beginning of an argument that would last through dinner. Fortunately, Emily's mother was still in her sewing room.

"It's a good thing, Dad, because I heard the mine was running out of coal," said Emily.

"They've been saying that for years," said Leo.

"Is it true?"

He shrugged. "Might be. I think the coal is there, but it's getting harder and harder to get at. They want to go to mountain top removal."

"Like they do in West Virginia?" asked Emily.

"Exactly. Only, no one around here'll let 'em do it. So they make all of these dire warnings about how the local economy is going to go under if there's no coal mine," said Leo.

"That's what I read. We talked about it in class," said Emily.

"Yeah, well, you just go back to class and tell them they can run out of coal because we got solar," said Leo, placing his hands on his hips defiantly.

"You tell 'em, Dad." Emily knew her Dad loved, in his words, to 'stick it to the status quo.' After all, he referred to himself as a semi-retired hippie who still wore his gray hair in a pony tail and listened to vinyl records that sent Rory running from the room with his hands over his ears. Leo carried his wallet on the end of a chain whether he was riding his Harley or not, and he and Frances still managed to join almost any protest march that happened to be forming in Louisville.

"What's for dinner?" asked Leo, peering through his wire-rim glasses at the oven.

"Chicken in ten minutes," said Emily.

"Are you the chef?" he asked.

"Yep."

"Well, dang. We're in for a treat. I'd better go kiss your mother before I get a lecture."

He sailed out of the room. That was Leo Kennedy.

Emily packed up her homework and cleared the kitchen table. They always ate in the kitchen because Frances didn't want to mess up the dining room. But, as Emily pointed out, it was so cluttered it would have to be cleaned up before it could be messed up. She stepped through the kitchen door onto the stoop and called for Toby in a loud voice. There was still considerable light, but the sun was very low. She whistled and cooed his favorite sounds, the sounds that always brought him running. But not this time.

She went back to oven. There was still five more minutes on the timer, but she checked the food with a fork and knife. Sometimes it was done sooner. The juices ran clear so she removed the sizzling dish with a pot holder in each hand, and then covered the chicken with foil to keep it hot. She checked the rice. It was done. The green beans were sitting in a pot, waiting to be steamed for four minutes.

She turned off the oven and called to her mother in a loud voice. "Chicken's out of the oven, you want to come make the gravy? I'm going to find Toby."

"Okay, dear," said Frances, who was hearing about Leo's latest solar contracts.

Emily went out the kitchen door. "Toby," she called, drawing out the syllables.

Their back yard consisted of a stretch of Kentucky bluegrass that ended abruptly at the edge of a large windblown field of dried, brown grasses and stunted trees. It was the old Fitch property, and it ran for a quarter of a mile, hugging the rear boundaries of all the properties on Emily's side of the street, which was Fitch Road. At one time it was all Fitch property, a huge horse farm. But then pieces of it were sold to developers, and finally the rest went to the power company.

Emily stepped through an opening in the crumbling rail fence and walked out into the field. She knew that Toby sometimes hunted birds and rodents in the field. She looked west, at a deep orange and blue sky. There were already dark shadows next to the larger clumps of brush. In the distance was the power plant, an ancient coal-burner with three tall smokestacks. As a younger girl, Emily had nightmares about the plant: she imagined the smokestacks coming alive and walking away from the plant and eating cows and people, anything with flesh on it. She remembered waking up, trembling, and running to her mother in the middle of the night.

A stream ran through the middle of the field. Horses had watered there, Emily was told. It branched off the Ohio River and carried water to a large pond at the base of Moon Hill. She had learned that the Moon Hill Pond was an ancient watering hole used by Indians and animals, and later settlers. They say Daniel Boone camped there while exploring Kentucky.

As Emily approached the stream, she looked upstream, toward the power plant. It was built on the spot where the stream branched off from the Ohio River. Two of the smokestacks were burning, and the wind carried the twin plumes of white smoke over the valley, like two jetliners flying side by side. But today the plant smoke eventually dispersed and formed a hazy-looking cloud in the distance.

Emily continued to call Toby's name. She hoped his black-and-gray fur would stand out against the light brown colors in the field. But she saw no cat-like figure stepping from around a bush or bounding toward her.

She heard the stream as she grew closer to it. Rory and his friends swam in it during the summer months. Emily preferred the swimming pool, partly because the boys usually swam in the stream without clothes. She didn't care to be around them anyway, and even less so without clothes. But there was another reason: every so often a story would appear in the newspaper about the power plant dumping chemicals in the stream, like arsenic and mercury and other pollutants. Emily's father said they paid a big fine a few years back, but Emily didn't trust the stream. She was afraid of getting poisoned.

Now she was at the stream's edge. It looked inviting after a hot day: clear, cool, deep. She imagined taking her clothes off and going in for a dip. If it wasn't time to eat dinner she thought she might.

Then she looked down at her feet and gasped. Toby, laying perfectly still in the brown grass.

She wondered how she could have missed him. Why didn't he greet her? She bent down and touched him. There was no movement. There was something very wrong. She lifted him. Tears formed quickly in her eyes. He was not reacting to her touch at all. She felt she knew he was dead.

Emily carried the cat quickly back to her own yard. Streams of tears now rolled down her cheeks.

She yelled urgently as loud as she could. "Mom, Dad. Come quick!"

Emily laid the cat on the grass and knelt by its side. She cried hard as her parents came out of the house, merely curious at first, but then breaking into a run once they saw Emily crying.

"It's Toby. Something's wrong with him," said Emily, not even trying to hold back the tears. She sobbed, her face red with anguish.

Frances knelt next to Emily and laid a hand on the very still cat. Leo touched the cat's eyes. Leo and Frances looked at each other for a moment. Emily knew what it meant: Toby was dead.

"What happened?" said Frances, holding Emily tight.

"There was a mouse in the yard, and he chased it. I guess he went into the field. I found him by the stream. Like this." Emily talked between sobs. They were uncontrollable. Frances and Leo sat quietly on the grass, Frances hugging Emily and stroking the hair next to her temples, while Leo rubbed Toby's fur between his closed eyes.

Then Leo pulled back the cat's lips and opened it's jaw. There were traces of red along with some other residue. "I would say Toby caught the mouse," said Leo.

"Don't touch anything until you've washed your hands," said Frances.

Leo held his hands up. Emily saw a dot of blood on his fingertip.

"Can we have a funeral tomorrow?" asked Emily. She had been to her grandfather's funeral and remembered how it felt to say goodbye to him with lots of people around.

"Sure, dear. Tomorrow after school."