Blessings (37 page)

“I hope so. I think so.”

“Then something good has come out of it, after all, hasn’t it? I hope it’ll help a little to make up for the rest, Jennie.” And when, not knowing what to answer, she was silent, he added more brightly, “I’ll be coming back. You’ll not get rid of me so easily.”

She said, meaning it, “I’m not trying to get rid of you.”

They passed through a corridor that smelled of cleaning fluid and was flanked by doors labeled Health Department, Dog Licenses, Police Department, Traffic Violations, Tax Collector. They entered the courtroom where the town council sat on its dais with the American flag on a stand at its side.

A man who was standing against the rear wall touched Jennie’s arm, and she recognized Jerry Brian, who had “wired” George. He was in plainclothes. “Are you still interested?”

“That’s why I’m here,” she responded.

“I thought you might be. Okay.” And drawing her away from bystanders, including Jill, he whispered, “You won’t believe it, but we’ve already got a lead.”

“So fast?”

“The boss has been working day and night. This fancy-looking company’s got a bad reputation. Mob connections.”

“Barker Development, you mean?”

“I mean. The top honcho’s built in California under another name, got in trouble, got out of it, then came East and started to look respectable.” Jennie let out a faint, low whistle. “What kind of trouble?”

“A bomb in somebody’s car. Something to do with a site they wanted to buy and the owner wouldn’t sell. Something like that. Martin says they weren’t able to prove it, but everybody knew it, anyway.”

“So can they prove this? About George?”

“Martin thinks so. Mind you, I’m not in on the whole picture. I’m only here tonight to keep my eyes open, see who’s here. Not that we’re expecting Mr. Teeth to show up.” Even in the dim corner Jennie could see the young man’s grin. “I hear you got off lucky with him.”

“That I did.” She thought of something. “And Fisher, that creep? Where does he fit in?”

“He doesn’t. A creep is all he is. Small fry who happens to have a piece of land he wants to sell and gets mad at the opposition.”

“I could have sworn he was in it,” Jennie said. “I guess I’m not so smart, after all.”

“You’re smart enough. Look, it’s filling up. You’d better get a seat.”

A large crowd had already taken most of them. From the rear Jennie searched the room for a pair of vacancies. Her moving eyes recognized a few faces on the dais, then flickered back up the sides of the room and caught the silver-gray heads of Enid and Arthur Wolfe. They were alone, which was to be expected, for Jay hardly would have given up a day in the office or a federal courtroom to be up here tonight. Their heads turned for only a fraction of a moment, yet Jennie was certain they had seen her. With Jill beside her, she walked in full view to the third row down front, where there were two places. If they want to acknowledge me, she thought defiantly, now is their chance. And if they should wonder about this beautiful young woman who is with me, why, I shall simply tell them who she is. I came to that point just a minute ago. I don’t know how I reached it but I did, and here I am.

The Wolfes, however, made no move. What must Jay not have told them! She imagined their widened eyes, their horrified astonishment. And, vividly, she saw them in their kitchen—blue-and-white gingham curtains, African violets in red porcelain cups, the dog at their feet— having their evening tea and cake. They’d have shaken their heads, commiserating with each other and marveling: “But she was so sincere, so frank and open!”

As quickly as confidence had risen, so quickly did it ebb. She shouldn’t have come back here, abrading her wounds. The sensible thing would be to turn around and go home right now. Let someone else fight for the Green Marsh and win it or lose it. But that would be humiliation in front of Jill. Hadn’t she come here in part to show off a bit before Jill?

So, waiting her turn, Jennie sat through the routine procedures, the pledge of allegiance, the minutes of the previous meeting and all the technical reports. Again the lawyers argued. Barker’s young man gave a repetition of his arguments, persuading his listeners of the benefits that Barker Developers was prepared to bring to the town. She wondered whether this engaging, respectable-looking gentleman with the open, confiding manner could possibly be acquainted with Robinson, also known as Harry Corrin, and decided that he probably was not, because in organizations of Barker’s size and nature, it would be prudent and necessary to keep the right hand from knowing what the left was doing.

The tired, middle-aged lawyer who had replaced Jennie was a poor match for the other man. Droning statistics, he was beginning to lose the councilmen’s attention; the mayor was yawning contemptuously.

Discussion eventually was thrown open to the public. Jennie waited until half a dozen citizens had expressed their opinions. They were fairly evenly divided. The council, too, she supposed was probably still evenly divided, as it had been a few months ago. So the vote would be close. She raised her hand, was acknowledged, and stood up to speak.

“My name is Jennie Rakowsky,” she began firmly. “Some of you may remember that I’ve spoken here before. This time I’m here just as a citizen. I want to talk to you about Barker Developers. Like all developers, they come with a fine speech, luring you with talk of jobs, tax abatements, and all the wonderful improvements they’re going to bring to your town. Don’t you believe a word of it,” she cried, and raised a warning finger. “They’ve come to make money, that’s all they’ve come for. They don’t give a damn about anything but the bottom line. There’s nothing new about these people, either. They were around back in 1890, trying to cut Yosemite National Park in half right at the start. If good citizens hadn’t fought them then, we’d have no Yosemite or Grand Canyon or any other wilderness park today.”

Somebody clapped and was immediately hushed. The Wolfes were staring over Jennie’s head toward the dais, or perhaps toward the ceiling, for all she knew, but someone else had applauded; it spurred her on, and Jennie began to gallop.

“We can go a lot farther back than that, to Isaiah more than two thousand years ago, or to the ancient Greeks. Plato knew that when you cut forests down, you don’t hold rain, and the earth washes away to the sea.”

She had notes in her hand yet didn’t need them. “And part of your land here is wetland, a sponge to slow water that could flood your lands. It’s home to wildlife, it’s beauty and recreation. It’s an ecosystem that took thousands of years to build. If it’s destroyed, it can’t be rebuilt. You know that, and these people know it as well as you do, but they don’t care. That’s the difference.”

Heads turned to Jennie. There wasn’t a sound in the room.

“We can always save ‘farther out,’ people say. But what about when there is no more ‘farther out’ to save? This planet’s not elastic. And right now it’s the only planet we have.”

She talked on. It already had been six minutes and she kept expecting to be stopped, but no one on the dais stopped her. She was aware of upturned faces, of Jill’s rapt attention and the flow of her own energy.

“It’s not as if this were a question of housing the homeless here. There’s no real need for this construction, for condominiums and golf courses. It’s frivolity—that and greed.” She paused a second. “We all know greed when we see it. The world’s full of it. People even kill because of it, don’t they?”

That’s for you, Robinson, she thought, and in that very instant she caught sight of Fisher. He was sitting diagonally across the aisle in the row ahead. She hadn’t noticed him before, but there he was, wearing the same black jacket with the same black, malevolent sneer on his face. Well, you fooled me, she thought. You certainly did. You didn’t kill George. You’re only a street-corner tough. You’re not smart enough to be in on a scheme like this one. Still, you’re not the type I’d care to meet on a dark night!

She recovered her train of thought; having spoken well, it was time now to stop. And she quickly concluded, addressing the rows of heads on the dais.

“We need a new way of seeing our world. I hope you’ve begun to see it and will agree that this application has to be refused.”

Her heart was still hammering when she sat down.

“You were perfect. Eloquent,” Jill whispered. Her eyes shone with admiration.

A surge of joy passed through Jennie. At the same time she would have liked to know what the Wolfes were saying.

The mayor then asked whether there were any more comments from the floor, and since there were none, the discussion was closed.

Now it was the council’s turn to deliberate and vote. Discussion was short and offered no surprises; as at the first meeting, there were angry remarks about do-gooders who cared more for skunks and weasels than for people, remarks that brought laughter from some in the audience and applause from others. Fisher got conspicuously to his feet to show approval. The librarian spoke for preservation. The thin man who seconded him was Jack Fuller, the dairy farmer. “You’ve got a fantastic memory for names,” Jay had said.

Then came the vote. One for. One against. Two against. Three in favor. Jennie leaned forward in her seat.

A heavy man wearing cataract glasses got to his feet. “I have to say that I was, at the start of the evening, still wavering. I could see merit in voting either way. But after listening to the young woman who spoke last, I made my decision. Yes, we do have an obligation to future generations. She’s certainly right. And so I vote no to the proposal. Leave the Green Marsh alone.”

“Four to four,” Jennie murmured. Jill squeezed her hand. The mayor was flushed and furious as he polled the man at the end of the table.

“Mr. Garrison?”

The one with money troubles. A decent sort, Jennie recalled. But they said he could be swayed.

Now he cleared his throat, as if about to give a speech, and took on a solemn expression. Obviously he was feeling his own importance.

“I, too, was of two minds,” he began. “There’s always something to be said on behalf of conservation. But there’s also much to be said for creating jobs, and certainly we can use ratables to ease the tax burden.”

Jennie groaned silently.

“It’s a question of weighing the two. On the one hand—”

Oh, for Pete’s sake, she cried silently, will you get to the point?

“On the other hand—”

After two minutes’ worth of weighing hands, he did get to the point. “So I vote to turn down the application. Let the state take over the land as a wilderness park.”

Jennie laughed. Her eyes filled with tears. Jill kissed her cheek.

“You did it! You did it!”

The crowd moved slowly toward the night and the dimly lit parking lot. Behind and around her in the crush, Jennie heard comments.

“If it hadn’t been for that young lady lawyer, it’s my opinion they’d have voted the other way.”

“Maybe so. She helped, that’s for sure.”

“She swayed them. I watched their faces.”

“You could almost feel Garrison making up his mind.”

“There’s a lot of anger here, though. You don’t see money like that go sliding through your fingers without getting pretty mad.”

“You must feel wonderful,” Jill repeated as they drove away. “You did it all.”

“No, I didn’t do it all. I did some, and I’m happy about that,” Jennie replied.

Jay would have applauded that speech. It had been concise, it had been damn good. All my pride and all my heart were in it, she thought.

They passed through the town and were soon out on the highway. Jennie looked at the clock on the dashboard. “Nine-thirty and no traffic. We’ll be back in the city by midnight.”

Fields, divided by the road’s black thread, were a black-and-white patchwork where snow had melted and refrozen. The sky was white and calm.

“I never realized there was so much empty space in the East,” Jill remarked.

“Well, you’ve only been in New York. Look over there, that’s the little road that leads to the Green Marsh. The lake’s just half a mile in. It’s one of the prettiest places you could hope to see, even in New Mexico.”

“All right, let me see it.”

“Now? At night?”

“Why not? See how light it is out? And it’s only half a mile, you said.”

Jennie was moved by the girl’s eagerness. “Okay. Then we’ll just get home fifteen minutes later.”

The little car bumped and slid on the ruts and stopped where the lane became too narrow. A short walk over crunching snow brought them to the crest of the hill above the lake. It, like the land, was a patchwork of black and white. Where the ice was broken, the water glistened like black marble. A deep quiet lay on the hemlock-covered hills and on stark birches, unmoving in the windless night.

Here under the benign sun she had come upon this place and stood in the bright air, perhaps on this very spot, with his arms around her and their life lying ahead of them, as warm and gold as the sun and the air.

“Oh, look, Jennie, an owl!”

From a low branch, it stared out of round, amber eyes; then, raising its great wings, it sailed downhill above their heads, crossed the lake, and disappeared in shadow among the trees.

“How beautiful it is here! I know what you mean and why you fought for it,” Jill whispered.

And Jennie understood that she was being considerate of the silence. She had gotten the feel of the place. Her hands clasped before her, she stood and gazed at the sleeping wilderness while Jennie just gazed at her.

Then they got into the car and started back to the city. For a while they rode in silence, the whir of the tires and the thrum of the engine making the only sounds. It was Jill who spoke first.

“I told Mom and Dad everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, about you and the reason you didn’t want to see me. Mom said I shouldn’t have insisted.”

“Just tell Mom it’s turned out all right.”

“Really?”

If only it were so simple, so clear a division between black and white!

“Yes. Really!”

“I just want to say one thing. Your secret—about me— would have been safe. I never would have told.”