Orient (21 page)

Bryan led the effort against the water main. He organized petitions, went door to door to collect signatures, artistically Photoshopped images of midwestern supermalls onto Orient farms, called for the impeachment of the superintendent, and brought supporters to flood the monthly council meeting in Southold with fevered complaints—the unifying message being, “when water comes, development follows.” When the water company’s CEO insisted that the main would supply only twenty-four homes on Browns Hill with water, the answer was, No sir, that’s just the beginning. When environmental agents revealed that a test of private wells in Orient turned up troubling amounts of gasoline by-product, Bryan and his allies made a public show of guzzling the tap water with unbelievable thirst. When certain previously faithful residents admitted that they might actually like their toilet waste to disappear in a single flush or their sprinkler systems to sprinkle continuously, the reprisals were subtle but swift: longstanding neighborhood cookouts were canceled, birthdays no longer acknowledged, even a few car tires deflated overnight. Finally, after months of negotiations, the
proposal was shelved, “until we fix a few internal problems with the water map.” But the CEO insisted to Bryan, during their final, tense encounter, that their retreat was only temporary. “You can’t fight progress forever. Modernization has a way of happening.”

After the debacle, OHB no longer felt safe leaving Orient’s future up to Suffolk County. Tonight, at seven o’clock, Bryan Muldoon would go on the offensive. As he ran through his talking points, he noticed a journalist from the
Suffolk Times
lingering near the front door with a young, safari-capped photographer. The first year-rounders were drifting into the hall, grabbing a flyer and helping themselves to the brownies Karen Norgen had baked.

The photograph of Magdalena brought a needed solemnity to the proceedings. The initiative they were here to debate—a nondevelopment trust—had been Magdalena’s brainchild, an embryo that Bryan instantly surrogate-fathered, calling in favors from environmental liaisons and spending his nights studying how similar conservation easements had preserved Montana’s cattle fields and wild trout fisheries. Magdalena’s untimely death was the first obstacle they’d encountered. Bryan could preach the statistics supporting voluntary conservation, but it was Lena’s elderly graciousness, and her long relationship with the local farmers, that Bryan had been counting on to drive the message from brain to heart.

Sarakit Herrig climbed the steps to the stage. She offered a curt hello before rearranging the stands for a more dramatic display. George Morgensen appeared, dressed in his retirement uniform of mismatched golf pastels. The other four members of the board were the elderly offspring of ancestral families—Max Griffin, Helen Floyd, Kelley Flanner, Archie Young—whose combined ownership of Orient counted in the hundreds of acres. Each had the chapped faces and invisible chins of early North Fork pioneers (now on view in sepia photographs in the museum’s “Pioneers of Peace” gallery). Arthur Cleaver had driven out from the city to fulfill his role as the board’s legal counsel. Bryan knew that Arthur, a distinguished attorney with iron hair who seemed to perspire duty-free cologne, had
no passion for the trust, but his volunteer work kept him abreast of local controversies. Bryan took Arthur as the kind of man who enjoyed the thrill of watching disasters from a distance.

The members took their seats as attendees flooded the hall; the meeting’s autumn date conveniently tipped the scales away from the summer weekenders. Bryan noticed his hunting buddy Alistair Swallow, Mitch Tabach with his aluminum legs and brand-new hip, Paul Benchley with his morose foster-care ward, the Stillpasses, Ina Jenkins, Reverend Ann Whitlen, and even Roe diCorcia, a corn farmer and obdurate enemy of OHB, who had supported the water-main proposal because it would have aided in the irrigation of his crops. Everyone spoke in whispers of Magdalena, and Bryan heard Karen Norgen use the word
murder
twice, the second time within the same breath as “Beth Shepherd.” Beth’s mother, Gail, slipped in a little after seven—a surprise, since most assumed she had been driven back over the causeway to Southold for good.

“Let’s get started,” Bryan said, standing on the stage with the microphone to his lips. “First I’d like to take a moment of silence for our recently departed board member, Magdalena Kiefer. Magdalena, who passed away this weekend, would have appreciated the strong turnout tonight, bringing us together for this important cause.”

What was the acceptable increment of time for a moment of silence? Two seconds? Five? Eight? Bryan realized he’d forgotten to mention that Magdalena’s funeral was tomorrow. Should he do it now? No, he must stick to his script.

“Magdalena was adamant about the initiative that I am going to spell out for you this evening, and we can only hope to honor her years of hard preservation work by naming it after her. She will be buried tomorrow.” He had stumbled into the ad lib to his own irritation. “At her funeral. Tomorrow. And naturally in our next meeting we will be electing a new board member to replace her.” He winced. “Not that we
can
replace her. But the funeral, it’s tomorrow. Now back to the reason we’re here.”

The bright overhead lights created a metallic shine on the white faces staring up at him. Friendly faces, but ugly here inside Poquatuck, with its acrylic cream walls. How ugly humans could be when jammed together in one room, all the color of cereal sitting too long in milk. Bryan felt a bead of sweat on his brow. He wished someone would open a window to bring some cold air into the hall.

“Do they know what Magdalena died of?” a voice called out from the circular tables, a man’s voice, but Bryan couldn’t locate the questioner. Whispers spread on the floor. Bryan heard the phrase “Plum monster.”

“I believe she had a heart attack,” Bryan replied. The photographer snapped a picture. The reporter wrote on her pad. “I saw Magdalena a few days before she died,” he said, awkwardly, as if he were admitting a secret, “and she was adamant about this initiative.” He was stumbling again, and he looked to history to bolster his confidence. “All of you remember how successfully we halted the water main two years ago. We have each other to thank for that victory.” Roe diCorcia raised his hand, but Bryan ignored it. He had finally found his rhythm. “But the work’s not over, folks. Not by a long shot. That was a wake-up call to OHB that we need to take the preservation of Orient into our own hands.”

Bryan walked over to the first poster. “Today, I want to share our plan for conservancy. We have fended off encroachment with zoning regulations, but we all know the powers that be in Southold are not to be trusted in enforcing those conditions.” The poster bore the headline T
HE
K
IEFER
N
ONDEVELOPMENT
A
DVOCACY
I
NITIATIVE
, over a shot of phragmites and the sun-dappled waves of the Sound. He tapped the cardboard. “Today OHB takes one step further. We have filed for nonprofit status as a conservancy trust. This will give us the community power to control what gets built in our own backyards. But we need your help and agreement. Friends, the decision is with you. The Kiefer Nondevelopment Advocacy Initiative promises to protect nature and wildlife in Orient—and it comes with a financial benefit to all.

“Simply put, the trust is asking to buy the development rights on your land—to keep it out of the reaches of commercial development forever.”

There was a stir in the room: more whispering, a few indignant grunts. The eight figures on stage smiled through the reaction, and Bryan stepped carefully over to his next poster, an aerial shot of Orient divided by property lines.

“Now, the trust owning your development rights has nothing to do with owning your land. That still belongs to you in every way. What we own is the promise that nothing commercial will ever be built on it. It takes only one developer to get his hands on a sizeable plot”—he purposely pointed to the diCorcia farm—“a loophole in the zoning laws, and a little cash stuffed in the right Southold pocket, to turn that land into a condominium community. You can already hear the sales pitch: ‘rustic living for city buyers with premium ocean views and a soon-to-be-opened multiplex, fitness center, and Whole Foods, all just steps from your door.’ That could happen,
will
happen, unless the trust steps in to preserve its sanctity—not for five years, not for ten, but forever. We don’t want to become another Hamptons. The Orient we love today should be the same Orient your grandkids will enjoy when they start their families.” For one minute, Bryan stood silent on the stage, hoping the vision was taking shape in their minds.

In the back corner, Roe diCorcia cleared his throat and stood up, all six foot four inches of him, rising out of the audience in tan overalls like a cancerous cornstalk.

“It’s a rotten deal,” Roe complained. “You might not be buying the land, but you’re buying control over what I can do with it. You’re deciding what I can build and how I can carve it up. And, meanwhile, you’re destroying my property values. You’ve gotta be kidding me. When we go to sell, who’s going to pay what the land is worth when there’s a lead anchor like that attached?”

Bryan stepped over to the third poster, full of rainbow-colored pie charts and graphs; he’d designed it to advertise the financial
windfall in such an agreement, but now, onstage, it all looked so convoluted. Sarakit’s smile began to tighten.

George stepped in. “Roe, the trust is planning to ask a fair price. That’s money straight up. Plus, in the long run, if neighbors also sell their development rights, that could actually increase the value of the land, because the buyer is protected from a condominium subdivision built right next door.”

“And it
is
a fair price,” Sarakit intoned.

Cole Drake stood up from his table. He stared with an intensity of a man who had discovered that his wife had been cheating on him. Bryan couldn’t decide if Holly’s absence from the meeting proved or disproved that fear. He quickly tried to wipe his palms on his pants, but in doing so he dropped the microphone, sending a clumsy reverberation blasting from the speakers:
Blump ump, blump ump, ump, ump
. Bryan closed his eyes, waiting for the speakers to clear the horrible echo.

“Where is the trust getting all the cash to buy these rights, anyway?” Cole demanded. “It sounds like a protection racket.”

Bryan knew that the answers were on the final poster, the one that listed possible revenue streams: tax-free donations, willed legacy gifts, fund-raisers, environmental grants, the selling off of certain properties it owned in East Marion that were of no conservational import. But he walked in the wrong direction, right instead of left, and found himself back at the first poster, as if Orient’s revenue questions could be found in the romantic, soft-focus picture of Orient.

“Other side,” Ted whispered. Bryan looked at him dazed, a look Ted only matched in return. Ted turned to the crowd.

“This is only an introduction. The point of this meeting is to familiarize you with the initiative. Obviously there are a number of legal and ethical questions that we’ll be happy to discuss with each resident individually. The point is that we have found a way to preserve our home. No property is too small to sell its development rights. Sarakit and I have pledged to sell the rights on our three acres when OHB receives nonprofit-trust status. And Archie has agreed to
sell the rights to his ninety acres. It will be owned by all of us—by the community, under the trust.”

“So you’re basically selling your own land back to yourself and making a profit?” someone shouted.

“What we will own isn’t freedom
to
, it’s freedom
from
,” Ted explained. “Geography isn’t something that just happens. As the teacher to many of your—”

Bryan finally got his bearings, stepping across the stage to the final poster. Before he got there, though, he spotted a band of dark shapes moving across the Poquatuck windows—dark human shapes, which passed the three windows on their way to the front door.

“Please, someone,” Bryan said urgently into the microphone, “lock the door.”

But they were already through it, black shapes even under the bright overhead fixtures. Five young men in head-to-toe hunting outfits held lime green posters of the creature on the beach. Adam Pruitt was their leader, a man every audience member knew as much for his current position as the head of the volunteer fire department as for his thirty-four years of low ambition and sporadic employment. Some looked offended by his intrusion; others seemed thankful for the entertainment. Adam carried a sign reading M
UTANT
P
LUM
in leaky, bloodred marker. His disruption had all the finesse of a high school theater production.

“We wouldn’t be interrupting if this weren’t important,” he shouted.

“This is unacceptable, son,” Bryan said into the microphone, hoping to gain the upper hand with a show of patronizing civility. “We are having a conservancy meeting here. You can schedule your conspiracy meeting for another time.”

Adam faced the audience. The
Suffolk Times
photographer crouched to snap pictures like he imagined himself in a war zone.

“Conservancy is our issue,” Adam said. “Conserving water, animals, air, and soil from a fun house of genetic-testing horrors that has been violating nature for a half-century right off our coast.”
Adam pointed out the window. “For as long as I can remember, we’ve put up with it, accepting the lab without ever asking a single question about how it might be affecting our health and homes. Ever since I was a boy.” Bryan hoped the year-rounders would remember Adam as a boy—as the school bully, the Greenport shoplifter with a face full of acne and free-floating rage. How many remembered when all the village stop signs were stolen—then found in the trunk of Adam’s Chevy Malibu? “If this is a town meeting, I think that merits a town discussion.”

To Bryan’s disappointment, many in the crowd nodded. Roe diCorcia clapped. Two of the intruders climbed up to put their own posters on the stands, causing Helen Floyd and Kelley Flanner to vacate the stage.