Cloning Galinda

by Jan Smolders

“I bet some Supren top executives will be more than happy to cooperate with the authorities,” she went on. “They’ll talk about bribes left and right, improprieties to save their necks when the Doornaert take-over story gets unraveled and they have their backs against the wall.”

  He frowned and nodded slowly, a patronizing smile over his face. “Let them, Miss Jenkins. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I suggest you get out of here.”

  Mary tried once more. “I do know what I’m saying about that takeover: Frank Anderson has contacts at Viola.”

  “Good for him. I asked you to leave.”

  “I will.”

  As he sank back into his chair she heard him murmur dismissively, “In over her head.”

  She summarized her mayoral lunch spoiler as she walked to the exit with Frank and Joe. “I tried to scare him, but he waved me off,” she concluded. “I don’t think he’s feeling very well though.”

  At four that afternoon Mary received a call from Julie Cole at home. “I have a personal message from Mr. Sanders for you, Mary. He had to go home early today. He wanted me to tell you that he’ll be glad to insist with the members of the city council that they approve the petition you have submitted. He’ll be in touch with you soon.”

  Mary resisted her impulse to shout. “That’s great, Julie,” she said politely. “Thank you. I sensed all along he would—”

  “Mr. Sanders cares deeply about the citizens of Noredge. Talk to you later. Congratulations.”

  Mary ran to Joe, out in the yard. “He accepts!” she screamed, hands up.

  “Sanders?”

  “Yes!!”

  “Yep. He’s smarter than I thought. Call Frank, and Dan. And…everybody.”

  She fell into Joe’s arms.

  He picked her up and swung her around.

  “Slow! Your foot, Joe!”

  Andy and Jimmy punched their fists in the air.

  Chapter 37

  That night Mary and Joe made love as if there would be no tomorrow. And if they were wrong about that, they didn’t care anyway.

  Later, as they lay exhausted, their blood still pumping, Mary ran her fingernails over Joe’s chest. “It’s almost heaven, Joe.”

  “If there is one, sweetie, this must be damn close.”

  “Yes….” She sighed.

  “Yes but…? I heard you. You know, those bastards who fired you…I think they might change their tune. Get you back to the school. Can Miss Mayor be a teacher too?” He pulled her onto him.

  She felt his warmth, giggled and tucked her head into his elbow.

  He rocked her lightly. “Can she?”

  “I have no idea. But you’re skipping a few steps on that ladder to heaven.” She turned onto her side. “And I’m not so sure Sanders had a real change of heart—”

  “Oh yes. I’m sure he did, for now,” he joked. “That weathervane flipped over at the speed of lightning. But a little too rapidly for my taste. Apostle Sanders on the road to Damascus…. How long before he makes a pit stop and pulls another one-eighty? And he still could come up with the excuse that he can’t get the votes at the council.”

  “He won’t do that. I bet he’ll fight his members tooth and nail not to let that happen: miraculously converted tree-hugger Sanders must have their consent because he plans to grab his opponent’s trump card out of her hands. ‘Bye bye Mayor Jenkins,’ he must figure.”

  “Okay. I see. Okay. No one-eighty now. But how about after the election, if he wins?”

  “I’ll win. I have to and I will: I have another ace tucked away in my pocket.”

  Joe smiled. “Yep. Calling him a crook. Should be easy.”

  Cutting right to the chase, my Joe. “No. No name calling—”

  The bedroom door squeaked. A little boy entered, a couple of steps.

  “Jimmy?” Mary grabbed the bed sheet and pulled it halfway over her upper body.

  “Mommy, I forgot to do my homework. Are you cold?”

  “Oh,” she said softly, suppressing a chuckle and covering Joe with the sheet as well. “No. Not cold. You can do it tomorrow morning. I’ll wake you up twenty minutes early.”

  “Ten minutes, Mommy? It won’t take long.”

  “Ten. Okay, go to sleep now.”

  Jimmy left and closed the door.

  Mary tossed a smile at Joe, jumped up, ran to the door, locked it and gamboled back to bed, back into his muscular embrace.

  He looked at her, amused. “Locked it well? Andy may have homework too,” he teased.

  She frowned, her eyes twinkling. “Back to Sanders. No name-calling, I said. No name-calling, but I’m sure Sanders must fear I might. I didn’t flat out accuse him of selling out to frackers. But I used not-so-subtle provocation: the Doornaert deal, all those Supren and Viola lawsuits on their way. I bet he was shaking in his loafers when I threw that at him. He bent but he didn’t break—didn’t explode in anger.”

  Joe showed a big smile, nickering. “The shyster didn’t take the bait, eh? But his ears must have been burning. Bribery. Kickbacks. Permitting shenanigans.”

  She shook her head, chewing her bottom lip. “He even managed a couple of condescending smiles. He had a hell of a time trying to maintain a façade of courtesy, but it held.” Her eyes lighted up. “No explosion, Joe. No violent anger. Know what that means? Don’t you think that any honorable person confronted with my kind of insinuations would go ballistic?”

  “So you’re saying he had to be playing dumb. Dumb but smart. Pretending he didn’t get the message. But guilty as hell.”

  “And even hoping against the odds that credulous Mary might believe his hands were clean. Or trusting that shy Mary would be too timid to ever call him out.”

  He squeezed her waist. “Or that ‘Lady’ Jenkins is not so naïve or shy but will refuse to play the dirty card.”

  “That could be. I will.”

  “Huh? Refuse? Then you don’t have an ace.” Joe sounded a bit irritated.

  “No, not that kind. I don’t want to stoop that low to win. I won’t have to.” She shivered and curled up close to him. “I’ll have to play it cleverly. Not act cheap. I’ll have a plan. Noredge’s people are smart enough to read between the lines.”

  He slowly rocked his head. “Hope so.”

  “Noredge will surprise you, my dear Joe. And so will I. Watch me, your future Mayor. Want to bet?” She rubbed his stubble.

  “No. I want to cuddle.”

  ***

  Mid-December the Noredge City Council agreed six to three on a city-wide fracking ban. Mayor Sanders, who had argued and voted for it, called an immediate halt to Supren operations at the Rutgers and Maple Road sites, and declared no new fracking permits would be considered.

  “Good,” Joe commented. “But I wonder about mid-May. After the election.”

  “Which I will win. No need to sigh,” Mary retorted.

  The city erupted into jubilation and celebration. Mary basked in the glory. But water distribution had to continue, even as Supren was closing down its sites.

  “Mayor Sanders will have to keep after them Texans or….” The threat was heard at grocery stores and bars all over Noredge.

  Mary would nod and complete the sentence in her mind. Rumors about her challenging the mayor swirled. She kept mum but was already planning her course, sometimes under the puzzled stares of Joe. Reading up on environment and energy and climate change; making phone calls to organizations she found on the web; contacting clean energy advocates. People stopped by at home to offer donations. A Californian group offered help in vague terms, adding that cleaner forms of energy “existed.”

  She let it be known to friends and neighbors that she was available for tutoring at her home. Joe’s workers’ comp amount wasn’t nearly enough to tide her family over “until better times will be upon
us,” as she would say with a sigh. And it could be cut to zero any day now.

  By mid-January Supren had plugged the Rutgers and Maple Road wells with loads of extremely expensive cement.

  “No more methane fouling our water,” Mary stated proudly.

  “Not in the next twenty years,” Frank corrected her, sitting across from her at the kitchen table. “Then?” He rolled his eyes. “Cement doesn’t last forever, you know.”

  “Right, stranger,” Mary said. “Then what? Not your problem. By then you’ll have long run off to California with Joanna, I guess?”

  Frank smiled. He had just returned from a ten-day trip all by himself to the state. “Twenty years. At that point the city will have to tell Supren to re-plug, whatever the cost.”

  “Oh yes,” Joe quipped. “Re-plug as ordered by Mayor Jenkins.”

  “Who’ll have retired by then!”

  “Yes, Mary. Well, me too. I’ll be playing soccer with the grandchildren.” Joe put his hand on her shoulder and winked at Frank.

  ***

  “Harriet seems to avoid us,” Joe observed one evening. “An hour ago I saw her walking in her yard, staring at the ground, shivering in the cold.”

  “Let her. She’s got her signing fee anyway,” Mary grumbled. “It should compensate royally for her messed up yard, and buy her a warm overcoat.”

  “But you’ve killed her royalties—not that I mind.”

  “And hopefully saved her and our drinking water. Okay?” The phone rang. Mary took the call. From Chuck Dombroski, so the screen said.

  “Am I talking to the lucky girl who married Joe Bertolo?” the caller asked without introduction. “Well, um…yes….”

  “I’m an old buddy of his. From college. Chuck.”

  “Okay. I’m Mary. Hold on. Honey! Chuck Dombroski for you!”

  Joe jumped up from the couch with surprising ease. “Dombroski? I’ll be damned.”

  She handed him the phone.

  “Chuck! I thought you’d fallen off the earth, man. All good? What’s up?” Joe sounded thrilled and showed Mary a “great guy” thumbs-up.

  Chuck laughed. “If your lady looks as great as she sounds I’ll have to meet her someday!”

  Joe’s sheepish grin told Mary this was Chuck language.

  “I can hear you loud and clear, Chuck. Please go on! I want more,” she joked.

  “Good. We should get together. Look, I heard about this Carrollton disaster and discovered last week that Joe was the driver. I should’ve called right away, but I guess better late than never. How’s my college buddy?”

  “You mean the one that dropped out after six months? Just fine. Thanks. Recovering well but up to my neck in this fracking shit like everyone here. A real mess.”

  “I know. Working yet?”

  “No. Workers’ comp for now…until the commission cuts me off.”

  “Yeah….”

  “And my wife lost her teaching job trying to be a good citizen.”

  “All because of Supren, Chuck,” Mary explained, half-shouting.

  “Heard that too. Sorry about your bad luck. So you’re done with Supren, Joe?”

  “I won’t touch bloody Supren with a ten-foot pole, buddy.”

  Chuck chortled. “Of course not. Sue the bastards. You’ll make a fortune.”

  “A good friend told us the same,” Mary jumped in again. “Maybe—”

  “Sue them, I say. I have a lawyer. Meanwhile, you may know that about ten years ago I went into business for myself. I own four nurseries, all in Ohio, one close to Canton. East Canton.”

  Joe’s eyes lighted up. “Oh? I had no idea. Pretty close to our neck of the woods.”

  “Yep. And I could use some help there. My Canton manager will retire in July and I’m looking for a reliable guy. One I can trust with money and who can deal with people, treat customers fairly with respect, coach young workers out of high school and so on. Mature. I thought that sounded like you.”

  “Do you know that Joe coached high school football for years, Chuck?” Mary asked.

  Joe gave her an “of course he does” frown.

  “Do I know!” Chuck roared. “Let’s be clear, the job won’t make you guys rich. I’m sure I can’t match those ridiculous Supren wages. But we could talk about that. Find a way, if you like.”

  Joe kept rocking his head and staring at Mary. “Well, I know how to grow tomatoes, potatoes and corn and—”

  “Sunflowers and roses and pumpkins,” Mary added.

  Chuck snickered. “You’ll learn, and I’ve got a couple of specialists who travel to my locations. What I need is a steady hand. I could come over and have a drink or two, talk about the old days. I live in Bath.”

  “Yes. Good. Mary and me want to hear more about your lawyer, too.”

  A week later Joe worked his first day at “Dombroski’s” in East Canton.

  By the end of March the level of methane in Noredge’s water had dropped to acceptable levels, but most citizens continued drinking bottled water and all insisted on continued free distribution. The mayor complied, no questions asked. “Of course,” Mary mocked.

  “Just squeeze that Sanders lemon and the juice will flow. Til election day,” Joe quipped. “By the way, where the hell are Frank and Joanna? Haven’t seen them in ages.”

  Mary nodded knowingly. “Our friend must be exploring new horizons. I think he’s had it with fracking. He’s hinted he might take some courses. He can afford coasting for a while. Sonya told me Supren paid his severance a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I bet he had built himself a good nest egg already. Quietly. That severance may be just gravy. My old boss Jeffrey told me the smart bachelor amassed a fortune in the Dakotas working crazy schedules for two or three years in the Bakken fields and having nothing to spend his dough on.”

  “He may. Whatever. Good for him. He never bragged about it.” She sometimes wondered why Frank didn’t buy himself some fancy Mercedes or BMW.

  ***

  Sanders started his reelection campaign with an article in the Sentinel and a city-wide mailing of a reprint, including a photo that had to be at least ten years old. He listed his accomplishments over the last four years and offered apologies for the drinking water issue.

  “We have confronted the problem head-on, restored the quality of our water and are taking measures to recover damages from Supren, a company that, despite iron-clad assurances of safe operations and strong employment growth, has let down the good citizens of Noredge. In a further step prudent management of the city’s finances will enable us to lower real estate taxes…more money in citizens’ pockets…compensating as best we can for the suffering…a better place to live….” The text climaxed with a promise screaming loudly, “Not one of our children will have to drink polluted water in Noredge! Not one! Not as long as Mayor Sanders runs the city!”

  “He should’ve used more exclamation marks,” Mary noted dryly as she handed the paper to Joe.

  She kept to her busy schedule of quiet preparation. Under the radar. Soon she filed the papers required to make her candidacy official. She, and Joe time permitting, started separate daily canvassing efforts once more, knocking on every door listed on their petition lists.

  Two weeks later a Sanders flyer made the rounds ridiculing Mary, his only challenger so far, as a dreaming tree-hugger with no consideration for the economic wellbeing of Noredge. “Sickly emotional about her land which she inherited.” Sanders proudly stated he had risen from nowhere through hard work and built up his life and business from scratch. Then he had started serving the community as mayor, living in a modest house on small acreage. Acquired acreage. “What’s her merit?” the flyer asked. “Having chosen the right parents? So she could afford to forgo leasing fees and royalties while blaming neighbors with more limited resources?”

  Joe would rea
ct angrily to such language, but Mary remained calm. She refused to repeat publicly the biting words she had spoken to Sanders in her private meeting with him the day she dropped off the petition. “We’ll never be able to match the upcoming attacks the Chamber will be happy to finance for Sanders in print or on radio and TV,” she said to Joe, without complaint.

  The assaults on Mary intensified. She was “a fired teacher. A failed teacher. A neophyte at running anything, let alone a city, who would drive Noredge off a cliff. A Sierra Club stooge. With two small kids to keep her plenty busy.”

  She didn’t lose her cool. Her own personal calls on voters, in their houses, and Joe’s frequent reports raised her level of confidence. “The wind’s blowing in the right direction, Mary,” he would say as he plopped down after another round of visits. The man combined his five or six days a week at Dombroski’s with knocking on doors during weekends and evening hours.

  Frank, back in town, assisted under the radar. Mary knew he was also contacting energy companies and environmental organizations. He seemed to have discovered his real calling, this petroleum engineer. “Branching out in new directions,” he said when Mary asked him for the umpteenth time what he was up to. Lately he had delivered those words with a tinge of mystery in his tone.

  Mary showed him an inquisitive frown. “I know you’re keeping a secret from me, Frank. You don’t trust me,” she teased him.

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “It’s about time I tell you. I’m going into solar. Panels.”

  “Huh? In California.”

  His eyes sparkled. “In Noredge.”

  “What?”

  “Putting money in a partnership. To help Noredge. I believe in it. Get the city back to work. Jobs, Mary!”

  Neighbor Jack Wiltse’s angry face appeared on her mental screen. He had blamed her yesterday for the loss of his job at Supren.

  “Wow! Frank!” she exclaimed. “Oh my God I knew it. I knew it. I told Joe you were going to end up with something like that. ‘In California,’ I said. But here! In Noredge! Partnership with whom?”

  “I can’t divulge his name yet.”

  “Tell your partner I want to join.”