“Over here!” I saw Michael waving to me. He’d found us seats on a hay bale just behind the stage, and was sitting there supervising as a regular parade of women came by to inspect the twins in their double baby carriage.
I spotted Cousin Festus on the other side of the barn, talking with Caroline and Dad, and waved at him.
Festus would be the first to admit that he’d decided to become a lawyer at the age of thirteen, after watching Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. And while Jimmy Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder, and Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind had helped cement his career choice, Festus remained largely true to his original hero worship of Atticus Finch. He wore old-fashioned, light-colored three-piece suits and thick-framed glasses similar to the ones Peck had worn in the movie and styled his hair in as close as he could come to Peck’s habitual fashion, the better to allow an errant lock to fall over one eye at the climax of his closing statements. He cultivated Finch’s calm, mild-mannered tone of voice and had even replaced his original Tidewater, Virginia accent with the rather more generic Hollywood-style southern accent Peck had adopted in the movie.
Immediately after his graduation from law school, a brief, unhappy stint as a public defender convinced him that the criminal justice system was unlikely to provide a steady supply of the kind of stoic, long-suffering innocent clients that he had been looking forward to defending. After a period of intense soul-searching he’d switched to a civil practice. He now specialized in, as he put it, “helping Davids fell Goliaths”—the Goliaths in question being usually corporations and governments.
Juries loved him, and rumor had it that during negotiations, more than one opposing legal team had hastily settled after Festus shook his head sadly and uttered, in the mildest of tones, the fateful words, “Well, gentlemen, I do believe we will be obliged to settle this in a court of law.”
He was standing to the left of the temporary stage, with his left thumb tucked in his vest pocket, sipping a cup of New Life Baptist coffee and surveying the crowd with great satisfaction.
Part of his satisfaction probably came from the fact that there were two television crews taking crowd footage. The one from the college TV station was no surprise—most of the students who ran it came from Michael’s drama classes. But the crew from one of the Richmond stations—now that was an achievement. I wondered if Festus or Caroline had arranged it, or if news was slow enough in the big city that what passed for a crime wave in Caerphilly had caught their attention.
And I could tell from Festus’s expression that he liked what the TV cameras were capturing. If they panned across the crowd they’d be showing everything from New Life choir matrons in their Sunday best hats and dresses to farmers in overalls; from county board members in well-worn suits to faculty members in corduroy jackets with elbow patches. And all of them at least temporarily in perfect harmony with each other, united by their outrage against the Pruitts and buoyed by the excitement of the meeting.
About the only people who didn’t seem terribly thrilled to be here were those few county board members. Clearly they’d have some explaining to do, eventually. They’d probably claim that the mayor had pulled the wool over their eyes, and they’d probably be telling the truth.
Timmy was sitting with a group of kids from his kindergarten class. Their teacher was pointing to various people in the room and talking to her charges. Using the town meeting as a teaching moment, no doubt. I moved a little closer so I could overhear.
“No, the town can’t just fire the mayor,” she was saying, “because the town voters elected him. But if enough voters are unhappy and sign a petition, we can unelect him.”
“Can I sign?” one kindergartener asked, raising his hand. Half a dozen others also began waving their hands to volunteer. I left her to break the news of their disenfranchisement to the eager little citizens.
It was a few minutes after seven when Caroline Willner stepped to the podium and adjusted the microphone down to where she could reach it. She had a large tortoiseshell cat draped over one shoulder. I doubted live cats would really catch on as fashion accessories, but I predicted that the tortoiseshell would not go unadopted. Several people were pointing at him, and I overheard several variations on “Isn’t he sweet!”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Caroline said.
The crowd began shushing each other, and settled down in a remarkably short time.
“I’ve been asked to chair this meeting.” Scattered applause greeted these words. “Although I’m deeply concerned with the fate of Caerphilly, I’m not actually a resident, so I probably have as good a chance as anyone at being impartial.”
Murmurs of approval from the crowd. I couldn’t help thinking what a smart choice she was. Of the Corsicans who had the confidence to tackle chairing a meeting, she was certainly the best choice. Dad would have been too gentle with the crowd and Grandfather too brusque.
“Before we get started,” she said. “I’d like to ask Reverend Wilson from the New Life Baptist Church to start off tonight’s proceedings with a blessing. Reverend?”
The reverend, a slightly hunched elderly man with close-cropped white hair and skin like polished mahogany, stepped briskly to the podium. A few people shifted uneasily. No one had ever called any of the reverend’s sermons boring, but then no one had ever called any of them short, either.
They needn’t have worried. The reverend was a man who knew how to read a crowd.
“Lord,” he said. “We ask your blessing on this gathering.”
A few amens rang out from various parts of the barn. I wasn’t sure whether this was intended as the usual call-and-response the reverend’s words would inspire in church, or whether some audience members were trying to hint that he’d already covered the topic sufficiently.
“There has been a great wickedness done in this town,” he went on. More amens. “And we ask your assistance in smiting the doers of that wickedness. Amen!”
He sat down amid a frenzy of amens and applause. Surely one of the shortest blessings he’d given within living memory. I suspected the reverend was as eager as most of the audience to get on with the meeting.
Caroline retook the microphone.
“I don’t know how many of you are up to speed on developments here in the county. Bear with me while I repeat a few things that might be old news to some of you. Early Friday morning, the police found Parker Blair murdered in the cab of his furniture store’s truck. I’m sure most people assumed that Parker’s demise had something to do with his … active social life.”
Snickers erupted in various parts of the audience, and the snickerers were hushed back into silence.
“But this morning Meg Langslow and Randall Shiffley uncovered information that indicates Parker was about to blow the whistle on a serious scandal here in Caerphilly. We’ll leave it to Chief Burke to determine whether Parker’s findings had anything to do with his death.”
She bowed to the chief, who was sitting along one side of the stage, and he bowed back with reasonably good grace.
“Parker learned that the town beautification project was not paid for with federal funds and private donations, as Mayor Pruitt claimed, but with loans.”
“But that was a town project,” someone called out. “What does that have to do with the county?”
“Town didn’t have anything worth using as collateral,” Randall Shiffley called back. “So they hornswoggled the county board into letting them use all the county buildings as collateral.”
I’d have expected the crowd to erupt at hearing that, but after a few moments of low murmuring—and more than a few angry or reproachful glances at the county board members who’d been brave enough to attend—the crowd settled down. Evidently most of them had already heard the news. Or perhaps they were cynical enough about their local government that it came as no surprise.
“Doubtless the mayor had a plan for repaying the borrowing.” This generated a few sardonic laughs. “But even if his plan was a good one, it a
pparently failed, no doubt due to the present adverse economic conditions. We’ve now learned that the lender has been demanding payment for months—and is preparing to foreclose on the collateral.”
A slightly angrier buzz greeted that statement, and died down when Caroline raised her hand to indicate that she had more to say.
Suddenly the tortoiseshell cat, which had been lying languidly on her shoulder the whole time, launched itself toward the audience with a howl, and began scrabbling around the base of the stage. Several people in the front rows leaped back and a few startled shrieks rang out.
The cat then leaped nimbly back onto the stage and marched back over to Caroline.
“Mrowr!” it said, its voice a little muffled by the field mouse in its mouth.
“What a good mouser you are!” Caroline exclaimed. She picked up the cat, mouse and all, and held him out as if displaying a trophy. The audience—many of them farm people who understand the value of a good mouser—broke into applause.
“And he’s available for adoption, if anyone’s interested,” Caroline said. She gestured to Clarence, who relieved her of the cat and took him off to enjoy his prey in one of the cat carriers in the adoption area.
“As I was saying,” Caroline said. “The lender plans to seize our county government buildings. And now Meg Langslow has discovered that the mayor apparently intends to solve the debt crisis he created by asking the county to seize the property of several local landowners and turn it over to an outside developer!”
All hell broke loose at that hated word, “developer”—and “outside developer” at that. Not that there was anyone living in the county who would publicly own up to being a developer, given the local mind-set on the issue. The county might be divided in many ways over many topics, but nothing would bring the residents together better than the threat of unwanted development.
Caroline let the shouting go on for a few minutes before tapping the microphone for silence.
“Before we discuss what to do about this threat, I’d like to hear a few very brief words from the people most affected by the developer’s plans—the people whose land is in danger of being stolen!”
Deacon Washington stepped to the podium and led off with a short but emotional statement about how much it meant to his family that they now owned the very farm on which their ancestors had labored as slaves before the Civil War—and how shocked he was to hear that the county where he’d spent all his life was plotting to deprive him of this important legacy. The New Life Baptist contingent punctuated his statement liberally with shouts of “You tell ’em!” and “Amen, brother!”
Randall Shiffley stood up and, after apologizing for not being much of a public speaker, proceeded to prove himself a liar by making a plainspoken yet eloquent plea for his cousins and their old friend Seth Early to continue farming the land their families had occupied since colonial times. Orville, Renfrew, and Seth stood in a semicircle behind him, looking the very picture of noble, careworn tillers of the earth. The addition of Seth’s newly adopted border collie was a nice touch. Someone—probably Cousin Festus—had clearly had a hand in the staging. Except for one scowling reference to “outsiders with no love for the land,” Randall completely refrained from Pruitt bashing. Orville didn’t spit tobacco once during the entire performance, and the crowd, having been warmed up by Deacon Washington, peppered Randall’s words with enthusiastic amens and encouragement.
“And finally,” Caroline said, after the border collie had herded the three farmers off the stage, “Meg Langslow, who discovered this dangerous plot this afternoon when she confronted the surveyors trespassing on the land she and her husband own. Meg!”
She might have warned me that she was planning to ask me to speak. Fortunately the thunderous cheers and applause that greeted my name gave me time to pull my thoughts together. I grabbed the closest twin, balanced him on my shoulder, and strode to the microphone. Not that Josh couldn’t have remained in the carriage under Michael’s watchful eye, but I figured Cousin Festus would never forgive me if I passed up the chance to show off, on camera, at least one of the adorable infants whose home the developers were threatening. As I stood in front of the microphone, I could see Festus beaming approval at me.
“Michael and I plan for our kids to grow up on this land,” I said.
A few amens rang out, and various people shouted “You tell ’em,” and “Go, sister!”
“So we have no intention of letting the stupidity, dishonesty, and greed of a few politicians take it away from us. That’s why as soon as I heard about the mayor’s plan, I called my cousin, Festus Hollingsworth, who has spent his entire legal career fighting similar injustices. Take it away, Festus.”
With that I sat down, followed by another thunderous ovation. Festus and Caroline beamed at me. I tucked Josh back into the carriage. Jamie didn’t seem jealous that he hadn’t had his own moment on camera.
Festus stepped to the podium.
“I would like to thank all of you for putting your confidence in me,” he began. “I can’t promise to win this for you—no one can—but I can promise I will do everything within my power to do so.”
“And bill us for all the time it takes,” someone called out from the back. But the heckler didn’t sound angry, and the crowd reacted with amused titters.
“True,” Festus said. “And I won’t lie to you—this is a complicated matter that will require a lot of my time. Unfortunately for me, since it was my cousin who originally called me in, I guess I’m going to have to do this all at the family discount rate.”
More laughter.
“The first thing I’ll be looking into is whether the town had the legal authority to borrow that money in the first place, and whether the county board had the power to let them use public property as collateral without the voters’ approval. I’ll also look into whether any of the public officials involved in this scheme committed any indictable or impeachable offenses in connection with this loan. And as far as seizing people’s property—we’re a long way from that.”
A volley of cheers and amens greeted this statement.
“Some of you may have heard about a case where the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a northern town’s right to condemn a bunch of modest homes to build a fancy new development. You’ll be relieved to know that Virginia was one of the many states to have passed laws making it harder for rogue governments to get away with this kind of outrageous behavior. I’ll be looking into whether what these developers are trying to pull has any chance of standing up in court under these new laws. I can already assure you that they won’t find approval in the court of public opinion. It won’t be easy, but I’m optimistic that we’ll prevail.”
More ovations. Josh was awake and beaming as if he thought the ovations were all for him. But Jamie woke up and began the soft fussing noises that meant he was about a minute from drowning out the entire meeting unless fed. I grabbed him and a bottle and slipped behind the stage and into my office. I left the door ajar so I could keep track of what was being said without the danger that I’d nod off. Probably not the thing to do in front of a crowd who thought you were a fearless and tireless crusader for justice.
And being out of sight also let me dodge volunteering for all the committees that Festus and Caroline and the rest of the attendees set up over the next hour. A committee to find and set up office and living spaces for the paralegals and clerks Festus would be bringing to town to help. A committee to look through the minutes of the town council and the county board to determine exactly what they were told about the beautification project. A committee, headed by one of Randall’s cousins, to analyze the costs of the beautification project, to see if the construction costs were exorbitant. A committee to gather data on the developer that seemed to be interested in our land, particularly any information on their relationship with the lender and with the Pruitts and their financial allies. A committee, including the editor of the Caerphilly Clarion and Ms. Ellie Draper, the town librarian, to
pull together as accurate a picture as possible of the Pruitts’ tangled financial situation. A committee to approach the college administration and talk them into coming out in support of the county’s new position, once the county figured out what that was.
Randall Shiffley suggested forming a committee to study the feasibility of doing away with the mayor and the town council entirely on the grounds that they didn’t do a lick of useful work and only caused problems for the county board and confused the hell out of people. Festus intervened, suggesting that however appealing this project might be, the citizens needed to focus first on the immediate crisis.
Randall withdrew his motion, but I had the sneaking feeling that he’d be hearing from a whole bunch of people eager to serve on his committee whenever he formed it.
Most important of all was the blue ribbon committee that was staying on after the main meeting adjourned to make a decision on the most urgent question facing Caerphilly—whether to sit tight in the county offices and prepare for a siege or evacuate and form a government in exile. The Fight or Flight Committee, as everyone had already started calling it.
The one option no one even brought up was the mayor’s order that everyone go home and behave themselves.
The meeting broke up at around nine thirty, but by half past ten the barn was still far from empty. The Fight or Flight Committee members were still waiting for things to become quiet enough for them to begin their deliberations. Michael and Rob had taken Timmy and the twins up to bed, and I was about to delegate shutting up the barn for the night to Rose Noire, if I could find her. People were straggling out slowly, some still talking in animated clusters, some exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses with their fellow committee members.
The Real Macaw Page 14