Rebecca whispered to Russell, "Maybe Clay got that stuff from the Town Incorporation Code all by himself."
Russell's face was still covered by his hands as he shook his head. "There's no such thing as a Town Incorporation Code. Only cities are incorporated. This is just a town."
"He's being advised by that fellow sitting behind him," Ostlich whispered to Rihaczeck. "He seems to know what he's doing."
"Yeah, they've prepared themselves for this, damn it. . . ."
"Furthermore," Clayton said loudly, "the matter before the town council today concerns town finances and has an impact on taxes and other revenues. I'm sure I don't have to remind the council of the risk they run of criminal liability in the event of a violation of legal procedures, as spelled out in Section 235c of the New York State Criminal Code."
"Oh, Jesus!" Russell sighed softly.
The drumming of Ostlich's fingers on the table grew louder and more rapid. "Is that supposed to be a threat, Mr. Saunders?"
"Heavens, no!" Clayton replied. "I just don't want to see any of you guys get in trouble."
Ostlich nodded. "Yes, of course you don't." He looked at Rihaczeck, who shrugged, and then said, "Very well. We will listen to Mr., ah, Geerson, and then bring the matter to a vote, if there are no further objections."
Alex Brown jumped to his feet. "Well, I object! We don't have to listen to these bums. I say we just throw them the hell out."
A wave of applause greeted his outburst, and Ostlich pounded the gavel hard. "Order!" he demanded. He turned to Alex and said, "Sit down. We can't afford to have anything happen here which might call the validity of the meeting into question."
"But these bums—"
"Alex, sit down!" Ostlich repeated sternly. Alex sat and placed his clenched fists on the table, his whole frame shaking with anger. His eyes met Rebecca's, and she winked at him. He looked away.
"Thank you, Mr. Chairman," Clayton said, and nodding to Peter, sat back down.
Russell leaned forward and whispered angrily, "What the hell is the matter with you? Was that supposed to be funny or something? What if they had called your bluff? Where would we be then?"
Clayton shook his head with disapproval. "That's the problem with you goddamn commies. No sense of humor."
Peter went to the front of the room and handed each member of the town council a copy of the report he was about to present to the assembled town residents. Then he opened the athletic bag and said, "This bag is made of plastic. And what you are about to see is the residue of the manufacture of plastic, residue which is going to end up in your water." With that he upended the bag and a thick congealed mass fell with a loud spat onto the floor. The smell was sickening, and a chorus of disgusted protests were immediately directed at Peter.
Ostlich brought the gavel down hard on the table and said, "Order, Order!" He turned his furious gaze at Peter and said, "I'll thank you to clean that up immediately, young man! This is an official meeting, and we will not tolerate any cheap theatrics."
Clayton leaned back and whispered to Sean, "I think Doc Ostlich watches too much 'Perry Mason.'"
"Sure, okay," Peter replied to Ostlich's reprimand. "I just wanted everybody to see an example of what I was about to discuss." He glanced at Dorcas Ostlich, who responded to his signal by scurrying forward to scoop up the rancid jelly and dump it into the bag. She tried not to look up at the livid face of her father as she removed the noxious material from the hall.
"The report I've just given to the council explains everything in detail," Peter said to the townspeople, whose hostility was undisguised and whose anger was clearly visible on their faces. He tried to ignore it as he said, "Let me summarize it for you, and explain to you how the plastic is manufactured. This is not a process as simple as pouring metal into molds or welding steel. To make this plastic, you begin with two chemicals called monomers, specifically vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate. To these you then add a solvent and a catalyst. Heat the mixture up in a sealed reaction vessel, and you wind up with a copolymer, which is plastic in its raw form."
Sean leaned to Clayton and whispered, "I wonder if everybody else finds this as fascinating as I do."
Clayton laughed softly, and Dorcas said, "Shhh! This is important!"
"Yeah, right." Sean yawned.
"Once the copolymer has been produced," Peter went on, "it goes through other steps in the manufacturing process. After being washed with another solvent, the copolymer is dried, dyed, and mixed with plasticizing chemicals. The end result is a strong, durable material which can be made into products such as this plastic bag." He made an attempt at a dramatic pause, but this served merely to annoy the already impatient audience. "The only problem." he said at last, "is that this process results in the production of large quantities of vile, carcinogenic waste materials which are going to be dumped into the river and onto the land and will eventually show up in your water. And please, don't think of this waste as harmless, unimportant stuff that you don't have to worry about. Think of it as stuff that you drink when you get a glass of water in the kitchen. Think of it as stuff that is absorbed by your crops when you irrigate your fields. It's the stuff that will be in the water when you boil your spaghetti, when you sterilize your babies' bottles. If you have dairy cows, this stuff will be in their milk. If you raise chickens, this stuff will be in their eggs." He allowed his eyes to drift slowly across the room. "This is poison, ladies and gentlemen, poison. If the plastics factory is built on the banks of the Beckskill River, you're gonna be harvesting poisoned crops, breeding poisoned livestock, drinking poisoned water, and eating poisoned food." Peter let out a deep breath. "That concludes my report. Thank you."
He walked back to his seat, and Dorcas, who had returned to the hall after disposing of the gelatinous waste, grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard. "Peter, I'm so proud of you!" she gushed softly.
"Any other discussion of the matter?" Ostlich asked.
"Yes," said Dave Dolak, a local carpenter. "I move that we ignore this left-wing jackass and bring the matter to a vote."
"All in favor of accepting the council's recommendation?" Ostlich asked.
The hand of every town resident was raised, along with some but not all of the local farmers.
"All opposed?"
A few hands went up, Clayton's and Rebecca's among them.
"Point of order," Rihaczeck said.
"Mr. Secretary?" Ostlich prompted.
"Miss Saunders is under twenty-one."
"Accepted, Mr. Secretary. Miss Saunders, you cannot vote in these proceedings because you are not of legal age in this state."
"Pig!" she shouted, and was drowned out by imprecations.
"A revote is called for," Ostlich said. "All in favor?" A sea of hands waved. "All opposed?" The same few hands went up, except Rebecca's.
"Point of order," Clayton shouted.
Ostlich closed his eyes and bit his lower lip. "The chair recognizes Mr. Saunders."
"The vote is not unanimous. I move that a rollcall vote be taken."
Ostlich stared at him hatefully. "That will take time, Mr. Saunders."
Clayton shrugged. "I got nothing else to do."
Ostlich pounded the gavel to quiet the din that erupted after Clayton's remark, and then said, "A motion has been made for a rollcall vote. Is the motion seconded?"
A few long moments of motionless silence ensued. Ostlich smiled and was about to bring the gavel down again upon the tabletop and declare the motion void. And then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a hand shoot up from the back of the room.
"Hi hi hi," said Vernon Sweet. Ashvarinda Patanjali whispered to him, and then he said, "Second second second. First second third. Second second second. First second third. "
The hall erupted into shouts of anger and laughter, and Ostlich's gavel was barely audible over the noise. "Order!" he yelled again and again, cracking the wooden table top with the small hammer. "Order!"
"He can't second a motion," Old Man Schilder yelled from h
is end of the table. "He only got half a brain! He can't vote in de meeting!"
Ostlich stood up behind the table, hoping that the sight of him standing imperiously before the assembly would quiet them in short order. Sure enough, one person saw him standing as if waiting for the opportunity to speak, and he quieted two others. They in turn urged calm, and in a few minutes some semblance of order had been restored.
"Now, I want everyone in this room to listen to me very carefully," he began, summoning up every bit of authority his voicecould muster. "We are going to deal with the issue, and then we are going to move on to the other issue confronting us today. This vote is important and it must be conducted properly. I want no further outbursts, and no disruptions. Is that clear?" It was, of course. Ostlich cleared his throat. "A motion has been made and seconded for a rollcall vote. I accept Mr. . . . Sweet's second as valid, inasmuch as I have no evidence to indicate that he has been declared mentally defective by a court. So, all in favor of a rollcall vote?" Only Clayton raised his hand. Vernon Sweet was smiling and looking around the room, and Ashvarinda could not get his attention. "All opposed?" The sea of raised hands once again arose.
Ostlich sighed, relieved at having finally dispensed with what should have been a quick and easy procedure. "The motion is defeated. Let the record indicate that the town of Beckskill has chosen to conclude the arrangement with Craigo Corporation, the vote in favor being an absolute majority of the voters present." He picked up the gavel once again and struck the table gently in a different spot. "The rest of this meeting concerns itself with negotiations for the purchase of the property which is the proposed site of construction. Inasmuch as this is a private matter which we are taking up with an individual citizen, the council will now meet in closed session. Mr. Sweet, we had not expected you to attend this meeting today, but since you are here, we request that you remain. And your, ah, friend, of course . . ."
The hundreds of people in the room had but one set of doors through which to exit, so movement from the town hall was slow. Clayton, Rebecca, and Dorcas had been separated from Peter and Russell by the tidal shifting of the crowd, so that the two out-of-towners found themselves surrounded by a sea of unfamiliar faces. Russell patted Peter on the back comfortingly as they shuffled toward the doors, saying, "Sorry, Pete. We did our best. But you didn't really expect to have any sort of impact here, did you?"
"Not really," Peter conceded, "but this is just the first step. The important thing is that my report has been read into the record, and that makes it public informa-tion. Now I contact some ecology lobbyists I've heard of, and some newspapers—" His words were cut off abruptly when someone in the tightly packed crowd bumped into him hard. "Watch it," Peter muttered; but then as a second and then a third unfamiliar shoulder jostled him, he realized that it had not been an accident.
"Who the hell asked you to butt into this, anyway?" a heavyset young man with a florid face demanded.
"Yeah, who even wants you in our town?" another stranger agreed, a wiry man whose muscular arms had heaved many a hay bale onto many a flatbed.
Russell and Peter exchanged apprehensive looks and then Peter yelped as a fist landed a short jab into the small of his back. He stumbled forward into the person in front of him, who immediately shoved him backward into someone else, who proceeded to shove him forward again. Russell began to reach out a hand to help steady his friend, but he felt a stabbing pain as an elbow rammed into his ribs and he spun around defensively.
And then they were standing outside the town hall, and the crowd was dispersing calmly in all directions as if nothing had happened. Peter and Russell were both trembling as Clayton, Rebecca, and Dorcas reached them and Dorcas grabbed Peter's ann. "Are you okay?" she asked with concern.
"Y-yeah," he stammered. "What the hell was that all about?"
Clayton frowned. "You goddamn furrinurs a'comin' heah an' a'buttin in wheah you ain't wanted. Why, we oughta jus' string you up!"
"That wasn't funny, Clay," Russell said, breathing hard as he pushed his long brown hair away from his face. "That could have gotten real ugly real fast."
"Hey, don't take it so seriously." Clayton laughed, slapping Russell on the shoulder. "Nothing ugly ever happens here in Ox Bow, you know that."
"I was afraid they were gonna hurt you," Dorcas said, still clasping Peter's arm. She had grabbed it in a moment of sincere concern, and was now reluctant to let go of it.
"Yeah, so was I," he said, laughing with relief. He looked at Clayton. "Let's get out of here. I need a drink or something."
"Not yet," Clayton replied. "I want to hang around for a little while."
"What for?" Rebecca asked. "There's nothing else we can do here."
He looked back into the town hail's general-meeting room. "I want to say hi to the little guy who seconded my motion. We're neighbors, after all. Should be friends."
"Friends?" Sean asked. "Are you kidding? Friends with that thing?"
"Oh, sure, go ahead, be judgmental." Clayton grinned. "Don't you support the deformed-retard-rights movement?"
"Why should I?" Sean rejoined, laughing. "They have too much power as it is. They already run the government!"
"Look," Rebecca said, "I'm going back up to the trailer, see if Lydia's there. Anybody who wants to go with me, come on." She started to walk toward her car. Peter and Russell followed her wordlessly, each glad to be rid of the town hall.
"I'm gonna stay here with Clay," Sean called to her.
"I'll see you in a little while." He turned to Dorcas. "What about you?"
"I want to say hello to Vernon and Mr. Patanjali," she replied. "And then I guess I'll go home."
"VERnon," Clayton mimicked. "He a buddy of yours now, Dork?"
"He's a very nice little old man," she huffed. "It's not his fault that he has some problems."
"Is that all they are, some problems?" Sean laughed grimly. "He's got problems like a dog's got fleas."
Clayton barked and scratched for a few moments, and then he, Sean, and Dorcas sat down on one of the benches near the Civil War monument to wait for Ashvarinda Patanjali and Vernon Sweet.
Chapter Six
November 23, 1968 (continued)
The large stretch of forest which had been owned by the Sweet family for well over a hundred and fifty years rested between the River Road and the foot of Saunders Mountain. Much of it had once been a farm, well back in the early-nineteenth century, but successive generations of Sweets had abandoned farming for trading, seafaring, hunting, fishing, trapping, and general malingering, so that what was once fertile if challenging farmland was now but a sixteen-square-mile expanse of thickly wooded forest.
Eland Sweet, Vernon's father, was a ne'er-do-well whose cheerful disposition endeared him to everyone, and whose sole means of support was the potent moonshine he brewed and sold furtively to other locals. He married Clara Koenig, daughter of a local minister, who promptly disowned her. Eland and Clara lived simply in the old Sweet house, and their income derived largely from Clara's job as a clerk in the dry-goods store in Beckskill. Clara gave birth to two healthy boys, then three healthy girls, and then Vernon. The delivery almost killed her, and the product seemed unworthy of the effort. For obvious reasons, she bore no more children, and proceeded to drink herself to death a few years later.
By the midpoint of the twentieth century, very few Sweets were left. Both older brothers were long since dead, and of the three sisters only Edith Sweet had remained in Beckskill, living on her modest schoolteacher pension and sinking deeper with each passing year into a cranky old spinsterhood. She disliked everyone except little Dorcas Ostlich, to whom she taught sewing and knitting and cooking and a dozen other domestic skills. With her death in 1963, the Sweet line, it was generally assumed, had come to an end. And then Vernon returned to Beckskill and took up residence in the old family house.
The house itself was typical of post-Colonial rural architecture. The basic, central structure was the log cabin built by Harrison S
weet, Vernon's great-greatgrandfather, who had settled along the banks of the Beckskill, fought the Iroquois, cleared the land, and established a claim in the last years of colonial New York. Great-grandfather Calvin had faced the logs with stucco and Grandfather Lucius had overlaid them with planks. The rest of the house followed the same type of pattern, with each generation making additions and alterations, until what was once the large unbroken interior of a one-room cabin was now the large central room of a house. Lucius had torn off half the roof and had added two upstairs rooms; at Clara's insistence, Eland had built on a kitchen and a porch, and had even indulged her in the extravagance of electricity. Someone, possibly Edith or one of her brothers or sisters, had installed a refrigerator and a gas-canister stove. But other than these two appliances and the power wire that ran under the ground from the utility pole on the River Road to the base of the house, no other modern conveniences were in evidence. The sole source of heat was the wood-burning fireplace, and a broken-down outhouse served other natural needs.
It might have been a picture of pristine rusticity, but the house was in serious need of repair. The porch steps bent and creaked beneath the feet of those who mounted them; the upstairs windows were cracked and boarded over; and decades of freezes and thaws had caused sections of the siding to split and fall off, uncovering in places Calvin's stucco and Harrison's ancient colonial logs.
Near the house stood an old barn, unused for the past seventy years, and used only for storage for a half century before that. It was a dry, brittle, colorless structure that seemed forever on the verge of collapsing. The barn, like the house, bespoke long years of inattention, for Edith had grown uninterested in such things during her long decline, and even Dorcas Ostlich's periodic cleaning binges did little to alleviate the general atmosphere of squalor and decay.
The house and barn stood in a clearing at almost the exact center of the property, two miles east of the River Road, two miles west of the foot of Saunders Mountain, two miles north of Beckskill proper, and two miles south of the farmland that Clayton rented to the local farmers. The property had once reached to the banks of the Beckskill River. It had been when the county decided to build the River Road back when Eland Sweet was a boy, and when his widowed mother had refused to sell her land along the bank, that the Sweets had first heard the phrase which even now was causing Ashvarinda Patanjali such confusion and concern: the right of eminent domain.
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