In the undergrowth down by the Brewer’s River, Juliette Rose was hunkered face-down with her camera lens sticking through a fiddlehead fern as she took surreptitious pictures of two guys, a length of tape, and what looked like a telescope. You may be asking yourself why. Certainly the young man hunkered next to her was.
“What are we doing here?” he whispered.
“Gathering evidence,” Juliette whispered back. “Sshh.”
There was a silence before the next question occurred to him. “Evidence of what?”
Juliette took her face away from the camera just long enough to glare. “Sshh,” she said fiercely. “You want them to know we’re here?”
Again there was a silence. The young man, whose name was Robert, did not have the kind of brain that struck like lightning but the kind of brain that would remain after it had been struck by lightning. Still, though its wheels ground slowly, they ground exceeding fine. “Why shouldn’t they? It’s not illegal to take pictures.”
Juliette considered Robert’s skull and wondered idly exactly how many foot-pounds of torque she would have to exert to depress it precisely one-half inch and if this was the moment for the experiment to begin. “Shut…Up,” she hissed. At least she hissed the first word (“up” is kind of a hard word to hiss) but her meaning was clear enough.
Robert shut up. He might have been a little too solid above the neck for genius or even competence but he wasn’t stupid. Juliette was the loveliest woman he had ever known but that lithe little body hid a left hook with the kick of a seriously pissed-off Missouri mule and he had no particular desire to become its target, not this afternoon anyway. It was not a good day to die. Or get conked.
Juliette continued to take secret pictures and Robert continued to shut up for a good while more before she finally signaled him like a reconnoitering Marine sergeant – forefinger twirling in the air above her head before jabbing three times in a single direction – to retreat. He got out of her way. She crawled from the underbrush and through the field behind them on her belly. He followed likewise, rolling his eyes but saying nothing. That dumb, he wasn’t.
When they at last reached the battered VW microbus that Juliette somehow kept running through the use of turkey basters and duck tape, Robert screwed up his courage to try again.
“What was that all about?”
“Those were surveyors,” she said, kicking the driver’s door with her boot to make it open. “They’re measuring the boundaries for laying out the new road.”
“What new road?”
“The new road they want to build next year to connect Route 101 and the State Highway.”
“But that’s the State Forest they were surveying. They can’t put a road through the State Forest, can they? Isn’t that illegal?”
“It isn’t illegal if the state legislature says it isn’t. They can put a road anywhere they want to put a road.”
“But that’s terrible!”
Juliette kissed his cheek and started the bus. “You’re catching on, junior. Good for you.”
Robert was thinking hard as he got into the other side. “Why were you taking pictures of them?”
“Hard to say,” Juliette said, turning onto the main road. “Can’t tell when a thing like that might come in handy.”
“Handy how?”
“Hard to say.”
“You’re going to try to stop them, aren’t you?”
“Robert!” Juliette exclaimed. “That was almost bright. I’m proud of you. Yes, I’m going to do something to stop them. You bet I am.”
“What?”
“At this point? Hard to say.” She turned off onto a dirt road that shook the bus like a covered wagon.
“Where we going?”
“I need some advice.”
