Sure enough, three seconds later Juliette Rose banged the table with the palm of her hand to get everyone’s attention. She got it. The place got so quiet so quick you could have heard a mouse in the middle of picking its nose and embarrassed the hell out of it.
“I guess you all know by now,” she began, “that State surveyors were on Amos Pepperell’s land yesterday.”
Some wise guy said, “So?”
“So the fact that they were there proves the DPW is going to try to put a road through the State Forest just like they’ve been threatening to do for the last six years. Surveyors mean they’re serious this time.”
The same voice said again, “So?”
Juliette’s jaw clenched. “So if we don’t want to be responsible for a goddamn highway on the banks of the Brewer’s River, we’ve got to stop them.”
“We’re not ‘responsible’, Juliette Rose,” Greg Twomey said, “just because we didn’t stop them building their damn road.”
“I think what Ms Rose means,” DJ interrupted in a quiet voice that somehow carried cleanly to the farthest corners of the store, “is that once the road is built, the town will be financially responsible for keeping the part of it within town limits maintained properly. We’ll have to pay to plow it and sand it in the winter, seal the cracks, smooth the bumps, and fill in the potholes. And if there’s an accident in our section, the victims can sue us if the condition of the road was at fault for it.”
“What!?” everybody said at once.
“Thanks a lot, girlfriend,” Juliette snapped at DJ. “When I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”
She banged her palm on the table again for quiet but this time it took five slaps and there was still some side-jaw. “The point is that if they build this road, we’re going to lose half the State Forest and therefore half the money the State pays us in taxes for it. The point is that we’ll have a road on the edge of the Brewer’s River, a river we just spent a small fortune the last few years cleaning up. The point is that the gas fumes, oil, road salt, and all the other crap that comes with highway traffic will undo all that and probably poison the aquifer to boot. The point is that they’re doing this without our permission and despite our strenuous objections. They’re doing it right in our faces after we told them not to like we’ve got nothing to say about what happens on our own land–-“
“You just said it was State land,” Ben objected.
“The State Forest belongs to all of us. We have a responsibility to take care of it and make sure it’s still here for our children and grandchildren. Look, everyone in this room knows what a road like this means. It means businesses buying up land along the edge of the right-of-way. It means strip-malls and gas stations and tourist traps. Anybody want to see what happened to the Mohawk Trail happen here?” Nobody answered, “I didn’t think so.”
Don Nelson, who lived in Wilbur but owned the hardware store in Tully, said, “Might be we could use the tax money from them businesses.”
“There wouldn’t be any.” DJ again. “If the stores were built on a State right-of-way, then the property taxes and the sales taxes on anything they sold would go to the State. We’d get nothing.”
“That true, Roger?” Don asked.
“Probably,” Roger answered slowly. “It would depend on how the leases were written. There might be some negotiating room there, but it won’t be easy to get the State to give up all that extra tax money.”
Juliette felt the meeting slipping away from her and threatening to devolve into an argument over money. Such arguments, in her opinion, were always endless eaters of energy and spiraled rapidly into confusion. She had to bring it back into focus. “People, let’s not lose sight of what this is all about. It isn’t about how much we can make or how much we’ll have to spend, it’s about saving the forest and the town from development.”
There were murmurs of agreement and the meeting was back on track, not that there weren’t a few spoil-sports still to be heard from. Laurie LeBlanc asked petulantly, “What does Amos say? After all, he’s the only one whose private land is going to be taken for the road. The rest is all State land. I heard they made him a very good offer and he’s going to take it.”
Juliette was ready for that one. “I’ve spoken to him, just this morning in fact, and I can tell you straight from the horse’s mouth that he’s turning it down. He’s going to fight it.”
This announcement caused something of a sensation. Ben – as he often did when he wasn’t being a jerk or too indolent to bother – cut through the din to the heart of what everyone was thinking. “And Molly’s going to let him?”
Juliette Rose, who could read an audience like an accountant reads a balance sheet, waited patiently for the laughter to subside to a trickle of giggling before letting her bombshell go at just the right moment. “Molly thinks they’ve gone too far. She’s with us.”
A shocked silence greeted this news. People all over the store looked at each other in stunned disbelief. Molly had always made it plain as only Molly could that government had the right to do what it needed to do to benefit the whole despite how unfair what it did might seem to the inconvenienced few. Don Nelson thought she was a Communist and respected her anyway, which says a lot about the regard Wilbur had for her. If she was willing to reverse a stand she had championed for years–– Well.
“Are you sure about this, Juliette Rose?” Liz asked sternly from across the silence. “You didn’t just hear what you wanted to hear, did you?”
“I’m sure,” Juliette said firmly. “If you don’t believe me, ask her yourself next time you see her.”
“Is that a big deal?” Cas asked Nikki in an undertone.
“Molly fighting the road? Yeah, it’s a big deal. If Molly Pepperell’s against it, the whole town will back her up.”
“Who is she?”
“An amazing woman. I want to be just like her when I grow up–– What the hell?” Nikki was staring at the candy counter. “Where did he come from?”
