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Photo by Davide Ragusa in Unsplash
Audience
With
so much at stake, Eileen arrived almost an hour before the meeting began for a front-row
seat near the mic. Unfortunately, no one had forewarned her about the basketball
practice. By the time it ended, the bleachers had tortured her sciatica, her
nails were chewed to the quick, and she’d already forgotten half the arguments she’d
carefully prepared and practiced.
To
move things along, she helped Joe, the custodian, put out 125 fold-up chairs.
“Good
job, Eileen,” he said, and gave her a grateful thumbs-up when they finished.
She
sat at the row’s edge, her thin grey hair in a ponytail, her size twelve corduroy
pants feeling like fourteens—a reminder she hadn’t eaten a decent meal since
the first mention of the darn project. She draped her parka over the back of
the seat next to her—a buffer of privacy and comfort in a crowded gym that
reeked of teenage boys’ sweaty socks and sports jerseys. It had filled up quickly
as if everyone had arrived at the same time. People bumped against chairs,
scraping them along the floor, creating a chorus of squeaking on top of the
cacophony of chatter and laughter, making her want to shelter her head under her
parka.
At
last, Mayor Sullivan called the meeting to order, the only item on the agenda
being an overview of the project. Sullivan, or Sully, as she was not-so-affectionately
known to Eileen, glanced over her padded shoulder where council members sat,
fiddling with their laptops or iPhones.
“Hear
me, okay?” Sully said, the volume an eight out of ten.
“Coming
through clearly. Move on,” Deputy Mayor Johnson said, sounding like someone directing
an interminable line of stalled traffic.
“Lights,
please,” Sully said.
Sully’s
first slide featured an aerial photo of Polly’s Point—coastline, river, cemetery,
Holy Trinity church and school, Foodland, Harry’s Hardware, houses, sheds, and shuttered
crab plant. Up next was an overview of the wind farm designed to satisfy the AI
data centre’s monstrous appetite for energy. Sully conveniently glossed over the
plan to divert Polly’s Point River for the sake of the centre’s cooling system.
She devoted the remaining forty-five minutes to greenwashing, green virtue
signaling, and green clichés—The Future is Green, The Future is Renewable. Bullet
point after bullet point of twirling text in every shade of green left Eileen
wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box.
The
final slide read, Polly’s Point and AI Solutions:Partners for a Powerful
Future.
The
fluorescents flashed on. Eileen turned around, squinting in time to see the McNeil
couple leave, the Frasers behind them. She shouted over the clapping. “Faustian
bargain!” Had anyone heard her? Did anyone get her meaning? “It’s a deal with
the devil.”
Someone
exaggerated a gaping yawn. Laughter and chatter followed.
Eileen
was too fixated on the mic in Sully’s hand to scold them for not taking the
matter seriously. As soon as Sully put the mic back on its stand, the jack-in-the-box
sprung up and nabbed it. “Is council going to allow—”
A
man’s voice called out, “Turn on the mic.”
She
slid the button on. A shriek of feedback had people plugging their ears. “Divert
the river’s natural course? What about the salmon and trout that spawn in that
river? Just how green is this—”
“Quack,
quack,” a voice said, laughing.
They’d
mocked Eileen when she opposed the salmon farm, then again when she opposed use
of glyphosate under power lines, prime blueberry-picking grounds. In the end,
the quack found herself on the winning side. She wasn’t about to give up now. “The
environmental assessment raised red flags—a rise in ocean temperatures from the
centre’s runoff, contaminants—”
Sully
shouted, hands cupped around her mouth, “Those red flags will be green by the
time the centre’s operational.”
Sweat
trickled down Eileen’s back. Blood rose to her head. “Council doesn’t have the
green, I mean the authority—”
She
felt a tug on the cord and almost dropped the mic. Deputy Mayor Johnson had come
up from behind, grabbed it, announced the meeting adjourned, then turned off the
mic.
“You
can’t bulldoze in like that,” Eileen said. “The mayor has to make a motion to
adjourn.”
“Go home and get a rest, Eileen,” Deputy
Mayor Johnson said, putting on his coat. “You look exhausted.”
With the other councillors by his side, he walked past her like she wasn’t even
there.
She
waited by her chair in case someone might want to ask her questions. She’d done
extensive research, made eight phone calls and sent forty-two emails to
experts, scientists, ecologists to supplement the information she’d gathered
online. The conclusions were definitive—the benefits would be short-lived and would
not offset the project’s carbon footprint. The centre should definitely not be
built in Polly’s Point.
Joe
folded up and stacked the chairs. She started to help.
“Leave
‘em,” he said. No thumbs up. No “Thanks, Eileen.”
She
put on her parka, stuffed her notes in her pocket, then headed outside.
Everyone except for Sarah Johnson was gone or in their vehicles. Sarah leaned
against the school’s brick facade, chin up, blowing smoke into the air.
“I
know whose side you’re on,” Eileen said.
Sarah
dropped the lit cigarette and stomped on it with the tip of her Blundstone boot.
“Gabbin’ with yourself again, are you, Eileen? There two of you inside your
head, or what? A whole audience? You should see someone about that.”
“You
wouldn’t be pushing the project if you and your deputy mayor husband weren’t set
to earn a fortune leasing the land to the compa—”
“Mind your own business, Eileen. Take care of
yourself. I swear you’re acting more unhinged every day.” She hunched her
shoulders, hands in pockets.
“You’re
trying to confuse and distract me, make it seem like there’s something wrong
with me when you two are the guilty ones, in a blatant conflict
of interest with—”
“You must be exhausted, judgin’, complainin’, railin’
against this, that—actin’ all hippy-crazy down at Martin’s store, warnin’ everyone
not to be leavin’ trucks idlin’ while they pick up their Bud Lights or Du
Mauriers, sayin’ if booze don’t kill ‘em, smokes will. For cripes’ sake, give
up.”
Eileen
glanced at the butt, a smudge of red lipstick on the filter, debating whether to
pick it up and throw it in the trash. “Look who’s judging now.”
“Speakin’
of lookin,’ you got either mirror in that shack of yours up there on the hill? The
black circles under your bloodshot eyes are tryin’ to tell you somethin’,
Eileen.”
“You
and your husband won’t get away with this.”
“Get
away with what? Let me tell you something—your over-my-dead-body attitude is
earnin’ you enemies. I’m not the only one who’s fed up, Eileen.”
Deputy
Mayor Johnson flashed his Toyota Tundra high beams. Eileen raised an arm over her
forehead to block the piercing glare, heard the truck’s door open and close, the
roar of the engine revving, followed by the crunch of tires on gravel.
The
last time she checked her watch before finally falling asleep was at 2:46 a.m. Sully’s
presentation looped in her head—not a syllable about environmental degradation
and sacrificing the river in the name of so-called technological revolution and
economic development. Investments in our future? Was Sully kidding? This was no
get-rich-quick, high-employment project. Why couldn’t council try harder to
find buyers for the crab plant?
If
council moved forward on this project, they’d need to do it over Eileen’s rotting
corpse, then spend the rest of their corrupt days with a putrid stench of guilt
on their bloody hands.
***
Awake
at first light, Eileen headed outside to feed the chickens, parka over long
johns. On her white porch door, in scarlet red paint, was Whitch. She put
her bets on the Johnson boys. Had Sarah put them up to it? “Idiots,” she hollered.
“Probably can’t spell your own names.”
After
a dose of green tea that reminded her of Sully’s presentation, she headed to
the river. Ranger led the way, his tail wagging as Eileen hiked through the forest
of black spruce, the trail marked with her fluorescent orange flagging tape. At
the end of the woods was a landscape of rhodora and juniper, too rugged to be
called a meadow—shaped by wind, sculpted by glaciers. There by the river’s
mouth, she sat on a low boulder, her arm around Ranger. Near the shoreline, a
raft of eider ducks bobbed up and down, foraging for mussels and sea urchins. An
osprey circled overhead in a grey sky, targeting his next feed.
She
turned to face Ranger. “Oh, the horror. What’s wrong with people?”
He
licked her face. She gazed at the hill behind town where her parents tossed and
turned frantically in their graves, their eternal slumber interrupted by
far-spreading word of their daughter’s behaviour—Eileen, the troublemaker, so
unlike the rest of the clan, who, as far back as they lived in Polly’s Point, never
once complained to or raised their voice with townsfolk.
“Good
for them, hey, Ranger? Just as well they’re not around.” She stared without
blinking, observing gravity work its magic in the tide’s rise and fall and the
river’s flow. She threw a stick for Ranger. He jumped into the river where the
current carried him out past the brackish water, until a small wave broke over
him and he reemerged with the stick between his jaws.
“For how long can I go on fighting, Ranger?” she
said, watching him shake off the water on his black fur. “Could I live with myself
if I stopped? If I don’t fight against it, who will?”
Back
home, she flopped down on the kitchen daybed, a hand on her growling stomach. Eileen
hadn’t planned to nap and wouldn’t have if she’d known Sarah would invade her dreams,
warning her to stop talking to herself.
Ranger’s
barking woke her abruptly. Someone pounded on the door. She grabbed hold of him
by the collar and opened the door.
It was the McNeils and Frasers. Had Sully sent
them? She took a deep breath, jaw clenched, sciatica activated. “You met Ranger
before,” she said. “He’s friendly.”
“Let
us know if you want help painting over that graffiti,” Alain McNeil said,
patting Ranger.
Helen
Fraser shook her head and tutted. “This place has gone to the dogs since we
voted in that council. No offense, Ranger.”
They’d
come with an announcement. The McNeil’s niece had studied the environmental
assessment and had visited the site. “She’s offering us pro bono legal advice,”
Alain said. “There’s no way we’ll let council steamroll this project.”
Roger
Fraser nodded. “Don’t forget the Feds’ role. We’ve got a steep climb ahead of
us.”
“Care
for tea?” Eileen said, surprised by the “us” and “we.”
Helen
turned to Roger and winked. “I’d love a cup.”
After
they left, Eileen took a can of paint from the shed and slathered it on until
the ‘Whitch’ was dead and gone. Later, on her way to the Fraser’s place for
a supper of fried cod, she scooped up three empty cans of Bud Light from ditches.
As she strolled past Martin’s store, she tossed them in the recycling bin and shouted,
“Wake up.”