Last Summer Boys(59)

The sun is sinking low behind our hill when Dad sets his plate down and stands in front of the fireplace. A hush falls over everyone then.

Dad gets down to business. He tells everyone about Kemper’s letter and the hearing. After the hearing, they’ll decide whether to dam the creek and flood our valley. The hearing is scheduled for the first day of July.

“That’s only a few days from now,” says Mrs. Glattfelder.

“Why so soon?” asks Pastor Fenton.

From the rocker chair, Mr. Halleck clears his throat. “To give us as little time as possible to prepare for it, while still meeting their statutory obligation.” He folds his bony hands over the deer-bone handle of his cane. “Standard procedure. Mr. Kemper does not want all of you to have time to organize against him.”

Old Sam shifts on one of Ma’s kitchen chairs, and he folds his arms over his stovepipe chest. “That feller come to my place one afternoon asking if I’d drink beer with him. Friendly-like. I’d never met him. ‘I’ll drink with anybody once,’ I tell him. He was polite enough ’til he worked his way around to the subject of my land. He asked me if I’d sell it to him. When I said no, he got downright disagreeable and I told him”—Sam glances over at the ladies before going on—“well, never mind what I told him. We had words. Then Kemper spouts this business about taking my land from me. ‘Pennies on the dollar’ was what I’d get for it.”

Around our parlor, heads nod. They’ve all heard the same speech.

Mr. Halleck speaks again. “Kemper knows every corner of the law, inside and out. He wrote it. He knows each of the local ordinances. He knows all the holes he can hide in.”

That makes me afraid. All this time, I’d figured it was illegal what Kemper was doing. It was certainly wrong. But what if it was both wrong and legal? Did we still have to go along then?

“But aren’t there other places they can build the reservoir?” one of Ma’s friends asks.

“I suspect there are plenty,” Mr. Halleck replies. “Why they insist on flooding you out, I have no idea.”

Pastor Fenton clears his throat. “Look, we live in town, and this whole reservoir is being billed as more water for us—and lower utility bills, I might add. But I don’t like bullies. People have a right to their land, their property. If I remember correctly, God made a whole commandment against stealing. But whether they believe in God or not, I think a good number of people in town will feel the same way. You might not have to fight this thing alone, just country folk against Kemper and his cronies, is what I mean to say.”

Heads nod around the room. For the first time, I begin to feel a bit of hope.

Mr. Glattfelder shrugs. “But how are any of us supposed to fight somebody’s got the law in his pocket?”

Mr. Halleck pulls a silver flask from his linen jacket, unscrews the cap, and takes a sip. “That is the whole question. When the hearing ends, the council will vote. Seven people sit on that council. You need four of them to vote against flooding. At this moment, Kemper has five who will vote for it.”

Our parlor is silent as the old man takes another sip.

“You must persuade two of them to switch their votes.”

There’s a murmuring of voices then. From our place on the stairs, we hear snatches of phrases—“Then it’s rigged; the whole thing’s already decided”—“How we going to get two to switch if their minds are made up?”—“Must be money for them in it somehow.”

The talk is cut off when Mr. Madliner raps his knuckles on the mantel and speaks directly to Mr. Halleck.

“You seem to know plenty about this business. And your house is on high enough ground. You won’t lose so much as a flagstone if the county floods the rest of us out. Matter of fact, I expect you’d have lakeside property.”

“Matter of fact, I probably would,” Mr. Halleck agrees.

“Then my only question is this: Why are you here?” Mr. Madliner fixes his burning eyes on the old man in the rocker, and the whole room goes silent.

Mr. Halleck leans back.

“That’s a fair question. I haven’t bothered with politics since Truman beat Dewey in 1948. I don’t have the stomach for it. But”—and here the old man lifts a bony finger and points to my father—“I admire that man. Very much so, as another matter of fact. And he asked me to come tonight.”

All eyes fall upon my father, as Ma puts an arm around him.

But it ain’t good enough for Mr. Madliner. “Easy to say. But you still stand to come out all right if we lose. And I’ll tell you all something else,” he goes on, looking around the room now. “Those council members mean to have our homes. There’s some folk only answer to power. And this Kemper fella, he’s that way. And unless we figure a way to get more power over him than he’s got over us, we might as well all buy canoes.”

The parlor is silent after Mr. Madliner’s speech. And much as I hate to admit it, I believe he’s right. Kemper will never stop. Not unless something more powerful than him makes him.

Ma answers him in an even voice: “You make a strong point, Arthur. If it comes down to power, then we’ll get as many voters into that hearing as we can. This country is still a democracy, last I reckoned, and a push from good and honest people who won’t back down is the best kind of power there is.”