A Flash of Green (12 page)

Major Harrison Lipe stood up. He was a round little man with a fierce leonine face, a careful mane of snowy hair, a stance so erect he seemed in danger of tipping over backward. He was always in some stage of painful sunburn, blistered, puffy or peeling. His tone was stentorian and oracular. “Tom, though I am not familiar with the geology of this area, I do know that when
the first … excuse me,
ever since
the first human feasted his eyes on the glorious beauty of Grassy Bay, untold generations have been entranced by its beauty. And once it is despoiled, it will be gone forever. In a few cynical months the dredges and the draglines can undo the glories of ten thousand years. Furthermore …”

“Harry!”

“… experts have assured us that this is one of the most unique breeding grounds for shallow-water fish in the entire …”

“Harry!”

“… west coast area of Florida. And—what is it, Tom?”

“Harry, I respect your sentiments. We all do. In fact, that’s why we’re here. You performed so well the last time, Harry, I hope you’ll take the same job again. It will be up to you to coordinate all the hobby groups and conservation groups in the area. Boating, angling, waterskiing, skin diving, garden clubs and the bird people. Locate their current officers, get the petitions written up and signed, and see that they come through with a maximum turnout at the public hearing. Form your own special committee as you did last time, Harry, picking anybody off the membership list you think you can use. Will you do that? We’re all pleased and all grateful, Harry. Thank you. Mr. Sinnat? Were you about to say something?”

Dial Sinnat did not stand up. He had one brown, hairy, muscular leg hooked over the arm of the chair he was in. He was a hard, handsome enigmatic man in his early fifties. His coarse black hair was just beginning to gray at the temples. Kat remembered how surprised she and Van had been when Di had jumped into the fight two years ago. He had not explained his motives until after the fight had been won. On a late night beside his pool he had said, “It isn’t atomic energy that’ll do us in, buddies. It’s sexual energy. Procreation. Billions of new bodies corrupting
God’s world. In their history books they’ll read how once a man could walk all day long and not see another human or a house or a machine, and they won’t be able to imagine how it was. There’ll be oceans of squirming people, from sea to sea, fellows. So we kept them from gobbling one little bay, one little crumb, and it felt good, but it doesn’t mean much. How long have we been sitting here? Two and a half hours? There’s ten thousand more mouths in the world than there were when we walked out of the house. Rejoice, buddies. Mankind is on the march, heading toward that golden day when there’s nothing to eat but each other.”

Now Dial said, “Just thinking, Tom. This sounds rougher than last time. The clue is that option on the Cable property. Martin Cable has to be a convert, it would seem. He’s the executor. How big a piece is it?”

“A little over six hundred feet of bay frontage, running from the bay to Mangrove Road,” Colonel Jennings said. “And we can expect, this time, that Ben Killian won’t be neutral.”

“As it’s a local operation,” Dial said, “he’ll have to go with his advertisers. I’m beginning to think we ought to try to lean hard on something we didn’t give much attention to last time.”

“Such as?” Jennings asked.

“Maybe we ought to develop some statistics to show that it won’t help local business a damn bit.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” Jennings said.

“They’ll have statistics. Eight hundred new houses at umpty dollars apiece initial investment and umpty dollars a year upkeep and maintenance, and eight hundred new families in the area spending umpty dollars a year with the local businesspeople. They gave us that jazz last time, those Lauderdale hotshots. I think we could develop statistics out of St. Pete, Clearwater and Sarasota to prove that all a big development does is bring in more
butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, so that after all the dust settles, everybody has just about the same gross business they had before. In fact, they might be a little worse off, because residential areas never pay back in taxes the cost of the services they require, particularly in Florida with this homestead free ride on the first five thousand of assessed valuation. Industry is the only thing which takes up the slack in the tax billing.”

“Could you get to work on that, Dial?”

“Better if it comes from some local businessman, Tom. I unloaded the family firm up in Rochester twenty years ago, took my capital gain and ran. I spend a couple of hours a day in the biggest crap game in the world, buying a little here and selling a little there, but I’m considered a playboy type, possibly because I am. Some yuk would question me from the floor and ask me if I’d ever met a payroll. I have, but it was too long ago. But I will see if I can find a convincing pigeon for you. This thing may be spread so wide it will be tough, but somebody is sure to be annoyed at being left out, and not in a very good position to capitalize on a big Grassy Bay development. I’ll look around.”

“Splendid!” Jennings said. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d line up the Power Squadron people and the Yacht Club people as you did so well the last time.” He made a check mark on the pad fastened to his clip board, turned over another sheet and said, “And you, Morton, will you operate just as you did the last time?”

Morton Dermond sighed in a somewhat dramatic way and said, “I shall rally all the forces of culture. Yes indeed. But it is tiresome, isn’t it, to have to go into the same little act all over again.” There was a slight stir of disapproval in the group. Dermond was a big waxy young man, apelike in construction—barrel torso, short thick legs, long meaty arms, a head dwarfed by the neckless span of the solid shoulders. His black hair grew low on his forehead, and his beard was a blue shadow on the pale solid
jaw. He had a light, flexible voice. He wore lavender slacks and a coral sports shirt. A ruff of springy black hair erupted out of the V neck of the sports shirt. Dermond was a museum director, lecturer and art historian. For the past several years he had been the Executive Director of the Palm City Art Center.

“It may be tiresome, but it is important,” Jennings said.

“Of course it is,” Dermond said. “But I could agitate my people a lot easier if we had some kind of vivid new approach. I mean, some of them may actually yawn this time. I realize that out here in the hinterland it is really difficult to come up with truly creative ideas. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more
grim
than eight hundred new dreadful contemporary houses. All those tricky white roofs, blinding you. They’ll look terribly modern for the first twenty minutes, but in no time at all it will just be another dreary middle-class slum, littered with tricycles, glass jalousies, ceramic egrets and plastic lawn furniture. They’ll
cram
those tiresome houses in there, with no privacy whatsoever, and fill them with dreary fatuous little people, and then we’ll be just one step closer to utter mediocrity.”

“That’s defeatist talk,” Harrison Lipe said sternly.

Dermond smiled at him. “I’m a defeatist, Major. I’ll strain and strive, but as long as our society equates progress with quantity rather than quality, permit me my private dismals.”

Jennings said, “If you feel you can do better with a fresh approach, Morton, please try to come up with one. Now, how about you, Mrs. Rowell?”

Doris Rowell cleared her throat. She was an ample billowy woman in her sixties. She wore a faded cotton dress and sneakers. She wore her straight white hair in a Dutch bob. Her voice was a pugnacious baritone. “It should be no great task updating my materials, Thomas. A team from the University of Miami has been doing another shallow-water ecology study, and I was of
some small assistance to them, so I see no problems in getting access to their findings. Just as soon as we know the date of the public hearing, I’ll make certain we have reputable marine biologists there to testify. And I’ll coordinate this with state and Federal conservation authorities. We’ll prove, as we did before, that filling Grassy Bay would have a disastrous effect on the local marine ecology, including, of course, game and food fish species. I can consider such a project no less than a criminal act.”

“Thank you, Doris. By the way, Harry, add the commercial fishermen to your list, and use Doris’s findings as the persuader.”

“Yessir,” said Major Lipe.

“Let’s hear your appraisal of the situation, Wallace,” Jennings said.

Wallace Lime stood up. He wore dark green walking shorts and a khaki shirt of vaguely military cut. Between the bottom of the legs of his shorts and the tops of his long dark wool socks, his bare knees were brown and sturdy, haloed with a curling crispness of sunbleached hair. He was in his early forties. He had a luxuriant mustache, reddish brown, carefully groomed. He wore glasses with heavy black frames. He used a pipe, lit or unlit, as a constant prop.

Whenever Kat saw Wallace Lime, Van’s appraisal of the man came into her mind. Van had said, “Try to find the man behind the tricks, honey. Take away the glasses, the mustache, the mannerisms, the slight Limey accent, and take a good look. I know you can’t, because behind all that camouflage is a man so desperately ordinary that he’d be practically invisible. Bugs and animals have protective coloration. Wally has spent his whole life going in the other direction.”

Wallace Lime waited a long thoughtful time and said, “You must think of my function as that of creating a general climate of approval for what we are trying to do. Ektually, a climate of desirability.
If I am to be denied all access to the means of public communication, press, radio, television, the tahsk becomes rather more difficult. I shall attempt to plant our little banderillas in significant places, of course. Largely, however, I shall be forced to operate on a personal-contact level. As soon as this matter is opened up, I shall see to it that our county commissioners begin to receive letters from the more thoughtful and articulate citizens of the community. I shall see what social and political pressures can be developed at this time, to counteract the commercial pressures which are obviously at work. And, as before, I shall put out mimeographed bulletins stating our position and see to it that they are properly circulated. Fortunately we ordered far too many bumper stickers and posters the last time. I have them in storage, and I shall get them out immediately. Tom, I will have the final draft of an emergency bulletin ready by tomorrow noon for distribution to our membership.”

“We’re going to get some drop-outs,” Jennings said, “so we’ll have to make every effort to increase the membership. And I plan to make an emergency assessment to build up our campaign fund. That brings us to the final staff mission. Jackie and I discussed it before the meeting. Jackie?”

Jackie Halley stood up quickly. She was a tall, gawky, spirited, attractive blonde. “Kat Hubble and I are going to handle the phone brigade this time. I’ll have to blow the dust off the old card file and get organized. We’ll be able to use most of the same team of gals we used last time. I guess you all know the system. By the time of the public hearing, every woman in this county we can reach by phone will have heard our little spiel.”

“How does it go?” Dial Sinnat asked.

“We tell them that the bay bottoms are owned by the State of Florida, and the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund are
supposed to administer them for the health and welfare of all the people. We tell them they own the bays. And their children and their children’s children should own them too. But if we let the state sell that land to private enterprise, then it’s gone forever, and they and their children and their grandchildren can’t even go near it because it will be private property forever. We ask them not to let a few greedy men legally steal what belongs to them. It isn’t a set speech, Di. We have gals who can sort of feel their way, depending on the reaction.”

“Thank you, Jackie,” Jennings said. “Kat, the last time we went to war, the newspaper was supposed to be neutral, but Jimmy Wing managed to slant things our way quite often, and I think it helped a lot. Do you think he’ll help us this time?”

“I really don’t know,” Kat said. “He was Van’s best friend, and he knew how worried Van was, and he tried to help us out. Brian Haas did what he could, too. All I can do is see if he’ll be willing to help us this time. But if the paper comes out in favor of the fill, it might be impossible.”

Dial Sinnat said, “Jimmy is a very bright operator, Kat. He doesn’t have to be obvious about it. Lots of men have torpedoed projects by coming out very strong for them, listing all the wrong reasons. It’s a standard device in politics. Tom, are we open for general comment? One thing I want to say to everybody: Last time we battled outsiders. Civil wars have a tendency to get nastier than the other kind. And men can do curious things when their pocketbooks are involved. I think we should all be ready for a game of dirty pool. I’m invulnerable. But there are others here who make their living out of the community, and the reprisals might get rough. How about you, Morton?”

Morton Dermond said, “I couldn’t care less, Mr. Sinnat. I have a captive board of directors, a docile membership, and two years
to go on my present contract. And, I might add, not the slightest interest in renewing it. How about your little bucket shop, Wally?”

Wallace Lime spoke irritably. “If I’ve given you the impression, old boy, that I’m dependent on the revenues from Wallace Lime Associates, I apologize. I would hate to lose all my little advertising accounts, but even in that unlikely event, I should survive … comfortably.”

“I happen to work for the Cable Bank and Trust Company,” Kat said, “and I can’t afford to lose the job, really.”

“That puts you in the target area,” Dial said, “but I don’t think Martin Cable would be that small-minded. Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to say I think we can all expect some kind of pressure.”

“I think you’re right, Di,” Jennings said. “We seem to be all set to go. I’ll coordinate all the staff functions, and all of you will be hearing from me frequently. One thing I want to make clear before we adjourn. This is just our first line of defense. We’ll fight like hell, of course, but if we lose this one, we’ll regroup and fight just as hard on all the other ways we have of keeping the sale from going through and, if it does, enjoining the dredges from beginning. Anyone have anything to say? Meeting adjourned. Cocktails on the patio, everyone.”