Kat hung up. “It seems a Mr. Flake buys his cars and trucks from Mr. Armstrong’s agency. And it even seems that Si Armstrong has a teeny tiny piece of Palmland Development. And just last week Si let her in on the secret and laid down the law.”
“Well, that’s it. Let me check this thing. We called forty-two women. I’ll mark Donna for a flat no. At least she’s more honest than the ones who got so terribly vague about the whole thing. Thirteen acceptances. There is a nice lucky number. Fifteen refusals. Excuse me. Eleven refusals. Plus Donna is twelve. Nine couldn’t be reached. Six gave us that let-you-know-later jazz. So out of the group who worked like dogs last time, it’s twenty-one to thirteen against. So we should pick up maybe three more out of that nine — sixteen when we’ll need forty. And we’ve lost some of the very best ones, dammit!”
“I keep thinking about Hilda.”
“I’d rather not think about her.”
“Just how did she word it?”
“Oh, she just gave a merry little ho ho and said, ‘But, Jackie, lamb, I’ve promised to organize a telephone campaign in favor of this project. This will be a delicious program, and it won’t hurt Grassy Bay a bit, and my Danny says only the forces of reaction will be against it.’ And so on and so on. Ugh! Her Danny was dragging his feet the last time. Remember? Eight hundred potential customers for dear Danny’s appliance business. Do I sound like a snob? I’m not. Selling appliances is a good wholesome way to make a living in America. But damn if I like them filling the bay so they’ll have a place to put them. Hilda was our best man, Kat.”
“So we’ll find other women just as good.”
“You have considerable jaw on you when you shove it out that way, honey.”
“And we’ll make the sixteen work twice as hard as last time, and you and I will work four times as hard. And, as Tom says, if the commissioners vote the wrong way after the public hearing, we’ll take the fight to Tallahassee.”
“Stop glaring at me, for goodness’ sake! I’m with you. Don’t you think we’ve earned a drink?”
“I guess so. Weak for me, please.”
“It’ll have to be something with rum. Okay?”
“Fine.”
As Jackie fixed the drinks, Kat walked out on the deck. The kids were quarreling over their fish count. Ross was finishing the oysters down on the dock. As she watched, he scraped the last one into the pan and waded out with the two buckets of shells and dumped them back onto the oyster bar.
“Jackie, would it cover that oyster bar?”
“Probably not that one, but it would cover the big ones out there, and it would block the tide flow to this one so that it would probably die. Here’s your drink.”
The first tall tree shadows were reaching out toward the dock, the intent children, the old skiff. The thunderheads were over the mainland, far inland, piled seven miles high, suddenly as monstrous in her mind as the tree shadows. “Seventeen!” Alicia called, her voice unbearably clear and sweet in the first silence of the coming evening. “That makes seventeen! Take him off my hook, Roy.”
Kat felt a coldness along her back, like a leathery touch, reptilian. “Everything changes,” she said. “Everything dies.”
“Hey now,” Jackie said gently.
“I’m sorry. Everything seems... like some kind of a dirty trick on people.”
Jackie gave her a quick, rough, shy hug, a one-armed gesture which spilled some of Kat’s cool drink on the back of her hand. “In the deathless words of my husband, dear, you can’t win ’em all. He has a crapshooter’s approach to eternity. He says he’s small time at a big table. He drags back when he wins, and he covers so many numbers they can’t ever hurt him too badly.”
Kat turned and stared at her. “What does that make me?”
“The same as me, dear. We’re hunch bettors. We win big and we lose big.” She cocked her head. “Now who the hell is that dropping in?”
“Oh, I forgot. It’s Jimmy Wing. I should have told you.”
“Jimmy is welcome here any time, honey. You know that.”
As they walked toward the front door, Kat said, “I wonder how Jimmy fits into that dice game idea.”
“I think he just watches the game. I don’t think he makes any bets,” Jackie said.
“And Martin Cable owns the table?”
“We’ll have to play that game with everybody we know.”
Jimmy came smiling up onto the deck. Ross brought the oysters up to the house. Jackie fixed four oyster cocktails. They all sat on the rear deck with drinks and generous servings of the oysters, their chairs placed so they looked past the twisted trunks of the water oaks toward the quiet bay, the competitive children. Jackie and Kat reported the meeting, and told Jimmy of their bad luck with the women they had phoned. Ross took no part in it.
Jimmy said, “They’re handling it well. It’s the same doctrine we were up against last time. Growth, progress. Last time it was outsiders coming in, bearing gifts. This time it’s our own people, and it’s more persuasive. No absentee ownership. All the profits stay in town. Broader tax base. Nice new residents and so forth. I heard one of their battle cries today. Eight hundred families means sixteen million in new investment plus four million a year into the local economy. So they’ve been quietly lining up the local businesspeople, getting them all set to be boosters.”
“But that misses the point of the whole thing!” Kat said. “That bay bottom out there is public land. It belongs to all the people, all the people who don’t have a prayer of ever owning a home there, or making any profit off it. It belongs to all the people now living in the state and all the future generations, and this takes it away from them forever, and turns it into eight hundred pieces of private land. It’s like stealing it from the public.”
“I know that,” Jimmy said. “You know it and Jackie knows it and Ross knows it. The trustees are supposed to consider the health and welfare of the people of the State of Florida. But it’s going to be used for the health and welfare of the bank accounts of the businessmen of Palm County, and done with so many reasonable arguments it’ll be years before the public realizes what a polite screwing it took, here and all up and down this coast. Maybe what I’m saying is this, people. Nobody is going to listen to sweet reason. It’s going to be a very emotional squabble. The fighting is going to get dirtier than you can imagine. So I’d say get out of it right now. Just as I told you the day before yesterday, Kat. It isn’t the same thing it was last time. It won’t be a gallant battle and an honorable victory. So resign now.”
“No,” Kat said in a small firm voice.
“He’s right,” Ross said. “If you are lucky, they’ll ignore you. If you get too energetic, they’ll clobber you. It makes me damn uneasy.”
“You’re always uneasy, dear,” Jackie said. “You’ve got the idea the world is full of monsters.”
“But it is,” he said. He smiled at Jimmy Wing. “You see what we’ve got here? A pair of innocents. Their strength is as the strength of ten because their hearts are pure. Oh boy! I mind my own store. Back when I was sure I was going to be Van Gogh, I was full of social messages. I did a little marching and a little poster work and a little singing and carrying banners. I think I was coming out strong in favor of human decency. Three Chicago cops took me into an alley. They were real jocular. I told them fiercely I was an artist. I was ready to die for mankind, but I wasn’t ready for what they did to me. They held my hands against a brick wall and used a night stick on them. I couldn’t hold a brush or a pencil for eight months. Back in Dayton it cost my father twelve hundred bucks’ worth of corrective operations. And I can’t even remember why I was marching that day. I mind my own store. Messages are for Western Union. They always find a way to hurt you, some way you’re not expecting.”