“Attack. The giant spider attacked me,” Pewter, eyes wide, screamed.
Mrs. Murphy, calm, said to the humans, “The giant spider ran over her tail. Leapt right out of its cubbyhole and ran over her tail.”
“She weighed a ton!” Pewter, tail looking like a bottle brush, told them.
“All right. Let’s go into the next room, pick up our stuff, and head for home. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. Stuff to do.”
“There is a dangerous monster in here,” Pewter, riveted to the spot, warned.
“It is big.” The puppy, feeling a little safer, offered his opinion.
“Big. It’s gigantic. It has long legs and too many eyes. It glares at me. I can see the hatred, and its terrible mouth works opposite ours. Oh, it’s a terrible sight.” Pewter slowly walked into the next room.
Once in the Volvo station wagon, heat turned on but still cold, the four animals sat in the backseat. The rear with the big window was still cold. This way they were closer to the heat.
“She has no idea how much danger she’s in. That spider will come out and bite. Poison!” Pewter dramatically predicted.
“How do you know she won’t bite you first?” the corgi slightly maliciously asked.
“I can run fast. Harry’s slow. Humans are slow. It’s amazing that they survive,” Pewter remarked.
“I noticed that.” Pirate’s bushy eyebrows rose up. “Do you think it’s because they only have two legs?”
“That’s some of it,” Mrs. Murphy answered.
Pewter, breathing deeply, intoned, “That spider will kill.”
“Right,” Tucker dryly replied.
38
February 15, 2017
Wednesday
She scanned every edge. If something was going to show up it would be on the edge. A pile of dirt, not yet removed, towered at the northwest corner, the wind blowing from that direction, even with the wall. Not much could dampen a winter wind. She paused. Glints from soda cans, pieces of plastic bottles, an odd lumber fragment, such things protruded from the dirt pile. If anything or anyone lay in the middle, no one would know.
Her question was if something unusual showed up, would the workers report it?
Cold air tingled in her lungs. She pulled her scarf up over her nose. Days such as this gave Harry new respect for Canadians. Leaning her head against the wall, she scanned again, then placed the binoculars in her pocket as well as her one hand. South by a few blocks, the great river flowed over quite beautiful rapids. Bald eagles soared. Often they flew over Richmond itself to their nests. The avian life on the river blossomed. Ending the spraying of DDT in 1972 had allowed life-forms to again flourish.
On the way downtown she had stopped at each location where a notation had been made in Gary’s files. She knew two of those locations involved a death. One was the Kushner Building, the other was years before on a site at West Broad Street where Mr. Asplundah was found dead sitting next to the excavation. The third referred to steel, as well as a new advanced insulating material back in the early eighties. As those structures stood, well built, she could glean nothing except they were big-ticket buildings. Expensive even then, they’d cost twice as much to replace, possibly more, given stricter building codes. Irritating as those codes were, they might save lives and structures in the event of a catastrophic hurricane or flooding. As the weather was changing, she hoped whoever drew up the codes was right. But in her heart she knew cash payments to the right people could circumvent some of this. Meeting new standards cost and it cost more every day.
Here a beautiful building, a hoped-for showpiece for the new Richmond, would cost forty-two million. That was the estimated cost with an undisclosed profit. Any delay, any lost time due to weather or goods not shipped on time would send that figure upward with the profit percentage diminishing. Anyone in construction understood this, which was why a home builder or someone like Rankin Construction tried to fold in such delays. If anything went amiss, no government bailout. Nor should there be. Private enterprise was just that. Harry understood all that, for as a farmer, although her parameters were different, no bailout was available for the small farmer. As to huge agribusiness, well, that could be something different. City workers need cheap food or one gets mass disturbances. Cheap food means mega-farming companies, fiddling with crops, using giant machines instead of people. So now, a man working for a huge company would look at the computer in his tractor or combine. Was there anyone left who knew how to get out, check the seeds, check the seedlings, check the half-grown crop? She could scoop up a handful of soil and know what she had. A computer printout might be helpful but unnecessary. You either knew your job or you didn’t.
So, looking at this enormous project, one important to a city on the verge of booming, Harry wondered who knew their job.
Even with fur-lined boots her feet felt numb. She pulled out the binoculars one more time; sighing, she returned them to her pocket, walked to her station wagon. She had called Marvella before leaving the farm, who graciously invited her to drop by.
When Harry stepped into Marvella’s home she visibly relaxed.