“Did you ever tell Mother she wasn’t your mother and you didn’t have to mind her?” I asked Seth.
He paused with a final forkful of steak and shook his head. “I was too little to remember my own mother. She was the only mother I ever knew.”
“ ’Sides,” growled Daddy. “Anybody sassed her would’ve had to answer to me. That boy of Dwight’s sassing you, Deb’rah?”
“No,” I said, reaching across to squeeze his calloused hand in reassurance. “Dwight wouldn’t let that happen either. It’s just that Cal’s so quiet sometimes. I’m never sure if it’s because he’s missing Jonna or because he wishes I weren’t in the picture.”
“He probably doesn’t know himself,” Minnie said briskly. She waved off our waiter’s offer of a third round of tea and gathered up her purse and glasses. “We’d better get going if we want to get a seat.”
“No problem,” I said. “Jamie Jacobson told me yesterday that they’d be meeting in the old courtroom. So many people turn out to speak for or against any of the items on their agenda these days that they haven’t met in their own room since Christmas.”
Daddy and Seth had their usual squabble over who was going to pay the check. I didn’t bother to get into it, because Daddy always wins. I just put down the tip and waited for Seth to give it up.
CHAPTER 3
I love the old courtroom where the commissioners were to meet that night. Unlike the modern ones in our glass-and-marble annex, it embodies the weight and majesty of what the law should be. This is where I took my oath of office and, yes, a setting like this makes it feel much more binding when you swear that you will judge impartially without fear or favors. Even hardened criminals seem more subdued here.
The floor is carpeted in deep red and gently slopes so that everyone can see any bit of evidence presented to the judge. The benches, doors, and jury boxes are dark solid oak. No drywall anywhere because the walls are lath and hand-troweled plaster. Plaster acanthus leaves fashioned by craftsmen long dead adorn the high vaulted ceiling. Hanging pierced brass lamps cast a soft golden glow that gives a natural solemnity. It’s almost like being in church.
Tonight, however, there was nothing churchly about the indignant buzz that rose from the crowded benches. Some of it came from the people in our community who were appalled that the planning board had recommended approval of a stump dump just west of us. Others were just as upset that the planning board had also recommended a first step toward trying to slow some of the growth until the infrastructure could catch up. Limit growth? How dare they!
It took us a while to get inside and sit down. Daddy doesn’t come into Dobbs all that often these days and it seemed as if every other person wanted to speak to him or shake his hand. Once we were seated, a vaguely familiar face down front caught my eye and I nudged Daddy. “Isn’t that G. Hooks Talbert?”
He didn’t bother to follow my eyes. “Yeah. I seen him when we come in.”
“What’s Talbert doing here, you reckon?”
“The stump dump probably,” said Minnie. “It would affect Grayson Village, too.”
The meeting was supposed to start at seven, but while three or four of the commissioners paid court to Talbert, there was no sign of Candace Bradshaw. At seven-fifteen, when she still hadn’t arrived, the vice chair, Thad Hamilton, called us to order. Half a lifetime ago, Thad tried to put the moves on me after I dumped his cousin. He’s porked up a bit since then, but he still looks good in a white-hair/florid-face Ted Kennedy sort of way. He first ran for the board as a Democrat, lost, changed his registration, and is now into his second term as a county commissioner. The Hamiltons were always comfortably well-off, but the family’s building supply business has made so much money these past fifteen years that there’s talk they’re going to back him for the state assembly.
To my dismay, instead of addressing the stump dump issue first, Thad announced that they would listen to arguments for and against the planning board’s second recommendation. Hands went up all around the courtroom when he asked who wanted to speak and eleven names were put on the speaker list.
“In accordance with our usual procedures, we’ll limit the discussion to one hour,” Thad said. “If my math is right, that means y’all each have five and a half minutes. Be warned right now though that if you try to go over that, I’ll cut you off in mid-sentence, okay?”
The planning board’s core recommendation was for no more than fifty houses per hundred acres, the lots to be configured however the developer wished within the minimal guidelines already set. Those fifty houses could be built on third-or quarter-acre lots and the other seventy-five or eighty acres could become athletic fields or garden allotments or left natural. That was up to the builders.
Three of the speakers would probably oppose the continuation of unmanaged growth, while the rest were from the building trades and real estate industry and would no doubt argue for the county to keep hands off their honeypot.
Both sides were eloquent in their positions. The three who wanted the commissioners to put a few brakes on the runaway developments spoke of vanishing farms, the disappearance of open land, the pressures put on wildlife and wetlands, and the continual need for more multilane roads, schools, and hospitals, which would entail more and more bonds and higher taxes. They asked for impact fees and transfer taxes and adoption of the planning board’s recommendation for better land use, none of which they were likely to get from this particular board.
Seven of the eight speakers for unmanaged growth shed crocodile tears for all the poor working-class people who would never be able to afford the American dream of a home of one’s own in a bucolic setting if building lots
