This week’s prompt was: Write a story including or somehow involving one of your favorite words, and one of your least favorite words.   After your story, be sure to tell us readers what words you chose!

Snowsweet Lake

“How the hell can a rain barrel be against the law?” Lucile shouted, arms akimbo and leaning through her doorway.  Having lost a foot to diabetes at forty, the ambulatory reserve her prosthetic demanded had made her normally animated gestures volcanic from the waist up.  Her squint of distain as deep as a chubby potato, her puckered lips more tart than a lemon grove, even the slingshot circling of her head before she flung a reply at Chief Davies all seemed to require more energy than running a marathon.  And that's just what she thought she was in, a test of endurance.

“Mrs. Gilbert,” Chief Davies said as he flipped open his ticket book (in a town as small as Boford, even the Chief of Police had to write his share of citations).  “State Law prohibits any device or construction that limits runoff due to precipitation, specifically rain barrels.”

“I've come to believe you are a lot of things, Davies,” she said, “but this is an outright lie.  You write whatever you want in your little ticket book, it'll never stand up in court.  I'll fight it.”

“It will stand up in court,” Chief Davies said as he took a long and deliberate look at Lucile's house number.  “And the fine is $1000.”

“What?” Lucile said, almost a gasp.

“You can't be serious,” Ellen, Lucile's grown daughter, said, stepping forward and holding her mother by the shoulders.  “She's on a fixed income.  Can't you give her a warning?  We didn't know.”

Chief Davies chuckled to himself as he held out the ticket.  Lucile snatched it away and began immediately looking for any gifts of stupidity Davies might have inadvertently made.  Meanwhile, he dumped out the rain barrel and carried it back to his SUV; as Police Chief he had put a Cadillac Escalade on the town budget for his official vehicle.

“I have to confiscate this as evidence,” he said after stowing the rain barrel.  “You'll get it back after the trial, if you choose to pursue one.”

“You can bet I will, you scoundrel,” Lucile shouted.

“Your history of defiance, Mrs. Gilbert, has always gotten you into trouble,” Davies said.  “I don't want to come back tomorrow and find you've installed another illegal rain barrel.”

Lucile hastily stowed the ticket in her brassiere and was about to flip off Chief Davies when Ellen hugged her mother’s arms to her sides and tried to kick the door closed.  She was giving away too much weight to overpower her mother but managed to screen her from the departing Davies.  Once he was out of sight around the turn down Cedar Lane, Lucile shook off her daughter and limped back into the kitchen to a cold cup of tea and a very hot head.

Cedar Lane ran in a long loop from where it plunged down the hillside to Main Street, five miles distant, around the lake to its end smack up against the Rowan Country Club's ski lift.  The lift had not operated since the '20s and what had been the Rowan Country Club was now a three story, finely appointed, dovecote.  It would have made a perfect romantic rendezvous spot for Boford's teens if it wasn't so far away.  It did have a ghost story—about the last owner hanging himself after the crash—but the views of Snowsweet Lake from the third floor must have been spectacular.

The lake remained private property and the lots surrounding it were subdivided and sold for development as summer homes.  The lake was then incorporated and anyone living on one of the surrounding lots was a part of the lake association.  For nearly seventy years, the residents of Snowsweet Lake had cared for the water, prevented dumping or over-fishing, and celebrated the natural splendor the lake brought to the land surrounding Boford.  On the other side of the mountain, skiers mobbed the slopes and the shops for tourists that clogged their Main Street, but on Boford's side of the mountain, peace reigned and beauty thrived.  Until Rapier Properties.

“Mom, maybe it's time to think about selling,” Ellen said, sitting opposite her mother and taking her hand across the little kitchen table set in front of the French doors.

“Never,” Lucile said, never taking her eyes off the lake.

“When they first started buying all the houses, I never thought the day would come when I would say this to you,” Ellen pressed on.  “I never thought they'd get this far.  I always thought more people would hold out.  And if all their pressure amounted to was nuisance law suits and telephone calls, I'd say keep fighting them.  But mom, if Chief Davies is so deep in the pocket of Rapier Properties that he'd try this, what real choice do we have?”

“When your father inherited this house and we moved here,” Lucile said, squeezing her daughter's hand but still looking at the lake, “I fell in love.  It wasn't just the sight of the lake, the sound of it, the mountains.  Everything together, and the work we did on the house, and the friends we made and the time we spent just us, with you when you were growing up and just us alone when you'd gone off to school, all of it: it's all a part of our family, Ellen.  That gigantic sky is one of us.  You know, I still feel your father about the place.”

“I know,” Ellen said.  She saw in her mind's eye the ring on her mother's hand nestled between two of her own clenched fingers.

“I wish I knew how they put the bacteria in the water,” Lucile said, all of a sudden facing her daughter.  “If I had a little bit of proof, I could sue at least.  Not that I'd have a hope in hell against their lawyers but I could try.”

“I'm so proud of you for standing up to them,” Ellen said.  “But you don't have any water now.  You're welcome to drive down to The Elysian House and shower in my room whenever you need to but, Jesus mom, you can't even flush the toilet.”

“That's what the rain barrel was for,” Lucile said.  “Ever since Davies came with the water sample results and said the well water was contaminated by whatever they put in the lake—and he 'confiscated' my well pump motor—I've been bringing water up from the lake in a bucket.  Figure it's still good enough to fill the toilet tank.”

“Are you sure those results were even true?” Ellen asked.

“I sent away a sample to a mail order company,” Lucile said.  “It's true, alright.  But I can't make them clean it up.  Since Rapier Properties owns every other lot on the lake, they're in the association same as me.  And they get a veto, just like every association member.  For crying out loud, I'd never seen a veto for association business before I vetoed their first motion to sell the lake—to themselves—and develop it into whatever they've got planned.  Never thought they'd be so cunning as to use their veto against me, veto a cleanup of the lake.  We had to clean an aggressive algae once before.  About ten years ago.”

“They just want the lake polluted so you'll have to move,” Ellen said.  “I hate it but what can you do?”

“Something other than sit around on my backside, that's what,” Lucile said and heaved out of her seat.

Though the other side of the mountain had large, monolithic hotels, bars with outdoor Jacuzzis even in winter, and a couple of nightclubs that catered to a young clientele eager to pay with plastic, Boford offered quiet bed and breakfasts—like The Elysian House—to people who wanted to walk in the woods, now turning color with the approach of fall, or visit the mountain before it was covered in snow, who wanted little shops with antiques and to excuse themselves for having an ice-cream float because it came in a frosted glass with a long spoon.  Boford was built by the Arts and Crafts movement and never tired of it, by outward appearance.  The school on the other side of Main Street raised its hand above the surrounding trees, hoping the town hall clock would call on it; the gazebo on the town square had a plaque remembering the founders and next to it a black marble stone remembering the fifteen men and two women who had gone to World War Two and never returned.  Everyone owned a car, of course, because it was seventy miles to the nearest piece of the twenty-first century, but no one drove on Main Street except guests.  There were no tourists in Boford.

The town hall bore a remarkable resemblance to a church, as if the people who drafted its plan knew either instinctively or philosophically that they were creating the spiritual center of a self-determined existence.  Classical columns and clapboards in local woods, slate roof from a blue stone quarry a mile from town, and carved doors so ornate in their pictorial historiography of the town's beginning that guests were always afraid to touch it—as if touching an exhibit at a museum—the details led by example the style of Boford.  Inside, every Tuesday night, the council met even if they had nothing to vote on.  Some Tuesdays it was especially if they had nothing to vote on.  But they were voting when Lucile walked in.

Sitting as close to the front of the room as she could without actually mingling with the dozen or so spectators, Lucile plopped down on one of the hundred year old wooden folding chairs and then quietly knocked a knuckle against its leg, for luck that it would hold together.  The fifty or so seats were mostly empty and faced a long folding table with another dozen people on the other side, leaning forward to talk to one another as various points were made and votes taken.  Lucile listened for a while.  Most of the business seemed unnecessary to her: hiring a surveyor to assess the complexity of widening Main Street down to the county road, forming a committee to determine if Boford needed a water tower or a reservoir, a call for a review of the zoning ordinances in the town constitution.  The town constitution could only be changed by a referendum and people became very uneasy when that storied and well-respected instrument was debated.  The murmur that rose amongst the dozen audience members quickly tabled the motion.  Lucile saw her opportunity and hopped to her good foot.

“I'm not sure of the protocol, but I'd like to speak if I may,” she said.

Mattie, the teller at the town pharmacy, turned around and smiled.  It was nice to see someone she considered “one of the gals,” by which she meant another woman over fifty, enter the boys' club of town hall.  “Oh it's not so formal,” she said.  “Usually people tell Sergeant before we begin and then talk after the voting's done but sometimes people just talk.  What's on your mind?”

“Well now Mattie,” Sergeant said from his place at the middle of the table, “you're right of course but, for the sake of the minutes, let's have a touch of formality and recognize the speaker.  How are you, Lucile?  And as Mattie said, what's on your mind?”

Sergeant Kirkland was Boford's mayor.  Mayor Sergeant was a title that never passed without a quip so he had let out quietly that he'd rather retain his civilian title of plain old Sergeant.  (His father had been a big fan of John Singer Sergeant.)  Solid as a bean-bag chair and about the same size, he wore enormous button-down sweaters year round, even in summer heat that sent young men reeling.  His jowls shook with undisclosed merriment as he invited Lucile to speak.

“It's a long story,” Lucile began, limping forward so she wouldn't have to shout.  “I assume some of you have heard all of it and that all of you have heard some of it.  The long and the short is that a company called Rapier Properties has bought every lot around Snowsweet Lake except mine.  They started by making offers for my house but I have no mind to sell.  Then they went in for a law suit that the court threw out.  Now, out of nowhere, the lake has a bacteria problem.  And wouldn't you know it, those Rapiers vetoed my motion at the lake association to have it cleaned up.”

“Maybe it's not as bad as you think,” Sergeant said.  “They're businessmen, after all, could be they don't think the outlay is worth the effect.”

“Oh the effect is exactly what they wanted,” Lucile said.  “The bacteria has reached my well water.  My well’s only a dozen feet from the shore.  Chief Davies came out with an official looking paper and condemned it, took my well pump.  And that's what I've come about.  He came out today and took a rain barrel I had set up.  Claimed there's a State law.”

“There is,” Mortimer Sneed said from the far end of the table.  His long neck stretched an inch from his starched collar before he elaborated.  “The law has been on the books for years, prohibiting any activity that could affect runoff levels.  That includes rain barrels, Mrs. Gilbert.”

“Well this is just nonsense,” she said, smacking her cane against the hardwood floor.  “He's not a State Police Officer, anyway, he's local.  You can tell him what to do or fire him.  Now, I'm not asking you to help me with my fight against those Rapier people—though I would appreciate the town's support—but surely you could rein in that lunatic.  Citing me for a thousand smackers because I had a barrel in my front garden?  It’s outrageous.”

“Chief Davies is an officer of the law, Mrs. Gilbert,” Cecile Rogers said, tilting his head toward Mortimer for a second, a smile flickering across his thin lips.  “We can't very well find fault with him for upholding the law.”

“That's right,” Mark Unger said, from the other side of Mayor Sergeant.  “He's only doing what's best for the town.”

“What's best for the town?” Lucile shouted.  With her free hand she nearly took a handful of her wild grey hair.  Balling her fingers into a fist, she said through clenched teeth, “What would be good for the town would be if you helped me stand up to those Rapier jackasses.  They put the bacteria in the lake in the first place, just to drive me off.  It's in my well now: how long before it's in everyone's wells?  Almost the whole town uses well water, after all.  Only Main Street has city water and that's piped in from the other side of the mountain.”

“I don't think there's any danger of bacteria going beyond lakefront property,” Mayor Sergeant said.  He ran his fingers along the buttons of his sweater as if playing a flourish on a piano.  “And, as one member of the community to another, I wouldn't risk a liable suit with baseless claims against Rapier Properties.  Without proof of their deliberately introducing a substance into the lake, you could be held accountable for their loss of reputation.”

“As one member of the community to another,” Lucile said, “I never expected any help with those bastards.  I came here about Davies.  I want to file a complaint.  Make it official.  I doubt there even is such a law.”

“Oh, I wouldn't doubt Chief Davies,” Mortimer said, sending a snicker back at Cecile.  “He's as fine an officer of the law as you could ever hope to see.  Why, he's a shoe in for Sherriff come next election.”

“That's true, very true,” Mark Unger said.

“I've seen the poster he'll release when the time comes,” Mayor Sergeant said.  “Very professional.  Very large poster.”

“Shows how much the state party believes in his candidacy,” Mortimer said.

They smiled across the table at Lucile, some leaning forward on their elbows, some reclining back until the front legs of their chairs came off the floor.  She looked over the row of them and finally understood.

“Interesting take on that particular scene,” she said quietly.  “Normally when a group performs it in tableau, they only have one Judas.”

She turned and walked out.

Pulling into her driveway, Lucile remarked every nook and cranny of her house, every slight shift in coloration that thirty years of touching up the paint had wrought.  Though the style was simpler than what the rest of Boford enjoyed, the lake houses not having been made until years later, the simple dormers and bay window, the screened-in porch peeking around the shrubs that waddled around back, even the detached garage that leaned ever more precariously toward the house with each passing year, felt like a hug as she returned.  Night had fallen but the lights through the windows warmed her.

Ellen’s boyfriend Kyle had come over, Lucile knew from his car parked out front.  He and Ellen both worked at The Elysian House, where they’d met, and both had tiny garret rooms there.  Lucile had kept Ellen’s room the way it was, however, and Ellen and Kyle often spent their days off at home.  Lucile liked Kyle; he was energetic and could talk for hours about the strangest things.  She described him to distant relatives as being far better than television.  He and Ellen were unpacking the dinner he’d brought from The Elysian House.

Lucile wasn’t very hungry but sat with them anyway.  She told them how her trip to town hall had gone.

“I could have told you that’s what’d happen,” Kyle said with a sauce covered morsel of bread hovering in front of his mouth.

“Kyle,” Ellen said.

“I’m just saying, with those boosters?” he said after bolting the bread and then shaking more grated cheese on his rigatoni.  “Those guys all see themselves as big time businessmen, temporarily embarrassed without their millions because the town holds them back.  They want the huge resort Rapier Properties wants to build here.  They think it’ll make them rich.  They want the next Aspen!”

“Bastards,” Ellen said quietly, looking at no one.  “A town founded with an open lesbian couple as the chief architects and you can just bet what party those boosters vote for.  Hypocrites.”

“Sure,” Kyle laughed, “they’re John Galts, one and all.  They’re self-made.  Never mind that they learned to read in the publicly funded school across from town hall.  Never mind the publicly funded fire department that saved Mortimer’s house four years ago.  Never mind that it's the historically protected status of most of the town’s buildings that draws in the tourists—excuse me, guests—and fuels our economy.  No, no, they did it all themselves.”

“Maybe those crazies who say we shouldn’t have a government are right,” Ellen said.  “If this is what happens with governments, they get taken over by wicked people who use the power against honest citizens, then maybe we’d be better off without it.  We’ve paid our taxes: is this what for?  For them to look the other way because a wealthy corporation flutters its eyelashes at them?”

“Government is just a tool,” Kyle said, pouring more wine.  “It isn’t good or bad by itself; the people in it define its character.  It’s kind of like a gun or a knife or a car, it’s just a tool: you have some asshole using it, people get hurt.  But by itself, it’s just there.  Government is supposed to be the will of the people, the tool by which they organize their efforts and improve their existence.  That’s the whole idea behind society that those assholes never understand, or choose to ignore.  Society isn’t supposed to be an armed camp with everyone at daggers drawn.  It’s supposed to be like a family, everyone pulling together to make things better.”

“Community,” Ellen said.  “They throw the word around when they want to take someone’s rights away but they don’t want community.  They want victims.  So what are we going to do?”

Lucile put back her glass of wine, shook her head.  “Talk to a lawyer, I suppose,” she said.  “Not that I can afford one.  I don’t even know where that thousand dollars for the fine will come from.”

“We should go to the papers,” Ellen said.  “Can’t we?  If people across the state heard your story, they’d speak out.  Maybe the bad publicity would force Rapier Properties into voting for the cleanup.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Kyle said, asking permission with a glance at Lucile.  She shrugged so he rummaged in the knapsack next to his chair and brought out his laptop.  Sucking sauce off his fingers, he brought the computer to life and went to the website of the highest circulating paper in the state.  “Well, here we are,” he said.  “A letter to the editor?  Or do you want to contact a reporter directly?  Offer what’s happening as a story?”

“Contact one of the journalists,” Ellen said.  “This is a big story.”

“Old woman gets shit on by local government and big business?” Lucile snorted.  “I’m sure they have whole rooms full of such stories and never find time to print them.”

“I’ve never heard you so pessimistic,” Ellen said.  “Come on, you were as ornery as ever this morning.”

“Crap, she may be right,” Kyle said.  He scrolled a bit more, searched a few times, and then sighed.  “Guess who owns the paper?  A holding company with three investors: two banks and Rapier Properties.  Somehow I don’t see any editor whose job security and promotion opportunities are controlled by the very people who will benefit from stealing your house is going to be very enthusiastic about exposing them.”

“There must be other papers,” Ellen said.  “I can’t believe this.  How are we supposed to hear the truth about what’s going on if the people who are supposed to tell us are bought and paid for by the people who undermine the law?”

“Okay, so there are fifteen newspapers in our state,” Kyle said, scrolling down a list on his laptop.  “And, Jesus, they are all owned by either that same holding company or a multimedia company that’s owned by the bank that owns a controlling share of stock in Rapier Properties.”

“What?” Ellen said, turning the laptop toward her.  “All of them?  How can this be true?  There are no local papers?”

“Boford used to have its own local,” Lucile said and heaved to her feet.  “Went out of business about the time Mayor Sergeant took office for the first time.  2002?  3?  I know it was during the Bush Administration.”

“They called it budget cutting,” Kyle said, looking up at her.  “The paper was run out of a town building, rent free.  Town council said it needed the revenue.  And the building then stood empty for years until they sold it to Mark Unger, last May.”

Ellen began to cry, balling her fists on the table and turning away from the computer.  Lucile held her daughter’s cheek and brushed away a tear with a sweep of her thumb.

“There now, Ellen,” she said.  “I guess no one knows it’s this bad until they find themselves pressed to the wall.  Don’t cry.  Well figure something out.  Maybe it is time to move on.  The founders of Boford had to, come to think of it.  They came out here to escape from this sort of thing happening in the eastern cities.”

“But where can we go?” Ellen asked, trying to steady her voice.

“I don’t know,” Lucile said.  “Canada.  That’s usually where American’s go when their government stands a little too firmly on their throats.  I hear it’s beautiful there, too.  Government is just a tool, huh?” she asked Kyle, grinning to take the sting out of it.  He nodded apologetically but didn’t say anything.  “Well, I sure would like to get my hands on it for a little while.”

After hugging Ellen until she stopped crying and thanking Kyle for looking things up, Lucile invited them both to stay before she walked out to the screen porch and dropped heavily into her wicker rocker.  The sun had set entirely and the stars were only just beginning to glow through the diaphanous evening sky.  Having sat and watched some ten-thousand evenings slip from the earth as it plunged into the night sky over the years, she knew no matter what she expected, the picture of heaven above and its mirror below would always be new and wondrous and beyond the power of memory to capture.  She slowly rocked as eternity continued, and thought of her small time in the audience.  She thought about the early days when she and Eugene had first come to Snowsweet Lake.  She thought of their walking together on the small island, making love in what they hoped was a secluded spot.  She thought about running back to the boat and rowing like mad when someone called from the other side of the lake that it wasn’t.  She thought about swimming out to the raft and that it would have to be towed to shore soon or winter ice could crack it.  But that brought the present into her mind, the thought that they would probably veto saving the raft as well.  She thought about Eugene’s rifle in the attic and how long would it take to become a crack shot; if it were better if she weren’t; if she needed to be at all.  Near midnight, she heard the stairs creak as Ellen and Kyle went to bed and she thought about how well she had adapted to her daughter becoming a full-grown woman.  She chuckled to herself and thought that she hadn’t adapted so much that she wasn’t grateful that their room was upstairs and on the opposite side of the house from hers.  If walking in on one’s parents was traumatic, Lucile thought hearing her daughter panting in ecstasy was easily as good an argument in favor of deafness.

“But Kyle’s a good boy,” she told herself.  “A good man, I guess I should call him now.  They basically run that B&B, I’m sure they’ll take over when the Reynolds retire.  He has some funny ideas about government, though.  Always has.  Of the people, by the people, for the people: how long since that was true?”

Close to three in the morning, with her mind still revolving at full tilt, Lucile heard quiet noises at the front of the house and thought Kyle must have slipped off back to the B&B.  Always an emergency of some kind, she thought.  Probably a quest’s dog ate that plastic fruit again and is sick all over the floor.  Glamorous job he’s got there.

An hour or so after the sun rose, so did Ellen.  But Lucile heard two sets of feet coming down the steps.  After receiving her usual admonishment for spending the night on the porch, Lucile accepted the offer of a bacon-and-eggs breakfast (even though she lusted for pancakes she couldn’t have anymore).

“Look at you smiling,” Ellen said.  “Things look brighter in the morning?”

“They always do,” Lucile said.  “I thought I heard you head out last night, Kyle.”

“Nope, not me,” he said.  “Slept like a log.”

“Hmm, critters nosing around again,” she said.  “That Davies probably loosed a leopard nearby in hopes it would eat me.”

They laughed at Wile E. Coyote plots they took turns inventing until breakfast was cooked and on the table.  They were about to sit down to it when the doorbell rang.  Against their offers to see who it was, Lucile plowed through to the front room and threw open the door.  Chief Davies stood there in his mirrored sunglasses with his ticket book out.  Behind him, an officer with a camera was taking pictures of a rain barrel attached to the gutter’s downspout.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Lucile demanded.

“I told you that your defiance would only get you into more trouble, Mrs. Gilbert,” Davies said.  “Really, a new rain barrel the next day?  And I know this is a different one because I still have yesterday’s down at the station.”

“I didn’t install that,” Lucile shouted, stepping outside to point at the brand new plastic barrel.

“You planted it, didn’t you?” Kyle shouted, surprising everyone as he shook his finger in Chief Davies’ face.  “You son of a bitch.  It’s bad enough your acting as hatchet man for those Rapier bastards, helping them throw an old woman out of her house, but now your fabricating evidence!”

“You watch your mouth, boy,” Davies shouted back.  “Slander is a crime, too.”

“Ellen, get your phone and film this,” Kyle said.  “He’s probably just waiting for an excuse to taser me, aren’t you, asshole?”

“Filming law enforcement is a crime in this state,” the Chief bellowed.  “And you, you little shit, are interfering in a police investigation.”

“And you’re a fucking thug and a liar,” Kyle shouted.  “Abusing your power in exchange for political support in the next election for Sherriff?  How can you live with yourself?  How can you think you’re not going to a very hot place when you die?”

“Threatening a police officer, are you?” Davies said.  “You’re under arrest.”  Against shouted protests, and Ellen throwing her arms around Kyle’s shoulders to try to pull him back into the house, Davies called over his shoulder, “Officer Larson: did you see the assailant resist arrest?”

“I sure did, Chief,” Officer Larson said.  “He tried to punch you in the face.”

Before the audacity of the claim could fully register, Chief Davies threw a fist into Kyle’s stomach.  The smaller man doubled over, falling forward out of the house.  Ellen screamed as she tried to drag him inside but Davies took Kyle by the hair and threw him onto the lawn.  Lucile raised her cane to take a swing at Davies but Larson was too quick for her: he swiped the cane aside and sent Lucile sprawling, her prosthetic foot swiveling around to point off to one side.  Once on the front lawn, Kyle rolled over and tried to cover his face with his arms; Davies took a can of pepper spray off his belt and doused the young man; once Kyle was coughing and trying to scramble to his feet, Chief Davies began to kick him.  Ellen would have jumped on his back if Larson hadn’t taken her around the waist, pinning her arms, and holding her as Davies beat Kyle, switching to his nightstick until he was out of breath.

“Put him in the truck,” Davies said breathlessly to Larson as he took Ellen by the wrist to keep her from running to Kyle.  “You better calm down right now, young lady, or you’ll get every bit as much as I gave him.”

Ellen was hysterical, pounding against the locked door of the Escalade after Chief Davies released her so he could slip in behind the wheel.  Only her mother’s cry for help kept Ellen from running down the street.  A little bruised but spoiling for a fight, Lucile needed a hand up and help straightening out her prosthetic foot.  Ellen dashed between lucidity and tears, between struggling to determine what she could do and surrendering to the madness of it all.  Lucile, once on her feet again, brought her daughter inside.

Calls to family, friends, and lawyers occupied the hours that felt like minutes as Ellen and Lucile tried to raise what money they could for bail and a lawyer to demand it.  No one in town could believe what the two women told them; some openly refusing to hear it, others shocked to speechlessness, caught so off guard that they couldn’t think of what they should or could do in the face of tyranny they thought only happened in movies.  As the batteries in her phone began to die, Ellen heard the doorbell ring.  She stood frozen by the sound, a hard cold ball of fright condensing in her stomach.  When Lucile opened the door, two men in crisp dark suits stood there, impassive behind their sunglasses.

“Oh my god,” Ellen all but sobbed.  “What now?”

“Mrs. Gilbert?” the one on the right said.  “I’m Agent Thoreau of the EPA, this is my associate Agent Whitman.”

“Gentlemen, you’re a sight for sore eyes, as they say,” Lucile said.  “Come on in.”

The night before, as Lucile had thought and thought about all that had happened, about what Kyle had said and the difficulties they faced, she had come to the conclusion that if there were any good people still in government, she should try to find them.  Calling through a host of tip lines and speaking to call centers, she’d finally talked a dispatcher into giving her the direct number to the closest field agents for the EPA.  By that afternoon, Thoreau and Whitman had tested Snowsweet Lake and determined  bacterial levels were beyond dangerous and had—have grown unchecked—spiraled out of control to the toxic level.  Asking her for the minutes from the last lake association meeting, as evidence, the EPA issued an emergency decree, finding Rapier Properties willfully out of compliance with federal statute and forwarded the matter to the FBI.  Furthermore, they directed FEMA to initiate a disaster protocol alerting residence of the danger to their health. The bacteria was indeed feared to have spread through the water table and infected every well water source in town.  Outrage was rampant.

“Fine them,” Lucile said, sitting at her kitchen table with Agents Thoreau and Whitman, Ellen and a badly bruised but smiling Kyle, two days later.  “I don’t care if you bankrupt me, just fine the lake association and its members.  Fine us to pieces.  As long as it bankrupts them, I don’t care if it bankrupts me, too.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Lucile,” Thoreau said.  “This is good coffee.”

“Made with bottled water!” Ellen assured them.

“I sure hope so,” Whitman said, “or we’ll all be dead in about twenty minutes.”

“They’ve started cleaning up the lake,” Lucile said.  “And that’s good but, even with the bad press, if they choose to weather it, I’ll be in the same boat again in a few months.  I know you’re first care is the environment but can’t you do your job and throw a little help my way, too.”

“What they did amounts to fraud, Mrs. Gilbert,” Whitman explained.  “The FBI will have something to say about that.”

“Hopefully,” Ellen said.

“There are two laws in this country,” Thoreau said.  “One for the rich and one for everyone else.  That’s true but there are two other laws, as well: local and federal.  If we can show intent—which the minutes of the lake association clearly do—we might be able to move quickly enough that the bank that owns Rapier Properties won’t be able to apply pressure in congress.”

“On top of that, the town has a hell of a lawsuit,” Whitman said.  “Rapier’s decision to not clean the lake makes them liable for the damage they’ve done.”

“Only if the town will sue Rapier,” Ellen said.  “And since the council was helping them, I don’t see that happening.”

“Maybe they were a few days ago,” Kyle said.  “But when I was bailing out, you should have seen the courthouse.  There were people everywhere!  A recall election seems likely for the council.”

“What about that storm trooper, Davies?” Lucile asked.

“Still in office,” Kyle said and shrugged.  “For now, anyway.  It’s only our word against his.  Maybe if the FBI finds something damaging in its investigation of Rapier, Davies will go down with them.”

“I talked to the State Prosecutor,” Whitman said.  “He just happens to be on the other party’s ticket.  He said he’s already opened an investigation.  You’ll probably hear from his investigative team in a day or two.”

“Ha, from what I hear,” Lucile said, “they’ll need to send in the State Police to stop the B&B owners from rioting and lynching Davies for ruining their businesses.  Apparently they were able to put two and two together.  Assuming people are stupid is a dangerous hobby.”

Indeed it was.  It turned out that Chief Davies had packed so many things onto his pistol belt that one pouch had pressed against his radio's transmitter during the altercation at the Gilbert house.  A civic minded dispatcher had heard it all and recorded it.  Davies was arrested by the State Police, as was Officer Larson.  A recall election went through with surprising haste, ending with Mattie and the former editorial board of the defunct Boford Observer taking over the town council.  Lucile was hailed as a hero by many of the B&Bers but she declined the offer of a seat.  The EPA had settled quickly with Rapier Properties, who avoided a court case by surrendering the lake lots to Boford and promising to pay damages: the EPA in turn had assigned a trustee to oversee the cleanup and manage the properties as Snowsweet Lake was returned to purity—none other than Lucile Gilbert.  The money movers were not utterly defeated, however: the machine had kicked on in time to save Rapier Properties and Rapier stood firmly on its rights.  It had signed a secret agreement with the former town council of Boford guaranteeing it profit for ten years.  They sued.  The case remains pending.

 I hope you enjoyed reading this short story.  I also have a few novels published through Amazon’s Kindle Store, the newest being The Parnell Affair.  Thematically, it is not very similar to the above but hopefully a good read, too; it’s a political thriller about a betrayed spy, a relentless journalist, and the hidden truth behind a President’s demand for war.  Don’t have a Kindle?  No problem: Amazon provides free apps to view all of the great—and inexpensive—Kindle content on your phone, PC, or Mac, here.  Thanks and happy reading!