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When Emily got home, she used her ancient landline phone to call James. Cell phones didn’t work on the island. As she dialed, she thought it a bit ironic that they’d be getting a windmill before a cell phone tower.
He answered on the second ring, surprising her. “I figured I’d have to leave you a message,” she said.
“Nope. Caught me on the way to the fridge. What’s up?”
“Don’t suppose you’re going to the windmill meeting today?”
“I wasn’t going to. Why?”
“I don’t know. I was just curious about the whole thing. Besides, it might be fun to see the inside of the ‘real church.’”
“Are you saying you want to go?”
“I don’t want to go alone.”
“So are you saying you want me to go?”
“Oh, would you?”
He laughed and the sound of it made her stomach flip. “Sure. What time is it at?”
“No idea.”
“OK, I’ll find out. Want to grab a bite before?”
“Sure.”
“Great. See you in a little bit.”
He picked her up less than an hour later and took her to their usual haunt: The Big Dipper. The Big Dipper was actually a bar, one of only two on the island, but it served scrumptious pub food. Emily wasn’t much of a cook, so she took every opportunity to dine at the Dip.
James ordered his usual medium-rare steak, but Emily got excited when she saw the special: lobster stew with a giant blueberry muffin.
She wasn’t disappointed as she slurped up the buttery cream. “So,” she said between mouthfuls, “you don’t care about the windmills?”
James shrugged. “Not really. I don’t know much about them. I mean, if they’re going to save me a ton of money on electricity, then sure. But if they’re going to torture the people who live near them, then maybe not. I’m not sure how the scale actually tips. People are still fighting over the windmills on Vinalhaven, and those have been up for years.”
“How do we get our power now?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
“I’ve never had cause to wonder.”
“It’s an underground cable.”
“That’s a long cable.”
“A-yuh. It sure is. And it’s an expensive power supply. But it’s what we’ve got. That’s why you won’t see a lot of islanders heating their homes with space heaters.”
“They say we’ll be able to store the extra power from the windmills in thermal storage heaters.”
He raised the same handsome eyebrow. “You been doing some research?”
She grinned. “I did some Googling during my prep. Don’t tell the taxpayers.”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I don’t know, Emily. I guess if I had to choose, I’d vote nay. Maybe we should err on the side of caution. But maybe we’ll know more after the meeting.”
––––––––
The church was packed. Emily was reminded of the day of the state championship game, when nearly the whole island had stood at the ferry terminal cheering as the girls’ basketball team boarded the boat. She’d thought then, “A lot of people live on this island.” She thought the same thing now, except that now, people didn’t look happy. Nary a pom-pom in sight.
A long table had been set up just in front of the altar. Four men and a woman sat on one side of it, looking anxious. Twenty rows of well-worn pews faced the panel, and someone had placed copious amounts of metal folding chairs in every available spot not taken up by pews.
The pews were filling up fast. The island’s population was about a thousand. Emily looked around the sanctuary and was certain a thousand people couldn’t fit. But from the look of the pushing match at the door, they were going to try.
A man in a WABI vest stood near a tripod in the corner, peering into a large camera. He was wearing headphones and looked like a hunter stalking his prey.
As Emily stared at the cameraman, Chloe slid into the pew beside her.
“I thought you weren’t coming?” Chloe said.
“Did I say that? Well, you intrigued me. Is Thomas here?”
“No. He acts like he doesn’t care, but I think the whole thing scares him.”
“Scares him? Why?”
“Because, Miss M, they’re going to put the windmills on his land.”
“His land?”
“Well, yeah, his grandma’s land, or I guess it’s his dad’s now that she died.”
“His grandma died? The one who goes to this church?"
Chloe nodded.
“How did I not know about that?”
Chloe shrugged. “It just happened. There’s been a lot going on.”
One of the panel members stood, the scraping sound of his chair against the wooden floor serving to call the meeting to order. He cleared his throat. “Thank you all for coming. There seems to be some confusion about the purpose of this evening’s meeting. Some of you have come prepared to vote, and some of you just to hear the facts about the issue.” He cleared his throat again. Then he reached for a glass of water, picked it up, and then put it down again without drinking any of it. He continued, “But the board here hopes that, once you hear the facts, that you’ll be able to vote tonight—”
“You can’t call for a vote without announcing the vote beforehand,” a woman called out from a pew near the back.
Emily craned her neck around to look at the woman and recognized her immediately. She was Duke and Sara Crockett’s mother, Jane Crockett. Emily knew her from parent-teacher conferences. Tonight, her long dreadlocks were tied up in a colorful scarf, and she wore an oversized shawl that Emily figured she’d probably knitted herself. There was fire in her eyes.
“I understand that, Jane—” the man behind the table started.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Jane cried. “You’re trying to do a sneaky vote, without inviting the people who actually have a stake in this thing!”
Various people around the room cried out “yeah!” in support of Jane’s claim.
“We’re not trying to be sneaky about anything ...”
Emily leaned toward James. “Who is this guy?”
“Darren McCormick, the co-op president.”
Chloe must have heard them, because she added, “The guy to his left is Bobby Snyder, the Vice President. And the guy to his right is Oscar Pride. I don’t know what his job is. Then the man on the end, that’s Thomas’s father. He’s the treasurer.”
“Yes, I recognize him. Remind me of his name?”
“Travis Payne.”
“And the woman?” Emily whispered.
“Mabel Pride, Oscar’s wife. I don’t know what her job is either. I think she might be the secretary. She’s also the one who actually works in the co-op office, you know, taking people’s money and everything.”
As Emily was getting the scoop on the board, the argument over whether or not to vote had escalated, until Duke hollered out, “Maybe we should vote on whether or not to vote.”
Many laughed at this, and Emily felt a little proud of her senior wisenheimer.
The crack cleared the air. President Darren said, “I know some of you have concerns about putting up the wind turbines, and the board would like to address your concerns. Would anyone like to share his or her specific worry?"
Emily waited for Tyler’s grandmother to call out, “The birds!” The thought even made her smile, and Chloe gave her a quizzical look. Emily tried to look stoic.
Darren called on Jane again.
“Where do I begin?” she said melodramatically.
Darren looked annoyed.
She continued, “First of all, this island, this beautiful island, our home, how are we going to mar its face”—her voice cracked as if she was about to cry.
“Never mind that!” Another man stood up. He wore a red and black plaid hat. “What about the money? You keep saying this is going to save us so much money—”
“Excuse me, Sam, but I was speaking!” Jane looked indignant.
But Sam continued to talk, raising his voice to drown her out, “—but how are we going to pay for the windmills? Last I heard those things don’t just grow out of the ground!”
Darren held up both hands. “Let’s address one concern at a time. Wind power will save us money. We’ve obtained an energy grant that will cover most of the purchase and installment. The rest will be covered by consumers—”
“Consumers?” Sam shouted. “Isn’t that a fancy word that just means us?” He held out both hands to the crowd, who murmured their agreement.
“But,” Darren continued, “you’re going to be saving so much money by not piping in electricity from the mainland, you won’t even notice the money you’re investing in our future.”
Sam guffawed derisively. “Don’t try to talk circles around us, Darren. We’re not stupid. And we haven’t even talked about property value! The value of my property is going to tank when my ocean view is blocked by two giant ugly windmills.”
“Oh, shut up, Sam!” someone called from the back. “You’re never going to sell—you’re fifth generation!”
“I can assure you,” Darren calmly said from the front. “Your property value will not depreciate because of the windmills. That is simply not true.”
Emily leaned toward James again. “What does Darren do in real life?”
“Real life?” James repeated.
“Does he make a living running this co-op?”
“Oh, no. He’s a lawyer.”
She stifled a giggle. “We have a lawyer on the island?”
“Well, he does mostly wills and real estate stuff. He’s no Matlock.”
“Matlock?” Emily said, failing to suppress the giggle this time.
“What? I grew up in the nineties. And we only had one channel.”
Darren had given up on Sam and had moved on to Jane’s concerns, which were plentiful. She didn’t want to disrupt the fragile ecosystem of Piercehaven. She was worried about the animals, and she did mention birds, but she was also worried about the health of the island’s human citizens. Jane said that the “infrasound” from the windmills caused a whole host of health problems, like insomnia, nausea, anxiety, allergies—she even claimed infrasound caused nervous breakdowns and brain tumors. Emily looked around the room to see if the crowd seemed to be buying into any of this, and most of them did not.
As Darren tried to redirect her, another woman said, from somewhere near the front, “And now that we’ve heard from our resident conspiracy theorist, can we move on?”
Jane apparently had hawk ears because her eyes locked onto the back of the speaker’s head. “Call me what you want. There’s a well-documented case of a scientist actually thinking he saw a ghost because of the way this infrasound messed with his brain. Is that what we want?” She looked around the sanctuary dramatically. “Is that what you all want? To be tricked into seeing things that aren’t even there? I’m telling you! We don’t want to fill our island with noise, especially noise that we don’t even understand!”
“OK,” Darren broke in. “Thank you, Jane, but let’s give someone else a chance to talk.”
But she didn’t sit down. “You said you were going to address my concerns. Well, are you?”
Darren took a deep breath and put his hands on his hips. “Only to say that there is no scientific data to support your claims. Vinalhaven has had wind turbines for years, and there have been absolutely zero reports of ill health effects. In fact, no one anywhere in the world has any health problems that can be tied directly to wind power.”
Jane swore and sat down, still mumbling, “Just because we haven’t heard about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist ...”
Someone else called out, “I don’t want to hear any more about Vinalhaven. We are not Vinalhaven—”
“That is true,” Darren said. “But we can still learn from them. Not only do they save money every month, but they are actually making money from tourists coming to see the turbines!”
James groaned. “Wrong thing to say, Darren.”
“Tourists?” someone from the back screeched. “We don’t want tourists! That alone is reason to vote no!”
The fight went on, with people essentially saying the same thing over and over. Darren continued to compare Piercehaven to Vinalhaven, which only further exacerbated the conflict. Emily couldn’t understand why he didn’t drop that particular angle.
Thomas’s stepmom, Abby, stood and turned to face the majority of the crowd. “There are so many reasons to do this. We islanders don’t like change, but some change is good. This will save us money. This will make us less dependent on the mainland. We will lose power less often. Please just try to see the positive and stop giving the knee-jerk rejection we do so well here. Let’s stop trying to live in the past.” She sat down.
At first, no one even acknowledged her little speech, but then a man called out, “And just how much money are you going to get for your dead mother-in-law’s land?”
“Bojack!” Darren scolded. “Let’s keep this civil!”
“No, I’d like to know that too,” Jane said. “How much is the Payne family going to charge for this little parcel of land, which they’re selling for the island’s greater good?” Jane’s voice grew more sarcastic with each word.
“We’re not buying anything,” Darren said. “We’ve worked out a lease agreement.” This announcement caused a small uproar.
The man named Bojack hollered over the din, “So we’ve got to give the Paynes money every single year? Sounds like a good deal for them. Not such a good deal for the people who actually live on that land.”
“You don’t live on that land!” someone in a green barn coat hollered.
“Close enough!” Bojack said. Then he swore at the barn coat wearer. “The Paynes sure don’t. They’re all cozy on the waterfront, now aren’t they?” He looked at Thomas’s father. “Your mother never would have done this, Travis. You should be ashamed.”
Several people began to scold Bojack for crossing some sort of line, but he didn’t seem to notice. Even more people were egging him on.
“Enough!” Darren shouted. “This is ridiculous. We’re not getting anything accomplished. How about we all go home and cool off. Do your research. Have your discussions. We’ll come back here on Thursday, and on Thursday, we vote. No matter what.”
