Newport, Rhode Island
Veterans Day
November 11, 2017
Suzanne Murphy was the Chief Chemist at the Newport Water Department located just off Connell Highway opposite a strip mall. Newport boomed after the US Navy left the town in the 1970s and had become a haven for tourists attracted to the town's mix of traditional New England and yuppie-smart. Sure there was a Starbucks down on cobble-stoned Thames Street, but there was also a marine hardware store where you could buy mooring line and bottom paint as well as the popular white-soled boat shoes. What bothered the locals were the tourists who jammed the narrow streets and started spreading out to the few good restaurants in town. Newport had a reputation for bad restaurants. Most of the waiters were hung-over drunks recruited that morning. But nothing could compete with the town's history and feel. The ocean made it different.
Bill Schmidt sat back in his swivel chair and relaxed. Everything was green on the gauge board in front of him, and he mentally started the list of necessities for tomorrow's trip out on the bay on his buddy's boat. He expected a good day of fishing. It was getting late in the season for striped bass but the blues still chased the bait fish in the Bay and they could always do some bottom-fishing off Fort Adams. The weather was going to be perfect... chilly, 4-6 knots of wind out of the south and waves of less than one foot. He made a note to check the tide tables when he got home. Six more hours to go in his shift, and he'd be heading out the door. Bill pulled a magazine from the middle of the stack which filled the bottom desk drawer...the glossy pictures had nothing to do with game fish but reminded him of the huge collection of raunchy magazines from the Chiefs' Quarters of USS Spruance (DD-963) where he served as Chief Engineman.
The main gate light briefly flickered, but it often did when the wind came off the Bay. Cuts in the maintenance and operations funding led to a number of problems recently, and the team started to cut corners. Suzanne had done a good job holding on to the people assigned to the Water Department. But with everything else being challenged by the budget, Bill knew the people were next to go. A bank of monitors showed an unbroken view of the perimeter fence and main gate. Bill returned to the magazine wondering if what he saw was the work of a plastic surgeon who had gotten a little heavy-handed with the silicone.
Schmidt was startled and nearly fell out of his chair when the control room door opened. He still had a shocked look on his face and a single red hole in his forehead when Dan Lewis came in to take over the next morning.
Sometime that night, a small tank truck backed up to the aeration beds. Two men uncoiled a rigid rubber hose and pulled it over to the first pool. One man opened the valve and let the tank empty quietly with gravity. Even in the darkness, the two men could see the cloudy liquid eagerly spread across the first bay. The bacteria would be carried through the miles of pipes connecting Aquidneck Island's water supply. After discharging their cargo, the two men left by the front gate and drove through Middletown into the night.