37. Let sleeping pigs lie
37
LET SLEEPING PIGS LIE
HAZEL
I walked into my second town meeting feeling like I wanted to barf. This was why I didn’t get involved in things. I put things down on paper and sent them into the world, where I didn’t have to see the audience and survive their immediate feedback. Tonight, I would be putting myself out there, and not through the safe distance of the pages of a book.
Clutching my emotional support notebook to my chest, I took a look around. Unlike my first meeting, tonight Pushing Up Daisies was a packed house. With no competing viewing, all three of the funeral home’s gathering rooms were opened into one large space. Apparently everyone wanted to see how the vote for chief of police had gone. As much as Levi didn’t want the job, I could only imagine how bad things would be with Emilie the fun police becoming the actual police.
“Hey.”
I turned and found Levi behind me. It was hard to tell through the beard and the black eye, but I thought he looked a little green around the gills.
“Oh, hey. Are you ready for the results, potential future chief?”
“No. Either I’ll end up responsible for everyone’s problems or we’ll all have to live with Emilie policing how we chew in public. Both options suck.”
That was a fairly long string of words for Levi to utter.
On cue, the woman in question marched into the room with her husband. They were wearing matching Don’t Be a Chump Vote for Rump T-shirts. Garland was walking backward in front of them, snapping photos from his phone like a photographer desperate for one good smile out of a toddler before naptime.
I wrinkled my nose. “I think we both know this town is better off with you wearing the badge.”
Levi grunted.
“Hey, thanks for hanging my TV and finishing the weeding in the front yard today. You guys didn’t have to do that.” After avoiding Cam all day, I’d emerged bleary-eyed from my office with a finished presentation for the council and the outline of a pretty epic fight scene to find my house empty and my chore list significantly shorter.
Levi ducked his head. “That was mostly Cam. He’s trying to get back in your good graces.”
“Hmm.” It was the best response I could manage. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him back in my good graces, a.k.a. my bed. Well, technically we’d never actually made it to my bed.
Levi’s grin was brief but brilliant. “Keep torturing him,” he advised, before slipping away into the crowd.
I spotted Darius behind the moonshine table—this time it was raising money for little Zelda Springer’s therapy dog—and headed in his direction. A little liquid courage felt like a good idea tonight.
I got in line behind the broad shoulders of tow-truck-driving Gator Johnson.
“Well, if it isn’t Hazel Hart,” he said. “I downloaded one of your audiobooks. It ain’t half bad.”
“Really? I’d have taken you for a historical military fiction kind of guy.”
“I’m a man of many depths,” he insisted. “I enjoyed it. Heck, I had to pick up Scooter when his truck broke down, and we sat in the cab for an extra five minutes just to finish the chapter where Bethany saves the town’s oldest oak tree from the evil developer.”
A pang hit me in the center of my chest. Pride and loss were so intertwined at this point that I couldn’t tell which one was winning out.
“Thanks, Gator,” I said.
“Can’t wait to give whatever you’re working on here a listen. If you need me to voice my own character, I’m happy to step up to the microphone.”
I immediately imagined a fictional grizzled Gator sauntering toward my unwitting heroine, wiping grease on his coveralls. “Need me to lube up your jalopy?”
“I’ll keep you in mind,” I said, trying to dislodge the image from my brain.
Fortunately, the arrival of Campbell Bishop provided just the right kind of distraction. He was in jeans and an open button-down layered over a tight T-shirt. The black eye gave him a rakish, bad-boy look that I found unsettlingly attractive. The moody set of his jaw under the ever-present stubble said he’d rather be anywhere but here.
Until he spotted me.
Even my self-deprecating lack of confidence couldn’t ignore the gleam in his eyes.
I turned my back on him. My body might have been ready to let Cam get his hands on me again, but my brain was thankfully holding out. “So, Gator, I’ve always wondered how you can tow a car when it’s in park,” I said, focusing all my attention on his detailed and long-winded explanation.
I felt the weight of Cam’s gaze on me, but he didn’t approach. When I made it to the front of the moonshine line, I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and saw he’d been cornered by amateur journalist Garland.
“Hey! There’s my favorite novelist,” Darius greeted. “Ready for the meeting?”
I leaned over the makeshift bar. “How are you so chipper? You’re about to tell an entire town that we might be months away from shit-strewn streets and bankruptcy.”
“With a creative person like you on the council, I believe we’ll find a solution. If there’s one thing Story Lake knows how to do, it’s survive,” he said with enviable confidence.
I was not so confident. “Yeah. About that. Has anyone ever been booed out of a council meeting before?” I asked as I traded him money for moonshine.
“Oh, sure. But it only happens a couple times a year,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said dryly.
“I do have some good news,” he said. “I sold a house today and leased one of the empty storefronts on Main Street, and I have you to thank for it.”
Uh-oh. What had I done now? “Really? How?”
“It’s a couple from Connecticut who own a coffee shop. They got pushed out of the strip mall they were in with rent and tax hikes. The wife is a reader of yours. She’s been following your newsletter and social media. She and her husband drove down, fell in love with Story Lake, and made a cash offer on the spot.”
Great. Now I was luring readers to a town that was on the brink of ruin.
“That’s…great,” I said, feigning excitement. I was digging through my wallet for more moonshine money when Zoey arrived out of breath and flushed.
She grabbed the moonshine out of my hand and downed it. “Okay. Lacresha has the slide deck all cued up. You’re going to kill this.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” I felt vomity again.
“Time to get started,” Darius said, closing the cashbox. He ushered me toward the stage as I looked longingly over my shoulder at the moonshine.
By the time I got to the stage, the only spot left was the one between Emilie and Cam. I wasn’t sure which one I was less excited about. I slunk into the chair like it was the middle seat on a plane. Cam’s knee brushed mine under the table. The electric jolt of physical contact startled me, and I flailed away from him, catching Emilie’s forty-ounce cup of Sports Aide with my elbow.
I watched in slow-motion horror as the cup toppled, sending a lime-green tsunami gushing toward the front row occupied by Emilie’s little band of acolytes.
There was a collective gasp as the liquid made contact, taking out three Vote for Rump shirts. The irate squeals from the victims were quickly drowned out by laughter.
Cam snickered next to me. His knee stalwartly reasserted its dominance against my own.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I called after them as the women sloshed and squelched their way toward the restroom.
“You’ll pay for that,” Emilie hissed at me into her microphone.
“I have no doubt.”
“Let’s keep the threats to a minimum. We’ve got a lot of big things on the agenda tonight,” Darius said to the room. He pointed at the Story Lake Warblers, who were gathered off to the side. The group harmonized a long hum. The room slowly quieted, until I was certain everyone present could hear the thud of my heart as it tried to escape my chest.
“I call this meeting to order,” Darius said. “First things first. The election results for chief of police are in.”
That got everyone’s attention. Emilie sat up straighter in her seat and flipped through a pile of index cards. It was a victory speech. And from the looks of the stack, it was a long one. I spotted Levi in the back of the room, arms crossed, leaning against the wall, looking like he was prepared to meet a firing squad.
“Here to announce the winner of our special election are the Story Lake Warblers,” Darius said.
The Warblers pranced to the front of the room and harmonized briefly.
“For fuck’s sake,” Cam muttered under his breath.
“No citizens dallied. The votes are tallied.
We take great pride in announcing this landslide.
Meet captain of our ship, Chief Levi Bishop!”
One of the Warblers shot off a confetti popper, showering the stage in red, white, and blue paper.
The vast majority of the crowd applauded. Frank and Pep Bishop held Chief Bishop signs overhead while Laura cruised over to Levi and gave him an affectionate punch in the gut.
Jaw set and blond curls trembling with what I could only assume was barely controlled rage, Emilie leaned into her microphone. “I demand a recall under Article 52, Subsection G.”
Ace sighed and dropped the hefty charter binder onto the table.
Darius waved a hand. “No need, Dr. Ace. Article 52, Subsection G, states that an elected official can be recalled if the winning candidate knowingly causes or allows a livestock stampede through town limits for a minimum of three blocks.”
Emilie’s husband, Amos, jumped to his feet and pointed at the window. “Holy heck! There’s a pig running down the street!” he announced in scripted excitement. I was fairly certain he was reading the line off his own set of index cards.
“Hang on. Ain’t that your pig, Amos?” asked an eagle-eyed observer from somewhere in the back of the room.
“That’s definitely Rump Roast. I’d know that pig anywhere,” someone else stated.
“Look at that! He’s taking a little nap in the Dilberts’ flowers.”
Ace gave Emilie a long look. “I think we can safely say that one pig walking one hundred feet and then falling asleep does not constitute a livestock stampede.”
Emilie harrumphed and crossed her arms.
“Congratulations, Chief Bishop. We’ll schedule your swearing-in ceremony at a date convenient to you,” Darius said, all business. “Moving on to the next item on our agenda. We got the results of the sewage treatment report back, and we’ve got eight months to come up with the $200,000 to upgrade our plant.”
It was so quiet you could hear Rump Roast snoring. And then all hell broke loose.
“People, please, let’s quiet down so we can get to the solutions,” Darius said.
The questions flew fast and furious.
“How in the hell are we gonna come up with that much money?”
“What happens if we don’t upgrade?”
“Why can’t we celebrate Garden Naked Day in the park?”
“Do the people who voted for Levi have to worry about any kind of retaliation from…any other candidates?”
“What if we all just install outhouses?”
I looked at Cam. “Can’t you do something?”
“Fine. But only because I’m interested in looking heroic in front of you.” He leaned into his mic, inserted his middle finger and thumb into his mouth, and whistled shrilly. “Everybody sit the hell down and shut the hell up, or my brother’s first arrest is gonna be all y’all, and I know we don’t have the jail space for that.”
The shouting quieted to a low rumble.
“Thanks, Cam,” Darius said. “Now, I know this news comes as a shock, but your council members have been hard at work on possible solutions.”
“There are only two actual solutions. Triple the property taxes or be absorbed into Dominion,” Emilie announced. “Might as well give up now. Start packing up and get those houses on the market before our streets run brown with shit and our taxes bankrupt you!”
The yelling started again and continued over several hums from the Warblers and Darius’s requests for quiet.
Cam put his hand on the back of my chair, fingers grazing my back. He leaned behind me. “Erleen, get their attention.”
The witchy woman threw him a little salute and produced an air horn from under the table.
I had just enough time to plug my ears before Erleen rocked the room with a blast from the horn. The crowd reluctantly quieted.
“Thank you, everyone, for your passion. Now Councilperson Emilie has provided two possible options, but I’d like to hear from a few more of our council members,” Darius said, moving things along.
Erleen leaned forward, her stacked bracelets jingling in the microphone making her sound like a magical fairy. “I propose that we start applying for infrastructure grants to help cover the cost. There are bound to be one or two that we’d qualify for, and we have a professional writer in town to help us out.”
“Excellent suggestion,” Darius encouraged.
Ace raised his hand. “My recommendation is that we ask for an extension on the timeline. With more time, we can explore less costly alternative upgrades.”
“An excellent suggestion,” Darius said, ignoring Emilie’s snort of derision. “And anticipating this, I did submit the request to the county commissioners, and they said no.”
The crowd groaned.
“But I didn’t get the sense that it was a firm no,” Darius said. “I believe we can find some middle ground.”
Cam leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. “We’re tanking here, Trouble. Better speak up.”
I was going to throw up on the remainder of the front row. My heart was beating so fast I wondered if I needed medical attention. But Cam was right. I came here to start fresh and maybe instead of just watching and observing, it was time to get involved.
Pep and Frank gave me encouraging thumbs-ups. At the back of the room, Laura mimed talking with her hand. Zoey was on the aisle next to Lacresha, staring at me. She used her fingers to pull up the corners of her mouth into a smile.
The crowd began to murmur again.
Instead of driving shivers up my spine with another whisper in my ear, Cam kicked me under the table.
“Ow!”
“Now or never, Trouble.”
Old Hazel wanted to pick never . But I’d left her back in Manhattan in a too-small, too-lonely apartment.
“What if—” My microphone erupted in a high screech of feedback.
“I’ll be happy to provide free hearing assessments after tonight’s meeting,” Ace offered.
I gave the mic some space and tried again. “What if the money didn’t have to come from Story Lake residents?”
“Are you going to write a check?” Emilie snarled from the corner.
“Let her talk, Rump,” Cam said.
“What I’m saying is, Dominion has taken a lot from you…er, us over the years. What if we found a way to take something back from them?”
“Like what?” Gator wondered from the middle of a row.
“I always liked their fountain outside city hall,” said a young mom jiggling a toddler on her hip next to a glossy—hopefully empty—casket.
“Remember when they stole our pickleball mascot last year? We should sneak into town and steal all their pets!” a muscular woman in a tracksuit called from her seat in front of a display of urns.
“Okay. I was thinking more like tourists,” I said. “This is a beautiful town with a stunning lake. There’s got to be a way to lure tourists away from Dominion.”
“Steal from Dominion. Lure tourists,” Darius said out loud as he wrote down my suggestions. “I like it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Emilie squirming in her seat and turning beet red.
Lang Johnson got to her feet. “While I’d love to take back from Dominion, how exactly do you suggest we compete with them?”
“Yeah,” Scooter said, standing one row behind her. “They’ve got everything a twenty-something could want for spring break.”
Emilie’s patience evaporated. “That’s a stupid idea. Who in their right mind would want to come here instead of Dominion? That place is a year-round party town with the amenities to prove it. We’ve got jackshit compared to them. We should just throw in the towel and sell everything off to Dominion.”
“I’m glad you asked, Lang,” I said with a smile that was only a little wobbly. “Zoey, can you start the presentation?”
The first photo was of Dominion’s lake on the Fourth of July. It was a traffic jam of party boats and floating bodies. You could barely see the actual water. “Looks like a casino pool in Vegas in August, doesn’t it? Can you imagine how much pee is in that water?”
“I’d rather be swimming in urine than shit,” Emilie piped up.
“For fuck’s sake,” Cam muttered.
“Emilie, I think we’re going to have to review helpful versus unhelpful feedback. I’d love it if you didn’t make us put you in time-out in front of the whole town,” Darius said, unfazed.
“So it’s definitely gross and there’s probably pee-borne disease in their lake water. But how does that help us?” Hana from the lodge called out.
Zoey flipped to the next slide. A beautiful summery shot of our lake with a pair of kayaks and a fishing boat trawling the shoreline.
“What if we’re the opposite of Dominion?” I suggested. “What if instead of a year-round spring break party town, we go after the people who don’t want Jet Skis and shots of Jaeger?”
“Like who?” Ace asked.
“Like families with kids who still take naps. Retired couples. Introverts who would rather go to a bar with a book than scream into the ear of a stranger. People with mobility issues. People who aren’t going to be setting off fireworks at three o’clock in the morning or falling down drunk in the middle of town.”
“Autism families,” Erleen supplied.
I beamed gratefully at her. “Exactly!”
Darius pointed at us. “Yes! I was just reading about a small-town amusement park that does special silent days for visitors with sensory issues. In the first year, they more than made up for the money they would have lost from general admission on those days, and the park’s revenue was up ten percent for the year.”
Goose bumps rose on my arms. We were onto something.
“We could focus on attracting fishermen…er, people instead of the speedboat crowd,” Cam called out. “It would keep the lake quieter and cleaner.”
“And the more people we tempt into our quiet little town, the more money they’ll spend here, and the more likely they’ll be to come back,” I said with enthusiasm. “Think about it. We’ve got this pristine lake, a gorgeous lodge, and the cutest downtown I’ve ever seen. And I write small-town romance, so that’s saying something.”
“But what about all the empty storefronts and the for-sale signs?” someone in the back asked.
“We do give off ghost town vibes,” Laura agreed reluctantly.
I pointed to Zoey, who advanced to the next slide.
“What’s Summer Fest?” Kitty Suarez asked, looking up from the beanie she was knitting.
“It’s basically like a rebranding. We’re not Dominion’s nerdy little sister with nothing to offer. We’re the escape from the chaos of real life. We kick it off with some kind of event or festival for Labor Day,” I said. “We could do a parade or a kayak race, pie-baking contest. We hide all the for-sale signs just for the day. We make it look like we’re a thriving small town that anyone would want to be a part of.”
“Isn’t that a little underhanded?” Gator demanded.
“Well, yeah, probably,” I admitted.
“I’m in!” he crowed.
“Can we have a petting zoo?” a toothless child with curly black puff tails asked from her dad’s shoulders.
“I like that idea,” I told her.
“A 5K with proceeds benefiting the sewage treatment project,” Ace suggested. Darius’s cross-country pals brightened at that.
“Wish it was a sexier cause,” Erleen said. “Run for Poop doesn’t really have a ring to it.”
“Trust me, if anyone can make sewage sexy, it’s Hazel Hart,” Pep yelled, pointing at me. A warm roll of laughter rolled through the room.
I felt my cheeks flush red. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”
“Maybe we could set up vendors in the park on the square? Oh! And food trucks on Main Street.”
“The lodge is happy to host a bonfire and s’mores party,” Billie volunteered, looking at Hana.
An event for everyone. A place where everyone belonged. I thought of the readers on the terrace from different backgrounds and different seasons of life. It was like we were taking a story and making it real. Together.
Cam leaned back in his chair and quirked an eyebrow at me. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was impressed.
I noticed Emilie getting out her phone and typing furiously. A second later, her husband opened his phone and frowned. He stood up. “Concerned citizen here. How do you propose we make $200,000 off one poorly executed, half-assed day of lame community activities?” he read.
“We don’t have to make $200,000 by Labor Day, Amos,” I said. “But we have to start somewhere. This is a multipronged approach with the end goal of saving Story Lake. We start by requesting an extension again, applying for grants, and finding ways to bring more revenue into the town. But we need everyone’s help to do this. Otherwise we will be absorbed into Dominion, and I have it on good authority that they plan to turn part of Story Lake into a golf course.”
There was a general gasp from the attendees.
“I like where this is going,” Darius said. “But Labor Day is only a week away. Can we pull off something like this that quickly?”
“Why don’t you ask our parks and rec chair?” Cam suggested.
They all turned to me.
“Oh, boy.”
Garland popped up at my feet and fired off several shots from his phone with the flash still on.
Blinking away the bright blobs in front of my eyes, I felt the panic creep back in. This was a lot of work on top of the deadline I was scrambling to meet and the construction zone of a house I was living in. Who was I to spearhead a campaign to save an entire town? I ate deli meat straight out of the packet for lunch most days.
“We’ll be looking for a Summer Fest co-chair and volunteers to form a committee,” Darius said.
I blinked as several hands shot into the air.
“I’ll co-chair,” Cam said.
I very nearly fell out of my chair when I turned in my seat to stare at him.
“By the way,” he said, addressing the crowd. “Hazel and I are dating.”