Mike McCormack - Solar Bones

how long was this going to go on

they wanted to know, when would the contamination be traced so that the city might get back to its proper business

how long more

the question directed to a spokesman from City Hall who came out to address the crowd and assure them that the investigation of the city’s water supply was ongoing with samples from several locations showing that the contamination was general throughout the supply lake so that it did not appear to be sourced from one particular spot and that in the next few days the air force would begin conducting overflights of the whole lake and those rivers which fed into it in the hope that a detailed aerial survey would reveal dump sites or sewage spillages in or around the lake itself or in the wider area, all this to be done before the new filtration system would be installed, the new system which was, at this very moment, in the process of being shipped from Canada and which would be installed in the city’s purifying plant as soon as it arrived, within the next month or so, six weeks tops, a triple filtration system — barrier, chemical and ultraviolet light — which would exceed comfortably all EU health and safety standards so that the citizenry could be assured that once this present crisis was cleared up — as it would assuredly be — this city’s water supply would exceed the highest standards of purity but until then the investigation was ongoing and that was all he could say at the moment so no, he could not put a timeframe on how long more the city could expect to have to boil its water, it would be irresponsible of him to say whether it would be days or weeks or months, he could not say, he would only be guessing if he did give a time, days or weeks or whatever, but a lot would depend on the visual survey of the following week, that was as much as he could say, except to thank the citizens for their patience and forbearance and for having shown such community spirit in the face of adversity, a compliment which provoked sullen murmuring from the crowd which had now spread across the car park and into the municipal gardens and green space beyond, some of whom had already taken up positions on the surrounding walls with placards and banners held aloft on this wet spring day with its sifted light which lent itself perfectly to the frustrated mood of the gathering which the spokesman seemed to interpret as something else because, apparently emboldened by the sound of his own voice carrying in such a broad, public space, he went on to assure them one final time that everything possible was being done — city engineers were working around the clock to get on top of the problem and that furthermore — here, he wanted to enter a personal note — as a native of this city himself

born and bred

seed, breed and generation, he

understood and felt keenly the distress this health hazard was causing its citizens, most especially those families with young children or elderly relatives in their care, he was especially mindful of these people’s plight and he could assure them that no one wanted a swifter resolution to this crisis than he did and this was all being borne in mind by the authorities and this was a masterful touch, the quiet way with which this spokesman made such soulful play of a shared history and heritage, assuring them that he knew their pain and was with them in their anxiety and distress, his emollient words working their charm so smoothly and effectively that, for a moment, the entire crowd was disarmed and silent, shameful almost of their protest and at a loss as to what they might do next, possibly appalled also at their own willingness to be so easily placated but unable to do anything about it until, at the precise moment when the righteous anger of the crowd might have dissipated into thin air

a small woman raised her voice and drew attention with her observation that what angered the populace was not that this crisis was some technical or environmental failing or that it was yet another instance of incompetence or wilful disregard on the part of the authorities — no, this was not what angered her, nor indeed was it news to any of those gathered here — what angered her was that the covenant of care struck between the people and the city authorities was now broken and that a reservoir of public trust and goodwill had finally been squandered, leaving the electorate and taxpayers feeling foolish and implicated, since they themselves had placed these people in power and therefore shared some responsibility for the disaster and this woman herself — a middle-aged, well-turned-out lady who should, given the mild weather, more likely than not have been bedding in summer plants in her suburban garden — now told the story of how her seventeen-year-old son had missed so much school in the last ten days through constant bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea that if it went on much longer he was likely to be so far behind in his studies there would be no point in sitting his Leaving Cert and he would therefore, in all probability, have to repeat the entire academic year so, in a bold thrust, the lady asked rhetorically, would the city council be compensating him in some way for this wasted year which would leave him behind while he watched all his friends move on with their lives, a powerful story, overstated but deft in getting the crowd to focus its accusative energies around the image of this seventeen-year-old boy who no doubt was at home at this very hour, still in bed in the middle of the afternoon, sick or otherwise, but who would likely have been embarrassed to know how quickly his martyred circumstances had become the rallying point for such a public protest because, how ever faceless he may have been at that particular moment, it did not prevent his plight becoming the living example of how this civic hazard disrupted a person’s life and whether this crisis was sourced in incompetence or, as some suspected, a culture of appeasement within City Hall which, for the longest time, had failed to police the conduct of those sectional interests — farmers and developers, principally — who might be directly responsible and which held such powerful electoral clout, whatever the cause of this breakdown it amounted to the same thing — an important clause in the contract between the citizen and the local authority had been broken and every person standing in the car park felt this, each with their own specific sense of betrayal not to mention that feeling of ridicule which seemed to exploit something gullible in their political faith, telling them that it was misplaced, that it was badly used or that it was inevitably bound to culminate in some fiasco like this, as much as to say

what did you expect

electing such clowns to public office

so that there was now a feeling among all those standing in the car park that, as the electorate, they were somehow complicit in this disaster whereby water, the very stuff of life itself, was now contaminated by way of whatever electoral foolishness they had wittingly or otherwise participated in, a consideration that had a sapping effect on the crowd which now stood bewildered by its own feelings and responsibilities, all its energy gone and vehemence drained, standing there in that rainy car park so that, after a few moments when it became obvious that no one had anything else to add, the crowd began to break up and drift away, but not before some photographs were taken which were used the following day to illustrate those front page articles which covered the event in all the city’s papers, articles illustrated with pictures of

these people wrapped up in caps and coats beneath placards held in gloved hands, this civic drama which had at its core a bland aggregate of ordinary people who felt themselves anxious and embarrassed by their circumstances and the political choices they had made and