Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

August C. Makelder

Chairman of Palm County

Bulkhead Line Authority

C. L. Arletter, Clerk of

Palm County Bulkhead Line Authority

By: J. Z. Winslow, Deputy Clerk

Publish: July 12, 1961

The morning papers for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were packed with ever more glowing accounts of the glorious future which Palmland Development was making possible for each and every resident of Palm County, present and future. At midmorning on Friday, Kat Hubble went across the street with Jimmy Wing for her coffee break.

“I am so damn mad!” she said.

“I’d say you look pretty mad too.”

“Wait till we sit down, Jimmy, and I’ll tell you and I wish I had an hour instead of ten minutes.”

After they had ordered, she leaned across the small table toward Jimmy and said, “You’ve got to do something about that horrible newspaper!”

“Like what?”

“Tom has phoned Mr. Borklund and Ben Killian and he can’t get any satisfaction at all. He has carbons of sixteen very good letters to the editor, all opposed to the bay fill, and they haven’t published a single one of them. Mr. Borklund says they’re getting so much mail they can only print a representative selection. Hah! Like this morning’s paper. Five in favor and one opposed, and the one that opposes the fill is from somebody I never heard of, who sounds totally insane. And another thing. Mr. Borklund won’t handle a perfectly legitimate news item. They did publish our names and addresses to make it easier for everybody. Do you know, we’re getting absolutely foul phone calls, all of us? Day and night. The phone company can’t do anything about it. The sheriff won’t do anything about it. Our telephone campaign has absolutely collapsed! The people we call up say hideous things. Most of our workers have quit. We can’t keep a sticker on a car five minutes before somebody rips it off. We can’t get anybody to put our posters up, and when we do, they get all ripped and scribbled. Darn it all, Jimmy, this is outright, horrible persecution, and everybody pretends it just isn’t happening.”

“Whoa now, Kat. Slow down a minute. Who phones you?”

“Women who yell. Sometimes men who whisper. That’s worse, I guess. If you want to phone me, Jimmy, let it ring once and then hang up and dial again immediately. That’s what I’m telling my friends. And that’s the way we get in touch with each other. Otherwise I don’t answer. And I don’t dare let the children answer any more.”

“What do these people say?”

“Filth, Jimmy. Absolute filth. They call me a dirty Communist slut and so forth. A lot of cars went by my house last night, blowing their horns. This morning there was garbage all over my lawn. Same thing at Jackie’s house and Doris Rowell’s, Tom’s, everybody’s. I’ll be damned if anybody is going to intimidate me, but they certainly are making life unpleasant. Yesterday and this morning it’s spread to the bank. This afternoon they’re moving me to the Trust Department until this is all over. What’s happening to people, Jimmy?”

“They’ve gotten worked up.”

“Somebody has organized all the nutty people in the county.”

“I’ll see if I can get the county road patrol to check your house at night, Kat.”

“I don’t want that. I want some publicity about what’s happening to us. Don’t you see, they’re overdoing it. And if all the decent people who are in favor of the fill could understand what’s happening, it might turn them against it. Another thing, Jimmy. Golly, I wish I had more time. Tom Jennings talked to old Mr. Hotchkiss. He has fifteen hundred acres on Grassy Bay, on the mainland, just north of Turk’s Pass.”

“I know where it is.”

“He’s got two thousand feet of bay front, and rather than see Grassy Bay ruined, he’ll sell the whole plot to Palmland for twelve hundred dollars an acre. That’s way under going prices. They could dig canals into it and make a big development out of it without taking over any public lands.”

“He’s offered it to Palmland?”

“Yes. And they’re not interested. They’d rather steal the land. But the important thing is to get it into the paper, and we can’t even do that, so the people will know there was an alternative. Can you try to get it in, Jimmy? Can you get some of this other stuff in? Honestly, every day I read all that guff in the paper with your name on it and it makes me sick.”

“You don’t get to see the things I’ve tried to slip in.”

“Of course not.”

“I have to face certain facts of life, Kat. I can refuse to keep writing up the big stream of flack stuff Costex keeps throwing at us. So somebody else writes it. And maybe they fire me. Then I’m in a position where I can do no good at all.”

“Which seems to be exactly where you are right now.”

“Not because I want to be.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Please try to do something. I promised Tom I’d beg you.” She scowled at her watch. “Thirty seconds more.” She spooned ice into her coffee. “Oh, by the way, who was the gorgeous chick you were seen with in Tampa the other morning? Heavens, Jimmy! You don’t have to look that guilty!”

“Just one of those celebrities we newspaper types interview. Who reported me?”

“A girl coming back from vacation. She said it was a showbusiness type in a wrinkled orange dress and platinum hair, about six foot seven. Who was she?”

“I was just doing a favor for a friend, putting her on a plane.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “You act as if you think I’m being jealous. Good Lord, Jimmy! If it’s none of my business, you’ve gotten your point across.”

“But I was just...”

She jumped up. “I do have to run, dear. Try to help us, please.”

Jimmy watched through the drugstore window as she hurried back to the bank, a redheaded woman, slender, agile and intense, a woman with the marks of life and marriage and loss in her face, a woman who, in comparison with the vivid Miss Prindergast, would look subdued, understated. But he knew he could never want anyone as badly as he wanted her.

He knew that in order to get a story into the paper he would have to make some special preparations. He visited Sheriff Wade Illigan. Using Kat’s system, he phoned Jackie Halley, Tom Jennings and Major Lipe. Then he phoned Elmo Bliss at his office, told Elmo what he planned to do, and suggested that Elmo phone Burt Lesser, and then Ben Killian. Ben, he assumed, would speak to J. J. Borklund. After a fifteen-minute wait he phoned Burt Lesser, saying that he’d heard Burt had a statement to make. When Burt made it, Jimmy heard some of his own words repeated back to him. He wrote it up with great care:

“Mr. Burton Lesser, speaking as President of the Palmland Development Company and in behalf of the other partners in that enterprise, has expressed concern about the harassment being inflicted upon the officers and directors of Save Our Bays, Inc., a group actively opposing any change in the bulkhead line in the Grassy Bay area.

“Mr. Lesser stated to a Record-Journal reporter that support of the Palmland Isles Project is so overwhelming, the public hearing should result in a unanimously favorable vote. He said he and his associates are grateful for the support of every public-spirited citizen of Palm County, but deplore the activities of those who have been expressing their attitude by telephoning harassment of Save Our Bays members, and miscellaneous acts of vandalism committed on and around the private property of those members. He said that he has suggested to Sheriff Illigan that County Police protection be given the executive members of S.O.B., Inc., and the vandals be vigorously prosecuted if apprehended.