1
“Remind me again why I said I’d do this?” I whispered to Lisbeth, who knew me better than almost anyone in the world, except maybe my parents. I kept my voice down because we were waiting in the wings of the high school’s stage, watching the good citizens of Asheboro, Maryland, come in and find seats, so they could listen to me telling them how I thought we could transform the sleepy town into a place that tourists and historians would want to visit—and leave some of their cash behind. If that didn’t work, the town would probably shrivel up and blow away, and I’d get the blame.
“Because you’re the best person for the job,” Lisbeth whispered. I knew she had my back, because she was the one who had called me and begged me to come help the town, and I’d been foolish enough to say yes. She was also standing behind me so that I couldn’t turn and run away.
“You know I hate talking to crowds of people,” I whined. She’d seen me botch my one stab at taking part in our high school debate team, in this same auditorium. Come to think of it, that was the last time I’d spoken to more than a dozen people at one time. I’d forgotten how terrifying it could be.
I checked my watch: ten of eight. Still time for even more people to drift in, ready to throw rotten tomatoes at me. This year there was a bumper crop of ripe tomatoes.
This was a special event for Asheboro, maybe even unique. While town meetings happened occasionally, seldom in my memory had there been one that affected the future of the town and all its residents. It sounded melodramatic to put it that way, but unfortunately it was true: if I couldn’t help the townspeople find a new source of revenues for this struggling town, it was doomed. I knew I couldn’t use dramatic words like doomed because people probably wouldn’t believe me, but somehow I had to get them to believe that things in Asheboro really were that serious. If I could.
Over the last month or so I’d come up with a general proposal, but there were still a lot of holes in it, the largest ones in the budget. I could probably spin a good story about what could be done to transform the place, but I couldn’t begin to tell them how to pay for it. The fact that a major storm had swept through recently and damaged a lot of the buildings along the main street, and then the bank manager had embezzled most of what little cash the town still had, didn’t make my job any easier.
Lisbeth tugged at my jacket. “You might as well get started. A lot of these people have kids at home and will want to get back. Just tell them the truth, and keep it simple. Now, go!” She gave me a gentle push toward the stage.
Since I couldn’t recall ever attending a town meeting here, although in my own defense I’d left for college and never looked back, I had no idea what kind of reception to expect. Stony silence would not have been my first choice. But here I was, and I had to move forward.
“Thank you all for coming tonight. I know you’ve got busy lives, so I’ll keep this short and to the point.” I swallowed as many pairs of eyes stared blankly. “If you’ve lived here for any length of time, you may remember me. I’m Kate Hamilton, and I grew up and went to high school here. Until about three years ago my parents lived in the same house they always had, before they moved to Florida.” The crowd still looked like it were made up of zombies. “All right, how many people in this room have lived here for most of their lives?” A few hands went up. “Twenty years?” A couple of dozen hands. “Ten years?” About the same number—which was telling me something: nobody seemed to have any reason to move to Asheboro, and that had been true for a while.
“Let me be honest with you. When I finished high school, all I wanted was to get out of town.” Several people laughed at that. “I went to college, and then I found jobs in other places. I never planned to come back, especially after my folks left. So why am I here now?” I waited for a response that never came.
I pushed on. “Because a very good friend of mine, who I’ve known since high school here—Lisbeth Scott—came to me to tell me that the town was broke and things weren’t going to get any better unless something big happened. And she told me flat out that the town was desperate, and I was the only person she could think of who could help. And here I am.”
Finally someone spoke. “Why’d she think that?” said a guy near the back of the room.
“You’ll have to ask her that, because I’m still wondering. Look, how many of you know what kind of shape this town is in?”
“Physically? Financially?” the same guy said.
“Physically, all you have to do is walk down the main street. It looks shabby, tired, like it got left behind while the world moved on.”
“Why is that?” someone else asked.
“Please, don’t throw things at me. I grew up here, so I can say what I see and what I believe. This is and always has been a good town, with good people living in it. But the only industry was the shovel factory, and that closed long before most of us were born, and nothing came along to replace it. We’re too far from Baltimore to make it an easy commute. The train line passed us by a century ago. There was never any kind of important battle or big historical event here. It’s pretty and peaceful and quiet, but you can’t pay the bills or send your kids to college on that. So people have left, and nobody’s replaced them. And Asheboro has just drifted along the way it always did, until very recently.”
I scanned the crowd to see if I had their attention. At least no one had gone to sleep yet.
I went on, “And then the town council found some gumption and decided to buy the Barton estate and make something out of it. Which took all the money you had. I applaud the courage and the hope it took to do that, but it’s not enough to have a house, no matter how gorgeous, without any other reason to come to this town. So you people really have only one shot at thinking outside the box and saving the town.”
“And that’s where you came in?” a middle-aged woman closer to the front spoke. “Why are you qualified to do anything about this mess?”
I focused on her, because it was a valid question. “I don’t claim to be an expert, in city planning or in finance. The biggest project I’ve ever managed was a Baltimore hotel, and one in Philadelphia before that. But nobody else seems to have stepped up, and all I’ve agreed to was to try to come up with a plan that might work. And in case you’re worried, I’m not getting paid for this. I just don’t want to see the town die.”
“And you think you have some ideas to fix this?”
“Maybe. But it’s going to take some cooperation from the people in this town, particularly those who have a business in the center of town.”
“And money? Higher taxes?”
“I know there’s no money, and how could anybody raise taxes here when salaries and revenues are in the tank? I may be inexperienced, but I’m not naïve. Just hear me out. You don’t have to vote on it or support it in any other way, at least not yet. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. But let me say one thing: to make this work, you all have to commit to it and work together. If you can’t do that, it’s over.”
I could see that the natives were getting restless. So much for the big buildup. Time to get my Big Idea out there and let it sink or swim.
Copyright © 2019 by Sheila Connolly
