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OUTFLOW PIPE

Fog sifted through the wetlands. Spartina grass was still faint in gray mist. A lone man, gray wisps showing from under his blue baseball cap, black rubber boots protecting his feet, picked his way across the edge of the mud flats, stopped, looked out at the fog, wondered at the feathery grasses, the millions of droplets suspended in the air. He took out a small sketch pad, flipped to a clean page, pulled a pencil out of a case, looked up at the cord grass and drew. A black duck rose, sped out into the mist. He dropped his pencil and when he bent down to pick it up he saw the iridescent tint of oil on the ground. He squatted down for a closer look, put his pad and pencil into his coat pocket, and followed the plume through the Phragmites towering over him to some rocks holding an outflow pipe from the road above. He grabbed stones, mud, grass and shoved them into the pipe, then climbed up to the road and pushed bits of wood, sand, leaves, stones into it from the street side. He jammed them in, kicked them with his boot until he was satisfied that they were in good and tight.

A few days later it rained hard, very hard. The streets were awash. A large pond formed and backed up onto lawns, swimming pools, basements. Tom and Mary, recent empty nesters, who lived closest to the water complained about the oil slick on the water that had collected in their basement. The Walmarks who lived across the street from them and had three adorable little girls, said there was an oil slick with dog shit floating in their swimming pool. Mrs. Glenrich, known as the merry widow, lived one house up the street and said there was a funny chemical smell to the water collected on their lawn. The Morgans and the Friedmans called the highway department, while the Espositos called the Department of Environmental Control. The DEC arrived two days later. Two men in protective gear launched a small boat and made their way to the bottom of the street. Two others had clambered down to the beach and were investigating the pipe. There was a good deal of talk back and forth over walkie-talkies about how to open the pipe and whether all the polluted effluent could be safely dumped into the wetlands. Betty Walmark, who overheard  them, shrieked, how could they be so concerned about the wetlands when there was dog shit in her swimming pool and an oil  slick in the neighbor’s basement. The bald guy from the DEC told her to relax, that they were working on a solution, but since the road belonged to the town, it was really their problem. Fred Walmark shook his fist and shouted that they’d all be hearing from his lawyer.

Meanwhile, Kurt Rasmussen, who’d stuffed up the pipe and who lived up the street, hung around watching all the commotion and listening to the demands for action. When he heard the fellow from the DEC tell people that they couldn’t just let all that effluent keep flowing into the wetlands and that he’d tell the town to build a recharge basin ASAP, Kurt smiled even though he knew it could be years.