My head was spinning by the time Geneva’s name was finally called and she walked calmly to the podium. I could feel Gina’s laser focus from across the room as Geneva talked about the community of Fairhope and the fact that the town and its residents were already struggling to recover from the effects of multiple storms. “And we in Fairhope are no strangers to the experience of living next door to borrow pits. In the past, many of us have lived with trucks rumbling in and out at all hours, and dust and fumes, as well as the noise of draglines and dredging equipment endlessly removing sand and fill dirt so that it can be used to satisfy the needs of others. But I would like to tell you that in Fairhope, we love our community. We don’t want it to be pillaged.” She punctuated with a nod and a pause, and in the room, murmurs of agreement went up.
Audience members shifted forward in their seats as Geneva continued. “My mother-in-law is eighty-seven years old. She has lived in Fairhope all her life. Her greatest joy at this advanced age is sitting on her screened porch with her coffee and watching her birds. If the proposed property, the Benoit estate, is used as has been suggested, she will have a mining operation less than thirty yards from her back door. Our daughter’s house is next to hers, on property that has been in our family for over one hundred years. If these pits go in, trucks and equipment will be rolling past, literally feet from where her children play. Now I ask you, close your eyes for a minute and picture that it’s your mother, your daughter, your grandchildren, your house. Fairhope is a community, a place where fishermen have raised their families since before the Civil War. Like every community, it has flaws, but it is our community.”
Geneva glanced down at the podium as the warning light went on. “I know my time is almost up, and I know there are others who wish to speak to this issue, so I’m going to stop here and trust that you on the commissioners’ court will do what is just and fair. If other towns need sand or fill or retention sites for storm water, let them truck in their fill dirt or find the space in their own communities. We should not, because we are a small community tucked back in the maritime woods, be railroaded by moneyed interests seeking to condemn a historic property. I’d like to request that, before any digging can take place in Fairhope, a public hearing be held to discuss a moratorium on borrow pits of any kind until the community can look at zoning changes to prevent such activity in the future.”
Cheers erupted around the room as she left the podium and walked down the aisle. Patting my shoulder, she leaned close to me. “Go get ’em, tiger. You tell them what Iola would think of them dozing her house under and digging a hole in her woods.”
“The next person I have is Tandi Reese.” The man with the clipboard looked expectantly toward the gallery, and every eye in the room turned my way as I stood. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. The aisle seemed impossibly long, like the distance to Iola’s house in my dream, when my legs wouldn’t carry me. The room, the voices, the people shifting forward in their chairs, Paul passing the poster boards down the row, the commissioners shuffling papers on the dais, the air conditioner kicking on overhead . . .
Everything seemed far away. As I set the notebook on the podium, opened it, shuffled the pages, there was a strange silence in my mind. Please help me do this, I whispered into it. Please help me be good enough.
“My name is . . .” My voice cracked and the microphone squealed, getting feedback from somewhere. In the periphery of my vision, Gina scoffed, pushing off the wall and tossing her hair, then slipping her hand over Ross’s bicep and whispering something in his ear.
The green light on the podium blinked on, and I started again. “My name is Tandi Reese. I live in the cottage at Benoit House in Fairhope.” The voice seemed to come from outside me, but it was strong and clear. I heard the words as if they were someone else’s. “I’ve been caring for the place since the death of Iola Anne Poole, the longtime owner of the property.”
Gina coughed and one of the commissioners glanced her way. I straightened my shoulders and went on. For once, I would not let my sister or anyone beat me down. I wasn’t that little girl hiding behind the sofa anymore, trying to keep myself hidden to survive. I was a woman ready to finally make her own life.
“I’m just across the salt meadow and through the woods from Bink’s store. The back portion of the Benoit estate is the property in question for the borrow pits, and the historic home under threat of condemnation lies directly west of my cottage. My grandfather was an insurance adjuster who many times assessed storm damage to homes here on the Outer Banks, and my father ran his own construction company for years. I often helped with his jobs as I was growing up, and I recently completed repairs to water-damaged areas of Sandy’s Seashell Shop, so I do know a bit about storm damage and structural renovation.”
Gina sighed loudly, and my thoughts jumped.
Taking a breath, I focused on the notebook again. Somewhere on the dais, a pencil scratched against a piece of paper. Who was writing and what?
I closed my eyes, opened them again. “Benoit House can be saved. It deserves to be saved. Many of you have heard of the house. It’s one of a few original Victorian-style homes remaining on Hatteras. If you know the Outer Banks well, you probably know of it. Before you consider condemning Benoit House, you should understand what you will really be tearing down.”
“That house is a wreck, and she knows it is!” Gina moved from the wall, stepping toward the podium. “She’s been trying to keep people out so they won’t see that, but I was inside the place just the other day, and there were buckets full of water everywhere, the ceilings are falling in upstairs, and —”
“Sit down!” someone yelled from the gallery.
The judge hammered his gavel, attempting to bring order to the room. “Ma’am, you have not been recognized by this court.” He pointed the gavel at Gina. “If you would like to speak, you may raise your hand when we ask if there are any more comments, and at that time you will be recognized by the court; however, if there are any further outbursts, I will ask that you be forcibly removed from the room.”
Gina’s nostrils flared and she bolted her arms, sulking against Ross.
At the dais, the commissioners leaned away cautiously, now fully sensing what a contentious issue we were dealing with. Where a moment ago they had seemed receptive, now they appeared reserved, careful.
I fumbled through my notes, trying to find my place again. How much time had gone by? How much did I have left?
A page of information about the current damage to Benoit House and the details of its historic value drifted to the floor. I didn’t retrieve it.
“I’d like to read something to you,” I said instead, taking one of Iola’s letters from the side pocket of the notebook. “This was written by the owner of the house, Iola Anne Poole, who, though it was never widely known, was a blood relation of Girard Benoit. She was the child of his eldest son and a housekeeper of Creole heritage. Over the course of her life, she not only cared for the members of the Benoit family, but she served this country in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in World War II. She traveled the world, yet this island was the place closest to her heart. She documented her life in letters that she kept in boxes. They were her prayer boxes —her letters to God —but they should speak to all of us.”
Closing the notebook, I unfolded the letter. “She wrote this just after the famous Ash Wednesday storm lashed the eastern coast for three days in 1962. The nor’easter came without warning on the night of March 7, and by the time it was over, it had killed forty people on the Eastern Seaboard and injured over a thousand. At that time, Iola was struggling to care for her biological grandfather, Girard Benoit, who was bedridden and stricken with dementia. She had also suffered the recent loss of Isabelle, who by blood relation was her aunt, but whom she loved as a sister. Here is what she wrote in the aftermath of that terrible storm:
“Homes lie toppled in the sea. Power poles lean against wires that hang twisted like thread. Boats sit upended and piled on shore. The road has been lifted and broken. The storm has cut an inlet through the island between Buxton and Avon, separating the south from the north. It seems as though our lives here will never be whole again. There is too much devastation to face.
“Yet we of this island slowly come forth from the wreckage. There is no other way for us, Father.
“Dawn comes after the darkness, and with it the promise that what has been torn by the sea is not lost. All of life is breaking and mending, clipping and stitching, gathering tatters and sewing seams. All of life is quilted from the scraps of what once was and is no more —the places we have been, the memories we have made, the people we have known, that which has been long loved but has grown threadbare over time and can be worn no longer. We keep only pieces. All colors, all shapes, all sizes.
“All waiting to be stitched into the pattern only you can see.
“In the quiet after the storm, I hear you whisper, ‘Daughter, do not linger where you are. Take up your needle and your thread, and go see to the mending. . . .’”