Free To Helen Back by Susan McBride Page B

comrades.
    But her watch showed a quarter to twelve already, and so far she and Dot were the only ones who’d appeared.
    “To think someone could sell all of this for mere money,” she said, and waved a callused hand at the copse of trees below the craggy bluffs. She screwed up her face, fighting the sudden urge to spit. “It makes me mad as hell, Dotty. Mad as hell.”
    “Me, too,” Dot chirruped from beside her as they pulled up the Jeep’s soft cover and retrieved two of the protest signs they’d brought.
    Handmade on poster board and stapled onto two-by-fours, Ida’s said bluntly: Murderers! Though slightly tamer by comparison, Dot’s was no less spirited. Wet ’n’ Woolly, she’d written, Nature’s Bully!
    Several additional signs lay in the back of the car, brought along for any of their cohorts who arrived unprepared. Only, it appeared those would go unused.
    Ida glanced at her battered watch.
    Eight minutes till noon.
    She joined Dot in leaning against the hood of the Jeep, watching as a dusty pickup or car swept past them in a whoosh of dust and wind, headed up the highway toward Grafton.
    “I’ll be honest with you, Dot,” Ida said, wrinkling her nose as grit from the air settled down on them. “I had a hard time keeping my emotions in check this morning.” The white featherlike seeds from cottonwoods blew into her face and stuck in her hair. She didn’t bother to brush them out. “It was all I could do not to stand up and cheer during that eulogy of Fister’s.”
    “Ida, watch what you say!” Dot warned her, wide eyes blinking as she glanced around them and then heavenward. “It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.”
    Ida snorted. “And why shouldn’t I?” she asked. “I never spoke well of him when he was alive. I’d be a hypocrite to do it now.”
    “Goodness, but that’s awfully strong talk,” Dot responded, and fanned at her flushed cheeks with a liver-spotted hand. She frowned. “Though it’s true, I guess, that no one much liked the man except his second wife.”
    “Two of a kind, I’d say,” Ida remarked. A cottony tuft stuck to her eyelash, and she promptly plucked it off. “She’s rotten, too, and no more concerned about the wildlife than he was. I can’t help but think it would’ve saved us a great deal of trouble if she’d joined him on his trip to Hades—”
    “Ida!” Dot stopped her from going further. “Don’t judge the poor woman too harshly,” her friend said gently. “It’s not her fault the contract’s already been signed. The deal has been struck, and there’s no going back.”
    Ida scowled. “That might be true as far as the law’s concerned, but it certainly won’t stop me from trying to put a halt to this destruction. I’ll do whatever I have to, no matter how much blood I get on my hands.”
    “Ida!” Dot blanched.
    “Figuratively, of course,” she said, and Dot nodded.
    Though Ida knew she’d do whatever it took to stop the construction of Wet ’n’ Woolly. She’d grown up around here, had been raised on a farm in Jerseyville and moved to River Bend when she graduated from Illinois Agricultural.
    She’d watched as so-called civilization had encroached on the area. Pollution poisoned the air, pumped out of smokestacks from electrical and industrial plants on either side of the river. She ground her teeth, thinking of the waste dumped into the Mississippi waters, lending new meaning to its label as “muddy.” It was surely brown as chocolate milk, but hardly safe to drink. “Don’t eat the catfish either,” she murmured, remembering when it wasn’t toxic to do so. Well, she wouldn’t let them ruin this valley so near to her home. She wouldn’t let them destroy the habitat of countless owl, deer, and rabbit.
    “After all,” she said aloud, “the animals can’t speak for themselves, so someone must.”
    “I’m with you, don’t forget.” Dot’s round face beamed up.
    Ida glanced at her sideways. “No, I doubt if