The community center had the familiar smell of old carpet and coffee that had been warming too long. Thirty residents occupied folding chairs beneath fluorescent lights, some still wearing work uniforms and some carrying children too young to understand why an evening meeting required everyone to be so serious. Brenda stood in front of a portable screen with a laptop, a remote control, and the expression of a person about to reveal a discovery of national importance. The first slide showed my fueling enclosure with four enormous red arrows pointing at the same tank.
The second slide declared EXPLOSION RISK in letters large enough to read from the parking lot. The third described potential groundwater contamination, and the fourth showed a photograph of an industrial fire that had occurred at a facility hundreds of miles away. There was no citation beneath it connecting that incident to my installation. I took a seat behind Dorothy Martinez, who turned around, gave me a sympathetic look, and whispered that Brenda had been practicing her speech for two days.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Brenda began, "we have a serious problem that demands immediate and decisive action. Our community has been exposed to an unauthorized industrial fuel operation, and some residents have already been encouraged to participate in it."
I glanced at Dorothy. She rolled her eyes and folded her hands over her handbag. Across the aisle, Bob Orion leaned forward with the look of a man who had come expecting a discussion about drainage and was trying to work out when the evening had become a disaster briefing.
Brenda clicked through several more photographs, including one showing me handing a sealed fuel container to a neighbor during the ice storm. She had captioned it UNLICENSED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION. The photograph showed no money, no transaction, and no evidence that the container held anything unlawful. What it did show was me assisting a man whose generator had been running a sump pump after his basement began flooding.
"This is precisely the kind of informal activity that drives down property values," Brenda said. "We cannot have people operating businesses out of residential driveways."
I raised my hand. "May I ask which rule you believe prohibits the installation?"
"Public comment will come after the presentation."
"I understand. I'm asking so everyone can review the same language."
She smiled tightly. "Marcus, you have already had ample opportunity to cooperate. Tonight the board is considering what to do about your refusal."
The slides continued for fifteen minutes. Some residents grew visibly anxious. A young father near the front whispered that he had never realized there was so much fuel stored near houses, and his wife looked toward me with new concern. Their worry bothered me more than Brenda's performance did. It meant she had found a way to make ordinary people afraid before giving them a fair opportunity to understand the facts.