Cornell, California may have been close at hand, just up the road, but perhaps the mind of the town was elsewhere.
That’s how it went in the Santa Monica Mountains. Nothing quite as it seemed, impressions splintered and sent off to float in the breeze.
At the dining room table in the little house off Kanan Dume Road, Caroline toyed with a pack of Marlboros.
“I’d like to do what the government won’t do and that’s to fight the frackers. Shut at least a few of them down. I want to make life a living hell for some of these companies fracking oil and gas. They’re criminals.”
The others at the table were silent but attentive. Caroline continued.
“It’s bad enough they’re producing fossil fuels and keeping us on a global warming path. Here in the west they’re also wasting all kinds of water. It’s water we clearly can’t spare. And they’re pumping all kinds of poisons we don’t know about into the ground.
“I want to shut a few of these guys down. Actually, I’d like to shut them all down, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I’m not sure if I want to go after the drilling sites or the scumbags who run these companies.
“The thing is, I don’t have a plan. Not a good one. Not yet. All I’ve got now is some outrage.”
“So I need to figure out how to aim this outrage in a good direction. I’m at the stage where I’ve reconciled the legalities, I think I’m OK being a vigilante. That part I’ve pretty much thought through.”
Near the edge of their dining room table, a few breakfast crumbs glittered like nuggets in a narrow shaft of morning sunlight.
Across the mountains in Cornell, California, the dull bumps and scrapes of a backhoe interrupted the silence of an otherwise peaceful morning.
