GENRE: Political satire

SUBJECT: A blackout

CHARACTER: An architect

The corridors of the Live Oak City Hall were properly decked for the final City Council meeting of the year. Councilwoman Smith-Watson—a caucus of one—tapped her leather pump heels on the hardwood floor, scuffed by the footsteps of all who came before her. After squeaking out a run-off win, she was biding her time. Causing a fuss now might sabotage her plans to restore reason and sanity to Live Oak. Small towns across the country were thriving because of decisions made in seats like the one she took at the dais desk.

The heavy door to the Council chamber swung open. Councilman Bowen tumbled in, brushing snow from his raincoat and stomping wads of gray, wet gunk on the floor.

“It’s comin’ down something awful out there,” Bowen declared, shaking excess moisture off like a wet dog. Live Oak hadn’t seen snow in five years, and even that had been generously deemed a dusting. Their little town of 8,000 was resilient, but if the weather had worsened since Smith-Watson braved the cold in her thickest—well, only—winter coat, then they were in for a doozy of a day.

“Safety for our citizens should be our top priority. People aren’t prepared for winter weather in this neck of the woods,” she said, tapping the height lever on her chair. Someone had changed the settings again, causing her feet to dangle.

Bowen plopped into his seat, then leaned back with his hands behind his head. His chosen stance whenever he put on his architect hat. “I reckon we’re in the sturdiest building in town. Storm like this is bound to knock out power twenty miles in every direction, but we’ll be safe and sound in these hallowed halls.”

“The repairs to the roof were cancelled in the last round of budget cuts. I seem to remember structural issues,” Smith-Watson said.

Bowen kept his gaze fixed anywhere but on her. “It’s nothin’ but a bit of cold water. Ain’t gonna kill you. This here building would have survived the Blitz if the Germans had thought to take a bite out of us. I’ve studied the blueprints left, right, and upside down. She’ll hold.”

Smith-Watson sighed. He was the only Council member with architectural experience. Who was she to second-guess his expertise?

The door burst open again, and Councilman Huntly’s voice cut through the wind. “Oo-wee, it’s really comin’ down out there,” he bellowed as he barreled into the chamber. He was dressed head to toe in tactical winter gear with a backpack fit for Everest, apparently too distracted by his GPS watch to remember to close the door behind him.

Smith-Watson tucked her arms deeper in her jacket to escape the draft. “We should have postponed the vote until after Christmas. No one should be out in this mess.”

“A little cold rain never killed nobody. I saw ten feet in an hour during my winter in Fargo. This is nothing.”

“Fargo is prepared for bad winter weather, Huntly. Live Oak isn’t.”

“There is no such thing as bad weather, Miss Watson. Only bad clothing. Synthetic down, my friends. 800-fill. No snowflakes are gettin’ through this,” Huntly said as he patted the pockets of his oversized parka. In under a minute, he had organized a small bunker at his seat. Several flashlights, a portable stove, a hand-crank radio, freeze-dried meals, and a stack of what looked like combat knives. “A snowstorm in Live Oak. Who ever heard of such a thing? Global warming my ass.”

This is not the moment, Smith-Watson told herself. There was a time and a place to engage with Huntly about his skewed worldview, but what good would it do right now? There was governing to do.

“We don’t have time to wait for Wilkes,” she said, finding the deepest notes of her voice.

“What should be our first course of action? Plow the roads? The superintendent has cancelled school, but I’ve seen reports that Walmart ran out of batteries, bottled water, and toilet paper. We’ll need to submit a request for aid—”

“Pardon me, Miss Watson, but nobody could've seen this coming. We got to get our own heads on straight ‘fore we start tossing tax-payer money around all willy-nilly,” Bowen said.

Smith-Watson bit her tongue too hard to call it figurative. Any reminder that they had slashed funding for Live Oak’s local weather team last year to make room for contracts with a private startup would be dismissed. In hindsight, Smith-Watson should have utilized her soon-to-be-flourishing newsletter to prepare the town instead of watching reruns of The West Wing.

A pop from outside made them all jump, and the room went dark. Huntly’s chair squeaked as he vigorously searched through his rucksack. A Coleman lantern hissed, and dim yellow light flooded the chamber.

“We should get the power company on the phone,” Smith-Watson said.

Huntly choked on a cough. “Shame on them for not putting in backup generators.”

Bowen nodded, his cowboy hat casting large shadows on the muraled wall. “This is what we get for allowing DEI hires. Those jobs should have gone to hard-working Live Oakians.”

Smith-Watson had learned to pick her battles. The town was in crisis, and now was not the time to fall prey to partisan politics. And where the hell was Councilman Wilkes? When the ground had thawed and the citizens of Live Oak returned to normalcy, she would stake her protest. She could wear all black to the first meeting of the new year. Yes. That would show her dismay over the gutting of government services.

Bowen thumped the dais with his fist. “Alright, we have one issue to vote on. Then we need to hit the road. It’s safer to drive in the first hours of the storm.”

That didn’t sound right to Smith-Watson, but Bowen knew better and was only concerned for their safety.

“Not if you put chains on your tires,” Huntly added. “Don’t go askin’ me for a lift because you didn’t prepare.”

Even if Smith-Watson had been willing to spend more than three seconds in a truck with Huntly, the opportunity to ask was cut short by a creak from above. The roof, she thought, trying not to visibly squirm in her chair. “Bowen, are you sure about the beams? We never executed the request for termite tenting.”

“Don’t go gettin’ hysterical on us. This hall has good, strong bones. American bones. I inspected the roof myself, and I didn't see nothin’ to fret about.”

Good thing they had an architect around. The roof repair would have put a dent in the budget she couldn’t afford if she planned to keep her promises from the campaign. The other council members had steamrolled her ideas so far, but Smith-Watson would get her progressive platform rolling the right way. The bureaucratic way. She wouldn’t stoop to the level of her counterparts just to push her own agenda.

She scanned the list of meeting objectives, the darkness forcing her to hold the paper almost to her nose. Should the nativity scene stay up on the courthouse square until February so the people of Live Oak can remember the true meaning of Christmas a month longer?

What a thing. They should be using their energy to inform the public that body heat is mostly lost through the head. At least, she’d heard Huntly say something about that once.

The roof groaned, a slow, splintered creak of rotten wood. The glow of Huntly’s lamp was enough to illuminate Smith-Watson’s breath, visible in the increasingly frigid chamber.

“Bowen, what were the specs on that roof? Just so the lady doesn’t get too worried,” Huntly asked, adding a grunt, likely to make it clear he certainly wasn’t the one who was worried.

“I don’t have specifics…I…didn’t make it that far in my studies, you know.”

Smith-Watson leaned forward, prepared to leap under the dais in the event the whole thing came crashing down. “What do you mean you didn’t make it? I thought your degree was in architecture.”

“I don’t need a piece of paper to say I know what I’m talking about. I took a class—”

“You took one class?” Smith-Watson was beside herself. “We could have fixed the roof. Or bought another plow. Or invested in sand and rocks to break up the ice. We could have held winter clothing drives or given funding to local businesses to stock up on supplies.”

“Now sweetheart, if we had done that, where would the people of this town find the resilience to pick themselves up by their bootstraps? We don’t want a town of freeloaders,” Huntly said, though his voice was muffled. He had covered his head with the thousand-page tome of laws that hadn’t been touched since the town was established.

The floor at the entrance creaked, revealing the silhouette of a hunched figure looming in the threshold. The backdrop was a white haze as icy wind battered the front of City Hall. Smith-Watson was the first to stand, but the other two joined her instinctively.

Councilman Wilkes had the power of a wise elder as he stepped into the rays of Huntly’s high beam flashlight. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The wrinkles of old age were just visible beneath his long, silver beard. “Your lies have led us astray, Councilman Bowen, and now the very walls we built for shelter are crumbling around us.” The click of his cane was the only sound as Wilkes made his way down the aisle. “We are the representatives. The chosen. The divinely anointed defenders of the American dream, and there is nothing left to do but investigate, accuse, and condemn the blight which has fallen on our doorsteps. For it is we, the Council, who will be this town’s demise. We are the waste. Let us do our duty and clean house.”

“Councilman Wilkes,” Bowen began, voice leaking reverence as if Reagan himself stood before them. “Are you suggesting we dissolve the City Council?”

Wilkes had reached the dais but did not move to take his empty seat. “The town has succumbed to chaos. There are looters in the neighborhoods, fires in the streets. The snow has coated the ground three whole inches, and I ask you, what can we do?”

Smith-Watson set her mind to work. “The fire-department—”

“Disbanded in the last round of cuts, Councilwoman Smith-Watson,” Wilkes said.

“The churches should be encouraged to provide food and water.”

“The church leaders are all away at their vacation homes until they are needed for Christmas Eve services.”

“We can open the rec center to those who can’t heat their homes.”

“Demolished to make space for potential corporate investors.”

A frigid drop of water hit Smith-Watson’s nose. Based on his sharp inhale, Huntly had felt it, too. She looked up. The roof was in motion, sagging and bulging ever closer to the dais.

“So there is nothing we can do,” Huntly said. “The Council is frivolous waste and I motion to dissolve. All in favor say yea, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

A chorus of yeas echoed through the darkened chamber. Only Smith-Watson stayed quiet, for without the Council, who would represent the town’s most vulnerable? Who would stand firm in the face of tyranny? Who would head the Committee for Reason and Sanity?

A wave of woodchips from above dusted the paper in her hand. Now is not the time to create division, she thought. It would only cause more trouble down the line. The Council needed to fall to make way for better things. I’ll lie low for four years or so, and try again when all this blows over. What’s the worst that could happen?

“Yea,” Smith-Watson said as she launched into a sprint toward the door.