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of his stilt house once, lured by his shrimp gumbo, he supposed. Thorn had shooed it off, and that was that. And he’d come on them in the woods, seen them squirming back under their bed of leaves when he approached. He had no case for or against them. And was having a little problem warming to the issue.
    Grayson had shown charts and graphs, aerial views, making his point that the wood rats wouldn’t be wiped out. A lot of the tract in question would stay just as it was, with only minor variations, wooden walkways and one or two roads. His organization was willing to comply with this and that regulation.
    Grayson made little jokes, calling the wood rat cute, saying he could understand why so many people were so worked up about such a cute thing. And then finishing up by saying how you had to weigh all of this very carefully. Weigh the future of the Key Largo wood rat against a new library, a new public park with a lighted baseball field, and not to mention, and here he paused, the first pause of the night. Gazing out at the crowd with his sharp metallic eyes. Not to mention, weighing that wood rat against jobs. Jobs!
    The guys in the row in front of them stomped and cheered. And the rest of the audience joined in. Grayson gave a friendly wave and took his seat in the front row.
    Thorn leaned across Sarah as the applause was dying and said, “Now how can you disagree with a guy like that?”
    “Exactly,” said Kate.
    One of the county commissioners introduced the next speaker. The commissioners all sat at a cafeteria table off to one side of the podium. Two women, three men, making a show of taking notes.
    This speaker was a local realtor, a young blond woman, her voice quivering a little from talking to five hundred adults. By that point it was standing room only. She started in on the U.S. Constitution, about how there were people among us tonight trying to take away our guaranteed property rights. She got from there to Communists and about how her husband had been wounded in Vietnam and now here she was doing her part. She finished up by describing an afternoon a couple of years earlier, when she’d been living in a mobile home park and she’d come into her baby daughter’s room and found a wood rat in the crib with the little girl. Her voice almost broke as she recalled it. “That’s the creature these people are trying to get you to give up the Constitution for.”
    Thorn glanced across at Kate during the applause. She was looking off at the wall of the cafeteria, at the posters left over from the spring semester. Crayon kids swimming, snorkeling. Blue and green parents in their boats catching sharks. The colors were the bright, fantastic primary colors of the reef.
    Next it was a retired high school biology teacher with a New York accent. At first the row of carpenters in front of Thorn seemed edgy, ready to hoot. Then the teacher got past his preamble and into his proposal.
    “You want wood rats? How many you self-appointed consecrationalists want?” he asked. “How many is right? You give me a figure and set aside an acre of land for me and I’ll start a wood rat factory. Give you any number you want.” He got the laughter he’d been after. Redbeard put his fingers in his mouth and made a piercing whistle. “Five hundred. A thousand? I dare you people to give me a number. What would it take to keep you happy? All I need is a number and I’m prepared to be the Henry Ford of rodents. Solve this whole damn dispute.”
    Sarah was tapping her foot, staring at her lap. Kate still looking at those posters. Thorn couldn’t help smiling at Henry Ford, though he had enough sense to look away as he did it.
    It was ten o’clock before Kate’s turn came. Thorn was leaning against the back wall by then. Near the water fountain. Sarah had gone out to the breezeway and come back in several times, standing out there with the smokers, trying to cool off. Maybe half the original audience was left. Redbeard had gone