McMansion Read Free

state’s attorney, an ambitious fellow who had good reason to hope that a high-profile TV trial would vault the victorious defender of public safety to the head of the pack running for the United States Senate.

Chapter Two
    I wasn’t the only one who disliked Billy’s Newbury Common sign.
    Some vandal had spray painted ELF on it in big letters. ELF stood for Earth Liberation Front, a secretive, amorphous radical movement that protested the waste and abuse of resources in general—and SUVs and sprawling McMansions in particular—by defacing SUVs and setting fires at McMansion construction sites.
    In the same spray hand, ELF had been painted on the model house. Someone had also tried to burn it down. But the arsonist had misjudged the force of the weekend rain. The fire had not amounted to much, just some scorch marks, which I duly photographed. Continuing past the model to photograph the sign, I had a sudden, strong feeling I was no longer alone at the construction site.
    My so-called sixth sense means one or two of the self-evident five are working overtime. Whether I had heard or seen or smelled something, I knew the direction to look to glimpse motion just inside the tree line behind the model house. I walked quickly toward it, trying to probe the shadows. I thought I saw another flicker. There was a crash of dry leaves and broken branches in the underbrush and I darted forward, running as fast as I could over a hundred yards of bulldozed ground.
    When I reached the woods, three deer bounded up the slope, their white tails flashing until they vanished in the tree trunks. I stopped and listened hard. But whatever had crashed through the leaves did not do it again. Another ELF? Or a bear? No deer I’d ever met made that much noise.
    I debated searching the woods. But an Earth Liberation radical would have a head start, and I was already winded from my broken field run, while a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound black bear in June would be protecting her cubs. So I retreated back to the road and walked down to Billy’s Newbury Common sign. I took a picture of it and the “Private” addendum, about which I and numerous other irritable literalists had already written peevish letters to the Clarion , reminding Newburians that the “common” was a custom of sharing land that the colonists brought over from England three hundred and eighty years ago, in which a pasture was used and maintained by all. Newbury, like most Connecticut towns, has one. Ours is called the Ram Pasture and represented an early version of “trickle down” economics in which folk of modest means could hope that when they grazed their sheep a rich man’s ram cruising the common would leave in his wake a flock of lambs.
    Billy knew perfectly well that a common was supposed to be public. He claimed deep New England roots at Planning and Zoning hearings, boasting that Tillers had settled in Newbury two hundred years ago. Therefore, he argued, no one had a right to limit how many houses he could build on his land. In truth, when Billy’s ancestors did finally straggle into town from God knows where, Newbury’s original settlers had long since planted crops, dammed the river, erected a sawmill and rousted out the French, the Indians, and the British Army.
    But while I could not forgive the abuse of our language, I would not have defaced his sign, nor tried to burn his ugly model. I certainly wouldn’t have killed him for it. Or even shot him in the leg. Which someone had done a year before the bulldozer got him.
    I had witnessed that assault up close—smack in the middle of town—on our historic Main Street, which is lined with marvelous eighteenth and nineteenth century Colonial, Federal, and Greek Revival houses set far back from the road. I happened to be standing about four feet away from Billy explaining, diplomatically I thought, that in an overdue attempt to improve my character I had taken