Page 25 of Candy Cane Dreams
How did she know?
He didn't dwell on that, though, but having got the prompting that he needed, and he slowly stood to his feet. He rubbed the back of his neck and took in a deep breath before he started to speak.
"I agree with everything that's been said here. I don't particularly want a box store to ruin the small town atmosphere of Mistletoe Meadows. I also am personally, completely against the bypass. It will take traffic away from our town, and people who might have gone through and maybe not stopped this time, but come back because of how quaint and cute it is, or maybe someone would have seen an advertisement along the street or whatever. I don't need to go over that with everyone. You're all aware of that."
"You are for it?" Noah asked, sounding surprised.
"I’m not. But there is another side."
"Multimillion-dollar companies making more money off the backs of working people!" someone said from over on the left-hand side of the room. Jack couldn't see exactly who it was, and he didn't recognize the voice.
"That wasn't what I was thinking," Jack said, his words not coming out as firm as he wanted them to. He cleared his throat and tried again.
"Well, then what were you thinking?" Another woman's voice spoke before he could answer.
"Give him some time. The man's trying to find his words," Marjorie McBride said, and although her voice still sounded tired, there was a firmness to it that settled the room right down, and no one dared to speak.
He nodded at Marjorie and gave her a little smile. She tilted her head and seemed to be watching him intently, interested in what he had to say and willing to listen. He looked down at Kate. She looked at him almost exactly the same way. That was enough to enable him to open his mouth.
"I feel like there are some pros to having the box store in town."
"I knew it! You've sided with the millionaires!"
"Billionaires!"
There were murmurings all through the crowd, and Jack wasn't sure where all the voices came from.
He spoke anyway. "I take a lot of pride in my work, and I make a good quality product. But it is very expensive. I can't make money if I don't charge according to the hours that I work and mark it up enough to make a profit—enough for me to live on. That means that sometimes people are priced out of my products, and that's just the way it goes. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who still want to buy candy canes. Should I keep them from buying candy canes just because they can't buy them at my shop? I don't think so. I guess what I'm saying is, there are people—me included at times—who need to find essentials at the cheapest price possible. And maybe a few things that aren't so essential, like candy and music and candles." He looked at Olivia, who made the handcraftedcandles in Mistletoe Meadows. She didn't look overly happy, but she didn't seem upset with him either. "I'm not talking about making the millionaires money. I'm talking about regular folks who maybe don't want fancy candy canes, but just want some inexpensive things to hang on their Christmas tree or to give to their children to eat. They should have a place to buy those things."
"Then they can go to a box store two hours away in Harrisonburg."
"It's two hours. And there's gas for the trip there and back. Is that really what we want to do? Price people out of things just because we are concerned about our own selves? Can we think about others?"
"I guess he has a point. I hadn't really thought about it like that." Marjorie McBride's voice rang through the room, and the silence after she spoke was loud and a little scary.
"That's a good point," Noah echoed. "A box store is not all bad."
"No. It's not. I'm not saying I want it to come in, because obviously that would be competition for what I'm doing and for my friends who have businesses as well. But I don't know that people who would buy handcrafted candy canes are all of a sudden going to go get them at the box store either. It might not be as bad as I think."
"That doesn't solve the problem of the bypass. If they put the bypass in, then that will draw traffic away, and surely you don't have anything good to say about that?" Mrs. Marrey spoke out from the other side of the room.
"Well, actually..."
There was a murmur through the crowd, and Noah banged the gavel a little bit more firmly than he had the last time.
"Let's let him speak," Noah said, a little bit of a warning in his tone.
Ben stood beside the podium, back against the wall, hands folded over his chest, weapon obvious at his side, his uniform giving him the cloak of respectability and deference.
"You're right. If we divert all traffic away from downtown, it will die. There's no question about it. We've seen it all across America. But I have an idea that... as far as I know, has never been tried before."
"What's that idea?" Noah asked, sounding intrigued and not as impatient as Jack might have been afraid. Noah was definitely a man with a head on his shoulders and a very good person to be running a meeting like this.
"I propose that whatever bypass the state puts in only allows trucks to bypass the town. We make the cars go through. That would get rid of some of the heavy traffic, keep our roads a little bit in better repair, and keep the people who are most likely to be stopping at our shops in the town, while we get the people who are less likely to stop—and also more in need of not being stopped in the traffic jams that sometimes ensue as too many cars try to go through the town. In other words, we keep the truckers working while keeping the people in cars coming through our town."
"That is extraordinary. I've never even... would that be possible?" Noah asked, a rhetorical question, because as far as Jack knew, there was no one in the room who could answer that.
"I was also thinking that maybe we could allow certain cars to use the bypass as well. Perhaps locals or in-state residents. I don't know, just a thought."
