Page 2 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

“Progress,” Sam shrugs. “It’s happening everywhere.”

“It is. But that doesn’t mean people who would rather things stay the way they have always been are going to accept it. Especially when it means having to give up what their families have worked so hard for over generations,” I point out.

The new mall being built right outside of town has been the buzz of Sherwood since it was announced last winter. The company bringing the sprawling shopping complex to the area launched an admittedly brilliant advertising campaign to get people excited. Appealing to every nostalgic imagery of Christmas they could conjure, they presented the upcoming mall like a gift Santa was bringing everyone, promising it would be there in time for them to enjoy for the next holiday shopping season.

Now almost a year later, we’re just a couple of weeks away from the grand opening of the state-of-the-art mall. The hype for it has only increased as the opening gets closer. Promotional imagery splashed on TV and through mailers since summer shows a long list of flagship stores and smaller shops, a huge food court with a soaring, domed skylight, a sparkling fountain right in the middle, an arcade, a nail salon…

The list just carries on and on, promising a mind-boggling destination unlike anything that’s ever existed around here. With the holiday shopping season just a couple months away, I can’t even imagine the kind of craze that’s going to ensue when it actually opens and everyone in the vicinity swarms to it. I’ll admit, even I have a little flutter of anticipation waiting for it to open. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a great lover of shopping, but I’ve gotten swept up a bit in the curiosity and novelty of it.

Sherwood isn’t exactly a metropolitan center that attracts the newest things very often. Around here we’re used to listening to the news of what is popping up in other areas and venturing out to experience them. The senior ladies’ group from the community center has been taking overnight road trips to the big malls near DC for the last several years to go shopping. Now we’re finally getting one of our own and their biggest discussion is if they should still take the road trip to DC or if they are ready to broaden their horizons and try a different destination this year.

I have a feeling the mall going up in the old farmland outside town isn’t going to be exactly like the ones near DC or Richmond. We probably don’t have quite the population to support quite that many stores and restaurants. But it still promises to be far more of an experience than the shops down Main Street or the department store that’s been the source for everything from back-to-school clothes to holiday shopping for everyone in Sherwood for almost thirty years. The elders of the community are getting excited about the power walking craze that’s cropped up over the last couple of years; parents are looking forward to a convenient way to shop for everything in one place without having to be out in the weather and have a spot for a quick dinner to boot; and teenagers all over town are salivating at the prime socializing opportunities waiting just on the other side of grand opening.

Something tells me this place is going to be the talk of the town for quite a while.

Unfortunately, a lot of that talking so far isn’t about the impressive commercials and dazzling list of stores. The backlash from the families whose land was taken or being encroached on to build the mall has only gotten more heated since the first announcement. As the opening date gets closer, the people are getting angrier. They feel like they are being pushed out of their homes and the value of the land they’ve poured their literal blood, sweat, and tears into for generations is being diminished. Many of the protests have been relatively peaceful, if simmering, demonstrations. But others have gotten violent.

I can understand their position. They’re used to having nothing around them but their rolling fields, the crops that feed their families, and the narrow dirt roads that rarely see anything but farm use trucks and tractors. Now the land has been ripped up to make wide, paved roads soon to be congested with the crowds of shoppers descending on the area. Rather than rows of corn and wheat, the former fields will hold rows of cars on the macadam slab spread out around the gleaming building.

Sunrise won’t find early risers heading out to milk cows and feed horses, but overeager shoppers finding the closest parking spot and waiting outside the doors to walk along polished marble rather than in fresh air. Sunset won’t mean sitting quietly on the porch watching the glow on the horizon and sipping a well-earned bourbon, but security guards patrolling through pools of neon and fluorescent light and gulping stale coffee to stay awake through the night.

It’s changing everything. I can sympathize with them for their sadness at the loss, and their anger at it being forced on them. But the federal agent in me always thinks first about the danger. My mind goes to the potential of fury, the capability human beings have of causing destruction when they feel backed into a corner. It’s easy to forget that people are animals, too. Only when a caged dog lashes out, it’s being driven only by instinct. The human has thought and intention behind it.

It leaves the question of which is more frightening: the creature that cannot control its violent impulses? Or the one that chooses not to?

Because the mall is being built outside of town, it is technically in a different jurisdiction from Sam’s department, but the tiny group of officers that oversees the rural expanse beyond the outskirts frequently looks to Sam and his team for help if there is anything beyond a bar brawl or a speeding ticket to be managed in their area.

Seth Hanson has his finger more on the pulse of the situation because of his grandfather’s farm right in the midst of the situation. He didn’t lose any of his land, but he doesn’t think too kindly about the development company that has come in to create what some call progress and others call destruction. He keeps Sam up to date on how the situation is going so that Sam can be better prepared if he and the rest of his officers are going to need to swoop in to help keep things under control. So far, they’ve only had to make a show of force like that a couple of times.

I know he’s worried that’s going to change when the opening comes. He’s waiting to get the call asking for his officers to help provide security, but it hasn’t come yet. Glen Nielson, the head of the rural department, doesn’t want to look weak. These are the people he grew up with, many of them old school buddies and their daddies who he spent summers working with when he was younger.

It’s easy for that to get out of hand. Familiarity often breeds entitlement. It’s easier to take liberties when you feel comfortable with a person, and when that person is the law, many people find themselves skirting the edge of what is and isn’t permissible. The line blurs and people become more comfortable pushing the envelope because the threshold for worry of their own personal consequences drops away under well-known eyes.

“Do you think they’re going to ask you to come out?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says, tossing the vegetables into my big, wooden salad bowl with a bit more force than cubed cucumbers really deserve. “They should. It’s just going to keep getting worse if they don’t smash it down.”

“Smash it down?” I ask. He tosses the bell peppers into the bowl, causing some of them to bounce out, and I take his hands to stop him from grabbing the knife again and going for the carrots. “What’s going on with this aggression?”

“Not aggression. Just frustration.”

I gesture at the bits of vegetables he’d flung across the table.

“Alright, maybe some aggression. I just don’t understand why there needs to be this much conflict. Things change.”

“Am I really hearing you, Samuel Lee Johnson, Sheriff of Sherwood and husband of FBI great Emma Griffin, being aggravated at people who can’t acknowledge that things change?” I ask, trying to take some of the weight pressing down on his shoulders.

He lifts an eyebrow at me. “FBI great?”

I shrug. “Something I’m trying out.”

He stands up and kisses me. “I prefer Emma Johnson.”

I kiss him back. “I can be both. Because I’m just that…”

“Great?”

I grin. “See? It’s catchy.”

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