By Rufus Brown

Jacob Ham pulled up to the Rockledge town hall in his Ford 150, its STOP THE STEAL tailgate sticker almost unreadable in the freezing rain. He normally didn’t care about town meetings. Tonight was different.

The hall was jammed as Ned Whitlock, the First Selectman, called the meeting to order. “Thank you all for showing up. As you know, the Delta variant is rising, and not enough of us in this town are vaccinated. We need to act to protect our young children and the health-compromised among us. The town warrant would mandate masking and require proof of vaccination for everyone eligible when indoors in any public place. This may seem harsh, but do we really have a choice?”  

No choice? What did Ned know about this town?  He wasn’t from here. He’d only moved here after retiring from one of Portland’s well-heeled law firms. He wasn’t here when the mill closed. He didn’t see local stores on Main Street replaced by sleepy antique shops that some of us in town suspected were a front for drugs. He idolized rural life just because he’d spent some childhood summers “in the country,” and called himself a “gentleman farmer,” whatever that meant. 

“It’s so quaint—I love it here,” Ned had said when he brought his Volvo in for an oil change at Jacob’s garage. “I just bought the Townsend farm out by the lake. You know the place?”

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