One Bad Apple

Three children in Odyssey come down with the same upset stomach on the same day, and the only place all three have been is Whit's End. John Whittaker hangs up the phone with a worried town doctor and turns the puzzle over with Connie Kendall. The doctor suspects something chemical, yet there are no bug sprays or insecticides anywhere near the food. Connie remembers what each child ate that day: an apple turnover, a sundae topped with apple slices, a caramel-covered apple. Every one of them ate an apple, and those apples did not come from the store at all. They came from Tom Riley's farm.

Out at the farm, Tom already has troubles of his own. His horse Rachel is down with what looks like a bad case of colic, and Dr. Baker, the veterinarian treating her, says the symptoms look like more than colic. He has only ever seen a horse behave this way after swallowing arsenic, the kind used in insecticides. Tom keeps his insecticide locked in a shed where no horse could reach it, and he has never used a crop duster on his orchard, so the doctor tells him to watch closely what his animals eat and drink. Something on the farm is contaminated. Just then Curt Stevens turns up hoping to fish in Tom's creek and reports that the fishing is terrible - the fish are lying dead on the banks and caught in the rocks.

Tom recalls every apple he has sold, but children have already gotten sick, and he takes it hard. The creek runs past his orchard, waters his trees, and gave Rachel her drink. Connie is astonished that a town as pretty as Odyssey could have pollution at all. Whit offers to call the state capital, since the local environmental agent works only part-time and Tom's phone messages have gone unanswered, but Tom insists the land is his responsibility and sets out to find the source himself, with Curt trailing along and complaining cheerfully the whole way.

Upstream they find a barrel lying in the water with a name printed on the side: Edgebiter. Curt knows the company - it has offices in the new complex upstream, next to a comic book shop. At Edgebiter Supplies, Tom is handed from the woman at the front desk to a customer service representative, who keeps trying to sell him something, and then to a public relations representative, who assures him that one barrel could never contaminate a whole creek and that the company's chemicals are manufactured far away in Chicago. She promises Edgebiter would never endanger anyone's health or property.

Whit, who has tested the creek water while they were gone, tells Tom that she is right about the barrel and that he is right about the pollution. The water still carries traces of arsenic, and the streams above Trickle Lake are clean, so whatever is leaking begins somewhere between the company and Tom's farm. That evening the three of them walk the open ground behind the Edgebiter building and find a windowless warehouse with a drain running straight down into the creek. Before they can say much more, a security guard named Eustace steps out and asks them to put their hands up.

They wait, politely and not very quietly, until Jerry Edgebiter himself arrives. He decides to level with them. Days earlier, some insecticide containers were punctured while being unloaded, the spill ran down the drain into the creek, and the cleanup was less thorough than anyone realized. He never reported it because inspectors, paperwork, and bad publicity cost time and money, and because the drain was never legal in the first place. Then he makes his offer: he will pay the doctor bills, the veterinary bills, the lost apples, whatever they ask, if they will simply forget the whole thing. Two hundred employees, he reminds them, could lose their jobs over one small mishap.

Whit answers that silence would only invite it to happen again, and Tom says plainly that jobs, however good, cannot replace contaminated water and land. Edgebiter has heard that speech before, and he turns the question back on them. What happens to the soda cans, the newspapers, the junk mail at their houses? What happens to Curt's gum wrappers and comic books? What about the plastic jugs, spoons, straws, and styrofoam cups at Whit's soda shop, and what does Whit teach his customers to do with all of it? Laws and inspectors govern his company, he says, but nobody writes rules for ordinary people, and how many conveniences are they willing to give up? The environment, he tells them, is their responsibility too.

They report him anyway. A government agent agrees to meet them the next morning, gather written reports from the doctors, and go look at the Edgebiter warehouse - though Curt doubts anything incriminating will still be sitting in it. Whit reminds them that for every company that behaves this way, hundreds are careful and responsible.

Then Whit says they are not quite finished. Edgebiter made some fair points, and Whit intends to take stock and change a few of his own habits. Tom decides to be more careful about what he buys and where his garbage goes, and to go back to sorting paper and aluminum cans for the recycling center the way he once did. Curt wants to help but has no idea where to begin, so they agree to ask the government agent and some environmental groups for practical suggestions. Nothing worthwhile stays worthwhile without effort, Tom observes, and Whit answers that this is exactly why it is a good thing they are starting now. He is not sure what will become of them if they do not.