Maggie was conscientious but superstitious. No matter how many details or moving parts a project had, she did the job well, but she sometimes ruled out perfectly reasonable solutions based on nothing more than intuition. 

In her almost fifteen years as city manager, she focused mostly on the small things, what she called “the quiet improvements.” Roads paved. Bridges painted. Walking trails opened. Downtown rezoned. Every two years, she used the exact same campaign slogan: “Done before you even asked,” and her flyers proclaimed: “Class of ’89. West Vernal High” at the very top. There was no need to say much more than that; everyone local knew exactly what that meant.

When the very first flame of the very first fire broke loose at the Wilson’s house, Maggie was at the transfer station dropping off unwanted furniture and unused tools. She walked up and down the rows of discarded items looking for the right materials for her next project, picking up almost as much stuff as she dropped off: Two wooden pallets, a galvanized steel 20-gallon tub, and a few plastic buckets. Harry almost always came with her but stayed home this time to make their contribution to this weekend’s community supper: Macaroni and cheese casserole, baked beans, and hot dogs with caramelized onions. 

“We need to tackle this one together,” she told Harry. “The sooner we can get the Wilsons into a new home, the better.” Harry closed his shop for the day, pulled his semi-retired bulldozer out of storage, and leveled the ghostly remains of the Wilson homestead. Maggie leveraged every power and authority of local government to get the Wilsons a temporary place to live and leaned heavily on local goodwill and small-town charity to get them clothes to wear and the items needed to cook, clean, and function as human beings. 

She did this all for the Wilsons and she did it all again for the Sanfords. By the time the third fire happened, the town was running out of resources and Maggie was running out of steam. But there was another, much bigger problem to surmount: Maggie hated the Medfords. Everyone did.

Copyright 2023 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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