A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [65]
Ashore, a wet boy, nineish, looks bewildered. Won’t go back in. “You feel it all over your skin,” he says. Another family’s kids are body-boarding, looking perfectly content.
Other creatures continue to work their world, their side of things. Least terns diving along the shore. The small fish. A school of mullet nose the surface. A small ray swims past: another hazard to swimmers. It’s a very alive place. That’s the point. The people and the others that live here. Everything that lives here.
A man emerges. I ask him if he can feel and taste oil. He says, “Oh, I can feel it on me. But as far as tastin’ it or anything, no, nothin’ like that.”
Mike, thirty-nine, wears American flag swim trunks. He stands with his well-tattooed arms folded. Feet oil-stained. “We come with the family on weekends. I’m worried this is the last time. Forget this oil; go solar power.”
You can clean a beach, but every wave brings a little more. The oil is still gushing, and there’s plenty more to come. Every day, oily sand goes out in bags. Bags and bags. Bag People.
The BP workers wander near. I ask what kind of work they would be doing if not for the Oil. “I have no comment,” they regurgitate.
“They tell you not to talk to anyone?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
The Oil is a big secret. Okay, I wouldn’t want my employees talking to anyone while on the job, either. But there’s a motive here: minimize the scope of information and opinion. Aren’t we really quite past the point where that can help even BP? What might these people say that we don’t already know? That the genie’s blown his cork, Pandora’s opened the coop, and the cats are out of their bags all over the region? Basic Privacy is no longer this company’s prerogative, and the pettiness does less to hide the facts than it does to expose the corporation’s desire to hide facts.
In a cloudless sky, a Coast Guard helicopter passes.
Outside one of the local churches, I meet Reverend Chris Schansberg. He’s forty-three, soft-spoken. “The first Sunday after the explosion,” he says, “I told our people, ‘Let’s get together and pray that the oil won’t hit the island.’ I don’t know why we focused on our island, but we did. And I was talking to the mayor later, and he didn’t know we’d prayed, and he said, ‘Y’know, it’s really remarkable that oil hasn’t hit the island.’ I know it hit the far west end. But on the oil-flow charts on the evening news, people were saying, ‘Now, look at Dauphin Island; there’s a seven-mile buffer between it and the oil.’ And apparently—to the glory of God—oil’s been flowing around us. Now, that’s a great victory. But of course, you have to answer, Well, why is it on the shores from Louisiana to Pensacola? That’s a deeper question.” Brief pause. “The oil cleanup workers come from everywhere, from Washington to New York State, Puerto Rico. I’ve seen loneliness, isolation, boredom—. Many of them have never seen heat like this. We have seen this as an opportunity to reach out toward them, sharing God’s love, giving out frozen Popsicles—.
“Someday, if not now, the people who’ve done this will be judged. I’m not saying it’s unforgivable. But they are accountable to God. If they tried to cut corners, if they failed in their stewardship, they will be accountable on the Day of Judgment. The Bible promises that when Jesus returns he will make all things right. And it really means everything. So if we still have oil in the Gulf when he returns—that’s it.”
Fifty House Democrats begin calling for BP to suspend its planned dividend payout, stop its advertising campaign, and instead spend the money on cleaning up the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Congressional Representative Lois Capps says, “Not a single cent” should be spent on television ads. If BP is so concerned about its public image, “it should plug the hole.” Yes, but—. Suspending a dividend payment would save BP something like $10 billion. The loss of prestige and stock value is a strong deterrent for not paying a dividend. But for BP, the silver lining would be pretty convenient