With great dignity, Mike ignored the gibe. With considerably less dignity-almost with apprehension-he stared at the girl in question. She was staring back at him, her hand still gripping Judith Roth's hand. Rebecca's mouth was open, in stunned surprise. But there was something other than surprise in her eyes, he thought. Or, perhaps, he simply hoped.
"Oh, come on!" he snapped. Even to him, the reproof sounded hollow.
Chapter 8
Mike and his "cabinet" held their first meeting an hour later, in Melissa Mailey's classroom. Mike began the meeting with a fumble. Of the hemming and hawing variety.
"For God's sake, young man!" snapped Melissa. "Why don't you just come out and say it? You want me-the only woman in the room, except Rebecca-to be the committee's secretary. Take the notes."
Mike eyed her warily. Melissa Mailey was a tall, slender woman. Her hair was cut very short, and its color matched the conservative gray jacket and long dress she was wearing. Her hazel eyes were just as piercing as he remembered them, from days gone by when he stammered out an unstudied reply to a stiff question. She looked every inch the stern and demanding schoolmistress. The appearance was not a pose. Melissa Mailey was famous-or notorious, depending on who was telling the tale-for her acid tongue and acerbic discipline.
She was also famous for being Grantville's most unabashed and unrelenting liberal. Flaming irresponsible radical, according to many. As a college student, she'd been a participant in the civil rights movement. Arrested twice. Once in Mississippi, once in Alabama. As a young schoolteacher, she had marched against the Vietnam war. Arrested twice. Once in San Francisco, once in Washington, D.C. The first arrest had cost her first teaching job. The second arrest had done for the next. Boston Brahmin born and bred, she'd wound up teaching in a small town in West Virginia because nobody else would hire her. Her first year at the newly founded high school, she'd organized several of the schoolgirls to join her in a march on Washington demanding the Equal Rights Amendment. A clamor had gone up, demanding her dismissal. She held onto her job, but she'd been treading on very thin ice.
As ever, Melissa didn't give a damn. The next year, she got arrested again. But that was for denouncing an overbearing state trooper at one of the UMWA picket lines during the big 1977-78 national strike. When she got out of jail, the miners held a coming-home party for her in the high-school cafeteria. Half the student body showed up, along with their parents. Melissa even snuck out, halfway through the proceedings, and joined some of the miners for a drink in the parking lot.
Melissa Mailey had finally found a home. But she was still as unyielding and acerbic as ever.
"Look, Melissa," Mike muttered, "I know it looks bad. But we've got to have accurate records, and-"
Melissa broke into a smile. That expression was not seen often on her face. Not in Mike's recollection, at any rate. But it was quite dazzling, in its own cool way.
"Oh, relax," she said. "Of course we have to keep meticulous records." Again, the smile. "We're the Founding Fathers, you know. And Mothers. Wouldn't do at all not to have accurate notes. I know-I'm a history teacher. Historians would damn us for eternity."
The smile vanished. Melissa's eyes flicked around the faces gathered in the center of the room. Her expression made plain just how sloppily and carelessly she thought men would keep important records.
When her eyes came to Rebecca, Melissa's frown deepened. The young Jewish refugee, hands clasped nervously in her lap, was sitting on the edge of her seat. Her chair was pushed back several feet from the circle.
Melissa stood up and pointed her finger imperiously to a spot next to her own chair. "Young woman," she stated, "you move that chair here. Right now."
If Rebecca had any difficulty with Melissa's Boston accent-still as pronounced as ever, after all these years-she gave no sign of it. Hastily, like a thousand schoolgirls before her, she obeyed the voice of command.
Melissa bestowed the smile upon her. "Attagirl. Remember: United we stand, divided we fall."
Melissa sniffed at the men. "Do something useful, why don't you?" She pointed to a row of long tables lining the back wall. "Move those together into the center of the room. Make a big conference table out of them. Then push these silly desks away and go get us some real chairs. Ed'll show you where they are. We'll be meeting here from now on, I imagine. May as well set things up properly."
She turned away, briskly striding toward a cabinet. "I, meanwhile, will demonstrate the marvels of modern technology." Over her shoulder, with a snort: "Stenography. Ha!"
The next few minutes were taken up with a flurry of activity. When the meeting resumed, a large and expensive-looking tape recorder occupied a prominent place in the center of the jury-rigged "conference table."
Melissa turned it on, recorded the time and date, and turned to Mike.
"You're on, Mister Chairman."
Mike cleared his throat. "All right. The first thing I want to take care of is this 'constitutional convention' business. It's important, of course-more important, in the long run, than probably anything else. But we've got way too much emergency business to take care of for this entire committee to spend any time on it."
He could see Melissa's gathering frown out of the corner of his eye. Hurriedly: "So what I want to propose is that we set up a small subcommittee to work on it. When they come up with a proposal, we can discuss it. Until then, the rest of us will concentrate on immediate matters."
"Sounds okay to me," said Nat Davis. "I wouldn't know where to start, anyway. Not with that problem. Who do you want on the subcommittee?"
Mike's first two names came instantly. "Melissa and Ed. She's the history teacher and Ed used to teach civic affairs." Pause. "One or two more people."
Everyone's eyes glanced at everyone else's. Melissa cut through the hesitation. "Willie Ray. He served a few terms as a state representative, way back in the Stone Age. Give us some practical experience, even if he was a chiseling politician like all the rest of them." Everyone chuckled except Hudson, who laughed aloud. "And Dr. Nichols should be on it too."
Nichols' eyes widened. "Why?" he demanded. "I don't know anything about constitutional law." He cocked his head. The gesture was both quizzical and half-suspicious. "If it's because I'm the only-"
"Of course it's because you're the only black man in the room!" snapped Melissa. Her eyes challenged Nichols, and then the other men. "Grow up-all of you. I didn't propose him out of tokenism. There's a good and simple reason to include someone whose people had a different history than most of ours. Whether he knows any law or not, I suspect Dr. Nichols won't be quite as complacent as everyone else about the received wisdom of the ages."
Mike wasn't sure he agreed with Melissa's reasoning. In general, that is. But he realized that he would feel a bit more confident himself, knowing that Nichols had a hand in shaping their new constitution.
"I've got no problems with that. James? Do you accept?"
Nichols shrugged. "Sure, why not?" Grinning: "Man does not live by chitlins alone, after all."
When the laughter died down, Mike moved on to immediate business. He started with the power-plant manager.
"Bill, the way I see it, power is the key to everything. As long as we have electricity, we'll have a gigantic edge over everybody else in this new world of ours. All the way from modern machine tools to computers. So-how long? And what can we do to keep the power coming?"