“That post is occupied,” Dale said eventually.
“We can vote you out, just like that good-for-nothing constable,” Jason said.
“There’s a different motion on the table.”
“Well, I move we suspend that motion and move on with my motion,” Jason said. “Anyone second?”
“I second,” Victor Gasparry said.
“I don’t know that you’re in order on that,” Dale said.
“I don’t give a damn,” Jason said. “Discussion?”
“Let’s vote him the hell out,” Rod Sauer said.
“Look at what’s become of our town under him,” Cody DeLong said.
“Point of order,” Dale said. “You are not following proper procedure here. Didn’t any of you bring the Robert’s Rules?”
“If proper procedure means so much to you, why didn’t you bring the damn Robert’s Rules?” Jason said.
“We’ve never had these disputes at town board,” Dale said.
“Maybe we should have,” Ned Larmon said.
“I call a vote on the motion to get rid of Mayor Dale Murray,” Todd Zucker said, “and replace him with Robert Earle.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How come nobody asked me if I want the job?”
“Sometimes duty just calls, son,” Brother Jobe said from the outer circle of the few nonvoting observers. He was grinning.
“You’re out of order, sir,” Dale Murray said.
“Those in favor of the motion to give Dale the boot and put Robert in, raise your hands,” Jason said.
“You can’t call the vote,” Dale said. “That’s the chair’s job.”
All the trustees except Dale raised their hands.
“The motion is carried,” Jason said. “You’re out, Dale. Robert’s the mayor now.”
“And the chair of this board,” Rod Sauer said.
“Congratulations, son,” Brother Jobe said, and everybody in the room except Dale Murray clapped their hands briefly. Terry Einhorn actually got up, walked across the circle, and made to shake my hand-the one that wasn’t bandaged up. I was flustered by this recognition from my peers, of course. But I also realized that somebody had to be responsible for things in town after years of apathy and paralysis, and that I was ready to try. I figured if I managed to accomplish the least thing it would be an improvement over the current situation.
“I guess you can always vote me out if you’re dissatisfied,” I said.
“You’re damn straight we can,” Ben Deaver said.
“All right, then, let’s get back to the business of this meeting,” I said. Meanwhile, Dale Murray made a big show of shoving his chair into the center of the circle and stalking out of the hall.
“Go easy on the corn liquor,” Ned Larmon said, as Dale clomped across the big room to the exit.
And that was how the gavel passed to me, except there wasn’t any gavel. By God, I thought, I could make one, though.
We went on with the meeting. Loren was nominated for the post of constable and the board elected him. I was surprised that he agreed to serve, considering all the rest of his duties around the community. We couldn’t agree what to do about the Shawn Watling case. Victor Gasparry wanted to convene a special court and haul Bunny Willman in-Andy Pendergast called it “a kangaroo court"-but anyway that meant going up to the trailer park, Karptown, and placing Willman under arrest, and that posed additional problems.
Andy brought up for discussion the related matter that Wayne Karp’s bunch had no legal right operating the former town landfill as their own private resource mine, and that we should investigate some means for getting it away from his control altogether and running the place as a public utility.
“Good luck with that one,” Victor said.
“My people could run it,” Brother Jobe said.
“How do we know you wouldn’t turn it into a racket for your own selves?” Jason LaBountie said.
“Because we walk upright in the sight of God,” Brother Jobe said.
“I’ve heard that before,” Ben Deaver said.
“It can’t be said enough,” Brother Jobe said.
“All right, let’s just back off that for now,” I said. “Loren, I’m going to instruct you as constable to send a letter to Stephen Bullock formally recommending an inquest. I’m sure Heath Rucker never put it in the form of a legal document.”
“All right.”
“One of my boys can ride it over to Mr. Bullock’s, post haste,” Brother Jobe said. “Maybe there’s something we can do for him in return.”
“We’ll need a town attorney with Dale gone,” Loren said.
“I’ll talk to Sam Hutto,” I said. Sam had dropped law for running a turpentine distillery on the back side of Pumpkin Hill, but I thought he could be induced to help out.
Finally, I moved that we form a committee to meet and make an inventory of the town’s needs-everything from meal sacks to medicine-and start an organized effort to obtain these things. By then, the true darkness of night was creeping over town and stealing into the third floor of the old town hall, and since nobody had brought any candles, I moved to adjourn the meeting.
Twenty-three
Jane Ann stole into my house, as she always did, without knocking, an hour or so after I’d returned from the meeting. I was sharpening my ripsaw with a file out back in the summer kitchen. In a world without electric powered saws, you had to take care with hand tools. She found me out there, slipped into the rocking chair I had pegged together out of some maple limbs, ash splints, and willow canes, filled a corncob pipe with some marijuana bud that she carried in a little leather pouch on the belt of her long skirt, and lit a splinter of stove wood off my candle to fire up the bowl.
“Want some?” she said, passing the pipe.
“All right.”
The weed was just past green and very resinous. I knew I was getting stoned when I lost track of which saw tooth I was working on.
“Are you just going to keep toiling away on that?” she said.
“Not anymore, I guess.”
“You’ve taken on quite a lot the past couple of days. All these heroics. And now you’re the big pooh-bah around here.”
“I’m hardly a pooh-bah. This sad little town just needs someone with organizational skills.”
“I always pegged you as more of a background kind of person.”
“Are you angry at me?”
She didn’t answer. She relit the splinter and the bowl.
“I don’t know what Loren thinks he can do as constable around here,” she said.
“People look up to him.”
“He’s not the warrior type.”
“There’s no war on around here.”
“Could be, though. Between Karp and this new bunch and everybody else.”
“I think we can get some law going.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “Here.” She took a lace napkin out of the big pocket in her skirt and unwrapped a generous square of the walnut cake she was famous for. It was almost all ground nut meats and butter. “For you,” she said.
“Why, thanks.” I was suddenly rather hungry. I put the file and saw aside. “Tell me about your day. What did you do?”
“What didn’t I do? Milked goats. Weeded. Forked compost. Put up rhubarb jam. Walked halfway to Battenville to call on Esther Callie. Her mom finally died.”
“Oh? What of?”
“She was ninety-seven years old, you know.”
“I knew she was very old.”
“I think she’d just finally had enough. She was a nurse in the Second World War. The things she remembered were incredible.”
“The things I remember seem incredible,” I said. “Airconditioning. Cold beer. Baseball on television.” I started to get lost in the maze of my own stoned mind remembering all the things we didn’t have anymore.
“She’d seen so much. I asked her how she could maintain any faith in the human race.” Jane Ann lit the pipe once again.