Mike Kilgore interrupted. “For those of you who haven’t met him, this is Ted Parsons; his house is on Cove Mountain.”
Sela choked back a startled giggle. Teddy Roosevelt’s name really was Ted. What were the odds?
“Where are you from, Mr. Parsons?” Carol asked in a neutral tone that made Sela’s people-radar start beeping. Carol didn’t like Mr. Parsons, because normally she was boisterous and friendly; neutral for her was just shy of downright enmity.
“Columbus, Ohio,” he said, for some reason giving her a disdainful look as if she’d asked the state of his underwear. “I own six tire stores, four in Columbus and two in Dayton. I’m accustomed to managing people and resources; I could handle the organization of this little community in my sleep.”
“Bless your heart,” Carol said, a polite smile fixed on her face, “but the valley has about six thousand people in it, which is way more than you’re used to handling—unless your little tire stores average a thousand employees each?”
Several people coughed at hearing Ted’s heart being blessed, the Southern equivalent of “you’re a moron.” Sela ducked her head and pressed her lips hard together. Oh Lord; she might have to break up a fight any minute now, so she needed to be ready, not doubled up laughing.
Ted Parsons’s face turned red at hearing his stores referred to as “little,” signaling that Carol’s retort had hit him square on the ego. Maybe Mike Kilgore saw the same thing because he stepped forward and clapped his hands, saying, “All right, let’s hear some ideas, people, about what we want and how we want it done.”
“Before anything can be done,” Ted Parsons pointed out, “a leader has to be elected. As I said, I volunteer for the job.”
“But you aren’t from here,” someone from the back of the room called out. “You don’t know people.”
Parsons looked annoyed at the reminder, then smoothed out his expression and shrugged. “People are people. Management is management.”
“It ain’t that simple,” a weathered old guy in a sweat-stained John Deere cap said. “If you don’t know where people live, or what they can do, or even what their names are, you can’t manage squat.”
Carol leaned closer to Sela and whispered, “I might have exaggerated about knowing everyone in the valley, but I damn sure know more of them than Teddy Roosevelt does.”
“Anyone else volunteer?” another man said grumpily. “It’s damn hot in here, let’s get this voted on and get home.”
There was a moment of relative silence, no one else speaking up, and Sela winced at the idea of Ted Parsons being in charge of the valley’s resources. He seemed to be more ego than ideas, though she might be wrong about that. After all, he was here, and wouldn’t he want things to go well because it meant his survival as well?
The same woman who had been in the disagreement with Parsons stood up and said, “I nominate Carol Allen. She’s the one who had all the good ideas about how to handle the food.” She gave Parsons a smug look as she sat back down.
Those standing around Sela and Carol looked around and a few muttered, “Not exactly,” because they’d overheard Sela feeding the ideas to her aunt. Sela almost panicked, afraid one of them would nominate her; she ducked her head, not meeting anyone’s eye.
Carol said, “I can’t take credit for that, my backup here is the one with all the good ideas,” and she put her hand on Sela’s shoulder. “This meeting is her idea, too.”
Thank God, Ted Parsons plowed right over that; Sela hadn’t been nominated, Carol had, and he focused on Carol. “I think we want someone more capable than an o—” He stopped abruptly, before the word old came all the way out of his mouth, but it was too late.
Carol stiffened; even the pink streak in her hair seemed to stand on end. “An ‘old woman,’ you mean?” she snapped, glaring at him. “This old woman has been working her butt off all day canning food to get us by. What have you been doing, other than coming here and trying to claim the same amount of school food as the people who live and work here all year long?”
Sela didn’t often get angry, but Parsons’s contemptuous dismissal of her aunt had her stepping forward, her hands curling into fists, shyness forgotten. Carol grabbed her arm, pulled her back. “I can handle this,” she murmured.
A groundswell of hostile muttering followed the exchange. Parsons glared right back at her. “And you yourself said I had a point.”
“I was being nice—something you might not understand.”
“Anyone else want to volunteer?” Mike Kilgore asked loudly, once more trying to deflect the hostility into a more productive direction. “Or nominate someone?”
Silence.
“Okay, then, let’s take a vote. Everyone for Mr. Parsons say ‘aye.’”
“Aye,” came a chorus of voices, mostly male.
“Now Carol Allen—”
“Aye!” This time the voices were mostly female, and definitely louder.
“You can’t go by whoever yells the loudest,” Ted Parsons snapped. “You have to take a real vote. Plus not everyone’s here. My wife—”
“Could your wife have come if she’d wanted to?” Carol asked, lifting her brows. Sela wondered if they were going to get through this election without fisticuffs. She’d never before seen Carol be so openly antagonistic to someone, especially on such short acquaintance.
“Of course—”
“Then whether or not she’s here doesn’t matter. I can’t think of any election in America that has a hundred percent participation.”
“But this means the decisions for six thousand people—according to you—will be made by the few hundred who showed up here.”
“That’s right. That’s how it works, Mr. Parsons. The word went out; the people who didn’t bother to show up opted out of the decision making.”
Oh no, now they were moving into politics. Hurriedly Sela said, “Let’s just line up, Carol’s voters on the left, Mr. Parsons’s on the right.”
“Good idea,” Mike said promptly, and raised his voice. “Line up, people! If you vote for Carol Allen, go to the left wall; for Mr. Parsons, go to the right wall.”
“Depends on how we’re facing, doesn’t it?” an old geezer said, then wheezed with laughter at his own wit.
“I guess it does,” Mike admitted. “Okay, this is the left wall”—he pointed to his left—“and this is the right wall”—he pointed to the right. “Anyone have any problem with that?”
“I’m good,” said Carol, as she grabbed both Sela and Olivia by an arm and towed them toward “her” wall, dodging people as well as tables and chairs that had been shoved helter-skelter.
“Way to go, Gran,” Olivia whispered, leaning forward to grin at Sela. Sela stifled a sigh. The little shit was actually enjoying seeing her grandmother get in someone’s face.
It was kind of fun, she admitted, giving in to a return smile as they lined up against the wall.
“No spreading out,” Mike Kilgore instructed. “Single file! Let’s get this done.”