Bob Baxter stood up. “Objection, Mr. Chairman. I call for a secret ballot. We can find some way to do it.”
A way was found. Pebbles would signify Rod, a bare twig was a note for Cowper, a green leaf meant Caroline, while one of Jimmy’s ceramic attempts was offered as a ballot box. “How about Nielsen?” Kilroy asked.
Jimmy spoke up. “Uh, maybe this would do: I made another pot the same time I made this one, only it busted. Ill get chunks of it and all the crackpots are votes for Waxie.”
“Mr. Chairman, I resent the insinua”
“Save it, Waxie. Pieces of baked clay for you, pebbles for Walker, twigs for Grant, leaves for Carol. Get your votes, folks, then file past and drop them in the ballot box.Shorty, you and Margery act as tellers.”
The tellers solemnly counted the ballots by firelight. There were five votes for Rod, one for Nielsen, none for Caroline, and twentytwo for Cowper. Rod shook hands with Cowper and faded back into the darkness so that no one would see his face. Caroline looked at the results and said, “Hey, Grant! You promised to vote for me. What happened? Did you vote for yourself? Huh? How about that?”
Rod said nothing. He had voted for Cowper and was certain that the new mayor had not returned the compliment . . . he was sure who his five friends were. Dog take it! he had seen it coming; why hadn’t Grant let him bow out?
Grant ignored Caroline’s comment. He briskly assumed the chair and said, “Thank you. Thank you all. know you want to get to sleep, so I will limit myself tonight to appointing a few committees”
Rod did not get to sleep at once. He told himself that there was no disgrace in losing an election shucks, hadn’t his old man lost the time he had run for community corporation board? He told himself, too, that trying to ride herd on those apes was enough to drive a man crazy and he was well out of it he had never wanted the job! Nevertheless there was a lump in his middle and a deep sense of personal failure.
It seemed that he had just gone to sleep . . . his father was looking at him saying, “You know we are proud of you, son. Still, if you had had the foresight to” when someone touched his arm.
He was awake, alert, and had Colonel Bowie out at once.
“Put away that toothpick,” Jimmy whispered, “before you hurt somebody. Me, I mean.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m up, I’ve. got the fire watch. You’re about to be, because we are holding a session of the inner sanctum.”
“Huh?”
“Shut up and come along. Keep quiet, people are asleep.”
The inner sanctum turned out to be Jimmy, Caroline, Jacqueline, Bob Baxter, and Carmen Garcia. They gathered inside the ring of fire but as far from the sleepers as possible. Rod looked around at his friends.
“What’s this all about?”
“It’s about this,” Jimmy said seriously. “You’re our Captain. And we like that election as much as I like a crooked deck of cards.”
“That’s right,” agreed Caroline. “All that fancy talk!”
“Huh? Everybody got to talk. Everybody got to vote.”
“Yes,” agreed Baxter. “Yes . . . and no.”
“It was all proper. I have no kick.”
“I didn’t expect you to kick, Rod. Nevertheless well, I don’t know how much politicking you’ve seen, Rod. I haven’t seen much myself, except in church matters and we Quakers don’t do things that way; we wait until the Spirit moves. But, despite all the rigamarole, that was a slick piece of railroading. This morning you would have been elected overwhelmingly; tonight you did not stand a chance.”
“The point is,” Jimmy put in, “do we stand for it?”
“What can we do?”
“What can we do? We don’t have to stay here. We’ve still got our own group; we can walk out and find another place . . . a bigger cave maybe.”
‘Yes, sir!” agreed Caroline. “Right tonight.”
Rod thought about it. The idea was tempting; they didn’t need the others . . . guys like Nielsen and Cowper. The discovery that his friends were loyal to him, loyal to the extent that they would consider exile rather than let him down choked him up. He turned to Jacqueline. “How about you, Jackie?”