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.”
It took several minutes of shuffling and jockeying and arranging, but finally the lines were mostly uniform. Sela looked around; Ted Parsons’s line consisted mostly of men, though there were some women here and there. She looked at Carol’s line; yep, mostly women, with a few men. No doubt about it, Ted Parsons’s aggression had definitely gotten on the wrong side of most of the women present.
And the women outnumbered the men.
When everyone was lined up, the line on the left wall was a good five or six feet longer than the one on the right wall. Ted Parsons looked thunderous. “This is an ignorant way to have an election! We should have written ballots.”
“Are you calling us ‘ignorant,’ Mr. Parsons?” Carol asked in a chilly tone.
He scowled, but was smart enough to backpedal. “I’m saying this particular process is ignorant, and the position is too important to rely on—”
“It isn’t even a paying position, and no matter how you look at it, my line is bigger than yours.” And Carol smirked at him, knowing he and almost everyone else in the room would catch her inference.
Mike Kilgore blew out a big breath and once again stepped into the breach. “That’s it, we’re calling this done. Carol Allen is