And the sign just outside, Pop. 1,983. Pathetic lack of 17 more pop. With 2,000 they could have boasted: We're on our way, on our third thousand, the biggest little town between here and there. Watch us grow. If you lived here, you'd be home now. Get in on the ground floor and expand with us, Tomorrow's metropolis. Under two thousand was stagnation, decay, surrender. 1,983: possibly a thousand registered voters; more likely eight hundred—two precincts. How many Republicans, how many Democrats? Maybe three screwballs: one voting Prohibition, one writing in his own name, one casting a ballot for Pogo. A sad town, a dead town. Surely it hadn't been so thirty years ago?
But there had been the railroad then, and young Almon Lampley swinging down from the daycoach before the wheels stopped turning, bursting with enthusiasm, eager, cocky, invincible. The railroad gone, its tracks melted into scrap, its ties piled up and burned, its place taken by trucking lines, buses, cars. You had to have progress. So what if the town got lost in the process, fell behind? There were other towns, equally deserving, equally promising, equally anxious to get ahead. The state was full of them: chicory capital of the world, hub of mink breeding, where the juiciest pickles are made, home-owners' heaven, the friendliest city, Santa Claus' summer residence, host to the annual girly festival, gateway to the alkali flats. Thousands of them. And he was governor of the whole state. It would be non-feasance if not mis-feasance in him to regret this one bypassed settlement.
Evidently progress, before it withered, had brought the Odd Fellows Hall. No more. The false fronted stores were as he remembered—as he thought he ought to have remembered—and the dwelling set back from the street, forgotten or held in irascible obstinacy, petunias and geraniums growing too lush in the overgrowned front yard. The Hay, Grain & Feed where he had called—where he must have called—the garage, the Chevrolet agency, the hotel.
The Governor gave a final brush to his trousers, pocketed the keys, and picked up his overnight case from the seat beside him. The hotel was unquestionably the most prominent building on either side of the street yet he had unconsciously left noticing it to the last. It was a square three stories high, probably older than anything else in town, of no identifiable style, with a sign saying glumly ROOMS, MEALS, in paint so ancient its surface had peeled away, leaving only fossil pigment to take the weather and continue the message. The brown clapboards had grayed, they were parted—driven asunder—by a vertical column of match-fencing, mincingly precise in its senility, pierced by multipaned windows with random blue, brown, green and yellow glass. The verandah, empty of chairs but suggestive of a place for drummers to sit with their heels on the collapsing railing, sagged in a twisted list. The two balconies above it had been mended with scrap lumber, unpainted, and the repairs themselves mended again.
Governor Lampley could easily have driven another thirty, forty, fifty miles—it was only mid-afternoon and he was not tired—to find modern accommodations. He could have driven all the way to his destination. He chose to stop here. As a sentimental gesture? As an uncomfortable (fleas, lumpy beds, creaky floors) amusement? As a whim? Call it a whim. The Governor was on an unofficial, very limited, vacation.
He admitted feeling slightly foolish as he took the three steps to the verandah and walked over the uneasy boards to the plate-glass doors and into the darkened, dusty lobby. In this position one didn't give way to sudden impulse. Any yielding to sentiment was calculated, studied, designed, to be milked for good publicity. He could see the bored, competent photographers, the casual—well-planned—chat with the reporters. Marvin would have arranged it all; the Governor would have only to move gracefully through his part.
Responsibly he ought to phone Marvin, let him know he was staying here, give his attention to whatever business Marvin would say couldn't wait till tomorrow. In imagination he could hear the querulous, nagging tones beneath the surface respectfulness, the barely suppressed astonishment (what do you suppose he's up to now? a woman? a meeting with one of the doughboys? a drunk?), the assurance Marvin would call if anything came up. He ought to phone Marvin immediately.
The thought of Marvin made him turn and glance back through the doorway, to reassure himself he was not part of a scheduled program after all. But there was no car on the street save his own, no busy technicians, no curious onlookers, no one. Only the afternoon sunlight, the swirling motes, the faint smell of oil and dust.