“I’m going to if ’Lish gets put up,” he says low, to me. But out loud he says, careless: “I couldn’t beat the saloon folks. They’re solid for Threat.”
“But ain’t we more folks to this town than them?” Mame asks.
“Yes,” says Eppleby, “but they don’t vote. Half the best men won’t touch the city hall with a clothes prop. The business men can’t vote much—they’ve got too mixed a trade, both sides eatin’ groceries and wearin’ clothes. And election time comes when them out towards the city limits is doing Spring plowin’ and won’t bother to come in town. (We’d took in most of the surrounding country in our efforts to beat out Red Barns in population.) And the Evening Daily was give to understand six months ago that the brewery ad. would come out if Threat wa’n’t their ticket. Anybody that runs against him is beat before the polls open.”
“Among ’em all, what about the town?” says I.
Mis’ Sykes spoke up, majestic. “The town,” says she, “is as good as any town. I’m sure we’ve got as many nice residences and well-kep’ yards, and as many modern improvements as most towns our size. My part, I’m too patriotic to be all the time askin’ for more.”
“I wonder, Mis’ Sykes,” I couldn’t help saying, “you ain’t too religious ever to pray about yourself.”
The band always plays “America” to go home on, not so much out of patriotism, I guess, as to let folks know it’s time to go home. And just as they was tuning up, Mis’ Toplady leaned over to me, brooding.
“I wouldn’t care so much,” she says, “if it wasn’t Lem’s first vote. Lem was twenty-one in the spring, and it’s his first vote. I just can’t bear to think of his voting for Threat or ’Lish, to cut his voting teeth on.”
“I know,” I says. “So it is Hugh Merriman’s first vote—and Mis’ Uppers’s boy and Jimmy Sturgis’s, Jr. Don’t it seem too bad?”
Mis’ Toplady looked at the men. “Couldn’t you do something to your election day that you own so personal?” she snaps. “Couldn’t you make it a day that is a day? A day that would make folks want to vote decent, and be some kitterin’-minded about votin’ bad?”