Chapter 8
Power

The banker stepped down, passing close to Pa.

“If you know what’s good for that wife of yours, Hollister,” he said quietly but with a look of menace in his eye, “You’ll get her out of this race before election day. If she’s going to continue her attacks against me, she’ll find two can play that game! And I warn you, the consequences will prove none too pleasant for either of you!”

He walked on. Pa did not say a word.

Mr. Royce strode straight back toward the bank. The crowd of people quietly began to disperse toward their homes. Hardly a man or woman anywhere liked the banker, but everyone was afraid of him. As sorry as they were for the Shaws, no one wanted to find himself in the same position. And as much as they’d have liked to help, no one had the kind of money it would take to do any good.

Almeda followed Royce down off the platform. She looked at Pa with kind of a discouraged sigh.

“Best speech I ever heard!” said Pa.

She tried to laugh, but the look on her face was anything but happy.

“I may as well have been talking into the wind for all the good it will do,” she said.

“Everyone loved it,” I told her. “You should have seen their faces! And they clapped about everything you said.”

“Both of you are determined to cheer me up,” she said, laughing now in earnest. “But you saw what happened—Royce has let it be known that if he doesn’t win, more foreclosures will follow. Nobody’s going to take that chance, no matter what I say, even if they might actually prefer to vote for me.”

That evening it was pretty quiet. I could tell Almeda was thinking hard on her decision to go back into the race and wondering if she had done the right thing.

“Why don’t I just go to Franklin,” she said at last, “and meet with him privately, and tell him that if he will reconsider the terms of the Shaws’ note, I will withdraw from the race? Maybe I was wrong to think we could take him on and actually stop him. But at least maybe we could save the Shaw’s place.”

“Won’t work, Almeda,” Pa said.

“Why not? He wants to be mayor, and I’ll give him the election. He will have won. He’ll have beaten me.”

Pa gave a little chuckle, although it wasn’t really a humorous one. “As much as you like to complain about us men not understanding women, and about how your kind are the only ones who really know how things work, I must say, Almeda, you don’t understand men near as much as you might think.”

“What do you mean, Drummond?”

“This election isn’t about being mayor. It might have been at first, but not anymore.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“It’s about manhood, about strength . . . about power.”

She cocked her eyebrow at him.

“Don’t you see, Almeda? You challenged Royce for the whole town to see. You’ve had the audacity not just to run against him, but to pass out flyers, to make speeches, and to ignore two or three warnings from him to stop. You’re challenging his right to be the most powerful person in these parts. And your being a woman makes it all the more galling to him. He was there this afternoon. He could see as well as everyone else that folks like you better than him. And he hates you for it. It’s gone past just winning for him now. Down inside he wants to crush you, punish you for making people doubt him. Winning isn’t enough. He’s got to make you pay for what you’ve done. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did what he’s done to Pat to get back at us, besides telling the rest of the town not to fool with him.”

“Then that’s all the more reason we’ve got to find some way to help!”

“I don’t see what we can do,” said Pa.

“But why wouldn’t he be satisfied with me withdrawing? How does it help him to foreclose and take the Shaws’ place?”

“Well, for one thing,” Pa replied, “something tells me he wants Pat’s place. I don’t know why, because according to Pat the gold’s about played out. But if I know Royce, it’s no accident that he set his sights on Pat’s note. And that’s just the other reason it ain’t gonna do no good. He’s gonna find some way to get back at you, and he’s also gonna make an example of Pat that folks around here aren’t likely to forget anytime soon.”

“What harm would it do him to simply let it be known, ‘If you elect me mayor, I’ll let the Shaws keep their place. But let this be a lesson to you not to cross me, or you might find yourself in the same position’?”

“Power, Almeda—I told you already. If he did that, it would be like backing down. You would have arm-twisted him to letting Pat off, and the whole town would know it. Royce would think you made him look weak. Everyone would know that he was capable of backing down, and so they wouldn’t take his threats as seriously. No, I tell you, he’s not gonna back down about the Shaws, no matter what you or I or anyone else does. The memory of Pat and Chloe and them kids of theirs having to pack up and leave—that’ll keep folks in line as far as Royce is concerned for a long time. Everyone’ll know he means to follow through with what he says. He may hate it that folks like you better and would vote for you if they could. But he wants them to fear his power even more than he wants them to like him. And now that you’ve challenged that, he’ll be all the more determined to run Pat off his land, and hurt you any way he can in the process.”

Almeda sighed. “I just can hardly believe any man would be so vindictive as you say—even Franklin Royce.”

“Believe it, Almeda. I saw the look in his eye when he got down off that platform this afternoon. I’ve met men like him before, and I know the kind of stuff they’re made of. And it ain’t good.”

“Do you really think he’ll try to hurt me?”

“He won’t go out and find a man like Buck Krebbs to send after you, if that’s what you mean. He might have done that to me in the past, but he’ll use different ways on you. I have the feeling we’ve only seen the beginning of his campaign tactics. If I know Royce, and I think I do, it’s already a lot bigger in his mind than just the election. I think we may have made an enemy, Almeda, and the town might not be big enough to hold both of us.”

Pa was right. It didn’t take long to see that Mr. Royce did not intend to stop with mere speechmaking.

Three days later, on Wednesday morning, when Almeda and I arrived in town for the day, a man high up on a ladder was painting a sign across the front of the vacant store-building two doors down from the bank. In the window was a poster that said “Coming Soon.”

By noon the words the man was painting in bright red had become plain. The sign read: Royce Supplies and Shipping.