A Place in the Sun

by Michael Phillips

  You could still hear quite a bit of noise coming from the men standing around outside, but Pa ignored it and kept right on going.

  “So before we decide, I need to ask if anybody’s got anything to say. You’ve all got a right to speak to the council before we vote if you think there’s anything we need to hear before making the decision.”

  Pa waited. The room was silent for a moment. Then Mr. Denver rose to his feet. He talked for about ten minutes, half toward Pa and the others up in front, but turning around into the saloon a lot too, saying mostly the same kinds of things he’d been saying all week about all the good Mr. Finch wanted to do for the people of Miracle Springs.

  When he sat down, Pa said. “Any of the rest of you got anything to say?”

  Mr. Shaw came forward.

  “All right, Pat. What do you have to tell us?”

  “Only this—that I think it’s an opportunity we might not get again. And as for the folks of Finchwood, it seems to me we can trust them just as far, if not even further, than some of the people we’ve been having our financial dealings with up till now.”

  A small buzz went around at his pointed words. Mr. Royce sat in front not moving a muscle, but everyone knew what Mr. Shaw was talking about. Since Patrick Shaw had almost been thrown off his land by Mr. Royce, if anyone had a right to be saying what he was, it seemed that Mr. Shaw did.

  “So I say we give them all the approval they want,” he added, then went back to where he’d been standing.

  From the nods and expressions of agreement, it was clear that most of the men present felt the same way.

  “Anyone else?” said Pa over the hubbub.

  “Get on with the votin’, Drum!” called out someone. “We all know well enough what’s gonna happen without no one talkin’ ’bout it no more.”

  “Do yer mayorin’, Drum!” cackled Alkali Jones. “Hee, hee, hee!”

  “Okay, that’s enough from you ol’ coots,” said Pa. “But I reckon you’re right. It’s time to get this thing decided and over with. So if there’s nothing more to be said, I’m going to call the vote.”

  Immediately there was silence, and Pa called on the council members one at a time.

  “Hooper,”‘ said Pa. “How do you vote—yea or nay about Finchwood’s petition?”

  “Yea,” said Mr. Hooper. Another round of chatter spread through the room.

  “Bosely?” said Pa.

  “Yea.”

  “Rafferty?”

  “I vote against it,” said the sheriff. At his words the noise got immediately louder.

  “What you got against ’em, Simon?” called out someone.

  “Quiet down,” said Pa. “You can’t interrupt the voting like that. You all will just have to keep your opinions to yourself till we’re done.”

  “I just got a feeling about it, that’s all,” said the sheriff, not paying any attention to Pa but answering the man anyway. “I just can’t see all the good it’ll do for Miracle to grow so big as they’re saying. It’ll make my job all the harder, that’s for sure. And that’s why I’m voting no.”

  “Royce?” said Pa.

  “Nay,” replied the banker. Everyone had expected that.

  “Shannahan?”

  “Yea.”

  Now it did get quiet. Everybody had figured the vote to be five-to-one, with Mr. Royce being the only person to be against it. Now suddenly it was three-to-two, with one vote left. No one had expected it to be close. And they sure hadn’t expected what came next.

  “Almeda,” said Pa. “Looks like you’re the one who’s going to decide this thing.”

  “I wish you’d have remembered to let ladies go first, Drummond,” said Almeda with a smile. “Then all this pressure would have fallen on one of the other men.”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” replied Pa. “It’s just the way you were all sitting around the table. Besides, on a town council everyone’s equal.”

  “Well, I’d still feel more comfortable not being last because I’m afraid I’m not going to clarify matters much. I vote no.”

  The silence instantly erupted into gasps and oohs and ahs and comments all filling up the room. The certain outcome was suddenly three-to-three—a tie vote on the first major decision the town council of Miracle Springs had to make!

  “What you gonna do now, Drum?” someone called out.

  “He’s gonna vote himself,” said Uncle Nick loudly. “That’s what we got a mayor for!”

  “Well, I reckon now we’re about t’ see what kind o’ stuff our mayor’s made of, ain’t we?” said someone else.

  “What’s it gonna be, Drum—yea or nay?”

  “Yeah, Drum, don’t keep us in suspense! How you gonna vote?”

  “Well, maybe I’d tell you if you baboons’d shut up long enough to let a mayor get a word in edgeways!” shouted Pa into the middle of all their hollering and talking.

  Gradually the noise subsided, and within another minute the place was dead silent, with every eye in the room fixed on Pa, who was standing up behind the table where the other council members were sitting. He waited a moment longer. I don’t know what he was thinking about, but everyone was listening for him to say just a single word—yea or nay. When he finally spoke, he said neither.

  “I aim to say a few words before I cast my vote,” he said. “You all know I’m no speechmaker. But I reckon a mayor’s gotta get used to making a speech now and then, and so maybe now’s as good a time as any for me to have a start at it. I didn’t plan this out, because I didn’t figure I’d have to do any voting today. But since it looks like I have to cast the deciding vote, I suppose I ought to tell you what I’ve been thinking about this week.”

  He stopped and took a breath, as if he was getting ready to jump into an icy river and wasn’t too pleased at the prospect. Then he plunged ahead. And if I didn’t know it was my own Pa, I would have taken him for a downright politician! It was just about one of the finest speeches I’d ever heard!

  “We’ve got a lot of things to consider,” Pa finally went on, “if it’s gonna fall on our shoulders to say what should be the future of this town of ours. Now I’ve been talking to a bunch of you this past week, and doing a lot of thinking. Most of you say you figure change and new business and more money would be good for everybody, and so we ought to just let it go ahead and happen. And I guess we all figured that’s how the vote would go, too. Probably most of you are a mite surprised that we’ve got a tie on our hands. And I’m as surprised as anyone. But even as little as I know about it, because I take my mayoring seriously, I did a bit of thinking these last days about what I thought too, and what I’d do just in case I did have to vote. And a couple of things stuck in my mind.”

  He stopped for a couple of seconds, just sort of looking around the room at all the eyes on him, then went ahead.

  “The first thing I found myself wondering is this—if all this change and growth that Mr. Denver’s predicting does happen, what kind of place is Miracle Springs going to be five or ten years from now? I’m sure he’s right, because he knows more than a man like me about bringing in lots of money and new people. And maybe we’d all get rich. But that’s what they said about the gold too, and not too many of us in this room are getting fat from having so much money stashed in Mr. Royce’s bank.”

  A ripple of laughter spread through the room.

  “Maybe we would get rich,” Pa went on. “But it still strikes me that we’d have to ask what kind of place Miracle would be with five or ten thousand people here. Speaking just for myself, I’m not at all sure I’d want to be mayor of a place like that, or would even want to live here. Can you imagine Miracle with ten thousand people? Why, tarnation, the place’d spread so far in every direction, the Hollister place would be in the middle of town! We’d have no woods, no creek, no mine! Even half of Hooper’s spread would have streets running through it!”

  He paused for a minute while everyone laughed.

  “Why Miracle would be a dad-blamed c
ity! There’d be no room for mines anymore. Every inch for miles would be taken up with buildings and people! And I guess I’m just not at all sure I like the idea of that. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like Miracle Springs the way it is.”

  Suddenly everyone quieted down as Pa’s words sank in. It was obvious nobody had thought about the question quite like that, and Pa’s questions got everyone sobered up in a hurry.

  “The second thing that bothered me is gonna surprise a few of you. It surprises me to find myself thinking like this too! But you all know that besides my mayoring, I’ve been trying to take living as a Christian seriously too, so I’m not afraid to tell you that I pray about things a lot more than I used to. And I’ve been praying about this vote too. When you pray, every once in a while you find an answer from God coming your way that you didn’t expect. And this is one of those times.

  “What I got to thinking about was loyalty, and what it means. Loyalty to other folks—not just to friends and family, but to all sorts of others we owe something to. Seems to me loyalty’s in short supply these days. Everyone’s out to get all he can, and we don’t stop too much to consider what we should be doing about those people Jesus calls our neighbors. But he tells us in the Good Book that we’re supposed to do as we’d like to be done by. And that means standing by our neighbor whether he stands by us or not. It means being loyal whether someone’s been loyal to us or not. It means trying to do good wherever you can, no matter what anyone else has done to you.

  “So I found myself thinking a lot about a certain individual in this town of ours by the name of Franklin Royce—”

  Another buzz of whispers and movement went around, then quickly settled down. Everyone was anxious to hear what Pa was gonna say.

  “Now, you all know that Royce hasn’t been a particular friend of mine, or anyone else’s around here. He’s pulled some pretty lowdown stuff, and he’s hurt more than one upstanding man with his greed.”

  I glanced over at Mr. Royce. His face had a scowl on it, but he didn’t dare move a muscle. I could almost feel the anger rising up from his reddening neck into his cheeks!

  “He’s tried to take my place a time or two, and would’ve taken Shaw’s and Douglas’s if Almeda and I hadn’t stopped him. So I’d have to say that Mr. Royce has been a mean man, and maybe some of you’d just as soon be rid of him and his bank altogether.

  “But you know, if it hadn’t been for his bank, half of you in this room wouldn’t have your houses and farms and ranches. Almeda’s store used money from Royce’s bank a time or two, and so did I. Much as we don’t want to admit it, Franklin Royce has done a lot for this community. Even if we don’t always see eye to eye, he’s just as much a part of Miracle Springs as I am or as you are. Why, he was almost your mayor! And it was money from Royce’s bank that saved the life of my Becky.

  “Maybe Mr. Royce, for all his faults of the past, deserves a little of our loyalty too. He’s put five or six years of his life into this place, and I’m not so sure I can be party to watching his business get ruined because he hasn’t treated me so kindly. Seems like when times get rough, folks have to stick together and show their loyalty to one another. Maybe this is the time when we need to show Mr. Royce that the folks of Miracle Springs can be loyal too.”

  There was another pause, this time a long one, while people shifted around in their chairs or shuffled their feet.

  “So here’s what I figure to do,” Pa continued finally. “I think we ought to think a little more about what kind of future we want for this place we call our home. Do we want it to stay the nice little town it is, or do we want it to become a city that’s growing faster than we can keep up with? Then I want to go have a talk with Mr. Royce. And I want to tell him I’m willing to give him my hand and be a friend to him, and show my loyalty to him, even if he does try to put my wife’s store out of business!”

  More laughter erupted, and people shifted about nervously.

  “What I aim to say to him is this: ‘Now look, Franklin, it’s no secret that you’re charging more interest than some of the big banks in Sacramento. Why don’t you be neighborly, and show your loyalty to the folks of Miracle Springs, by lowering the rates on everybody’s loans to match what Finchwood would give them? They’ll like you all the more for it, and then there won’t be any reason for a new bank to open up. What do you say, Franklin?’

  “That’s what I’m going to say to our friend and banker, Mr. Royce, first chance I get,” said Pa, glancing around the table where the council sat. Everyone chuckled when he looked straight at Mr. Royce.

  “And in the meantime, since we’ve got town business to conduct right now, I’m going to cast my vote. I vote no.”

  He was immediately interrupted by sounds throughout the room. I had been looking at Mr. Royce, and my eyes drifted to Almeda, who was sitting right next to him. She was crying. She was so proud of Pa—we all were!

  “So, Mr. Denver,” Pa was trying to say, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell your Mr. Finch that the petition’s denied for right now. But you tell him how much we appreciate his interest in Miracle Springs. And you can tell him for me, that if he is still interested in Finchwood coming up this way, try us again a year from now. That’ll give us a chance to think about all this a little more slowly. And it’ll also give us a year to decide whether we think Miracle Springs is in need of some more competition in the banking business, or if the bank we’ve got seems to be operating to everyone’s satisfaction.”

  Again Pa glanced in Mr. Royce’s direction. The banker’s face had a look of stunned joy on it, realizing that the man he styled his arch enemy had just saved his bank from another enemy.

  I think Pa’s final words were lost on Mr. Royce for the moment. But there would be plenty of people to remind the banker of their significance in the coming months!

  People began moving around the room, and lots of men were already walking up to the bar to start ordering drinks. The women and children who had been there made haste to leave. The members of the council stood up, and some talking and hand-shaking followed.

  Then almost as an afterthought, Pa shouted out: “This meeting of the town council is adjourned!”

  Chapter 41

  Uncle Nick Learns to Pray

  Pa’s speech and vote sure did show what the new mayor was made of! Pa had shown his mettle in front of the whole town, and there couldn’t have been a prouder, happier bunch of kids and a wife than we were riding home in the wagon that night after the meeting! It didn’t even matter about the vote—it was what Pa’d done. He’d been a leader, a mayor. And it felt good to see him strong like that, and courageous to speak out.

  Things seemed to change after that. The mayor and town council were more than just formalities now. They had made a real decision that changed something that would have happened without them. And if Mr. Royce did lower interest rates like Pa hoped he would, then as mayor Pa would have done everybody a lot of good. Miracle Springs might not grow as fast as some of California’s new towns and cities. But at least from now on, folks around here knew they had people they could trust looking out for them.

  One of the other events that happened early that spring before the babies were born was a big town picnic. But first I want to tell you about a conversation Pa and Uncle Nick had. I didn’t actually hear it. Pa came in late one evening, got me and Almeda and Zack together by ourselves after the others were in bed, and told us about it.

  “Nick’s worried about Katie,” he said quietly. We all waited for him to explain further.

  “She’s still quiet and moody. Of course, that’s no surprise to any of us,” he went on, “because we can see it well enough. But he thinks it’s his fault in some way, that he must have done something, or that he isn’t being all to her he ought to be.”

  “Bless his dear heart,” said Almeda tenderly.

  “I told him it’s not his doing—”

  “Of course not,” added Almeda. “He’s a fine husband
and father.”

  “That’s exactly what I said,” Pa went on. “Why, nobody from the old days would even recognize Nick! He’s that different.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “Aw, he just kept going on about how Katie wouldn’t talk to him and was sullen and quiet and how he didn’t know what to do. He was frustrated, I could tell that much. Seemed like he was ready to get angry with her one minute, but then the next remembered her condition and felt bad for not having more patience. He just doesn’t know what to do, that’s all.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘She’s been downright impossible lately. When I married her I didn’t bargain for no wife that’s moody all the time. What kind of marriage is it when you can’t even talk together? But she ain’t saying nothing no more, and I wind up talking just about the weather and the mine.’ He’d go on like that, but then suddenly stop himself and feel bad just for saying it.”

  “It could be the pregnancy, you know, Drummond. It’s harder on some women than others, and she’s a good seven months along.”

  “So are you,” said Pa.

  “Are you saying I’m fat?”

  “Just good and plump,” replied Pa with a smile. “And you aren’t moping around like you’re mad at the world.”

  “But then I have you for a husband,” said Almeda with a loving smile.

  “Yeah, I guess you do at that!”

  “But it’s not really the pregnancy,” Almeda mused. “That probably is wearing her out some, especially with little Erich to keep up with. But there’s more than that—it’s down deep. She’s a troubled woman, Drummond. It’s her spirit that’s in turmoil, not her body.”

  Pa sighed. “Yeah, I know you’re right. That much is plain from one look in her face. She’s just not at peace with life.”

  “Does Nick know that?” she asked.

  “I think so. I asked him when it all started. He said that it had been growing gradually for a long time, but it seemed to start getting worse a while back after he’d gotten her to go to church with us one Sunday. Avery preached a sermon about how we’ve all got to make God a regular part of our life every day, not just here and there.”