Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

He snorted. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. The only people left in the country were people who didn’t know or didn’t care that they didn’t have any civil rights anymore. The government had been whittling away at the Constitution since Trent was born, and they’d done it so slowly and deliberately that most people hadn’t even noticed. Who would vote for a person who wanted to upset the whole applecart in one big shove, especially now when the world was in such turmoil anyway?

He made himself grasp the thought he’d been nibbling around the edges of: Who would vote for him, Trent Stinson?

Donna would. And he guessed it wasn’t bad form to vote for yourself, so that was two. At least he wouldn’t get skunked.

But if he was on the council, he couldn’t vote for the civic center. It would be a conflict of interest to vote for that and then make money building it. On the other hand, if he was on the council then he would already have a job, wouldn’t he? And of all the things he could think of to pay off his promise to Andre, this was the one that actually stood a chance of making a difference.

It was ridiculous. Trent wasn’t a politician, and never would be. He didn’t know a thing about running a city. But obviously neither did a one-vote majority of the people on the council right now.

And it was just about the right time to start campaigning. It was spring, and elections were in November.

He laughed out loud at the absurdity of it and focused on polishing up the truck, but the idea kept coming back, and finally he tossed his rag onto the workbench and started rooting around in his lumber scrap for some lath and a piece of foam-core. If he’d learned anything from this trip, it was that there was no better way to scare yourself away from something than to take a step toward it.

He was just finishing up when Donna came out to see what he was doing. To her credit, she didn’t laugh. She just looked at the sign, and then at Trent, and finally said, “Let’s go stick it in the yard.”