Chapter 27

Alice and I took our seats on each side of Sheila as the last stragglers filed into the amphitheater and returned to their places.

“Before we resume, I want to thank our kitchen crew for a fantastic, as usual, flash-banquet. Well done, thank you,” Sheila said as she held her gavel in the ready position.

With plumbing and dietary needs satisfied, a soothing and comfortable afterglow had fallen over the proceedings. It wouldn’t last long, but at least we were starting with an advantage. Deliberation was going to determine the outcome of this debate. Other than adding my voice, I had no control over the discussion.

A fundamental truth of democracy: having the freedom to speak is no guarantee you’ll win the vote.

The rap of the gavel sent a jolt of energy into the gathering and created a new life form as individual participants assumed the dynamic of an assembly; the meeting itself became a living being with a mind of its own.

“We have a membership question before us: shall Dennis Richards be admitted as a member of the Liberty Mountain Society of Sisters?” Sheila paused for a moment as she shuffled her notes.

“Debate will continue until all parties have had the opportunity to speak, or the chair determines that we’ve reached a consensus. At that time, I will entertain a motion to call the question. A simple majority vote is sufficient to close debate. Passage requires a two-thirds vote. Are there any questions?”

She scanned the silent room.

“Good. Anyone wishing to speak in support, please stand and be recognized.” Sheila leaned forward in her chair and studied the crowd. “Yes, Brenda, what is on your mind?” She said to the quartermaster, waving her hand in the air.

Brenda’s demeanor was confident and self-assured as she stepped on the stage and took a handheld microphone from Sheila. “I will vote to allow this man to stay with us. He can live with us at Liberty Mountain. He is a fellow veteran, and I give him the benefit of the doubt. He is welcome to share our home.”

She handed Sheila the microphone and returned to her seat.

“Does anyone wish to speak in opposition to the question?” Sheila scanned the assembly and called upon the Frost Queen rising out of her chair.

“I don’t want him here. I did not work fifteen years building this place to share it with a man. I don’t think any of us did. He has no place here. He has to go. That’s all I have to say. For now.”

Frosty’s glare sent chills up my spine; she was not somebody to be trifled with. About twenty-five years younger than me, Belinda was, despite the thin faint vertical dimple slashed across the right side of her lips, a strikingly handsome woman with eyes of different colors. The effect was striking. Her right eye was hazle, while on her left side, an intensely blue eye peered out from beneath long strands of brown hair, so dark as to be almost black.

Beginning just below her nose and ending just above her chin, the line from the old wound was more a dent than a scar. The injury left her thin lips twisted into the shape of a smiling frown or a frowning smile, depending on her mood.

For the next forty-five minutes, I watched in frustrated apprehension as the debate ebbed and flowed between positive and negative while the assembly struggled to find a consensus between polar extremes. The hatred of the Frost Queen stood in sharp contrast to Alice’s affection. Starshine, Darlene, and our supportive quartermaster had done an excellent job presenting the case for my membership. They even won over a few of Belinda’s friends by promising to hold a special meeting and kick me out the front door if I turned out to be an asshole.

The debate had pretty much run dry, and the meeting was starting to re-plow the same ground when Our Lady of the Glacier got in the last word. Belinda stood and made the motion to call the question. The resounding chorus of “I second the motion!” left no doubt that discussion was over -- the vote to end debate passed without opposition.

Decision time had arrived.

“I remind everyone that this vote requires a two-thirds majority for passage. All those in favor of the motion to allow Mr. Richards to join the Liberty Mountain Society of Sisters, please signify by saying, ‘aye.’”

I breathed a sigh of relief when an overwhelming majority of the Sisterhood sang out a boisterous, “Ayiii!”

The relief was short-lived when a rumble of NOs answered in the negative.

“Too close to call. I’ll need a manual count. All those voting in the affirmative, please raise your right hand.”

Sheila divided the room and asked Rusty to count one side of the hall while Marjorie, from the kitchen crew, was drafted as a teller to count the votes on the other side.

“Rusty, your count?”

“Twelve”

“Marjorie?”

“Eleven”

“All those voting in the negative, please raise your left hand,” Sheila instructed the meeting as the tellers again did a manual count.

“Four ‘No’ votes,” Rusty reported from Starshine’s side of the hall.

“Ten,” Marjorie said from the Frost Queen’s side of the room.

“Our membership being thirty-seven and the vote being twenty-three in the affirmative and fourteen in the negative, the motion does not meet the twenty-four vote threshold required for a two-thirds majority. Motion fails.”

Sheila frowned and shook her head as she brought the gavel down with a crash that reverberated off the walls like the crack of doom.

“What’ll we do with him?” a voice called out.

“Good question. We’ll take it up in thirty minutes. We stand in recess and will reconvene in a half-hour,” Sheila declared as rapped the gavel on the table and quickly left the stage.

The dismayed and perplexed expression on her face as she stormed toward the exit did nothing to ease my rising anxiety. I looked around the hall as the room erupted in conversation. The majority of sisterhood was not happy with the results of the vote.

“Now what?” I asked Alice as I wrapped my hands around a steaming cup of coffee and tried to think my way out of a box with no visible exit.

“I don’t know.” Alice comforted me with a hug. “We’ll think of something.”

One lousy vote?! I felt like the guy who busted his butt running a marathon only to trip over his shoelaces a few yards short of the finish line. My mood did not improve when two of the women who hung out and voted with the Frost Queen stopped by to offer their condolences. They were in their late twenties or early thirties and could have passed for twin sisters.

“We thought you were going to win; otherwise, we would never have voted no,” said the first woman.

“It’s nothing personal. I don’t care if you live here or not, but it’s Belinda,” she said, glancing at the Frost Queen.

“We voted to keep the boss happy.” The first one grabbed her friend by the arm and turned to walk away.

“Yeah, she’s a bitch when she gets pissed,” her companion said over her shoulder.

Great! Peer pressure once again trumps judgement.

I pulled out my pack of cigarettes and fumbled with my lighter while I walked over to the fireplace, took a seat on the hearth, and lit up. No point in pissing folks off with smoke; the updraft would take care of that problem.

“There you are!” Darlene shouted as she raced across the room with Alice at her side, running to keep up. “We’ve got some good news!”

“We’ve been talking to a bunch of our friends. They feel awful about the vote. We think we’ve come up with a compromise that everyone in the Sisterhood can live with, even Belinda.”