Chapter 14

A couple of days later, we each of us got a typed notice, posted on our cabin doors, about a "group meeting" scheduled for three days hence. The paper said that, hereafter, Janice Pennington was going to be posting, once a week, a newsletter all around the ship, intended to let us all know about anything the entire group needed to know, and might not have heard through the grapevine.

The paper said that, three days later (on a Friday night) there would be a group meeting in the main lounge. All adults in our group (including, by name, me and Geneva Franklin) were expected to attend. Roald and I, right in the paper, were designated as carriers, to help Martin Kazner to get down the gangway and into the lounge for the meeting.

There was going to be a lengthy discussion of setting up a "constitution" for our group. We would discuss broad general rules that we would all be expected to live by, and we would discuss important matters such as work assignments, treatment of future members who joined the group, and "sexual questions."

No answers would be formally decided upon that night, the notice said, but based on our discussions, after the meeting a draft constitution would be put together by a small committee, and subjected to a vote.

Edward Wilson was assigned the task of caring for all four small children while the meeting was in progress. To make that job easier for Edward, the meeting wasn't scheduled to begin until 9 p.m., and the adults would assist Edward, before that hour, in getting the children ready for bed.

And at the bottom, in large letters, the notice said that we would also discuss the future election of a leader of our group, and whether we would need a small group of representatives to work with the leader, "in lieu of a vote of the entire adult population on each issue that arises."

Looks like we were going to move from a democratic to a republican form of government. I hoped we could keep the small "d" and "r".

Well, with the agenda we had, it felt to me like we'd still be holding that meeting when daylight came. First thing I did was ask Ingmar whether he wanted the radio broadcasts (still being run, using recordings, every two after-dark hours, through most of the night) to continue during the meeting. He said he did. He'd already thought of that. Uncle Harry had the duty that evening and had assured Ingmar that he could run the radio recordings and attend to the post-broadcast listening periods without missing too much of the meeting.

You can imagine how much we all talked about that upcoming meeting, over the next three days and nights. Everybody was interested. Lots of ideas were tossed around, too, I can tell you. Folks are a lot more interested in government, when they have the feeling that their vote makes a difference. There were fifteen of us with votes. We all of us felt like we could make a difference.

All through the past couple of weeks, I'd made my best efforts to stick close to Geneva Franklin and try to make sure she knew I was alive and well. Geneva might have been only 14, but she was a smart little girl, and she looked and acted somewhat older than her age. I'm pretty sure she knew what was making me so friendly. She was friendly right back, although she held back a little more than I did. She held back a little more than I would have preferred.

And I worried about the race thing. I mean, she was from a small town in Louisiana. I was likely the first white boy who had shown any interest in her. And who knows what she'd been taught, about dealing with white people? Or about dealing with boys, in general?

We all realized that things had changed a lot, nowadays. I watched for signs that Geneva's father might be unhappy about my hovering around his very young daughter, but as far as I could tell, he seemed unconcerned.

Just how much had things changed? That wasn't always clear. This meeting we were going to have -- and future meetings -- even a written-down constitution: These things weren't going to answer all our questions.

But the meeting, and our setting up some kind of system for running things, would be a start. I think we were all eager for some answers.

Ingmar called the meeting to order at 9 o'clock sharp. He stood up and started talking, and I couldn't help but admire how much Ingmar had grown, as a leader, in the brief time we'd all been together. It was easy to forget that he was just an under-educated fisherman from a tiny town, way up north in Manitoba. I thought Ingmar had been an awful sure-footed leader, even before this. Even before we started living on yachts and he had openly claimed the role of "captain."

Now he was repeating what he'd said before: "Just because I've been running the ship, that don't mean I need to be the leader of the group," Ingmar said. "I think it'll be reasonably easy, keeping the question of the Leader's role separate from my role as Captain. Hell, if you don't like the way I run the ship, you can change that, even. Only, I think that it's got to be either me, or Roald, or some future person who knows about ships, to be the captain."

"Oh quit being modest, Ingmar," Bridgett sang out. "You know damned well we want you to continue being captain of this ship, and Roald your first mate."

So that was settled, because we all joined in to endorse Bridgett's statement.

"OK," Ingmar said. "But the question of Leader is different. There's lots of folks, here, could be leader, just as good as me. We got new folks, but we've all had time, now, to learn a little bit about each other. We've got some educated folks. Maybe one of them ought to be leader. And it don't necessarily have to be a man, neither. Some of the women, here, they could lead us, if we asked them to."

"What about Martin?" Sandra Shumer said. She was the first of the "new people" to open her mouth, that night. I wondered how many people there, besides me and Bridgett, knew she'd been sleeping with Martin.

"Martin's educated and smart," Sandra continued. "And he's confined to the ship, most of the time, because of his handicap. He's got time to think about stuff, and do some planning. Most of us are all the time running errands, and stuff. Even Ingmar leaves the ship regularly. But Martin's always here. And he operates the radio a lot, too. I think he'd do good, as our leader."