The Monument Read Online Free

them.
    Inside the courtroom—the largest room in town except for the gym at the school—was packed to the walls. Fred worked himself in and to the left, and we followed him until we were more or less stuck against the wall.
    I couldn’t see anything until Fred picked meup and let me prop my feet on the back of one of the benches so I could see the front.
    Except that there wasn’t much to see. Just old Howard Bemis, the mayor, standing up at the main bench.
    “The motion has been made that we hire an artist to construct a war memorial monument in front of the courthouse. This special open public meeting has been called to discuss the motion, find its merits and demerits, and open them to public scrutiny to ensure the free operation of the public will in these matters.”
    “For God’s sake, Howard, shut up and sit down and let’s get to it.” This from Wayne Conners who owned a farm north of town. “I have to be home by tomorrow to work.”
    Howard seemed to rise on his feet. Since he was short and kind of round, it didn’t do much for him except seem to raise him about half an inch. “Need I remind you,
Mr. Conners
, that this is a town matter for town residents only?”
    “And need I remind you,
Mr. Bemis
, that if it weren’t for my grain money and the rest of our grain money, you wouldn’t
have
a town?”
    “All right, all right.” This came from Fred. I looked around to see him smiling. His voice was soft but everybody was listening. “That doesn’t do any good at all. Let’s just talk about the monument, all right?”
    Which settled them right down and showed a side of Fred I didn’t know about. In the elevator he just let the others talk, mostly, and didn’t enter into any of it. I looked at Emma but she didn’t seem surprised.
    “Very well,” Howard said. “Back to the issue at hand. The floor is open to discussion. Does anybody have anything to say about the war memorial?”
    Which was about like throwing raw meat into the middle of a bunch of cats. Everybody had something to say about it, and they all said it at once. You couldn’t make out any words, just a roar, and Howard held up his hands. It seemed to take about half an hour but finally everybody quietened down again.
    “We’ll do it by hands,” he said. “You first, Margaret.”
    Margaret Balen stood up from one of thebenches in the front row and took a deep breath. She said all at once, “Just so it’s big I think it ought to be big because there are so many small monuments in the world and we want a big one so people don’t laugh at us when they drive through town.” She sat down abruptly.
    “Yes. Well.” Howard nodded. “And you, Taft—what do you have to say?”
    Taft was a man with no hair at all on his head except for bushy eyebrows and he coughed and said, “I think we ought to know how much money we’re talking about here.”
    And so it went, talk and talk until my head was starting to nod. Fred put me down so I could sit on the back of the bench and lean against his chest and doze a little until it was over at last. I heard Howard say:
    “All right, it’s settled. We do the monument as long as it falls under two thousand dollars. Mrs. Langdon will see about contacting an artist since she was the one who won last year’s art award at the county fair with her macramé piece depicting the history of Bolton County up to thepresent.” He banged the gavel and we all shuffled out and worked our way into the street.
    Python was waiting and slipped in behind us as we came out.
    “I don’t know about all this,” Emma said. “Just because she could knot some baling twine into the shape of Bolton County doesn’t mean Trudy Langdon can find an artist.”
    “Magazines,” Fred said. “She’s got tons of art magazines. Carl told me one day he about blew a truss moving them. She’s got crates of them. There’s probably ads in all of them for artists looking to do monuments.”
    “Still …”
    “It will be