November The Elk And The Election
The elk came down off the ridge in the first week of November, which is when they come down, and were seen first by Hollis, who lives closer to the ridge than anyone and who does not say he saw them first because saying would spoil the seeing, and then by the Fremont boy on his way to check fence, and then by the whole county after that. There were nine of them, six cows and three calves and no bull, and they stood at the tree line at the top of the Hollander quarter-section for most of one afternoon without moving, as if they were waiting for a decision that had not been written yet.
The election was on Tuesday.
The courthouse
turned the side room
into a voting place
the way it turns it
every two years,
with the long folding tables
and the cardboard partitions
and the old steel ballot box
that has held every vote
cast in this county
for longer than anyone
who was voting in it
could remember.
Mrs. Linzmeier,
who runs the elections,
arrived at six
and put the coffee on
and set out the sign-in book
and unlocked the door at seven
and the first man
in the line
was Earl Nygaard,
because Earl
is the first man
in every line
that has to do
with the town,
and he took his ballot
and went to his partition
and filled it out slowly,
the way he fills out
everything,
and dropped it in the box
and signed the book
on his way out
and touched his cap
to Mrs. Linzmeier
and went home to Delores.