At Last Week's Village Board Meeting

New Jersey Mob Figure

Blames Mayor for Sluggish

Sales of Westphalia Land

At last week’s meeting of the village board, Gordon Vak dropped the "A Bomb" on purpose for all to hear – “Autocracy!”

The French speakers in the room gasped.

The mayor was visibly shaken. “We can vote, you know,” he said.

“You’re the only member of the board!” Vak shot back, stomping his feet like a four-year-old. “Who made you mayor, anyway? I didn’t even know there was an election.”

“Neither did I.”

“I demand a recount.”

“There was only one vote, and I don’t remember voting for myself.”

“Nobody even knows for sure if there had been an election and I bought these worthless shit hole acres of land thinking I could make a nice profit selling it off in pieces. But, no! Nobody wants to move here because they have to follow your rules!”

“Structure,” the mayor corrected him. “Sandburg or Frost, I can’t remember which one, said he found freedom in structure.”

Gordan pulled out his gun.

Everybody knew it was just for show. It was an old six shooter that you couldn’t get bullets for anymore. The man was actually a gentle soul who had secret stashes of money lying around in password-protected electronic vaults. His old man had been a mid-level Syndicate enforcer who’d been able to pass along to his kids some of the take before he went to prison without saying a word.

Gordan and the mayor had been friends for years. They first met when the mayor was working as an over-the-road trucker and Gordan was running lumper crews on the New Jersey docks. He slipped Gordan a twenty and Gordan told everybody that the new guy was “all right.”

But for a moment their friendship seemed to be unravelling at last week’s meeting of the village board.

The widow Anderson spoke up. Her tuna casserole always won first prize at the county fair in the small Missouri town where she and her husband raised two dutiful sons and the girl, who, from the moment she entered the world, tended to be a little too curious for her own good.

The widow Anderson thought her husband was the gentlest, most caring wonderful man in the whole world. He shepherded the flock at the town’s small Lutheran Church. She baked pies for the regular potlucks in the field out back of the church where everybody gathered following his sermons to iron out any differences they might have. The Missouri State Senate was considering a bill to re-name the town “Harmony” when her husband died following a short illness. In his final hours he said he wanted to start a church in a desert out west where nobody thought they knew him.

Her voice was soft and purposefully meek, but it roared over Vak’s bellicosity. “I think I have a solution,” she said.

All eyes turned towards the widow Anderson.

“A potluck,” she said.