Michael Malone - Weebly

secretary.
"How's life?" asked Lance.
"Hard work," answered Hedgerow, then each went
about his own business.
Cecil Hedgerow was the town's third selectman; in
other words, the loser in the race for first selectman; in
other words, the Democratic candidate. Like the
second "selectman," Ramona Dingley, he'd been in
office for years, repeatedly elected by a coalition of
workers from Madder, where he had grown up, and
Dingleyans who did not choose to oblige Ernest
Ransom by voting for whomever the bank president
had selected to run the town that term. Arthur
Abernathy had been his most recent choice. Arthur had
obliged Ransom not only by becoming his first
selectman, but also by selecting Ransom's daughter
Emerald to be his wife. Cecil Hedgerow did not like
Arthur Abernathy, or for that matter Ernest Ransom.
Ransom did not like Cecil Hedgerow either.
But the antipathy made financial negotiations an
agony to Hedgerow, whereas they affected Ransom's
decisions not at all.