Love for Sale

nobody was still under the Duesie before Robert drove off.
    By three-thirty he was back and had loaded up Lily and the boys and girls to take them home in style. By this time Robert himself was as dirty as the car, and the children seemed to absorb a lot of the dirt on the way.
    “Their mothers are going to have fits when they see them,“ Lily said.
    “Most of their mothers have ridden in it already, and some of them brought along the mess themselves. Roxanne Anderson had been canning fruit she dried over the summer for pies. She smeared sticky juice all over the dashboard,“ Robert said. “I’ve tried to keep count. I think I rounded up over sixty voters by the time I lost track.”
    Lily could hardly hear him for the delighted squeals of the children. He stopped to let her vote, insisting that Lily go to the head of the long line in honor of his contribution to rounding up voters, and had a hard time keeping the children in the car.
    Lily was tired by the time he dropped her off, and she had some of Mrs. Anderson’s pie filling on her coat sleeve. Robert kept going, trying to find more voters before the polls closed. Lily cleaned up her coat and took a quick bath.
    By seven-thirty, Robert was home. He was filthy and exhausted, but jubilant.
    “I did my part to elect the president. Who would have thought I’d have come to this? I even managed to vote. And I scooped up Howard Walker and made him vote, cranky as he was.”

    For the only time in their history at Grace and Favor, the residents of the house ate their dinner with the radio on. The early returns were starting to come in and sounded good. But most of them were from the northeastern states, where Roosevelt was well known. It would be hours before the Midwest would report and even later for the West Coast. Robert was driving them all so crazy gabbing on about his contribution and his tallies that they told him to go take a nap.
    Phoebe decided at ten to give up listening, and the Prinneys were nodding off in their chairs by eleven, when Robert came back downstairs with sleep-tousled hair. “Have you kept up my tally?“ he demanded of Lily.
    “Of course I have. Take a look.”
    By midnight it was clear that Governor Roosevelt had won the presidency by an enormous landslide. Lily was thrilled, but Robert pointed out that no matter how grand this was, Roosevelt wouldn’t take office for another five months.
    “Hoover knows he’s out now. He has no incentive left to care about the country. Five months is enough to get a revolution going.“
    “I don’t think it will happen,“ Lily said, meaning she hoped it wouldn’t.
    “Maybe you’re right. Now that the voters have spoken loud and clear, they’ll be willing to wait for better times. Lily, could you take my half day of teaching again tomorrow so I can clean the car?“
    “Absolutely not. You’re the one who had the nap.“
    “I’d trade you two whole days.“
    “No. Miss Langston might be back before you can do it.“
    “I’ll do it this week. I promise.“
    “Oh, all right. I’m going to bed now. I won’t forget the promise.“
    “I can cope with grammar, but you know I’m at sea with arithmetic,“ Robert waffled.
    “They can go two days without arithmetic then. I haven’t time to teach you anything you can teach them. We’ll just reverse what we already teach to the other half of the day.”
    Robert looked confused.
    “You know what I mean,“ Lily said. “I’m just too tired to say it right. Good night, Robert.”

    Howard Walker couldn’t stand waiting for information to come to him, so on Wednesday he went hunting for anything he could find out about his suspects. He called nearly every law enforcement person he was acquainted with. All of them knew about Brother Goodheart, and one had interesting information.
    “We went after him when I was starting out as a cop in Nebraska. That’s where he was born, around 1885. Regularly beat by his father. He did time for petty larceny when he held up the town pharmacy. That’s when I caught him. Then he did time again after that for attacking a young woman in the town. Went east, about the same time I did, working his way along as a traveling preacher. I’ve kept my eye on him for a long time, hoping to catch him out at something else, but it seems someone’s bumped him off, from what you say.“
    “Would you care to guess who?“ Walker asked the retired chief of police of Kingston, a town upstate.
    “Either someone he