Folly woke with a start as if she had been interrupted in the middle of a dream, turned over, and let herself lay in bed for a few minutes, her body stretched out its full length. Voting day. She felt the knot in her stomach. She remembered from her childhood the long days of anticipation waiting for the opening of the county fair, then the morning of waking, the day having finally arrived, the flutter of the butterflies tickling in her gut. This was the day. She had wanted to be well rested for it, and here she was instead—tired, achy tired. She and Martha had stayed up arguing late into the night, and then she hadn’t slept well when she’d finally gone to bed. If having the election over with meant going back to the routine of doing her shift, she wouldn’t mind that. And she could surely use the paycheck. In fact, Mary Lou’s job had been feeding them the past few weeks and she didn’t know what they would have done without it. She felt both let down and relieved by the idea that time was up, she was done with spending her days talking herself and everyone who would listen into supporting the union, talking down fears that she wasn’t even sure she shouldn’t be holding onto, such as the fear that the union would be one more arm of authority to come in and pinch off another piece of their individual freedom.
