He, on the other hand, needed his hands to take notes in his vandalism notebook. The police were always polite when he called in the day’s damage—three more trees cut down; another tree toilet-papered; graffiti on a mailbox; stickers on the stop signs that said, beneath the word STOP, “clinging to the past”—but they had only come out a few times at the very beginning to have him file a report. Sometimes a police car drove through town at night, but what good did that do? Ted had suggested to the mayor that a volunteer force of residents take shifts monitoring the town since it was really too big a job for him alone, but she refused to add it to the November meeting agenda. Alternatively, he’d suggested a hotline for residents to call in anonymous tips, but this had not met with her approval either.

It was Lucy who had, inadvertently, provided a platform for town residents to help when she asked residents to take a vote: Were they for the moratorium or against it? She took everything off the bulletin board and set out two bowls full of thumbtacks: blue meant “for,” and red “against.” At the end of the month she would tally which side had the most tacks, and declare a winner.

It was clear there was cheating from the get-go—someone (Ted had a guess) stuck all of the red thumbtacks in the board before the end of the first day—so you could say it was a failure, but Ted thought it was a success because people started using the tacks for their intended purpose: to attach notes to the board: Small fire along the creek, teenagers in attendance; Mindy and Juan Sanchez have retained an architect; Bob Wilson took an electric hedge trimmer to his azaleas November 11; Kenny Adisa spotted taking a late-night walk.

Ted had some concerns Lucy would take down the board: it made the town into a little bit of a police state. But wasn’t a police state what they needed right now? You had to go early and often if you wanted to see the dirt before the accused took it down: Melanie Frank said her black walnut trees are “not worth the trouble”; Ana Lopez cheats on her taxes; Antoine Beignet has a second family in Toledo. Some of the notes had nothing to do with the matter at hand.