Sue: "Yeah, I guess we do. Big man with his fists."
Nick: "Anyway, the man in question beat up the third party and then the woman in the case. Now I don't think it matters to any of us here who was right and who was wrong - "
Glen: "You are mistaken there, Nick."
Stu: "Let the man finish, Glen."
Glen: "I'm going to, but it's a point I want to come back to."
Stu: "Fine. Go ahead, Ralph."
Ralph: "Yep - getting toward the end now."
Nick: " - because what matters is that the man in question committed a felony crime, assault and battery, and he is walking around free. Of the three cases, this one worries ordinary citizens the most. We've got a melting-pot society, a real hodgepodge, and there are going to be all kinds of conflicts and abrasions. I don't think any of us want a frontier society here in Boulder. Think of the situation we'd have if the man in question had gotten a .45 out of a pawnshop and had shot them both dead instead of just beating them up. Then we'd have a murderer walking around free."
Sue: "My God, Nicky, what's that? The thought for the day?"
Larry: "Yeah, it's ugly, but he's right. There's an old saying, Navy, I think, that goes, 'Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.'"
Nick: "Stu's already our public and private moderator, which means people already see him as an authority figure. And personally, I think Stu is a good man."
Stu: "Thanks for the kind words, Nick. I guess you never noticed that I wear elevator shoes. Seriously, though - I'll accept the nomination, if that's what you want. I don't really want the goddam job - from what I've seen down in Texas, police work is mostly cleaning puke off your shirt when guys like Rich Moffat barf on you, or scraping dummies like that Gehringer boy off the roads. All I ask is that when we put it up to the public meeting, we set the same one-year time limit on it that we're setting on our committee jobs. And I intend to make it clear that I'm stepping down at the end of that year. If that's acceptable, okay."
Glen: "I think I can speak for all of us in saying that it is. I want to thank Nick for his motion, and get it on the record that I think it's a stroke of genius. And I second the motion."
Stu: "Okay, the motion is on the floor. Any discussion?"
Fran: "Yes, there's some discussion. I have a question. What if somebody blows your head off?"
Stu: "I don't think - "
Fran: "No, you don't think. You don't think so. Well, what's Nick going to tell me if what you all think is wrong? 'Oh, I'm sorry, Fran?' Is that what he's going to say? 'Your man is down in the county courthouse with a bullet hole in his head and I guess we made a mistake?' Jesus Mary and Joseph, I'm going to have a baby and you people want him to be Pat Garrett!"
There was another ten minutes of discussion, most of which is irrelevant; and Fran, your ob'nt recording secretary, had herself a good cry and then got herself under control. The vote on nominating Stu to be Free Zone Marshal was 6-1, and this time Fran would not change her vote. Glen asked to be recognized for one last thing before we closed the meeting.
Glen: "This is middle-think again, not a motion, nothing to vote on, but something we ought to chew over. Going back to Nick's third example of law-and-order problems. He described the case and finished by saying we didn't have to be concerned with who was right and who was wrong. I think he was mistaken. I believe Stu is one of the fairest men I've ever met. But law enforcement without a court system isn't justice. It's just vigilantism, rule by the fist. Now suppose that fellow we all know had gotten a .45 and killed his woman and her lover. And further suppose that Stu, as our marshal, went out and collared him and put him in the calaboose. Then what? How long do we keep him there? Legally, we couldn't keep him at all, at least according to the Constitution we adopted at our meeting last night, because under that document a man's innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now, as a matter of fact, we all know we'd keep him locked up. We wouldn't feel safe with him walking the streets! So we'd do it even though it would be patently unconstitutional, because when safety and constitutionality are at swords' points, safety must win out. But it behooves us to make safety and constitutionality synonymous as quickly as we can. We need to think about a court system."
Fran: "That's very interesting, and I agree that it's something we ought to think about, but right now I'm going to move that we adjourn. It's late, and I'm very tired."
Ralph: "Boy, I second that motion. Let's talk about courts next time. My head's got so much in it right now that it's going round and round. This reinventing the country is a lot tougher than it looked at first."
Larry: "Amen."
Stu: "There's a motion to adjourn on the floor. Do you like it, people?"
The motion to adjourn was voted, 7-0.