“You need to see where they put the line,” he said, pointing to the eastern edge of the new map.
I matched his numbers against the draft Ralph had shown me earlier. The redrawn boundary cut his home out of the district entirely.
“These lines were not drawn by anyone who has ever set foot in our county,” I said.
Don adjusted his wrist watch again, his face tight.
“Why did you bring these to me tonight?” I asked, looking at the private figures.
He did not answer, but his silence told me the statehouse doors were already closed to him.
I locked the office door and looked down at the newly drawn lines that divide my hometown in two.
The next morning at nine, Elaine McAdams sat at the long oak table in the archives vault with three leather-bound voting ledgers open in front of her. She was a political scientist from Georgetown, but she turned the yellowed pages with the careful touch of a high school history teacher. I hauled a heavy cardboard box of historical maps from the metal shelving unit in the corner, the dust tickling my throat under the hum of the old fluorescent lights.
