Rhoda Merriweather held the challenger interviews on a Tuesday night in the Grange Hall, at a card table under the basketball hoop. She brought her heavy gavel, a timer, and a scoring rubric she had typed herself. It had five categories. One of them was "Temperament."
I sat in the back row, on a folding chair, with my coat on. I had recused myself from presiding. Nobody had said anything about watching.
"Judge," Rhoda said, without looking up. "You understand you're a spectator."
"Entirely."
"Spectators don't take notes."
I put my pen away. She had seen it from across the hall. I was beginning to understand how she had stayed council president for eleven years.
Forty-one applicants had become thirty-eight. Two had withdrawn after Rhoda published the rubric. One had moved to Arizona, possibly for unrelated reasons.
They came up one at a time. Rhoda asked each of them the same four questions, in the same order, in the same tone. I hated how fair it was. It was exactly how I would have done it.
Pastor Lyle Amsel was first. He is sixty and has been at First Methodist for twenty years. He tells a joke at the start of every sermon and waits for a laugh that has not come since the Clinton administration.
"Qualifications," Rhoda said.
"I have made an entire congregation laugh," the pastor said.
"When?"
"Easter. Two thousand eleven."
He paused. "It was a joke about a stone. It was mostly a joke about a stone."
Rhoda wrote something. It was short.
Kyle the gentle firefighter was next. Kyle is twenty-seven and apologizes to doors when he bumps them.
He said he wanted to help the ladder truck. Rhoda asked what technique he would use. He thought about it and said, "I'd ask him first if it was okay."
"It's a contest, Kyle," Ray Dombrowski called from the side.
"I know," Kyle said. "I'd still ask."
Rhoda gave him full marks for temperament. I would have, too.
The dental hygienist proposed going for the lower ribs, "where people forget they have ribs." The grandmother proposed a speech about how disappointed she was in him. Ray tried to apply again under the name "R. Dombrowski" and was removed by Gloria, who did not look up from her minutes.
Then Faye Mulroney came to the table.
She was small and upright, with silver hair in a firm bun. She wore a navy wool coat and fingerless gloves, though the hall was warm. She sat down, laid her hands flat on the card table, and ran a scale up the edge of it with her fingers. It made a soft, fast, rippling sound, like rain on a tin roof that knew what it was doing.
The hall went still. Even Gloria looked up.
"Faye Mulroney," she said. "Sixty-six. Retired piano teacher. Thirty-eight years at the Dunmore County music school."
"Qualifications," Rhoda said.
"For six years I've run the Giggle Booth at the Dunmore Harvest Fair. Adults only, signed cards, two dollars for the food pantry."
She folded her hands. "Two hundred and twelve people have sat across from me. Not one of them made it to twenty."
"And you'd like to face Mr. Kettering because…?"
Faye looked over her shoulder, directly at me in the back row.
"Five years ago, I sat in that chair," she said. "Your contest, Judge. Year four.
"I lasted four seconds. I laughed so hard I knocked over the pickle bucket."
She turned back to Rhoda. "Then a man in a flannel shirt sat down after me and lasted sixty. I have been practicing on the other side ever since."
Rhoda picked up her heavy gavel. She did not even consult the rubric.
"Challenger selected," she said.
You might think the town would wait for the contest. The town did not wait.
Larkin Falls had ten thousand dollars on the line and eleven days to collect it. There were rules about the chair. There were no rules about the rest of Dennis's life.
So the town tried to make him laugh the old-fashioned way.
The pastor changed the sign outside First Methodist. It read: WHY DID THE ASSESSOR CROSS THE ROAD? TO RE-EVALUATE THE OTHER SIDE. Dennis drove past it twice a day.
On the second morning, he stopped, read it, and wrote something on his clipboard. The pastor took this as a good sign. It was a note that the church's sign was taller than the zoning code allowed.
Sal Ferraro, the barber, is sixty-nine and has a joke for every haircut. He gave Dennis a free trim and told eleven jokes in twenty minutes. Dennis thanked him for the haircut and tipped twenty percent.
Sal said later it was the worst afternoon of his career. He also said it was a very good tip.
Then there were the houses.
Dennis was in the middle of the autumn reassessments. Every homeowner on his list suddenly became a comedian. The Halvorsens put a rubber chicken in their oven. The Kowalskis hung a portrait of a cow in their front hall, wearing a judge's robe.
Mrs. Trimble, who is eighty, left a whoopee cushion on her only dining chair.
Dennis sat on it. It made its noise. He stood up, looked at it, and made a note.
"Novelty cushion," he told her. "Removable. Not assessed."
Mrs. Trimble reported this at the Dairy Bar with something like awe. The Dairy Bar updated its sign. It now said CRACK DENNIS, SAVE THE TRUCK, and under that, in smaller letters, HE SAT ON IT.
On the eighth day, I had to issue a notice.
Ray Dombrowski had been seen at the gas station, standing behind Dennis at pump four, with both hands raised and a determined expression. Witnesses disagreed on what happened next. Dennis said he turned around and asked Ray whether he needed help. Ray said he had been stretching.
I typed the notice that night and had Gloria post it on the board outside the post office. I had recused myself from presiding over the contest. I had not recused myself from being the person who wrote its rules.
NOTICE TO THE RESIDENTS OF LARKIN FALLS
The Straight Face contest takes place in the chair, by consent, under the rules. Nobody is tickled anywhere else, at any time, by anyone, for any truck.
Jokes are permitted. Rubber chickens are permitted. Hands are not.
— H. Vosburgh
Ray read it at the post office and said, "That seems aimed at me." Gloria said, "Noted," and initialed the bottom.
That Sunday, we had dinner at the farmhouse as usual. Walt made pot roast. Lydia brought a pie and a pile of band folders to grade. Dennis arrived at six exactly, in a pressed flannel shirt and a fresh haircut from Sal.
We talked about everything except the contest. That lasted until Walt passed the potatoes.
"Ray's not a bad animal," Walt said. "He's a bull that's never been told no. He'll run at anything with both hands up."
"I did tell him no," I said. "In writing."
"That's the thing about bulls," Walt said. "They can't read."
Dennis cut his pot roast into squares. He was very good at it. The squares were the same size, the way they are every week.
He did not say anything about Faye Mulroney. He did not say anything about Ray, or the whoopee cushion, or the cow in the judge's robe.
"Dennis," I said. "How are you feeling about Saturday?"
He finished chewing. He put down his fork.
"Prepared," he said.
That was all. He looked at a spot just above my left shoulder, then back at his plate.
After dinner, Dennis and Walt went out to look at a fence post that was leaning. I stayed in the kitchen with Lydia to wash dishes.
She dried. She hummed. It was a march, and she was humming it slightly faster than it was written.
"What," I said.
"Nothing."
"You're humming in two-four. You only do that when you disagree with me."
She put down a plate. She looked out the window at the two men in the yard, one tall and one steady, both squinting at a fence post.
"Mom," she said. "You know he's ticklish, right?"
"He's the least ticklish man in the county. He has five Golden Gherkins."
"He's the most ticklish man in the county. I can make him laugh by pointing at his ribs from across the room. I did it at Easter, while you were getting the ham. He had to leave the table."
I stopped washing. The water ran over a pot I had already cleaned.
"Then how," I said, "has he lasted sixty seconds five years in a row?"
Lydia picked the plate back up. She dried it very carefully, the way you handle something you are about to say.
"Because you're sitting at the table," she said. "He's terrified of you."
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