"They want us to sell it to them," Danny said, "so they don't have to steal it."
"That's one way to say it." Mrs. Dunning took off her half-glasses and folded them. "Here's another. In about five weeks, Lonnie Ebert is going to close this auditorium, because we have four thousand one hundred dollars in the trust account and the roof costs thirty-eight thousand. Then the commission's going to vote to take it, because they've got the votes. Then we get eighteen thousand dollars, minus the lawyers. Or we can take forty-five. And with forty-five thousand dollars, the trust could give a college scholarship in Cora's name to a Merritt kid every year for the next twenty years." She looked at Danny. "A kid like you."
"You want to sell it."
"I don't want anything, Danny. I'm sixty-three years old and I've sat in that ticket booth since Kennedy was president. I want to not watch it die." She put the glasses back on. "I'm going to put it to the board on the seventeenth. I'm going to recommend we take it. I'll be honest with you, I think we'll vote yes. Delphine Rourke told me last week she can't do another winter of this. The Bergstrom girls will go whichever way Delphine goes." She glanced at Ansel. "And I hear Royce has been calling around."
"Calling who?" said Danny.
"Ushers," Ansel said. He hadn't spoken until then. He was standing by the door with his gloves in his hand. "Old ones. People who made their year back in the forties and fifties and haven't been to a meeting since Eisenhower. People who work for him, or owe him on a car note, or rent from him. Phil Sorensen. The Vance brothers. Cecil Moore at the feed store. He's been telling them their country needs them." He looked at the letter on the desk. "He's not leaving it to chance. He's going to fill the first row."
"He can do that?"
"Anybody who made their year can come," Mrs. Dunning said. "That's the rule. Cora's rule." She smiled, very tiredly. "She didn't think anybody would ever bother to cheat at it."
* * *
That night, after the second show, Danny asked Ansel to open the cabinet again.
He sat on the upturned film can with the Book of Aisles across his knees and turned the pages under the work light while Back to the Future ran below, and Ansel did the changeovers without needing to look up from the stool, and the sound of the picture came up faint through the ports, Doc Brown shouting about lightning.