Margaret went very still. I've lived in Willow Creek for 12 years. I know that. There is no residency question. I know that, too.
Patricia looked at her with something that was part pity, part fury, part helplessness. He's looking for something to stand on. Clara's giving him the lumber. Margaret stood in the noise and movement of the festival and felt something cold moved through her that had nothing to do with the temperature. She had paid her $2 entry fee.
She had signed her name. She had driven here before dawn, and she had made that pie four times to get it right, and she had set it on the numbered stand and followed every rule. and they were looking for a way to take it back before the judging even happened. She said, "I need to go to the registration table," Patricia touched her arm. "Margaret, I need to go to the registration table," Margaret said again quietly, steadily. "The way you said things when you had decided you were going to do them regardless."
She walked across the festival grounds toward the registration table which was near the main tent entrance and she was aware of the distance she was crossing in a way she wasn't usually aware of distance the people she passed the looks that followed the particular silence that spread in a small radius around her movement like she was something that disrupted the air. She was 10 ft from the registration table when she heard Harlon Fitch say her name. He was a broad man of maybe 60, a county official of some kind, who had been giving himself authority over other people's efforts for long enough that he'd stopped noticing he was doing it. He was standing with two other men and Clara Hutchkins, and he said, "The Dawson entry." In a tone that made it clear what he thought of the Dawson entry, and Margaret kept walking.
She was 5 feet away when Nathan stepped in front of Harlon Fitch. Not beside him, in front of him, between him and the registration table, which meant between him and whatever path he'd been walking toward. Nathan was not a large man in the way some men were large. He didn't fill rooms. He didn't announce himself.
He had a quietness that could read as unremarkable until it stopped being quiet. It stopped being quiet now. He stood in front of Haron Fitch with his hands at his sides and his face completely composed and he said, "Harlen, what's the residency question?" Fitch looked at him, something recalibrated behind his eyes. "Nathan, this doesn't concern.
You're looking at Margaret Dawson's entry form." Nathan said, "She's lived in Willow Creek since 1875. She paid her fee." "What's the residency question?" The two other men looked at Fitch.
Fitch looked at Nathan. Clara Hutchkins was very still. It's a procedural review, Fitch said. Nothing personal. Then it should be quick, Nathan said, since there's no procedural issue.