Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  “I’m not worried about the money,” Black said. “Pay me whatever you were paying Buchanan. And I’ll be right up front with you, Will; I’m not looking for a ticket to a Senate staff job. What I want to do is get you elected, take as much of the credit as I possibly can, then start my own political consultancy.”

  Will laughed. “That’s candid, I guess. So, if I get elected, who’s going to run my office?”

  “I’ll find you somebody who’s cut out for administration and fighting legislative battles. Me, I’m cut out for late nights and high drama on the campaign trail.”

  Will turned to Kitty. “Well, I guess that answers your question.”

  “It’s okay by me.” Kitty grinned.

  Will turned back to Tom Black. “You better pack your bags and meet me at College Park Airport in a couple of hours.”

  Tom snapped off a salute and walked away.

  “Will?” Kitty said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What was that business with Millie Buchanan a few minutes ago?”

  Will looked back to where Millie and her parents were still receiving mourners. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess she’s just upset.”

  “I hope that’s all it is,” Kitty said.

  *

  On the flight back to Atlanta, everyone wore headsets, and they talked on the intercom.

  “How much money you got in the bank?” Tom Black asked.

  “I’m embarrassed to tell you I don’t know,” Will replied. “That was Jack’s department.”

  Kitty ripped a sheet of paper off a yellow legal pad and handed it to Tom. “How’s that for the press release?” she asked.

  Tom read it over quickly. “Good,” he said. “I think you’re right about not holding a press conference,” Tom said. “We don’t want him staring into a white light and expressing his grief on the tube. The statement does it best.”

  “I want reporters to be able to talk to him informally,” she replied.

  “Okay, if you think so.”

  Will piped up, “Anybody care what I think around here?”

  “Not much, pal,” Tom said. “You’re just the candidate. Kitty and I will do the thinking; you just smile a lot.”

  “I think I like it that way,” Will laughed.

  *

  Kitty got the press release hand-delivered in time for the eleven-o’clock news and the morning papers. Will had three or four phone calls from reporters, mostly to express sympathy. They watched the eleven-o’clock news on all three local channels. Jack Buchanan’s suicide was treated respectfully.

  Will stood up and stretched. “I’m turning in,” he said, heading for the small bedroom set up in the back of the Atlanta headquarters. “What about it, Kitty? You happy with the way it went?”

  “Couldn’t have been better,” she said.

  “I agree,” said Tom.

  “Good,” Will said. “Tom, there’s a cot upstairs somewhere. We’ll find you a place to stay tomorrow.”

  *

  At the Georgetown police station, a young detective walked up to his older partner’s desk and dropped a sheet of paper on it. “I told you so,” he crowed.

  The older detective looked at the document. “Oh, shit,” he said.

  9

  They forded the river about two miles from the main highway. The jeep went in up to the doorsills and Harold Perkerson thought for a moment they were going to get wet. The woman drove surely and quickly up what was now little more than a track. Nothing but an off-road vehicle would have made it, he thought. Another mile along, they came to a gate. She took a remote-control box from the glove compartment and pointed it; the gate creaked noisily out of their way and closed again when they were through. Another half a mile passed before the cabin came into view up a steep rise.

  It was perfect, Perkerson thought. Good field of fire.

  “Okay, sport,” the woman said, “you’re here.” She grabbed one of his bags and led the way to the front porch, unfastening the two padlocks that secured the door. “You want to be careful right here,” she said, easing the door open a couple of inches and reaching in to unfasten something. She swung the door open and showed him the hook and wire, then the sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun at the other end of the wire, pointed at the door. “The Archon doesn’t like smart-asses.” She grinned. She flipped a switch by the door and lights came on in the cabin.

  “Where’s the power come from?” Perkerson asked. “I didn’t see any wires.”

  “There’s a water-driven generator in the creek, a couple hundred yards back up in the woods; it tops up a bank of batteries in the cellar. There’s two years’ worth of food down there, too.” She handed him a clump of keys. “Weapons and ammunition, the works. Be sure and keep a list of every single thing you eat,” she said. “I’ll replace it when you’re gone.”

  “It’s a survivalist’s dream,” Perkerson said admiringly.

  “Damn right,” the woman said. “Now, you sit down over there; I want to change your bandages.” She went back to the jeep and returned with a medical bag, then scrubbed her hands at the kitchen sink.

  Perkerson thought he looked a little like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. The bandage across his nose joined with the turban enclosing his ears, and the dark glasses made him look as if there were nothing behind them. “Are you a doctor, or something?” he asked, as she laid out bandages and scissors.

  “Something, I guess; I’m a nurse/anesthetist. I passed the gas during your surgery, but you were still pretty groggy when we left the doctor’s. Don’t worry, the doctor has already checked on the results of the surgery. All we’re concerned about now is secondary infection.” She snipped at the bandages, then unwound the gauze from his head. “Oh, boy,” she laughed, “you’ve got a couple of great shiners there. You look like a raccoon!”

  “Thanks,” Perkerson said dryly.

  “Don’t worry, sport,” she said, “you’re looking real good. A lot of the swelling has gone and … uh-oh, here’s the start of some infection.” She swabbed the area with something and took a bottle from her bag. “I want you to start on antibiotics today. Take two, then one after every meal. Use up the whole bottle, okay?”

  “Okay,” Perkerson said. “Can I look at myself?”

  “Oh, you don’t want to do that yet,” she said. “A few days and the shiners and the swelling will be gone, and then—boy, you’re going to look great. The nose has a nice shape. Now, let’s get some fresh bandages on.”

  She began winding gauze around his head, and as she did, her breasts brushed his face. She was a big girl, Perkerson thought, five-eight or -nine and not skinny. He felt himself stirring.

  “There you go,” she said. “Now let’s get some tape across that nose. Don’t want the cartilage moving around before it heals.” She held his head in her hands and had a good look at him. “Those are the handsomest bandages I ever saw,” she said. “And you’re not so bad yourself.”

  “Neither are you,” he said, putting his hands on her hips and pulling her toward him.

  “Hey, tiger,” she purred. “Plenty of time for that later. We don’t want to mess up the doctor’s good work, do we?” She put her hands on his shoulders and rubbed.

  “How long do I have to wait?” he said. He was breathing rapidly.

  “Tell you what,” she said, pushing him back onto the bed. “I don’t guess it can do any harm if you just lie there and enjoy yourself for a little bit.” She knelt between his legs and swiftly unbuckled his belt and undid the zipper.

  Perkerson drew in air as she took him into her mouth. “Oh, God,” he moaned.

  “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, tiger?” she asked, pausing from her work, then returning to it.

  “Too long, too long,” Perkerson said, then gave all of himself to her.

  *

  When he woke, the lights were off, and it was dark outside. There was the noise of one stone striking another, and Perkerson was on his feet immediately. He unzippe
d his bag and came up with the automatic pistol the Archon had given him, then crept to the door, which was open. The moon was up, and he saw, standing ten yards away, chewing on a sapling, a large buck deer. His hunter’s instinct made him want to kill it, but the sight was too beautiful. He stood silently and watched for a few moments, then the wind changed, and the buck caught his scent. The big deer raised his head, sniffed, and listened for a moment, then moved off down the mountainside toward the trees.

  Perkerson went back into the cabin and sought the bed in the darkness. The painkillers the doctor had given him had worn off; he sat on the bed and rummaged in his bag for more. Then he lay back on the bed and tried to turn off the wariness he had felt for the past days of being hunted. He was safe here; he had food, shelter, weapons, and—most important—a woman. When he had healed a little more, he was going to screw the socks off her. He let the pistol slip from his fingers and fall to the rug beside the bed; then he closed his eyes and drifted with the morphia.

  Pretty soon, he would be himself—no—better than himself, because he wouldn’t match the pictures in the papers anymore. He’d go among them again, hunt them down, the queers and pornographers and liberals. He sighed and dreamed of The Day.

  10

  Will slept late on Sunday morning, allowing himself to wake only when he heard the thump of the Sunday newspaper on the front porch of the cottage. He got out of bed slowly, stretching and yawning, and it was a moment before the dread came to him—the memory of Jack’s death. He took a few deep breaths and tried to banish the thought, to enjoy, instead, the comfort of a Sunday morning at home on the farm.

  He went to the kitchen and spooned the strong Italian coffee he loved into the maker and switched it on. While the coffee brewed, he scrambled eggs and toasted English muffins; then he put everything on a tray, took it to the bedroom, and settled down to breakfast and the newspaper. There was nothing more in the news section of Jack Buchanan’s death, but there was a moderately long obituary, detailing Jack’s education and service on congressional staffs. He read it carefully, learning nothing new about his friend, then went through the travel and arts sections before picking up the Sunday magazine. To his surprise, his photograph was on the cover, walking along the lake with the dog. He had forgotten the interview he had given the magazine’s new editor, Ann Heath. He found the article inside and began to read.

  This November, if the Georgia electorate decides to take a new course and choose a man not from the traditional core of the Democratic party, like Governor Mack Dean, then its other choice will be a young man very unlike those usually found on Southern slates of candidates.

  Not bad, Will thought.

  Born to wealth and position, political heir to a father who was a controversial governor, and now attempting to inherit the power of a great senator who gave him his most recent job, Will Lee is conventionally handsome, conventionally charming, conventional in just about everything, it seems, except his personal life.

  Now, what the hell does she mean by that? Will asked himself. The phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Will, it’s Tom Black. Have you read it?”

  “I’ve just started to,” Will replied. “What do you think she means by the second paragraph?”

  “Forget the second paragraph; turn to page fifteen, about halfway down.”

  Will fumbled with the newspaper while cradling the phone between shoulder and head. “Where?”

  “Dead center on the page. It begins, ‘His social life …’ ”

  Will found it.

  His social life, if he has one, is another matter entirely. For, to the best memory of anyone who knows him that this reporter has been able to contact, Will Lee has not been seen in any social situation with a woman in years. Since there is no clear, substantiated evidence of proclivities to the contrary, it seems that Georgia is considering electing a man who might be the first United States Senator who has never lost his virginity to anyone of any sexual orientation.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Will said.

  “I shouldn’t have barged in on the two of you,” Tom said. “I should have let you fuck her.”

  “Christ, maybe I should have,” Will said. “I’m stunned. I can’t believe that anybody would write something like this, or that anybody would publish it.”

  “Welcome to politics,” Tom said.

  “Tom, I want you to hand-deliver a letter demanding a retraction, and if we don’t get it within twenty-four hours, we’ll sue for libel.”

  “Easy there, Will, easy. I know you’re upset, but we have to consider some things before we go off half-cocked.”

  “What things? I want her scalp. I want to raise such a stink that the paper will pack her off back to Washington.”

  “First of all,” Tom said, “I want to ask you a blunt question. Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?”

  Will paused and took a deep breath. “I don’t have to answer that question to you or anybody else.”

  Tom paused, too. “Of course you don’t, but nevertheless, I wish you’d given me a blunt answer.”

  “All right, I am not now nor have I ever been a homosexual. Is that good enough for you?”

  “It would have been ten seconds ago,” Tom said.

  “What does that mean, Tom?” Will demanded, starting to get angry.

  “It means that the proper answer to that question or any other like it is a prompt and visceral no!” He paused again. “And you hesitated.”

  “It’s not a question that deserves an answer, Tom. I answered you because you’re running my campaign, and you have a right to know. I won’t ever answer it again—to you, the press, or anybody else. Is that clear?”

  “All right, Will. For what it’s worth, I believe you; I want you to know that. You’re right, of course. It isn’t a civilized question, but getting elected to the Senate is not always a civilized process.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand that,” Will said, cooling a little.

  “Of course, she hasn’t exactly called you queer,” Tom said, and his voice contained ill-concealed amusement. “She’s left the door open to an alternative; you may simply be a neuter. That way, we don’t even get the gay vote.”

  Will burst out laughing, in spite of himself.

  “All right, let me handle this,” Tom said. “I’ll ask for a meeting with the editor of the paper, in confidence, tomorrow morning, and I’ll demand that he discipline his new Sunday magazine editor. I doubt if the man has even read the piece, and he’ll probably be pretty annoyed when he does.”

  “Don’t you think we should make some sort of public statement on this?” Will asked.

  “That’s the last thing we should do at the moment,” Tom said. “This may blow right over, who knows? If it doesn’t, I’ll handle that, too. You don’t mind if I tell people you’re not queer, do you?”

  “Feel free.”

  “Listen, I don’t suppose you’ve got some old girlfriend who’d like to go out on the campaign trail with you for a few days and hold your hand in public now and then?”

  “Nope.”

  Tom was quiet for a moment. “I’ve got an old girlfriend who’d do it. You might even like her.”

  “Tom, get stuffed.”

  “All right, it was a bad idea. Now put down that magazine and read ‘The Week in Review’ or something. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

  Will hung up and tried to do as Tom suggested, but his anger kept boiling up. The bitch; she’d practically offered herself to him on a platter. A woman scorned, he guessed, but then, he hadn’t even had time to scorn her before Tom had interrupted their conversation. Still, as he remembered, he may have been walking backward at the time.

  He cleaned up the dishes and got dressed. He didn’t feel like reading the papers anymore; he felt like a walk. He was about to leave the cottage when the telephone rang again. Probably Tom with another idea on how to handle the situation. He picked up the telephone. “Hello?”
r />   “Will Lee?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Bill Mott with the Associated Press. I assume you’ve heard about Jack Buchanan; I just wanted a comment.”

  “Of course I’ve heard about it,” Will said, annoyed. “I found him. Didn’t you know that? You’d better start reading your own dispatches.”

  “I guess you haven’t heard,” Mott said. “There’s a story in this morning’s Washington Times that Jack Buchanan had been arrested in 1982 in a Georgetown gay bar when he propositioned a vice cop. Do you have any comment?”

  “I don’t believe it!” Will blurted. He turned away from the phone and took several deep breaths.

  “The paper published a copy of the arrest report, with photograph attached. Did Jack Buchanan have a security clearance?”

  “Of course,” Will said absently, trying to absorb this news. “All the senior staff people had clearances because of Senator Carr’s chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

  “Do you have any idea why this didn’t turn up during the FBI investigation of his background for the clearance?”

  “No, I don’t. As I say, it’s news to me, and I’m sure that neither Senator Carr nor anyone else in the office knew about it.”

  “Well, I guess the FBI is getting sloppy.”

  “I still find this impossible to believe,” Will said. “What was the disposition of the case? Did the story say?”

  “He pleaded guilty, and as a first offender, he got off with a thirty-day sentence, suspended. He was lucky somebody didn’t spot him in the courtroom, I guess.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Will said.

  “Mr. Lee, did you ever have any indication at all that Jack Buchanan might have been a homosexual?”

  “None whatever. He was happily … he was married and had two children.”

  “Do you think his homosexuality might have led to the domestic difficulties he told you about when he turned up at your house the night he died?”

  “I have no idea about that,” Will said. “He never told me the nature of his problems with his wife. Until that night, I thought they were very happily married. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was just on the way out of the house.”