Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  “All right,” Will said finally. “I’ll find the money.”

  “There’s something else, Will,” Tom said.

  “What?”

  “If we don’t get the money, we’ll lose; but if we do get the money, we still may not win. I’m not at all sure that we can.”

  Will’s heart sank to his lower abdomen. He knew how to find the money. He always had known; but he had never really thought it would come to this. Now he was being told that, even if he did do this, it might all be for nothing. Was it worth it? Only two people could tell him. “Wait a minute, will you, Tom?” He rose and went to a pay phone, dialed the number, got both of them on the line, and said his piece, listened to their answer. Then he went back to the table. “I’ll have the money for you tomorrow,” he said.

  *

  Will sat and watched the man’s face as he looked over the papers. It was a face he had known since he was a boy, a man he had never liked much.

  The man put down the papers. “Are you absolutely positive you want to do this?”

  “I am,” Will said, with as much conviction as he could muster.

  “Have you really considered the consequences if you aren’t elected?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You understand that you don’t have the income necessary to effect repayment.”

  “I certainly understand that.”

  “And, since this is the case, we would have no recourse but to sell?”

  “I understand.”

  The man reached into his desk drawer and took out a form. He wrote Will’s name at the top, the amount of four hundred thousand dollars, and a due date ninety days hence. He made two Xs at the bottom, turned the form around, and handed Will the pen.

  “We’ll have to do a title search, but I’ll expedite that. Assuming the titles are sound, the money will be in your account by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  Will signed in both places and stood up. “Thank you, sir,” he said, extending his hand.

  The man stood and gripped Will’s hand. “You’re a braver man than I,” he said. “Or, perhaps a more foolish one.”

  “I hope not,” Will said. Then he walked out of the office, leaving the deeds to his family’s land on the banker’s desk—land that the first Lee in Meriwether County had begun buying in 1826; land that his grandfather had lost to the boll weevil, and that his mother and father, through a lifetime of struggle, had won back; land he had thought his children and grandchildren would live on one day.

  In the car, on the way back to campaign headquarters, he wept.

  11

  Mickey Keane sat on the bed and made the huge effort it took to get a sock onto his left foot. As he did so, every muscle in his back, neck, and shoulders cried out for him to stop.

  “I wish you’d stay here another couple of days,” the doctor said.

  “Why?” Keane asked. “I’m not hurt bad. You said so yourself.”

  “You were badly shaken up,” the doctor said. “It takes time for the system to recover from an accident like that. You’re only alive because that car folded up exactly the way it was supposed to when it hit an immovable object. It doesn’t always happen that way.”

  “Hurrah for Detroit,” Keane said. “Fuck Germany.” He had gotten the sock and shoe on and was trying to tie his shoelace.

  “All right, go ahead and discharge yourself,” the doctor said, disgusted. “I know there’s a heel on that cast, but you’ll have to use crutches for a few weeks, or you’ll screw up your leg. Come back in two weeks, and we’ll pull another X-ray.” He started to say something else, then stopped. “I just hope I don’t see you back in here,” he said finally. He turned and stalked out of the room.

  Almost immediately, a man in a suit walked in.

  Keane ignored him, struggling with the shoelace.

  “Let me do that for you,” the man said. He walked over and tied the shoelace.

  “Thanks,” Keane sighed. “Who are you?”

  The man produced a small wallet and flipped it open. “I’m Bob Warren, FBI,” he said.

  Keane bent over and untied the shoelace, then began the struggle to retie it. “You guys investigating traffic accidents these days?”

  “We’d like you to stay away from Willingham,” the agent said.

  Keane got the shoe tied and sat back on the bed. “Who? Never heard of him.”

  “No? Then how come you camped outside his house for three days?”

  Keane looked at him. “I’ve always liked the woods.”

  “Look, Willingham may be important in a group we’re investigating. We can’t have you rattling him.”

  “Yeah? I love you guys. What if he’s important in something I’m investigating?”

  “I know what you’re investigating,” the agent said. “I can tell you that Perkerson will get brought in faster if you stay out of it. We’ve got a man on the inside. We know some of what’s going on.”

  “What would you want with Perkerson?” Keane asked. “Murder isn’t a federal crime.”

  “He’s part of something that is a federal crime,” the agent said.

  “So why haven’t you arrested him?” Keane asked innocently. He put a hand on one of his crutches.

  “Because he’s more useful to us where he is than he would be in jail.”

  Keane nodded. “I thought so,” he said. He pushed off the bed, pivoted on his good foot, and swung a crutch at the FBI man. It caught him full on the side of the head, knocking him down. Keane tried to put his weight on the foot in the cast, cried out in pain, and went down himself.

  The agent scrambled to his feet, pulling his gun. “You stay where you are, you crazy bastard!” he yelled, crouching and keeping the gun pointed toward Keane.

  Keane struggled into a sitting position and leaned against the wall. “Oh, I just love you guys,” he said. “Perkerson drove me into a concrete wall at seventy miles an hour, and you guys were probably taking movies the whole time. How long have you known where he was? Long enough to have stopped those killings at the abortion clinic? Long enough to have stopped my partner from getting barbecued? Who else are you guys willing to get killed, just so you can make a few headlines?”

  The agent stood up and holstered his gun. “We have our own ways of working.”

  “Yeah?” Keane said. “Well, I have my own ways of working, too, and—”

  “You want to kill Perkerson, don’t you?” the agent asked. His face was turning red. “You want to just put a bullet in his brain and screw up the investigation that’s been going on for two years, one that will result in dozens of arrests on conspiracy charges.”

  Keane grabbed the bed and hauled himself to his good foot. “I don’t know about conspiracy,” he said. “I catch guys who kill people; you might call it my life’s work. I especially catch guys who kill my partner and try to kill me.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not going to kill Perkerson, not that I wouldn’t love to do it. I’m going to push his face in the dirt, put my knee on his neck, and handcuff his hands behind his back. Then I’m going to see him booked, printed, photographed, and arraigned, then tried for murder; and, eventually, if I live long enough, I’ll go down to Reidsville and sit in the gallery and grin while they fry the son of a bitch.”

  Keane picked up the crutch and hopped over to the other one. He tucked them both under his arms and checked them for length while the agent watched. Finally, he looked up at the agent. “And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “None of you federal fairies had better get in my way while I’m doing it.”

  Keane staggered out of the room on the crutches and aimed for the nurse’s desk, muttering under his breath, wobbling all the way.

  12

  They lay side by side in the dark—wet, spent, still breathing hard.

  “I want to know,” she said. “I want to know it all.”

  He laughed. “You’re something else,” he said. “You never let it go, do you? You looking to get yourself killed?”

 
She took his penis in her hand and massaged it. “You could never kill me. You need me too much.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he whimpered. “Christ knows, it’s true.” He began to become hard in her hand.

  “I love the power of knowing,” she said. “To be near the power. To feel it throb.”

  By now he was throbbing himself. “I don’t know as much as you think I do,” he moaned.

  She sat up and mounted him, taking all of him inside her. “I want to know what you know,” she said, moving slowly in a way she knew drove him crazy. “That’s enough for me, just to know what you know.”

  “No,” he said. “Forget it.”

  She stopped moving.

  “Don’t stop,” he pleaded.

  She sat perfectly still.

  “Ask me,” he said.

  “Who is the Archon?” she asked.

  “Allgood,” he said. “Your boss is the Archon.”

  “Liar,” she said. She started to dismount him.

  He caught her and pulled her back. “No,” he said.

  She began moving again. “Who?”

  “Willingham,” he said.

  She stopped. “You wouldn’t lie to me again?”

  “I swear it,” he said. “I’ve met with him alone half a dozen times.”

  She began to move again. “Where do you meet him?”

  “Usually at his house,” he panted. “That’s the center of everything—weapons, money, everything.”

  “I thought it was Calhoun,” she said.

  Perkerson laughed aloud, then caught his breath as she moved a certain way, the way he loved. “That clown? He couldn’t find his way to the bathroom without Willingham. When Willingham found Calhoun, he was preaching in an old peach-packing shed and living in a house trailer.”

  “Where does the money come from?” she asked. “There’s a lot of money, isn’t there?”

  “Some from rich guys who are Elect; some from Calhoun’s operations. Any actual cash money that comes into Calhoun’s ministry gets siphoned straight to Willingham.”

  She began moving faster. “How do you know all this?”

  “He tells me everything. I think he needs somebody to talk to.”

  “But why you? You were just a team leader; now you’re working alone. Why you?” She moved faster still.

  “Oh, God,” Perkerson groaned. “Soon.”

  “Why you?” she demanded.

  “Because he’s known me since Vietnam; because he knows … ”

  “Knows what?”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  “Yes, yes!” she cried. “I’m with you!”

  They came loudly together, then sank into relaxation. She did not move from on top of him, but wiped the sweat from his forehead and stroked his face.

  “Why you?” she asked again, genuinely puzzled.

  “Because he knows I’d put a bullet in my own brain, if he asked me to,” he panted. “Because he knows I’ll never be taken alive.”

  13

  On a Friday evening in the same Atlanta public-television studio where Will had faced Mack Dean, he now faced Don Beverly Calhoun.

  The two men stood under the hot lights, at lecterns facing each other, and engaged in debate, prompted by directions from a single moderator, who chose the points that would be discussed by the candidates. For over an hour, Will had offered closely reasoned answers, backed by a real knowledge of each subject, while Calhoun had generalized, pontificated, and invoked Family Values, the American Way, and God’s Blessing at every turn.

  Will was growing increasingly frustrated at the preacher’s tactics; it had been like firing silver bullets into the heart of a monster who simply kept getting up and attacking. Not a single answer of Calhoun’s had been without skillful innuendo directed at Will’s maturity, masculinity, and religious convictions. At every opportunity, he questioned Will’s moral qualifications for representing Georgia in the Senate.

  Finally, Will had had enough. He had avoided addressing Calhoun’s veiled accusations for fear of lending weight to them, but they were down to the final minutes of the debate, and he felt that he had to take some sort of stand. When his time came to sum up, Will turned to the camera.

  “Since this is the last opportunity I will have to speak to such a large number of Georgia voters in this campaign, I would like to address myself to what I feel has become the single most important issue in this campaign, and that is the consistent campaign of innuendo, half-truth, and name-calling that my opponent has indulged in since the day he entered this campaign. He has implied, time after time, that, because I am a bachelor, I must be a homosexual; that, because I am unmarried, I cannot be responsive to the concerns of families; that, because I have refused to discuss my religious beliefs in a political campaign, where they have no place, I must be a faithless atheist—or, even worse, in my opponent’s opinion, a secular humanist, whatever that is. Because I am opposed to the continuous spending of horrendous sums of public money on weapons systems that do not work, I am characterized as being against a strong defense; because I believe that a reasonable part of public funds should be used to help unfortunate Americans participate in the American Dream, I am accused of being a free-spending liberal; because I reject a radical right-wing ideology, I am accused of being a socialist or a Communist sympathizer; because I oppose the death penalty, I am accused of being a coddler of criminals; because I support a woman’s right to choose whether she should bear a child, I am named an accessory to murder.

  “I believe in my heart that you people out there are too smart to fall for these smear tactics; I believe you want responsible government, free of radicalism of any sort; I believe you want to be represented by honorable men who care about the concerns of your daily lives, not demagogues who see public service as an opportunity to distort the political system in favor of their own radical and rigid beliefs. I don’t have a church pulpit from which to speak; I have only the means of any political candidate, and I have used them to the best of my ability.

  “If I am right about what you out there believe and want, then I can expect to be elected to the United States Senate a week from Tuesday. If I am wrong, then I deserve to be defeated, for I have misjudged the American heart. I ask you to prove me right. Thank you.”

  Don Beverly Calhoun now came to his final statement. “My friends,” he intoned, “my young opponent has summed himself up better than I ever could. He would have you believe that a man’s sexual orientation does not matter, even though God himself damns the sodomites; he would have you believe that a God-created fetus is not a human being and does not matter; he would have you believe that a candidate’s religious convictions—or lack of same—are not important to the people who elect him. You have heard him say these things himself, here tonight.

  “You have also heard him lament his lack of a pulpit from which to tell you of his faith. Well, tonight, I am prepared to offer him that pulpit.”

  Will stared at Calhoun. What was the man up to?

  “I am prepared, tonight, to offer Mr. Lee the pulpit at Holy Hill Pentecostal Baptist Church, a week from this Sunday. If he is not afraid to let us know what he believes, then let him deliver the sermon on that day and tell us.” Calhoun turned from the camera to face Will. “Do you accept my invitation, sir?”

  “I accept,” Will said, “on one condition—that is, that if I preach at your church, my sermon will be carried on every outlet of your television network, just as your Sunday sermons have been. Do you accept that condition?”

  “Why, sir,” Calhoun said, “I would not have it any other way.”

  “Then I am very pleased to accept your invitation,” Will said, with as much confidence as he could muster.

  *

  The following day, in the back of a car on the way to a campaign appearance, Will sat and looked at Kitty Conroy and Tom Black.

  “You let him sandbag you in there last night.”

  “Tom’s right, Will,” Kitty said. “You’
ll be speaking to Dr. Don’s audience, both in the church and on television, and with those people, you can’t win.”

  “Then get me a bigger audience,” Will said. “Use some of our TV time to advertise the event. Television isn’t selective; it goes into every home in the state; all we have to do is get people to turn it on that morning.”

  “That’s very risky,” Tom said. “We’ve improved dramatically in the polls since we got the TV money. I think we might be in a position to edge him out on election day, if we don’t make any mistakes. We’ve already got Larry Moody’s trial to contend with; that’s unpredictable enough. I just think it’s wrong to stick your neck out like this, for Calhoun to chop off publicly from his pulpit.”

  “It’s already stuck out,” Will said. “I can’t back out of this now. Can’t you see that? Tell you what, you watch Calhoun’s program on Sunday morning; time everything—the hymns, the sermon, the works. That will be useful to me.”

  “All right,” Tom said glumly. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is,” Will said. “And I want a big audience for that appearance. Start working on that today, all right?”

  “It’s your funeral,” Kitty said.

  Will sighed. “Well, at least I’ll get to conduct the service.”

  14

  The wind blew across the little lake and piled golden leaves on the porch of the cottage on the Delano farm. It was a Sunday of perfect autumn; the crisp days and bright foliage that New Hampshire had known weeks before had finally slipped south to Georgia.

  After a morning of sloth and a good lunch, Will sat down to review the Larry Moody case for the last time before the trial. He went slowly through the prosecution’s evidence, looking for traps and pitfalls. It seemed straightforward enough. The discovery rules allowed him access to their case, but did not allow them access to his, apart from a list of his witnesses, of which he had only four. He went through the crime-lab report again, mentally rebutting each point. He had his own exhibits: some clothing of Charlene’s and a medical certificate.

  He would not be able to prove in court that Larry Moody had not murdered Sarah Cole; the case rested on Will’s ability to keep the prosecution from proving that he had.