Dark Horse

by Doug Richardson

  For God’s sake, was it true?

  Mitchell’s eyes narrowed upon her. Not in anger, but in a soulful need of clarity. And there, before his eyes, she was crumbling, the secret she’d kept for those two miserable months leaking in a chain reaction of shakes and silent sobs. Changing colors in Mitchell’s mind.

  Shakespeare continued. “All along, I’ve been doin’ nothing more than callin’ ‘em the way I see ‘em. If the front-runner is misleading y’all, I’m gonna say just that. A fellah that starts at the back of the pack can’t afford to be a nice guy and let the other candidate make a doormat out of him.”

  Mitch burned. The anger inside him came from somewhere south of hell, cutting loose in a tidal wave of heat. He felt the surge of a bullied animal, pushed to the wall and cornered. Within an inch of life.

  “Now, the counselor here. Can I help if he thinks he should get a free ride to Congress? He thinks he can do whatever he likes because, one, he’s good-looking. He’s got good name ID. Speaks well in public. Then there’s number two. He’s the front-runner. Or at least has been, until he took advantage of the people’s mandate. Flaunting public opinion and showing his elitist face at a funeral for a convicted murderer. Cryin’ over the body of a killer who a Texas judge and jury decided should be put to death.”

  He swung a pointed finger at Mitch, prompting the director in the booth to call for a wide two-shot that included both candidates.

  “This man,” accused Shakespeare, “this man, I tell you, was cryin’ tears over an avowed agent of evil. We all saw the pictures. There he was. Dressed in the black mourning attire of somebody who cared about the devil himself!”

  Mitch never even heard a syllable of it. He was in a fugue state, fueled by rage. The colors of his brain skewed to monochrome while his body moved involuntarily.

  Fitz saw it, too. From the back of the studio, he knew something bad was about to happen. Something disastrous. His stomach told him as it churned in acid. Then Rene nudged him.

  “What’s with him?” she whispered. “Why the hell doesn’t he respond?”

  But Mitch did respond. His lips clamped shut and his jaw went rigid. His right fist tightened around those panties into a bludgeon that, when he finally strode across the stage, closing those short ten feet between himself and McCann, clubbed Shakespeare across the ear. The studio mikes picked up the sound of crunching bone as Mitch’s right hand shattered against Shakespeare’s skull.

  And Shakespeare never saw it coming.

  One moment he was playing to the camera, swollen with his own menace and commanding the medium. The next, Mitch was upon him with flying fists and teeth gritted with spit and a seething wail. “You sonofabitch! You motherfucking sonofabitch! I’ll kill you!” Shakespeare was pinned. Mitch’s weight was on his chest. He couldn’t guard himself from the balled right fist mat jackhammered time and time again into his face. Cartilage cracked. Blood sprayed across his face as his nose bled and lips split apart.

  Stagehands leapt into the fray as the cameras realigned to capture the slugfest. Mitch was peeled away, instantly shrugging off Shakespeare’s saviors and shoving right past Rene and Fitz, who’d come rushing to the fore.

  “Mitch!” called out Rene.

  Suffering from an aural myopia, Mitch didn’t hear a word. His tunnel vision was aimed at Connie, finding her right where he’d last seen her, frozen stiff and fetal in that same chair just one row back from the on-camera panel. She was scared to death of what he might do.

  “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “Please, Mitch. I’m sorry.”

  “Ssshhh,” he calmed her. “Just be quiet. Now, where’s your car?” His tone was surprisingly soft and careful. She caught her wits, nodded, stood, and led him out the side exit where she’d first entered. Past silent and stunned onlookers. Nobody tried to stop them. If anything, people got out of the way.

  SIX

  GINA SWEET watched the entire debacle. In the comfort of her darkened guest house, she’d curled up to watch the main event from a down-feathered bed that was more pillows and stuffed animals man mattress. The quaint little cottage had been hers since high school, opportunely buffered by an alley with her own private garage and entrance. Convenient for a woman who didn’t want to be bothered by her benefactors, parents or not.

  Since her motel tete-a-tete with Shakespeare, her resolve had been to run. To get out of that motel room alive, she’d made too many promises. Love. Devotion. And dirt on Mitch Dutton. Real dirt. Facts. All promises, deep down, she knew she couldn’t deliver. The best she could offer were more lies, empty promises, and some humiliating sexual acrobatics at the harsh hands of her tormentor. Just to get out of that fucking motel room.

  Then run, she did. To Europe mostly. And, as was her custom, she’d returned with more bags than she’d left with. Unpacked luggage surrounded her. If it weren’t for her damned parents’ fiftieth anniversary party—an event at which she’d promised to play the part of hostess—she’d have stayed clear of Cathedral until well after the election.

  With a pint of Häagen-Dazs to boost her spirits and a bottle of cognac lifted from her old man’s private reserve, Gina settled in for a night of channel-surfing. That’s how she tripped over the debate. Her first instinct was to switch stations. She didn’t care to hear word one from either of those assholes. But a fascination took over. The prefight warm up made Mitch Dutton and Shakespeare McCann out to be political gladiators, movie stars on the rise. Stars whom she knew far better than the average viewer. So she stayed tuned. And watched.

  Ten minutes more of talk, followed by twenty-two minutes of debate that ended like no other in modern history, destined to be a story that would go national. Certain to air again and again and again. Rerun, analyzed, and covered to death.

  And when it was over? Gina wanted to vomit. Her emotions had swelled into a potent mixture of contempt and fear. She quizzed herself as to which man she hated more. Mitch or Shakespeare. She couldn’t choose. There was a moment she recalled when the camera had briefly cut to Connie, seated stoically in the studio audience. It was catalyst enough to curdle all the ice cream in her stomach.

  Then as quick as she’d thought she’d puke, Gina leapt for the phone. She had to call Connie and tell her. Everything. All about Shakespeare McCann.

  As Mitch and Connie drove home, both observed a kind of silence that only those whose souls had connected in marriage could understand. The thunderstorm had passed like so many before it, quickly, leaving a clean smell coming off the roadway. He cracked a window and inhaled all he could. Each breath slowed his pulse and brought healing blood to his mangled right hand. It was beginning to throb with each heartbeat. He let it lie in his lap while Connie shifted gears.

  But his mind raced. He knew nothing of his wife and Shakespeare McCann. Wherever or whenever or whatever had taken place. He knew about evil, though. He’d gone toe to toe with it. Live on TV. If he’d touched Connie. Hurt her. Or if she’d touched him…

  Curious, he thought. The instinct to forgive her was as powerful as his instinct to ball his fist and beat the daylights out of his opponent. To slug the sonofabitch into breathless submission so that he might never rise again to harass, stalk, or tell another lie. Fair was fair. Justice, though, would surely command a high price. Mitch knew that would come, too. By morning it would be over. After that, there would be only Mitch and Connie.

  Entering the house, the couple bypassed the answering machine that was quickly eating tape with each and every plaintive call. Mitch disconnected the telephone so it wouldn’t ring and disturb his strange peace. Connie took care of Merle and Pearl, letting them outside then wrapping a tray of ice cubes in a dish towel for Mitch’s swelling hand.

  “You wanna tell me about it?” he asked.

  She first crossed the bedroom, kneeled at his feet and carefully packed his hand in ice. “Leave it there for a while,” she said as she stood up and turned her back to him. “Help me with my dress?” With his left hand, he unzipped her. Afte
rward she walked three steps from him and sat on the edge of the bed, the dress falling off her shoulders.

  “I wanted to hurt you,” said Connie. Her words were clipped and succinct. “Instead, he hurt me.”

  “Did he touch you?”

  She had thought about her answer since the dreadful night it happened. But she hadn’t ever come to sort out what she would say. “Gina—” she began, and stalled. She wanted to be articulate. She wanted it to make sense in as few words as humanly possible. “You were gone to Washington.”

  “The day I told you about Jennifer O’Detts.”

  “Yes,” she went on. “I called Gina. I guess I told her how mad I was at you. Resented you. I mean, I was mad before the newspaper article. I was just—madder.” She began to cry softly, though she quickly recovered, as if talking would mitigate the pain. “I worked a long day for the charity. I came home. I started drinking. Gina showed up…with him.”

  “And you let him in.”

  “Yes. They brought some grass. We smoked it.” Connie was shaking her head. “Then I went to bed. I left him with Gina. Mitch, I’d come to dislike him so much that night. He was nothing like I’d remembered him from the yacht. He was perverse and disgusting.”

  “Go on.” Mitch tried keeping an even tone. Still, he left her alone on the bed. That’s the way she liked to do these kinds of things. Alone. If she had something to say, she didn’t like to be prompted with care and kisses. That would make her melt. And neither wanted that.

  “I was sleeping.” She took a deep breath. Exhaled. “When I woke up, he was on top of me. He made me take some kind of pill. But before that, he did it.”

  “Raped you,” confirmed Mitch. The hellish rage inside him once again began to boil.

  Not now, Mitch. Don’t lose it now. She needs calm. She needs to tell. Most of all, she needs you present.

  He cranked open the window, breathing in some of the cool air. He wanted to cry.

  “It wasn’t anything. It didn’t hurt as much as it was so violating. I was drunk. It was like a bad dream. And I knew I could handle bad dreams.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he braved, swallowing hard on the words.

  Anger rose in Connie’s voice. “Because that’s what he wanted. For me to tell you. He told me, ‘You tell him what I done to you or I’ll come back and kill him.’” Her voice struck eerily close to Shakespeare’s, confirming any possible doubt that Mitch might’ve harbored up to that point.

  “So I didn’t tell you. Not just because I didn’t want to hurt you. But because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction!” Her voice finally broke. She was at the edge. One more nudge and she’d be over. She looked at him. She needed to hear his words.

  “You don’t need my forgiveness,” he said, walking to her, kneeling at her feet as she began to crumple. “That’s because what you did doesn’t need forgiveness.”

  “I let him in.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I didn’t believe in you,” she said under a waterfall of tears.

  “I didn’t believe in me!” underscored Mitch. “Don’t you see? You just saw through all the talk. You almost always could. Connie, it’s all bullshit!”

  “But I want you to win. I want you to get what you want!”

  What I want? What I want?

  He was shaking his head. In his mind everything was all turned around. He didn’t want to think about the campaign. The debate. None of it. Just her. Only her. Protecting her! That’s something he understood. That’s something he could do!

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “You want to be a congressman,” said Connie, wiping her tears, relieved to be talking about something other than herself.

  Mitch stood, putting his arms around her and pulling her head to his chest. He inhaled, exhaled, seeking a piece of realistic thought. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. If I wanted it or not,” he said, his voice barely a monotone. “It’s over. After tonight. What I did. Christ Almighty. I’ve become a joke.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” she lied.

  “It’s worse than bad. It’s the end. And right now I don’t really care. I feel relieved.”

  “Because it’s over, or because you punched his lights out?” laughed Connie through her tears. A real tension reliever.

  “I don’t know,” he said, searching for something concrete. “I know that I’ve been wanting to hit him for months. Really hurt him. And now I finally did.”

  “Something a political wife can be proud of,” she joked. He laughed, too. In the face of it, some sense of humor seemed intact. And then, for just a while, they held each other. Kissed. Mitch wiping her tears with his cuff. She was crying again. He cupped her head in his hands, looking her straight on until she looked into his eyes.

  “There’s something else,” she said.

  “What?” he asked without condition. He was there for her. That much he knew. In the cyclone of confusion that was his brain, she was his clarity. “You can tell me anything.”

  “I know.”

  “Then go ahead.”

  “M-M-Mitch—” said Connie, tripping over his name, even.

  “Let it go.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Mitch’s hands, still cupping her face, began to tremble. Violently. The synapses in his head making the connections at lightning speed. The consequences instantly becoming all too overwhelming. “Tell me it’s mine.”

  “I can’t.”

  “No!” he raged.

  “The doctor. We’ve tried. It’s too close to know!” she screamed. “I wanted to have an abortion. Have it out of me if it’s his!”

  “But it might not be,” he finished.

  “Yes. And if it’s yours, we might not be able to have another.”

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” he ranted.

  “I love you, Mitch. I’ll do whatever you want!”

  Whatever I want? I don’t know what I fucking want! Christ!

  “How many weeks?”

  “Eight weeks. I’m due the end of May, God willing.”

  God willing, yes!

  It was all Mitch could do to throw himself at her feet, clutching her. Kissing her. Thanking God for her. And pray, he did. For the first time since he was a boy, he prayed aloud. Asking Christ for guidance, forgiveness, and a direction.

  There was a chance, he prayed. A chance the baby inside Connie was his and not some evil, inbred Son of Satan. Instead, a child made of love and second chances in a marriage that had once gone so very wrong. For that, Mitch could pray. For that, Mitch would give up everything.

  SEVEN

  FITZ NEEDED to escape. After the fracas, his first inclination was to face the media and spin like the devil. And the sooner, the better. But with what? he thought. His candidate had just, without sufficient provocation, mercilessly beaten the crap out of McCann and then bolted from the scene. Would charges be pressed? A good spin was only as good as the result. If counterspin was required, it might be like trying to reverse the direction of a speeding tank. No. He had to get out of there. Sort it out.

  So he dumped it on Rene.

  “Don’t spin. Just stand there. Listen. Take it all in and promise to have each and every question answered as soon as you’re able.”

  “What’s it matter, Fitz?” she moaned. “It’s over.”

  The two were back in the green room with the door locked.

  “Bullshit!” he snapped. “We got a week and a half to turn this around.”

  “How? Mitch just assaulted McCann. What if he presses charges? They’ll have video of Mitch in handcuffs!”

  “They had video of McCann in cuffs and he rebounded.”

  There was a knocking at the door and the sound of a crowd gathering. Marshall Lambeer at the fore, probably leading a throng of media. “Kolatch? Are you in there?” The knocking quickly turned to pounding. “Goddammit, I want some answers and I want them tonight!”

  Fitz turned to Rene. “Don’t spin. We do
n’t know Mitchell’s state of mind. Without it, we’re stuck. Hold ‘em until we talk to our candidate.”

  Throwing open the door, he gave a broad smile to Marshall. “Call me.” Then he shoved past the growing crowd, leaving Rene to wave them all in.

  “Okay. Come on in. Let’s get this over with,” she said, putting on her sweetest southern smile. “We can all talk. Just one question at a time.”

  To Fitz, sorting it out equaled booze and the time to drink it. The crushing inconclusiveness of his circumstance led the show runner to a mom-and-pop convenience market just off the Interstate. Buying a fifth of bourbon, he was going to park in front of some public beachfront, suck back some Jim Beam, and let the liquor do the thinking.

  His far-from-stellar career as a campaign strategist might be ending. What would be next? Consultant? Lobbyist? A long stretch of unemployment and a retired life viewed through the bottom end of a bottle?

  The cashier, a 7-Eleven reject who was probably not in the mom-‘n’-pop family, was seated on a stool at the register with a small black-and-white TV switched on. When Fitz came up to the counter to pay for the bottle of booze, the cashier proved surprisingly articulate and on-point. “Can you believe this shit?” he said, gesturing to the TV.

  “What shit?” asked Fitz, politely tuning out and certain the clerk would be just another clueless slacker.

  “Took the guy right out,” said the cashier. “I mean, a Democrat. A fuckin’ wuss of a Democrat. I thought they was all flower sniffers and antiviolence, know what I mean?”

  Fitz gave a sideways glance to the TV. Nervous about the confrontation. Did he smell of Mitch Dutton? “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  “Mitch Dutton. The debate with Shakespeare McCann. Did you see it?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “It was awesome.”

  “You must be a Republican,” grumbled Fitz, shucking a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and laying it on the counter.

  “I don’t vote. But my parents. They’re, like, right-wing. They said this Dutton guy was a fag-lover, too.”