The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  For that matter, who could possibly believe in it? On this trip, George had asked himself, more than once, “Would I vote for Vernon Ingledew if he wasn’t my boss and my buddy and my sort of nephew-in-law?” And the well-considered answer was a loud and clear Nope, noway. Of course, George wasn’t much of a voter anyhow. He’d voted only once for Clinton himself for governor, and once for him for president, and that left eight other chances he’d had to vote for Clinton but stayed home. Not that he’d ever had anything against Clinton, unlike some of these here loudmouth clodhopper naysayers who had thought they’d looked smart running down the boy just on account of he was practically family, like killing your brother or your dad or leastways your cousin. George had been pure-dee proud of Clinton being family, and he hadn’t never held it against him. The odd thing was, he had a little bit of trouble trying to think of Vernon as family, even though Vernon really and truly was kinfolks. Not because he was Boss and not even because he was so all-fired brainy, but because he just didn’t somehow seem like he was one of the folks.

  For one thing, he didn’t sound like one of the folks, what with those big words that fell out of his mouth like crumbs of caviar. And he didn’t exactly look like common folks but some godburn Hollywood movie star or somebody. Sure, he looked like an Ingledew. Anybody who’d ever known any of the Stay More Ingledews for generations back would say that Vernon was pure Ingledew, but come to think of it, the Ingledews had always stood out from everbody else.

  George remembered when he was just a kid, growing up in that shack his momma tried to keep up yonder on Dinsmore Mountain, the least’un in a family of thirteen brats, he’d been learnt from the word go that the Ingledews was quality folks, the upper crust, never mind that Stay More couldn’t’ve been divided into classes any way you’d slice it. After old John Ingledew, Boss’s great grandpa, had lost his money in the Crash, none of the Ingledews had had any money to speak of, but they still kept their pride and their feeling that they were a cut above everbody else. Boss didn’t wear his pride like some goddamn epaulets on his shoulders, but you could feel it surrounding him like a invisible raiment. How had that Avenel feller in Salt Lake City put it? “Mr. Ingledew, I don’t want to hurt your obviously well-earned self-regard, but my experience is that most people who aspire to politics without ever having endured any of the tests and trials of the campaign are doomed to discover that they have inflated images of themselves.” George wondered if Boss was really capable of seeing himself as others saw him.

  But George also wondered how others really and truly did see him. How did Jelena see him? How did Day and Diana? How did his sister Sharon and that college professor husband of hers, Larry? How did his grandma, Latha Dill? How did all the other seventeen employees at Ingledew Ham? Well, George could probably speak for the latter: they worshipped him. Come to think of it, George himself worshipped him. Why else would he be on this goddamn bouncing 747 working this goddamn crossword?

  He took another sip of his bourbon and wondered if he himself could say anything to discourage this Pharis feller they were a-fixing to meet in Cincinnati. More than likely, it wouldn’t be necessary. The way it looked, Pharis was a lost cause irregardless of how the offer was made to him, but there remained, nevertheless, one possible selling point that separated Pharis from all the other guys they’d interviewed: he was a ole Arkansas boy hisself. The others—Fred Avenel in Salt Lake City, Matt Spears in Washington, D.C., Gene Kubby in Atlanta—didn’t even seem to have a clear idea of where Arkansas was, although they damned well knew that a former president of the United States had come from the state, which was not, as another former president name of George No-W. Bush had misplaced it, somewhere between Oklahoma and Texas. Two of them, Kubby and Spears, had both wondered if Vernon had been inspired to run for office because the former president had once held that office. Boss had replied that Clinton’s tenure as governor of his state had been “proceleusmatic,” whatever that meant, but that he didn’t have any presidential aspirations himself; he just wanted one term in the statehouse to see what it was like.

  Matt Spears, who was an old man who had helped elect seventeen United States senators and eight governors, had understood what proceleusmatic meant, but had concluded, “You certainly have Clinton’s duende, and his eupatrid mien, but you don’t have enough of his track record to dissuade me from carrying out my long-anticipated and well-earned retirement.” On the plane to Atlanta, George had asked Boss if he wouldn’t mind enriching George’s impoverished vocabulary. Proceleusmatic was just one of them fancy Greek words meaning “inciting, animating, or inspiring.” Duende was Spanish dialect meaning the ability to attract others through personal magnetism and charm. And eupatrid mien (“He was just poking fun at me when he threw that in,” Vernon explained) simply meant aristocratic bearing or manner. I live long enough, I might learn a thing or two, George said to himself.

  Gene Kubby had come pretty damn close to accepting. Of the three, he had given Boss the most of his precious time, nearly three hours, including lunch at Atlanta’s best rib joint (although George had slapped down his AmEx card to cover it), and George knew that Boss had got the feller just to the point where he was fixing to say, “Let me think this over,” but they never made it that far. Kubby’s credentials wasn’t nothing to write home about, not compared with the others; he’d elected the governor of Georgia twice and of Alabama once, as well as a whole slew of jackleg and peanut hopefuls, and the man wasn’t timid about talking price. When Vernon asked him flat out to name his figure, he had come up with some bad news so steep it made George choke on his sparerib but didn’t even make Boss blink. All Boss had said was, “When can you start?”

  The man had carefully wiped all around his mouth with the cloth napkin and then had put to good use the bowl of water with the lemon wedge in it, and when he finished wiping off all his fingers he said, “Gentlemen, as you can plainly see, I’m not in this line for my health. I require not just a handsome fee but I require practically a guarantee of winning. Frankly, I don’t see any clue of that in your case. Why don’t you hire a local manager? I can recommend a good man or two in Little Rock.”

  But Vernon had told him that he was determined to find the very best and he was sorry the very best was turning him down. He wasn’t interested in the “amateurs” in Little Rock. “So where do you go from here?” Kubby had asked. Cincinnati, Boss had said. Bolin Pharis. The man had laughed his fool head off. “Jesus god, you are ambitious, aren’t you? The good news is, if there’s a man on this earth who could overcome your insurmountable odds, it’s Bo. The bad news is, you don’t have a prayer of talking him into it. When he quit the game after Al Gore lost, he made it clear to everyone he’s never coming back.”

  George winked at the stewardess, who was just sitting there like she didn’t have nothing else to keep her in business except waiting on him and Boss, who didn’t need anything because he was asleep, and wouldn’t bother her none if he was wide awake because he was not only shy with womenfolks in general but pretty airplane stewardesses left him speechless and petrified; in fact, when Boss first dosed off George figured he was just trying to escape the pretty gal who was bent on serving them. Now she brought George another Jack Daniels. He reached down and opened his briefcase and got out the file on Bolin Pharis. George earned his stiff salary, not just at the pig works. He had spent a good bit of time rounding up everything there was to know on all these fellers, and he had half a dozen pages on Bolin Pharis, who was practically folks, born in Harrison up in Boone County just forty miles from Stay More. George had never known any Pharises, but for that matter he hadn’t known hardly anybody up Harrison way. His niece Jelena had gone to school there, when Jackson Ingledew was a-raising her after her dad got killed in the War. Of course George had done a lot of business and trading in Harrison; everybody did. If Mr. Bolin Pharis wanted to chew the fat about his hometown, George reckoned he could manage.

  Pharis had gone to the University at Fayetteville in
the late Sixties on an academic scholarship and a football scholarship, had played for the Razorbacks and was Southwest Conference academic All-American. He had got hisself a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in business administration and had worked for a while in management back home at Hammerschmidt’s lumber yard before Hammerschmidt’s campaign manager offered him a job as assistant in one of Hammerschmidt’s early runs for United States Congress. Pharis had accepted even though Hammerschmidt was a Republican and Pharis was a Democrat. Pharis celebrated Hammerschmidt’s victory by marrying a Harrison girl he’d dated throughout his university days. They’d had two kids, the boy now in college in Texas and the girl working in Chicago; the wife had divorced Pharis some years ago but he hadn’t remarried. Pharis’s work for Congressman Hammerschmidt had led to a campaign managership when a Republican had tried to beat Dale Bumpers for senator; the guy had lost, but that was the last time Bolin Pharis’s man ever lost a campaign. Until Al Gore and the Florida fiasco.

  It was also the last time he ever worked for a Republican. After helping elect several people in Arkansas, Pharis had been lured to neighboring states, Oklahoma and Missouri and Tennessee and even Texas, and had elected a bodacious list of senators and congressmen and governors. With some other fellers, he had set up a whole factory of campaigning, calling it Pharis Carville & Begala. They went nationwide and elected governors, senators and congressmen in Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, etsettery, all they could handle. James Carville left the firm to manage Clinton’s successful first campaign for president, and while there had been rumors that Bolin Pharis had been mortified because Clinton had passed up a fellow Arkansawyer in favor of Carville, a Louisianian, he and James Carville remained good friends, and in his memoirs of the Clinton years Carville had praised Pharis as practically his mentor. “Hey, the dude taught me all I know about strategy, which aint much, but hey,” Carville had said.

  When his man Al Gore won the popular presidential vote but narrowly lost the electoral vote to that dumb Texas governor, Pharis had no problem finding a top job out of politics. He was offered and accepted a position as public relations director for this great big company whose headquarters were in a tower in Cincinnati although the factories were all over the earth. They made everything. They turned out soaps and drinks and beauty products and coffee and medicines and god knows what all. Hell, George himself was an occasional user of some of their stuff, like Pepto-Bismol and NyQuil and Crest toothpaste, not to mention Head & Shoulders and Old Spice. But he wasn’t fixing to think their name out loud right here, where any fool could see it. He was only going to notice that if you took out that ampersand and replaced it with an “I,” it would spell “PIG.” He was also going to notice that he wasn’t too partial to the company’s name because the first part of it reminded him of some sessions he’d had to have with a St. Louis medical specialist called a “proctologist,” who caused him some pain and embarrassment.

  He didn’t hold any of this against Bolin Pharis. From everything George could find out, Pharis had been doing a really bang-up job handling the public relations for the company, and the company truly appreciated it, and paid him accordingly, with bonuses and stock sharing and enough perks to keep any man happy and working his ass off. George knew there was no way on God’s earth they could hire him as campaign manager. They couldn’t afford him. Aw hell, of course they could afford him even if he asked for a million dollars, yet surely Boss had set some kind of limits.

  Bolin Pharis was even in line to become Chief Executive Officer of the company. He was such a big man that the very thought of him reassured George that they would get a quick, easy, and indisputable turn-down, maybe even strong enough to make Boss give up his fool idea, and Jelena would feel good. But George had to play along with Boss, who was now stirring and waking up, mumbling something that sounded like “Ugithew,” probably one of those Indian words he’d learned last year when he was studying the Osages. “Where are we?” Boss asks.

  “We’re a-fixin to light down,” says George.

  “Where?”

  “Cincinnati,” George tells him.

  “Why?”

  “You’re running for governor, and we need some help.”

  “Right,” Vernon Ingledew says.

  It was late before they got away from the baggage carousel, and by the time they’d checked into the Hyatt Regency it was nigh onto suppertime, so they got them a bite at the Champs Italia Chop House and took a stroll afterwards. There was snow on the ground but they still had their boots on. George had never been to Cincinnati before. It was a right nice old town. There was hills all around it. They walked past the General Offices Tower Building of their destination for the morning, so they already knew how to get there. The very size and shape of building ought to have warned Boss he didn’t have a dog’s chance.

  They both wore business suits for breakfast and for the goings-on ahead, and they both carried briefcases, although Boss didn’t have anything in his except some books because George carried everything they needed. They rode up the elevator to the man’s suite of offices, way up yonder; he sure did surround himself with a fancier environment than any of those other fellers they’d visited, and had a real swell view of the Ohio River and all. The man’s secretary didn’t keep them waiting very long, hardly long enough for Boss to get out one of his books and read a bit.

  The man didn’t have his secretary usher them in. He came out himself, with his hand extended and a smile on his face. Bolin Pharis was about fifty, and George was surprised to see he had a beard, still dark, not much gray in it, neatly trimmed on all sides. George had grown a beard when he came home from ’Nam, that time he discovered his wife had left him and taken the kids with her and he got so mad and so drunk he went around beating up any man in Newton County who crossed his path and some who didn’t, including Boss, who wasn’t his boss yet and who didn’t get beat up, as far as that goes, but in fact gave George the beating of his life, or rather the two of them whalloped the crap out of each other, off in the woods, for half a day until they couldn’t move, and then they got drunk together and healed their wounds and their bruises together, and Vernon offered George a job. George sobered up and shaved off his beard.

  Bolin Pharis had a right powerful handshake, but George matched him in the strength of it and said, “Please to meetcha, Mr. Pharis.” He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Boss grimaced just a tiny bit when his hand was squoze in Pharis’s mighty grip. Probably wants us to not forget he was a Razorback linebacker, George thought.

  It was the fanciest office George had ever seen, big enough for six or seven fellers, but Pharis had it all to hisself. There was Razorback souvenirs and stuff all over: flags and a hog hat and a couple of footballs and team pictures and etsettery. George’s chair was so big and so comfy he near about fell asleep right away. The secretary brought coffee.

  The man kept looking back and forth between Boss and George and finally he says, “It sure is a pleasure to see some Arkansas people. Sometimes I think I’m the only one in Cincinnati.” He took a sip of his coffee, and then he says, “I’m not sure I’ve been to Stay More, though. Is it down in there somewheres around Parthenon?”

  George offers, “Just six mile or so kindly southwest of Partheeny.”

  “I may have fished the Little Buffalo in your backyard without knowing I was there,” says Pharis.

  “The town’s so untenanted and necrotic you’d not notice it,” says Boss.

  Pharis stared a little bit at Boss, and then he asks, “Are you any kin to Jelena Ingledew?”

  “We’re own cousins,” says Boss.

  “I’m her uncle,” George puts in.

  “Well well,” says Pharis and shakes his head and says, “I never knew her myself, but she was a legend at Harrison High. She was a few years ahead of me. Highest grades in the history of the school and valedictorian and all, you know.” Pharis chuckles a little chuckle. “My teachers were always telling me, ‘If you’d just work a
little harder, you might be as good as Jelena Ingledew.’” Pharis appreciated that George and Boss both chuckled along with him a bit. “Whatever became of her?” Pharis asks. “Is she married?”

  “Naw,” George offers. “Not no more, leastways. Her and Mark Duckworth was married for a while, and had a couple kids, but they split up, oh, I reckon it must’ve been going on thirty year ago.”

  “Really?” says Bolin Pharis. “She didn’t remarry?”

  “Nope,” says George.

  “She’s not still in Arkansas, is she?”

  “Matter a fack, she is. Her and him”—George inclined his head toward Boss—“they kindly live together.”

  Bolin Pharis gave Boss a good looking-over for a second or two, and then all he says is, “Well.” Then he sort of coughed, and after a while he says, “I sure do eat Ingledew Ham, I can tell you. Every chance I get, I buy it.”

  “George gets most of the credit for the quality of that meat these days,” Boss says. George shook his head to deny it.

  Pharis smiled and says, “You boys aren’t here to suggest that we buy you out, are you? Despite the diversity of our products, we don’t do anything fancy in the food department. I’m sure lots of people eat our Pringles with their Ingledew Ham, but we aren’t planning to diversify into meat.”