The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  “Speaking for myself,” Lydia Caple said, “I like Stay More in particular. I understand Vernon’s ties to this town and I can understand his disdain for Little Rock. As a native of Little Rock, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

  Jelena smiled broadly at that remark. Diana usually reported back to Day all the many conversations she had with her best friend (her only friend besides Day) Jelena, and even if Day didn’t know Jelena’s chapter as well as you do he would have known how much Jelena loathed the idea of having to live in Little Rock if she became First Lady. Day also knew that even if she did take up residence in Little Rock, against her will, the media would not let her be referred to as First Lady because she and Vernon weren’t married. So what would they call her? First Lover? Day personally felt she ought to be called simply First Person.

  The only thing distressing about Day’s and Diana’s long relationship with Vernon and Jelena was Day’s belief that regardless of how much Diana and he loved each other, it could never match the love between Vernon and Jelena. Day didn’t feel inferior to Vernon because of his vast learning and his keen intelligence and his movie-star looks, and Day certainly didn’t feel inferior to him because of his money (because Diana was inconspicuously one of the wealthiest women in Arkansas, having inherited from her father a major insurance company). Day felt inferior to Vernon only because he enjoyed such a woman’s love as Day could not even imagine.

  You are wondering, Day is sure, if during the almost thirty years that they’d been the most intimate of friends they hadn’t swapped. Back during the Seventies and on into the early Eighties when the Ozarks were filling up with back-to-the-land young people seeking alternate amoral lifestyles including lots of homegrown pot, they couldn’t escape having for neighbors (if not friends) certain interesting but ultimately shallow characters who temporarily affected their way of life. For one thing they created noise pollution in the form of the helicopters from law enforcement that periodically flew over scouting out the marijuana patches. For another thing their prolific cultivation of that weed led to Day and Diana’s and Vernon and Jelena’s brief experimentation with the use of it. And for a third thing their new friends’ flagrant, constant practice of “free love” provided a topic of conversation among the four of them which led, inevitably, to a desire to try it. Just out of curiosity, of course.

  Day can remember the date: April 12, 1979. Young Danny, their son, then nine, was staying over at a friend’s house. Vernon and Jelena were staying over at Day’s and Diana’s, not by design or invitation but because they’d all experimentally lighted and smoked several joints made from the prime crop of a hippie friend who lived on the road to Parthenon and had been trying for years to have them sample his harvest. In the euphoria and lightness that goes with such an activity, they ceased gossiping about the constant mate swapping of various acquaintances and began to wonder, aloud, if they ought not give it a fling themselves. Day remembered the summer he’d first met Diana, ten years before, when they were camping out in the abandoned remains of Dudleytown, Connecticut, he just out of high school, she just out of college, both of them with the belief that he was the reincarnation of her grandfather, Daniel Lyam Montross. A band of pot-smoking Jesus freaks, who had wound up sharing not only their dope but also their bedrolls, had interrupted their tranquil idyll in Dudleytown.

  So Diana and Day had previously been “unfaithful” to each other, when they were young and adventurous and naïve. But had Vernon and Jelena ever been unfaithful to each other? “I’ll try anything once,” Vernon said. “I’m game if you are,” Diana said. “Suits me, I reckon,” Jelena said. “Well, hell,” Day said, “so long as we’d still all be friends afterwards.”

  They smoked another joint (enough perhaps to help Vernon overcome the appalling woman-shyness that he felt toward his good friend Diana simply because she was female), and then they repaired upstairs to separate bedrooms, Diana leaving the light off in her bedroom so that shy Vernon would not have to look at her, and Day taking Jelena into the guestroom. Day may never know what transpired in the other bedroom; he never asked Diana about it, and she never told him. But he can say what happened in the guestroom: nothing. Day and Jelena just stood there, facing each other, fully clothed, staring at each other with expressions on their faces that must have said How did this happen? Day did have an overwhelming desire for her. And after learning what she’d often felt about him, in the previous chapter, he can only assume that she had an overwhelming desire for him. Why didn’t they rush into each other’s arms, have a long mad kiss, strip the clothes from each other, and jump into bed? After a long moment he managed to ask, “Aren’t we going to do anything?” And she answered, “If we were sneaking around by ourselves, I guess we could. But with them too? In the same house? At the same time? I think I’d be thinking of them throughout.” So they went back downstairs and made themselves a pair of drinks with Chism’s Dew, and went outside to admire the stars and moon.

  Day never smoked pot again after that night. He doesn’t think the others did either. They never talked about reaching a decision not to smoke any more pot, but they never did.

  Arch Schaffer was saying, “You know, it’s a little ironic, when you get right down to it. I’d like to say this on behalf of Bo, because he’s too polite to bring it up himself. But he made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t going to get back into politics for anybody after Al Gore, certainly not an unsung greenhorn in Arkansas. Then after he was persuaded to change his mind, no doubt because of the many attractive qualities of that unsung greenhorn, and after he went to considerable trouble to persuade the rest of us to join him in the crusade, he discovers that the unsung greenhorn has backed out! Can you blame us for feeling betrayed?” Schaffer cleared his throat, took a sip of his Haig & Haig and added, “Of course I mean no criticism of the unsung greenhorn.”

  “Damn right!” remarked Carleton Drew, the media man. He was a short man who had long but neat black hair and the look of being uncomfortable away from the blistering operations of politics in the nation’s capitol. He wore an ascot, for heaven’s sake. “I’m speaking only for myself, not for Harry, but we both left dc and came out here to risk our necks working for an unknown entity. I gave up a chance to handle Bergen Reed’s campaign for California governor. And I did so with grave misgivings because, if I understand correctly, Mr. Ingledew would not permit television ads, which is neither here nor there in view of the fact that he doesn’t intend to run anyway! Jesus.” Day wondered if Carleton Drew, who had brought two bottles of good wine with him, as a well-meant gesture of cordiality, was a bit miffed because his wine remained unopened.

  Around the circle of various chairs various people offered variations on this theme: here they all were, with nothing to do, feeling led astray and frustrated. If only Vernon could give the word, they’d amaze him, they’d amaze themselves even, by organizing a campaign such as had never been seen before in Arkansas politics. They were proud professionals. Bo Pharis politely interrupted whenever any of them even hinted at the matter of what they were losing, financially. Without coming out and saying so, he gave the impression that he intended to reimburse all their expenses out of his own pocket, but Vernon at one point flatly declared that he would give each of them a generous “honorarium” for damages. The baby of the group, young Castor Sherrill, who couldn’t have been yet out of his twenties (and was drinking beer, not hard liquor) spoke up and said that he was probably the one who needed damages most but didn’t want any because he had “volunteered” for this “mission” in order to gain experience in politics. He said he could certainly understand and appreciate Vernon’s original motive of wanting to run for governor in order to gain experience in politics, and then he said to Vernon, “Sir, if you don’t want to run, could I have your place?”

  Everyone stared at Cast, and it took them a while to realize what he was suggesting, that he become a candidate for governor. Arch Schaffer informed him that the law said you had to be a resident of th
e state for seven years before you could run for governor.

  “I was just kidding,” Cast grinned, and got up to get himself another bottle of beer.

  But was he? Knowing Vernon as Day did, and watching him now as his eyes revealed his thought processes, Day could make a strong guess that Cast Sherrill’s naïve, even absurd suggestion might have been the spark that made Vernon come round. If you don’t want that piece of pie on your plate (and by now Jelena was serving her delicious black walnut and cushaw pies and everybody was ready for seconds), could I have it? No? So you decided to eat it yourself, after all? Just because I wanted it? Day didn’t yet know Cast Sherrill well enough (Bo in his chapter hadn’t yet revealed enough about him), but he wondered if Cast had deliberately made that suggestion just to prod Vernon into changing his mind.

  Whatever, to switch to another metaphor, the title metaphor, Vernon was beginning his slow fall off the mountain. The mighty eagle sitting on the tree limb had been hit by just one pellet from a kid’s B-B gun. But it was enough to make him start to fall.

  The fat fellow named Harry Wolfe said, looking directly at Day and even winking at him, “If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed had better get his ass to the mountain.” Day stared at him. He was obviously well along into inebriation, his words slurred, but why had he directed that statement to Day, as if he’d been reading Day’s mind at the moment when Day came up with the mountain metaphor? Suddenly—and Day wasn’t stone sober himself—he had a weird suspicion that he might not be the only one of them who had the privilege of knowing what this novel is about: not merely a participant in it but a spectator of it.

  Day waited until the next time Harry Wolfe got up to replenish his drink—he didn’t have to wait long—and then joined him at the buffet-bar, and Day quietly inquired what he had meant by that remark. Harry eyed Day a bit superciliously and said, “You haven’t heard that expression? You’re Ingledew’s best friend and he hasn’t revealed to you the Wisdom of Islam?” Sorry, Day said, wondering how Harry had unearthed his friendship with Vernon. “It’s a long story,” Harry said, “about Mohammed trying to throw a miracle like Moses or Jesus had done to prove his supernatural powers. He commanded Mount Safa to come to him, but of course it wouldn’t, so he came up with a good excuse: Well, God was merciful because if the mountain had come to him it might have fallen on them and killed them all. ‘I will therefore go to the mountain,’ said Mohammed, ‘and thank God that He has had mercy on a stiff-necked generation.’ So you might say it means this: if we cannot do as we wish, we must do as we can. Or like this: if someone won’t do this thing for you, then you’d better do it for yourself. Or even like this: we may find a way to make a difficult situation better if we just think about it in different terms.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Day said. “But why did you happen to direct the remark to me, almost as if you could tell what I was thinking at the moment? You’re supposed to be the top opposition-research man in the country, but your talents don’t include mind-reading, do they?”

  Harry Wolfe chuckled. He toasted Day with his refilled tumbler of bourbon, and said, “It’s not just Vernon falling off the mountain. It’s all of us. You too, buddy.” He returned to his seat.

  Lydia Caple said, “As far as the people of Arkansas are concerned, right now Castor Sherrill is just as good a candidate as Vernon Ingledew. Our big question is: what has Vernon got that Cast hasn’t?”

  “Good looks,” said Harry Wolfe, who was in bad need of good looks himself.

  “Brains,” said Bo Pharis, and there was laughter at the implication that Pharis’ protégé lacked brains.

  “Presence,” intoned Carleton Drew. “If they photographed Cast, the image would be blank.” More laughter.

  “Sex appeal,” offered Monica Breedlove, the only words she’d spoken. But she got some laughs too, and a pout from Cast.

  “Duende and eupatrid mien,” said George Dinsmore, and the others did not know, as Day did, where George had picked up those uncharacteristic words. Perhaps the guests thought George was using some old Ozark dialect. Vernon laughed. Vernon laughed very hard.

  “A hearty and sincere laugh,” said Arch Schaffer. “That’s a rare quality in politicians…although I haven’t heard Cast laugh so I don’t know if he’s got it or not.”

  “Laugh for us, Cast,” Bo Pharis requested.

  “After my next beer,” Cast said, and so many laughed at that remark that Cast himself laughed. It was a good laugh, but it didn’t have the heartiness and sincerity of Vernon’s.

  The afternoon waned and they went on drinking. Eating all of Jelena’s pies kept them from getting empty-stomach drunk, but they were all getting pretty light-headed and convivial. Harry Wolfe, who was a jump ahead of the rest of them in the intoxication upgrade, declared that because he’d been out of training for so long in his chosen field of uncovering dark secrets about the opposition, he had decided to get back in practice by digging up the dirt on each of his fellow members of the team, if anybody would care to hear it?

  “Tell us!” several exclaimed, and Harry started with the head-man himself, Bo Pharis. Despite being the valedictorian of Harrison High, Bo had been caught cheating on the final exam in Physics his senior year. Arch Schaffer during the early Seventies had a real drinking problem that got him into several scrapes, jails, and situations. Carleton Drew was a gun nut and not only had done much work for the National Rifle Association but personally possessed an arsenal of handguns and long guns. Lydia Caple at the age of seventeen had been caught shoplifting a handful of Bit o’ Honey bars at a Little Rock supermarket. Monica Breedlove had five tickets for speeding in her Camaro. And Castor Sherrill spent his spare time sexsurfing the Internet.

  “You forgot somebody,” Bo Pharis said to Harry Wolfe.

  “Who?”

  “Yourself.”

  “Hell, I wouldn’t need to do oppo research to find that out,” Harry said. “All I’d need would be a good memory, but damn me if I can remember a single bad thing I ever did in my life.” Several others joined Harry in his drunken laughter.

  Vernon looked levelly at Harry and asked, “When are you going to practice on me?” Day felt it was almost a concession, it was almost as if Vernon had changed his mind and wanted to get the ball rolling.

  “That’s the very first thing I did,” Harry Wolfe announced. They all looked at him and waited expectantly. But he said nothing else.

  The aroma of baking ham filled the house and gave Day an appetite, even if he knew that they would be served a meat inferior to Ingledew Ham.

  Day spoke up, a bit self-consciously. “Well?” he said to Harry Wolfe. “Let’s hear it. What did you find? He couldn’t make the mountain come to him?”

  “Mohammed’s problems with Mount Safa were like nothing compared with Vernon’s problems with Mount Ingledew,” said Harry. He looked inquiringly at Jelena. “This is Mount Ingledew, I take it?”

  “Actually, Ingledew Mountain is the big one you see to the southeast,” Jelena informed him. “This one is called Daniels Mountain.”

  “After Daniel Lyam Montross?” asked Harry, and once again Day was stunned by his wealth of information. But Harry could easily have read any one of the four Stay More novels in which Montross appears.

  “How did you know about him?” Jelena asked. “But no, this mountain had been named back in the Nineteenth Century for an early settler whose last name was Daniels.”

  “Excuse my interruption of this geographical discourse,” Day put in, “but we’re still waiting to hear what Mr. Wolfe has uncovered about Vernon.”

  Harry Wolfe gave Day another of his supercilious looks. “What the fuck difference does it make? There’s not going to be any campaign. There’s no need to get personal on Vernon. Let sleeping dogs lie, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Now, Harry,” Bo Pharis said, “I haven’t seen anybody else throw in the towel. If the towel is going to be thrown, I don’t think you’re the one to do it.”
/>   “Supper’s ready,” Jelena announced.

  There was no dining table to accommodate the fourteen of them, so they had supper with the plates in their laps in their customary places, although they were sitting as if it had been planned for a table: Vernon at one end with Lydia Caple beside him, Jelena at the other end with Bo Pharis beside her, the rest of them arranged in such a way that spontaneous conversations developed between one and another, and no attempt was made to keep the supper talk focused on the group as a whole or the subject of the meeting. There was lots of chatter. Day was sitting on Jelena’s left and he overheard her conversation with Bo Pharis on her right. She served, among the variety of side dishes, radishes which had been overwintered under straw in her garden, and Bo and Jelena devoted several minutes to talking radishes.

  The Petit Jean ham wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was tasty. But there is simply no comparison to Ingledew Ham. When Carleton Drew made the mistake of flamboyantly adoring the ham, even to the point of saying, “I can see why you made a fortune on this!” Day was not going to be the one to correct him. It was Bo Pharis.

  “Carleton,” said Bo, “hold on. I’ve had plenty of Ingledew Ham, and I can tell you: this is an impostor. Or else the hog from which it was made wandered too far and ate something abominable.” Day was impressed with Bo, not just at his sensitive palate but his knowledge of the fact that Ingledew hogs are indeed free-ranging, not penned up and fed the usual commercial crap but allowed to forage for themselves in their natural element, the woods. Bo turned to Jelena and said, “So why did you do it?”