The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  “Barnas plagiarized his term papers in Sociology, Economics, and American History,” Harry pointed out.

  “Hey, touché, Mr. Wolfe, sir. I didn’t know that myself. But what about your man worships the Dow.”

  “That’s Tao, buddy,” Harry pointed out, and spelled it for him. “And he doesn’t worship it, he just likes it. It’s an oriental religion which teaches, among other things, that we should be kind to one another.”

  “But it doesn’t teach that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So what’s Ingledew’s religion?”

  “He has no religion.”

  Garth Rucker stared through his thick lenses at Harry for a time long enough to assure himself that Harry wasn’t jerking him around. “Whoa!” he said. “You don’t mean he’s an infidel?”

  “I suppose you could call him that,” Harry granted.

  “Wow! Boy, sir, can we use this!”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘sir.’ Maybe I can outsmart you, but I don’t outrank you.” And then Harry told him flatly, “But you aren’t going to use any of what I’m telling you about Ingledew.”

  “I’m not? But that’s the whole point of ‘Swap,’ sir. We need all this good stuff to attack each other with.”

  “You’re not going to attack Ingledew,” Harry informed him.

  “Hey, what is this?” He looked to Hank Endicott for help. “We’re talking politics, right, sir? Politics is about attacking each other’s faults and weaknesses and sins, isn’t it? What do you mean, we can’t attack Ingledew?”

  “Because if you do,” Harry warned him, “if you utter, or publish, or televise, or even leak one unkind word about him, we will reveal that your man Barnas gets his endowment from the Ouachita Militia.”

  Garth Rucker’s mouth dropped open. He struggled to put a blank, innocent look on his face. “Huh? What’s the Ouachita Militia?”

  “A neo-Nazi gang of thugs whom the good people of Arkansas rightly despise,” Harry informed him.

  “Never heard of ’em,” Garth said.

  “Then you’d better go ask your client to tell you all about them. And while you’re at it, get him to give you full disclosure on certain other aspects of his activities. Ask him about the weekends that he flew to Jamaica at the expense of the tobacco lobby. Ask him, since we’re so concerned about religion, to tell you why he was expelled in 1989 from the Malvern First Baptist Church. Ask him to let you audit his income tax records for 1986-1992 and get him to account for all the falsifications therein.”

  There was a long silence, an absolute silence that scarcely permitted the sounds of other customers in the cozy confines of The Afterthought. Even the jazz piano seemed to be muted. Harry reflected on the seemliness of the establishment’s name, because he was going to keep on rethinking and reconsidering everything he knew about James Barnas. The silence was finally broken by the sound of Hank Endicott’s laughter.

  “Hoo boy,” Hank chortled. “You’re out of your league, Garth. It’s too bad I can’t print any of this good stuff.”

  “Unless you have to,” Harry reminded him.

  “Unless I have to,” Hank said ominously.

  “So what’s the deal?” Garth demanded. “Do you mean nobody can say anything bad about Ingledew?”

  “You’re a fast learner, Boy,” Harry complimented him.

  “But that’s not politics!” he whined.

  “It’s going to be politics,” Harry assured him. “By the way, did anyone ever point out to you the origin of the word, ‘politics’? It comes from the Latin, ‘poly’ meaning ‘many’ and ‘tics’ meaning bloodsucking creatures.”

  “Hold on just a minute,” Garth, missing the humor and trying to reason with Harry, pled. “You and me both would be out of business if we couldn’t use the dirt we dig up and dish out. How’m I gonna tell my boss, ‘Here’s all this good stuff on Ingledew but you can’t use any of it’? Do you think he’ll pay me? I’ll be out of work!”

  Harry smiled. “Maybe we can hire you to help sniff around Shoat Bradfield in the main campaign.” Harry was making no promises, but he was having afterthoughts about Garth Rucker’s possible usefulness. “Tell you what. Make you a deal. You show me all your files on the other seven candidates—oops, there’s only five left, right?—you show me all the good stuff you’ve got on those guys, and I’ll recommend that Bo Pharis hire you for the Ingledew campaign.”

  So, thanks to Hank Endicott, that was how Harry greatly simplified his workload in Little Rock. He even had an ally badly needed when, because he’d lost his license over a DWI years before, he depended upon Garth Rucker to chauffeur him around and help plant a few videocams and wiretaps and hunt for a few garbage collectors to be bribed. Thus Harry was able to escape from Little Rock sooner than he had expected, coming away from the place with all the intelligence that could have been desired about any opponent who would dare oppose Vernon Ingledew.

  Chapter eight

  She was the cheapest of the samurai, but it didn’t bother her. She’d just as soon not have known how much less she was making than Cast, but among the five thousand other responsibilities in her job description was writing the checks for the weekly payroll. Of course Cast had a master’s degree from Harvard, which was one reason he was making more than she was, although what he was making was still a scrimption compared with what Bo and Arch and Lydia were pulling in. She didn’t really care. She would have done this job for nothing, to have a chance to be doing something like this. They had even let her pick out the campaign headquarters. They’d told her that it had to be in Fayetteville, and it had to be high profile, but beyond that they left it up to her, the way they left so many things up to her: the selection of the computer equipment, the hiring of office staff, the scheduling of Vernon’s appearances. Bo had draped his big arm across her broad shoulders and said, “Monica, hon, here’s the rule: whenever you think of something that needs to be done, you do it. You don’t need my say-so.”

  That first week after Vernon announced was the busiest week of her life so far, and the first thing she’d done was find out which realtors managed the few vacant buildings in Fayetteville. Even before she found an apartment for herself she visited several buildings around town that were available, and after thorough investigation and careful consideration (but no advice or consent from the others) she had signed the lease on a building right close beside the picturesque Fayetteville Square, had got in there herself and swept the floor and cleaned the windows, had obtained all the necessary supplies during a one-hour shopping spree at Office Depot, and had visited some furniture renting stores and got enough desks and chairs and all, and even helped the men unload them and put them in place. There wasn’t anything a man could do that she couldn’t do.

  The second day on the job she’d had a sign company make the signs and a printing company print some banners, and had already hired and put to work three of the office staff, when Vernon Ingledew came to Fayetteville for his first visit to get himself photographed for the official campaign photo and to begin his lessons in speech and deportment. He was amazed to find his headquarters already in business, not only in business but really busy, with four people on the phone and typing at their computers simultaneously. Although he was not able to speak directly to her, nor even look at her, he wrote a memo heaping her with praise, and she was ready to die for him. In fact she was tongue-tied as far as her own tongue was concerned, and when she tried to tell him some of her ideas for the upcoming tour that she and Cast were going to make to the state’s college campuses, she found that her voice sounded exactly like Lydia’s.

  Vernon, whose woman-shyness didn’t prevent him from hearing her, laughed and said, “Who needs Lydia? You’ve even got her voice,” and even though he spoke these words to his shoes she felt that they were in touch at last. She’d always had a talent for imitating the people she admired, and way back when she’d worked in the governor’s office alongsi
de Lydia, other people had called her “Lydia Junior.” That time that Lydia had grabbed Vernon and dragged him out into that field in Stay More to jump his ass for his poor performance, Lydia had thought they were out of earshot, but Monica had followed (it was dark) and eavesdropped and she wondered if the occasion would ever arise when she’d have to cuss Vernon herself but she knew that if it did, she could cuss nearly as good as Lydia. If Cast’s ambition was to make himself into another Bo Pharis, Monica’s was to make herself into another Lydia Caple. And this job would let her do it.

  And like Lydia, without even knowing Lydia’s heart, she too was madly in love with the man and ready to die for him.

  It was her assignment to take Vernon to meet Andrew Kilgore, the photographer, who shot Vernon all over the campus, particularly in the library, in what was supposed to be a staged picture in the reference room with stacks of books piled all around while he pretended to read and study. But he wasn’t pretending, and Monica had a heck of a time trying to get him to leave. You’d have thought he’d never been in a real library before. Maybe he hadn’t. The pictures turned out great, an official campaign photo that made Vernon look really movie-star-handsome and an “activity photo” that showed him looking like the answers to all the problems of humankind were in those books about to fall on his head.

  Monica and Cast had been thrown together for a whole week, the second week after the announcement, early in April. Since it had been his bright idea to visit the college campuses, he had spent a lot of time at headquarters helping her plan and order what they needed to take with them: four hundred campaign T-shirts, thousands of banners, buttons and bumper stickers. These things were made right here in Fayetteville, but they had to wait several days for the bumper stickers. Cast and Monica had their first fight over what the T-shirts should look like and say. All they could agree on was that it should have the official photo of Vernon that was so striking. But Cast wanted a conventional campaign T-shirt, with red-white-and-blue lettering and something like “Vernon Ingledew for Governor,” whereas Monica wanted to put in big purple letters across the yellow chest INGLE WHO? and then in smaller letters below the photo, ask me! This was too unconventional for Cast, so they had to take it to Lydia and get her opinion, and then all the way up to Bo, who agreed with Lydia that Monica’s idea would attract more attention even if it sort of poked fun at the candidate’s name.

  She selected the campaign colors with of course the approval of the candidate, who complimented her again (by memo) for her ideas. When she had been studying art at UALR she’d had an obsession with color and had learned everything she could about it. One reason she wore black herself so much, apart from the way it went with her blonde hair and pale complexion, was because the psychology of black connotes mystery, loyalty, authority, seriousness, and strength, not to mention death, and there had been so many deaths in her life that it was unmentionable. She chose as Ingledew’s colors purple and yellow because, for one thing, he himself didn’t want “trite” red-white-and-blue, never mind Cast’s opinion. Purple and yellow are complementaries, meaning that one of them makes the other more intense and noticeable. Purple is associated with dignity and royalty, with frugality and melancholy, and Monica was one of the first to detect Vernon’s streak of melancholy. Yellows give playfulness, gaiety and sunlight, but also confidence, esteem, and knowledge. All of these things were part of Vernon’s make-up. So with his full approval and appreciation, it was decided that all the banners, T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. would be purple and yellow. The yard signs would have been too, but, as we’re going to see, Vernon wouldn’t allow the “visual clutter” of yard signs.

  It was also Monica’s idea to put together a little paper sack full of goodies to be distributed on the campuses, each sack containing stuff that college kids could always use: the campaign pencil (which, Cast agreed with her, could simply be imprinted “Governor: Vernon Ingledew) and the campaign ballpoint (ditto) as well as notepads, a package of chewing gum and an imprinted lollipop. Monica’s tomato-red Camaro couldn’t carry all this stuff, so Cast took Bo’s silver Nissan 4-by-4. They had a trial run right here in town at the University of Arkansas, getting permission from the Office of Student Affairs, setting up a booth on the quad in front of the Student Union, and contacting the Student Democrats Club to come and help out. They gave the officers of the latter each a T-shirt and a little booklet that would tell them what to answer if somebody did take that ask me! literally and wanted to know not only INGLE WHO? but what he stood for.

  That’s where the other Samurai were needed, putting that booklet or manual together. In what little free time they had, for each and every one of them had a full plate of jobs to do, the Seven Samurai got together, sometimes with the candidate, and talked about position papers. Bo had wanted to form what was called a “steering committee,” which wouldn’t have included Monica (did they think she wasn’t bright enough to have ideas about issues?) but when Vernon found out about it he gave them all together a little stern lecture against committees. No committee in the history of the world, he asserted, had ever accomplished anything, and he defied any one of them to tell him an example of a single achievement by a committee. He certainly intended to extirpate committees, right here and now. Monica was proud of the way he spoke out against committees, beginning to sound already like a forceful no-nonsense governor.

  Without any committees meeting, it was commonly agreed among them that there was to be no further mention of Vernon’s more radical ideas, especially those involving “extirpation.” It was agreed to stress Vernon’s aim to bring Arkansas into the 21st century, to take advantage of technology and new inventions to lift the state out of the stagnation that two Republican governors had left it in. Those parts of the state Democratic platform which were not too unacceptable to Vernon (he could not accept “We hold that the public school system is essential to Arkansas’ economic success and support”) were rephrased into his own platform: it could be said that he supported law enforcement agencies without giving his support to prisons, that he expected government to refrain from undue intrusion into the private lives and personal decisions of Arkansans—no, wait, Vernon like a lot of people was adamant that the word Arkansans, which smacked of some kind of false connection with the state of Kansas, should never be used; that in places where one could not say “Arkansas people” the classical “Arkansawyers” would be employed (and indeed it would be Monica who would organize on the Internet a select bloc known as “Arkansawyers for Ingledew”).

  Further, Vernon had no intention of raising taxes and wished to overhaul the entire taxation system. Further, Vernon fully supported the state’s cultural and natural heritage. At Monica’s suggestion, they agreed that Vernon was strongly opposed to drugs, although no mention was made of his inclusion of tobacco and guns among the drugs. Monica was also responsible for a plank in the platform favoring health care and mental health care with or without insurance for every person, and since this made no mention of Vernon’s opposition to hospitals it was acceptable.

  Monica had a live-wire assistant at headquarters named Hazel Maguire, and she not only trusted the keys to headquarters to Hazel while she and Cast took off for the state tour of campuses, but she also got Hazel to visit her apartment daily to feed her dogs, Buster the bulldog and Whiskey the part Rottweiler, and her several cats. Another way Monica emulated Lydia was in surrounding herself with pets; Lydia too had taken an apartment in Fayetteville and installed in it her dog and several cats from Little Rock. Monica hated to leave her animals, and she knew that Lydia hated to leave hers. Whenever Lydia went out of town for overnight or longer, she hired somebody to feed her animals, and it had been Monica’s ambition to be able to emulate Lydia in that regard.

  The morning that she and Cast were going to depart Fayetteville, the newspapers published the first polls for the Democratic primary. Monica was amazed to see that Vernon Ingledew had got .85 percent! But she couldn’t figure that arithmetic; the percentages
of the other five added up to more than the remaining 15 percent. Barnas alone had 47 percent. And then she realized to her horror that it wasn’t 85 percent but only 85 percent of 1 percent: Vernon Ingledew had less than 1 percent of those polled! Arch Schaffer came to headquarters to deliver a pep talk (there were now several volunteers from the University in the headquarters) and to remind everybody that his uncle, Dale Bumpers, had pulled only 1 percent in the first poll taken after he’d announced for the primary, but that Dale Bumpers’ ranking had steadily risen in the polls. “Let’s get rid of those long faces!” he told them.

  But Cast and Monica still had long faces when they headed south on Interstate 540. For many miles they didn’t even speak to each other, although they both felt an obligation to make talk. Finally, to cheer him up and herself into the bargain, she offered, “I’ll bet a week’s salary against your week’s salary that the next poll will show him with at least 10 percent.”

  “If we have anything to do with it,” Cast declared firmly. She was going to be treated to the spectacle of Cast busting his ass, an act that she thought only herself capable of. So far he hadn’t seemed particularly industrious. He did his assignments, whatever they were, but he didn’t hustle. Now on this trip she was going to see him transformed into an activist take-charge guy. He had overscheduled the trip: fifteen colleges and universities in seven days, but Monica had calculated the distances between schools carefully so that, if they spent as much travel time as possible on the Interstate, they could get from one school in the morning to another in the afternoon.

  There was nothing whatever romantic between them. Cast had never asked her how old she was, and she’d never offered to tell him that she was eleven years older. Of course there were lots of relationships between older women and younger men—look at Vernon Ingledew himself—but even though Monica thought Cast was “very cute,” she couldn’t see herself having an intimacy with him. Campaign workers are always on duty when in public, and any sign of flirtation or affection between them would be ill-conceived. She had been younger than Cast when she’d divorced, and she hadn’t had a real relationship for seven years. If Lydia could thrive without romance, so could she.