The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  “It’s okay,” Harry Wolfe will console him. “You aren’t going to win, anyhow.” Harry will have returned to drinking, after his idyll in the woods. Not serious nor bilious drinking but enough to liberate his tongue. After consulting with Vernon, he will be planning to make one last flight to Little Rock, where he will attempt to get Bradfield to accept this fabrication: that the Ingledew campaign, who had kidnapped him (and from whom he had escaped just long enough to fax those hundred damaging calumnies to Bradfield), will have permitted him to follow his hunch and attempt to find and rescue Lydia, only to have been captured himself. Which will have explained to the Bradfield people what Harry will have been doing kidnapped by the Indians instead of by Ingledew.

  “That’s fine with me,” Vernon will confide to Harry. “But out of curiosity, just what makes you so sure?”

  And tipsy Harry will say, “Do you recall a little donation you made to the Library of Congress many years ago, an old Roman book called De Architectura Antiqua Arcadiae, which tells the story of an Arcadian Greek named Vernealos Anqualdou? Well, I took the liberty—and the trouble—of having a friend in dc make me a copy, which I commissioned a professor at the University in Fayetteville to translate from the Latin for me. I take it you haven’t read it yourself, even though you read Latin.”

  “I don’t want to read it,” Vernon will tell Harry. “I gave it to the Library of Congress on condition that they never let me see it.”

  “But don’t you want to know whether or not Vernealos won the election to become governor of Arcadia?”

  Vernon will recall the conversation he had with Day Whittacker, before the primary, over this whole matter of magic realism and Day’s awareness of the contents of Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling Off the Mountain). Vernon had wanted Day to tell him the outcome of the primary, but Day had claimed he hadn’t got that far yet. Now here will be Harry Wolfe, offering to tell him—or indeed, having already told him by saying “You aren’t going to win, anyhow,” the outcome of the election in which his metafictional ancestor, Vernealos Anqualdou, was running for governor of ancient Arcadia.

  “You’ve already told me, haven’t you?” Vernon will say.

  “But it was close,” Harry will elaborate. “It was real close.”

  “Did that campaign also involve the brilliant scheme to publicize one hundred of Anqualdou’s vices, in order to inoculate the voters against scandal?”

  Harry will chuckle. “Not exactly. But Anqualdou is figuratively stabbed in the back by his best friend, who corresponds to your Day Whittacker, the author of our brilliant scheme. Oops. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

  “Tell me more,” Vernon will request.

  The revelation that Day was the originator of Operation Vernon’s Vices will disturb Vernon, and once he will have sent Harry on his way he will go out looking for Day, to get him to confirm or deny the imputation.

  Harry Wolfe will return, for a final time, to Little Rock, where he will remain with Bradfield’s people, watching the Vernon’s Vices scheme going beautifully, watching the electorate growing increasingly fed up with any mention of either candidate’s unsavory past or present, watching Bradfield becoming apoplectically frustrated over Vernon’s refusal to answer to or comment upon any of the new charges brought against him, watching the final opinion polls going awry (13 percent Bradfield, 12 percent Ingledew, 8 percent other candidates, 19 percent undecided, 48 percent totally indifferent) for the last few days of the campaign, and the election itself, in which Harry will not be able to vote, even if he were so disposed, because he is not an Arkansas citizen, a condition he will eventually remedy. Although he will have been offered, even before the election, a good job in the Bradfield administration, and will later also receive offers elsewhere in the country to be an oppo man for important candidates the following year, Harry will surprise all those who will have known him by joining a Franciscan monastery near the Ozark village of Witts Springs. In time, Vernon will receive a letter from him, a humble letter, a self-deprecating letter, an apologetic letter. “Only God should be permitted to make predictions,” it will conclude. “And He already has.”

  “Did Harry tell you?” Day will ask of Vernon, who will have found him at the construction site of Juliana’s mansion, where with a crew of men he will be excavating an enormous hole for the transplantation of a seventy-year-old red oak tree. “Well, damn him! And anyhow, I just planted the seed with him. He and the rest of your Samurai developed it into a workable scheme.”

  “It has certainly worked,” Vernon will observe.

  “I’ll say! Apparently the voters are completely disgusted with you and Bradfield both.”

  “Not disgusted,” Vernon will correct him. “Just overdosed and apathetic.” The newspaper editorials will have agreed that Shoat Bradfield will have appeared to have committed an act of desperation by revealing all of Vernon’s Vices. Hank Endicott will have commented, “Aren’t we all a little sick and tired of hearing what’s wrong with Vernon Ingledew?”

  “Diana and I may not vote,” Day will say.

  Vernon will know that it’s just good-natured ribbing. “Bo tells me that a low turnout at the polls will probably be in my favor.”

  “Oh? So you’re back on speaking terms with Bo? You didn’t fire him?”

  “I couldn’t. He said that if I fired him, he’d keep on working for me voluntarily, because he’s determined to see me get elected governor. He said he’d personally canvass door to door if need be.”

  “He wants you out of Stay More,” Day will observe. “But if you spoke with him, did you and he finally discuss this little matter of your mutual interest in Jelena?”

  “You want to report all the little details to Diana,” Vernon will laugh and punch him on the shoulder. “And also to your friend the Author. Speaking of whom, and the matter of revelations and metafictions and all that, did you know that Harry possesses an English translation of the Latin De Architectura Antiqua Arcadiae?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “Did he tell you he knows how the story ends? So you can tell your Author friend how this story ends?”

  “Harry didn’t say anything about endings. And as you ought to know, none of my Author friend’s books ever have endings. He won’t allow them.”

  “But Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling Off the Mountain), as you call it, is going to have to say whether or not I win the election, and that’s going to be the end.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s probably more a beginning than an ending.”

  “Don’t you want to know what Harry said happens in that ancient election in Arcadia?”

  “I’d rather not know,” Day will say. “And I’m sorry that you’ve found out.”

  Vernon will be sorry too, but he will not blame the knowledge of it for the depression that will hit him and will last for the remaining days of the campaign. He will attempt to shake himself out of the depression by reawakening his former self, in its customary milieu: his secluded study, his “nest” in the top of the double-bubble, where he will go to read books on quantum theory, his next biannual course of study. Never mind that elsewhere on the premises his true love Jelena will be living it up with his unfired campaign manager. Usually, when weather permits, they will be out in Jelena’s “secret” garden.

  Vernon, turning a page of D.Z. Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and Experience, will smile to himself, thinking that Jelena for all of her intelligence will have never realized that her secret garden will not have been a secret from him, Vernon, for the simple reason that each and every time George had brought the helicopter down to its landing pad Vernon had spied the secret garden from the air. He will not yet have confronted her with his knowledge of it. Just as he will not yet have confronted her with his awareness of her affair with Bolin Pharis, which, for that matter, she will not have attempted to hide from him, as she will have hidden her Bible, her journal, her cigarettes, her chocolates, and her little TV set, the existence of all of which he has
known about for quite some time.

  The only mystery about Jelena remaining to him will be the question: Why has she tried to keep all those things secret but has really made no effort to keep her love of Bo a secret? Possibly because, just as he will have persuaded himself that it is indeed possible for a man to love two women equally, she has persuaded herself that her love for Bo has not diminished her love for Vernon. Because if it will have, there will have been no sign of it; she will still sleep with Vernon whenever he will be at home, or whenever he will come to bed after late hours in his study, and she will still bring him his lunch while he is reading in his study, and she will still kiss him and hug him and speak sweetly to him and, as far as their daily conduct will be concerned, Bo Pharis might very well never have existed, even if he is living permanently in the guest room.

  Oh, of course Vernon will miss Juliana, and not just sexually (although Jelena’s desire for Vernon will also be undiminished by the presence and the prowess of Bo). Juliana and Thomas Bending Bear will be inmates of the Washington County Jail, awaiting trial sometime in December or January. They will have obtained the very best legal counsel available, but their team of high-powered lawyers will not have been able to arrange bond for them because of the severity of their crime: not one but four kidnappings. All the newspapers will have given front-page coverage to the dramatic rescue effort that will have been engineered by Vernon’s new press secretary, Monica Breedlove, which will have sent into the wilderness a SWAT team to liberate the four members of Vernon’s staff being held hostage by, as the newspapers will have put it, “a pair of deranged Indians.”

  The expensive lawyers will have been tight-lipped about any possible motive their clients had for the kidnappings, other than a wish to depopulate their ancestral lands. There will have been no mention of, nor implied connection to, Vernon Ingledew. Another team of lawyers, according to the newspapers, will have arranged quickly for the release of the woman who will be identified as Ekaterina Vladimirovna Dadeshkeliani, 49, whose address will be given as Stay More but who will not be revealed to have the pseudonym “V. Kelian,” by which she will have once been known to many readers of American fiction. The lawyers will convince the arraigning judge that she will have had no real part in the kidnapping and was simply visiting the Native Americans, who were friends of hers. Upon her release, she will return only briefly to her home, the former Jacob Ingledew house, and will close it up, remaining only long enough to tell Vernon that she is taking an extended vacation back home to Svanetia and Georgia, but will vote for him by absentee ballot. With her house vacant once again, the village will soon return to its sleepy tranquillity, in which it will drowse forevermore.

  Vernon will go on loving Jelena (and sharing her with Bo) for as long as he can stand missing the very sight, sound and scent of Juliana, and then he will ask Arch Schaffer to see if there will not be some way that Vernon could quietly, secretly visit Ben and Juliana in jail. Arch will agree to look into it and to use his connections in the Washington County legal establishment. Arch Schaffer will always have been good at pulling strings. His conduct in the closing days of the campaign will be exemplary and beyond the call the duty; he will even surpass Bo in his zeal to get Vernon elected. And when it will all be over, and his leave at Tyson’s will be up, Arch will return to his old familiar desk at Tyson Corporate Headquarters, where he will exercise the same zeal and string-pulling, as well as his trademark bonhomie, to help his company and to further his career. In time, Arch Schaffer will be moved upstairs to become CEO of the Tyson empire, which he will vastly extend, until Tyson’s, having acquired the nation’s largest beef producer and then the nation’s largest pork producer, will become purely and simply the largest meat producer in the world (including a line of turtle-meat fried pies).

  Although Arch will have urged Vernon to throw his heart into the last days of the campaign, Vernon cannot. Vernon will justify his new pessimism and Taoist passivity, not to mention the prediction of that old Latin book on Arcadian architecture, on the grounds that he will have become practically broke. But Monica, who will decline the reward of a hundred thousand dollars on the grounds that Vernon can’t afford it, will have been almost right: the campaign coffers will indeed have diminished to nothing. But those funds, which he had set aside back in February after first deciding to try his hand at politics, were only a part of his fortune; he will still possess enough money to keep him (and Jelena and Juliana and Bo and Sharon and Larry and Monica and anybody else who asks) comfortable forever. Once the hectic campaign is but an unpleasant memory, talented Cast Sherrill, who will marry Sheila Kimber of Stay More, will be appointed to the position of Director of Media, Public and Governmental Affairs for Ingledew Ham, and will help extend its markets to the four corners of the globe.

  But Vernon will have solemnly promised himself (and Jelena) that once his “political allotment” is spent, he will not dip into the rest of his fortune, and therefore economy measures will have to have been taken in the last days of the campaign. One of the first of these will be the use of the helicopter. The panoply of Vernon’s accompaniment—the marching band, the choir, the cheerleaders, most of whom will have had to return to their colleges for the fall semester anyhow—will disappear, and even the largesse of his feasts will no longer feature Ingledew ham but just hot dogs and hamburgers. So the last use of the helicopter, the last stump speech of the campaign, indeed the last stump speech that will ever be delivered in the state of Arkansas, will occur at the town of Mountain View, where seventeen people, five of them children, and three dogs, will listen to Vernon make a halfhearted chat promising that under his leadership things will get better in the state of Arkansas. Afterwards, after dropping Vernon off at Stay More, George will fly the helicopter back to its lessor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Vernon will personally drive over there to bring George home. On the way back to Arkansas, Vernon will ask him, “George, if by some miracle I were to get elected, what kind of job could I give you in Little Rock? How about Highway Commissioner? Or Director of Veteran’s Affairs? I could make you Adjutant General, how about that?”

  “You cain’t scare me, Boss,” George will respond. “You aint gonna git elected and you aint gonna do no such of a thing as that. Why would you punish me like that? Aint I been good to you?” George will insist that if, in the dog’s chance Boss will git hisself elected, and will give George his druthers, he’ll a whole heap druther keep on working at the pig plant until he reaches retirement, which is just around the corner anyhow.

  And sure enough, that is precisely what will become of George. He will continue to manage Ingledew Ham, and will work closely with Cast Sherrill in expanding its operations and making it global. He will be given a nice bonus upon his retirement at sixty-seven, and will live happily in Stay More to a very ripe old age.

  But for now, Vernon will tell George that he plans to stop in Fayetteville on the way back to Stay More, and Vernon will say, “George, I’m planning to say hello to Juliana and Ben. Do you want to say anything to Ben?”

  George will ponder, but will say, “Naw, you can jist tell ’im we’re all pullin for him, and we hope he gits out soon.”

  “It’s not likely they’re going to get out for a long time,” Vernon tells him.

  “Then jist say I’ll miss him,” George will tell Vernon. “He was my friend.”

  Arch Schaffer will have arranged for Vernon to enter the Washington County Jail without attracting any attention and to have as much time as he wants to visit with the defendants.

  Vernon will first visit with Ben, who will be brought from his cell in an outlandish bright-orange jail jumpsuit, with his hands shackled to his waist, and will sit across a table from Vernon, who will convey to him George’s good wishes and the fact that George misses him and will continue to miss him.

  “But you didn’t come here to see me,” Ben will remark.

  “No, but I want to thank you for having been so kind and considerate to Lydia during her detainment.
I want you to know that I understand why you were ordered to kidnap her. I am still your friend, I hope.”

  Ben will laugh. “That’s nice. You know, I came to Arkansas in the first place intending to kill you, so maybe it’s fortunate I’m just facing a kidnap rap, not a murder rap.”

  “Take care of yourself, Ben.” Vernon will not be able to shake his hand, which is manacled to his waist.

  Ben will be led away and then they will bring Juliana to him. She too will be dressed in a day-glow orange jail jumpsuit and will have her wrists cuffed and attached by a thin but strong chain to a chain around her waist. She will not be able to hug him. He will give her an awkward embrace, but will be aware that a guard will be standing with his hands folded, directly behind her.

  Vernon will speak to the guard. “Would you mind if we had some privacy for a few minutes?”

  “I aint sposed to let her out a my sight,” the guard will say.

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Vernon will say.

  “Still and all…” the guard will hesitate.

  “Do you know who I am?” Vernon will ask him.

  “Yessir, you’re the next governor of Arkansas. Leastways if my vote means anything. My old lady don’t plan to vote for you, but I sure do.”

  “Thank you. So could you just step outside for a few minutes?”

  “Well…” the guard will continue to hesitate. “Don’t tell nobody I did it.” And he will leave the room, and leave them alone.

  And they will kiss. It will be a lovers’ kiss, serious and urgent and eloquent, her solid breasts mashed against his heart. But she will burst into tears as they will be sitting down across the table from each other, and between her sobs she will say, “I made such a mess of things.”