At Risk of Winning (The Max Masterson Series Book 1)

by Mark E Becker

  College was a time of experimenting. Yearly pilgrimages to the senator’s “district home,” the anchor of residence that qualified him to run for Senate from Florida, was Max’s mandatory destination. Its proximity to Tallahassee and the politicos of the state capitol made the beach house a “must attend” when Senator Masterson held his annual oyster roast fund-raisers. Old guests didn’t bother for an invitation. They just dropped in when they knew John Masterson was down home for some fishing. This torch had been passed to Max, who wasn’t running for anything. It was assumed by the locals that he would someday seek his father’s seat in Washington, but Max had a standard response to the almost daily pestering: “I’m not a politician.”

  Regardless of his repeated denials of harboring any political aspirations, Max was treated to local celebrity status just the same. The quiet world of the Florida Gulf Coast was made more interesting by his visits.

  By the time the caravan of law students had arrived in Apalachicola and had made the turn onto highway 98 to parallel the coast for the ten miles to Indian Beach, they had already stopped at the ABC store to stock up on their beverage of choice. Max bought a bottle of Cabo Wabo tequila, some limes, and supplemented it all with a hot bag of boiled peanuts. he bought his from the same roadside vendor who had sat under the umbrella alongside the road for as long as Max could remember.

  “hi, Clayton. What’s new and exciting down these parts?” “You know, Mista Max. If you ain’t fishin’, ya’ll need to hump down the road to Panama City. Go to Club ‘Vela and watch them girls takin’ their T-shirts off.”

  “Clayton, I’ve known you all your life so far, and I don’t know that you’ve ever been out of Franklin County. how do you know those girls are taking their tops off?”

  Clayton chuckled, his mouth opening long enough to show an irregular row of yellow stained teeth with a gap on the bottom where his incisors once grew. Max knew that the missing teeth were the result of a drunken brawl down the road about a mile at a local oyster shack where the locals hung out most days. The sign out front merely advertised “Cold Beer.” It was enough to keep the locals happy.

  “Mista Max, are you stayin’ down to the beach house again?” Clayton had a keen sense of the obvious.

  “No, Clayton, I thought I’d bunk with you for a few days,” smiled Max as he swung into his convertible Ferrari and plopped the bagful of groceries in Debbie’s lap.

  “Well now, Mista Max, I’d hafta think about that . . .”

  The tires spun on the gray gravel as the entourage traveled the final leg to their spring break. Two miles down the road, they swung onto a white-sand dual track, a path known to locals as the “maneater.” Drivers unfamiliar with driving in sugar sand inevitably became stuck in the soft white dunes that lined the driveway. A local industry of four-wheel drive truckers earned beer money pulling tourists out of the sand, and each spring break was a boost to the sleepy local economy.

  The cars pulled up to the two story beach house, its lights glowing in a welcome of sorts. The sun was setting over the Gulf of Mexico, an orange good-bye until the next day. Too late to visit the beach, they settled for assembly in the kitchen, the nerve center of every home get-together. After they stowed their bags, they were intent on becoming spring break inebriated. It was a test of their limits and was the foundation of a diminishing number of blurry memories that they would carry through adulthood. They had arrived.

  u ChAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Over a half-century of continuous abuse from sunlight, salt spray, and occasional hurricane winds, the Masterson home, referred to by the senator as “Anchor house,” took on a weathered look. The yellow paint and white trim seemed to Max to look duller with each visit.

  Maybe next time, I’ll put these guys to work putting a new coat on it, he thought. Dad probably won’t even notice, though. He doesn’t come down here often enough to know the difference. It seems the older he gets, the more I have to pry him away from Fairlane. He hates plane travel, and the drive down and back takes too much out of him these days. I may have to surprise him with a private flight down just to get him into a reminiscing mood.

  Max carried the two duffel bags containing a week’s worth of Tshirts, shorts, and bathing suits up to the master bedroom on the second floor while the remaining members of the entourage claimed the remaining sleeping space on the first floor. Inevitably, someone would end up sleeping on the floor beneath the dining room table, but at twenty-two years old, the hardness of the sleeping surface never seemed to keep anyone from getting a good night’s sleep. The alcohol helped to numb the discomfort.

  Once they had moved in and the refrigerator was stocked with liquid refreshment, the deck was the next stop. Drinks in hand, the group sat in the abundant Adirondack chairs while Max fired up the barbeque grill. As the sun set, the idyllic orange and pink pastel clouds turned to burgundy before the sun slid low over the Gulf of Mexico.

  Florida legend has it that at the moment the sun touches the horizon over the Gulf, if you are focused at that very spot on a clear evening, you can see the “green hiss,” a momentary flash across the horizon. Max had never seen it, but he had repeated the legend to the uninitiated at every rest stop on the trip down I-75. All eyes were focused on the horizon as he moved up behind his companions with a large squirt machine gun filled with ice water.

  Just as the sun touched the water, Max trained the blast of the water on the back of the heads of his classmates. In one sweep, he soaked his startled victims. “There’s your hiss! Did you feel it?” The screams were his desired result and began the raucous party that lasted long into the night.

  Gradually, the last stragglers turned in, and Max quietly slipped away with Debbie hand-in-hand, walking barefoot through the dunes. An experienced navigator from his many visits as a young boy, he was careful to steer wide of the sandspurs that lined the path. At the shore, Max held her tightly as the moon slid beneath the horizon. This was a special time, when the darkness took over and the stars seemed to hang at arm’s length. he had no difficulty picking out the Southern Cross from the constellations that he had committed to memory. Max turned toward the house, lit against the night sky, then turned and kissed her slowly, their lips full and warm. “I want you.”

  “Max, you didn’t exactly have to go out of your way to impress me.” “I know, but I just want you to know.”

  “What?”

  “There will always be other women.”

  Debbie didn’t need to respond. Not verbally. her body pressed

  against his, and the silence took over. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold him for long, but she savored this moment and pressed her full breasts against his chest. he kissed her with the hot passion she sought so urgently. Their tongues intertwined for moments that turned into minutes, their hands roaming in increasingly bold strokes. They briefly parted, panting from the intense passion.

  “You’re with me now, and I have you all to myself,” she said in a husky voice. She grabbed his hand tightly and led him to a solitary depression between the dunes.

  u ChAPTER EIGhTEEN

  One of the most dangerous aspects of spring break is not the amount of alcohol that a college student can consume in one evening nor their ability to go without sleep for long periods. The prodigious amount of youthful hormones flowing through the young blood vessels of this age group is the main cause of high risk behavior. Sure, the alcohol and sleep deprivation enhance it, but the core reason is those ever-present hormones.

  After four days of nonstop partying, sunning, and beach paddleball, the law students were turning bright red, sometimes purple, in anticipation of peeling skin off their exposed areas on the trip home. It is mystifying to Floridians to see tourists and spring breakers spending hours on the beach until their previously healthy flesh becomes radiation damaged. To tan naturally, the ritual is supposed to start out with a short exposure to the sun that increases over a long period of time, allowing the skin to heal. A suntan is actually dead skin on
top of live skin, baked golden brown over time.

  On spring break, all of the lectures about skin cancer go right out the window, and the obligatory sunburn frequently occurs after the first day on the beach. By the time the redness appears, if you haven’t taken cover, your skin is on its way to a sickening purple color. This, together with the searing pain, can compel even the drunkest spring breaker to seek shelter in an air-conditioned building. These buildings are commonly known by locals as “bars.”

  Bored with the luxury of a free stay in a beach house, the entourage decided to pack into the SUV for the fifty-mile drive along the coast to the spring break mecca of Panama City Beach, where over a million college students congregate each year to see how close they can stand next to half-naked members of the opposite sex. It is here that the inhibitions of normally studious college students can lead to sex with strangers in hotel rooms occupied by other couples who don’t know or care to remember the name of their newfound friend, but most of them will go home with blurry memories of other people engaging in debauchery.

  Max was hovering on the rail of the balcony of the happy Buccaneer hotel when he suddenly developed the urge to fly. Three days of nonstop drinking and sleep deprivation had brought him to this state of mind, and at the time, it all seemed so reasonable: just leap the twelve feet from this balcony to that one and then jump back. he had made longer jumps before, and besides, he could fly in his condition. his friends wouldn’t encourage him to do anything dangerous, would they?

  Debbie warned him. “Max, don’t. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Max shooed her away and cleared running room on the balcony to give him the proper launch velocity. She was just being a girl, he recalled as her stern voice echoed in his alcohol-infused brain. Too careful. Thinks I’ll hurt myself, he thought. I just need a ten-step head start until I get up to speed. I’m gonna do it!

  Max actually made the first leap across the gap between the balconies of rooms 201 and 202. he landed hard and fell to his hands, turning to the loud applause of not only his friends but the hundreds of onlookers from adjoining balconies and those around the pool a mere two stories below. The words of praise were mixed a few “Asshole” and “That dude’s wasted” comments that he totally ignored.

  he quickly realized that even though he had made the jump, he was now standing on an empty balcony of a room that had locked sliding doors, and he had no way of getting back unless he repeated the feat of athletic prowess in reverse. This time, he took five steps to launch across the gap. Did the balcony just get overcrowded? he wondered, his mind clouded with high levels of adrenaline, alcohol, and testosterone. “Max, don’t do it!” yelled Debbie. “Wait for the manager to unlock the door!”

  Without hesitation, Max backed up five steps and ran for the open space.

  u ChAPTER NINETEEN

  he may have made the jump if he had given himself a longer head start, or if the big guy from Syracuse had stepped out of his way instead of pushing into the only open spot on the balcony, but here lay Max, his leg in a cast and in traction. Law school had resumed for more than two weeks. he was forced to withdraw for the summer term, and it looked certain that he wouldn’t be leaving Fairlane anytime soon.

  It was precisely the opportunity that the senator and Luke Postlewaite had waited for. “You got a dose of humility, and it didn’t come too soon.” The paternal instinct was being revived in the elder Masterson, and he was mildly surprised that he still had it in him. he had felt it come and go over the years, but he seldom had to summon the need to protect his son from danger or direct him away from the pitfalls of life. Max was a good kid. This time, though, it was more serious than a broken leg. his son had stepped off the path to greatness, and he wasn’t going to sit idly by and watch him squander his only opportunity to finish his life’s purpose. To do so would be admitting he had failed.

  “I’m sort of relieved that you only broke your leg, and the way I look at it, in every misfortune there lives the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. I know that this will be a good learning opportunity for you. To be sure you don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself, I have invited someone to help with your training.”

  “Senator, I’m a law student on medical leave, and I have no idea what training you are referring to.” Max was still groggy from eleven hours of sleep and was frustrated by his inability to leave the bed. he never addressed his father as “Senator,” unless he was desperate to have his full attention.

  “I’m not talking about law,” replied the senator.

  “Yeah, we think you need some reinforcement of the business of politics to keep your sorry ass in tow.”

  Max was startled at the familiar voice coming from behind him, out of his line of sight. There was no mistaking the booming baritone of Uncle Luke. Postlewaite had been his second mentor since infancy, and his visits with Max were always full of “life lessons” as he called them.

  “I figured that it would take something like a broken bone to slow you down long enough for me to talk some sense to you, and now you’re mine.” The two elders chuckled in unison, a sinister conspiratorial laugh.

  Postlewaite continued. “In the world of politics, there are two types of elected officials. There are those with ideas, and they are rare. They have goals and foresight and think for themselves. Then there are those who never had an original thought and only look out for themselves. The difference, I think, puts too many of the non-thinkers in position to lead the people that put them there. Then, when they get voted in, instead of leading, they get busy planning for reelection. Dammit! That’s not how it should be! They get their egos out and begin to think that they are experts on everything. Then, when they stand in front of the voters and make speeches, they are careful to only tiptoe around and avoid saying anything controversial.”

  Max listened intently, careful not to comment until Postlewaite and the senator were certain they had made a point. When the pause became an ending, he responded.

  “But I’m not a politician.”

  “I don’t want you to be a politician,” commented the senator. “I do want you to run when the time is right, but I don’t want you to run as a politician.”

  The last words were confusing, even to Max, who had been indoctrinated in the fine art of politics since infancy. “I don’t see the difference.”

  “I want you to say what you mean and never fear the consequences of holding tight to your ideals. You should never be afraid to clearly state your position on the issues you feel strongly about or to ask questions. You should never avoid discussion with those who don’t hold your views. Nobody ever resolved a conflict by refusing to talk about it. I’m going to go into more depth, and while we have you hostage, Luke and I are going to begin your journey into becoming a person of value.”

  When Max didn’t respond, Postlewaite took up the silence.

  “What we are trying to tell you is that you don’t need to act like a politician to get elected. You need to develop a clear vision of what you intend to accomplish once you get into office, and you must be able to clearly state your position in a way that will convince people that your way is the right way,” he expounded.

  “OK, but can we do this after breakfast?”

  u ChAPTER TWENTY

  how do people, most of them from humble beginnings, become president? Think about it. Most of them didn’t have the pedigree.” Luke Postlewaite began each of his lessons with a question that his students all wondered about, but the answer to that question would never be found in a textbook or a Google search. These were questions designed to get them to think outside the box and ponder the metaphysical. “You could make a better argument for left-handedness being a prerequisite for being president than any of the other qualifications that those elected to higher office possess, with the possible exception of being born a male,” Postlewaite continued. Max laughed without knowing why.

  “Lincoln crawled literally out of the wilderness. Clinton grew up in Arkansas, but ended
up at Yale, and later, to Cambridge, a Rhodes s cholar.”

  “Obama. A child of a marriage between a Nigerian scholar and a hippie girl, who grew up in Indonesia, hawaii, and Kansas. They were all portrayed as outsiders, trying to break into politics, but were they? Outsiders?”

  Postlewaite paced while Max listened. If there had been a carpet beneath his feet, it would have been threadbare by now. When Luke talked, he walked, and the only way to silence him was to ask him to sit down.

  “Our nation has always mistrusted royalty. The aristocracy has never trusted the common man. Our Founding Fathers were a talented and brilliant group of landowners and businessmen who were being taxed to death by the British. When they broke away from the monarchy and Mother England, they rejected the traditions that came with it.”

  Max looked more puzzled than before. “I don’t get it. First you start to tell me about how the average guy can become president, and then you launch into some history lesson about England and kings and who knows what?” his words were met with an annoying glare from his teacher.

  “For a kid in traction, you certainly act like you have to be somewhere else.” Luke’s rebuke silenced his student long enough for him to continue. “Whether you like it or not, Max, you are going to focus on what I am saying. Now, as I was saying,” he smiled, and Max knew from a lifetime of experience that he was not going to succeed at convincing Luke Postlewaite to move on to another subject, even if he couldn’t understand where all of this was headed.