Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  “You went to church last week.”

  “Yeah. To get votes. Christ, This is awful. What they’re saying about me and Smooth Lennie is true. We’re the same. Why the fuck did I ever get involved in this. Why? Why?”

  “You can’t back out now.”

  “I can so. That’s what I do. Back out of things.”

  “Come on, Wallace,” said Robbie. She took him by the hand and pulled him out from behind the van. “It’s like Robert the Bruce and the spider. You gotta reach deep down within yourself and come out laying about with your claymore at the English bastards to win the battle for Scotland.”

  “Fuck Scotland!” said Wallace, probably more loudly than he intended. From around him heads turned, and three men in kilts who were coming toward him stopped and, offended, turned on their heels and strode off.

  “Wallace,” Bailey grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed back under cover. “Best not to say anything now.”

  “I told everybody he had laryngitis,” I said.

  “Good. Stay with that story. Melissa, Robbie, go get some scotch. Come on, Wallace. We’re going up to the hall.”

  Robbie and Melissa went back to the truck. We walked alongside the parking lot where there was nobody and around the side of the Barrisway Legion, past a CBC truck where large pythons of electric cables coiled out and ran in the side door of the building, which we entered.

  The doors and windows were all wide open, but it was still hot inside the Legion hall. There were maybe thirty people standing around in the room, which was set up with auditorium chairs under fluorescent light, and was constructed with a stage set into the far end with a door to go behind on either side. It was the kind of room that any amount of festive decoration would only make sadder, but there was no decoration tonight, only campaign posters of the candidates and on one wall a large photograph of Robert Logan Head, smiling paternally. Apparently, the Conservatives had some pull with the poster-hanging committee. The remaining walls of the Legion were hung with framed photographs, mostly black and white pictures of soldiers, but also a few more florid colour snaps of older drunken ex-army types holding trophies and laughing. Queen Elizabeth was prominently displayed in a colourized portrait which probably came from one of the British holdings in the South Pacific, as Her Highness had been rendered with a distinct Polynesian cast to her facial features and colouring.

  Robbie and Melissa came in with the bottle of scotch, excited. “You’ll never guess what we heard!” said Robbie.

  “What?”

  “Robert Logan Head has hired a new political advisor.”

  “Ha! See, Wallace?” said Bailey. “That means we got ‘em on the run.”

  “And guess who he got,” said Robbie.

  “Who?”

  “Leo Murdoch.”

  “Who?”

  “Perhaps it might ring a bell if you knew what pen name he sometimes goes by: Ward Morris?”

  Wallace looked up and found his voice. “Ward Morris? The guy who wrote…Just a second. You’re saying that Robert Logan Head has hired Ward Morris as his campaign manager?”

  “Yes. But…” Robbie looked worried that she might have said the wrong thing.

  Wallace sat down in an empty chair and stared at a point in the floor, then put his hands to his head. “Fuck!” he howled.

  “Come along, Sonny,” said a mother who had approached with her six-year-old, turning on her heel and clicking away.

  “I thought you’d like the idea…” said Robbie.

  “I’m sure Robbie’s mistaken,” said Bailey. “And even if what she says is true, all that means is, well, it means we know how he thinks, anyhow. And how would the electorate like to know that Robert Logan Head has hired someone like Ward Morris? Eh?”

  “They wouldn’t know who he was.”

  “Then it’s up to you to educate them ,” said Bailey. “No, the more I think about it, the more I believe this is perfect. All those quotes you’ve memorized? I want you to have ‘em handy, to show the voters what we’re dealing with here. But I want you to save it for the time it will do the most damage, Wallace...Wallace, are you listening?”

  “They’re going to slaughter us,” said Wallace.

  “Pull yourself together!”

  “We’ve lost! Jesus, Jesus Jesus…”

  “Snap out of it, Wallace.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Wallace! Look at me. Now! You are going to…Look at me!…You are going to meet the opposition, shake hands like a gentleman, retire to your corner and when the bell rings, you are going to come out and kick the living shit out of him. Got it?”

  “I…”

  There was movement by the front door. At the opposite end of the hall from where we were, the growing crowd parting and reforming after him like the waters of the Red Sea, Robert Logan Head entered. With his two aides behind him, a younger man like a secret service agent and, shadowing his left shoulder like his familiar, an immaculately dressed wraith of advanced age, he began glad-handing his way around the room, clearly enjoying himself. He worked the crowd like a master, spoke a few words to a grandmother, moved to a family of five, while everyone else in the room arrayed themselves into a reception line like iron filings along his magnetic field. Taking all this as his due, Head moved from group to group, saying something personal to each without breaking rhythm or causing offense. Then he moved on, a busy man working for your good, leaving you feeling lucky to have had the few words he could spare out of his busy schedule of helping you, the voter. His face was immaculately shaved, his hair groomed and sculpted. He was bathed, scented and probably massaged. He was looking both sharp and relaxed.

  Wallace on the other hand was a quivering wreck, sweating buckets and breathing hard, face red and hands shaking. Wearing his father’s church jacket, too tight around the shoulders, and a pair of check pants, too short by an inch, which he had convinced himself might look casual and down-to-earth, but now only seemed laughable. His stage-fright was crippling in itself, but with the actual sight of his opponent, I saw his core confidence start to crumble.

  “Follow me,” said Bailey. “Melissa, Robbie, Brucie, save us seats up front.” He led Wallace to the door beside the stage and we stepped in and up a small set of stairs to the backstage area.

  “Give me some marijuana,” said Wallace.

  “No fucking way,” said Bailey. “That stuff will rot your brain. Have some scotch.” He unscrewed the cap of the bottle and Wallace grabbed it and gulped.

  “Whoa! Enough!” said Bailey as he wrestled it back away from him. “Now, listen to me, Wallace. Are you listening? That bastard is out there right now, smiling and shaking hands and being friendly and amusing, but make no mistake, what he is doing is castrating you. Slowly. With a rusty knife. Carefully sawing off your testicles. And when he has done that, he will cast them under his heels and flamenco-dance them into a fine puree to spoon-feed them to you, in public, as the rest of the world looks on laughing. Got it?”

  “I know…”

  “Unless you screw him to the wall first.”

  “It’s over.”

  “It’s not over. Are you listening?” Bailey hauled back and slapped Wallace hard on the face.

  “I deserved that,” said Wallace.

  “You didn’t deserve that. Jesus! You should have kicked the shit out of me for that!” Bailey, for the first time, looked worried.

  Then the door opened behind us and “Hello!” said the cheery voice of Robert Logan Head. He stepped in and up, accompanied, still behind his shoulder, by Leo Murdoch.

  This leather-faced éminence grise, eyes masked behind dark glasses, looked, up close, as old as Methelusah, although every cosmetic aid, including undoubtedly long and expensive bouts of plastic surgery, had been employed to carve years off his body and face, or at least make him look human. It hadn’t worked. His
hair was dyed a coppery colour which doesn’t exist in nature, and the top of his head had been replanted with hair-plugs like marram grass on a dune. A partial comb-over from just north-east of his right ear flipped and plastered over the remaining bald spot, completing his Tribute to Bad Hair, and his teeth were false and fitted oversized to force his lips into something away from the habitual sneer you could tell was his default expression. Under good lighting and with the right makeup, seen through gauze from a distance, all this might shave a week off his apparent age, but as it was, here and now, it only served to highlight his desperate seniority. He looked like Faust after the Devil had come to collect, as if any vital energy he possessed was created by some massive spiritual meltdown which had been happening since birth and sustained by God-knows what? Alcohol? Drugs? New transfusions administered in his subterranean vault below the Parliament buildings where ritual sacrifice of innocents were performed to feed him their sustaining lifeblood? Anything was possible with that face.

  He whispered into the ear of Robert Logan Head, who acknowledged with a nod, and looked at Wallace, who was sitting, staring down and away, too afraid to look.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” said Head. “I saw you duck in here and thought I’d come and introduce myself. I mean, obviously we find ourselves on the opposite sides of this election, as well as many other individual issues, but we are after all living in a civilized democracy and I see no reason why we shouldn’t behave to each other as respected colleagues rather than opponents.”

  “Go fuck yourself you slimy bastard you,” said Bailey. “We will personally eat you up raw and vomit you back into the sewer that spawned you.”

  Robert Logan Head didn’t bat an eye. “What I mean to say,” he continued, “is that apart from the political differences which beset us, and are bound to beset any two opposing forces in a healthy democracy, I still harbour a great respect for both what you stand for and the manner in which you have run your excellent campaign so far.”

  “You prick-faced dick-wad. We’ll crush your eyeballs and feed them to the jackals. We will rip out your intestines, and strangle you with them, then bash in your brains with your own severed arm,” said Bailey.

  “Ah. Well. At least I tried the civilized approach.”

  “We will step on your nuts and eat your organs raw.”

  “Yes, yes. I catch the drift,” said Robert Logan Head, with the first trace of mild annoyance, “but I think you might find it somewhat difficult to do any of those things you so glibly threaten, Mr. Bailey James Hendershott, from prison.” He looked into Bailey’s eyes, and now his voice had the edge of a low menacing hiss.

  “How do you…my name?” stuttered Bailey.

  “We have friends. On both sides of the border. And your cohort Aiden has been most forthcoming with photographs of you flagrantly flaunting the laws of our land. Or am I mistaken? Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.”

  “Oh fuck,” whimpered Bailey. He looked at Robert Logan Head in fear and awe and backed two steps into the shadows, wilting.

  “And so, if you don’t mind, let me at least introduce myself to Wallace MacAkern. I am Robert Logan Head. And this is my campaign manager, Leo Murdoch.”

  Making a humiliating, subservient effort, Wallace, who had been looking pathetically at the ground the whole time, raised his head, while he held out his limp paw, a wan smile on his face that as much as said, “Please don’t hurt me.” You could almost see him tug his forelock as his head swung up and he stole a humble glance at Leo Murdoch.

  There was a rattling sound behind me and I looked to see Bailey, still backing away, knock over some brooms in the corner.

  And when I looked back at Wallace, something was different. He seemed to have stiffened from the inside, straightened up to his full height and was now clasping firmly the hand of Robert Logan Head. I had missed something.

  “Hello,” said Wallace with strange new confidence. I guessed that, with his friend under threat, he must have somehow rallied and found strength.

  “I’m sorry,” said Robert Logan Head. “Have you two met?” And he indicated Leo Murdoch.

  “I feel like I have,” said Wallace, as though to an equal. “I loved your book! You’re Ward Morris, aren’t you? That’s your pseudonym?”

  Leo Murdoch was about to say something else, but Robert Logan Head put his hand up to field the question. “Why, yes he is, and you are, of course, referring to that parody of the Ottawa political process which he wrote a few years ago? That humourous satire on what not to do. That fictional account?”

  “Precisely,” said Wallace.

  “Can you believe that some people not only took that book seriously but actually tried to use it to defame the campaign of one of the candidates he was advising last year? Do you remember that little scandal? No? Well, why should you? A small glitch in an unimportant by-election, quickly squelched by threats of a lawsuit and in fact showing them up as a group of backwoods low-rent hicks with about as many qualifications for leadership as so many swamp leeches. Awful isn’t it, this game we’re in? Well, best not to take it personally.” He sighed at the imperfection of the world.

  “I can see you’re learning his lessons well,” said Wallace. “That’s pure Ward Morris right there. Deflection. How to return a threat. Chapter 6. Classic! But you misunderstand me if you think I plan to use that book as some sort of weapon in this debate.” He turned to Leo. “I have far too much respect for you as a writer and artist to stoop to such tactics, Mr. Ward Morris… Or Mr. Leo Murdoch. Which do you prefer?

  “Leo is fine,” said himself, hoarse-voiced.

  “Very well,” said Wallace. “Leo. I’ll make a mental note of that. I’m awful with names! Leo is the name you are going by. Got it. And thank you, Leo. I’m your biggest fan.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Although, I may be lying,” said Wallace. “Which is what you do after all advise in that book of yours.”

  “That satire, yes,” said Robert Logan Head.

  “Yes indeed.”

  Everybody paused. “Well, that’s done,” said Head, a little put-out by not fully understanding what had just gone on. “It’s best if there are no hard feelings, don’t you think?”

  “Indubitably,” said Wallace. “Let the best man win.” He sounded sincere, looking deeply into Robert Logan Head’s eyes and taking his hand in both of his. Then Head and Leo backed away, smiling and nodding, watching Wallace the whole time until they had left through the door they had entered and which now closed after them.

  “Those pricks…” said Bailey.

  “Don’t worry,” said Wallace, still smiling.

  “What do you mean, ‘don’t worry’? I’m looking at extradition and ten to fifteen in Norfolk. I can’t do this anymore, Wallace, I gotta pull out…”

  I heard him start to slip back into a frightened version of his Caribbean accent. His spine had become cartilage, his voice a whine.

  “Of course you won’t pull out.”

  “I got to”.

  “Don’t worry,” said Wallace.

  A bell rang outside, and, having found strength from somewhere, Wallace said, “That’s us,” and walked back down the steps and out the door into the large crowd who had gathered by now in the hall.

  I don’t know where it had gone, but the stage-fright had disappeared completely, replaced by a calm acceptance and joy of battle, like Arjuna in his chariot, filling him like wind in a sail.

  “What’s happening, Wallace..?” I asked, but I was interrupted.

  “Feeling better now?” said the loud man in the straw fedora from before. “Because if you are, I want to tell you again, I’m not going to vote for you, like I said, and I want to be clear about that right up front, but if you do get in, I want you to look into that pothole for me.”

  “Let me get this right. You’re
not going to vote for me?”

  “No.”

  “Then fuck off,” said Wallace, still smiling, and he turned and left, leaving the loud man speechless.

  I followed Wallace around the room as he shook hands and said hello to as many as he could. He did the complete circuit, waving and smiling at anyone out of reach. When he got to the front of the stage, he climbed the steps at a run, and I sat down in a seat that Brucie had been saving on the far side of Robbie and Melissa. On stage the moderator, who turned out to be Ben Malone, was speaking to Wallace and Robert Logan Head. Although not audible over the babble of the crowd to anyone else in the room, the microphones on the podiums picked up just enough for me to hear what was being said, through the loudspeaker I found myself sitting beside.

  “The other candidates haven’t showed up yet, which is goddamned unprofessional, if you ask me,” said Ben Malone. “But we’re going out live on the radio two minutes from now and can’t have any dead air, so we’re going to start with just you two. When I call your name, just take a bow. We’ll take it from there.” He looked at his watch and moved to the front of the stage and the babble and hum died down.

  “Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the All-Candidates Debate for Barrisway riding. It seems that Liberal candidate Dwayne Evans and NDP candidate Shiela Cudmore haven’t showed up, and we have somebody out trying to contact them now as we speak. Nevertheless, we can start the debate with Mr. Head and Mr. MacAkern. There will be an opening speech from each of the candidates lasting five minutes, and then a face-to-face, and for want of a better word, a free-for-all.” The audience chuckled. “Both candidates will then take questions from the floor. Mr. MacAkern, as challenger to the incumbent, will go first. Any questions?”

  Wallace spoke up. “I would just like to take the opportunity to send out a big hello to the Arsenaults over there in the back, a family who came over with my grandmother Monique Taillefer on the same boat from France. Claude, Gerry and Bridget! How are the kids?”