The Coyotes of Carthage

by Steven Wright

  “I did my best.” Brendan slides open a door to reveal a parlor and kitchen. The combined space is far from perfect—why is the air so muggy in here?—but Brendan has cleaned and made improvements, furnishing cheaply, playfully, with futons, beanbag chairs, basketball hoops above each door. The space has a sterile, almost toxic smell: ammonia, bleach, a hint of lye. He suspects the chemical cleaners might bond to form a carcinogen, but cancer’s a small price to pay for thirteen weeks of inoffensive air.

  “Everything’s up here. The kitchen, bathroom, both bedrooms,” Brendan says. “All the electrical outlets work, as does the plumbing. Though I don’t recommend we drink the water. Your room’s over here.”

  Andre expects bunk beds, lofts made of two-by-fours, pan-African posters of Bob Marley. Instead, the bedroom, small and square, contains one twin bed, a plywood desk, a banker’s lamp, and a wooden armchair. The built-in shelves slant slightly, pointing toward the glue traps that line the wall, and a draft sways wire hangers hooked to a rod that runs the length of the room. Brendan says, “I hope you like it.”

  “You did all this?” Andre appreciates the gesture, appreciates Brendan’s willingness to prioritize his comfort. This kid must have spent the past thirty-six hours scrubbing floors and washing walls. “Listen, Brendan, I can put you up at a hotel. I’ll cover the cost myself. You might have to choose a motel in a neighboring county, so you’ll have to commute back and forth each—”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Oh. You’ve done great. Honestly. I’m grateful,” Andre says. “It’s just not fair to ask you to stay here.”

  “And where will you stay?”

  Andre won’t give Alenushka the satisfaction. “I’ll stay here.”

  “Then I’ll stay too.” Brendan nods. The subject is closed.

  Maybe his new assistant isn’t all bad. The kid’s already proven himself hardworking and well mannered. Mrs. Fitz should be proud. She’s got an all-American boy. Andre hopes the kid isn’t a mental case—the kind too often attracted to politics—who’s clean and sunny outside yet dark as a mine inside. Last year, one of the firm’s senior associates, a petite blonde with a penchant for puns and limericks, got caught fighting pit bulls along the Eastern Shore. She took photos of herself, laughing, winking, as she drowned muzzled dogs, her kitchen-gloved hands clasping their collars, submerged deep in a hot tub brimming with bloody water. She got herself a good lawyer, a plea deal with two years stayed and suspended, promising the judge that she’d dedicate her life to public good. She still works at the firm. Just made junior partner. Shit. Crazy bitch wins elections. Plus, she bakes a mean-ass strawberry scone. Who cares about anything else?

  “I think I should get some sleep. I’ll cook something special for breakfast.” Brendan rolls his head around. “And, again, I’m sorry about the gas station.”

  “Already forgotten.”

  “You gonna tell my grandmother?”

  “In the field, teams live by rules. Road rule number one: what happens on the road stays on the road.”

  “Do people actually follow the rules?”

  “I do.”

  The answer seems to please Brendan. Perhaps because now the two share a secret. Now they are brothers keeping mischief from their nana. Brendan makes his exit, closes the door.

  Andre sits, exhausted, on the bed’s edge, hopes he can fall asleep. He’s been working all day, on full alert, shuffling from place to place, but now, alone in this strange dank room, he feels the sudden evaporation of adrenaline, a sensation not unlike drowning that leaves him off balance and hollow. The end of each day, he knows, makes every traveler feel a little lost, a little lonesome, a little homesick. Travel, by its nature, disorients. And yet, the barrenness he feels isn’t just about loneliness or fatigue. He also feels a hint of dissatisfaction, about himself, about his life. He’s worked hard, achieved much, his professional life the envy of others. But the truth is, even if he weren’t on the road, even if he were lying beneath the blankets of his own bed, Andre would still spend this night alone, restless, a drink in one hand, the remote in the other, a vain attempt to distract himself from the cold reality that he needs something more than this disappointing, peripatetic life.

  Chapter Three

  Andre sleeps maybe four hours in restless shifts that never exceed fifteen minutes. He usually sleeps better on the road, but then again, he usually enjoys accommodations where the mice don’t skitter so noisily inside the walls. His sleeplessness, however, has provided the opportunity to plan this campaign, and now, he concludes, he doesn’t need a larger team. Sure, a private investigator might be nice, and yes, a volunteer coordinator would help. But Brendan’s qualified to analyze their data, and Andre’s mastered the skills required to win with less.

  He’s studying recent election results when a smoke detector sounds in the next room. Andre hurries into the kitchen to find Brendan standing atop a stool, arms flailing, the alarm beyond his grasp. The high-pitched beep grates on Andre, who grabs a broom, sweeps the ceiling, knocking the alarm to the ground, where it breaks into pieces.

  “The sensor must be sensitive,” Brendan says. “I wake you?”

  Andre helps Brendan down, notices his assistant’s buzz cut. The haircut brings into focus Brendan’s new look: a face now textured by thin, uneven patches of blond stubble, contact lenses that turn blue eyes gray. Did he bring those with him? For sure, Brendan appears older, slightly more masculine, but apparently no mask can hide his baby face.

  “I thought about what you said,” Brendan says. “Our job is to blend in.”

  Brendan returns to his makeshift kitchen, where a pine door atop cinder blocks serves as a counter for a hot plate, toaster oven, microwave, and electric grill. From seven feet away, Andre can feel the appliances’ heat, worries that Brendan might set the house afire. In a skillet, eggs sizzle in butter. In the toaster oven, a yellow casserole browns. The sweet smoke makes Andre dizzy with hunger, and he can’t remember the last time he enjoyed a home-cooked meal.

  “I’m making a breakfast bake.” Brendan points toward a card table set for two. “Don’t worry. I didn’t speak to anyone when I went out. I blended in.”

  “Good. I may need to blend in too.” Andre sets his napkin in his lap. “I’m thinking three-piece suits aren’t popular in Carthage. I’ll find something casual when we head into town today.”

  “I bought everything I needed this morning. And I got a call from the moving guys, they’ll be here soon.” Brendan slides the fried egg atop the casserole, brings breakfast to the table. “You want the Jeep? Carthage’s pretty easy to navigate.”

  Andre eats his first forkful of breakfast bake: ham, tomatoes, eggs, shredded potatoes, and so much butter that he imagines, somewhere in this fire hazard, Brendan’s hidden an Amish maid and churn.

  “I fixed plenty. Help yourself.” Brendan bows his head, makes the sign of the cross, and starts to say grace softly beneath his breath. Andre sets down his fork, waits for the prayer to end. Brendan says, “Amen.”

  Brendan starts to eat, flexing his left biceps, on which appears a tattoo: a green shield enclosing a soccer ball and the word Ireland. The tattoo, Andre thinks, is solid work: strong lines, perfect symmetry, well shaded. In juvie, bored kids found expression through tattoos. A contraband lighter, a toothbrush, and a busted Bic could memorialize the name of the sixteen-year-old girl who swore she’d wait for the rest of her life—the same girl who, three months later, wrote you a letter saying she’d been reborn courtesy of a new man. Sometimes the juvie art was beautiful, but often the tats were blotchy, crooked, accompanied by bleeding, infection, or second-degree burns.

  * * *

  A pickup whips past, and Andre tightens his grip around the steering wheel. He has a license, though three years have passed since he last drove. For most of his life, he’s had no need to drive. In fact, he lied on his application to join the firm, claimed to possess a valid driver’s license issued by the District of Columbia. On th
at same job application, he also claimed to speak Arabic and to adore crossword puzzles, tidbits that he thought would enhance his résumé. For a while, he got away with these lies, dropping the occasional as-salaam alaikum, until ten years ago, during that presidential primary so nasty that both parties forever changed their rules. In New Hampshire in December, the road fat with snow, Mrs. Fitz asked him to drive her around to the day’s meetings. Behind the wheel, bewildered by the controls, he felt shame that he lacked a skill mastered by most sixteen-year-olds.

  “Have you ever driven in snow?” asked Mrs. Fitz.

  “Well, technically, no.” He hoped to engage the windshield wipers yet succeeded only in flashing the high beams. “Actually, fuck it, truthfully, ma’am, I don’t know how to drive. At all.”

  “How old are you?”

  “When would I have learned? Juvie?”

  “People learn all types of useful things in prison.” She popped a mint into her mouth. “You really don’t know how to drive? During all your youth—the street scams, the drug walking—during all those delinquencies, you’re telling me that you never stole a car?”

  “I broke into plenty. Stole tires and rims. But no, I never stole a whole car,” he said. “You sound disappointed.”

  “How was I to know that you lacked ambition?”

  That evening, Mrs. Fitz pounded on his hotel room door, there, he assumed, to send him home. Instead, she slapped the car keys into his palm, saying, “You might as well learn to be useful.” For the next two months, after each end-of-day briefing, in a vacant lot deep inside a Manchester park, she mixed driving instruction with political wisdom. Ease off the gas. Straighten the wheel. New England Republicans claiming to be libertarians are like gay men claiming to be bisexual; who are they fooling?

  The stoplight ahead turns red, and Andre panics, pumping the brakes, the Jeep stopping hard seven feet behind the nearest car. On campaign trips an intern usually chauffeurs him around, and he realizes that he’s out of practice. Crashing, dying: neither really worries him, but he’s unsettled by the physics of cruising down this boulevard: a two-ton Jeep propelled at forty miles per hour down a four-lane road, past a hock shop named the Gospel of Pawn, past a payday lender with a neon sign that blinks: GET FAST CASH TODAY, BECAUSE YOU COULD DIE TOMORROW. He’s surprised by the glut of storefronts with out-of-business signs, by abandoned service stations stripped of color. Andre searches for a bank, a broker, an insurer. Instead, he spots a law office whose shingle claims expertise in personal injury, paternity testing, Social Security disability, and bankruptcy protection. The stoplight turns green, and Andre gently feeds the Jeep gas.

  A billboard displays an acne-scarred white man, a physically unattractive—no, downright ugly—school board candidate. His slogan, written in gold biblical font, is “One Nation Under God. Teaching Tradition.” Andre assumes billboards around here are cheap, because most small-town candidates can’t afford a full billboard. Small-town candidates might run their entire campaign on less than one thousand dollars. Two years of saving a few bucks from each paycheck.

  One block later, beside a dollar store, a pictureless billboard displays the name ARETHA MERRIWEATHER, her slogan “Making schools work for our children.” At once, Andre draws two conclusions. First, Aretha Merriweather is black. Second, thirteen weeks from now, when the polls close, Aretha will lose in a landslide. She’s wise to withhold her picture. White voters in racially polarized communities will take one look at her skin and immediately support her opponent. If Andre managed her campaign, the billboard would feature a stock photo of a young white mother, arms wrapped around an adorable blond-haired, blue-eyed boy. But where Aretha Merriweather has erred is in using her real name. Has anyone ever met a white woman named Aretha? Andre taps his thumb to each fingertip, counting the number of Arethas he’s ever known: three in sum, all black, not including Her Majesty, the Queen of Soul. But just as fatal as using her real name, her slogan, with the italicized our, invokes the type of racial pandering detested by most whites. Such slogans may play well in Baltimore or Detroit, communities where a majority-black electorate will always support the black candidate. But African Americans make up 6 percent of Carthage County’s total population, 3 percent of registered voters. So, Aretha Merriweather: go on ahead, sister, make these racial appeals, but be sure to have a concession speech ready on election night.

  The next block, he pulls beside a strip mall anchored by a hardware store. A dozen men, each dressed in tattered jeans and a dirty T-shirt, sit astride the curb awaiting work. He steers the Jeep toward an empty corner, a tree-shaded space beside a newspaper box. Today’s headline: SCHOOL WON’T LET BIG GIRL SWING. The front-page picture, above the fold, features a fifteen-year-old girl, maybe three hundred pounds, in her ill-fitting marching-band uniform, trombone in hand, sour expression across her face. Apparently, the school board has affirmed the principal’s decision to expel the girl from the marching band. Some parents complained that her shape set a bad example, says the pull quote. It was increasingly difficult to meet her special needs.

  Andre has one hour to buy clothes, but first, he visits the liquor store, which has the air of an interrogation room, one hundred square feet divided by glass two inches thick. Behind the spotty glass, on full display, sit rows of cheap high-proof spirits. Andre waits behind four wrinkled women, each with a violet bob and uneven bangs. The first lady in line, clutching a sheet of stationery, reads aloud a set of six numbers, then stops to watch the cashier transform digits into one lottery ticket. The process repeats, slowly, number by number, ticket by ticket, with no end in sight.

  A decent rail gin. That’s all he wants. Something to help him sleep. Can’t he cut ahead in line? His mother, cursed too by insomnia, enjoyed White Russians to help her sleep, and Andre still fondly remembers those late nights when mother and son would watch British wildlife documentaries till sunup. Hector, who once slept through a hurricane, claims those nights are fiction. If anyone ever asked Hector, he’d say their mother was a selfish woman, a narcissistic eccentric who spent each night away from her sons: naked in her latest lover’s bed, stoned with her bohemian friends in some ratty underground club, or, more likely than not, in jail, prison, or the DC psychiatric hospital.

  * * *

  In the attic, set atop an easel, rests a poster-sized sample ballot with small portraits stapled beside each candidate’s name. Andre, exhausted, spacey, floats his gaze across the room toward a photo of Aretha Merriweather, candidate for school board trustee, who is, as he suspected, black, though, to his surprise, the lone female candidate on a ballot crowded with white men. Thirteen weeks from today, Carthage County voters will choose from among these ten candidates to fill four municipal seats: coroner, sheriff, probate judge, and at-large school board trustee. This ballot, he fears, is bland and uninspired, like Chinese food in Iowa, dull enough to keep the famished at bay. He won’t know until the firm conducts a poll whether he’ll benefit from low turnout, but for now, he assumes not, considers adding a second initiative, something spicy, something hearty, some social issue that will inspire the masses to stampede the polls. Perhaps a measure that grants landlords the right to evict transgender tenants; or, perhaps, financial penalties for daycares that tend to the children of undocumented workers; or, maybe, prohibit municipal courts from considering sharia law. In his experience, Americans enjoy nothing more than denying their neighbors happiness.

  Brendan, grumbling to himself, swipes his forefinger across his tablet’s screen. The kid has spent the morning transforming the attic into their headquarters, an admirable effort, though cobwebs still hover overhead and cardboard boxes, soggy and freckled with mold, fill the sunlit space with a spongy scent. The movers have come and gone, delivered a mobile command center: high-speed modems and personal global cell tower, server and wireless routers, two sleek flat-screens now mounted against the wall. Fine equipment, but none of which right now works.

  “I don’t know what the trouble is.” Brendan
plugs a surge protector into the wall, and the tech remains black.

  Andre knows the problem. As a precaution against theft, a technician in Washington must remotely activate the equipment. All Brendan must do is make a call, a fact that Andre has denied his apprentice, a jackass move, he concedes, but necessary to postpone a presentation that Brendan promises will run two and a half hours.

  “The sockets must not provide enough juice.” Brendan unplugs the laptop. “I’d use my own laptop, but it doesn’t have the software to show the database I put together.”

  “I’ve seen an index of voters before.”

  “Not like this. We bought the state’s voter registration list. That gave us each voter’s name, phone number, race, address, political affiliation, participation in past elections. We bought a mailing list from the post office. We also have court records, FEC filings, census data at the block level, precinct-level results, magazine subscription data, the white pages . . .”

  Andre wants to say, Yes, yes, I have seen that index too, every election consultant in America has seen that exact index, but sharing this observation will lengthen his stay in this purgatory. Andre, breathing through his mouth, says, “I’m gonna take a nap.”

  “Five more minutes, Mr. Ross. Please. Five more minutes.” Brendan tries to buy time. “Does our super PAC have a name?”

  “We’re not a PAC. Super or otherwise,” Andre says. “We’re just two citizens who want to share our message. You’ve got four minutes.”

  Andre closes his eyes, resists the call of sleep. He can’t fathom how Brendan’s presentation could take two and a half hours. This morning, in fifteen minutes, Andre studied past election results and two county maps broken down to the census-block level. Carthage County is overwhelmingly poor and white—a fact any novice could’ve guessed. For the past sixty-five years, county residents, by a margin of four to one, have cast their ballots for the Republican nominee for president and the Republican nominee for governor, and the Republican nominees for lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. If Carthage residents ever had to elect a dog catcher, odds are he would be a white, free-market-loving, scripture-quoting, federal-government-mistrusting Republican. The remaining voters aren’t Democrats. The rest are self-avowed independents, mostly former Republicans, die-hard conservatives who think that the party’s gone soft.