by Jess Walter
Proposed by Initiative Petition
INITIATIVE MEASURE NO. 383
Shall Washington ban the importation and storage of nonmedical radioactive wastes generated outside Washington, unless otherwise permitted by interstate compact?
He skips to the next one.
Proposed by the People to the Legislature
REFERENDUM BILL NO. 38
Shall $125 Million in State General Obligation Bonds be authorized for planning, acquisition, construction, and improvement of water supply facilities?
He reads down the ballot. There are five of these questions, and all of a sudden it seems like a test he didn’t study for: Does he want to pay $450 million for public waste disposal, does he want the state to disclaim unappropriated federal land, does he want to create a commission to discipline judges? What the hell? Vince stares at the first question. Reads it again. He turns to the elderly women at the table, who are giving a ballot to a man with a beard. The first woman sees the look on Vince’s face, smiles gently, stands, and walks over.
“What is it, honey?”
“I wasn’t expecting all this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some of these things…I guess I didn’t prepare…”
She cocks her head.
“Like this radioactive thing. I didn’t even hear about that.”
She pats his arm and the vertical lines in her face spread into a smile. “Listen, honey. Just vote how you think is right. If you have to skip one, it’s okay.”
She returns to the table and Vince turns back to the ballot. He figures that it’s a bad thing, bringing in nonmedical radioactive waste. He puts the little pointer in the YES hole, next to the arrow from the number one. He pushes down and he can feel the chad break through. It’s a nice, small feeling. Water is good, too. Votes yes. But he votes No on public waste disposal, because $450 million seems a lot and he knows the mob is deep into garbage and will likely take a big whack into that money. He votes Yes on public lands and on disciplining judges (there are a couple he wouldn’t mind seeing disciplined), and then he turns the page and there they are: the presidential candidates. He feels a quickening. Reagan and Bush are first, followed by Carter and Mondale, John Anderson and Patrick Lucey, and then a bunch of names he didn’t expect to see. Clifton DeBerry of the Socialist Workers Party, Deirdre Griswold, of the Workers World Party; also Libertarians, Socialists, something called the Citizens Party…even a couple of Communists—Gus Hall and Angela Davis.
The guy with the beard is in the booth next to Vince.
“What’d you put for the radioactive thing?” Vince whispers.
He looks up. “What?”
“I had no idea there would be so many names for president,” Vince says. “Women and Communists and everything.”
The bearded guy shrugs and turns back to his ballot.
Vince looks around, sniffs, and settles back in his booth. He’ll come back to the president. He flips the book until he finds Aaron Grebbe’s name, in the state representative race, and pushes the pointer down. He reads the other names running for state offices, but he’s never heard of any of them, so he turns to the page with the big congressman from the bar—Foley. He votes for Foley. He doesn’t want to guess on the rest, or vote for someone who turns out to be an ass, so he skips them. That leaves the president.
Vince turns back to that page and stares at the names. He wonders about these men…what’s at the center of them. What kind of men are they? Are they good? Wise? Tough? Have they risen from the rest of us, the best we have to offer? He wonders which traits he’d value most—the traits he has, or the traits he doesn’t? You read the papers and watch the news and you think you have a sense of these men, but who are they, alone, at night? What would he do in their situation? What would they do in his situation?
Ronald Reagan. George Bush. Jimmy Carter. Walter F. Mondale. John B. Anderson. Patrick J. Lucey. He tries to connect the names to what he knows about these men, but they’re just names on a page, and he finds himself filled with a cold panic; maybe this whole thing is stupid. He feels foolish. Maybe you build a thing up in your mind and believe that it connects to your own life and has some meaning. But what if you’re just fooling yourself? What if it doesn’t mean anything in the end?
Or is it enough to believe that a thing has meaning? He glances over at Beth, takes a breath, and bends over the ballot book, the whole world for a moment bordered by the cloth walls of a voting booth.
The pointer hovers above the names, and only then do you make the decision; a gentle push and the paper gives way in a kind of release that gives way to a vision of the house you bought for Beth, kids skipping rope while she watches from the porch—and you’re embarrassed by the flatness of your dreams, even as you stare at the ballot and think that, if nothing else, for the first and the last time in this short, misguided life, Vince Camden has voted for president.
LENNY IS SLUMPED against the passenger-side door, out cold, his jacket still tight around his shoulder. Vince drives in silence, a half smile on his face.
“So what is it?” Ray asks. “Like a fuckin’ wishbone? Or birthday candles? You won’t get your wish if you tell?”
“No, I just don’t want to say, that’s all.”
“What the fuck you don’t want to say? What difference could it possibly make?”
“It makes a difference to me.”
“Bullshit.”
“Look, I’m not gonna tell you. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I could tell you anything and you wouldn’t know if I’m telling the truth.”
The gun against his neck again. “And I could shoot you in your fuckin’ head!”
“Okay. I voted for Reagan.”
“You did?”
“No. I voted for Carter.”
“Really?”
“Nope. Anderson. See what I mean? I could tell you anything.”
Ray glares out the window as they drive through downtown. Vince angles in front of Beth’s bank—red brick and glass double doors—and pulls into a metered space. He puts the car in park, reaches over, and feels Lenny’s throat for a pulse. It’s weak. He opens Lenny’s jacket a little and looks at the bloody wound, the knife handle wedged just above his collarbone. “I really think we ought to take him to a hospital,” Vince says. “He doesn’t look good.”
“He didn’t look good before I stabbed him,” Ray says.
Ray looks up at the bank, his eyes moving from the double doors to the windows and the pillars. “Okay,” he says. “Here’s how we do this.” He grabs the wrist on Beth’s broken arm. She shudders in pain. “You’re gonna go in there alone. I’m gonna stand right there on the sidewalk with your boyfriend. If I see you point, or talk to a security guard or do anything screwy, then three things are gonna happen in quick order.”
Ray holds up one gnarled finger, the nail perfectly clipped, the knuckle bent and swollen from too much work as part of a fist. “One: I shoot your fuckin’ boyfriend in his balls. Right in front of your eyes. You’re gonna watch him go down on the sidewalk and know that you could’ve stopped it. Number two: I drive straight to your apartment and I shoot that old lady that watches your kid. Three: I take that baby of yours and you never see him again. And know this, lady: I will be the angel of his fuckin’ nightmares. I will skin that kid like an apple and mail you little squares. He’s gonna be six before he finally dies. You hear me?”
Beth nods and he lets go of her wrist. The breath goes out of her.
They climb out of the car slowly. Lenny doesn’t stir. As they walk to the front doors, Vince tries to catch her attention—(Run!)—but she won’t look at him.
Ray and Vince stand on the cold sidewalk, hands in their pockets, squinting into the gusting wind, their breath steaming, watching Beth walk into the bank and up to a teller’s window.
“She ain’t gonna run,” Ray says. “She ain’t gonna get help. I know you think she will, but she won’t.”
Vince doesn’t say anything.
“I know people. It’s…a gift. I can see it in her eyes. She ain’t got the juice for something like that. She’s broken. She’ll go get my money and she’ll bring it to me, and when I finally shoot her in the eyes, in a lot of ways, it’ll be a fuckin’ relief to her.”
Vince closes his eyes.
“You know what I believe? In my heart? I believe that I never did somebody didn’t really want me to do them. I believe that. I do. Down deep, they all thought I was doing ’em a favor.”
Ray shifts his weight, still trying to make small talk. “So come on, chief. Tell me. Who’d you vote for back there?”
Vince doesn’t answer.
“You know what? You might as well tell me now. ’Cause in about an hour, when you’re on your knees, pissing your pants and bleeding out your fuckin’ eyeholes, begging me to finish you off…you’ll tell me.”
“No,” Vince says. “I won’t.”
Ray snaps and steps up in his face. “You’re such a cute motherfucker! You have no idea what I can do!”
Vince doesn’t answer.
Ray stares into his eyes for a moment, then steps back, seeming embarrassed that he lost his temper. He clears his throat. Pretends to laugh. “You know one thing I don’t mind here…is the weather. It’s a little cold today, but I do not miss the fuckin’ humidity, that’s for sure.”
Beth comes out of the bank. The wind startles her hair like a row of birds. She hands Ray her purse. Catches Vince’s eyes briefly. They walk back to the car. Vince squeezes her arm. “In front,” Ray says. Beth climbs in front, between Vince and Lenny, who doesn’t stir, slumped against the window.
Ray begins counting the bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
“You said we could go after we gave you the money,” Beth says.
Ray smiles. Scratches his head. Seems amused. “I’ll tell you what. If your boyfriend tells me who he voted for, you can go.”
“No,” Vince says.
Ray laughs. “I don’t get what the fuck is the big deal with who you voted for.”
“You really want to know?” Vince says.
“Yeah,” Ray says. “I wanna know.”
Vince adjusts the rearview mirror so that Ray’s eyes are in the center of it. As good a time as any, he supposes. He pats Beth on the leg and she looks at him hopefully, as if she knew he was biding his time until he made some move.
“I got my first juvenile felony conviction when I was fourteen.”
“I was nine,” Ray says. “Big deal.”
Vince continues: “My first adult felony conviction came two weeks after my eighteenth birthday. So I’ve been a convicted felon my whole life. You know what you lose when you get convicted of a felony? Two things: the right to own a gun and the right to vote. Every presidential election, I was either in jail or on parole. But I never heard anyone complain that they couldn’t vote. Who cares about that, huh?”
Ray shrugs.
“Voting is for assholes, like paying taxes. Or having a job. And guns—big fuckin’ deal. You can always find a gun on the street. Any felon can buy a gun. But just try to vote in jail. You can’t do it. It’s funny, you think about it, the only thing we can’t do…is something we don’t even care about doing.
“But lately I’ve been thinking.” Vince glances over at Beth, who is watching him intently. He goes back to Ray’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Our old life, Ray? It wasn’t about money or drugs or women or even power. It’s about this hole we were always trying to fill. Big fuckin’ hole. One more score, one more job…more booze, more broads, more money. But the hole never gets filled. We think we’re so smart because we don’t follow the rules, but tell me, Ray, you ever seen an old, happy crook? You ever seen one of us sitting on a porch with his grandkids? You know why you’ve never seen that? Because by that time, the hole is all that’s left.”
Ray is staring back at him.
“When they put me in this program, I was gonna be someone new. I was gonna change. But I just did the same old things. I was the same fuckin’ guy.” Vince pulls out his wallet. “Then, a week ago, I got this in the mail.” Hands the crinkled voter registration card back to Ray. “And I thought, what if I don’t try changing anymore? What if I just decide to be this guy? The guy on the card?”
Ray turns the card over in his hand, and then gives it back.
“What happens after you get this money, Ray? After you meet the mailman? How much money is enough? Fifty? A hundred? A million? Whatever it is, it won’t be enough. The hole gets bigger. The more you put in, the bigger it gets. Kill me. Kill the mailman. Kill everyone in this town, Ray. Take everything they own. And then what?”
Vince turns so he’s facing Ray. “They gave us freedom, Ray! Not from jail. From ourselves, who we used to be. They told us, ‘Go be someone else. Go fix that hole’…you know how rare an opportunity that is? And how hard it is? It takes more courage than anything we’ve ever done. But it’s ours if we want it, Ray. All we have to do…is get up in the morning. Go to work.” He looks over and takes Beth’s hand. “Come home at night and take care of our people.” He looks back at Ray. “All we have to do is vote.”
Ray stares off.
“You can’t go back to New York when this is done,” Vince says. “I just got back from there. I saw Johnny Boy.”
Ray’s eyes snap up to Vince’s.
“I went to see him because I thought he sent you here to kill me.” Vince shrugs. “Turns out he’d never even heard of me. Carmine. Ange. Toddo. I saw ’em all. Played cards with ’em over on Mott Street. They all wanted to hear about you. John wanted to hear about you.”
Ray’s mouth goes up in a half smile at the memory. He speaks in a whisper. “How is John? His kid—”
“Yeah. I heard. You took care of that for him, didn’t you, Ray? The guy who killed his kid. You did that. Well…John sent me back here to take care of you.”
Ray stares. “Bullshit.”
“He sent me back to kill you, Ray.”
Ray’s face is cold. “I don’t believe you.”
“You can’t go back there,” Vince says. “You can never go back. Ray Sticks is dead. Just like Marty Hagen. We died the minute they put us in the program. And we only got two choices now. We can be ghosts, running around thinking we’re still alive. Or we can be somebody else.”
Ray rubs his head.
Vince leans forward. “Let’s go to the marshals, Ray. Tell ’em Gotti knows where you are now. Tell ’em everything. Start over. See if we can’t make something with this life.”
Ray looks down at the stacks of bills on his lap.
“Ray, if you take that money…if you go see the mailman, then you’re the same stupid fuck you’ve always been. You’ll never be anything but a ghost who used to be Ray Sticks, walking around thinking you’re alive. And when everyone looks at you, all they’ll see is the hole where you used to be.”
Ray stares at him and Vince sees in his eyes a glimmer of recognition, of hope.
“Look at me,” Vince says. “I might be the least productive person in this country. I’m thirty-six years old, and other than this baking job I’ve never worked an honest day in my life. But today I voted. And my vote counted the same as everybody else’s. Now, maybe it doesn’t matter to those assholes out there, but to me…well, it’s something.”
Ray brushes his fingers across his forehead. He looks over at Beth, and then up at Vince. He looks outside, where the wind is shaking down the sidewalk trees. But when he looks back at Vince he seems unchanged. “Turn around and drive,” he says.
VINCE AND BETH hold hands in the front seat. They drive in silence down Third Avenue, the sign for Dicks Drive-in looming two blocks away. When Vince stops at a light, the wind rocks the car gently from side to side. Ray seems distracted.
“You know why I don’t believe you?” he asks. “About John?”
Vince looks up in the rearview.
“Because you didn’t do anything. If John really sent you after me, you wou
ld’ve tried something by now.”
Vince looks back at the road. “At first, when Ange asked me, I sat there thinking about how I could do it. Where I could buy a gun. Maybe I could shoot you from a distance. Hit you with a car. Try to get you in some situation where I could surprise you. I even thought about hiring somebody. But who am I gonna hire that’s better than you?”
Ray shrugs, accepts the compliment.
Vince pulls into the parking lot of Dicks Drive-in. “But the whole time I’m thinking that, I also knew I couldn’t do it. Not if I mean the things I just said. So…I told ’em that I couldn’t do it. And that’s when I decided to try talking you into giving up and going straight.”
“You told John Gotti no?” Ray laughs. “Now I know you’re lying.”
Vince puts the car in park and turns off the motor. He looks across the parking lot, to where Clay is waiting at the outdoor picnic tables.
“Look,” Ray says, “nobody talks but me. Got it?” He starts stuffing the money in his pants pockets. He bulges with hundred-dollar bills, sick with money. “You try anything, I shoot the girl and then I shoot you. Got it, chief?”
Ray and Vince climb out. They look across the parking lot. Beth slides out the driver’s-side door, the last one out of the car.
Across the lot, Clay sits alone.
“That your guy? The colored guy?”
“Yeah,” Vince says.
Beth makes expectant eye contact with Vince—as if asking what now? and Vince is glad they can’t talk so that he can’t tell her that he doesn’t really have a plan, that the speech he gave in the car was his plan.
“Lenny!” Ray shouts back into the car. “Come on.”
He doesn’t move. Ray slaps the hood. “Len. Let’s go!”
“Get Lenny,” Ray says.
Vince bends down in the car, slides across the seat, and feels the side of Lenny’s neck. His skin is cold, clammy. He can’t find a pulse. He tries Lenny’s wrist. Nothing. He looks at Lenny’s shoulder. The knife is gone. Vince climbs out.
