The Run

by Stuart Woods

  The whistle blew, and, a moment later, men and women began streaming out of the plywood plant, gathering their winter clothes about them. Will saw they were all wearing snow boots. Why hadn’t somebody thought of that? “Hi,” he said, taking off a thin glove and thrusting a bare hand at an approaching man. “I’m Will Lee, and I’m running for president.”

  The man stopped but didn’t take the offered hand. “You a Republican or a Democrat?”

  “I’m a Democrat,” Will replied, smiling.

  “Then go fuck yourself,” the man said, and continued on his way.

  Will’s instinct was to aim a kick at the man’s ass, but a woman was standing in front of him, shaking his hand. “Hey,” she said. “I heard you say something at the football game last night. I liked it, and I might vote for you.”

  “I really appreciate that,” Will said, wiping his nose with a sodden handkerchief. He was probably going to give half the town his cold.

  “I like that stuff about the middle,” she said.

  “The New Center,” Will corrected. He was anxious to stop some of the other people who were moving past him. “Good luck to you.”

  “And to you,” she said, then went on her way.

  Will got a couple of dozen people to acknowledge his presence before the crowd was gone, and he was left standing in the snow. A campaign volunteer, a college student from south Georgia, handed out the last of her leaflets and came over to him. “Senator, you look awful,” she said.

  “I feel awful,” he replied. “I hope the van is running; I’m freezing, too.”

  “I’ll get it started,” she said cheerfully, and ran ahead.

  Will trudged through the wet snow, feeling like a character out of Dr. Zhivago. An agent opened the door for him, then got into the backseat. The van was cold soaked, and the girl was having trouble getting it started. Finally, it came to life, and a rush of icy air came out of the vents. “Don’t switch this thing off again, until we return it to the rental company,” Will said.

  The girl, whose name he could not remember, ran her gloved hand over the icy inside of the windshield, where their breath had frozen, and cleared a tiny portion of the glass. She drove, seeing nothing that could not be seen through the six-by-six-inch spot.

  “We’re going to end up in a snowdrift, and they won’t find us until spring,” Will said. “How do people live in weather like this?”

  “It ain’t Georgia, is it?” the girl said. “Freeze your buns off.” As she turned a corner, the van began to move sideways. “Oh, shit,” she said under her breath as she spun the wheel into the skid. She was too late; the van slid, broadside, into a large SUV idling at the curb.

  “I’ll take care of this,” the agent said, opening the rear door.

  “No, I’ll do it,” Will said. “You stay out of it.” He waited while the girl inched the van forward so that he could get the door open. Thank God there was no TV crew, he thought.

  A large man was climbing out of the vehicle, while a woman waited in the front seat.

  “It was our fault entirely,” Will said, preempting the man’s coming outburst. “My driver has never driven in snow before, and I want to make this right. What do you think the damage is?”

  The man stopped in his tracks and turned to look at his damaged car. “I reckon a good fifteen hundred bucks,” he said.

  Will dug a checkbook and a pen out of his pocket. “Let’s make it two thousand; bodywork is expensive these days.”

  “Fifteen hundred will do it,” the man said wearily. “Make it out to Harry Hoskins.”

  Will wrote the check and handed it to the man. “I’m really very sorry,” he said. “I know what an inconvenience this is going to be for you, and I wish there were something more I could do.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m Will Lee, and I’m running for president. I hope this won’t cost me your vote.”

  The man laughed. “Senator, you’re the fifth candidate I’ve met today; there’s two in the supermarket over there. Good luck to you.” He got into his car and drove away.

  Will climbed back into the van, which was now a few degrees warmer than the outside air. “Let’s go.”

  The girl was practically in tears. “I’m so sorry, Senator; I don’t know what happened.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mary Ann,” he said, suddenly remembering her name. “Make a note to rent cars with snow tires from now on.”

  “Yessir,” she said.

  Will sighed and fell fast asleep.

  He was jolted awake as the van struck the curb.

  “We’re here,” Mary Ann said. “It’s the Kiwanis Club meeting, in the basement of the town hall, right there.” She pointed. “I’ll leave the engine running.”

  Will struggled out of the van. There was a man waiting at the front door of the hall to take him inside. Will peeled off his light topcoat and stamped the snow off his feet, leaving a puddle behind him. He was shown to the head table, shaking hands all the way, and a bowl of hot soup was put in front of him. He got that down gratefully, then started on the fried chicken, which wasn’t bad. By the time he was ready to speak he was warm, if damp, and very sleepy. His missed his first cue, then hopped up and went to the microphone. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  A man stood up and tapped the microphone, which was on.

  Will tried again, and this time he managed a squeaking noise. He had no voice whatever. He grabbed a notebook from his pocket, scribbled something on it, and handed it to the man at his left. The man read it, stood up, and leaned into the microphone.

  “It says, ‘My name is Will Lee, and I’m running for president, and I’ve just lost my voice.’” The crowd roared with laughter.

  As Will was making his way out of the hall, mutely shaking hands, he found his way blocked by a large man.

  “What size shoe do you wear?” the man asked.

  Puzzled, Will tried to speak, then got out his pad and wrote down 10D.

  The man looked at the pad, nodded, and stepped away. Will was back in the van before he realized that the man who wanted to know his shoe size was the same man whose car his van had struck earlier.

  It was after ten o’clock before Will got back to the depressing motel the campaign had booked him into. Kitty Conroy was waiting for him. “How’d it go?” she asked.

  Will tried to speak and couldn’t.

  “Oh, my God!” Kitty said, helping him off with his coat. “You’ve got laryngitis?”

  Will nodded wearily and headed for the bed.

  Kitty stopped him. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “Not in those clothes.” She began stripping them off him, aided by Mary Ann. The Secret Service agent stood by the door, watching morosely.

  “We’ll get you home first thing tomorrow,” Kitty said. “You’re no good to yourself, if you can’t talk.”

  Will shook his head. “Not yet,” he mouthed.

  “All right, we’ll see if you can talk tomorrow, then we’ll decide. There’s only one more day to go, anyway.”

  The door to the room opened, and another Secret Service agent walked in, carrying a large parcel. “This was just delivered,” he said. “I’ve already checked it out.”

  Puzzled, Will opened the box and found a thick winter parka with a fur collar, a pair of snow boots, and a hunter’s woolen cap with earflaps. There was a note in an envelope, and Will opened it. The letterhead said, “Harry’s Menswear.”

  “Dear Senator Lee,” it read. “We don’t like to have our candidates die on us in New Hampshire, so please accept the enclosed with my compliments. You’ll not only live, but you’ll fit right in.”

  It was signed “Harry Hoskins, the fellow whose car you bumped into earlier this evening.”

  Will fell into bed, already asleep. The next morning, still unable to speak, he wore his new winter clothes to the airport.

  23

  The anchorman gazed into the camera, rustled the useless papers in his hand, and read from the TelePrompTer to the nation
al television audience of the primary-night special.

  “The polls will be closing shortly in New Hampshire, and when they do, we’ll tell you what our exit polls are showing. The weather was unexpectedly good today, and the turnout has been heavy. While there are half a dozen names on the ballot, three are expected to take the lion’s share of the vote. Senate Minority Leader George Kiel is expected to win outright, with something more than fifty percent of the vote. Then Senator Mark Haynes, the firebrand liberal from Nebraska, and Senator Will Lee, the moderate from Georgia, appear to be running about neck and neck for second place and are expected to take in the region of eighteen percent each. That could change in Senator Haynes’s favor, because Senator Lee had to fly back to Washington with a galloping case of the flu four days ago, so he couldn’t be around for the home stretch. Let’s go to Lisa Helford in Manchester for an update.”

  A young woman in fashionable ski clothes appeared on screen. “Thanks, Bob,” she said. Immediately the screen was filled with shots of people lining up at the polls, and she continued, voice-over. “The unexpectedly heavy turnout was certainly due to the blue skies and warmer temperatures in New Hampshire, after weeks of weather that would be considered really filthy by anyone not from New Hampshire. The candidates braved it as best they could, and one, Senator Will Lee of Georgia, fell by the wayside, done in by the New Hampshire winter. An amateur cameraman caught him at a Kiwanis Club meeting five days ago, at the moment when his health failed him.” The shaky screen and tinny sound of a home video camera showed Will approaching the dais, trying to speak, then scribbling something on a notepad. When the club’s president read what Will had written, the room erupted in laughter.

  “We caught a glimpse of Senator Lee at the local airport the following morning as he beat his retreat, and he seemed a lot better prepared for the weather, after a sympathetic Kiwanian who owns a men’s store got him kitted out.” An image of Will in his brand-new winter clothes filled the screen as he trudged across a snowy ramp to his airplane, turned and waved, only his eyes visible between his parka’s fur collar and his cap, the earflaps of which were tied under his chin.

  When the camera returned to the reporter, she was laughing. “That’s it from New Hampshire, Bob,” she said. “Back to you.”

  Bob Blakely, the anchorman, was laughing, too, when he came back on. “Thanks, Lisa. Now let’s go to our commentator, Bill Varner, who has been talking to New Hampshire voters for days. Bill, was that the height of fashion in New Hampshire last week?”

  The camera panned to a desk where Varner sat. “Bob, that’s the way you have to look up there if you want to survive the primary. Actually, Will Lee’s early departure from campaigning may have hurt him badly. His campaign tried to make up for it by buying extra television time, but the pros I’ve talked to said it wasn’t enough, that New Hampshire folks are used to seeing their candidates up close, and that television just doesn’t do it. Also, everybody in the state saw that television report from the Kiwanis Club meeting and had a good laugh about it, and folks up here tend to look askance at candidates who can’t get through a few weeks of winter without folding. What I’m predicting now is that Will Lee is going to lose at least five or six points out of this, and most of those votes are going to go to George Kiel, who will fatten his majority in the state. This could actually have the effect of derailing the Lee campaign, since the New Hampshire primary has been, for so long, a harbinger of things to come at the convention later in the year. So, if Mark Haynes does a little better than expected, we might very well see Will Lee withdrawing from the race—after he gets his voice back.”

  The camera went back to the anchorman. “If that happens, Bill, what’s the overall effect on the race going to be?”

  “Well, Bob, unless some dark horse appears from nowhere and turns Democratic voters on, George Kiel is going to be the out-and-out front-runner for the nomination. Kiel is a more conservative Democrat than Will Lee, though hardly a right-winger, and Hayes is so liberal that nobody gives him much of a chance for the nomination. The most he could hope for is a shot at vice president when he gets to the convention.”

  “So you think Will Lee could really be out?”

  “Could happen, Bob, and it would be a pity, because I think a lot of Democrats around the country would find him an attractive candidate when they get to know him. He has an excellent reputation in the Senate, among both Democrats and Republicans. He’s often compared to both Sam Nunn and Ted Kennedy, which is unusual. He’s compared to Nunn because of his deep knowledge of defense issues, though he’s much more skeptical of Pentagon requests than Nunn was, and he’s compared to Kennedy, not for his politics, but for his hard legislative work and outstanding staff.”

  “What about his wife’s job at the CIA?” the anchorman asked.

  “I haven’t heard anybody but Republicans complain about that. Katharine Rule Lee is a career CIA officer, and she’s risen to a high level, being in charge of all the Agency’s Intelligence analysts. She was something of a heroine a dozen years ago, when she was instrumental in the arrest of Ed Rawls, who is said to be the most damaging mole in the history of the Agency, except perhaps for Aldrich Ames. She’s a very bright lady, by all accounts, but she intends to hold on to her Agency job come hell or high water, and she’s not going to be seen on the campaign trail, except at the Democratic convention.”

  “Bob, on the off chance that Will Lee should be elected, is there some sort of inherent conflict in having a president whose wife is in an important CIA job?”

  “I expect the Republicans would say so, Bob, but nothing like this has ever happened before. No first lady has ever been a government employee, either before or after an election.”

  “Would Will Lee be likely to consider appointing his wife as Director of Central Intelligence, if he were elected?”

  “I don’t think so, although Kate Lee is said to be an eventual contender for that job, should some future president appoint a career CIA officer instead of an outsider.”

  “Well, it’s all very interesting, Bill, and the polls are closing in New Hampshire in just a minute, so after the break, we’ll come back with our exit polling and see if Will Lee is going to be able to manage to stay in this race.”

  The cameras went to commercial.

  Will, Kate, and a dozen of Will’s staff sat around a large-screen television set at campaign headquarters. Will could talk again, now, though he had been advised not to, unless absolutely necessary.

  “This doesn’t look good,” Tim Coleman said. “We sure could have used those four days.”

  Will nodded.

  “I wish we had some poll results of our own,” Tim said.

  “We’re about to get some,” Will whispered.

  Bob Blakely came back on camera, sitting at a V-shaped desk with three other people, among them Bill Varner. “Our director is telling us that we’re going to have these exit-poll results flashed on our big screen behind us, and none of us has seen them yet, so this will be hot off the wire.” He turned toward the screen behind him. “Here they come. Bill, you want to take us through this?”

  “Sure, Bob, I…” Varner stopped talking. “Wait a minute, here, are you guys in the control booth running a game on us?” He pressed a finger to his earpiece. “This is really what’s come in?” He listened again. “All right, here we go. Now, remember, these numbers are from exit polls, and we won’t have the real numbers until midnight, but what we’ve got here is a major near upset. Our exit polls are showing Senator George Kiel not with more than fifty percent of the vote, as predicted, but with only forty-one percent. Next—and this is stunning, I don’t know what happened—is Senator Will Lee of Georgia with thirty-six percent, and after him, Senator Mark Haynes with only eight percent of the vote.”

  “You think there might be something wrong with our exit polling, Bill?” the anchorman asked.

  Varner had his finger to his earpiece again. “I’m hearing from New Hampshire that our people a
re standing behind these numbers, that they’re real.”

  “And what is this going to mean, Bill?”

  “It means that Will Lee is solidly in this race—he’s still behind, but if these numbers hold, then something has happened in New Hampshire that we never expected. If he can bring in numbers like this while in bed with the flu for the last four days of the campaign, then he may really have something going for him.”

  Back at campaign headquarters, Will was being hugged by Kate and pummeled on the back by Tim Coleman and Kitty Conroy.

  “Let’s wait for the real results,” he managed to whisper.

  24

  It was midnight, and ninety-eight percent of the ballots in New Hampshire had been counted, confirming the network’s exit polls. Bob Blakely and Bill Varner still sat at their desk.

  “Bill,” Blakely said, “this has certainly been a big night for Will Lee. To what do you attribute this big surprise?”

  “Bob, we’ve put together some footage taken earlier today, when the polls were still open, and we asked people who voted for Lee why they did. Let’s listen.”

  A woman carrying a small child appeared on camera. “I met him a couple of times early in the campaign,” she said, “and I just liked him. And when I saw that thing from the Kiwanis Club, I just laughed until I cried. I really felt for him.”

  An elderly man came on camera. “I heard that his car ran into another fellow’s car right before that Kiwanis meeting, and Mr. Lee wrote him a check on the spot. That impressed me.”

  A young woman’s face appeared. “Well, he’s charming, isn’t he? He gives an honest answer to a question, and he looks you in the eye. He doesn’t talk like a politician, even when he can’t talk.”