Dark Horse

by Doug Richardson

  “Let’s not start with Gina. I thought we could eat. Maybe play Scrabble.” She bit into a cracker and passed the rest to Mitch, stepping into his arms to let him take hold of her. He proved up to the task, carrying on the embrace until all thoughts of the day dissolved into the sweet sweat of her skin. He brought his lips to hers and kissed her.

  “You’re taking advantage of me cuz I’m stoned,” she giggled.

  It’d been weeks since they’d made love. Not their longest stretch, by any means. But long enough so interest was higher than normal, as was the politics of intercourse. It had begun some three years back when Connie had decided the household needed a baby. They needed a baby. Age was creeping up on her, as were fears of infertility. She’d never used birth control with Mitch and had never been pregnant since that one time in college.

  He was fine with the prospect and game to try. But trying was one thing. Performing was something else. After two difficult years, lovemaking was no longer spontaneous. Rapture and romance were reduced to timetables set by Connie’s schizophrenic ovulations. Medical science was in charge of each and every sexual sojourn. But Mother Nature came up a winner every time. It left her crying each month when her cycle returned. And Mitch cold. So they swept their failure under the bed and stopped talking about the subject altogether. All that was left were moments.

  She switched off the lights, stripped naked, and settled next to Mitch, barely making a dent in the bed. She was small, fit, barely a hundred pounds. Green eyes. And ears that never quite grew into her face. The short haircut was brave. He gave her that.

  Her skin glowed milky white in the mixture of moonlight and ambient light from the streetlamps well below the windows. So pale and tracked with fine blue veins was she that she’d long feared it was unattractive to Mitch. Hardly the bronze of a South Coast beach babe. So daylight was damned in favor of a darkened bedroom. It turned everything monochrome and romantic.

  But to Mitch, her skin was perfect and somehow untouchable. Porcelain, easily bruised. After the sex, he silently retired to the shower to wash the sweat off. By the time he’d returned and toweled dry, she’d switched the TV back on. They watched the finish of a prime-time news show placidly and without any conversation until he’d fallen asleep by eleven.

  At 12:22 A.M. the telephone rang. Mitch woke with his heart pounding, then checked the clock and cursed. Then again, he could simply reach over and turn off the ringer and let the machine pick up the call, but his curiosity would get the better of him and he’d have to check, trekking all the way downstairs to retrieve the message. It could be Fitz. Or worse, something about his father. He let the phone ring twice again before answering, barely croaking out, “Hello?”

  “Mitch Dutton?” asked the voice.

  “Speaking,” he answered by rote.

  “Candidate Mitch Dutton?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s George Hammond.”

  “Who?” He thought he’d heard wrong.

  “George Alexander Hammond. But you can call me Hurricane.”

  Mitch had heard Hammond speak about a zillion times. It wasn’t him, even if he were alive. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “I don’t hear you laughing.”

  “Listen, pal. I don’t know how you got my number—”

  “Not yet, I don’t.”

  He heard the click-clack of a hang-up. Just before which there was some kind of external cue. A background sound of a truck rushing past. A phone booth, he decided. Some drunken prankster with Mitch Dutton’s home phone number and a quarter left over from his nightly bender.

  “Who was that?” Connie called out from the bathroom.

  “Hang-up,” he groaned. He placed the phone back into the cradle, then reached over to pop open the window. A breeze drew into the room and billowed the curtains.

  A truck roaring past a telephone booth.

  Connie returned to bed, pushing the covers aside and snuggling close to Mitch, her arms wrapped about his waist. This was her favorite time. Late night. When they were both awake and he was hers alone. They would lie nose to nose and talk. She could feel his breath with every word he spoke. She would keep him awake for as long as she could, knowing that once he fell asleep she would lie awake and feel so darn lonely.

  “So you’re going to be a congressman after all,” she said, trying her best to sound proud.

  “Nothing’s certain,” he cautioned.

  “But on the news—”

  “The news means nothing. I’ve got a new challenger. Who knows? He could be good.”

  “They said his name. What was it?”

  “Shakespeare McCann, I believe.”

  “That’s not a name. That’s a used-car salesman,” she joked.

  He laughed.

  Then she got serious. “You weren’t supposed to win.”

  “Nobody runs to lose, Connie.”

  “Hammond was unbeatable.”

  “What can I say? The rules change. People die. Hell, forty-year-old men get heart attacks. I could die tomorrow.”

  She put her finger to his lips. “Don’t say it. Please don’t.”

  “How about we just go to sleep.” He rolled to his side and she spooned him, curving her body to fit into his. Her hand tracing the lines of his chest to his belly button, then slipping inside his shorts.

  “Wanna try again?”

  He knew what she meant. She was still high. They’d smoked plenty of grass in years past. It was her call to his wild, when sharing a single joint they’d get high and screw for hours. Always in the dark. So he let her fondle him until he could no longer lie still, whereupon he rolled back to face her before crawling between her legs. She guided him in, leaving his hands free to cup her face and bring his mouth to her ear, whispering, “I love you, Connie.”

  The words she so desperately needed to hear.

  All in all, though, it soon turned into the same old mechanical act. Robotic and passionless, filled with too many insipid memories of fruitless copulations followed by dreams of unborn babies.

  Just to keep the soured act going, Mitch closed his eyes and thought about Rene Craven.

  FIVE

  IN THE week following George Hammond’s death, the Dutton campaign office was flooded with calls curious about Cathedral’s new front-runner. Fitz, hooked up to a telephone headset like an air traffic controller, stood at room center and passed need-to-know information off to various volunteers. Line one: Dallas Evening Report wanting a candidate’s statement and a picture. Line two: The League of Women Voters, wondering if, instead of a debate, there could be a series of lectures by the candidate. Line three: a local printer wanting payment on that extra run of bumper stickers. “We’re good for it,” Fitz told him, “but then again, you could call it a campaign contribution to your next congressman. You didn’t know? Dutton’s a shoo-in. He’s also probusiness.”

  A whorehouse aeons earlier, the campaign’s building had withstood a century or so of hurricanes and ocean salt. In 1983 Hurricane Alicia had blown the roof clean off. The exterior was chewed down to a patchy gray veneer. Fitz had made a deal with the owner to paint the building if Mitch won the election.

  Inside wasn’t much more attractive. Plaster walls had been replaced by drywall blistered from the leaky roof. Still, who could tell with the amount of snipe material that layered all vertical surfaces? Volunteers, mostly young women, were scattered about at gunmetal office-surplus desks, and the telephone lines were a massive tangle atop carpet held together with silver duct tape. Fitz had come to call it home. Ground zero. Dutton Central. Every couple of hours he would wander down to rub elbows, give pep talks, and schmooze, schmooze, schmooze. After all, most of these people were working for free.

  When Mitch showed up, he would usually enter from the rear. There was a space next to the double Dumpster where he’d park his Volvo. His only office key would fit the back door and he’d slip in undetected, making his way up the stairs to what he called the inner sanctu
m: a suite of five offices where the real work was done.

  On that particular spring Saturday, he had borrowed Connie’s Mustang. A breeze had kicked up off the Gulf and he wanted to drive with the top down. So he drove the long way, dropping off the west side of the island down to the Gulf side where he picked up Beach Road, a two-lane highway that etched along the perimeter of the island. As expected, the wind had started up early and left the waterfront air sweet with a salty brine that instantly shot him back to his boyhood, a memory chock-full of shrimp boats and his Uncle J carping at him about wind shifts, weather, the Baptist church, and the evils of redheaded women.

  Before he got two steps through the back door, he could smell Rene’s perfume. She was coming out of the copy room with an armload of the daily press releases. “Ever hear of using the front door?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” said Mitch as he eased past her and into the stairwell. “Shake a few hands, answer a couple of phones.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. The volunteers work hard. Might show ‘em you’re part of your own team.” Gentle nudges, but nudges all the same.

  “How’s about this? For lunch I’ll buy them all pizza. We can picnic on the roof.”

  She followed him up the stairs. “It’s Saturday. That means some twenty-five volunteers.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “You didn’t think you were that popular?”

  “News to me,” he said, sounding innocent enough, before making the hard right into his office and wondering just how long it would take Fitz to appear. Within a minute, he figured. He could set his watch by it.

  Once settled behind his desk, he was surprised to find a pink message slip placed front and center. His first inclination was that it was a message from Connie. Or another from his father. He hadn’t called him back. Personal messages always came straight to him. The rest, well, they’d begin downstairs where some volunteer—any volunteer—would answer the phone, take down the message, and send it up to Murray, who would filter them to Fitz.

  But the message wasn’t from Connie. Written in the neatest of handwriting was the name Shakespeare McCann.

  He picked up the slip and was about to ask Rene about it when Fitz appeared in the doorway with a handful of his own pink paper. Murray was with him. “Glad you’re here. Got plenty more where that came from, every last one stacked in order of importance. One call was from Marshall Lambeer from the Hammond Reelection Office. The family has invited you to walk in Saturday’s processional down the Strand.”

  “Of course. It’ll be my honor.”

  “That’s good. Rene?” Fitz turned to her and paused. Was it him or were her skirts actually getting shorter? “Let’s write up a little release. Let everybody know the candidate’s going to walk—”

  “I don’t wanna make this a campaign march. For Christ’s sake, it’s a funeral,” groused Mitch. “I’ll do it out of respect and duty.”

  “There you go again, sounding like you’re in the damn service,” said Fitz. “You can walk for yourself, or duty, or for God and fuckin’ country. I don’t care. Just don’t forget the way it sizes up in the eyes of the media. If they’re gonna make the most of it, then so should we.”

  “Fine,” he relented. It was too early and he’d started the day too happy. Ten minutes ago he’d had the top down, the wind in his hair, and some damn fine memories. He wasn’t about to spoil it by debating over bullshit, considering that Fitz knew what the hell he was doing, and arguing over small matters usually proved pointless.

  “Who took this call?” Mitch held up that first pink slip in his hand, turning the neat handwriting around for all to see.

  “Shakespeare McCann?” read Murray.

  “How’d that slip by?” asked Fitz, reaching for the note. “Damn volunteers. I’m supposed to get those messages. I’ll give the fellah a call.”

  “He called me,” objected Mitch. “He deserves a call back.”

  “There are channels,” said Fitz.

  “Sure there are. So this one slipped by you. The least I can do is call him back.”

  “Candidates don’t usually hook up like this. Let’s talk about this first,” warned Fitz. “Let the managers set some ground rules.”

  Mitch dialed anyway, smiling all the way. Five times the telephone rang before a male voice answered with a folksy hello. Mitch spoke politely. “Shakespeare McCann, please. This is Mitch Dutton returning his call.”

  The tip of the week for Hollice Waters came through the Cathedral Daily Mirror switchboard, transferred twice before ringing Hollice’s house. It was Saturday and he didn’t like to step foot in the office unless he was on the clock.

  “Heard somethin’,” offered the tipster, a woman.

  Obviously, you moron. Or you wouldn’t have called me, he thought. Instead, he was polite. He wanted the juice. “I’m all ears.”

  “A meeting. Between Mitch Dutton and that new guy. What’s his name. The Republican.”

  “Shakespeare McCann?” Hollice remembered, the no-name nominee who hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of, at this late date, building any kind of campaign, let alone toppling Dutton in a head-on race. Thanks to an antiquated Texas law, Mitch was about to get a free ride to the House. It bugged the shit out of Hollice.

  “That’s him. McCann,” said the woman. “They’re gonna have themselves a little chitchat at a coffee shop out in Benton. You think it’s something?”

  Something. Maybe.

  Writing a cross between gossip column and racing form, Hollice owed most of his political coverage to free tips from the anonymous and not-so-anonymous. Friends and foes, it didn’t matter. Information flowed. And should new legislation pass that might affect a minority or disaffected group, he was a convenient champion. Racist, racebaiter, muckraker, and political pendragon with a poison pen. He was all of the above and unashamed, just as long as the good folks of Cathedral and thereabouts kept on reading under his byline.

  “Interesting,” he told the woman on the phone. “You know around when?”

  “High noon,” she said, a little too dramatically.

  “Thanks,” was his only concession. And that was the end of the call.

  Twelve noon. And all the way out in Benton. What was it? A deal in the works? The tip sounded unusual enough. But newsworthy? A trip that far off the island would mean he was going to miss the Houston Open on ESPN. Oh well. Information didn’t know workdays from weekends.

  Dutton vs…McCann.

  Hollice didn’t believe in miracles, but he did believe in the power of print. A little ambush action might spark something. He grabbed his camera bag and hit the door. If it turned out to be a dry well, he might make it back for the last couple holes of golf coverage.

  Mitch knew Benton as a small, poor town that straddled the interstate. Little more than a truck stop, it was about a forty-minute drive from the campaign office. He used the time on the cell phone, finally braving a return call to his old man. The candidate was relieved to get the machine. “Q. Dutton here. This is my machine, so don’t waste my time. Leave a brief message.”

  Instantly Mitch regretted sending his father the answering machine for Christmas. The gift was so eighties. And now he was antagonizing people without even being present. “Hey, Pop. It’s your only son. Sorry to take so long calling you back. It’s been crazy here,” was just about all Mitch could think to say. “Best way to get me is at home or on weekends,” Mitch fibbed.

  After the call, Mitch wondered what his father was up to at that very moment. Had he taken the pleasure boat down to Mexico for some albacore fishing? Or was he hustling a tennis game on one of San Diego County’s million or so hard courts? More likely he was shacked up with some surgically enhanced, post menopausal bleached blonde who was suffering her first “Ohmigod, I’m a grandmother!” depression. Q. Dutton, Mitch thought. Granny’s answer to Prozac.

  As for the telephone conversation with Shakespeare, it had been short and gracious. The folksy voice a
t the other end of the line had invited Mitch out for a cup of coffee. So polite was Shakespeare that he even offered a small café in out-of-the-way Benton, where, for Mitchell’s sake, there would be no media about to tarnish the scenery. Shakespeare had practically conceded defeat in the upcoming general election, referring to himself as a lazy lapdog who’d entered the race against the practiced greyhound and simply gotten lucky.

  How could Mitch refuse him?

  Fitz had other ideas. The meeting was against his better judgment. “What scares me is the unknown,” he admitted. “If we knew something. Anything.”

  “It’s just a hi, hello, and a handshake. I’m certain,” said Mitch. “So stop worrying.”

  The fact was that Mitch wanted this ceremonial handshake, something he knew he’d never get from an old political attack dog like Hurricane. Like most American boys born of the fifties, he’d been taught to play fair, an idea seemingly lost on the majority of adults he’d known. Maybe an example could be set. With the little town of Benton the high ground.

  So at roughly 11:45 that Saturday morning, fifteen minutes early, Mitch wheeled Connie’s Mustang off the interstate and found a place to park at the side of the Mairzy Doats Café. He left his coat in the car, thought twice about it, then finally decided to lose the necktie. No sooner had he stepped from the car when a semi roared past, blowing a load of dust into his face. He winced and brought his hands up to his face a split second too late. Pain scratched at his eyeball as a speck of dust found its way under one of his contact lenses. In a flash he pulled the soft contact out of his eye and stuck it in his mouth to give it a rudimentary cleansing. Instead, it came back ripped and useless.

  “Aw, fuck!” he blurted as he piled back into the Mustang with one eye shut. He fished through his glove box for his contact lens case and spare pair of glasses before realizing that he’d driven Connie’s car instead of his own. “No.”

  With his one good eye, he was about to get out of the car, but found a stranger standing in his way. He appeared as a blur in the midday sun. Mitch squeezed his bad eye shut and focused on the smaller man but didn’t yet recognize him.