The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  Lydia needed only a moment to figure that out and then she told KFSM the formal announcement would be at four o’clock. To be fair to the other networks, she also called KHOG in Fayetteville and KFAA in Rogers, ABC and NBC affiliates, respectively. She was pleased that the mention of her name got her a quick connection with the station manager wherever she called, and with editors at the newspapers she called. Carleton Drew’s name couldn’t have accomplished that in Arkansas.

  She took the trouble to write out for Carleton’s benefit the “official” release she was dictating to the media:

  “Deep in the remotest Ozarks a man has decided to learn Arkansas politics by starting at the top. Vernon Ingledew, 49, owner and operator of Ingledew Ham, declared today for governor in the Democratic primary to be held in May.

  He will face eight other candidates, including former governor Jim Ray Birdwell and former congressman Bob Tunney, for the awesome right to challenge Republican Governor P.T. ‘Shoat’ Bradfield in the November election.

  Unlike the other eight candidates, Ingledew has had no experience at all in elective office. But his vision for the state of Arkansas in the 21st century, and his exceptional intelligence, have already drawn to his corner a team of seasoned political professionals, including such well-known consultants as Bolin Pharis III, a native of Harrison, on leave as vice president for public relations at a major national corporation in Cincinnati; Archie Schaffer III, on leave as Director of Media, Public and Governmental Affairs for Tyson Foods, Inc. in Springdale; and Lydia Caple III, former political reporter and columnist at the Gazette and the merged Democrat-Gazette, as well as a well-known political consultant in her own right…”

  “Are you really Lydia Caple the Third?” Carleton asked her.

  “Of course not,” Lydia said. She handed Carleton the handwritten copy of the release and told him to get busy.

  Then she put in a call, a long one, to Hank Endicott at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, the state’s largest and most influential newspaper. When the old Democrat, Hank’s paper, had merged with the Gazette, Lydia’s paper, following a typically internecine newspaper war, Hank had taken over the thrice-weekly op-ed political column that Lydia had been writing, a circumstance which could have resulted in great enmity between them had it not been for Lydia’s gracious and philosophical attitude. Hank and Lydia weren’t exactly friends. They’d never lunched together and he’d never tried to flirt with her, and sometimes his political opinions had caused Lydia to cuss him to his face, but they had remained on good speaking terms if only because she found it easy to talk to him. Now she found it easy to tell him a lot of off-the-record information about Vernon—the things that the investigative reporters would find out soon enough—in order to give Endicott the full picture with all the local color it needed.

  When she’d finished, Endicott asked, “What’s your part in all of this, Lydia?”

  “My part?” she said. “I’m working for him. The minute he made his announcement, half an hour ago here in Stay More, I became his employee.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Endicott said. “You?”

  “There are going to be a lot of things about Vernon Ingledew that you won’t believe. It’s going to be your job to make him believable to the readers of your paper.”

  “No, my job is just to say what I think about the world.”

  “The world of Vernon Ingledew is going to give you plenty to think about.”

  Bo Pharis called a strategy session that afternoon following lunch. By lunchtime the weather was warm enough that they could eat al fresco. Good George Dinsmore disappeared and returned with baskets of food: sandwich fixings, chips, condiments, beer and wine. Real Ingledew Ham was included this time. Sharon furnished a pot of baked beans she’d been cooking all morning. Diana fetched a plate of assorted homemade cookies.

  It was a grand lunch but as soon as it was over they had to get down to business. First, Bo wanted the Seven Samurai to meet without Vernon. Not that there was anything they were going to keep secret from him, but they didn’t want to be inhibited by the candidate’s presence while they bounced ideas off each other. Sharon offered them the use of the interior of the store, where they could sit around the potbellied stove and cracker barrel. Then, later in the afternoon they’d bring Vernon into the meeting in time to get him ready for his formal announcement, scheduled for four o’clock when the media would arrive.

  During the session without Vernon, while he was presumably secluding himself to work on the draft of his formal announcement, they discussed their individual responsibilities, and their ideas for making most effective use of their ingenuity and talents, but they agreed that they’d have to wait until Monday to really get started, when Bo and Arch would begin phoning and emailing old friends and Arch would use his contacts in the Democratic Party organization to get the machinery rolling.

  Young Cast Sherrill brought up the idea that the state’s colleges and universities would soon be having their spring break, and it was important that sufficient college students be “energized” before the break to start “infecting” a considerable contingent of campaign workers. Monica volunteered to accompany Cast on a tour of the campuses the following week. Bo complimented Cast on his idea and complimented Monica for helping with it, but reminded Monica that her principal responsibility was office manager of campaign headquarters, which she would be setting up in Fayetteville, a city Vernon had decided would be a more appropriate place for it than Little Rock.

  Lydia wanted to be complimented too so she brought up the idea of getting early endorsements from other prominent politicians. “Arch,” she asked, “could you get your Uncle Dale to plunk for us?” Arch said he could damn well try, but that Dale Bumpers, who had been one of the most popular governors of Arkansas in modern times during the Seventies, and who had followed that up with a distinguished career in the United States Senate, had consistently refused to endorse any candidates for the primaries, preferring to wait for the general election.

  “And I’ll talk to David Pryor,” Lydia said. Like Bumpers, Pryor was a popular former governor who had also served in the U.S. Senate before his retirement.

  “Good for you, Lydia,” Bo said. “Good for you.”

  Harry Wolfe promised to begin digging up the dirt on the eight other candidates. Bo said he was driving in to Harrison to visit his mother on Sunday, and he’d give a Harry a lift to the Harrison airport so he could fly to Little Rock, the best place for researching the opposition.

  The strategy session lasted over an hour, and then they sent Cast to find Vernon and invite him for the second or “open” part of the meeting. When Vernon arrived, Bo said to him, without beating around the bush, “Governor, do you have your speech ready?”

  “Do I have to make a speech?” Vernon asked.

  “Well, you can’t simply say, ‘Look, I’m running.’ And you ought to be ready to answer the reporters’ questions.”

  Lydia would discover, to her and their chagrin, that they needed more than a couple of hours to prep Vernon for his first public announcement and his fielding of questions. They had taken it for granted that a man with—what was that charming expression of George Dinsmore? Duende and eupatrid mien, for godsake!—would be able to compose himself in front of a microphone and say something forceful and noteworthy to convince the people of Arkansas that he was a worthy candidate for governor.

  “First,” Lydia said to him, “I think you ought to wear a jacket and tie, not just that shirt.”

  The fact that he hung his head when she spoke to him made her think that he was ashamed of his shirt, but then she realized he was known to be shy of women. “What’s wrong with this shirt?” he asked his shoes innocently, and she wondered how to tell him. The shirt wasn’t bad; it was a plaid wool in an attractive color that went well with his complexion and looked like something a business executive would wear on weekends in the country.

  Bo Pharis said, “When you came to my office that f
irst time we met, I could have mistaken you for a CEO or a US senator. Couldn’t you wear that same suit?”

  “That was Cincinnati,” Vernon pointed out. “This is Stay More. The last time I wore a necktie in Stay More was when I was ten years old and they made me attend Jelena’s wedding.”

  “Speaking of Jelena,” Carleton Drew said. “What are you going to tell the media about your…uh, living arrangements with your cousin?”

  “What are the media going to ask me?”

  “She’s going to be by your side, isn’t she?” Bo said. “How are you going to introduce her?”

  Vernon smiled. “I’m going to say, ‘This is Jelena Ingledew, who would much prefer that I stay home and make love to her instead of running for governor.’”

  “You’re not going to say that!” Bo said.

  “Then what should I say?” Vernon asked.

  The Seven Samurai looked at one another; a couple of them actually scratched their heads in thought. Timid Monica Breedlove was the first to speak up. “Couldn’t he simply say, ‘This is my better half’?”

  “Bitter half is more like it,” Vernon commented, not to Monica but to the sky. “She’s not going to be smiling, and I’m not going to force her to smile.”

  “But sir,” Cast Sherrill put in, “how’s that gonna look? She’s so much older anyhow, she’ll really look like a senior citizen if you can’t get her to smile!”

  “Mr. Sherrill,” Vernon said. That’s all he said, but his tone was such that Cast knew he’d be unemployed shortly if he didn’t watch his tongue.

  “Jelena is a beautiful lady, smiling or not,” Bo commented. “Let’s not concern ourselves with her appearance.”

  Carleton Drew said, “Personally I’m for full disclosure from the beginning. Since they’re going to find out everything about Vernon before the first vote is cast, we might as well put all our cards on the table from the git-go.”

  Arch said, “That’s an admirable policy, but I think we’d better lay the cards down one at a time, in order to give people a chance to absorb them.”

  When Jelena returned eventually in her Isuzu 4-by-4, Lydia was troubled to see that she was still wearing the same blue jeans and sweater she’d had on that morning. While Lydia was envious because she herself couldn’t fit as neatly into blue jeans, or couldn’t look as presentable in them, she didn’t think Jelena looked like a governor’s wife. Of course, she reminded herself, she isn’t his wife.

  They had to decide upon a place to serve as the setting for the announcement. Vernon wanted to use the porch of Latha’s store, now Sharon’s house, the same place where he’d declared his intentions earlier that day, but the Samurai were pretty much in agreement that it wasn’t very photogenic: it just looked like some old country store…or an old country store converted into a house. Vernon’s second choice was the porch of the Governor Ingledew house, but he was reluctant to assemble a crowd there because it might disturb Whom We Cannot Name II. Lydia and the other Samurai much preferred that edifice, however, so Vernon offered to go talk to the Woman about it.

  Other things continued to go wrong on this most momentous of days. The announcement was scheduled for four o’clock, and therefore the television crews ought to have arrived and been set up by three-thirty at the latest, but four o’clock itself came and there was nobody there except the Samurai and the local people, including all of the employees of Ingledew Ham, who had been given the afternoon off. Others of the few citizens of Stay More also showed up, including Vernon’s grandmother, the regal dowager Latha Bourne Dill, who didn’t look, as Lydia had been told, a full century old. Lydia couldn’t take her eyes off the woman, but soon she had to return her eyes to the road and wonder what the hell was keeping those media people.

  Her cell phone rang. It was one of the television people, calling from somewhere in the vicinity south of Parthenon, where all of the television vans and the reporters’ cars had apparently taken a sequence of wrong turns and become hopelessly lost.

  Lydia reported this to Bo Pharis, and he suggested that Cast take George in the Nissan Patrol and go out searching for the media crews and bring them in.

  It was almost five o’clock before Cast and George returned, leading a convoy of cars, vans, and trucks. And then Lydia’s attention became focused, intensely and fearfully, upon what was to become the disaster of Vernon Ingledew’s formal announcement for governor.

  When the microphones were in place at the top of the steps leading up to the porch of the Governor Ingledew house, Vernon just sort of ambled up to them. He didn’t walk with a brisk confident stride like all seasoned politicians. He ambled. And he just stood there with his hands in his pockets and a blank look on his face before realizing he’d forgotten Jelena, so he had to amble back down the steps and find her in the crowd and take her by the hand and pull her back up onto the porch as if he were a mother trying to get the scared kid to go to the first day of school.

  Bolin Pharis, his campaign manager, introduced him. “People of Stay More, people of Arkansas,” Bo said, “it is my great privilege to present to you a man some of you already know and all of you will come to know as well as you know yourselves!” He paused and draped one of his muscular arms across Vernon’s shoulders. Lydia noticed that Vernon was several inches taller than Bo, but he wasn’t standing up straight to his full height. He had a kind of slouch, for godsakes.

  Bo went on, “We’re standing here in front of the charming old house that Jacob Ingledew built for himself and his family after he left the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock in 1868. Just why we’re standing here I’m going to leave to Vernon Ingledew to tell you. He is a direct descendant of that brave, wise, courageous governor who dared to stand on the floor of the Old State House in 1863 and vote ‘No!’ against the motion to secede Arkansas from the Union, and who fought valiantly to keep the Union together during the Civil War, and who served as an able and foresightful governor to steer the state of Arkansas through the perilous years of Reconstruction after the war!”

  Lydia admired the way Bo Pharis could say these words as if he were describing Vernon rather than Jacob.

  “Look around, friends, at these lovely Arkansas mountains.” Here Bo paused long enough to let the television cameras pan the surrounding landscape. “Vernon Ingledew was born here, raised here, and learned how to make a scrumptious ham that has watered the mouths of every one of you! And now his beloved hills are going to let him go. But I’ll let him tell you why. Ladies and gentlemen, the most remarkable citizen of the state of Arkansas, our next governor, Vernon Ingledew!”

  Lydia would have liked it if Vernon had said something folksy like “Howdy, I sure am proud to be here,” but he just stood there for a too-long moment, staring into the cameras, his hands still stuck in his pockets, and then he turned his head and stared at the house behind him, as if he were seeing it for the first time. Lydia detected, behind one of the curtained windows, the vague but striking face of Whom We Cannot Name II. Lydia hoped that none of the cameramen were zooming in, trying to pick out the figure behind the curtain.

  Vernon faced the crowd again and tried to speak. “G-g-good evening,” he stammered. Although it was getting dark pretty fast, it wasn’t evening yet, but Lydia remembered that in the Ozarks “evening” means all the rest of the day following noon. Vernon gulped and faltered onward. “J-J-Jacob Ingledew wasn’t a great governor, and I’m sure he would much rather have—”

  Vernon seemed suddenly to realize that what he was saying was being heard not just by this small gathering but by thousands of people all over the state, and for a moment he appeared on the verge of panic. Lydia’s heart quit beating.

  “—much rather have, have, have stayed right here in Stay More instead of going to Little Rock. He had no use for Little Rock. Neither have I.” Vernon appeared to be getting in control of himself, but at the cost of beginning to make outrageous statements. He’d already lost the big Little Rock vote. Vernon wasn’t letting his eyes roam from face
to face the way a good speaker should, but just staring straight ahead at an imaginary person, and Lydia realized she had better become that person herself real fast so she tried to position herself in Vernon’s line of sight and tried to convey instructions by sign language, to get him to stand up straight, to get him to take his hands out of his pockets, to get him to move his eyes from face to face, until she realized that Vernon wasn’t looking at her, because she was a woman. Her gesticulations failed to escape the notice of several media people, who snickered or laughed, and Vernon just stopped speaking, thinking he was being laughed at. He waited until it was completely silent, and then, as if Lydia’s sign language had gotten through to him, he took his hands out of his pockets, straightened his backbone, and began to look intently at each person…at least each male person.

  “I am a reluctant candidate for governor,” he went on. “Jacob Ingledew was reluctant, but he accepted the job because this state was in a mess and only he with his eccentric ideas could straighten things out after the war. You know the state was bankrupt when he took over, and when he left office it had a surplus. He had to put a tax on everything—I think it’s only a myth that he put a tax on breathing.” Vernon grinned and waited to see if anybody laughed. George Dinsmore could be heard chuckling, and there was a smattering of laughter from a few others. “But he managed to hold the state together. I’m not going to ask you to vote for me because I’m Jacob Ingledew’s great-great-great grandson.” At first Lydia thought he was stuttering again, but she realized he was tracing his descent to his ancestor. “But I’m going to tell you that my ideas may be just as eccentric as his, and they’re going to save this state!” Vernon swept his arm, and permitted his voice to rise slightly toward the end of this sentence but otherwise his delivery was mild, without inflection, without any semblance of oratory. Lydia, using a sign language resembling the motions of an orchestra conductor trying to get a full crescendo, attempted to get Vernon to impart more eloquence to his speech, but without much luck. He still could not look at her.