The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  But from the moment poor Lydia had disappeared, Monica felt she was losing her authority, or her ability to make anything happen. She herself couldn’t find Lydia, and had no idea what might have happened to her. She had a clear intuition that Lydia was still alive, and when one of the FBI agents had reported to her (as if she were in charge and could say something significant about it) that Lydia’s pets (a dog named Beanbag and several cats) had been abducted from her apartment in Fayetteville, Monica understood that whoever Lydia’s kidnappers were, they weren’t compounding their crime by exterminating her pets; they were compassionate enough to kidnap her pets too because Lydia missed them so much. Wherever Lydia was being held—and it could be anywhere in the Ozarks or the whole state of Arkansas—she at least had the comfort now of having her pets with her. The FBI guys didn’t believe Monica’s theory when she told them this, but she assured them that the kidnapping of the pets was good news.

  Still, Monica couldn’t help dwelling upon the possibility that she herself might be kidnapped—and would the kidnappers bother to take her dogs and cats also? Hazel Maguire practically lived now in Monica’s Fayetteville apartment, because Monica was spending so much time in Stay More—even before this hubbub surrounding Lydia’s appearance, and Hazel was in charge of feeding the dogs and cats…and protecting them from kidnappers.

  “If you hear of my disappearance,” she told Hazel by phone just this morning, “take the animals and move into some out-of-town motel where nobody knows where you are.” She told Hazel that Harry Wolfe too had been kidnapped, or was missing for several nights now, and that the FBI and state troopers were keeping a round-the-clock watch on Monica, for her protection. And presumably on Bo, Arch and Cast as well, the only other remainders of the Seven Samurai. Monica tried to explain to her favorite among the FBI guys, at least the man who was most respectful and even obsequious toward her and called her “Ma’am”, that Harry Wolfe was no longer in Ingledew’s campaign anyhow, that he had recently defected to the Bradfield team, so whoever had a political motive for kidnapping Lydia would not have kidnapped Harry for the same reason.

  She was scared, and she didn’t sleep well at night, not even with a wide-awake sheriff’s deputy sitting in the next room. This latest kidnapping, and the renewed investigation surrounding it, was a guarantee that Larry and Sharon were not going to come home, and it was lonely in this house without Harry, even if there were always deputies or troopers or agents watching over her. Bo told Monica that if she wanted to, she should feel free to go on back to Fayetteville, where her presence could be used in campaign headquarters, even if the campaign was in limbo. He also told her that he’d request constant protective surveillance for her in Fayetteville. She told Bo she’d just as soon stay more in Stay More, if she could be useful here. She didn’t love the town as much as she had before its population had filled up with all the agents and cops, but it was still, as she had once suggested to the Samurai, a better place for real campaign headquarters than Fayetteville. And apparently Bo, Arch and Cast, not to mention Vernon himself, liked it here too, for a variety of reasons: Cast, as she well knew, was deeply involved with a local girl, Sheila Kimber, and could scarcely bear to spend a moment away from her. And Bo…just as Monica knew practically everything about everyone (except who might have kidnapped Lydia), she knew that Bo was head over heels into an affair with Jelena Ingledew, and possibly even Vernon knew about it but couldn’t feel too jealous because he himself was scandalously involved with the Indian Juliana.

  Now that Indian woman and her pansy bodyguard had left Stay More—for the same reason Larry and Sharon and Ekaterina had left: it was just too overpopulated and raucous—and presumably Vernon would have to start paying attention to Jelena again. That was fine with Monica; she’d much rather be jealous of Jelena than of Juliana.

  The truth that Monica had been facing for some time now was that she was hopelessly in love with Vernon Ingledew, not because he was so powerful and possibly could become much more powerful as governor but because he was just such a very nice man, the kindest man she’d ever known, as well as the smartest. She hated the idea that he was being unfaithful to Jelena. At churches all over Arkansas, when Monica had given her standard Ingledew-is-really-a-Christian-even-if-he-doesn’t-think-so speech to youth groups and ladies’ socials and men’s Bible Classes and such, she had invariably been required to answer questions about Vernon’s living out of wedlock with his first cousin, and she had mastered a lovely little set speech in which she pointed out that they were common-law husband-and-wife (which was true) and they had simply avoided marriage because first-cousin marriages were not a good idea.

  There was no way that Monica was going to be able to give any speeches defending Vernon’s affair with that Indian woman. Even though she was skeptical of the Samurai’s plan to counterattack Bradfield’s dirty politics by supersaturating the public with Vernon’s real and imagined vices, she knew that it was the only way that they could slip the fact of Juliana Heartstays past the public’s curiosity.

  Just as Cast Sherrill had been required to take over Carleton Drew’s responsibilities after the latter had defected, the disappearance of Lydia had thrust Monica into a position as substitute press secretary for the Ingledew campaign, and she’d been required to deal with the newsmen and TV crews who had slipped into Stay More in search of developments about the kidnappings, and, during moments when there were no new leads at all in the search for Lydia and Harry, taken to quizzing Monica about the progress of the campaign, and, with Cast’s help, she’d started giving daily briefings to the media. Governor Bradfield had gone on television to announce that while he still fervently prayed that Lydia and Harry would be found, it was time to return to business as usual, and therefore he was rescinding the moratorium on politics which he had declared. Then Bradfield had the effrontery to suggest what he called a fourteenth albatross: that Lydia and Harry were missing because they had become disillusioned with Vernon Ingledew, with the implicit suggestion that Vernon himself might have done away with them.

  One by one the state troopers and sheriff’s deputies disappeared from Stay More. One by one the FBI agents packed up their gear and left town, most of them having the courtesy to say goodbye to Monica and to thank her for her help. Only a skeleton crew of state troopers and sheriff’s men were still bivouacked in town, assigned to protecting any more Samurai from being kidnapped. Surely the newsmen were growing tired of hearing Monica announce the same thing at each day’s briefing: Vernon Ingledew refused to continue the campaign until Lydia and Harry were found, even if Harry had defected to the Bradfield camp before he was kidnapped.

  “But what if they’re both dead?” a reporter had asked her.

  Monica shuddered, but replied, “Vernon Ingledew will make another statement if that should prove to be the case.”

  Larry and Sharon returned to their home, and thanked Monica for having taken such good care of it during their absence. Ekaterina did not return to her home. Had Larry and Sharon seen her in Harrison? No, they suspected she might even have gone to a larger city, or even gone home to Georgia or Svanetia or wherever.

  Now that Larry and Sharon were returned, Monica felt tempted to take Bo’s advice and go on back to Fayetteville. She missed her pets; it had been a long time. Sharon suggested that Monica could go to Fayetteville and get her pets and bring them here to live. Monica appreciated her hospitality but knew that she was putting a strain on it, especially with the deputy who had been assigned to protect her and had moved into what had been Harry’s room.

  Larry and Sharon wanted to know all about Harry, whose disappearance disturbed them as much as, if not more so than, Lydia’s (after all, Lydia had “belonged” to Day and Diana, whereas Harry was theirs). Monica told them that she’d been the last to see Harry, that morning when he’d told her he was restless and needed some exercise, and had decided to take a hike. She hadn’t bothered to look out the windows to see which way he was hiking, north, east, south
or west. The state troopers had brought a pack of bloodhounds, and Monica had fetched Harry’s pillowcase, which bore his scent, for the dogs to sniff. But a whole day of the hounds roving the countryside had not apparently picked up that scent. Everybody currently in the Stay More population had been questioned, but nobody else had seen Harry. It was almost as if Monica had uttered an enchantment which made him vanish, but if that were so she had no witching words to make him reappear. It never occurred to any of the searchers—as it would eventually occur to Arch Schaffer before he personally took up the quest in the next chapter—to glance at the copy of The Choiring of the Trees that Harry had left open facedown at a crucial passage.

  “Next chapter?” Monica said aloud to herself, and began wondering why she had thought those words, and decided that life is sort of like a book and that there would be another chapter after this one. She did not feel, as Harry himself and Day Whittacker felt, that she was actually a character in a novel which had a beginning, middle, and, if not an end, a promise of a future.

  But she definitely had a feeling that everything which was happening—or failing to happen—was quickly turning into past tense, into something over and done with and finished and final, irrevocable, which she could no longer control with her managerial skills. She really ought to go on back to Fayetteville. She told Larry and Sharon that she intended to go back to Fayetteville, in another day or so.

  Then Vernon came to see her. It was a warm day in early October, unusually warm, almost like summer still, so they sat on the front porch, Monica in the swing that so many people young and old had sat in during the heyday of this building’s service as store and post office. Vernon sat in the captain’s chair.

  He still could not look at her (would he ever be able to?) but at least he could talk freely, although for a long minute they could only sit there like a couple of country people enjoying the store porch and watching the autumn color emblazon the surrounding trees. And then he spoke.

  “I’m awfully sorry about Lydia. I know what she meant to you. Don’t you worry, she’ll turn up.”

  “I sure hope so,” she said.

  “It looks like you’re my press secretary now,” he said to the post that held up the roof of the porch.

  “If you say so,” she said, and did not tell him that she’d been acting in that capacity for many days now. “I couldn’t even begin to replace Lydia, though.”

  “I’ll bet you could,” he said. “You’re like her in so many ways. Whether you know it or not, you’ve tried real hard to be like her. You’ve watched her so much that you even seem like her. You don’t look like her, or sound quite exactly like her, but in many ways you’re better than she.”

  Monica’s heart skipped a few beats, and she realized that when Vernon spoke these last words he was looking directly at her, for the first time. Now it was she who could not look at him. Her eyes could only study her hands in her lap. She didn’t know what to say. She thought of saying, “If you say so,” but she had already said that and didn’t want to sound repetitious. Finally she managed to say, “That’s real kind, sir. It makes me proud. But you don’t really need a press secretary if you’ve canceled the campaign until after Lydia is found. And after she’s found, of course she will be your press secretary again.”

  “Certainly we hope that Lydia will turn up any minute now, safe and sound,” he said. “But if she does, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose your new job to her. You’ll still be press secretary. And after I’m elected, you’ll be my press secretary for four years in Little Rock. Would you like that?”

  Oh, she would like that! Again she hung her head modestly and said, “That would be just fine. But right now I’m supposed to be running campaign headquarters in Fayetteville.”

  “We’ll get somebody else to run the headquarters,” he said. “You’d rather be in Stay More anyway, wouldn’t you?”

  She almost told him of Sharon’s and Larry’s offer to let her keep her dogs and cats here. She didn’t want to get too chummy. Instead she voiced a concern: “But when Lydia comes back, and finds out I’ve got her job, what will you do with her?”

  “If Lydia comes back—when Lydia comes back—we’ll appoint her to a different job. Maybe we’ll give her Bo’s job. I’m thinking of firing Bo.”

  Monica caught his eyes. “You are? How come?”

  “I think you know why,” he said.

  She had thought that it was her own secret that she knew everybody else’s secrets, but somehow she hadn’t been able to hide it from her boss. It put her on the spot. All she could answer was kind of flippant. “I could make a pretty good guess.” But then she couldn’t resist adding, and surprised herself at how much her voice sounded like Lydia’s, “But how could you fire him for that, when you yourself have been fooling around?”

  Vernon laughed. “I don’t hold Bo’s liaison against him. What I don’t like is that he’s so wrapped up in it he can’t concentrate on his work.” Vernon laughed again, and added, “All of this is strictly between you and me, I hope you understand.”

  “Does he know you know?”

  “Not yet.” Although she waited to hear him add something to that, such as But he probably suspects I do or I’m going to let him know soon, Vernon added nothing.

  “As your press secretary, what spin am I to put upon these various Stay More liaisons?” she asked, surprised at herself for her matter-of-fact firmness, and added quickly, “Assuming, of course, that we resume the campaign.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Juliana, because we probably won’t see her again until after the election.”

  Monica was thrilled to hear that, but wondered how Vernon knew. Of course quite possibly Juliana and Vernon had one last fling before she left town, during which she had told him—or he had requested of her—that she would become invisible until after the election.

  “Doesn’t that weaken the plan of the Samurai to overload the public with your sins, to the point where nobody will care anymore?”

  Again that laugh of Vernon’s. Monica was beginning to wonder if she possessed a sense of humor she didn’t fully understand. “I like the way you put that,” he said. “I haven’t heard the crackpot plan described so succinctly. But no, I can assure you the Samurai have such a long list of my sins ready to glut the public that Juliana’s absence from the list will scarcely be noticed. You’ve seen the list, haven’t you?”

  She nodded. She had a copy of it, nearly a hundred real and brazenly fabricated instances of Vernon’s misconduct, enough to make the most slavering citizen surfeited, jaded, and eventually indifferent. “Let me ask you,” she said. “Are you keeping in touch with Juliana? Have you phoned her? Or vice versa?”

  Vernon studied her for a moment as if he were trying to determine why she would be asking that question. His reply wasn’t evasive but just pensive. “No, I haven’t. I don’t have her number in Oklahoma, which is unlisted. She has her own reasons, I suppose, for not calling me.”

  “You’re not even sure that she’s in Oklahoma?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know she’s coming back after the election?”

  “Well, look,” he said, and gestured in the direction of the wigwam, where there was much activity going on: workmen were laying the foundations for her mansion. Just this morning a fleet of rumbling cement trucks had groaned into town and out to the construction site of Juliana’s house. Monica also knew that Day Whittacker was busy in the woods marking trees to be uprooted and transplanted laboriously to Juliana’s homesite.

  “If she’s not coming back until after the election,” Monica asked boldly, “and there’s no way you can contact her, how can you ask her for a financial contribution to the campaign, or to your generous reward offer?”

  Again he studied her as if it were taking him a while to answer his own question about why she would be asking that question. “I wasn’t planning to ask her that,” he said.

  “Sir,” she said, not comfortable to be cal
ling him sir but needing to preface such a statement respectfully, “the campaign is nearly broke. You need money. Much money, and soon.”

  He smiled. “You really do know everything, don’t you?”

  “Not quite everything.” She was proud of her restraint in not telling him that she had seen and studied the FBI’s files on Lydia, as well as on Juliana Heartstays and Harry Wolfe. The agents who had been so deferential to her hadn’t even questioned her right to read the files.

  “I’ll take care of the money,” he said. And he rose and patted her on the shoulder and went off into the world to get money or whatever he had to do.

  As long as the campaign was still in abeyance, Monica didn’t have much to do in her new position as press secretary, and the few stragglers among the newsmen and TV people who had invaded Stay More finally gave up and went on back to their cities. The town was almost back to normal. Monica wished that Ekaterina would come back, because Monica had really enjoyed talking with her. That mysterious woman from Svanetia knew all kinds of things about Stay More that nobody else knew. But Ekaterina did not come back, and her big house, now that the FBI were no longer using its porch as a command center, seemed forlorn. Monica wasn’t bored; she found time to read a novel that Larry loaned her, called Butterfly Weed, which she found very interesting not only because it was about Stay More but also because it was full of people named Breedlove, her ex-husband’s family.