The Candidate

by Paul Harris

  “What’s in it for me?” Lauren asked.

  Dee laughed again. “I told you, catin, we like you right now. We appreciate the good work you’ve done. Maybe we’ll get you a bit of face-time with the candidate. I’m sure I can arrange a nice big interview. Maybe we’ll dig up a few other things about Stanton and pass them along. Just stick with us and you’ll go places, Lauren. You’ll go all the way. You’re gonna be big, Lauren. Do we understand each other?”

  “I understand,” she whispered.

  “Atta girl,” said Dee, and with a click the phone went dead.

  Lauren suddenly felt the real world around her come back into focus again. Her body fizzed with adrenalin and she felt herself literally shaking. She knew Dee opened a door to her, a gateway to a whole secret world where the prizes were enormous. She closed her eyes. “You’re gonna be big,” Dee said. For the first time in her life, Lauren believed it.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE GENERAL’S MAN, Federico, drove with no regard for anyone else on the road. He pitched the spluttering rental car down the highway back to Guatemala City with a grinding of gears and a groaning engine. He weaved in and out of the traffic like a football player racing for a touchdown, thumping down with an open palm on the horn and gesticulating wildly at other drivers.

  Mike sat in the back and gripped the underside of the seat with both hands as his knuckles turned white while the scenery raced by. He looked in the rear-view mirror and tried to see Federico’s face. He wondered if the driving was meant to intimidate him. But Federico’s scarred visage betrayed no hint of a threat. Indeed he whistled softly to himself in between letting out violent expletives at the next crawling bus that slogged along the road.

  “My friend. I am in no rush,” Mike said. He reached out a hand to rest on Federico’s shoulder. “Your country is beautiful. I would like to see it at a slower pace.”

  Federico glanced back at Mike and then looked sideways at the landscape rushing by outside. They had been on the road a couple of hours but already the highway started to climb into the highlands as the land crinkled up towards the clouds above. Federico shrugged, as if seeing the view speed by for the first time.

  “Eh!” he grunted and wound down the window to spit out a gob of phlegm. “I need to get some fuel.”

  He jerked the car off the road and into a gas station. Mike got out with a feeling of relief. Finally, he was no longer thrown around like a rag doll by Federico’s driving. They were in a small village that lined the main road with a strip of shops and restaurants. People milled around, mostly Indian-looking women in brightly-colored dresses and men in tattered work clothes. Mike breathed out and walked into a roadside restaurant while Federico began to harangue one of the attendants at the gas station.

  A lone, elderly woman, her face wrinkled and round as a rosebud, stood behind a metal hot plate and fixed small round discs of dough into fat tortillas. She smiled at Mike as he walked in and bustled towards him, eager at the prospect of a customer. He glanced at the menu and ordered three chicken tacos by pointing at the words in a menu written on the wall behind her. Almost instantly the smell of frying meat filled the air.

  He turned to the old woman and tried to engage her in conversation but she just smiled at him and nodded her head. He could not tell if she did not understand his accented Spanish or if she was deaf. She handed over a paper plate loaded with food that was doused liberally in chili sauce and accepted a few grubby quetzals in return. Mike took a bite and started to speak to the woman again when a sudden burst of Spanish outside cut through the air like gunfire.

  Mike recognized the voice instantly. He swore, dropped the food on a table, and ran outside. Even from thirty yards away he heard Federico scream insults at a small, Mayan-looking man crumpled at his feet. Federico loomed over the man and yelled something about showing him some respect. He lifted a foot and delivered a sickening thud right into the man’s belly that prompted the man to let out a piercing squeal. Around them a group of women skittered, clearly terrified of intervening.

  Mike yelled out, “What’s going on?”

  Federico, poised to deliver another blow, suddenly stopped and looked up. His face was a bloated, twisted mask of rage, but the sight of Mike penetrated his temper. Federico’s chest, which heaved like an ocean swell with each breath, calmed. He looked down at the man and then back at Mike.

  “He was thinking of robbing me,” Federico said. “I am sure of it. He was lurking around the back of the car when I went to pay.”

  The man beneath him moaned softly and put up his hands to protest his innocence. A thin trickle of blood leaked from a nasty tear in his scalp. Mike felt the urge to shout at Federico but he strangled the words. That could only make things worse. The two men stared at each other. Then Mike shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. “I have to make my plane,” he said.

  Federico smiled thinly. He understood. “Of course,” he said and he gestured to the car.

  Mike stepped over the man on the ground to get to the back of the car. The man held his head in his hands, not looking up, evidently praying that the monster who beat him would drive off. Mike thought to whisper an apology but he desperately wanted to hit the road again. Federico was at least halfway to a psychopath and there was no telling what he might do if Mike antagonized him by siding with his victim.

  As soon as Mike was seated, Federico hit the accelerator and the car lurched forward and set off a blare of horns from traffic that swerved to avoid them. Federico looked at Mike in the rear mirror, caught his eye and flashed a grin.

  “That bastard was a thief,” he said. Mike understood, with a mix of shock and shame, that Federico saw him as an ally. As if Mike approved of the beating.

  “This province is no better than down at the coast with all those black devil Garifunas,” Federico said. “It is the same everywhere with all those low types. These ungrateful peasants who have no education or morality.”

  For a moment Mike thought to protest and make a stand. But he stopped himself. This was an opportunity. There was such real anger and emotion in his voice that Mike knew he could play Federico, push him to talk and see if he opened up. Mike felt a surge of energy: he was back on his mission.

  “Where are you from, my friend?” he asked.

  “Antigua,” Federico said. “The same place as the General. It is the old capital. A beautiful city. People come from all over the world to see it.”

  Mike asked him to say more and Federico soon talked in his gruff accent of his hometown where he grew up on a tiny farm just outside the city walls. Mike let him riff and hoped he enjoyed the experience of talking. It was an old trick that he learned while interviewing witnesses and sources for court cases down in Florida. He always tried to get his subjects to talk about themselves in the most general sense. Then as the river of information flowed he sought to guide them and fish for bits of words that floated by. It worked easily with Federico. Mike nudged his talk in the direction of Carillo. Federico revealed they met when he was a young volunteer in his first year in the army and the General was his first commander. They rose together, with Federico appointed his aide. He never left the General’s side through the rest of his career.

  “The General is a great man,” Federico said, the pride in his voice obvious. He was like someone talking about a sports hero or an admired father. “He helped save this country and they repaid him by sending him down to live with the blacks in that mosquito-infested swamp. It is a crime! There should be statues of him all over Guatemala. But instead when peace comes he is sent into exile.”

  Federico’s anger was very real. He spoke in a rapid-fire Spanish that Mike found difficult. His words poured from deep within him, like a hole in a dam that relieved a long pent-up pressure. The road climbed firmly into the mountains now and the countryside around them became green and lush. They sped through villages where Indian women lined the streets and sat at market stalls, their vibrant dresses like splashes of paint spilled against the t
armac of the roads. Their bronze skin and black hair also reminded him of another woman, thousands of miles away, in a solitary jail cell in Iowa.

  “Tell me more about the war,” Mike said.

  Federico laughed, a crackling sound in the back of his throat like the sudden moment dry bark catches alight in a fireplace.

  “You Yankees never really understand what happened here. It is like you forgot us and our struggles. But we have not forgotten.” He shook his head and gestured out the window. “These people were all communists back then. All los Indios were Reds. They fell for that propaganda from Moscow and Havana and wanted to take this country back to the Stone Age. But we fought them hard. We fought them in the fields and the jungles. We even fought them in the churches.”

  Federico turned to look at Mike, driving without looking at the road ahead. His eyes were wide and their pupils dilated.

  “There is blood all around here,” he said. “Indian blood. Our blood. We fought for our country and have the scars to prove it. The General has especially. He fought the war harder than anyone. You Yankee liberals never understand it. They always say we went too far, but they never understood the price we paid.”

  Mike stood his ground, speaking softly. Suddenly the air inside the car felt full of electricity, alive and fizzing between them. Mike knew he was on dangerous territory but pressed on. “Is that why the General is in Livingston? He went too far?”

  Federico stared straight ahead. For a long time he did not speak a word, but his eyes widened, as if he saw events long lost in time. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead and trickled down his brow like a tear. “I tell you one thing more,” he said, his teeth gritted and his jaw almost locked. “We did not go far enough.”

  They were the last words Federico spoke. For the remaining four hours to the airport, Mike stared out at the passing mountains, looking at their green folded shoulders shrug themselves into a cloud-strewn sky. They looked peaceful, beautiful, havens of life, dotted with tiny fields. But Mike only heard Federico’s words describe the blood that ran down those same valleys just a few decades ago.

  * * *

  THE TWO students froze as Dee marched by in the chaotic mess that was now Hodges’ Manchester headquarters. The boy, whose tousled blond hair suddenly reminded her of her younger brother, tickled the girl and nearly caused her to drop a sheaf of papers she was carrying. Dee’s sudden appearance was like the arrival of a stern teacher in a classroom out of control.

  “Get a room,” Dee snapped as she walked by. But she could not resist a smile too. God, she envied their carefree youth.

  She went into her office and slammed the door shut. She wore the same clothes for two days straight and was sure she smelled like she’d worn them for a week. Not that anyone would dare mention it. She glanced at her watch. It was past midnight and still the room outside was as busy as Grand Central at rush hour. The televisions blared the cable news shows, students placed fund-raising calls to the West Coast and abroad; plans were drawn up and arrangements made. There was just 48 hours to go now. No time to sleep. No time to waste.

  She thought again of the two young students outside and remembered her own first campaign. She was at college in California. It was 1979 and Reagan was about to take over America. Looking back, you sensed it in the air, but she had no clue at the time. She threw everything she had into the campaign of a liberal congressman in Orange County, California. When he was swept away by the Republican tide, she was genuinely devastated. It was hard, she thought, for the first experience of a campaign to be such a loss. It was always good to taste the thrill of victory your first time. But it made her hard quickly and she was thankful for that. She sighed to herself. Had she ever really looked like one of those fresh-faced kids outside? That was more than thirty years ago. Merde. Still, here she was now. Ready to guide someone to the ultimate prize: the path to the White House. She could put Jack Hodges on that road. She knew she could. She just needed to win this race and then shake up this stuffy world.

  A knock on the door disturbed her reverie. She looked up and shouted a “Come in.” One of the flirting students walked in. The boy. He really did look like her little brother, Beau. Or the way she remembered him three decades ago when they scrapped and fought like bobcats down at their grandfather’s farm.

  “You look positively post-coital,” Dee teased.

  The boy blushed a deep red as he handed over a folder. It was the latest internal polling. She grabbed the sheath of papers, scanned the headline figures and plunged into the methodology and the detail. She drank in the lists of numbers and figures like it was spring water and she was lost in the desert.

  Hodges was neck and neck with Stanton in New Hampshire. He was at 31 points to her 33, but with a margin of error up to four points. And he trended in the right direction. Independents broke to him by six points over the past few weeks. He was strongest among the young and students, but the elderly were warming up to him too. Stanton still led there by eight points. But a week ago it was a 16-point gap. She punched her fist in the air.

  “Yes!” she said and got up from behind the desk. She banished her exhaustion and winked at the student. “We’re on our way, sweetpea,” she said.

  She burst out of the office and headed down a hallway to a room used as a place to catch up on some of the many lost hours of sleep they all suffered from. Hodges lay in there now, resting on a makeshift cot. He had attended a whirlwind of house parties in the Manchester suburbs and had a 7:00 a.m. breakfast rally the next morning. There was little point in going back to the hotel. Dee knocked quietly on the door and pushed it open.

  “Senator,” she said. “You said to wake you when the latest numbers came through.”

  The light flashed on. Hodges was lying down, still wearing his somber blue suit. But he looked as alert as normal. He had an uncanny ability to go from sleep to wakefulness in an instant. He sat straight up, stretched and held out a hand. She gave him the papers. “This is good right?” he asked, his voice calm and measured.

  Dee nodded. “We are trending strong in all the right places. We’re moving into the independents and the old folks. Essentially that means we are now fighting on Stanton’s home turf. Our tanks are parked right up on her lawn.”

  Hodges smiled. “You’re doing a fine job, Dee. I knew I had a chance when we got you on board.”

  “It’s what I do, Jack,” Dee said.

  Hodges stood up and looked down at the simple cot that he rested in. “Funny thing,” he said. “I’ve been out of the military for years but I still sleep better in one of those things than any hotel bed I’ve ever found. I guess a body just does not forget certain habits.”

  “Neither do the voters,” said Dee. “What’s winning for us now is the oldest issue in the book: national security. That’s where we hit them hard. That flag-burning picture hurt Stanton real bad.”

  Hodges shook his head. “You know I hated that, Dee,” he said. “That’s the sort of bullshit I never wanted near my campaign. In fact, I think we need to change tack for the last 48 hours. Try out something new. I want to talk about jobs and poverty reduction. Put some fresh policy meat on this campaign. We can brand it as a “Second New Deal for America.” Speak out for ordinary Americans a bit more, address the things they care about in times like these and quit all these tacky political games.”

  Dee was silent. Hodges rested a hand on her shoulder and fixed her with a stare.

  “I aim to change America, Dee. We can’t do that if this campaign stays the same,” he said. “Can you draw up a policy statement on that? We can announce it at a presser tomorrow afternoon. Get it out in time for the evening news shows.”

  Dee nodded. “Of course, Senator,” she said. “But if I give you that, I want your permission to go after Stanton too. I know I can punch her out now if you allow me to keep playing my own game.”

  Hodges walked over to a window at the back of a room and pulled the thin curtain aside. Outside the city lights of Manch
ester twinkled in a cold, clear night. The streetlights reflected off the hard-packed snow.

  “You have to win first before you can change anything,” Dee said. “You can’t do anything if you lose.”

  Hodges did not say anything. He just stared at the cold nightscape outside. Fuck it, Dee thought. I’m gonna take that as a yes.

  * * *

  “YOU PALE bastard. I thought at least you’d get a tan!”

  Mike stood in the doorway of Dee’s hotel room and still clutched his bags. He took a taxi straight from the airport and his brain felt fried from the drive with Federico, the jet lag and the lump on the back of his head. But Dee’s raucous laugh and tight embrace brought him back. It was good to be here. Good to be back where the campaign was.

  “No time for sun-bathing,” he said. “I was too busy getting my ass kicked.”

  Dee winced sympathetically and pushed him down to sit on the bed. She positioned herself behind him and whistled through her teeth.

  “Damn, Mike. You should have got this stitched,” she said running a finger over the cut and lump, matted with strands of bloodied hair. She’d seen worse, mainly after Louisiana bar fights, but there was no doubt it was a nasty blow. Whoever dealt it was not shy about what they were doing. “You sure it was linked to this General Carillo?” she asked.

  Mike shrugged. “I can’t be sure. But it has to be. This guy is a piece of work. Seriously. He seems to be in some sort of internal exile, living in this out-of-the-way hellhole. Like they sent him there to forget him and what he did.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I’m not sure. But his driver took me to the airport and from the way he was talking I would think Carillo was knee deep in the dirty war in the 80s. Tens of thousands of people got killed back then. Your classic Latin American shit show. Death squads, massacres. The works.”