The Candidate

by Paul Harris

  Inside the living room was entirely bare except for an ancient television set and a couple of grimy-looking mattresses on the floor. The man sat on one of them and gestured unself-consciously for Gusman and Mike to do likewise. Mike settled himself, and tried hard not to look at the stains.

  “This is ‘Jose’,” Gusman said. “You don’t need to know his real name. He was a villager from the Atitlan area, near where the Santa Teresa massacre happened. He was picked up for interrogation by Carillo’s unit back in 1989. He can tell you what sort of person the General is.”

  Mike looked at the man. He could not guess his age. He must be at least 40 or so, he thought, but you could put ten years on either side of that and he would not have been surprised. His face was lined with the harsh kisses of the sun and the stresses of hard work, but his eyes sparkled and his black hair shone like it had been polished. His hands, which seemed large for his body, were thick and muscular, a product of a lifetime of labor. They looked like they could strangle a horse.

  “Tell me what you know about General Carillo,” Mike said.

  Jose nodded and spoke slowly in thickly accented English, while Gusman helped him along when he got stuck. He talked of his village, San Diego, deep in the Highlands, surrounded by thick jungles and farms. Of how the guerrillas came down from the mountains and took food for their supplies; of how the villagers begged them not to come, but could not refuse their requests. They were just peasants with no weapons and, besides, many of the guerrillas were cousins and brothers.

  Then, one day, Carillo came to their village and lambasted them as communist-lovers. He ignored protestations that they were simple farmers. He singled out five of them for interrogation, including Jose. They were put in the back of a jeep and taken to an army camp.

  Jose stopped talking. Mike could see the man’s bottom lip quivering and his breath came in deep gasps. Gusman reached out and rested a hand on his arm.

  “Perhaps this was not a good idea,” she said. But Jose jerked his arm away and shook his head fiercely.

  “It’s about time someone asked about this,” he said. “Carillo was beloved of the Americans in Guatemala City.”

  Mike said nothing. It seemed there was a spell in the house that gathered in the shadows from the far corners of the room and reached out to throttle the light.

  “I was kept in a dirty room for seven days. I was tied to a chair and they beat me three times a day. Each morning, noon and night, they beat me. Their fists fed on me.”

  Jose spat the words out angrily, his eyes shining and defiant as they tumbled out of his mouth. “Carillo was the worst,” he said. “He asked the same questions over and over again. Where are the guerrillas? Who are they? Give me their names. It did not even matter what I told him. Whatever the answer he would take one of his big, fat Cuban cigars and stab it out on my flesh.”

  Mike winced at the thought and remembered the smell of smoke that permeated Carillo’s villa. He wondered how the stench changed when mixed with burning skin and muscle.

  Jose stood up and lifted his T-shirt to reveal a long line of old, blistered white scars that marched across his chest like a line of lunar craters. “In the end I told him what I knew. Everyone did,” he said. “They made a few arrests and they let me go.”

  His voice faded away and he looked down at the ground. “But I survived,” he said. Then more loudly: “I survived.”

  There was a sudden knock on the door which broke the dark spell in the room like a snapped twig. Jose rushed to open the door. Again there was a burst of staccato Spanish and he looked back. “There is a job,” he said. “A lady in Georgetown is moving house. It’s a half-day’s work to lift her furniture. I’ll get twenty dollars.”

  Gusman and Mike got up and Jose brushed past them as he left. He barely acknowledged them as he collected some warm work clothes. A flat-bed truck idled outside and its exhaust sent plumes of smoke into the cold air. A half-dozen other Latino men sat on the back of it, wrapped up warm, their faces dark or light, young and old, betrayed different nationalities and stories. Jose jumped on the truck to join them. It trundled slowly down the street. Jose did not look back. But Gusman and Mike stared at it until it disappeared from view, carrying its human cargo, his scars hidden beneath cheap clothing, onto the highway heading north.

  * * *

  AS he drove back from Washington to New Hampshire, Mike decided to visit Corinth Falls again. It was a whim, borne of the long drive and a longing to see Sean. He desperately needed someone to just relax with, free from the campaign, free from Guatemala. Just an old friend. He punched in his phone number and, when Sean answered, simply named their old, favorite local bar.

  “I’ll see you in two hours,” Mike said and hung up without waiting for a reply.

  Then his foot hit the gas pedal and he was there in ninety minutes.

  The bar had not changed one bit. O’Rourke’s squatted on the corner of Locust and Main. It was a dark, seedy dive where daylight never penetrated and the same selection of 80s hits that Mike remembered from so many wasted evenings of his youth still played on the Juke box. Sean waited inside. They embraced each other and then burst out laughing and ordered a round of beers.

  Mike listened patiently first while Sean updated him on his family life and the struggle to find work. Then it was Sean’s turn to play confessor and listen to Mike unburden himself. He talked about his trip to Guatemala and Washington but kept the details a little vague. He trusted his old friend with more than he told anyone else so he mentioned Hodges’ links to Central America, the visit with the General and Jose’s horrible story. Sean grimaced and shook his head.

  “The only good thing to come out of the 80s was the music,” he said, as a Guns’n Roses hit played for the fourth time. “The politics stank.”

  “Yeah, I know. But don’t you think it all seems like ancient history now? I mean, it was the Cold War.”

  Sean shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like ancient history to you. Nor that Jose guy in Virginia,” Sean said.

  “Yeah, but what if Hodges was involved in something really bad? What if the woman who tried to shoot him wasn’t just some crazy person? But was out for revenge. I mean, Jesus, what could Hodges have done that means you would still want to kill him 30 years later?”

  The pair fell silent. Mike had finally voiced his innermost fear, the burden that grew heavier and heavier the more he delved into Hodges’ background. Sean breathed a deep sigh and took a swig of the whisky chaser that nestled snugly beside his bottle of beer.

  “Fuck,” he said. “I can’t think like that, Mike. Hodges gives a lot of people around here a bit of hope. People talk about him all the time. They’re rooting for him to win in New Hampshire. They don’t want the same old bullshit from some career politician like Stanton,” he said.

  He paused for a moment. “They want a chance to vote for Hodges, Mike,” he added. “Not just in the primaries. But in the real election against that prick we’ve got in the White House right now. They want to vote for Hodges to be president.”

  Now it was Mike’s turn to have a drink. He could hear Dee’s voice, delivering her favorite lecture: we’re here to protect our man. Even from himself. From his own past. From his own sins. Mike was a soldier. Trust in the righteousness of the cause. And it was righteous too, he thought. The hope and inspiration that he read in people’s faces when they heard Hodges speak, when he spoke to them directly, like a man, like a fellow American, not just another politician angling for votes. He felt it himself, too. That was, after all, why he first signed up.

  “Oh shit…” Sean breathed suddenly and Mike followed his gaze to the bar’s front door where a slim, female figure had walked in out of the cold.

  Jaynie.

  She cast her eye around the bar and when it settled upon Mike’s surprised face, her expression lit up like a pinball machine. Mike could almost hear the bells and whistles going off. She smiled a heart-breakingly familiar grin and bounded over.

 
“Mike!” she cried. “Goddamn! What are you doing here?”

  Mike looked at her, trying to see if she was high on anything. But her eyes were clear. She pulled herself up a few feet away from them. Mike wondered if she remembered how just two days ago she slammed the door on him and left him sprawled on the ground.

  “Can I join you?” she asked, an acknowledgement that now she needed to be invited.

  Mike strained to say no. He knew he should. He did not have the strength to deal with Jaynie right now. But he felt his resistance melt at the softness of her touch, at the pleading at the edge of her voice. He said nothing and just made room for her in the booth, scrunching up to create space for Jaynie at the table. It was always like that.

  * * *

  THREE HOURS later Mike stumbled along in a dizzy, drunken haze, immune to the midnight cold that caressed his skin. Jaynie walked by his side and giggled as they slipped and slithered down an earthen bank towards the railway tracks that were a shortcut back to Jaynie’s trailer.

  The evening was, in the end, just like old times. Jaynie was funny and flirtatious and the three of them sank into an orgy of reminiscence. They relived their school days, their college vacations and all the tales they relegated to a half-remembered past, like it was a foreign country. They shot pool and slammed whiskies, put their favorite songs on the juke box until well past midnight when Sean finally declared that he needed to leave and get back to his family. Jaynie raised a single eyebrow at Mike and wordlessly the two left the bar. Mike shed his jacket and placed it around her shoulders to ward off the freezing air. Now they bumped along the train tracks, like off-kilter dance partners, laughing loud at each stumble and pratfall.

  “You remember the prom?” Jaynie giggled. “Didn’t we come down here that night?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever been as drunk as that,” he said and laughed. “Nor as happy.” He remembered that far-off evening when they were both 17, already dating for two years, and the sweethearts of their class. They got drunk on a bottle of moonshine from one of Jaynie’s country uncles and flung themselves around the dance floor like whirling dervishes. Then they came down to the railway tracks to watch the stars madly circle overhead and make love in the heat of a summer night.

  “Feels like a long time ago now,” Jaynie said. Suddenly she seemed more sober than he was. She steadied him and helped him off the tracks as they neared the spot where they could scramble up into Jaynie’s back yard.

  “You know. I owe you so many apologies, Mike,” she said. “I know I’ve got into more trouble than anyone ever thought possible. I know I was impossible to be around, let alone stay married to. I don’t blame you for leaving.”

  There was not a trace of bitterness or rancor in her voice, just a whiff of regret and melancholy.

  “We were just kids, Jaynie,” Mike said as they clambered up the slope towards a copse of trees behind which the dark hulk of Jaynie’s trailer could be seen.

  She slipped her arm through his and helped him along. She felt warm beside him and he thought of the touch of her flesh alongside his. It had been a long time, he thought. He looked at her and traced the line of her face, still beautiful in this half-light. She was still in there; his Jaynie. Through all the time and the drugs and the booze and the hopelessness, somewhere in the core of her being, a little diamond shined on.

  They arrived at the trailer and Jaynie ushered him in. It was dark, musty and chaotically littered. It smelled like a troop of cats lived there. He scrunched up his nose.

  “Since when did you get a cat?” he asked.

  Jaynie did not reply but pushed him down into a sofa. “I’ll get something else to drink,” she said and went into the kitchen to rummage around in the cupboards. Mike settled into the sofa. It was soft. He felt the ceiling above begin to whirl, like the night sky did years ago. He tried to focus on the light in the center of the room, but it was a lost battle. By the time Jaynie returned, clutching a half-drunk bottle of bourbon, Mike was already snoring. He never felt her lean over and kiss him gently on the top of his head or her lips brush over his forehead like a benediction. She snuggled down beside him on the couch and nestled her head against his shoulder. Within seconds she too slept.

  * * *

  THE SOUND exploded into the front room of the trailer like a bomb going off. The door burst open, half-shattered and hanging off one hinge. A tumble of figures burst through into the room and screamed and shouted as Mike and Jaynie flailed into rude consciousness, untangling from one another on the couch in a whirl of knotted limbs.

  “Police! Police! Get down!”

  Mike, stunned, looked around at the black-uniformed figures coming towards him, pistols grasped in both hands. He barely registered the sight before a blow caught him on the back of the head and he hit the floor, his mouth open, and tasted the bitter, ashy carpet. He was facedown and he felt a knee plant itself in the middle of his back and his arms hauled forcefully behind him. Then he felt a caress of cold metal around his wrists and heard a faint click. He was handcuffed. He twisted his head to his right and saw that Jaynie lay there too, trussed up like a turkey dressed for a Sunday dinner. She struggled hard, her head rocked from side-to-side and the veins in her neck stood out like pipelines and pulsed beneath her skin. She wailed and screamed, a banshee-like sound, as the police began to search through the trailer.

  “Jaynie! Jaynie! It’s all right. Calm down,” said Mike. But she did not hear him. She was frantic and roiled on her belly like a run over snake.

  “Better watch that one. She’s feisty,” one of the cops said, as he emptied a cupboard that overflowed with plastic dishes and pots and pans.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Mike asked.

  One of the cops cast him a sideways glance but did not answer him. Instead he sniffed the air and grimaced. “Sure smells like a meth lab in here,” he said.

  Mike closed his eyes. Fuck, he breathed. Then to himself, loudly in his mind, he screamed the words he could not express out loud.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Jaynie did not have a cat. The sour, rotten smell in the trailer was from her cooking up meth. He suddenly thought of her reaction when he came here before, pushing him away, certain of someone else with her. She was not hiding a lover. She hid her drug-making partner.

  One of the cops roughly pushed open a door to a back bedroom and the sour smell suddenly got stronger.

  “Bingo!” the cop said and held open the door. Mike craned his neck up from the ground and saw a complex tangle of piping and pots, like some crazed hillbilly scientist’s perpetual motion machine.

  He turned to Jaynie. She was quiet now and would not look at him. She faced the opposite wall, even when the cops hauled them both roughly to their feet.

  “I’ve no idea what this is…” Mike said to the cop who held his arms. But the expression of naked disgust on the man’s face caused the words to evaporate. The cop glanced over at Jaynie.

  “We’d heard you’d been hooked up with those Callaghan boys and their crew,” he said. “You’ve had plenty of chances, ma’am. Now it’s time to do a little time.”

  They were frog-marched out of the trailer and pushed outside into the bright sunshine. Mike instinctively raised his hands to shield his eyes form the light. But they were caught behind his body by the cuffs and he yelped at the unfamiliar strain in his triceps. Then he was shoved forward to a trio of squad cars parked outside the trailer, like wagons drawn up on the prairie. They were placed in the back of one of them and the car’s engine hummed into life.

  Mike stared ahead and his mind whirred with panic. Things had happened so quickly he could barely think.

  “Mike… Mike…”

  Jaynie sounded desperate and pleading. He turned around. Jaynie looked at him now with eyes full of fear and tears. “I don’t want to go to jail, Mike,” she said.

  Slowly, and painfully, she moved her handcuffed hands from out behind her and twisted her back. She inched a finger over to t
ouch his side and rested it there. Mike felt a rage rise inside him. He turned from her and moved away, shifting out of reach of her desperate touch, the gulf between them just inches, but now as uncrossable as an ocean.

  * * *

  MIKE PUT the phone receiver to his forehead and paused for a moment before dialing the number. He looked around at the bars of the holding cell while three other listless male prisoners returned his gaze. He could not believe his situation. He had one phone call. It felt like a movie even just thinking that. But it was the truth. He was arrested for aiding and abetting the production of illegal narcotics. He told the cops he was just visiting his ex-wife but they seemed uninterested.

  “Tell it to the court,” one said.

  He dialed a number now and prayed it would not go through to a voicemail. That she would answer. That she would help.

  “Hello?”

  Dee’s voice never sounded so good. Mike blurted out his story and quickly rattled off his whereabouts and what happened. The entire time he spoke he heard Dee’s measured breathing get a little quicker on the other end of the line. Eventually he finished. There was a pause.

  “Just one question, Mike. You were just visiting, right? You’re innocent?”

  “Yes!” Mike insisted. “Jesus, Dee. For the past three months I’ve been nowhere that you didn’t know about. I haven’t a spare second to shave, let alone run a fucking drug ring.”

  He sounded hysterical, wild even. But then he heard Dee chuckle and her Southern drawl got a little thicker. “Yeah, I guess you have a point, Mike,” she said. “Sit tight there, fella, and try not to get too friendly with anyone in the showers. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Mike heard the click of Dee putting down the phone. He felt like he just flung a Hail Mary pass the entire length of the field and was watching the spinning football twirl towards the horizon without the slightest sense whether it would make its target. He slumped onto a bench and held his head in his hands and a tide of despair filled him. He was still like that three hours later when the door to the holding cell opened and a burly cop walked in.