The Candidate

by Paul Harris

  “Sweeney. Your story checks out. You’re outta here,” he said.

  Mike got up and stumbled forward. As he walked past the cop the man grabbed his elbow and leaned in close, whispering words with a mix of admiration and envy.

  “You’ve got some powerful friends,” he said.

  CHAPTER 15

  DEE RESTED AGAINST the lamppost on the corner of Main Street and Elm in Manchester and sucked in deeply on her cigarette. She felt the nerve endings jingle in her brain as the nicotine rush hit its target. They lit up one by one as if someone was turning on the Christmas lights. It was early on polling day but she wanted to step outside the campaign headquarters and watch the New Hampshire streets a little.

  She leaned against the cold metal, her skin protected by a thick overcoat, and looked at a posse of student volunteers gathered on the opposite side of the street. They carried Hodges’ placards, crudely drawn in crayon that they churned out for weeks in the headquarters like some campaign version of a Chinese sweatshop. Now they waved them high in the air as each car drove down the street and they cheered loudly at any motorist who bothered to press their horn. Many did. It was like the sound of a mini-traffic jam amid the cries and shouts and laughter.

  Dee did not allow herself to take that as a sign. Long years in the game told her not to trust things like a straw poll of horn honkers. What she trusted was the poll that landed on her desk last night. It was the final snap shot of the New Hampshire campaign and it spelled out in black and white the one thing they needed to know: Hodges and Stanton were neck and neck. The dirt they poured all over Stanton’s campaign had kept the opposition down. But Hodges was not decisively ahead. He and Stanton were like two fighters in some old cliff-hanger movie. They slugged away at each other on the edge of a chasm and each hoped that only one would topple over, not both. Dee drew in a deep blast of her cigarette and puffed out the smoke until it wreathed around her like an ashy halo and billowed in the freezing air. She had done all she could, she reflected. She knew that. And yet… she hated the thought of getting this close and losing. They had their single piece of glorious luck in Iowa and rode it for all it was worth. Right to this point of potential victory. If they won here, Stanton was firmly on the ropes and headed to South Carolina for a last stand where they could knock her out. But if Stanton won New Hampshire, then the narrative changed. Suddenly she would be the “comeback kid” story for the media to latch onto, fighting off a scrappy but over-reaching interloper.

  She watched the students opposite her, fixing on their smiling faces, their sheer joy and belief in what they were doing. She narrowed her eyes and focused in on two girls with their arms wrapped around each other as they held placards in their other hands. They jumped together at each car horn and laughed so hard it looked like they were drunk, despite being just after 7:00 on a freezing January morning.

  “High on goddamn life,” Dee muttered and then smiled to admonish herself for a sense of sour envy. “What was that about, catin?” she thought. “Come on. Remember why you do this.”

  She felt a sudden flash of heat in her hand and instinctively dropped her cigarette butt which had burned down to the filter. She stamped on it to put it out in the slushy snow and headed back to the headquarters where her car was parked. It was time to see her candidate.

  * * *

  SHE FOUND him in the hotel swimming pool. A security detail closed it to keep out the prying eyes of other guests while he swam a series of lengths. She walked into the room, breathing in the unexpected humidity and warmth of the air. Hodges was in the water, perfectly in synch as he scythed through the blue, chlorinated pool. She had no idea whether he saw her. His stroke did not alter. Just back and forth, back and forth, like a shark, moving all the time, never slowing. She settled into a faux beach chair and waited, not taking her eyes off him, noticing his body was lean and muscular and looked a good twenty years younger than the calendar told her it was. She never found male bodies attractive. She hated their hardness, their muscles, their hair. The softness of a woman was so much superior, so inviting and warm. But even she admired Hodges’ physique. He looked carved from marble. Eventually he finished his laps and emerged from the end of the pool dripping wet and taking off his goggles. He nodded hello to Dee and walked over.

  “What’s up, Dee?” he asked.

  She stood up, feeling suddenly like a private standing to attention. He naturally commanded respect. “I got the final numbers last night. We’re even, maybe slightly ahead.”

  Hodges absorbed the information and picked up a towel to dry his tightly cut hair. “It’s going to be a tense day then,” he said.

  Dee nodded. “I’ll get more feedback later in the afternoon, but I don’t imagine it will change much. We just have to wait for the result.”

  Hodges wrapped the towel around his waist. He was silent for a moment, lost in thought, and then he smiled. “Hell, two months ago, slogging our ass through Iowa and getting nowhere, we never dreamed of being here, Dee. But I’d have given my life for it.”

  “You almost did, sir,” Dee said.

  Hodges chuckled. But it was a distant sound. “It’s the strangest thing,” he said. “I wanted to get here because of what I believed in. Because I know that I could make this country right. But it took some crazy woman trying to kill me to get me noticed.”

  Hodges grunted a brief, bitter laugh. “That’s not how it should be,” he said.

  Dee put a hand on his arm, felt the rigid muscle on his forearm still flush with blood after the swim. “It’s a game, Jack,” she said. “It’s a vicious, nasty game. That’s why you’ve got me. Then once we’re done, you can rip up the old rule book and change the way it’s played.”

  Hodges seemed to snap out of the moment. He resumed toweling his hair dry again. “We’ve got to win first,” he said and turned around.

  Dee watched him go. She never had a candidate like him. Anyone else would be in a feverish mood now, veering between the thrill of a dreamed for victory or the pitch-black despair of a feared defeat. They tally all the long years, the thousands of days and tens of thousands of hours that brought them to this point. But not Hodges. He had the nerves to get reflective. The iron will to look at his own ego and understand this was about more than him. She looked at the pool. Its rough waters were calm now that Hodges was out and the ripples and waves smoothed back in to a mirror-like flatness.

  Her phone rang. She looked at the number and felt a stab of surprise. Howard Carver. She weighed whether to answer it. That fat bastard would not have anything good to say. But she could not resist. She flipped open her phone.

  “Howie?” she cooed. “You’re the last person I thought I’d hear from today. How’s life over in Camp Stanton? You staying warm by burning some more flags?”

  She heard Carver’s heavy breathing on the other end of the line. He was clearly flustered about something.

  “Fuck you, Dee,” he said. Dee grinned. She had not really expected her crude remark to hit home. It was too easy with him. “You bastards have dragged this campaign through the mud. But it’s not over. When we get to South Carolina we are going to tear you apart. We are going to blow you out of the water.”

  His tone was spitting and vicious.

  “What’s got your goat, Howie?” Dee said, barely able to keep herself from laughing. This was like being back on the schoolyard.

  “Just wait, Dee. Just wait,” he said and hung up.

  Dee stared at her phone as a growing feeling of realization surged through her body like a warm glow. She bit her lower lip to keep herself from letting out a little squeal. Carver’s team and Stanton must have got their own last set of internal polls and whatever it contained was different from hers. It was bad news for them. Perhaps, very bad. She slipped the phone back into her pocket.

  “Pic kee toi, Howie,” she said under her breath. Fuck you. At last she let herself begin to laugh.

  * * *

  MIKE FOUND Dee in her office at the campai
gn headquarters. She glanced up at him as he came in and gestured with her head for him to close the door. He flopped down in front of her, a look of panic across his face. He had no idea what she would say about his arrest at Jaynie’s trailer.

  Dee sat on the edge of her desk and looked him up and down. He could not take the silence any longer.

  “I’m sorry, Dee!” he said. “I just went home to check up on things and ended up at my ex-wife’s place. She’s a junkie and apparently a dealer now and I choose the morning she gets raided to spend the night there.”

  He put his head in his hands and stared at the floor. Then it slowly dawned on him that he could hear Dee laughing. He looked up. She smiled like a Cheshire cat.

  “Relax, Mike. I know you would not get involved in anything like that. So I made a call to the cops. It’s going to be fine.”

  “But what happened?”

  Dee shrugged and spread her arms out wide. “Jesus, Mike, it ain’t a crime in this country to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Least it ain’t yet anyway. I spoke to the Sheriff — he’s a big fan of Hodges apparently — and explained the situation. He was very sympathetic to our point of view.”

  She went back and sat in her chair. “The cops ain’t your problem, Mike. What about your ex-wife? Jaynie, right?”

  Mike nodded. “She’s in jail. They found a meth lab in her trailer.…”

  His words trailed away. He could scarcely believe it. He thought of her behind bars and to his shock felt all his anger towards her melt away. Jaynie, his Jaynie, was in jail. How did it come to this? He felt an almost overwhelming sense of guilt. He left her, first for Florida and then for the Hodges campaign. Now she was behind bars and alone.

  “Good,” said Dee.

  Mike looked up in shock. She raised an eyebrow; dared daring him to say something.

  “I haven’t got time for any more shit, Mike,” she said, her voice cold and low. “Neither have you. Neither has this campaign. She’s where she needs to be and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now you need to get your head right. Focus on the job in hand. Tell me about your trip to Washington? What did you find there?”

  He looked at her with a mix of horror and shock. But her expression did not change. Dee was all business. Stuttering, he told her of meeting with General Andersen and how he stonewalled over Hodges’ time in Guatemala. Then, picking up speed, he described his trip to the American Center for Latino Justice and what he found out about the dirty war in Guatemala and General Carillo’s role in it. Dee listened intently and occasionally thrummed her fingers on the desk. When he was finished, she let out a loud sigh and puffed out her cheeks.

  “Jesus, Mike. I don’t like this. Whatever happens here in New Hampshire today, Stanton is going to start getting ugly with us. Howie Carver’s already been threatening me with all sorts of hell to pay down in South Carolina.”

  Mike grimaced. South Carolina was legendary among political campaigners. The third stop on the nomination race and the one known to every campaign insider simply as The Swamp: a hot bed of dirty tricks and racial tension that could blow up even the most stable campaign.

  “You’ve got to nail this down, Mike,” she said. “We’ve sedated the link between Hodges and Carillo with that bullshit about donating to his kids’ college fund. But that ain’t going to hold. Lauren O’Keefe is not a fool. Nor is Carver. Our best shot is to get the dirt before they do. Then we can spin it our way. It’s better to wash your own laundry then let someone else get all up in your underwear.”

  Mike knew what was coming next. He bowed his head.

  “Go back to Iowa. Confront the shooter about Carillo. See if there’s a link. Then get back to Guatemala and dig up everything you’ve got on this Carillo bastard. If he’s got something on Hodges, then I want something on him.”

  Mike nodded. He would obey his orders.

  Dee watched Mike as he got up to go. Just as he was about to open the door, she spoke. “Mike,” she said. “I know it is hard. I know you feel like you’re not doing proper campaign work. But, believe me, you are doing so much more than that.”

  Her voice was soft. Mike looked at her and he could see that she cared, that she read his doubts like he was an open book. That she understood them too.

  “Trust me, Mike,” she continued. “When the results come in tonight and we win this damn thing, it will be down to you as much as anyone else. What you are doing in secret is just as important to this campaign as anything that happens in public.”

  * * *

  THOSE WORDS were still in Mike’s mind as he watched the first vote tallies come through on a TV monitor on the crowded main floor of the campaign headquarters. The tension was unbearable. The entire staff stood or sat around the television like worshippers at a church, or star-struck country folk being visited by a UFO. Their eyes glazed over and their faces shone in the reflected glow of CNN. No one moved a muscle. Or spoke a word. Everything hinged on this. It came down to a ticking counter at the corner of the TV screen that showed Hodges and Stanton neck-and-neck.

  It was agonizing. The first flood of returns arrived and Stanton led 40 percent to 31 percent. Mike shot a feverish glance at Dee, but she just shook her head.

  “It’s nothing,” she mouthed as she leaned against a water cooler, but he noticed her fists clenched into tiny balls of tension, her finger bones strained white against her skin.

  Then Hodges began to climb. After a third of the vote was counted the lead narrowed to just two points with Stanton at 37 percent and Hodges at 35 percent. It remained that way as the tally moved past 50 percent, then 60 percent, then 70 percent. Then they were both at 36 percent with Stanton just a few thousands votes ahead. Mike muttered under his breath, like a rabid sports fan, watching his team just behind in the final innings, stepping up to the plate with just a few at-bats to go.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” he said. He uttered the words like a prayer of want and longing, afraid almost to blink lest he miss an update.

  A huge cheer went up. The ticker finally showed they were ahead. With 80 percent of the results in, Hodges and Stanton were still level at 36 percent but Hodges was in front on the count by just over 200 votes. Mike looked over at Dee again. She was transfixed by the screen nearest to her and he could almost see her thoughts as her eyes scanned the maps displayed on the TV, desperate to see where the remaining votes would come from. She suddenly turned around and raised her fists in the air.

  “It’s mostly Manchester that’s still to come! That’s our turf!” she yelled.

  Manchester meant one thing: college kids and the working class. Hodges voters. Mike felt adrenalin go through his body like an electric shock and his vision dimmed as if someone in the room switched the lights on and off. He reached out a hand and steadied himself against a desk.

  And then it was over.

  “CNN newsbreak: Hodges wins New Hampshire”

  The words flashed over the screen like a long-awaited Second Coming and pandemonium broke out. Mike felt a strong pair of arms grab him around the middle as a scrum of student volunteers and staffers all yelled and screamed at once. He was hauled into the air and thrown around and he punched the air with his fists, shouting at the top of his lungs, his mind devoid of any thought but simple, pure elation. They won. They did it. It was like fireworks exploded in his mind. Every lost night of sleep and every moment of exhaustion disappeared, burned out by this moment of triumph. His doubts vanished for a moment, exorcised in the pure thrill of victory.

  Gradually, like a referee’s whistle sounding through the cheering of a crowd, a lone voice cut through the noise and tried to calm down things. It was Dee, shouting against the tide. Eventually, she stood on top of a desk, an open champagne bottle in one hand and a lit cigar in the other. The cheers rang out even louder for a while but eventually subsided as she waved her arms for quiet. She took a swig of the champagne and puffed on her cigar like some political version of General Patton. Eventually the noise died down
enough so Dee could begin to speak.

  “Ya’ll here know I’m not one for emotion,” Dee began and prompted a loud chorus of laughter and whistles. She paused, gathering herself and breathing out. Her eyes glistened slightly. She felt a deep hollow in her breast that swallowed up her breath, strangling the words in her throat. She paused and then carefully allowed herself to speak.

  “We’ve all been working for this moment for a long time and I want you to know that ya’ll deserve to feel on top of the world right now. No one ever believed we could do this. No one ever believed in our candidate but us…”

  Her voice tailed off slightly as she took another deep swig from the champagne bottle. She gave a laugh and started again, wielding her bottle like a baton.

  “You know,” she said. “Politics can be a shitty game. I know that better than most. But every once in a while, something happens that makes you thankful that you put up with all the shit. This is one of those moments.”

  She pointed up to one of the TV screens that showed Hodges walking out in front of a cheering crowd at the victory rally held in a hotel a few hundred yards away.

  “That is our man right there,” Dee said. “He’s special. He can change this country. For the first time America will care for its poor. For the first time it will look after its veterans. It will clean the lobbyists out of Washington. Hodges can do all that and he is getting that chance because of the work that you have done…”

  Dee stopped talking and looked at the screen. Hodges was trying to quiet the crowd, Christine by his side, and he waved amid the cheers and confetti and placards with his name on it.