The Candidate
Page 30
He laughed at the image of Dee in an office. She would be like a caged tiger, pacing up and down in a zoo, longing for freedom, not wanting to be safe and well-fed. She could not fight her instinctual desire to hunt and catch her own food.
“I got my eye on a nice little governor’s race down in Arkansas,” she went on. “This time the candidate’s a real special one. Reminds me a lot of Hodges when he was at his peak. I could do with someone who…”
Mike jabbed a finger down and pressed erase. The spell was broken. It was not real to him anymore. That world of the campaign. It was a ghost world. He got up and walked out of the office. He passed through the church where the glowering black Christ looked down from his high cross and then Mike paused in the open doorway that led outside.
In the courtyard vegetable garden a figure crouched and planted an upturned furrow of earth with seeds. She moved slowly and deliberately down the rows seeming to take exaggerated care as she placed each seed in a carefully dug hole. It was Mayan corn. In a few months, nourished by the frequent rains, even in this slum earth, it would grow tall and strong. The young woman looked up, her face shielded by the flat hat she wore to help shade skin that was paler than that of her countrymen.
Gabriela smiled at Mike. He waved back. She was doing well, he thought. It had been a long struggle to help, but she was clean of drugs for three months now and off the streets for twice that. Perhaps she would yet fall back into the gangs. But perhaps she would not. It was impossible to tell. You just did what you could to help. To try and fulfill a promise made far away.
This world was the real one, he said to himself. Right here. Right now. He watched Gabriela from the shadows of the church doorway. He was suddenly full of hope that she would make it. He stepped forward out of the darkness and the thought warmed him even more than the sudden light of the bright, shining sun.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WOULD like to thank my agent, Laney Becker at Markson Thoma, for working so hard to make sure The Candidate made it. I owe you one, Laney. I also want to express my deep and heartfelt gratitude to my editor Joseph Pittman at Vantage Point Books, both for taking a chance with the book and for his careful work in making it as good as it can be. Mike Luongo brilliantly copy-edited the final manuscript and made sure my British English prose was thoroughly and correctly Americanized. I would also like to thank the many people who have helped me write about the bewildering but fascinating and inspiring world of American politics. They include Julian Coman, Paul Webster, John Mulholland, Matt Seaton, Shaun Bowler, Larry Haas, Tracy McVeigh, Janine Gibson, Stuart Millar and many others. Thanks also to my parents, Sandra and David Harris, for all their love and support and my brother, Mark. A final word of gratitude to many friends over the years who have engaged in endless political debates with me that have still, somehow, failed to solve the world’s problems. They include but are far from limited to Simon English, Lee Bailey, Burhan Wazir, Vicky Graham, Helen Jones, David Teather, Imogen Wall, Dave Stoller, Lawrence Siegel, Adi Leshko, Andrew Clark, Peter Alexander, Robin McKie, Mark Townsend, Peter Beaumont, Glen Owen, Francesca Gessner, Mike Green, Gary Shannon, Ian King, Hugh Chow, Tom Campbell, Tim, Sheila and Ellen Herbst and all of the Friday night poker guys in New York.