Andre worries that, between his poor diet and booze, he’s gaining weight. Already his clothes don’t fit quite right. His entire life, he’s never not been lean, never once worried about his shape. Now he worries his colleagues will make fun. Last year, a junior partner, a marathon runner, developed a tumor in her leg, a cancerous mass that took surgeons six hours to remove. Unable to walk or run, she gained thirty pounds. Tried her best, but she couldn’t shake the weight. Folks around the firm tease behind her back, but to her face, everyone says she wears the weight well.
“Come on, Dre,” Brendan said. “Pick something.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because yesterday you ate all my Cancun Cinnabites,” Brendan says. “This time, I’m not going to share.”
“Do what you want.” Andre’s tablet chimes twice, and his forefinger slides across its screen, picks the app that monitors the progress of each canvasser. Chalene Lee, in the field for five minutes, has already logged ten names. At six dollars per name, she may set a firm record for the most cash earned by one canvasser in a single day. He scans the app’s map feature, sees the exact location of each member of the team. To his relief, all four have deployed to the field. For the past half hour, he’s feared a mutiny, feared that Tyler’s team would think he’s Youth Day’s version of Ebenezer Scrooge. Now, with the team in the field, nothing short of a Youth Day miracle, Andre feels relief. God bless us, every one.
* * *
Carthage County’s only superstore is busier than a mall the day before Christmas. The time’s not yet six thirty, but this early, the parking lot is full, with fathers and sons wearing orange vests over camo, passing through the double doors, shopping bags in hand, boxes of ammo tucked beneath their arms. From this spot, on the fringe of the parking lot, hidden beside an open dumpster, Andre and Brendan have a clear view of Chalene in her jeans and campaign sweatshirt. She’s the lone canvasser not collecting signatures door-to-door. Instead, she’s set up shop here, beside the front door of this bustling superstore, a move that’s proven surprisingly successful, perhaps because passersby pity her, this doughy pregnant woman who begs for signatures outside in the cold.
About Chalene Lee, Andre has yet to make up his mind. To be sure, she’s bright and gracious, with an enviable work ethic, and now, having said her piece, she’s abandoned all complaint about the three-initiative strategy. She’s the best signature collector on Tyler’s team, averages forty names each weekday, scored three times that many last weekend. Andre suspects she could play a larger role in the campaign, but he worries about the inevitable clash, the moment he gives an instruction that conflicts with the tenets of the Good Book. He doesn’t expect to ask Chalene to kill, or to steal, or to make a graven image, but campaigns are a tricky business, and he’d prefer to keep his options open.
“Dre?” Brendan chews a hoecake. “I want to ask a question.”
Andre readies for a fresh wave of campaign-finance-related objections. The kid still struggles with the morality of their vocation. To be fair, Brendan doesn’t bemoan their tactics every day. Indeed, four days have passed since the kid last lent voice to complaint. These days, Brendan’s starting to grasp the political reality, that Americans enjoy lamenting the role of corporate money in politics but that no one cares enough to change the rules. So now the kid’s stuck in this precarious position where he’s asking the next logical question, that is, whether there’s any real point to complaining. The answer to which, of course, is no.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to answer, and if it’s offensive . . . You know what? Never mind,” Brendan says. “I need to get some sleep. Forget I said anything. I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”
Andre sips his Carolina Casa coffee, scalds the roof of his mouth.
“I take it back. I’m going to ask. But, you know, I’m just asking. So please don’t take offense.” Brendan finds a bottled water in a backseat cooler, loosens the cap, hands the bottle to Andre. “Do black people hunt?”
“What?”
“I’ve never heard of black people hunting. I’ve never seen a photo or movie with a black hunter. For that matter, I can’t think of a single black person who’s known for hunting.”
“Can you name a single white person known for hunting?”
“Orion. Teddy Roosevelt. Elmer Fudd,” Brendan says. “I’m not saying . . . it’s not like a racist stereotype. Like black people can’t swim. Or black people don’t pay taxes. Or black people—”
“Maybe you should stop.”
“Perhaps it’s an economics thing. Hunting, not taxes,” Brendan says. “Maybe African Americans view hunting as a luxury. You know. An expensive form of recreation. The guns. The ammo. The licenses. Plus, butchering and keeping the meat. Those aren’t insignificant costs in time, money, labor, especially when you consider the grocer sells cheap ground beef that probably won’t make you sick. But, on the other hand—”
“Why do you always have another hand?”
“This town’s dirt-poor. Youth Day’s an official holiday. They cancel school.”
The kid keeps speculating, something about the fallacy of Giffen goods and the Irish famine, but Andre’s now distracted. Into the neighboring parking space has backed a police SUV, a jet-black paramilitary-style vehicle more appropriate for a war zone than a bucolic county in western South Carolina. From their position, the cops can see straight inside Andre’s Jeep, and though he has broken no law, and though years have passed since he last felt the grip of a policeman’s cuff, the mere proximity of these two white men, dressed in black, feels like a blade at his throat. He runs down each way that these cops might cause trouble. He trusts that Brendan doesn’t keep weed in the Jeep, that papers in the glove box will prove that the rental’s not stolen. But the technology in the back seat—a printer, a scanner, two tablets, and a laptop—all this, he fears, is too flashy for Carthage. Around here, tech savvy might amount to probable cause.
Andre considers his options, resolves that he has but one clear choice. He needs for Brendan to drive away, and he needs for that to happen now without an elaborate academic discussion, without a protest from the rich white kid, whom he considers his friend but who has never—and probably will never—experience a humiliation like a cop’s arbitrary stop-and-frisk.
“Maybe it’s historical. Maybe black Americans, in the Jim Crow days, were forbidden by law from owning guns?” Brendan picks at crumbs in his lap. “Or maybe black people were forbidden from hunting on public land. You think Youth Day was segregated? Dre, you ever hunt?”
He wants to say, Brendan, I’m a former felon, I’m prohibited by law from touching a gun. Instead, he takes a sip of coffee. “Fuck, Brendan.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. I’m tired, I—”
“Not that, jackass,” Andre says. “This coffee is shit. Can we go someplace where I can get a decent cup?”
“You’re such a baby.” Brendan licks his fingers, puts the Jeep in gear. The Jeep coasts through the crowded lot as Andre keeps his eyes on the cops, the Jeep traveling a quick half mile before Andre feels at ease.
Chapter Eight
Youth Day is ending; the sun is setting, and halfway across the county, Tyler Lee and his team wrap up their canvass. Brendan and Andre, each eager to see his own bed, must idle the next hour, and the kid prefers to wait here at the abandoned train depot. The kid likes to see the coyotes and boars and bears that wander around the rails. If he and the kid are lucky, they’ll see the pack of wild dogs that sunbathe on platform four, or the family of mean-ass raccoons that have also made the station their home and with whom the wild dogs are at perpetual war. Until wildlife comes, the kid, on his tablet, perfects websites for fake organizations that have endorsed the liberty initiatives. The Atlanta-based Council of Christian Commerce. The Charleston-based Society for American Freedom. These sock puppets mingle online with Carthage’s small-business owners, offering exciting opportunities, free online promotion and office-supply discou
nts and inclusion inside an award-winning regional business directory. All the small-business owner must do is endorse liberty. E-mail some friends. Add the campaign’s logo to their website.
Brendan double-taps his tablet to load the campaign website, which, like the public perception of the campaign itself, eschews the sophisticated or flashy. The home page is simple: a nice tight picture of Tyler, Chalene, all six sons, each dressed in their Sunday best. The family stands before Carthage County Junior High, the brick-and-mortar public school that the county’s elite abandoned decades ago to spite a federal court desegregation order.
The site sees slow yet steady traffic, most of which, the IP addresses suggest, originates outside South Carolina. The website’s Contact Us page allows visitors to submit a private message to Tyler, but, in reality, it’s read by Brendan, who sends a form response. Most messages are spam: pledges of better sex or offers of assistance by political amateurs. The site also receives a steady flow of rants from political fanatics, angry men—always angry, always men—who write long, meandering manifestos rooted in fantasy, misinformation, paranoia, and fear.
Message review is customarily a tedious task assigned to the team’s most unpopular intern, but Andre knows the kid derives a voyeuristic pleasure from reading the histrionics. By a six-to-one ratio, these fanatics support the liberty initiatives, with the lone dissenters, too often honest-to-God anarchists, adamant that Carthage should adopt natural law.
“‘Slaughter them all.’” Brendan reads today’s first message. “‘Patriots will raise a twelve-gauge against those liars on the Supreme Court, those usurpers at the UN, and the Jews that run the Federal Preserve. People will not tolerate oppression from Washington overlords.’”
“We should warn the Jewish preservers.”
“The message is signed Sherman Camp, DDS,” Brendan says. “How can this guy call himself a patriot?”
“Love your country, loathe your government. What could be more American than that?”
“Think he’s a real dentist?”
“If you’re going to lie, why would you claim dentistry?” Andre says. “In your entire life, have you ever heard anyone say, That guy’s a dentist, so he must know what he’s talking about?”
Andre’s surprised by the lack of local reaction. He would expect praise or protest in the local paper, perhaps a letter to the editor or column or editorial, but Carthage County, thus far, has ignored his effort. Interest in the initiatives should be low at this stage, but in his experience, each town, no matter the size, has a community of vocal do-gooders obsessed with local government. By now, the campaign should’ve captured their attention.
Brendan reads another message. “‘The radical progressive experiment must end. It makes us soft, and we cannot afford it. Cut government. Cut waste. Cut all unconstitutional institutions. Keep only what’s necessary to preserve order and protect property. Let individuals choose the services they want.’”
Andre laughs. “So does that mean I could buy my own local police force?”
“Why not?” Brendan says. “You’re already buying your own local election.”
“Sure, make jokes, but right up until this jackass’s house burns down, he’ll complain at every city council meeting about the waste of funding a firehouse,” Andre says. “But let his house catch fire, I’ll bet you, the asshole will shame the entire city for having too few firemen. You sure there’s no local message?”
Andre thinks, perhaps, folks don’t take the campaign seriously. After all, who in Carthage would ever expect Tyler Lee, of all people, to collect fifteen hundred signatures in ten days? Tyler’s a high school dropout who’s worked mostly backbreaking, bone-wearying jobs. He’s the last person one might peg to start a political revolution.
“You don’t feel a little bad about the initiatives?” Brendan says. “People around here love hunting. It’s an essential part of the culture and the economy. You’re asking them to support an initiative that’s against their own interest.”
Self-interest. Desperate people are terrible at assessing their own self-interest. Last night, Andre navigated the website on which insurers upload Hector’s medical records. Hector, this past week, attended three appointments with his physical therapist. The physical therapist’s notes caught Andre’s eye: Patient’s wife seeks recommendation on alternative therapies. Particularly electroshock. Claims to have a friend who saw this cure ALS.
He wasn’t surprised. Vera has never trusted modern medicine, is prone to embrace random ghetto quackery over a doctor’s learned judgment. Two days ago, during their most recent conversation, she shared another therapy idea, one she swore she’d researched extensively. Gold-tipped acupuncture and unpasteurized milk. She quoted straight from a website that offered, as a part of an annual subscription, a weekly newsletter entitled Medical Marvels That White-Owned Multinationals Don’t Want Black Folks to Know.
“Self-interest is never simple.” Andre’s phone vibrates against his hip. “Your grandmother’s a millionaire a couple times over, and she’s still pissed at Reagan for cutting her taxes.”
He checks his phone. He’s missed a text from Tyler, who says he’s running an hour late. The message, complete with three exclamation points and a smiley face, is presumably childish payback for this morning’s tardiness. Andre grabs his tablet. “Bet his lazy ass didn’t even meet his daily quota.”
“I don’t mean to start a fight, but maybe if you were nicer . . .”
“To Tyler?”
“I’m just saying the ancient Greeks had this concept of thymos,” Brendan says. “It’s the fundamental human desire to feel respected and recognized. Everyone wants their opinions taken seriously. Everyone wants to feel valued.”
Andre studies today’s canvass results, concludes that each signature collector has pulled his or her own weight—everyone, that is, except for Tyler. Today Tyler’s collected a total of twenty-four names, nowhere near the fifty-five collected by each of the two other canvassers who went door-to-door, nowhere near Chalene, who, stationed outside the superstore, collected a canvass high of one hundred fifty-three.
* * *
The television broadcasts Paula Carrothers, the bone-thin six-foot-tall administratrix with razor-sharp cheeks and thick tortoiseshell glasses. She testifies before the county council, the topic: preparations for the biennial reenactment of the Battle of Silver Creek. She suggests, in response to a recent trend of post-reenactment brawls, that the county council allocate extra funds for security, for an ambulance, for overtime to pay the firefighters who, last time, spent half the night extinguishing piles of soiled Union uniforms drenched in diesel and set ablaze. The council agrees with a brief, unanimous voice vote, and with the bang of a gavel, Paula Carrothers has her money.
Andre presses pause, syncs his tablet with the television. This footage, now three years old, will make excellent film, yet another clip in a series in which the county council showers their precious county manager with bundles of cash. He plans to string these five-second clips together to make a digital ad, a montage of Carrothers requesting extraordinary sums. Fifty thousand dollars here, twenty-five thousand dollars there. Perhaps he’ll have a little fun, maybe auto-tune each request, maybe mix in the sound effect of a scratched record over the cha-ching of a cash register. The size and frequency of the funding, he hopes, will leave voters appalled that their elected leaders handle their hard-earned tax dollars with so little care.
By now, he’s reviewed archived footage from Paula Carrothers’s first seven years in office, has three more years to go. Thus far, he’s been impressed. In her public testimony, Carrothers is consistently thoughtful, framing each issue in terms of how best to serve her community, a polished and considerate public servant if ever he’s seen one. She’s never without a flag pin, and at the start of each council meeting, when all rise to say the pledge of allegiance, Paula Carrothers pledges a little louder than the rest.
Andre advances the video, starts to study the next co
unty council meeting, this one, like all the others, opened with a guest-led prayer. The newly crowned Miss Carthage County, a twenty-year-old redhead wearing too much blush, reads from inside her bejeweled journal, hands shaking, voice aquiver. She asks the good Lord to watch over these proceedings, to bless the five members of the council with wisdom and courage, but clearly Miss Carthage County is in way over her head. She mumbles, breathes heavily into the mic, trips over words longer than two syllables. The rambling prayer, which feels as though it will never end, is difficult to watch, and Andre, who, like the members of the council, has begun to cringe, wonders what thoughts pass through Paula Carrothers’s head. The county manager has a bachelor’s degree in finance and public administration, earned a scholarship to graduate with honors from the nation’s finest women’s college, and now, here she is, forced to suffer the stuttering prayer of a svelte debutante wearing a tiara and a sash.
The beauty queen’s rambling becomes unbearable, and Andre removes his earphones. The attic, cold and damp, has the faint smell of burnt plastic—has another surge protector failed?—and a soft hiss remains unexplained. Brendan sits at his L-shaped desk, his back to the flat-screen on which Paula Carrothers appears. The kid’s hunkered down with a six-pack of energy drinks and a bag of pumpkin seeds. He’s reviewing signatures to confirm that each signatory is, indeed, eligible to endorse the petition. If the signatory is ineligible, the campaign will still submit the name to the county—never know, maybe the clerk won’t catch the mistake—but Andre doesn’t include these problematic names in his internal tally, which, today, surpassed sixteen hundred, more than needed to appear on the ballot, but far less than required to impress Mrs. Fitz.
His phone rings. It’s Vera. He’s not sure he can persuade her against alternative therapies, but he can, perhaps, buy some time. Maybe he should channel the ancient Greeks, pretend that Vera’s proposal deserves equal consideration. But first, he’ll say, he wants to talk face-to-face, maybe ask questions of the friend of a friend who recommended electroshock. Anything to ensure that Vera won’t strap his brother to a DieHard until after Andre makes his case. Maybe he’ll take the shuttle to DC next weekend. The campaign has plenty of money, but he doesn’t have nearly enough time.
The Coyotes of Carthage Page 9