The Coyotes of Carthage

by Steven Wright

  “Tale as old as time.”

  “Never imagined I’d end up here. You know, I was born with Jesus in my heart, and I always knew I’d serve Christ. I used to have big plans. I dreamed of making disciples in China. You know they stone Christians there?”

  He wonders why he would possibly know that.

  “Most folks don’t. Terrible mess. Terrible. I pray for them every day. Send ’em a few dollars every month.” She covers her full mouth. “I even write my congressman once a month.”

  Writing a congressman. That’s quaint.

  “Fourteen years old and I had it all mapped out. I even got a part-time job, saved up to buy these Chinese-language cassettes. I can still recite the Lord’s Prayer in Mandarin and Cantonese.” She takes pride in this accomplishment. “But time passes. I met my Tyler, and after our first pregnancy—that was our first miscarriage—I sorta gave up.”

  He gives a sincere sympathetic nod, thinks to confess that when he was a boy, he aspired to be a kingpin. Partners in crime with Hector. Even once he left juvie, with a second-chance scholarship to college, he studied business, thinking that, one day, he’d create his own criminal empire. The modest ambitions of an eighteen-year-old with a rap sheet.

  “I was that girl in high school. Bride of Christ, the kids called me. I tried to save the students, the teachers, the principal,” she says. “Heck, I’d leave little Post-it notes with Bible verses in the janitor’s closet. I just couldn’t understand why folks wouldn’t embrace Jesus’s love, you know? I mean, it’s like winning the lottery.”

  “You must’ve been popular.”

  “I never got invited to parties.” Her voice fades. “Still don’t.”

  He hears a ripple of shame in her admission, and imagines Chalene, fourteen and dimple-cheeked, in her school hall campaigning for her Lord. He thinks she’d be a great campaigner—adorable, passionate, sincere, and persuasive—so he wonders what exactly went wrong. Maybe there were no South Carolinians left who needed to be saved.

  “Most folks around here are part-time Christians,” she says. “You know the type. Go to church every other Sunday, say grace if they remember. They don’t put Christ at the center of their lives. They never study the Word. They never tithe. Never follow His direction. But I don’t judge.”

  He sees why her Jesus campaign failed. Can’t win votes by blaming voters.

  Chalene steals the last ash cake, and Andre watches her through a new lens. She could triumph on a campaign trail, this pregnant mother of six, wholesome and noble, motivated by a sincere desire to better her community. With the right molding, she could become a superstar. If he asks her to campaign now, she’ll say no, but if he asks her to take a smaller step, perhaps to submit and certify the sixteen hundred signatures, then maybe he could later persuade her to do more.

  Part III

  The Council Vote

  Chapter Twelve

  Ulrich Plantation sits atop a plot of harsh, unpliable earth, but the plantation’s founders—three brothers, horse thieves banished from Bavaria—built a legendary furniture-making operation, producing cabinets and curio desks, exquisite pieces that fetched a handsome price at auctions around the world. The plantation remains the pride of Carthage County and has received such distinctions as the Centurion Award from the Daughters of the Confederacy, which recognized Ulrich Plantation’s “continued dedication to the truthful preservation of our nation’s proud cultural heritage.” The plantation hosts birthday parties and weddings, corporate retreats and field trips, and, for the amusement of tourists and guests, the curators have preserved the sawmill and workshop, stable and barn, chapel and forge. But the grandest preservation remains a marble-pillared mansion surrounded by tall oaks draped with Spanish moss.

  In the master bedroom, Andre regrets letting Brendan talk him into hosting this rally here. Dude, the kid pled, a liberty rally at a plantation, that would be the ultimate in ironic. Anywhere else such a rally would cause a political firestorm. Counterdemonstrations, angry op-eds, black students chanting lyrical slogans. But in Carthage, no one cares.

  Through binoculars, he surveys the vast open meadow where today’s rally is held. In two days, the county council will vote on his liberty initiatives. If the council fails to adopt the three, then six weeks later, the initiatives will appear on the spring ballot. Andre doesn’t expect to win the council vote—PISA has principles: the company will buy an election but dares not bribe a council—but he needs to energize his base, to inspire passionate supporters to spew venom at each member of the county board. Thus, he’s organized this event, the latest in a dozen rallies meant to motivate supporters with free barbecue and live bluegrass.

  The turnout is strong, maybe four hundred, a fair number of whom are men, angry men, angry white men, some of whom wear costumes: colonial minutemen, Confederate officers. One guy’s a Jedi knight. Andre recognizes some regulars, hard-core true believers who want the liberty initiatives to succeed but only as a precursor to a much larger, more radical political revolution.

  Andre spots Brendan standing beside a picnic table on which sit platters of smoked meat, molded gelatin, racks of pies, and Tupperware bowls full of all manner of mayonnaise-based sides. The food, Andre’s learned, is key to outreach. The good people of Carthage prefer a good meal to a good message, and, thus, he provides this feast. He imagines trying to host a successful grassroots rally with only fat-free vegan fare. Carrot sticks. Chickpeas. Homemade hummus and pita chips. Maybe in Boulder or Berkeley or Burlington, Vermont, but south of the Mason-Dixon line, Negro, please. A campaign that offers sides without heart-stopping globs of creamy mayo doesn’t have its finger on the electorate’s irregular pulse.

  Brendan chats up an olive-skinned beauty, a goofball grin across his face. The kid’s got zero game, but that doesn’t slow the belle, who clearly digs Brendan. She taps his wrist, laughs at his joke, strokes his cheek to wipe away flecks of pollen. Yet the kid doesn’t take the hint, which Andre doesn’t completely understand. Part of Andre thinks, Jesus, B, just kiss the girl and be done with it.

  Andre wishes he were down there, on the ground, able to interact with the crowd. In all his years of political consulting, he’s not discovered a substitute for firsthand intel, direct dialogue with voters about their passions and prejudices. Most Americans are eager to share their opinions. All one must do is ask. But Andre, sequestered up here, accepts the reality that a black man at this event would draw unwelcome attention.

  “I brought food.” Chalene sneaks up behind him. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t scare me.”

  “Fixed you a bit of everything.” She sets the packed plate atop a desk, doesn’t care that grease or sauce or runny mayo might stain a two-hundred-year-old antique. She’s nearly seven months pregnant, fingers like Vienna sausages, wrists like a Louisville Slugger. On the edge of the four-poster bed, she kicks off her shoes, sets her swollen feet atop an ottoman. “I should’ve never let you talk me into this.”

  She closes her eyes, releasing a please-notice-me, please-pity-me sigh, and Andre patiently awaits her complaint. Chalene, he’s learned, is a first-rate campaigner, a master of see-me, touch-me, feel-me retail politics. She remembers your sick mama’s name, reminisces about last year’s county fair, swaps embarrassing stories about failed church solos. And yet despite these political gifts, Chalene suffers from a crippling fear of public speaking. Get a group larger than ten or twelve, and she panics. Today’s crowd is her largest. He’s not surprised when she starts in, feigning illness, like a kindergartner trying to skip school. “I’m gonna throw up sick all over the podium.”

  “Brendan forgot to bring the podium.”

  “Now I’m gonna be up there naked.” She removes a rib from his plate, says a blessing before clearing the bone. “This can’t be good for the baby. Stress is poison to the womb. I read that. Stress causes more birth defects than drinking and smoking and crystal meth combined.”

  “What pregnancy b
ooks are you reading?”

  “I had this dream last night. A nightmare. I’m giving one of my speeches and sweat kept stinging my eyes. I was up there blind as Bartimaeus,” she says. “You know insomnia’s bad for the womb. It’s the second leading cause of—”

  “Please stop reading pregnancy books not written by doctors.”

  “Here, pray with me.” She licks her fingers, extends her open hand. “Come on, you know the prayer’s stronger with more people, and hurry up, I gotta pee.”

  “Can’t we go five minutes without you talking about peeing?”

  “I’d rather go five minutes without having to pee.” She flicks her wrist, moves her open hands closer. “Shug, come on, please. It’ll be quick.”

  He hesitates before giving in, like he does each time she asks for his hand. These past weeks, he’s learned that Chalene will pray with just about anyone, and she’ll pray over just about anything. She is constant and steadfast. He’s seen her pray for a successful speech, for a successful rally, for a successful campaign. She’s prayed for him, for Brendan, for her husband and six sons and unborn child, for her pastor and postman, for her neighbors and nurses, for the special-ed students she shuttles between home and school, for the owner of the local bowling alley, who helps look after her kids. For herself, she asks for wisdom and health, for compassion and mercy, for the strength to carry on throughout each day.

  Now, eyes closed, lilt soft, she prays for His guiding hand to bless her speech. She trembles, nerves beyond control, a slight yet familiar quake at her thick wrist. Andre resists the urge to interrupt, to reassure her that she has no need for concern. Yes, for the first time, she’ll deliver a brand-new speech, a complete replacement of the old stump speech that has, thus far, served her well. But he also wants to remind her that she’s rehearsed this new speech in the mirror, before her children, on the school bus. More important, he wants to reassure her that this new speech, which she wrote herself, is pretty damn good. A thoughtful meditation that links American freedom and Jesus Christ. Starts with Galatians, cribs from America’s greatest religious thinkers: Edwards, Bryant, King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

  Her trembling stops, and Chalene ends her prayer, requesting that Christ find His way into each man’s heart, a plea he’s certain is aimed at him. She keeps her head bowed, eyes closed, tightens her grip around his hand. A prickly silence rises between them, interrupted by the abrupt clearing of her throat. He knows what she wants, and he’s tempted to wait her out, to engage in this battle of wills. But, in the end, he decides against picking a fight with his straw man, who right now needs a reassuring friend, not an uncooperative asshole. So, like each time before, he surrenders to her passive-aggressive proselytizing, saying with a quick, reluctant breath, “Amen.”

  * * *

  On the ride home, Andre receives an updated poll.

  The good news: the liberty initiative’s public-awareness campaign has worked. Through direct mail and social media and targeted online ads as well as good old-fashioned word-of-mouth, a staggering nine of ten county residents say they’ve heard about the initiatives, and an impressive seven of ten can name all three. The good news gets better. Among the county’s voting-age population—that is, Carthaginians older than eighteen—the liberty initiatives are decisively popular.

  The first initiative, the Bill of Rights in public buildings, is universally beloved. Women and men, young and old, Baptist and Methodist and Appalachian snake handler, everyone in Carthage worships the Constitution. The third initiative, to reduce Paula Carrothers’s salary, also enjoys broad public support, and, for the first time, the auction of public lands now commands the approval of a majority of Carthage residents. All of which is to say: Andre’s confident that if the election were held today, and each eligible voter cast a ballot, they’d win in a landslide.

  But therein lies the rub.

  The bad news is that not everyone in Carthage will vote. In fact, six weeks from now, the overwhelming majority of eligible voters will avoid the polls. Thus, the firm’s pollsters have also predicted the outcome of an election that includes only likely voters, and these voters, the pollsters conclude, are utterly unimpressed.

  Among likely voters, the posting of the Bill of Rights remains overwhelmingly popular. But the majority of these same voters oppose the auction of public lands, and they’re evenly split on reducing Paula Carrothers’s pay.

  “Um, Dre, I got a question.” Brendan takes the highway exit. “Honestly. Truly. ’Cause I’m curious. I’m just asking.”

  “Is this another black-people question?”

  “Sorta. Does it bother you that some people at the rally were . . . dodgy?”

  “You mean the Jedi?”

  “I’m just asking, ’cause, you know, some guys at the rally were . . . you know.” The kid whispers the accusation: “Racists.”

  A red light stops the Jeep. Beside the road, parked in a lot, a pickup blasts gospel music, bed full of animal pelts. The truck’s owner, a haggard one-eyed trapper, sits atop a crate, reading, his scarred face shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat. His spray-painted sign says: TANNED PELTS. HUMANLY CAPTURED.

  “One guy gave me his card, introduced himself as a congressman in the New Confederate States of America.” Brendan digs into his back pocket, retrieves a flimsy business card with smudged text and bent edges. The kid says, “Guy spent ten minutes explaining how taxes are illegal.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, he said the federal government doesn’t have the power to—”

  “Not that. I meant, if you’re gonna be an elected official in a fictitious government, why be a legislator?” Andre says. “Why not appoint yourself king or emperor or lord protector? North Korea and Iran both have supreme leaders. That’s a title I could get behind.”

  “Dre, I’m serious.”

  “You think this New Confederacy holds elections? If this campaign fails, I may need new clients.”

  “There’s a market that’s easy to corner. Twenty-first-century Confederate politicians,” Brendan says. “But I guarantee they’ll make you work for free . . . and against your will . . . and in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which, by the way, they say wasn’t properly ratified.”

  “Still beats being a graduate student.”

  “How is this funny? This guy is literally, literally, a card-carrying bigot.”

  “That’s just a PR problem. We could fix that.” He stops before confessing that he’s fixed worse. Holocaust deniers. September eleventh truthers. What can Andre say? Politics attracts broken men. “Give the guy a break.”

  “And you covet their support.”

  “B, what do you want from me? A campaign can’t always choose its base.”

  Brendan’s phone vibrates, and Brendan replies to his incoming text, typing away, so immersed that he doesn’t notice the stoplight turn green. A dump truck behind them honks, and Brendan checks his rearview mirror, presses send, then steers the car ahead. The kid says, “You hungry?”

  “Didn’t you eat at the rally?”

  “Too busy working.”

  “Yeah. I saw.”

  “I promise, Dre. It won’t be long.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Andre stretches his arms, jamming his middle finger against the Jeep’s low ceiling, and watches Brendan pace inside the fast-food joint. The kid’s spent the past five minutes patrolling the space beneath a banner that advertises deep-fried cream-cheese-stuffed jalapeños, checking and rechecking his phone, face full of apprehension. The Casa’s nearly empty save preschoolers celebrating a birthday. A fat clown with face and lips painted, sitting in an adjacent booth, nears the end of his cigar, while a young mother in cherry-red curlers plays on her phone. A gap-toothed boy licks a ketchup packet. Another boy picks his nose. The lone girl, a pale, sickly sight, bangs her forehead against the t
able.

  The fat clown extinguishes his stogie, lights another in one smooth, swift motion, head tilted back, rainbow wig crushed against his polka-dotted shoulders. Look at this asshole, smoking feet from a dozen kids, a literal bozo who doesn’t give a damn that, because of him, the birthday boy’s parting gift to his friends might be carcinoma.

  Andre checks his watch—a little past four—brings his thumb to his forefinger, counts the tasks he must complete tonight. A long list that starts with written updates to Mrs. Fitz and PISA, both of whom will have seen the latest poll, both of whom will express frustration with his mediocre progress. So, how should the e-mail start? Dear Mrs. Fitz, It’s my sad duty to acknowledge that I’m fucking up this simple beneath-me campaign. Tonight, he must also approve both radio ads and the remarks Chalene plans to deliver to the county council.

  The list of tasks keeps growing, and a sensation, like a belt, tightens around his chest. His face feels hot and flushed, like there are a thousand pinpricks against his cheeks. One heartbeat, then another pounds inside his ears. In juvie, he trained for moments like these: deep belly breathing, rubbing his own earlobe, repeating a mantra. But all he can think to chant is I’m fucked. I’m fucked. I’m so fucking fucked. Which, of course, doesn’t help. He tells himself that the poll is wrong, though he knows, from deep experience, that doubting a poll is a sure sign of delusion, a rookie’s retort—swear by the polls when the news is good, distrust the poll when the news is bad. He struggles to understand how he could sink eighty grand into these initiatives and, thus far, not persuade most likely voters. He needs an answer soon, because in twenty-four hours, Mrs. Fitz will ask that same question.

  Where the fuck is Brendan? They need to get home. Andre has work to do, and right now, he craves a drink. Why doesn’t the kid ever act with urgency?