The Coyotes of Carthage

by Steven Wright

  “Our latest polls suggest we’re doing well with white men with no college,” Andre says. “They make up a sizable portion of the electorate, and we’re winning that demographic about two to one. But they’re unreliable as voters. Especially the unemployed ones. Especially in local elections. They simply don’t show to vote.”

  “Good ol’ boys,” Victoria scoffs. “They’ll spend an hour harassing an innocent woman but not a minute to cast a ballot.”

  “We’re gonna need women. And, right now, we’re polling a little behind with them,” Andre says. “We have an opportunity to make real gains with class-conscious women, mostly white women with some education and white women with relatively higher incomes.”

  “Good. Good. I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad we agree.” Victoria is relieved. “It’s in everyone’s interests to change the campaign’s tone. I know we haven’t much time. But we can embrace a less misogynist, less divisive, less deplorable message. Oh, thank you, Mr. Ross, I knew you’d understand. Paula can’t handle—I can’t handle—ten more days of this.”

  Victoria misunderstands. In fact, she’s missed the entire fucking point. But her husband hasn’t. Duke’s face is a mask of concentration, distant yet intense, as though he’s playing out each possible scenario, calculating next steps and probabilities, and only once this exercise is done does Duke return to them, with a slight reluctant nod to authorize Andre to do what must be done.

  “What? If you two have something to add,” Victoria says, “I wish you would.”

  “The Lees need to keep our base energized. We can’t change their message. In the final days, we need to hammer home our message.” Andre dives in. “But we also need new voices to legitimize our cause. You wouldn’t have to do much. Record a robocall. Write an op-ed. Obviously, you don’t have to speak against your friend, you’d only have to endorse—”

  Victoria raises her hand, brings it down fast and hard against his face. He doesn’t have time to react, and the slap spins his head, echoes throughout the sunroom. Everyone, especially Victoria, is surprised. She clearly did not intend this sudden burst of violence.

  She chokes back rage and grief and frustration until, at last, she gives way, an avalanche of emotion, a loud mournful cry that, in his entire life, he’s heard only behind bars. He recognizes it as the same cry made by a frightened thirteen-year-old on his first night in juvie, once his trial is over and all that remains is to serve his sentence. It is a cry without dignity or shame. It is a cry of hopelessness and regret. It is the cry of someone who doesn’t quite understand how, of all places, she’s ended up here.

  Andre casts a stunned sideways glance toward Duke, wonders whether he should apologize or press his case. The damage to Paula Carrothers is done—an endorsement will make Paula’s life neither better nor worse. Trust him. The crazies will be crazy no matter what is said. That is the nature of crazy. But an endorsement from the likes of Victoria Boshears, that precious and prized aristocratic endorsement, that could be the tonic that legitimizes this campaign. He decides to pursue both—a quick yet sincere apology and a sharper, more sensitive explanation. Logic and reason, he’ll insist, must prevail. But before he speaks, Duke rises, says, “Marie. Please show Mr. Ross the door.”

  * * *

  Hector once teased Little Brother that he couldn’t take a punch—Dre, why you always crying, embarrassing me, whining like a punk, like a bitch, like a punk-ass bitch—but, to be fair, those punches, back in the day, were dead serious, not the whiplash smack of a middle-aged diva but the jaw-splitting blow of a strung-out junkie desperate for a fix.

  Andre wonders whether this stinging sensation in his face is sincere or whether he’s experiencing a phantom pain. He wishes he could think about anything else. But he can’t change his thoughts. All day he’s tried. Calm, soothing breaths; cold, stiff drinks; hours of shitty TV. Nothing distracts or permits him to forget. He regrets that, earlier today, he canceled his entire schedule, spent all day here alone, sitting on his stoop, sulking, humiliated.

  He wishes he had a phone. He’d call Victoria up, cuss her ass out. Instead, he opens his laptop, starts to type a letter written in Victoria’s name—mild, nothing inflammatory, the call to action he would’ve proposed she sign. Our governments—federal, state, and local—have fallen short of their promise to preserve our precious liberty. He likes the alliteration; it lends a touch of class. Our leaders are corrupt, in service to only themselves. No one speaks for the people or the Constitution. Maybe he’ll post the letter online and forward it to supporters. A banner subject line: Victoria Boshears joins the fight for women’s liberty! Tell your friends!!! He doesn’t need her permission. In fact, fuck Victoria and fuck her permission. What can she do? Write a letter to the editor? Won’t get published. Demand an official retraction? He’ll ignore it. Hire a lawyer and file suit? Good luck getting relief from the South Carolina courts.

  If Victoria’s smart—and, of course, she is—once she learns about this endorsement, she’ll shut her damn mouth. She must know that Andre’s preserved months of e-mails and texts and voicemails, her forlorn late-night pleas in search of hope. Please, Mr. Ross, assure me that the campaign will win. Be a shame if those e-mails went public, or, worse, if someone published the unsolicited e-mails from her husband, each over-the-top, buffoonish, desperate for someone to take him seriously. Those e-mails, nasty fucking e-mails that are nothing but betrayals, every confidence that Paula shared with Victoria and that Victoria shared with Duke. In painstaking detail, he’s listed each of her failures and faults, created a color-coded spreadsheet: red for failed lovers; blue for failed public policies; yellow for personal imperfections like the eating disorder she developed, yet overcame, in college. Her father, white trash if ever there was, used to beat her and her little sister. That’s why her mother left. Maybe you could use that. Duke preserves Paula’s traumas like one might collect stamps, coveting the opportunity to enlarge his collection, eager to share each collectible with his friends, as though to say, Look what I have for you to see.

  A pity that Paula ever trusted Victoria Boshears. A pity that Paula hasn’t moved somewhere else. The truth is that this election might be good for the county manager. Maybe then she can abandon this ungrateful rattrap, move someplace where people appreciate her. A rationalization, he concedes, but a rationalization that’s rooted in a rich soil of hard truth.

  He resents that Victoria blames the campaign for Paula’s troubles. It’s not his fault that Carthage’s culture is one of discord and dissatisfaction. The rage and the mistrust and the sexism and racism and homophobia and anti-Semitism each existed long before he came to town. Read the local newspaper. Look at the federal statistics. Three in five men underemployed, opiates more popular than vitamins, the median household income among the lowest in the nation. Hell, the male life expectancy in Bangladesh is higher than the male life expectancy in Carthage. He chose neither the audience nor the theater; he merely produced the show.

  He types the final line of Victoria’s endorsement: Through love of Christ and country, we will take Carthage back. On Election Day: cast your vote for liberty. He recognizes that he’s angry, that he’s more than a little drunk, and that, by the light of day, he wouldn’t think half these thoughts, but this move feels right.

  The click of a button, and he posts the endorsement on the campaign website, sending copies to media and supporters, an act that doesn’t remove the sting from his face. Yet sending the endorsement feels good. This endorsement is a bright beacon of self-affirmation, a sorely needed confirmation that he hasn’t lost his touch, that he remains resilient and ruthless, and that, above all else, he is not, and never will be, anyone’s punk-ass bitch.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In his backyard, beyond T-shirts pinned against a line, lies a small shed that Tyler purchased, some twenty years ago, on credit, a clearance-sale markdown, hail dented and sunburned. Chalene, hungry and ambitious, has commandeered the shed, turned the space into her ow
n private recording studio, where, in the past two weeks, she’s planted the seeds of an empire. She records a daily podcast focusing on Christian life: child rearing, scripture reading, Satan resisting, and disciple recruiting. At times, her message is playful and light, at others, devastatingly honest, sharing intense, intimate struggles with remarkable candor: miscarriages, debt, depression, and marital discord. Andre doesn’t enjoy podcasts—such shows are the rants of antisocial narcissists—but Chalene’s voice is pleasant, her narrative compelling.

  Now Andre waits inside this shed. Microphones, mixer, digital recorder, and camera. An entire state-of-the-art studio purchased with campaign funds. Today is Sunday, and Chalene, who still wears her church clothes, is preoccupied at her sound mixer. She is a toddler playing with a busy box, twisting dials, thumping buttons, sliding knobs, amazed by the flashing lights and her own ability to create sound. Around her neck hang headphones, expensive and mahogany, that he swears she’s never actually brought to her ears.

  “Did you hear?” She sets down the headset, and he assumes that she means Victoria Boshears. “Someone threw a rock through Paula Carrothers’s bedroom window. Middle of last night. Shattered glass everywhere.”

  “She hurt?”

  “I didn’t ask.” Chalene pauses to reflect. “Probably should’ve. Lord forgive me. Someone would’ve said something if she’d gotten hurt. Right?”

  He hesitates to ask more questions. Knowledge can be a liability.

  “The police are investigating.” She pushes back against her chair, wraps her arm around her belly. “You think they’ll catch whoever done it?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  If this were any other campaign, he might issue a bullshit press release. A wink, a nod. We reject and denounce all forms of violence. Ours is a battle of ideas. We wish Paula Carrothers well. But the rules here are different, the public anger an asset—don’t cool the kettle, feed the flame—and he wonders whether he should make light of the offense. Maybe Andre could purchase a box of smooth stones. Maybe, at the next get-out-the-vote rally, he could present the stones, gifts to supporters, each stone bearing a picture of Paula and inscribed with Rock the Vote! Deplorable for sure, but a solid joke his base will love. He’s patting his pocket, searching for his phone, which he realizes isn’t there, when a thought gives him pause. What if Victoria is right? What if the campaign has gotten out of control?

  “I was thinking,” Chalene says. “Soon I’ll have enough content to start my own channel. I’ve been thinking about it. Prayed over it. And I think I’ve got a name. The Carthaginian Christian. What do you think? You think it’s terrible. Go ahead. Say it. Make your ha-has.”

  He does hate it, though he keeps the judgment to himself.

  “You’re not wrong,” she says. “But I want something simple. Don’t discourage me. I’m fragile. We don’t need to decide today. But I want to launch right after the election. The day after, if we can. I don’t want to lose our momentum.”

  “Have you seen my phone? I think I left it here the other night.”

  “When are you going back to DC? If you need a place to stay, you can stay here. After that, I can send you things through e-mail. Have you ever filed a trademark application?”

  He doesn’t have the heart to tell her: Chalene, dear, we are not friends. Clients occasionally misinterpret the relationship forged on the campaign trail. Consultants and clients have, after all, fought together like soldiers in a foxhole, side by side, sometimes for years. For amateurs, the presumption of a more permanent relationship is an easy mistake to make. But the morning following the election, he’ll board a plane and never see her again. Chalene is not repeat business. She will not run for reelection in six years. She will not move through the ranks of South Carolina politics. She will never lead a multinational conglomerate that seeks to organize yet another clandestine grassroots dark-money campaign.

  “Oh goodness.” Her hand covers her mouth. “You’re just gonna leave us, aren’t you? We’re mules to you. Good to do your work. Are you just gonna ghost us? Ignore my calls? Delete my e-mails?”

  He is stunned. She’s read his mind.

  “It’s my fault. Really it is,” she says. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have assumed. I thought you and me and my Tyler, we make a good team. I know I shouldn’t have assumed. You have your own life. I don’t know why I thought different. Damn it, Dre. Sometimes you make me feel so stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid. I don’t believe that. I swear.”

  She turns her face, focuses her concentration on the shed’s round window onto a sunless sky and a parched field that seems to stretch toward the edge of the world. At first, she looks hopeless and brokenhearted, as though his betrayal has wounded her faith. He expects her to cry because she always cries: cries when she’s happy, cries when she’s sad, cries when she sees evidence that God has made a world with equal parts passion and pain. But when she turns to face him, she hasn’t a tear in her eye. All she has is an ironclad resolve that he would’ve never guessed rests deep inside her. She rises, draws in breath, and, with a hardness that he has never heard in anyone’s voice, says, “The Lord is my sword and shield. I will not perish in battle.”

  The pause is long and the silence uncomfortable.

  Chalene and Andre stare awkwardly at one another, and he cannot fathom what will happen next. He’s a little afraid, a little excited. For the second time in two days, will a white woman slap him? In this moment, he realizes a new truth: Chalene didn’t fully know who he was, and he didn’t fully know her either. He feels as though they are meeting anew, and he wonders whether this introduction has brought them closer.

  “Morning’s almost over.” Her face goes smooth. “I should fix something to eat.”

  In her kitchen, she makes fried-egg sandwiches: buttered bread, mayo, three kinds of cheese. The conversation is strained yet polite. Full of information that they both already know: upcoming campaign rallies, volunteers who knock on doors, the calls her team should make tonight. The two strive to avoid a lull. Neither wants to repeat the awkwardness from the shed, and, for this reason, Andre considers sharing the tale of Victoria’s endorsement. He doesn’t want to share the whole truth, worries Chalene will, yet again, see right through him, as Tyler stumbles, shirtless, half-asleep, into the kitchen to kiss his wife.

  Chalene’s quick to report the news about Paula Carrothers: the rock, the window, I don’t know whether she’s okay. Should we call someone to ask? Tyler folds his arms, bows his head, a stance that, in any other man, might be mistaken for deep contemplation. For a moment, Andre wonders whether Tyler will confess that he broke the window. Improbable but not impossible. A rock through Paula’s window is the kind of thing Tyler might do. A rock through a woman’s window is the kind of man Tyler is. Instead, Tyler wags his finger, says, “I wager she threw that rock herself. Betcha she broke her own GD window.”

  “No.” Chalene’s hand catches the cross around her neck. “You think?”

  “I been talkin’ to Weston Martin,” Tyler says. “Weston’s brother and her were in the same high school class. Says that she was a drama queen even back then. That she always played for attention. You know. Pretend like she was hurt to get out of PE. Limpin’. Cryin’. Stuff like that. Couldn’t get boys to notice her any other way. She once came to school wearing a cast. You believe that?”

  No. Andre does not believe that she wore a cast to avoid high school gym. Nor does he believe that, last night, she smashed her own window. Moreover, Andre resents that, for Tyler, communal hearsay and forty-year-old anecdotes pass for fact. Do you believe everything you hear? Tyler refuses to read a newspaper, or a magazine, or a book—haven’t got time, he says, don’t trust the media. Instead, Tyler receives all his information, on which he makes important life decisions, from a small circle of friends and neighbors, each of whom is as lost as he.

  “I knew that kind of girl in school,” Chalene says. “Needs Jesus in her life.�
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  “Everyone knew she’s fake. Weston says even the teachers called out her BS.”

  “The more I learn about her . . .” Chalene shakes her head. “Think it’ll work?”

  “People know her game, but some people are dumb. Fool me once, shame on me, you know?” Tyler says. “But this is a good sign, yeah? Shows she’s worried. Ain’t that right, Dre?”

  Andre veils his eyes, a precaution against Chalene’s reading his thoughts. He can’t risk his team knowing that for Tyler, he feels nothing but contempt, and that for Paula Carrothers, his heart has become a reservoir of pity. With a lift of his shoulder—Who knows with her—he provides the gesture that satisfies both husband and wife. Now the matter is settled: Paula Carrothers broke her own window. Everyone in town will soon know.

  * * *

  Andre. Tyler. Chalene. The three stand hunched over the kitchen table, studying a large county map like four-star generals weighing competing strategies ahead of a great battle. Instead of miniature tanks or infantrymen, the three have placed bottle caps across the map, one atop each of the county’s twelve senior-citizen centers: six residential, six adult daycares.

  South Carolina doesn’t offer universal early voting. Instead the law permits certain voters, with certain excuses, to cast their ballots in person before Election Day. College students, service members, patients with scheduled surgeries—voters who know that they won’t be available on Election Day. But the law also creates a blanket exception for senior citizens, anyone older than sixty-five, and these older voters are essential to this campaign’s success. These seniors represent roughly 12 percent of Carthage County’s total voting-age population, but in the most recent local election, they constituted nearly 35 percent of all voters. This fact really shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, who else has time on a Tuesday afternoon to visit a polling place and cast a ballot for county comptroller? Housewives, the chronically unemployed, and the elderly, the holy triad that make up the liberty initiative’s base.