by Paul Cwalina
Just before the priest started, Cindy arrived and stood next to me. She was wearing a bright red skirt, white blouse, red jacket that matched her skirt and red, high-heeled shoes. With a red, wide brimmed hat matching her lipstick, she stood in stark contrast to the muted grays and blacks surrounding the casket and grave. She was also the only person there not sweating or fanning herself.
The priest began the service and was just a minute or two into it, when Cindy started giggling. “What a pathetic man,” she said softly to me. “I wasn’t even fully undressed when his little heart, all wrapped in fat, seized up. Then his dry, black lungs couldn’t get him any air. He looked at me as he grabbed his chest and gasped for air and his eyes were pleading with me to help him. I wasn’t there for help. I was there for pleasure, you know? Still, there he was reaching for me with all that fear in his eyes. Then he died. He looked so funny because he died with his eyes open. They all look funny when they die that way. They all look surprised or full of fear, like they saw something or realized something in their final moments.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You are one sick individual. Stay away from me,” I said, truly disgusted.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m only as sick as you are,” she said.
“Don’t think for one second that you know me. Who do you think you are?”
“Who am I?” she asked. “How could you even ask such a question? We’ve known each other since you were born.” Everything around us was slowly turning into a blur. The trees, the people, and the ground were becoming nearly indistinguishable from one another. All I could see in sharp focus was Cindy. Then, while placing her hand on my shoulder and slowly circling me, she softly and deliberately continued, “Who am I? I’m every pack of baseball cards you stole from a store when you were a little boy. Remember that girl in college who passed out drunk at that fraternity party? I was there when you took advantage of her. I was with you when you drove her to the abortion clinic a couple months later to kill off that little problem and make the evidence of your crime disappear. I was every drink, every lie, and every innuendo you poured into a woman to lead her into your bed. On election night and every time you sat behind the mayor’s desk, I was that voice inside you telling you that you were invincible. I was every cocky smile in your mirror. I was every punch that prison guard threw to kill that drunk driver and satisfy your thirst for vengeance. I was the anger and the pride that wrapped your hand around Sarah’s throat. I was the voice inside you that convinced you that you could always do better than the woman you had. I was your indifference to Chelsea,” she said, now facing me. “Oh, you know exactly who I am. And now I’m going to be pleasure like you’ve never known. Come with me. I hired a limousine today. We have the back of it all to ourselves. Nobody will see and nobody will know.”
I couldn’t help but stare into her eyes and try to recover from the body blows she leveled at my conscience and how she knew all of those things from my past. I smiled at her and put my arm around her. She wrapped her arms around me and we walked to the limousine. I opened the door for her. She turned to face me and tried to pull me in for a kiss, but I stopped her. “Wait until we’re inside,” I said.
“I knew you’d come around. You all do,” she said. She seductively smirked and bent into the car. When I saw her legs clear the threshold of the door, I slammed the door shut and patted my hand hard against the car to let the driver know to start driving away. As fast as I could, I got back to my car and drove to the airport. My flight wasn’t scheduled to leave for another six hours, but I preferred to sit in an airport and have all of its security sitting between me and Cindy. I was shaken by everything Cindy said. I never felt so unclean in my entire life. I couldn’t escape the feeling. I couldn’t get home fast enough.
I need to get back to Jennifer.
When I arrived home, I wrapped my arms around Jennifer and held her like I’d never held her before that moment. I wanted to feel her goodness and absorb it. I wanted her to take away the overwhelming sense of shame I was feeling. She was a bit taken aback by the affection, but didn’t question me.
On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, Jennifer caught me off guard when she asked if I would be accompanying her to church that morning. I couldn’t come up with an excuse fast enough for why I couldn’t go, so there I was driving us to her church for Sunday service.
It was the standard service with readings, prayer and hymns and I assumed my standard stance throughout, which included staring out the window.
The pastor then assumed the pulpit and began his sermon. “Brothers and sisters, please open your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter nineteen. We are taking a break today from our study of the book of Isaiah, but we will resume that study next week. So, again, the book of John, chapter nineteen. I will be reading verses twelve through fifteen.
‘From then on, Pilate tried to release Him, but the Jewish leaders cried out saying, ‘If you let this man go, you are not Caesar’s friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar!’ When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgement seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now, it was preparation day of the Passover and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, ‘Behold your king.’ But they cried, ‘Away with him!’ ‘Crucify him!’ Pilate said to them ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ The chief priests answered,‘We have no king but Caesar.’
As he closed his Bible, the pastor repeated the last line of the reading, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he continued, “Brothers and sisters, let me ask you a question. How much time do you spend talking about, arguing about, and Facebooking about politics?”
At hearing this, I turned my head sharply toward the pastor. I turned my body away from the window and inward toward the church. Jennifer noticed and wrote on the back of the program, ‘Oh, so now you’re going to pay attention?’ I smiled, pointed toward the pastor, and whispered, “Listen!” She smiled a wide smile and playfully curled her fist.
“We are at the doorstep of what is often called the silly season. It’s the last part of a political campaign, a campaign which I’m sure all of you think has gone on forever. With all of the television ads we have seen and will continue to see, the radio ads we’ve heard and will continue to hear, the bumper stickers, the yard signs, and, of course, all of those Facebook memes and posts and all of those Twitter tweets. Did I say that right?” he said to mild laughter from the congregation. “You will be made to believe that nothing else matters but this election. And isn’t it always the most important election of our time according to every candidate? You may be blinded to what really counts and what really matters if you aren’t careful. The Pharisees were blinded, were they not? They were blinded by their pride and positions, as well as their desire to preserve their lifestyle. So consumed were they by their positions and their fear of Caesar that they refused to recognize the Messiah that they spent their Sabbath days preaching would come.
“Pilate, too, is consumed with fear of Caesar, is he not? The Pharisees play on this fear that Pilate harbors inside of himself. ‘You are no friend of Caesar,’ they said to him. They use it to goad him into sending Jesus off to be crucified. It was all about Caesar, was it not?
“Examine yourselves today. It’s still all about Caesar, isn’t it? Today, Caesar goes by a different name — whether he ends up being named Rick Roman or John Peters this time, but it’s still Caesar. It’s still earthly power and force that is feared and revered to the extreme today. And that’s the way they want it.
“Who are ‘they’? It’s the candidates, sure, but it’s not just them and the media that want to keep you distracted. There are hundreds of people behind the scenes of political campaigns that want to do the same to you. They are the political consultants, the speechwriters, and the rich and powerful who open up their back accounts to pay for all of those television and radio ads. They exist to pull your strings and make you dance like puppets, and scream
at each other using their words. All of these people are just like the Pharisees, hoping to trade political support for positions afterwards, to divide the spoils of victory among themselves. They call these people kingmakers. Whether they realize it or not, their goal is to distract you from the truth. Not just truth, but the Truth with a capital T.”
The pastor went on for a long time, citing other verses in the Bible to emphasize the point that people get too caught up in politics and other pursuits deemed trivial compared to life itself and the possibility of life eternal. ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s’ and something about ‘lesser magistrates’ were two of the verses that stuck out for me. The pastor emphasized that in the former verse Jesus was talking about much more than just coins and taxes.
He finally concluded his sermon by saying, “Brothers and sisters, by all means, research the candidates and vote for whichever one you deem worthy of your vote. But let us, as Christians, never forget nor allow anyone to cloud the truth that there is but one true king, and that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And there is only one true kingmaker and that is the Creator of the universe and author of our salvation, God the Father.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
We started the last two months of the campaign in the enviable position of leading Peters in national polls by as much as six points. State by state, though, the race was much closer. September was spent jetting Rick to as many states as possible, delivering his stump speech in as many factories, fire halls, and school auditoriums that would have him. In Ed’s absence, I became the point man for all messaging, but I did little to change the course which we set ourselves back in the primaries. It was a winning strategy then, and still proving a winning one in the general election.
Peters was countering speech for speech, visiting as many states as possible that they felt were in play. He was desperately trying to get the national conversation centered on economic issues, speaking in direct terms and with specifics on a far-reaching plan for tax reform. It drew the all the usual criticism from the predictable source, but he was relentless in not bowing to pressure to be less policy-driven and to be more “folksy”, as one news magazine put it.
Meanwhile, I was committing more of my free time to my notepad and the writing I felt driven to commit to paper. From paper, it made it into my hard drive until, by the end of the month, I had what I felt was a finished product. What that product was, though, remained a mystery. It was most likely unpublishable as anything more than an opinion piece or essay. Regardless, I felt like completing it was non-negotiable and that it was something I was simply compelled to complete. It made it back to paper again when I printed it out. I still had no idea what I had, but I knew I wouldn’t rest until it was transposed from my mind to the keyboard and paper. When I finally completed it, it felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders and with all that I had to juggle in the last days of the campaign, from my mind, as well.
When September gave way to October, the race was coming into focus and I couldn’t help but smile when I looked at the map. Forty-seven of the states were already decided. In each of those, one candidate had a constant lead significantly outside of the margin of error. There were only three left in play. Just as Ed told us back in August, those states were North Carolina, Ohio and New Jersey. The good news for us, though, was that the electoral map showed that we had two hundred fifty seven electoral votes wrapped up to Peters’ two hundred thirty. That meant that all we had to do was win one of the remaining states to win the election and it didn’t matter which one. Each one by itself would hand us the two-hundred-seventy votes necessary along with the White House keys.
With three weeks remaining before election day, we made the decision to focus all of our efforts on North Carolina. A victory there would give us exactly the number we needed. We cared about victory, not the margin of it. We saw both Ohio and New Jersey as too expensive, too close to Peters’ home state, and too susceptible to the Northeast bias against a Southwestern candidate which we’d been fighting since the primaries. We bought every single second of available commercial air time on both television and radio, as well as every available inch of print ad space. We cancelled all of Rick’s appearances outside of North Carolina and practically made him a resident of the state. For the remaining weeks of the campaign we carpet-bombed the Tar Heel state with the ‘women’s champion’ message.
It was around this time that Jennifer came into the living room, carrying a few sheets of paper. I knew right away it was a printout of that project I had been writing. Again, I had left a copy on the table. Remembering last time, I flinched, thinking she was going to fling them at me like she did back in August. Instead, she simply asked me, “What is this?”
“I’m not really sure. One day a few months ago I just started writing things down as they came to me. I don’t know why and I don’t know where it came from. It was just kind of thoughts on some of the things that were happening around me.”
“Sweetheart, this is beautiful,” she said genuinely.
“It is?” I asked in disbelief.
She looked at me “This is what you should be writing. This is wonderful and thought-provoking.”
“Yeah? You think so?”
“Absolutely. I couldn’t put it down.”
I took the sheets from her and read it again. “Thanks, but what good is it, really? Nobody’s going to pay me to write that.”
“Well, I don’t know how publishing works, but maybe if you write a few of them you can get a column in a newspaper or something. Create your own blog.”
I smiled. “I don’t know, but thank you. Just hearing that from you feels amazing.”
“Well, whatever you want, but those words should be read and heard,” she said and returned to the kitchen. “Can I show it to a friend?”
“Um…yeah, I guess.”
A week later, we received word that Governor Peters’ campaign bought a half-hour of primetime television for the Tuesday night one week from election day to deliver a speech to the nation. The announcement was the equivalent of a piñata bursting in a room of children. Newsrooms, talk radio, and our campaign scrambled to figure out why the Peters campaign was doing this. The twenty-four hour news cycle was littered with wild speculation from both sides. Some were convinced Peters was dropping out of the campaign while others, including our campaign, thought he found something damaging to Rick.
My phone was constantly ringing from press inquiries and desperate campaign workers looking for answers or comfort. We assigned a staff of attorneys to pour over campaign contributions to make absolutely sure every dollar was legally given and received. We held our collective breath with the hope that the Peters campaign wasn’t in receipt of compromising photos of Rick and an unsuspecting woman.
Inside the campaign, it was pure chaos as well. Phone calls were being made at all hours of the night at the very instant that any kind of news or new speculation arose. Tensions ran high as we resorted to finger-pointing, accusing every internal group of falling down on the job. To the outside world, we were calm and unconcerned about the announcement. Our message was simple: the Peters campaign was desperate and was trying a ‘hail Mary’ pass to save a failing campaign that is hopelessly behind the times. We repeated those words over and over again on every talk show and news program that would have us. Peters’ campaign released no information and encouraged everyone to simply watch on that Tuesday night.
The night of the speech, Jennifer fell asleep in the recliner after a long, exhausting day of taking care of the twins. I was hoping she would stay up to watch it with me, but since I was of little help to her that day, I had no right to ask anything of her. I decided to watch the speech on the television in our bedroom, so my phone and I wouldn’t disturb her.
I settled into the chair in the bedroom, grabbed my notepad, and turned on one of the networks. The camera opened on Peters, who was standing at a podium situated in what the c
hyron at the bottom of the screen said was Scranton City Hall. With two American flags standing behind him and he wore a basic black pinstripe suit, white shirt, and red tie.
“Good evening, my fellow Americans. Thank you for spending the next few minutes with me and if I’m interrupting your favorite show, I sincerely apologize. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a long, spirited campaign and I am grateful to God for the opportunity that my wife, Mary, and I have had traveling this great nation of ours and meeting so many wonderful people, and seeing all the great sights of this country we all love so dearly.