by Dorsey, Tim
At the word governor, the woman turned and looked at Marlon, and her eyes flashed with recognition.
“I know,” said Marlon. “Don’t that beat all?”
Marlon made up time behind the wheel, and in less than an hour they began seeing the bars, college kids and motorcycles that signaled Daytona Beach’s orbit. Everyone shifted to the left side of the Winnebago and stared out the windows as traffic thickened and slowed. Outside was a tropical Coney Island, people jamming the boardwalk and the midway, riding the Space Needle, bungee-jumping and driving on the beach to a thousand stereos.
“Right there!” Pimento pointed. “That’s where Sir Malcolm Campbell drove two hundred and six miles per hour to set the land speed record on February nineteenth, 1928. The car was called the Blue Bird, powered by a Napier aircraft engine.”
“More news you can’t use,” said Escrow.
Marlon turned west, away from the hubbub, and crossed a bridge to the mainland.
“Turn up here on MLK,” said Pimento. “I remember something else.”
“We don’t have time!” said Escrow.
They turned.
Minutes later, they were standing on the edge of an old campus. Pimento whispered, and Marlon nodded.
“Big deal, it’s a school. And now we’ve seen it,” Escrow shouted from a window in the RV. “Can we finally go? I mean, if that’s okay with you. It’s not like we’re going to be on TV or anything tonight.”
They got back in and headed east.
Marlon was still a few blocks from the Daytona International Speedway when he first saw the turmoil. A giant traffic jam. Cars, lights, people, chaos. The Winnebago pulled into the parking lot next to a row of satellite trucks. Vendors sold corn dogs and fried dough.
News of the wild campaign had spread, and now anyone who wanted any piggyback media exposure was showing up. It was a long, deep ballot this year. Dozens of fringe-party candidates and constitutional amendments, and they were all represented at the speedway. There was the Communist Party and the Socialist Party and the New Socialist Party, which had splintered from the Socialists because it thought they were soft on Communism. There were the Fascists, the Nazis and the Whigs. There was the Libertarian Party, which refused to meet, and the Anarchist Party, whose goal was to disband. There were two parties that wanted to preserve the Confederate flag, the Metaphysical Party, which was selling lucky crystals, and Parrot Heads for Economic Progress.
Every one of them had a candidate for governor, and they stood with megaphones, competing in a cacophony of tortured rhetoric, all packed tightly together except for the Immolation Party candidate. The angry Reform Party nominee, Albert Fresco, was even madder than usual, now having to jockey for the spotlight with a whole cast of quarrelsome paranoids.
As the candidates shouted each other down, highly paid petition-takers canvassed the audience, signing them up for a menu of constitutional amendments that would legalize casino gambling, cap millage rates, penalize the sugar industry, regulate campaign finance, deregulate utilities, and make tax-free e-mail a birthright. Amendment 16 was incomprehensible, and Amendment 33 would repeal Amendment 16.
Marlon and company got out of the Orange Crush and worked their way through the noise.
“Ah, democracy in action,” said Pimento.
“How do we ever win any wars?” said Escrow.
They passed Albert Fresco, who was yelling at the Fascists. “I was mad first!”
Guards cleared Marlon through the security checkpoint and into the speedway. It was like a rock concert inside. Gomer Tatum was taking water and oxygen under the Democratic tent.
Just before nine o’clock, the candidates made their way to the makeshift stage from opposite sides. Each was given a few minutes for opening remarks and rebuttal. Tatum spent his allotment talking about the electric chair. “We have an execution coming up. The guy’s name is Frank Lloyd Sirocco. You watch—I’ll bet anything Marlon Conrad weenies out of it!…So a lot of things can go wrong with the chair—good!”
The ovation was off the meter. Tatum looked over at Jackie, and she smiled and gave him an A-OK. Perfect—just like they’d rehearsed!
It was Marlon’s turn. He stepped up to the microphone.
“I don’t wanna talk about the electric chair anymore. It’s sick, and everyone who just applauded is sick, too.”
That shut them up.
“I want to talk about things that move the spirit. Great achievements don’t just happen. People need to be inspired. Many things can inspire you, something as small as a really good movie. I remember watching Rocky—the first one, not the others, and especially not the one with Dolph Lundgren. You remember how you felt coming out of the theater?”
There was a lot of nodding. Of course they remembered!
“I know how I felt. I was ready to take on the world! I had stallion blood in my veins”—Marlon stopped to throw a few jabs in the air. “No more taking it from the bullies!”
There were hoots and whistles now. People shouted from the beer line. “Yeah, fuck the bullies!”
Marlon raised a hand for them to quiet down. “Things that can inspire us are all around, and we don’t even notice. Today, a friend took me to a place just a few miles from this very spot. It’s a place here in town you’ve probably driven by a hundred times. It’s a story that may never be made into a movie, but it’s much bigger than Rocky.”
The crowd couldn’t believe it. What? Bigger than Rocky?
“That’s right, bigger than Rocky. Because it’s true and it’s about this great country….”
Escrow whispered to a sound technician, who began playing “Eye of the Tiger” over the PA speakers.
“Turn that crap off!” yelled Marlon. The music stopped. He looked back at the crowd. “Talk about your against-the-odds story. Her name was Mary. She was the fifteenth child of former slaves. And she wanted to start a school. She only had a dollar-fifty and five students and a small piece of property that used to be the city dump, but she also had something inside that I’d be proud to have just a small piece of. The world was against her, but she made it work. The Klan even showed up. Bunch of brave men! She just sang songs. Her full name was Mary McLeod Bethune, and that school is now Bethune-Cookman College.”
He raised his arms and voice for the finale. “Bless you, Daytona, for giving us Mary!…I yield the rest of my time to my worthy opponent. Thank you and good night!”
The crowd went wild. They surged the stage. “Eye of the Tiger” came back on as Marlon ducked off the rear of the scaffolding and disappeared.
THE Orange Crush rolled south in the darkness. They cruised through Titusville after midnight. Marlon looked out his window across the Indian River and saw the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. A few miles beyond it, down by the ocean, something glowed in bright spotlights.
“Must be a shuttle on one of the pads,” said Marlon.
“Endeavour on Thirty-nine-B,” said Pimento.
The woman from Marineland was in the passenger seat, but she still wasn’t talking.
They passed Port Canaveral and the subtle Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach and the guard shacks at Patrick Air Force Base.
Marlon thought he’d try again. “What’s your name?”
She wouldn’t answer.
“Please, just a first name.”
“J-J-J-Jenny.”
Marlon smiled over his shoulder at Pimento. “She’s got a name.” He turned back to her. “Jenny, I think both our luck’s about to change.”
24
“RISE AND SHINE!”
Marlon opened the motel-room door, letting in the morning sun, and Escrow pulled the covers over his head.
Pimento sat up in bed half awake and grabbed his watch off the nightstand. “Eight o’clock! Where are we?”
“Vero Beach.”
Marlon tossed the morning papers on Escrow’s chest, and Escrow swatted them off.
“Get the lead out. I’ve been up f
or two hours,” said Marlon. “Got your coffee here.”
“Where’s Jenny?” asked Pimento.
“Still asleep in the RV.”
Marlon opened the lids on three steaming cups in a cardboard McDonald’s tray. Pimento grabbed one of the newspapers off the floor. “Hey Escrow, look at this headline: SENATOR INDICTED IN BRIDGE-GATE.”
Escrow pulled the covers off his head. “Lemme see that!”
The chairman of the transportation committee had used his influence to get a bridge built out to his investment property, squaring the value of the land.
The paper quoted the senator as he was taken into custody: “I’ve earned this! You just don’t get it!”
Every few days the media christened a new -Gate. This week it was Bridge-Gate, last week Lottery-Gate, the one before that Cable TV-Gate and Emission-Gate. There was even a scandal at the water plant. The press called it Plant-Gate…. Escrow was crushed. Another conspiracy and he wasn’t involved.
Marlon went out to the RV. It was unlocked and quiet. She must be somewhere getting breakfast. Marlon climbed in.
Jenny didn’t hear him as she stepped out of the tiny walk-in shower. She had her back to Marlon as she grabbed a towel.
He was about to apologize and avert his eyes. But before he could, he saw something he’d never forget, and it just blurted out.
“Holy Jesus! What happened?”
Jenny spun and saw him. Her mouth opened and her eyes betrayed shame. Her secret. She ran to the back of the RV.
Marlon knew the sight would bother him for a long time. Across the top of her legs and up her buttocks, a solid pile of scars. Mended, striated flesh, line upon line. God only knew how many times the same spot had healed and been flayed open again.
Marlon ran to the back. He had no idea what was appropriate. “Who did this?”
She was curled in a bunch on the floor, hiding her face in the corner. He put a light hand on her back and she flinched hard, so he took it away.
Marlon returned to the motel room. “Consider this a day off, guys. Go shopping or something. I’m going to stay with Jenny.”
“I gotcha,” Escrow said with a mischievous grin.
“You’re an asshole.” Marlon left the room.
Escrow turned to Pimento. “I was just trying to be one of the guys.”
“Ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
ESCROW and Pimento split up for the day. Pimento headed for the beach, and Escrow went straight to the local campaign headquarters of “Tatum for Governor!”
A bell jingled as he opened the door.
“Hi! I’d like to volunteer,” Escrow told the young woman in a VOTE TATUM! plastic straw hat. “Got any campaign material you need passed out?…And can I have a hat?”
Escrow left with a bundle under his arm. He went to a news rack and bought a copy of the Press-Journal. He folded the paper over to the Senior Citizens Activity Bulletin Board and called a taxi.
Escrow tipped the cabbie outside a local retirement park, then went into the office and bribed the activities coordinator….
Four hundred seniors sat in the bingo hall of Puerto Lago Boca Vista Isles East, enjoying baked goods and juice at their regular Thursday-morning installment of Canasta-Mania.
The activities coordinator tapped the microphone on stage. “May I have your attention? This morning we have a special guest with us. He’s a top political official who’s going to discuss issues affecting senior citizens.”
Sounded important. They put down their sticky buns.
“He’s come all the way from the capital, so please give a warm Vista Isles welcome to Phil Striker!”
Escrow smiled and waved to the crowd as he passed the electric bingo board on his way to the podium. His suit was blue, shirt white, tie red. On his lapel, an enamel American flag; on his head, a VOTE TATUM! straw hat.
“My name is Phil Striker,” said Escrow, “and I’m with the Tatum campaign. What I want to talk to you about today is the future. And, let’s face it, you’re not the future. The future is youth, but how are they ever going to get anywhere if you won’t take your bony little fingers off Medicare and Social Security?…”
The auditorium went silent.
“Why don’t you stop being so selfish and accept the inevitable? I say we slash benefits and use the money to cut the capital gains tax so those out there still actually contributing to society can make some money and get this country moving again! Who’s with me?”
The first thing to hit Escrow was a cinnamon roll. Followed by slices of cantaloupe and papaya, blueberry muffins, crescent rolls and a crumpled-up Styrofoam cup weighted with a rock that had somehow made its way into the auditorium.
“Wait!” Escrow yelled. “Would you for once think of the poor young executive instead of your incontinent butts?”
They charged the podium with canes and electric scooters.
“Kill him!” someone yelled. A metal folding chair flew up onstage.
“Go ahead, live in the past!” he yelled and threw a batch of VOTE TATUM! campaign brochures at the mob and escaped off the side of the stage.
ACROSS town, another group of senior citizens sat in another hall, their coffee cups long since empty, doughnut crumbs on the tables, napkins wadded and rewadded dozens of times. They fidgeted painfully.
The group was ninety minutes into a high-pressure time-share pitch that had been guaranteed to last “no more than a half hour.” That was the price they had to pay for all the breakfast pastry and beverage they could hold. The time-share people knew their audience. To retirees, free doughnut holes and orange juice were like crack.
A hunched old man in a Pearl Harbor vet baseball cap got up to leave. The salesman blocked his path.
“But I want to go.”
“Just a little while longer.”
“You said it would only be a half hour.”
“Sit down!”
The man sat down.
There were about fifty of them in the audience, all at least sixty-five years old. Except one guy. He was fortyish and making his ninth trip to the food table. He was on the thin side, with blue eyes and short hair that had touches of gray at the temples.
“Must have a high metabolism,” one senior whispered to another.
A second retiree got up, this time a woman.
“And where do you think you’re going?” asked the salesman.
“I have a doctor’s appointment.”
The salesman pointed at her seat. She sat back down.
Everyone was distracted by a loud rattling noise in the back of the room. During his latest trip to the food table, the younger man had wrapped his arms around the massive plexiglass orange juice sprinkler-dispenser and was tipping it forward to get the last drops. Then he drained the tiny paper cup and headed for the door.
“Not so fast,” said the salesman, stepping in front of the man.
Pimento pointed back at the juice machine. “But it’s empty.”
“Nobody leaves until I say so.”
Pimento grinned and gave the salesman a solid head butt to the face that broke the man’s nose, and he punctually went to the floor yelling and bleeding.
The seniors erupted with a big “Hurray!” and charged out of the room like a slow-motion storming of the Bastille.
ESCROW and Pimento arrived back in the motel room at the same time. Marlon was watching the evening news. The anchor desk had just wrapped up a pair of segments involving local seniors. First was a small uprising at a local bingo hall—some broken windows, a lounger set on fire. Then the station cut to an assault at a time-share seminar. Nobody would identify the assailant, but a Pearl Harbor survivor had taken responsibility, and the anchor desk joked about his becoming a hero for the second time.
Marlon eyed the pair as they walked in the room. “Guys?” he said suspiciously, pointing at the TV.
“Look at the time!” said Escrow. “We’re going to be late for the book-signing!”
“Whose book-
signing?” asked Marlon.
“Yours!”
“WHEN did I write a book?” Marlon asked as they drove over to the Vero Beach Book Center.
“It just came out,” said Escrow. He pulled a copy from his briefcase and handed it to Marlon. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
Marlon examined the impressive hardcover. The front had a soft-focus picture of Marlon walking barefoot on the beach at sunset, with an inset of the famous Reuters photograph from Kosovo. He read the title.
A TRUST RENEWED:
GIVING GOVERNMENT BACK TO THE PEOPLE
An Outsider’s Blueprint for Bold New Reform
My Own Courageous Journey
by Marlon Conrad
Marlon bounced the book in his hand, gauging the heft.
“Pretty heavy—lot of pages,” said Marlon. “Who wrote it?”
“I did,” said Escrow.
“I see,” said Marlon. “Where’d you get the title?”
“Standard stuff. It’s how all campaigns are run now. Just keep promising change and reform out the wazoo…”
“And then get reelected and keep giving them the same old thing?”
“Exactly.”
“I can see how you got to be where you are.”
“Can’t take all the credit,” said Escrow. “They teach it in college now.”
The Winnebago pulled into the bookstore parking lot. An impressive line of book-toting people spilled out the door and snaked around the building. Across the street, protesters waved signs behind a police barricade.
Marlon read the placards as he climbed down from the RV. BOOK OF SHAME! VILE VOLUME! BOYCOTT THE OPPRESSIVE WRITINGS OF CONRAD! CHARACTERS HAD NO DEPTH!
The bookstore’s author liaison came out and shook Marlon’s hand. “I’m a big admirer,” she said, leading him inside. “Love what you’re doing on the campaign.”
“What did you think of the book?”
“Your economic theories are quite impressive, but…”
“But what?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but your day-care ideas seemed a little, well, heartless.”
“Is that so?” said Marlon, scowling at Escrow.