Doxology

by Nell Zink

  “I’m campaign staff. But if you mean ‘Do I have a clue?’ then yeah, I think I do. The Trump supporters love him so much. He’s, like, their revenge on the rest of us. They hate Obama more than anything in the world, except maybe Hillary.” She lowered her voice, but not by much.

  “We’ve got them outnumbered.”

  “Yeah, if this were a poll and not an election,” she said. “But what about turnout? The Bernie people were fired up, but unless you count, like—you know—two hundred career socialists, their big thing was hating the lackey of war and Wall Street, by which they mean Hillary. They’re so not voting.”

  “I was for Bernie, and I vote.”

  “Who wasn’t? Even Trump supporters came out for him in states with open primaries. That’s how much they hate her. It’s so crazy.”

  “Like I said, she wasn’t my first choice either.”

  “And now you’re a socialist working for a Democrat? Your party is all Republicans, even Obama. Half his budget goes for defense!”

  “I think the Clinton administration can dial down overkill without impacting national security.”

  “Because she’s such a super-nice pacifist,” Flora said. She noted with alarm sarcasm’s ability to render a difficult conversation impossible.

  “You’re in a strange headspace,” he remarked.

  “I know I’m bugging you. I should finish my coffee and get out of here.”

  “No, no, stay,” he said. “I’m on break. I worked from nine to ten this morning. That was enough for one lifetime.”

  “You went out that early?”

  “There were people at home. But I’m not going back.”

  “Why not?”

  “Woman pulled a gun on me.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m serious. Not a shotgun. Like this little tiny snub-nosed Derringer. She came to the door with a gun and a baby. Like it’s the baby’s gun. She pointed it at my chest from two feet away. I was afraid to turn around, but I couldn’t stay facing her, because then it’s self-defense. I was up on her porch! She could have killed me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What’s the Green position on guns again?”

  “It’s complicated. But what’d you do?”

  “I kowtowed, man. Right down on my face.” His phone dinged and he turned it over. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Look at this.” He handed her his phone, open to the New York Times app. It said Hillary was slated to win, with odds of 92 percent. “How am I supposed to get out the vote for somebody who’s already won?”

  The profoundly boring information that Hillary was a shoo-in—a reason in itself for New York Times subscribers to cancel their subscriptions—was accompanied by contravening insinuations that she was less than virtuous. Obama’s FBI director was seen to be in favor of Trump. His unimpeachable motive was transparency. He had acquired Hillary’s private e-mail correspondence, without a warrant, from foreign saboteurs and felt morally obligated to share it with the universe. The Times had no imaginable reason to play along, other than a desire to make Hillary less boring.

  “Why are they doing this?” Flora said, scanning the article. “It’s unnerving. It’s not like anybody needs new reasons to hate her.”

  “She’s the original vampire lesbian of Sodom.”

  “Wait. Are you from New York?” she asked, because Daniel had once told her about an eighties off-Broadway hit called Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.

  Aaron didn’t know it was a play. As a first-generation college grad, he assumed that vampire lesbians had always been a thing in Sodom. “I’m a rootless cosmopolitan,” he said. “A citizen of GAFAM. But I went to Baruch.” Baruch College was a Midtown branch of CUNY. He had established New York City residency by working at an oil and lube place in Queens for a year and then moved up to library night shifts under Baruch’s federal work-study program.

  “Did you say ‘Gotham’?”

  “No, GAFAM. G-A-F-A-M. Sorry. Bad joke. It’s a failed state. We’ve got the best-educated, richest citizenry on the planet and eighty years of required national service.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, recalling Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon-Microsoft. “I read that it’s bigger and more powerful than most countries, and there are sovereign states proposing to establish diplomatic relations with it and appoint ambassadors. I think maybe the new right-wing Danish foreign minister?”

  He lowered his head, lowered his voice, and said, “Let’s get out of here and go drinking.”

  “Hey, some people have to work! You want to go canvassing with me?”

  He glanced around the café and said, “Shit, why shouldn’t I? Nobody’s going to miss me unless I tell them to.” He stood up and put his phone in his back pocket. He politely bussed her tray and ate her miniature almond cookie. He hadn’t ordered anything himself.

  STANDING OUTSIDE, SHE FINALLY CALLED THE LOCAL CAMPAIGN ORGANIZER TO ANNOUNCE her presence in town. He was an audibly black man with a drawl, a southerner, probably older, named Reginald Shannon. He said he lived in a trailer without much room to turn around, so it would be best for them to meet up at the coffee shop in the Walmart. There he could give her some xeroxed maps.

  Her phone said it was only about six miles to the Walmart. She suggested they take Aaron’s car, because it was bigger than hers.

  While he drove, she could see that he was regretting his decision but being nice about it. He made friendly conversation. She mused that he might really have preferred to get a beer. She hadn’t analyzed her evening canvassing practice from the perspective of a drinker—that you can’t ride in a car with an open bottle.

  Reginald Shannon in real life was exactly as he had sounded on the phone, an Alabaman transplant with a graying beard. He stood up to greet them and asked about their trip. Flora introduced Aaron as a fellow volunteer, and Mr. Shannon winked at her.

  “Have you talked to the people here about letting us set up a table?” she asked. Walmart was clearly the main shopping district of Greater Towanda, but the closest public property was 150 yards away across the parking lot, a strip of grass next to a four-lane divided highway where the pickups were still kicking up fine gravel from last winter.

  In response he asked whether she was tripping. His maps were printouts from the internet, marked in pink and green highlighter. Every street and country road was marked one way or the other, pink or green. “Pink is like red,” he explained. “Those are the roads where you don’t go. Green is the streets where you can go. Those are the Democrats.”

  “It’s not by individual houses?” Aaron said.

  “We don’t know how people are going to vote. But we can make an educated guess. Green here is a minority party. This is about getting out the vote. I don’t want you going in places where they are going to kill you.”

  Aaron looked meaningfully at Flora. As they left Walmart, he said, “I wish I’d had a map like that this morning.”

  “Let’s drive the pink roads and run Trump down,” Flora said. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “It’s our last hope. We’ll tell them we’re Republicans.”

  “I don’t have any printed material with ‘Trump’ on it.”

  “You guys have printed material? Come on. We give them our Facebook page. You could at least drive my getaway car. Be a sport.”

  She was asking a lot. He seemed cooperative, if hesitant. It wasn’t a scene she could have played with Bull, who always knew not only what he wanted, but when and where. Aaron was drifting like a spinning top, and she was whipping the top.

  SHE NAVIGATED FOR HIM, USING THE PAPER MAPS. A FEW MILES OUTSIDE OF TOWN, they arrived at a cluster of seven houses built in front of a stone colonial farmhouse that was set back a quarter mile from the road. There was a TRUMP-PENCE sign under the lilac by the mailboxes. She asked him to park on the shoulder, parallel to the road, so the people in the houses wouldn’t be able to read his license plates.

  It was six o’cl
ock, and the people at the newest house, closest to the road, were just finishing dinner. Flora could see the dinner table past the open white lace curtains. She knocked and smiled.

  “Good evening,” she said to the woman who opened the door. “My name is Mary Maloney, from the Republican National Committee, and I’ve been delegated here today to tell you what a great job you’re doing supporting our candidates. Our sincere thanks.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “We do our best.”

  “We’re wondering if you’d like to participate in our new program, America for Americans.”

  “Won’t you please come inside? We’re just starting dessert.”

  She hadn’t intended to enter the house. In her hesitation to turn and look at the car, she stepped inside. After being introduced as “Mary Maloney from the RNC,” she joined a family of six at the table, where she was served apple crumble. With one hand in her lap, she resumed her pitch. “The idea behind America for Americans is that for every illegal immigrant on welfare, there’s a legal immigrant who’s paid his dues. We’re asking you to pledge just fifty dollars a month to support a new American. This is not a tax. It’s a voluntary, tax-deductible charitable contribution. We’re asking only our most dedicated supporters.”

  “We can’t afford that. They should get jobs,” the husband said.

  “We don’t want immigrants taking our jobs,” Flora said.

  “They can have mine,” the wife said.

  “What do you do?” Flora asked.

  “Teach English. It’s an uphill battle. It’s real hard to get kids to read these days.”

  “I’m not opposed to immigration per se,” the husband said. “I think it’s a more complex issue than it sometimes gets presented.”

  The seventeen-year-old son asked her, “Do you have signed pictures of Mr. Trump?”

  “I’m sure I could have one sent to you.”

  Addressing his father, he said, “Can I have it?”

  “Up to you,” the husband said. “He’s your hero, not mine.”

  Flora’s phone rang with a call from Aaron. She declined it. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to go.” She wolfed down the last of her dish of crumble. She pushed back her chair and said, “That was delicious. Thank you so much for your time and your hospitality!”

  “Thank you for coming by so late to see us,” the wife said. “Sorry we couldn’t help. We wish you luck.” She let Flora out the door.

  She ran down the driveway and didn’t look back. Aaron started the car before she got in. “I didn’t expect you to go all the way in the house,” he said. “I couldn’t see you. That’s why I got nervous and called you to abort the mission.”

  “Oh, Aaron,” she said. “That was such a stupid prank. Now I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That being Trump supporters entitles them to first pick of the legal immigrants who will need support with charitable contributions after he takes office. But they were so nice.”

  “You don’t need a beer. You need, like, six beers.”

  “I need Xanax!”

  “Heroin’s probably easier to find.”

  “Not heroin,” she said, suddenly serious. “My best friend died of that when I was a kid.”

  “You were childhood friends with a heroin addict?”

  “No,” she said. “It was weirder than that. Do you remember Joe Harris, the singer?”

  “The ‘Bird in God’s Garden’ guy.”

  “He was my babysitter. More than that. Like an uncle or a godparent.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron said.

  “I really loved him.”

  “Didn’t he die on 9/11?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t know anything about it until, like, three months later. I was nine. But that song is still creepy to me.”

  “That was a sad day for everybody, not just Western civilization. My parents lost a friend who’d spent his whole life taking care of his sick parents. In July 2001 his mother dies, he’s finally free, and bam! He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald.”

  “That’s terrible,” Flora said, surprised. She didn’t imagine socialists’ parents cultivating friendships with stockbrokers.

  “He was Jewish, by the way.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t do conspiracy theories.”

  “I’ve been in Towanda too long. There’s a popular misconception that not a lot of us died. The whole thing was set up to be the new Masada. When the planes hit, we drew our revolvers. First we killed the women and children.”

  “Are you Jewish?”

  “Yeah. What about you?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Aw, crap. Now we can never get married.”

  Flora let that stand and said, “Can I feel your horns?” He said yes, please, and she reached over from the passenger seat and fluffed his curly bangs. “Nothing there. I guess you’re too young.”

  “I’m a grower,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  THEY FOUND A SIX-PACK OF DUVEL AT A SUPERMARKET AND DROVE TO FLORA’S ROOM TO watch TV. They each took one big double bed. Flora took off her shoes, but Aaron poised his sneakers with care on the bedspread protector. “CNN or MSNBC?” he asked, pointing the remote at the screen.

  “What time is it?”

  “Maddow’s not on yet.” He turned to CNN. “Oh, God. Guess who’s on TV.”

  “And you were expecting—”

  “The Messiah.”

  “Turn if off,” Flora said. “Let’s go to the river. We can cross the bridge and go down to these islands. I saw them from the car.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “I know.”

  They abandoned their open beers for sealed ones and returned to his sedan. They drove across the Susquehanna, took the first left, and nosed their way down a gravel road to its apparent end. He pulled to a stop when the tires stopped crunching. He knew enough not to keep driving until he couldn’t drive anymore, or until the sedge was so high it might indicate a marsh. The new moon had not yet risen, but he could see by the reflected light of the town and the passing cars well enough to walk across a channel of damp sand and broken glass to the nearest island, beers in hand.

  He had imagined a sylvan glade. The footing under the trees was not good. It seemed a likely place to sprain an ankle, be impaled on protruding rebar, or get poison ivy. He could feel burrs in his socks.

  Flora kept to her left, moving upstream along the shore. She called out, “Hey, Aaron! There’s a beach!”

  He found her, barely visible, a backlit obelisk on a broad shelf of sand. Approaching her, he took off his woolen overcoat. He fanned it out for them to sit down on.

  She said, “You’re going to freeze.”

  “I won’t freeze.” Using his lighter for leverage, he pried open a beer and gave it to her.

  “Let me have that,” she said. “The lighter.” She held it above her head and flicked it on. The flame wavered, casting no light in any direction. “Who am I?”

  “The Statue of Liberty.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Diogenes looking for an honest man.”

  “Nope. I’m the angel with the flaming sword, blocking our return to Eden!” She stood up. She jumped up and down and from side to side, waving the flame.

  She expected him to get up and chase her, but instead he said, “Let me see that lighter a second,” and held out his hand. With the other he dug deep in the left front pocket of his jeans. He had to lean back. Almost lying flat, he found the crumpled joint. He sat up, smoothed it, and lit it. He handed it to Flora.

  She tried it and handed it back. In the darkness, his presence drew her in. He was nice to her, vetted by the Clinton campaign, young and malleable. She sat down next to him, lay flat, leaned her body against his, and rested her nose on his ear. He sighed, a barely audible hum. She raised her head to get a look at his face. She saw nothing to categorize or dismiss. He said, “You’re sweet.” He lifted her hair like a bride
groom lifting a veil and kissed her tentatively, gently, on the mouth.

  She said, “I have a boyfriend.”

  The disclaimer didn’t give her the expected sense of honesty and full disclosure in good faith. It was stingy with relevant information. As a point of fact she had believed until that moment that feeling valued, understood, relaxed, and sexy was something that happened to her only with Bull. An unanticipated notion was germinating in her mind—that if that was what it meant to have a boyfriend, well, then, maybe she had two.

  “Well, I don’t, so you shouldn’t either,” he said. “Fair is fair!”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Is this a pub quiz?”

  “I’m risking something. You need to be risking something.”

  He said, “If you only knew.”

  “What?”

  “I’m already scared you might leave me someday.”

  “That is so not cool.”

  “No.” He sat up and relit the joint, which had gone out when he set it down on the sand so he could lift her hair.

  She watched his eyes in the light of the long flame. She said, “It’s so dark, I can’t see you. I have no idea what you’re thinking.”

  He said, “Here’s what I’m thinking. That your boyfriend doesn’t live in Towanda. Turn your car in early, and let’s hang for a week. There are all these lakes and waterfalls around here. It’s a beautiful area, especially with fall colors. We’ll go on vacation like old married people. It’s our last chance, because Trump is going to nuke Iran.”

  “If Clinton wins, the USA will be ceding this part of Pennsylvania to militias from Oregon,” she said, not quite joking. “So it really is our last chance.”

  “We could go back to your nice, warm room,” he suggested.

  The topic of birth control came up not long after that. She said he could just pull out, because that’s what her boyfriend did, and it always worked. “I guess I’m not a fertile person,” she said apologetically as he stared at her body in awe.

  XXIV.

  Flora didn’t turn in her car or take whole days off, and neither did Aaron. On Halloween morning, she went canvassing on streets marked green on Reginald Shannon’s maps. Out of thirty houses, she found eight adults who answered the door. Three said they’d already voted for Hillary absentee. Two said they would vote Libertarian if they ever voted. Two came out for Trump. One pledged eternal devotion to the Green Party. Flora asked why. He said he’d gotten terminal cancer from the environment.