At Risk of Winning (The Max Masterson Series Book 1) (21 page)

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ChAPTER SIXTY-ONE

She was made for it, I tell you. A natural politician, the kind of woman who will shake your hand and make you forget whether you wuz raised Democrat or Republican!” The old man pulled the night crawler out of the Styrofoam cup and baited the hook in one loop.

“I dunno. She’s too purty to be a politician. I voted for her daddy, though. he come to my house one time. I offert him a beer, but he jest smiled and tole me that if he had a beer every time some constichient offert, he’d be looking for unemployment. I liked that man. I wuz sorry to hear he passed.” The other fisherman was old, too, and had spent most of his life outdoors. You couldn’t tell whether his face was tanned or dyed brown. It  looked like the kind of leather they make baseball mitts from, and when he talked, his wrinkles moved. he wore a weathered Caterpillar tractor hat, faded by too many afternoons in the sun. People who live longer than their time have a wisdom that fits like a favorite pair of jeans, and his tolerance for fancy was nonexistent. 

“I still think ya need ta hear what she has to say,” said the first fisherman. Just then, his pole twitched, and he pulled back quickly, setting the hook. Without cranking the reel, he hauled a bass over the dock and into the open cooler. “I’m one up on ya! If you don’t keep up, you get to clean ‘em all, and ah’ll just put ma feet up and watch you work!”

Outdoorsmen don’t talk much when they’re fishing. Come to think of it, most of them don’t talk much when they’re doing anything, but when they do, they don’t waste words. “Ah hear what y’all er sayin’. Ah don’t have much use for politicians, but ah’ll go with y’all and the missus to that rally, provided y’all don’t make me dress up.”

The first fisherman turned slowly and stared directly into his old friend’s grizzled face. “If I ever saw you dressed up, I’d either fall over dead or make sure you wuz lyin’ in a casket yourself, cuz I can’t think far enough back to remember you wearin’ a suit and tie. Besides, I’m going just like I am. The wife might make me wear cologne or take a shower or both, but they can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. I’m too old for that.”

The next night was the rally, and for a week before, the county park was filled with the noise of pounding nails as the stage was erected by the party faithful. Some supporters offered money, others offered time, and by that night, the time and money coalesced into a welloiled machine. As they had done for centuries before, the party had mobilized and energized, and this night was bound to be an event to be remembered . . . at least until the next election.

 
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The band got the crowd moving, and then the local politicians got five minutes each at the microphone. After an hour of standing on the lawn, the old fishermen, wife in front, began to shift back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Where is she? You told me we wuz goin’ ta hear her speak, and all I heard so far is a bunch of people I never heard of.” The wrinkled face seemed to sag even more if that was possible.

“Ah tole ya not to bring him!” The wife looked at her husband, his hair slicked back and still looking wet from his shower taken hours before. he’d known he’d eventually be blamed for everything out of his control. 

“She’ll be here. They didn’t go to all this trouble for nothin’,” he said to nobody in particular.
The normal rumble of the crowd changed to one of exclamation. “There she is!” a woman exclaimed, as every head in the crowd turned toward the entrance road. A white stretch limousine slowly appeared behind the stage and stopped. The crowd cheered and fell silent. It seemed a long time before anyone emerged from the limo, and the crowd whispered as dark-suited men appeared on the rooftops surrounding the outdoor amphitheater. They spoke into hidden microphones in their lapels. Security was in place.
The front door opened, and a driver emerged, dressed immaculately in a tight red chauffeur’s uniform. he walked around the limo, opened the back passenger door, and stood at attention. The candidate emerged, her tanned legs sliding out first, followed by the rest. She stood smiling in a red dress, the kind that nobody wears in real life. It was the uniform of the politician. 
She began waving to everyone, and the crowd smiled with her. The clapping escalated as she walked slowly toward the stage. They were hers for the taking.
Scarlett Conroy had made her political reputation the hard, traditional way. her family was sixth generation; a Charleston clan, with more cousins in high places than a tree full of monkeys. She exuded the image of stability, and she had just been elected to her second term in the United States Senate, representing South Carolina. her pedigree as a politician was impeccable.
She had the pedigree to be president, but not the support in the polls. her lack of numbers kept her in the running for vice president, but she had never been able to get that hellfire excitement her male counterparts had generated. She was inspiring, though, and exciting to be around. her demeanor engendered trust, and her running mate knew it. Scarlett was a vestige of the Old South, and Cunningham needed her to balance the ticket.
“If I had gone to war and had the stories to tell, I could be one of the good old boys who sit around impressing you more every time I tell about it,” she often told the women at the many speeches she made on the campaign trail. She knew she had their vote. Women could be counted on whenever a prominent woman sought higher office. Cunningham’s pollsters had calculated her vote potential and knew she was a jewel who could bring them a win.
She approached the stage, and the fanfare grew. At a prearranged rest stop on the stairs, she stepped to the left and pulled a gold hairbrush out of her purse, pausing for effect. The bright lights caught each stroke as she ostentatiously brushed her hair while thousands watched. When she was certain that she had their attention and each hair was in place, she deftly inserted the brush in a side pocket and completed her rise to the podium. This routine had become her trademark. It was a way of setting her apart, of defining her place as a woman in the midst of maleness. She did it well.
Scarlett had been running for office most of her adult life and felt at home in the midst of the adoration and attention. It was like comfort food to her; her life had been spent in the best private girl’s schools, learning the social graces. She knew exactly what to say and when to say it, and she had a radar-like ability to be where she could obtain the maximum attention. In her speeches, she used few notes. Palming three-by-five cards trimmed to fit her delicate hands, she reduced her talking points to a few key words. With just the talking points to guide her, she could talk for hours, and talk she did.
“I stand before you today as your nominee for vice president of the United States, and you, dear voters, are the first to know!” For the ensuing five minutes, the cheering was too loud to hear her words. It was time to stand and smile. Eventually she raised her hand for silence and continued.
“I will be joining the party’s nominee for president, Bob Cunningham, in Washington this afternoon, and we’re going to the White house in November!” An aide leaned over and spoke into a hidden microphone.
“Well, I won’t be living there, and I guess the old occupants get until January to move out, but we’re going to be in Washington anyway!” The crowd laughed and cheered again, as if she intended her remarks. Although she was known for her ability to speak for hours on any subject, she wasn’t known for her accuracy. It didn’t matter, though; this audience was hers. If she had stood up and told these folks that she was carrying Elvis’s love child, they would have supported her decision.
Scarlett’s speech was a well-constructed combination of old, worn slogans; win-win statements that polls had demonstrated were safe talking points; and a rah-rah patois of “hooray for our side” stories that she was comfortable in repeating at every stop. From repetition, Scarlett had perfected the stump speech, and when she was tired at the end of the day, she had the ability to put her brain on repeat and give her mind a rest.
“My female Americans . . .” She paused for effect.
“I’m sorry. I meant to say, ‘My fellow Americans’ like my opponents are fond of saying, but we aren’t all fellows, are we ladies?” She shamelessly pandered to the female vote, and as the only female running for national office, she was a member of a sorority that banned males from birth. “We have a long way to go before this men’s club invites me to be a member.” She paused again, and a woman in the front row hollered before she could continue. “That’s OK, Scarlett, you have bigger balls than old Blythe, any day!” These words got one of the bigger cheers of the day.
In an era where the popularity of a president wanes from the first day of taking office to the last day in the White house, a popular challenger can enter the campaign dozens of points higher in the polls than the incumbent. After four years, Blythe’s popularity was at an alltime low, and Scarlett wasn’t the only one taking potshots at Blythe. her running mate, Bob Cunningham took the lead in attacking him about anything from his lack of moral character to his impotent efforts at stimulating the economy. Scarlett’s job was to use the silkgloved approach of softening the message so it wouldn’t appear that the poor president was getting picked on, while Cunningham led the charge in another state. Their speeches were strategically timed to run simultaneously, so that the networks would be forced to shift all of their exclusive coverage from other candidates.
When it came to pointing out their differences, though, Scarlett was a sophisticated and devious opponent. She could pick apart her competition while smiling in that way only Southern women can muster, and her years in the Junior League’s hierarchy had made her realize that when it comes to verbal attack, only women can swoop in without mercy, smiling, and leave their opponents dazed and confused.

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ChAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Look at those guys. They must have bought up every tie in town with red, white, and blue on them.” Andrew said. he and Max sat at the coffee table in the Michigan farmhouse, drinking Stroh’s beer and gnawing at roast venison ribs that had been marinating in Mom’s secret sauce for a week. The freezer in the utility room filled with wild game each fall, and by midsummer, it was nearly empty. hunting season is big business in the upper Midwest, and if they aren’t hunting, they’re preparing to hunt or feeding on the previous season’s bounty.

On the large flat-screen monitor were two conventions running simultaneously in split-screen mode, the Democratic convention in blue on the left, and the Republican convention in red on the right. Each had been preserved in real time and summoned for review. Speaking at the podium, the incumbent paused frequently for the applause to subside. he had accepted his party’s nomination for president forty-five minutes earlier, and this was as euphoric as the attendees had been all week. he was definitely preaching to the choir. On the other side of the screen was the challenger, a grizzled veteran of Congress who was in the process of exceeding all records for the length of an acceptance speech. he had been going at it for over an hour and a half, and his face was becoming more purple as he spoke.

“This is where old Bob Cunningham has a stroke! Watch!” Andrew held the zoom control in his right hand, and centered on Cunningham’s face. As he approached the crescendo of his message, his voice rose higher than usual, and the sweat began to appear on his forehead. Then it happened. A purple streak ran up the right side of his face, and his eyes rolled back into his head. he slumped onto the podium, which was ominously draped with an American flag like the caskets that bring soldiers home from war. Two dark-suited men appeared from the side of the stage and held him up by his elbows. As they carried him hurriedly off-camera to waiting paramedics, it was apparent that the party’s candidate for president was gravely ill. his immaculately shined black shoes left dual tracks across the stage.

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ChAPTER SIXTY-ThREE

The nation watched in shock as the endless loops of commentary spewed forward from the media. The clip of Cunningham’s public demise was disseminated almost instantaneously. By this time, Scarlett was forty-five minutes into her own speech, lost in the glory of her words and creating a furor among the uninformed. Strange though, the back of the crowd became silent, and a murmuring rose as people looked down at their wrist monitors. Soon, an assistant spoke into Scarlett’s communicator.

“he’s dead. Cunningham is dead. Wrap it up.”

Scarlett stopped in mid-sentence, as if she had suddenly lost her teleprompter notes. her face turned pasty white, and it appeared for a moment that she might pass out. She looked from side to side, bewildered, waiting for a voice in her ear to tell her what to do next. Without a sound, she turned her back to her audience, searching desperately for her aides. They were waving for her to leave, but she didn’t seem to notice. The audience was so preoccupied with the news that they barely noticed her exit from the stage.

“What does this mean?” Scarlett was clearly perplexed. her trademark smile was replaced with a look of grim concern.
“Somebody tell me what comes next,” she rasped into the microphone. She scurried for the limo as staffers and security spoke in hushed tones into their communicators. An aide attempted to usher her into the limo and put a finger to her lips. “I will not be hushed! This was all unplanned! This just can’t be!” As her head was being inserted into the back seat of the limo, her fading voice could be heard to say, “Someone needs to pull a knot on this, and . . .” the door slammed shut as the tires sprayed gravel on the remaining spectators.
The chief of security leaned over and buckled her into her seat, setting the environmental and security controls located in the seat back. “Miss Scarlett, I’m taking you the airport, and then we’ll soon be flying to Washington to meet with the party. It looks like you won’t be waiting until January to sit with the big boys.”

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ChAPTER SIXTY-FOUR