Grass Roots (41 page)

Keane picked up the crutch and hopped over to the other one. He tucked them both under his arms and checked them for length while the agent watched. Finally, he looked up at the agent.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” he said.

“None of you federal fairies had better get in my way while I’m doing it.”

Keane staggered out of the room on the crutches and aimed for the nurse’s desk, muttering under his breath, wobbling all the way.

they lay side by side in the dark—wet, spent, still breathing hard.

“I want to know,” she said.

“I want to know it all.”

He laughed.

“You’re something else,” he said.

“You never let it go, do you? You looking to get yourself killed?”

She took his penis in her hand and massaged it.

“You could never kill me. You need me too much.”

“Oh, Christ,” he whimpered.

“Christ knows, it’s true.” He began to become hard in her hand.

“I love the power of knowing,” she said.

“To be near the power. To feel it throb.”

By now he was throbbing himself.

“I don’t know as much as you think I do,” he moaned.

She sat up and mounted him, taking all of him inside her.

“I want to know what you know,” she said, moving slowly in a way she knew drove him crazy. “That’s enough for me, just to know what you know.”

“No,” he said.

“Forget it.”

She stopped moving.

“Don’t stop,” he pleaded.

She sat perfectly still.

“Ask me,” he said.

“Who is the Archon?” she asked.

“Allgood,” he said.

“Your boss is the Archon.”

“Liar,” she said. She started to dismount him.

He caught her and pulled her back.

“No,” he said.

She began moving again.

“Who?”

“Willingham,” he said.

She stopped.

“You wouldn’t lie to me again?”

“I swear it,” he said.

“I’ve met with him alone half a dozen times.”

She began to move again.

“Where do you meet him?”

“Usually at his house,” he panted.

“That’s the center of everything—weapons, money, everything.”

“I thought it was Calhoun,” she said.

Ferkerson laughed aloud, then caught his breath as she moved a certain way, the way he loved.

“That clown? He couldn’t find his way to the bathroom without Willingham.

When Willingham found Calhoun, he was preaching in an old peach-packing shed and living in a house trailer.”

“Where does the money come from?” she asked.

“There’s a lot of money, isn’t there?”

“Some from rich guys who are Elect; some from Calhoun’s operations. Any actual cash money that comes into Calhoun’s ministry gets siphoned straight to Willingham.”

She began moving faster.

“How do you know all this?”

“He tells me everything. I think he needs somebody to talk to.”

“But why you? You were just a team leader; now you’re working alone. Why you?” She moved faster still.

“Oh, God,” Ferkerson groaned.

“Soon.”

“Why you?” she demanded.

“Because he’s known me since Vietnam; because he knows…”

“Knows what?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

“Yes, yes!” she cried, “I’m with you!”

They came loudly together, then sank into relaxation.

She did not move from on top of him, but wiped the sweat from his forehead and stroked his face.

“Why you?” she asked again, genuinely puzzled.

“Because he knows I’d put a bullet in my own brain, if he asked me to,” he panted.

“Because he knows I’ll never be taken alive.”

on a Friday evening in the same Atlanta public television studio where Will had faced MacK Dean, he now faced Don Beverly Calhoun.

The two men stood under the hot lights, at lecterns facing each other, and engaged in debate, prompted by directions from a single moderator, who chose the points that would be discussed by the candidates. For over an hour. Will had offered closely reasoned answers, backed by a real knowledge of each subject, while Calhoun had generalized, pontificated, and invoked Family Values, the American Way, and God’s Blessing at every turn.

Will was growing increasingly frustrated at the preacher’s tactics; it had been like firing silver bullets into the heart of a monster who simply kept getting up and attacking.

Not a single answer of Calhoun’s had been without skillful innuendo directed at Will’s maturity, masculinity, and religious convictions. At every opportunity, he questioned Will’s moral qualifications for representing Georgia in the Senate.

Finally, Will had had enough. He had avoided addressing Calhoun’s veiled accusations for fear of lending weight to them, but they were down to the final minutes of the debate, and he felt that he had to take some sort of stand.

When his time came to sum up. Will turned to the camera.

“Since this is the last opportunity I will have to speak to such a large number of Georgia voters in this campaign, I would like to address myself to what I feel has become the single most important issue in this campaign, and that is the consistent campaign of innuendo, half-truth, and name-calling that my opponent has indulged in since the day he entered this campaign. He has implied, time after time, that, because I am a bachelor, I must be a homosexual;

that, because I am unmarried, I cannot be responsive to the concerns of families; that, because I have refused to discuss my religious beliefs in a political campaign, where they have no place, I must be a faithless atheist—or, even worse, in my opponent’s opinion, a secular humanist, whatever that is. Because I am opposed to the continuous spending of horrendous sums of public money on weapons systems that do not work, I am characterized as being against a strong defense; because I believe that a reasonable part of public funds should be used to help unfortunate Americans participate in the American Dream, I am accused of being a free-spending liberal;

because I reject a radical right-wing ideology, I am accused of being a socialist or a Communist sympathizer;

because I oppose the death penalty, I am accused of being a coddler of criminals; because I support a woman’s right to choose whether she should bear a child, I am named an accessory to murder.

“I believe in my heart that you people out there are too smart to fall for these smear tactics; I believe you want responsible government, free of radicalism of any sort; I believe you want to be represented by honorable men who care about the concerns of your daily lives, not demagogues who see public service as an opportunity to distort the political system in favor of their own radical and rigid beliefs. I don’t have a church pulpit from which to speak;

I have only the means of any political candidate, and I have used them to the best of my ability.

“If I am right about what you out there believe and want, then I can expect to be elected to the United States Senate a week from Tuesday.

If I am wrong, then I deserve to be defeated, for I have misjudged the American heart.

I ask you to prove me right. Thank you.”

Don Beverly Calhoun now came to his final statement.

“My friends,” he intoned, “my young opponent has summed himself up better than I ever could. He would have you believe that a man’s sexual orientation does not matter, even though God himself damns the sodomites; he would have you believe that a God-created fetus is not a human being and does not matter; he would have you believe that a candidate’s religious convictions—or lack of same—are not important to the people who elect him. You have heard him say these things himself, here tonight.

“You have also heard him lament his lack of a pulpit from which to tell you of his faith. Well, tonight, I am prepared to offer him that pulpit.”

Will stared at Calhoun. What was the man up to?

“I am prepared, tonight, to offer Mr. Lee the pulpit at Holy Hill Pentecostal Baptist Church, a week from this Sunday. If he is not afraid to let us know what he believes, then let him deliver the sermon on that day and tell us.”

Calhoun turned from the camera to face Will.

“Do you accept my invitation, sir?”

“I accept,” Will said, “on one condition—that is, that if I preach at your church, my sermon will be carried on every outlet of your television network, just as your Sunday sermons have been. Do you accept that condition?”

“Why, sir,” Calhoun said, “I would not have it any other way.”

“Then I am very pleased to accept your invitation,” Will said, with as much confidence as he could muster.

the following day, in the back of a car on the way to a campaign appearance, Will sat and looked at Kitty Conroy and Tom Black.

“You let him sandbag you in there last night.”

“Tom’s right. Will,” Kitty said.

“You’ll be speaking to Dr. Don’s audience, both in the church and on television, and with those people, you can’t win.”

“Then get me a bigger audience,” Will said.

“Use some of our TV time to advertise the event. Television isn’t selective; it goes into every home in the state; all we have to do is get people to turn it on that morning.”

“That’s very risky,” Tom said.

“We’ve improved dramatically in the polls since we got the TV money. I think we might be in a position to edge him out on election day,

(/ we don’t make any mistakes. We’ve already got Larry Moody’s trial to contend with; that’s unpredictable enough.

I just think it’s wrong to stick your neck out like this, for Calhoun to chop off publicly from his pulpit.”

“It’s already stuck out,” Will said.

“I can’t back out of this now, can’t you see that? Tell you what, you watch Calhoun’s program on Sunday morning; time everything-the hymns, the sermon, the works. That will be useful to me.”

“All right,” Tom said glumly.

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Will said.

“And I want a big audience for that appearance. Start working on that today, all right?”

“It’s your funeral,” Kitty said.

Will sighed.

“Well, at least I’ll get to conduct the service.”

the wind blew across the little lake and piled golden leaves on the porch of the cottage on the Delano farm. It was a Sunday of perfect autumn; the crisp days and bright foliage that New Hampshire had known weeks before had finally slipped south to Georgia.

After a morning of sloth and a good lunch. Will sat down to review the Larry Moody case for the last time before the trial. He went slowly through the prosecution’s evidence, looking for traps and pitfalls. It seemed straightforward enough. The discovery rules allowed him access to their case, but did not allow them access to his, apart from a list of his witnesses, of which he had only four.

He went through the crime-lab report again, mentally rebutting each point. He had his own exhibits: some clothing of Charlene’s and a medical certificate.

He would not be able to prove in court that Larry Moody had not murdered Sarah Cole; the case rested on Will’s ability to keep the prosecution from proving that he had.

Will opened the cottage door and let the wind blow in an occasional leaf; the cool air would keep him alert. He paced the living room, formulating questions to the witnesses and saying them out loud. He practiced a summation, though he knew its content would change depending on what the trial brought out.

He was standing, hands in pockets, addressing an imaginary jury, when a particularly large puff of wind blew in a pile of leaves, scattering them around the room; he was so absorbed in what he was doing that he did not notice for a moment that someone had entered with the wind.

She stood watching him, silhouetted against the sunlit doorway, until finally he saw her and stopped, his mouth open.

“Hello, Will,” she said.

It took Will a moment to recover.

“Hello, Kate,” he replied slowly.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, breaking the silence.

He was at last able to move from the spot.

“No, no, you’re not interrupting. Come in, let me get you some thing to drink.”

“Thank you. Something soft, if you have it. I have to drive back to Atlanta in a little while.”

He went to the refrigerator, got a pitcher of iced tea, and poured them both a glass. He came back to the living room and put them on a little table between two comfort able chairs, then sat opposite her.

“This is quite a surprise,” he said carefully.

“I know it must be,” she answered.

“I spoke this morning to some prospective analyst recruits at Georgia State University; my plane isn’t until six, so I had some time. I rented a car and drove down.”

“I see,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He felt oddly unsettled.

She waited a moment before she spoke.

“I guess I’m going to have to be the one to speak first.” She looked away, out the windows toward the lake.

“It seems we’ve been working at cross purposes for the past few months.” He still said nothing.

She took a deep breath.

“I want to try to make you understand what’s been happening. If I can.

When I got the new job, it rekindled something in me, something I had forgotten I ever had a kind of passion for the work.

The past few years had been so boring at the Agency that I really was ready to leave it and get married; then, when they offered me this job well, it was like falling in love again. After two years out of the loop, suddenly, I knew everything again; they trusted me; I could affect events.”

She tucked her feet under her in the large chair and smoothed her skirt, a motion that Will found familiar and appealing.

“I immersed myself in it right up to my ears; I was working fifteen, sometimes twenty hours a day—we had a crisis or two that kept things on the boil. I neglected Peter.”

She had a small son by her first marriage, who was enrolled in his father’s old boarding school in New England.

“I didn’t go up there to see him as often as I should have, and when I finally did get a day or two off, that was where I had to be.”