The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (26 page)
Sarah’s Fourth of July message “
www.troopathon.org
or call 866-866-6372 to support greatest military in the world; show our troops we care, we’ve got their back, bless them” comes via Twitter.
Back at Soap Opera Central,
People
reports that Levi Johnston has apologized to Sarah and Todd. When last I read about him he was spilling his guts to
Vanity Fair
for money, telling tales out of school about what went on behind the Palins’ closed doors. It wasn’t pretty. Now that he’s realized that his own “career” can go nowhere without Bristol, he’s busy patching things up.
“Last year, after Bristol and I broke up, I was unhappy and a little angry,” his prepared statement says. “Unfortunately, against my better judgment, I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true … I owe it to the Palins to publicly apologize.”
Bristol’s PR people add a statement of their own, in her name. It says, “Part of co-parenting is creating healthy and honest relationships
between the parents. Tripp one day needs to know the truth and needs to know that even if a mistake is made the honorable thing to do is to own up to it.”
So all is well again. For the moment.
I MEET WITH Sherry and Mercede Johnston again, this time—because Sherry has been granted a rare afternoon out—at the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop in the Carrs mall, probably second only to the Mat-Su Family Restaurant as a gathering place for Wasillans, and even more of a magnet for Wasilla youth during the day.
Sherry is pleased because she’s just seen Levi, not a common occurrence. “He came up for a haircut,” Sherry tells me. “He said he had a big photo shoot coming up. He wouldn’t tell me with whom and he wouldn’t tell me what it was about. It was strange: I felt like there was something important he wanted to say.”
Levi went to his mother’s bathroom, looking for Percocet. “He said Bristol had just had another plastic surgery and she was hurting.” He wouldn’t speak to Mercede because he’s been on the outs with Mercede since getting back with Bristol because Bristol is on the outs with Mercede because Mercede posted a blog that Bristol didn’t like and Bristol told Levi to tell Sherry to tell Mercede that if she didn’t take the blog down she’d never see Levi or Tripp again.
Instead of removing the offensive post, Mercede blogged anew: “Why would he let this happen all over again? … I wish Levi could be the man I know he is and have a mind of his own and finally stand his ground, but I guess he is blinded by love. How is it fair that I can’t speak my mind on a blog without Levi threatening to never speak to me again, but Bristol can go on Facebook daily and call me nasty names with no repercussions at all?”
At Kaladi Brothers, she’s unrepentant. She tells me she was recently subpoenaed for a deposition in Bristol’s custody fight with
Levi, a fracas that may be paused for a while as the couple struggles to reunite. “Bristol’s lawyer, Van Flein, he just sneered at me. He also told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to you. I said, ‘Who are you to tell me who I can talk to?’ He said, ‘That’s if you ever want to see your nephew again.’ Bristol was sitting there smirking.”
The next day,
US Weekly
has Bristol and Levi on the cover holding Tripp. “We’re Getting Married! The reunited couple reveals their sudden, secret engagement—and why they hid it from Sarah. ‘I Hope My Mom Will Accept Us.’” They were reportedly paid a hundred thousand dollars for the exclusive.
This was the photo shoot for which Levi wanted his mother to cut his hair. This was the “something important” he seemed to want to tell her but did not.
Rumors immediately run rampant that Bristol is pregnant again—and not by Levi, because she was living with Ben Barber at what would have been the time of conception. Barber, who was offered an electrician’s job in Delta Junction, 450 miles to the northeast, as an inducement to leave without making a fuss, speaks to The Daily Beast.
“I helped her out with Tripp more than Levi ever did,” he says. “What does Levi have going for him? Nothing. I don’t understand how Bristol can go and spend her life with someone who can’t get his GED.” He says Bristol never had a good relationship with either of her parents and that both Todd and Track are incensed at the news of the engagement.
Truly, the Palins are a circus of many rings.
THE FUSS OVER my moving in here has finally wound up where it belonged all along: in a comic strip. I’m in
Doonesbury
this week.
I TOLD TODD back in May that not only was I not going to be paying attention to anything that happened on his side of the fence, but that even if I inadvertently saw or heard any activity I would refrain from writing about it. I keep my promises—most of them, anyway. In any event, I’m keeping this one. Thus, Roland Hedley would have had a fruitless trip.
As for my side of the fence, almost anytime I glance out my kitchen window, I see a car parked by the chain. Not the same car—dozens of different cars and trucks and campers. Often, people will be standing outside the vehicles taking pictures of the fence.
It reminds me of the looky-loos who throughout the O. J. Simpson trial flocked to the condo on South Bundy Drive in Brentwood to see where O.J. killed his wife and Ron Goldman. The difference was that something had actually happened there.
Here, there is nothing going on. There is only a fence: two fences, actually, the original and Todd’s addition. Pictures have appeared all over the Internet for six weeks, but still the curious drive down the rutted dirt lane until they reach the chain that lets them go no farther, except on foot.
Despite the
POSTED
and
DO NOT ENTER
and
NO TRESPASSING
signs, some do walk around or duck under the chain, wanting to get closer to the fence. If I’m there, I tell them that they are trespassing on private property and they have to leave. “But we just want a picture.” I tell them they can take all they want from outside the chain. And they do, morning, noon, and night, as if the fence itself has become some sort of quasi-religious shrine, protecting Queen Esther of the North from prying, agnostic eyes.
FINALLY, I FIND a friend of Sarah’s who will talk to me. I’ve put a lot of time into trying, but, forget fences, Sarah has dropped an iron curtain of silence around herself. Not only will she not talk to anyone who isn’t paying her, but she’s made family and friends take an oath of omertà, at least in regard to me.
By insisting that those close to her rebuff my requests for interviews, she is ensuring that I’ll wind up speaking mostly to those who do not feel bound by her wishes. Then she and her acolytes can complain that my book is not “fair and balanced” like Fox News.
Even this friend of hers, who at first tells me I can use her name, then changes her mind, is trepidatious about talking to me, to put it mildly. She insists on meeting where we will not be seen, eventually agreeing to The Digital Cup, on Knik-Goose Bay Road, which is almost deserted on the afternoon we meet.
Despite all the precautions, she’s so jittery it’s hard for me to concentrate on what she’s saying.
“Tell me about Sarah.”
“The first time I saw her was at aerobics. She had no makeup on and her hair was in a ponytail. Then I saw her at a PTA function, wearing makeup, and I said, ‘Oh my God, she’s beautiful!’ ”
“But beyond her looks, what drew you to her?”
“She was exciting. Even at city council meetings. She’s much more
exciting in person than she looks like on TV. And then, when she ran for mayor, they ran such a dirty campaign against her. They misused a state law just to find out that Todd had a DUI charge against him in Dillingham. She got so afraid they were after her that she had to paint her car a different color. And then, of course, they slashed her tires.”
“By ‘they,’ whom do you mean?”
“Stein’s people, of course. Who else would do it? They were sexually harassing her, pretending to be in her aerobics class just so they could make her feel uncomfortable by looking at her. And then, after the council meetings, they’d all get together at Nobody’s Inn and do their real business, and Sarah knew that was unethical and she had the courage to stand up and stop them.”
“How well did you know her socially?”
“For fifteen years my friends and I had a Christmas ornament exchange, and until she got too busy Sarah always came. She’d come late and leave early.”
“Did you ever have any serious talks with her, one-on-one?”
“She’s not that kind of person. She’s too busy for talk because she’s always doing something to try to make things better for everyone else.”
“Really?”
“I remember when she quit the oil and gas commission after she forced Ruedrich to resign. She was with a bunch of us, I think it was at an ornament exchange, and she said, ‘Well, the Democrats have always hated me, and now the Republicans hate me, too. I’ve ruined myself politically, but I just had to do what I knew was right.’ ”
“But it turned out that the publicity she got because of Ruedrich was what made her viable as a statewide candidate.”
“Yes, but she didn’t want that. Sarah never thinks of herself. She only thinks about the good she can do for others. Maybe people in Alaska have gotten cynical, but just go Outside and take a look. I’ve been to lots of places in the past couple of years and people just love her. It’s oozing out, from all kinds of people.”
“Then why have people here lost their enthusiasm for her?”
“Because of the press and the bloggers. All that negativity. Nobody ever writes about the good that she does. There was a boy a couple of years ago, when she was governor, who was in a bicycle accident. She actually went to his house and brought him a gift. The
Frontiersman
wrote it up, of course, but the rest of the press just ignored it.”
“So you’re still friends with her?”
“She’s too busy now to have time for that. But last year a vehicle I didn’t recognize came up to my house and Piper jumped out of it and gave me a present. It was a wind-chime bell from Arizona. I called out, ‘Sarah!’ She slid down her window for a sec and said, ‘Love you, bye—gotta take my kids to the library.’ That’s how she is: always a mother first.”
“Were you surprised when she quit as governor?” I ask.
“At first, yes, but then I realized, just like she said, it was because of all the attacks. Attack, attack, attack, that’s all people wanted to do. My daughter in Colorado sent me an e-mail after Sarah resigned, and I’m just so proud of her because, even living so far away, she understood. ‘People are so cruel,’ she wrote. I don’t think Sarah wanted to resign, but so much cruelty didn’t give her any choice.”
This goes on for another hour. Dutifully, I take notes. This woman’s eyes are like laser beams on my notebook. She seems able to read my handwriting upside down better than I can read it as I write.
“I said she deals with stress with grace and dignity. Why didn’t you write that down?”