Political Timber Read online

  “Ohhh.” I was about to get indignant when the words registered. “Well, ya. I mean, you make it sound kind of stupid, but I suppose that’s about it.”

  He beamed. “See. I been there. And know what? My plan is just going to help you. Jesus, Gordie, you know what it’s going to be like, going through senior year as an eighteen-year-old political superstar? You’ll be beating ’em off with a stick.”

  Superstar.

  I let him do it to me. The old snake.

  “You’ll be goddamn near godlike. Hell, I only wish I could have been mayor at eighteen instead of—”

  “Whoa. Stop right there for a second. Eighteen-year-old mayor. Da, you’re talking like I’m going to win. That’s not going to happen, is it? You’re not going to make me win, are you?”

  Fins stood up, stretched his arms high and wide, groaned like a waking bear.

  “Don’t sweat so much. It’s not becoming to a candidate for public office to perspire. You don’t have to win, anyhow. You’re going to run a very strong race. Early polls are going to show you opening up a respectable lead, throwing a mighty scare into your opponent. You will become the season’s phenomenon. Newspaper’s going to call you a juggernaut, but don’t be offended, ’cause it’s better than it sounds. Then, Sheena of the political jungle, my former protégée, will come in here and pay me a visit during which she will say the right things. Following that reconciliation, your candidacy will waver, then falter—or maybe it’s falter, then waver. Anyway, in the end you will go down to a very narrow, yet very noble, defeat.”

  I thought about it, rode the whole ride on his words. I could see the thing play out, kind of a fun ride, with no resulting responsibility. A potential hoot.

  And coincidentally, a hoot was precisely what I had in mind for the year.

  “Cool,” I said. “Think there’s any way I could finagle some kind of school credit out of it?”

  Fins grinned, turned to Chuckie the guard, then back to me.

  “Kid, you’re going to be great at this.”

  FLEXIBLE CAMPUS

  TRUTH WAS, I WAS always considered to be a very responsible guy by the small core of people who got close to me. But since most of them were musicians or people with no discernible hobby, avocation, or place to go, being responsible meant I was the one who wore a watch.

  “Mayor?” Mosi screamed over his own distorting amp, at the back of his mattress-padded garage. “I didn’t even know the school had a mayor. That’s the balls.”

  I strummed, much more quietly, on an acoustic guitar from Mosi’s collection of instruments, which stood upright on guitar stands all around us like rock-’n’-roll Stonehenge. I really couldn’t play much; mostly hung around with people who could.

  “They don’t, Mos. I’m talking about, of the city. Amber. Mayor of Amber.”

  “Get outta town.”

  “I can’t. I’m gonna run it.”

  Mosi nodded his great shaggy head, squinting hard as the smoke from the cigarette rolled back over his face. “Can I be police chief?” he asked, studying his fingers on the fretboard.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Promised Sweaty.”

  “School superintendent?”

  “Hmmm. It’s yours.”

  “Excellent. I’m gonna do some big-ass firing first day.”

  Flexible Campus is basically the plum of all senior-year plums, where you get to take two days a week out of school to apply to a more worldly, adult pursuit. But you have to present them with a decent plan, like apprentice in an architectural firm, volunteer at a hospital, teach a gym class at a blind school, stuff like that. A lot of kids with no imagination take college classes to get a jump on next year. Yawn. Myself, I was going to try to get into a radio station, maybe learn to work an audio board, wear big professional headphones, get the jock to make jokes about me on air so I could be famous. It was the best-thought-out plan in the program.

  But that was before.

  I took my seat in Mr. Vadala’s office. Vadala was coordinator of the Flexible Campus program, and the career-track guidance counselor, the one who didn’t want to hear about why you’d been passing out cold in homeroom but would give you a thirty-page printout on the best vocational training programs in the country. In his way, he was the most practical, functional, useful guy on the faculty. Zero shit content, ol’ Vadala. He looked like a retired catcher, broad and squat with fat clumps of curly hair springing up over the collar of his shirt and around the back of his neck. Thinner clumps on the top of his head, which you stared into as he pored over his computer files.

  “Mr. Vadala? Ah, I’m here.”

  “I know you are. Be with you in a second.” Unlike most people, Vadala kept his computer directly in front of him, like a castle wall, so you had to conduct your business with him over it.

  He looked up at me. Removed his glasses and rubbed the two residual red marks on the sides of his shark-fin nose.

  “Foley,” I said, helping him along. “Gordon Foley.”

  “Foley,” he answered, hit four keys. “Have I seen you before, Foley?”

  “Hope so,” I said. “Been here four years.”

  “Hmmm.” Vadala leaned in close to the green screen. “I’m sorry, Mr. Foley, but I have no recollection of seeing you before.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I said. “That’s sort of the kind of profile I was after.”

  “Here you are.” He pointed at the computer screen. “Foley, Gordon. But there’s nothing here, I’m afraid, Gordon. I keep fairly complete records of the student body, and, well... anyway, what can I do for you? You’re here to pitch your Flex-Campus plan, I imagine.”

  “I am.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’m going to be mayor.”

  Mr. Vadala’s hirsute fingers were already working the keyboard, finally plugging me in there with the rest of the fully functioning student body, when he stopped. “Gordon, this is a very busy time for me, with all your classmates making presentations the same week. Now, I like a good joke as much as the next guy—just a half hour ago one guy proposed that he’d be spending Tuesdays and Thursdays working in quality control at the Sam Adams brewery. I laughed. Another said he was going to spend the two days a week in a sleep-study over at the Deaconess hospital. A young lady told me that if I would allow her to expand her Flex-Campus from two days to three, she would spend the extra day with me at my house.”

  That tears it: She does not get the police chief job.

  “But I’m serious, Mr. Vadala.”

  “You’re serious. You mean to tell me you’re going to spend your senior year—” He stopped himself, staring at me. Put his glasses back on. “Whoa, wait a minute.” Back to the keyboard. He flew so authoritatively over the keys, it sounded like a tiny little Thoroughbred race. “Ah. The annex file tells the story. You’re that Foley.”

  I sighed. I could see the political-legacy thing was going to be a burden, bringing knowing leers from everybody.

  “So then,” Vadala chuckled, now keying in my proposal. “You’re not only going to run, then, you’re going to win.”

  “No way, I’m—” I stopped myself when he turned a concerned look my way. “Of course I’m going to win. You don’t enter a race like this if you don’t expect to win it, dammit.” To bone up on attitude, I’d stayed up to watch The Last Hurrah the night before.

  “Okay, Foley, Tuesdays and Thursdays you’re a full-time candidate. But remember, the other days you’re still a student.”

  “No I’m not. I’m a senior.”

  Vadala opened his mouth to snap at me, then let it soften into a gentle, ugly smile.

  “Okay, that was a good one.”

  I shook his hand when he stood.

  “And at the end, you still owe me a report, just like everybody else. At least try to learn a small something from your experience.”

  I continued to pump his hand. Practicing. And ignored what he was saying while I concentrated on making my pitch. Still practicing.


  “So I hope I can count on your vote come election day,” I campaigned, through my wide, cheesy smile.

  He sat down, spoke into his computer.

  “Well... it’s not important to your grade, anyway.”

  I passed Mosi on my way out. I gave him the thumbs-up, which caused him to charge right in.

  “I’m going to be working in the incoming mayor’s administration,” I heard him say.

  “I do not care to listen to another joke proposal,” Vadala popped.

  “Hey, you. You don’t want to piss me off,” Mosi barked. “You just might come begging into my office after the election.”

  He sounded awfully close to believing all this.

  “No direction, huh?” I said to my dad as he came through the front door. I had his big easy armchair dragged over to the front door, where I sat regally, mayoralty, awaiting him. “Just getting by? No master plan? No ambition?”

  “You joined the debate team,” he said hopefully.

  I shook my head. “Debate’s so negative.”

  The phone rang.

  “Let the machine get it,” I said.

  He could never let the machine get it.

  “Try it, one time, Dad,” I said as he hurdled me and the chair to get to it. “I don’t remember us ever getting one single phone call that couldn’t have waited. Not—”

  He held up his index finger to me, squinting a smile and nodding a nonverbal Just a sec.

  “Yes, he’s here,” he said, aiming the phone at me.

  “Fine,” I said, shoving the chair all the way back across the room and taking my sweet time about it like the potential city employee I was. He’d spoiled my moment.

  “Ya,” I said, bratty.

  “Gordon Foley?”

  “Gordon Foley.”

  “Hello, Gordon, this is Matt Baker, “at station WRRR.”

  “Wrrr!” I growled automatically, the response you’re supposed to give to win free CDs and concert tickets and stuff.

  “Nah, Gordon, it’s not that. I’m calling because you applied for an internship here at the station. This is you, right?”

  Jesus, I thought, the old plan. Does it figure, or what? Soon as you light up, the damn bus comes along.

  “Ya. Gordon Foley, right. This is me. Gordon Foley.”

  My first attempt at filling dead airtime. Good thing I wasn’t applying as a jock.

  “Good, kid. We’ve established you’re Gordon Foley. The question is, are you still interested?”

  “Am I still interested?”

  I held out my two hands flat and spread wide, weighing one against the other. Mayor, radio? Mayor, radio? Mayor, radio, mayor, radio, mayor, rock RADIO?

  “What are you doing?” my father asked, staring at me and mimicking my motions.

  I held up a finger to him. Just a sec, Dad.

  “Shit ya, I’m still interested.”

  “Of course you are. You’re a kid, right? You’re an American, right?”

  “Is that required?” I asked.

  “Ha, you’re funny, too. I got one more question for you. You listed one ‘Fins Foley’ as a reference—”

  “Yes, he’s that Fins Foley.”

  “Relation?”

  “Si, señor.”

  “Okay, well, you know, we might want to talk about him some on the show. Might even be a little... irreverent. ‘Zat gonna be a problem for you?’

  Irreverent? To my da? Not only was that unheard of around Amber—at least while Fins was a free-walking citizen—it was scary. Matt Baker was “irreverent” on his show a lot, and made cops and hockey players and other ruffian guests cry right there on the air.

  My da? My mentor?

  Girls, radio, rock and roll, girls, senior year, rock and roll, girls, radio.

  “Not a problem, Matt.”

  What was a problem, only I hadn’t thought about it until after hanging up, was how was I going to go to school, work two days at the station, and, oh ya, run for mayor?

  POPULISM

  I WAS AT SCHOOL. I was in the Hawk. I was on the phone.

  He made me take it, the little black folding flippy thing that was about as big as three credit cards taped together end-to-end-to-end. I might as well not even run if I didn’t have one, he said, because nobody who matters doesn’t have a cellular phone. And when I didn’t have a call, I was to pretend. I didn’t have to pretend often, though, since he called me constantly.

  “So you got your nosebones, who have always voted for us and always will. You listening to me, Gordie? Okay, you got your nosebones, your sweet boys, and your delicious chickens—”

  “Da?”

  I cupped my hand over the mouthpiece, as if that was the way to keep anyone from overhearing him.

  “What, Gordie? What’s the problem?”

  “Those...” I leaned closer to the dashboard. “Those things you’re saying.”

  “Well, it’s true. Learn who you are in the political universe, Gordie. You are a Foley. Therefore you are a liberal, a populist. So your core constituency is going to be the nosebones and swishies and delicious chickens and Cambos and all the other marginalized fringies. And, of course, the bleeding hearts that come suckling along behind ’em.”

  “Jesus, Da. How can you—”

  “What? I said something wrong?”

  I knew better than this. I was not going to slice open this seventy-year-old can of worms. I heard my father once try to discuss the “label” issue with him. He labeled my father in ways a kid should not have to hear.

  “Okay, Da, as long as we don’t have to have this discussion again. I have a question, though. Delicious chickens?”

  “Ya, delicious chickens. Chicks. Dames. Like, the League of Delicious Chicken voters, who, by the way, will be endorsing you—in a stunning coup—over my opponent. Who, you may have noticed, is herself a delicious chicken.”

  “My opponent.”

  “Huh?”

  “My opponent. You said your opponent, but you’re not running.”

  “Oh, I did not. Of course you’re running. Your opponent.”

  “Right, well, back to my constituency.”

  “The common man,” Da crowed proudly. “The disenfranchised. The little guy. The guy who feels like the government ignores him at the expense of everybody else.”

  I liked the sound of it. I listened to him rhapsodize on the American sense of fair play and equality as I kicked back in the Studebaker, aimed into the bright morning sun, and watched my passing classmates as they watched me. Every eye in the parking lot snapped my way as I plotted political history on my very cool little bitty phone. As I watched them all, and listened to him, I was momentarily dazzled, as if the sun had just shattered the Gran Tourismo Hawk’s thirty-year-old windshield into a million suspended crystals.

  Suddenly I understood. The thing the Kennedys have always understood: I could do truly good works for the betterment of all peoples; and I could get all the delicious chickens in the process.

  My grandfather was laughing heartily. I saw the guys and gals outside my window smiling too, and realized that I was laughing along with Fins.

  “And the beauty of it for you and me is”—he could barely choke out the words—“that that includes everybody. You tell ’em you’re running to stick up for the little guy, the disenfranchised, and every jamoke on the street thinks that’s him.”

  My grandfather was still laughing at the great ironic high he got out of politics, when a girl I didn’t know pulled open my car door. I recognized her as a cheerleader—I’d torn the page out of the library’s copy of the yearbook—and a junior. The two girls with her looked to be likewise underclasspersons.

  “This your car?” she asked, without looking at me. She was looking all around the car’s interior, like she was thinking of buying.

  I stared at her cherubic, freckled, satanic cheerleader face. I pressed the phone hard to my ear the way I clutch the arms of the dentist’s chair trying to reroute unwanted sensations.
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  “Gotta go, Da,” I said stiffly. He just went on and on, telling me something about... something campaign related.

  “Is this an electric top?” She played one ungodly long white-polished fingernail underneath the toggle switch that moved the roof. “How come I never seen you here before, huh? You ain’t a freshman, are you?”

  “Don’t touch that,” I said.

  It didn’t matter how many cartwheels she could do. This was the Tourismo, for god’s sake.

  I reached out to block her hand from contacting any of the car’s controls, and immediately the three of them started laughing at me.

  The flip phone had stuck to my ear, held by the nervous suction pressure I’d created.

  Two of the girls walked away immediately. The third lingered.

  “Nice ride,” she hummed, before following her friends. “Call me, when the phone is free again.”

  “Da, I have to go,” I snapped, popping the phone off my head. “Gotta go work the underclasses.”

  “There, that’s the populist spirit,” he was saying when I folded him up and rolled him in my T-shirt sleeve.

  “Betty, Christ, I was just trying to get their votes.” I ducked as I spoke, and shielded my head with my arms. Sweaty Betty is a slapper.

  “How-are-you-sup-posed-to”—one slap per syllable—“win-votes-from-fif-teen-year-old-hood-sies-who-can’t-vote?”

  Candidate caught with hand in cookie jar.

  We were in the stands high above football practice. A couple dozen head of overfed underloved stud cattle looked up from whacking each other to watch the better action in the bleachers. Mosi, from out of the clouds, swooped in between us before Betty had the chance to sneak in that potent little uppercut of hers. Boos came from the field.

  “Because,” Mosi drawled, thinking on the fly, “because he wasn’t working on his mayor gig, he was working on his student-body-president gig.”

  See that? Most people think Mosi’s a little slow. I know he’s a genius.

  Sweaty turned to me. I turned to Mosi. Mosi turned up to the sky.

  “Since when?” she demanded of me.

  “I just figured, it made sense. If I was gonna—”

  “That’s a ‘why’ answer, Gordie. We’re not up to that yet. I asked you a ‘when’ question.”