Political Timber (10 page)

“You’re not going to help me out, are you, Mr. Vadala?”

“I cannot, Mr. Foley. Just watch yourself, that’s all. That’s all I can say to help you.”

“Watch out now, babes in toyland!” Mad Matt was roaring, leaping, flailing, excited like he could not wait to get me on the air this time. “He’s back, and more controversial than ever, and with a brand-new handle that just puts our Name the Candidate contest to shame. To
shame.
Here he is, Four Percent Foley!”

As Matt turned up the big-crowd-applause sound effect, and Sol laughed in my ear, I took the microphone. “What, does that school newspaper have a circulation of a
*@#%
million or something?”

“New game, constituents. As our young hero gets crustier and meaner as a result of the political hardball he’s mixed up in, we’re going to have to begin our censor-the-candidate watch. Four Percent is developing a salty speaking style.”

“I’m sorry, Matt,” I said on air. Which he seemed to appreciate. “And while I’m on the subject of apologizing, may I have a minute of your and your listeners’ time to make something right?”

Sol sat there vigorously shaking his head no.

“Sol says no, Gordie.” Matt grinned. “You got your minute. But keep it clean.”

I took a long breath and, for the few seconds before speaking, realized just how quiet and deep and lonely dead air really is.

“Last week on this program, I told somebody to shut up. Perhaps some of you heard that. Perhaps you laughed. Matt laughed, and Sol laughed. And since that came out of my mouth, things have been happening to me, things that haven’t been any fun. It’s a coincidence, of course, or maybe not, but the thing that’s there and indisputable is that the bad things have been a lot worse because Betty has been apart from me. Not just like, she’s over there and I’m over here, because we have that kind of separation lots of times and it doesn’t hurt us. But, like, fractured. Because before, even when she wasn’t there with me, she was right there, for me. And even though you probably couldn’t tell from the outside, we had something, large, on the inside. And while I can sometimes call Sweaty a &$!@* because she can be one and she’ll tell you that herself, and even though she can call me... nevermind that... Anyway, what I cannot do is I cannot ever tell her to shut up, because I’ve got no right, and because no matter what she’s saying, I’m an idiot to want her to stop.

“So, Betty, if you’re listening, I hope this makes it as an apology because I’ve got no business telling you ever to shut up, ever, and in fact we’d all probably benefit from somebody telling me to. If you decide this is not apology enough, I will find out what is enough, and I will find a way to give it to you. I couldn’t be sorrier and I couldn’t be sadder, and I couldn’t believe I could miss you like I miss you.

“And if you’re not listening, we’ll get you a tape.”

After a great big fat uncomfortable pause, Matt came on and said, “Sure. I’m sure we can make her a tape.” Then he went into joke mode, but just lightly. “And you went way over your one minute, Gord.”

“I’m not making him any extra tapes,” Sol muttered, ever the sport.

Off the air, I asked Matt, “Is it okay, Matt, if I call it a night?”

He nodded, waved me on out of the studio.

The call-in lights were all shining brightly as I passed them on the way out.

My ma was up, at the table again, when I got home. I stood in the doorway, could not manage to speak. I walked past her on the way to my room.

“I think maybe I will vote for you after all,” she said, killing the kitchen light.

I
T WAS A BETTER DAY.
Though I expected a rash of shit when I got to school and faced the music over what was in
The School Newspaper,
I didn’t fear it the way I feared it the day before. Betty was with me.

As I sat in the Studebaker, giving her her four minutes of warm-up, Sweaty Betty quietly slid in the passenger side.

“Accepted,” she said, foofing her hair higher in the little square mirror on the sun visor. “You give good apology, Gordie. You should do it more often.”

I took that without speaking, dropped the Hawk into gear, and tooled off to school feeling, unwisely, invulnerable.

We hadn’t gotten out of the car, hadn’t entered the parking lot even, before that new familiar feeling—like a bathtub drain whirlpool gurgling down from the center of my belly—rushed back. This was something so big that Betty at my side could not even match it.

“Holy shit.” That was Sweaty Betty.

“Holy
shit
” was me.

Since we had the top down on this fine and heretofore carefree Indian summer morning, we had a clear view of it. The massive billboard, on top of the two- story sporting-goods store directly across from the front entrance of school, was a paid political advertisement.

On the other side of the street, spilling down from the top step and fanning out all over the block, was what appeared to be the entire student body.

My face on the billboard was the size of our garage door at home. In front of it, the Studebaker Gran Tourismo Hawk—being driven by a smiling, waving Fins Foley, circa 1973, with big long sideburns and a shirt collar that could have made it as a skateboard ramp. They looked to be pulling into the big empty garage of my head.

On the one side, that, the billboard. On the other side, them, the student body.

That.

Them.

Then there was me. Live and in person, driving the famous vehicle right through the middle of it.

You would have thought the Hawk burned nitrous oxide, the way Sweaty Betty began—and could not stop—laughing at me when the crowd started screaming, “Four-Per-Cent! Four-Per-Cent!”

“Goddammit, Fins,” I said. “What are you doing to me?”

The phone rang.

“Go to hell, you senile old crock!” I yelled, and felt much better. The phone, however, went on ringing. I went on not answering it.

I scrambled, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the toggle switch to get the top up and stop the rain of ridicule from beating down on me. “If you don’t
mind
,” I interrupted Sweaty’s laugh-out, “could you please roll up that window?”

She did, but once the car was sealed up it only made the noise coming from my girl, my strength, my support, sound more brutal.

“Glad to have you back, Sweat,” I said as I jumped on the gas with both feet and blasted right on past school.

“Glad to be back,” she answered, leaning her head on my shoulder and squeezing me tight, as if we were on a roller coaster together.

By the time we actually did slink into school, homeroom and first period were gone. Betty patted me on the ass like a coach and said good luck as she shoved me toward biology.

Inside the door, the first thing that struck me was Mosi’s face.

I had forgotten to pick him up that morning. Because I had Betty back.

I was only vaguely aware of the low laughter, the good-natured pokes in the ribs, the remarks, as I crossed the room toward my friend’s desk. “I’m sorry, Mos. I’m such an asshole.”

“Good thing you’re so good at apologizing,” he said. “I take it Betty is back.”

“There’s just no excuse. I can’t tell you—”

Mosi held out his hands. “So don’t tell me. Just don’t forget me no more. Right now you got bigger problems than me anyway.” He pointed over toward my desk. That is, he pointed over to the desk behind my desk. Where Robert O’Dowd was sitting cracking his knuckles, biting a loose piece off his pinky fingernail, then cracking his knuckles some more.

“He’s not even
in
this damn class,” I whined.

“No? You know, I didn’t think so either,” Mosi said. “But there he is, so apparently he is.”

“If Four Percent Foley will ascend to his throne,” Mr. San Pedro yukked, “we can commence.”

“When you’re school superintendent, Mosi...” I said, pointing out San Pedro for a hit.

I could feel O’Dowd’s breath on my neck. Bastard, he wouldn’t just smack me, wouldn’t say anything. He simply hung back there, leaning closer, closer on me, breathing so I could feel the hot mist of his meanness gathering on my skin. Completely disorienting me and leaving me unable to recognize the words as the teacher spoke them.

The phone bleep-bleeped, my whole head heated to about 115 degrees with embarrassment, and I answered. Not before everyone turned to look at me, of course.

“D’ya
love
it? D’ya
love
it?” Fins boomed.

I could not answer immediately, as Mr. San Pedro was now standing, smiling, rocking on his feet right beside me.

“Is this something you’d like to share with the rest of us?” he asked, updating an old classic.

“Da, not now,” I snapped into the phone.

“Duh. Then when?” San Pedro asked, to big laughs.

There is nobody more bloodthirsty than a teacher getting laughs. He looked all around, lapping it up. In the rush, he snagged the phone out of my hand.

“Um, sweetie, could His Honor please call you back? See, he’s in the middle of high school right now.”

Everybody laughed. San Pedro laughed. But only for an instant. You could see his face drain as Fins apparently started speaking, and San Pedro started listening. And nodding.

“It’s a phone, Teach,” somebody called out. “He can’t hear you nodding.”

Pale and trembling, the teacher handed me back the flip phone.

“San Pedro,” I said loudly into the phone, even though Da hadn’t asked. “San, capital P...” I raised my hand, just like I was a normal student, which, unfortunately, I’d never be again. “Mr. San Pedro, okay if I take this out in the hall? Thanks.”

I could feel a bit of a shift as I strolled out with the phone on my ear. I was once again borrowing it from my grandfather, but some version of power was definitely clinging to me—much to my surprise.

Out in the hallway, things got back to normal.

“No, Da, I’m not thrilled. This does not help me. How is it going to look, a guy taking a serious run at the mayor’s job, when he gets himself wedgied in the damn bathroom every day. ’Cause that’s what they do to guys here, Da. They wedgie them.”

“For what? You’re a big man there now. They gotta see that.”

“What they see is that I’m sitting on your knee while you have your hand stuck up my ass wiggling your fingers to make me talk. So now I’m going to show up at my next Chamber of Commerce breakfast with my underwear yanked up out of my pants, pulled over the back of my head, and strapped off under my chin.”

Da, being from a different era, and of a very different political-social philosophy from me, heard a different urgency in my words than what I’d intended.

“So,” he said coolly, “who exactly is going to do this to my grandson?”

“Oh Jesus, Da, it doesn’t matter. Want to know what matters? It’s that I’m a
senior.
Seniors aren’t supposed to get wedgies. This is all backward.”

“It’s the guy, that sweet-boy from the newspaper article, isn’t it? The one you said stuff about, right? What was his name?”

I thought about O’Dowd sitting back there waiting for me, breathing for me.

“I don’t know, Da. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s just drop it.”

“Fine. I’ll get his name outta the paper.”

Somehow, in there somewhere, I felt a threat toward
me.
Not like a physical threat. Something foggier.

“So,” Fins said after a pause. “You don’t like my present?”

“No,” I said, the first time I could recall telling the truth when I knew he didn’t want to hear it. Probably the first time anyone—outside of the law-enforcement community—had done so in decades.

The fiddling he did then with the phone, the heavy breathing into his apparatus, made me shudder at the blast that was coming. He didn’t take stuff so beautifully well as a rule, and he would wind himself up before blasting me.

“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I meant ta do something good for you. Thought you’d be happy.” He hung up.

I felt like a rat.

As I retook my seat, O’Dowd practically climbed over his desk to haunt me now.

“You ain’t foolin’ nobody,” he said. “We all know what you are.”

“You do? Jeez, be a sport and let me in on it, because I haven’t got a
clue
what I am at this point.”

O’Dowd clapped me a sharp smack, right across the back of my head. Nobody in an official capacity, like, say, a teacher, seemed to notice. This was when I realized, the joke of all this was pretty much over.

Which always had the unfortunate effect of making me joke more.

“You shouldn’t bite your fingernails, O’Dowd, or a hand will grow in your stomach. Didn’t your mother ever—”

“You’re going to be sorry you ever heard the name Robert O’Dowd,” he interrupted.

“Well, actually, I already am,” I said. “So I guess there’s no need to continue, huh?”

He smacked me again. It was upon me now. Was I just going to let him beat my ass? Or was I going to put up an honorable defense before he beat my ass? I truly didn’t know.

Good thing a miracle came along.

“Cut the crap, O’Dowd.” It was the voice of an angel. Her name was Mariah Maris.

“Ya, O’Dowd, damn ape. Leave him alone,” Tyra Mays joined.

I could feel O’Dowd back off, lean away from me, even as he said, “Shut yer faces.” O’Dowd had dated them both at some point, and he was the type of ladies’ man-psychopath who didn’t like to let one job cross over the other. If girls frowned on his bullying, he wouldn’t do it—not in front of them, anyway.

Neither of the girls had ever paid me much attention before, so this did come as a surprise. Anyway, I was happy to have their pity, and nodded my deep gratitude.

Tyra leaned across the aisle, put a hand lightly on my wrist. “I heard you on the radio last night,” she whispered. “That was so sweet... I cried.”

Hmmm...

“I do wish you hadn’t gone home so soon the other night,” Matt said. “It was unbelievable. Half the women in the city must have called to say how sweet you were. Since you were gone, I had to absorb all the love in your stead.”

“You’re a trooper, Matt.”

“Don’t I know it. But hey, no joke. We’re on to something here. You suddenly look viable. Not like you have a chance to win or anything, but, like, you exist anyway.”