Political Timber (3 page)

“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?

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.

“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.”

“I just nominated him today,” Mosi chirped.

“That’s enough out of you, mouthpiece.”

“He just nominated me today,” I said. Then I remembered the real campaign. “Nomination papers. Shit,” I said.

“What’s your problem?” Betty asked.

“I forgot I was supposed to go see my grandfather after school today. He has my nomination papers with the three hundred signatures I needed.”

Mosi laughed out loud. “You had Fins get your signatures for you? From jail?”

I shrugged. “He said it was no trouble. He doesn’t have a shitload to do at the moment. Anyhow”—I looked at my watch—“between school and the radio station and my campaign—
both
campaigns—I just can’t do it all.”

I started down the bleachers, walking over the aluminum benches. “In fact, I have to fly right now. I’ll have to go right to WRRR from the jail. Today’s my orientation.”

Mosi followed me.

“So, that nomination thing is all in order, then, Mos?”

“Ah, ya,” he said. “I’ll just pop back in and make sure it all got done in time.” He took off across the field toward the main building. The quarterback sailed a ball at Mosi, a fat wobbler that missed his head by three feet as he galloped off. Our quarterbacks always sucked.

Betty stepped up close behind me as we neared the bottom of the steep bank of stands. Just then the cheerleaders filed onto the field, across our line of vision, right to left.

I did not turn my head to look at them. I felt the strain on my neck muscles as my brain, like a big dog on a leash, tried to yank my head in that direction. But I was strong, trembling with the tension.

Sweaty clomped me across the back of the head anyway.

“Cool. So this is it, right? Just file this downtown, then I can sit back and ride out the election?”

Fins furrowed his big meaty brow and shook his head at me. “Gordie, boy, there is work involved here. This is going to be quite a ride for the next couple of months. The runoff goes down in a month, and the special election one month after that. You’ll have help, sure, but you gotta at least be
visible
the whole time.”

I rubbed my forehead, which was starting to ache every day now about twenty minutes after I awoke. “Visible. Da, what’s visible? You got three hundred people to sign for me here in, what, two days? How hard could this be? Just go on and tell the rest of your fans to vote for me on election day and we’re all set, right?”

The brow again, and the head shaking.

“So make a few extra phone calls. No offense, but—you got the time.”

“Gordie, you know how many people are in this town? I mean, you’re looking to run the city, I suppose you should know how big it is. Huh, how many, you think?”

“Jeez. I dunno, Da. A lot.”

“How big a lot?”

“A whole lot. A wicked lot.”

“Gordon?”

When he calls me Gordon...

“All right... twelve thousand people.”

“Excellent guess, Mr. Mayor. There are seventy-eight thousand people in this city.”

“Holy shit,” I said. I hopped up out of my chair, as if to escape the throng.

My grandfather was amused. “Hey, how ’bout this one,” he said, leering. “Guess what the city budget is for this year?”

“I gotta go to the bathroom, Da.”

“One hundred million dollars,” he crowed. “Want to know how many schools we have?”

“
No, I don’t.
They got bathrooms here, Da, or is that part of the punishment?...”

“Police? Parks-department no-show grounds-keepers?”

I stopped thinking about the toilet, threw myself against the Plexiglas partition. “Da, what are you doing to me? I just wanted something interesting to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I just wanted girls to like me.”

“Easy, bubby,” my dear old grandfather said. “Your da is going to be with you all the way. So stop fretting. We can’t have you getting worry lines already. Your skin is your strongest political asset.” He leaned closer to me, where my face was still mushed to the partition. “You have great skin. Easy on the fried clams, though. I see a blind zit bubbling up on ya.”

I backed up, felt around for the zit. Started worrying more.

“Next meeting, we’ll strategize. I got your itinerary laid out nice. But now you go home and sleep. That’s your job, and you’re gonna need it.”

I agreed, even though that was impossible. My job was not sleeping, it was working at the station.

Wrrr.

M
Y GUY, MATT, WAS
the night guy. Which meant I was going to have to be a night guy too. Seven to midnight twice a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, theoretically, but since my calendar was starting to get pretty jammed, Matt said we could flex it however I needed to. I thought that was awfully decent of him.

My actual instructor, the guy who sat next to me at the controls and showed me what to do, was a guy named Sol. He was a very serious, technician-type guy who didn’t seem to appreciate that he was in show business and that it was a privilege to have the city’s most controversial deejay making fun of his relatives and stuff over the air. Sol was very skinny all over except for his belly, which poked out from under a T-shirt that never quite managed to reach all the way down to his belt-line. His stomach was very hairy, like a sweater, and he never smiled. Like a jazz musician or a boxer, Sol could have been thirty-five or sixty-five, you couldn’t tell. What was very clear was that his attitude had already reached retirement age.