tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41016367723232586872024-03-08T06:44:58.130-08:00Winter Wolves of Haden County....a 12 chapter serialized introduction to Haden County, a rural community with good horse stock in Southern Illinois.
The 102 counties in Illinois boast about 29 county commissioners apiece. This is a slice of one of them.Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-62215424904930056562011-02-19T09:47:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:47:29.814-08:00Chapter One - The Governor<div class="post-header"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The air is clearer, thinks Kyle, clearer now than at any other time of year.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“HAPPNING NOW!” Shelby texted and nearly immediately followed, “RITE NOW!!!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He already knew. Her father was being interviewed by the governor. Shelby too, in a way. They all were.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">William A. Wolf was actually her step-father. But “he’d brought her up,” which was how the official relationship was always stated. It was more that Kyle and Shelby had brought each other up, using their mothers and their fathers as guides, but not actual participants. That’s how it seemed to Kyle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby had no idea what he was talking about when he said this. That’s what she always said when he tried to make this particular point.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He had seen the caravan make the corner, still out of sight of Shelby’s upstairs bedroom window and was receiving her text after he’d seen them pull up at the Wolfs’ house. Kyle watched, irritated with himself for not bringing the binoculars. He now saw how childish his earlier notion had been, that someone would spot him, report him if he’d stood across the park and watched her house. He nearly flinched again, thinking what his father would say at receiving such a report. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She was texting again.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Living.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There had been a debate which room to host the governor in, the living room or the downstairs third of the split level, the area Shelby called the “basement” only so she could correct herself in her mother’s drawl, “oh- I-do- mean-den-slash-rumpus-room.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle knew this because Shelby had laughed at her mother’s setting up food and drinks in both rooms. “It’s imperative to be ready for anything,” Shelby quoted in her mother’s drawl, but as frequently in respect as mockery – although in this case she had proven correct. “The governor is not going to traipse through her <i>outdated </i>split-level. He’s going to see if we have three heads, probably kick back a shot of bourbon, compliment her on her outdated split-level and split himself.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle pictured the governor sitting in the Wolf’s living room, on the sofa where he and Shelby had once made-out, the sacredness of the off-limit-ness of this pastel living room more thrilling than the tumbling which, while also exciting, was more familiar. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It was, explained Shelby, finally an edge of danger, finally the threat of getting caught.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">They’d had free rein in both their houses their whole lives. By middle school the notion that any of the four parents would be home before dinner time – if then -- was so unlikely as to never be thought. Their parents and their various grandparents and another few dozen other family names were the committee members that ran Haden County, a wealthy agricultural district marbled thick and deep with successful thoroughbred stock. Some years their wealth alone could give Downstate voters the edge they needed to carry the long state.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Every great politician has this need,” Shelby told him that day on the sofa. “This need to be caught out and even to be admonished, beaten down, it’s like fuel, the proving you can come back. Winning is thrilling,” she said, and Kyle knew even this first time she said it she was quoting Mr. Wolf, “but coming back has that sweet, sweet taste of cold revenge.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So it’s like power,” Kyle had said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What is?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Revenge. If it tastes so sweet you’re willing to endure humiliation just to get it must be as aphrodisiacal as power.” Kyle could remember saying this. How she looked and how she nodded. He thinks it might be the only time she granted him superior political knowledge. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">For a long while this bothered him. And worse, Shelby knew it. But that was before Carlene Deluccio. Carlene Deluccio who thought she could win a seat on the county council because she was Victor Deluccio’s widow. Kyle laughed like his father. It had always been said he laughed like his father, even as a child. “Imagine, Matthew Grosen said, she <i>cried </i>when the reporter asked about Deluccio’s payoffs at the tracks. What did she think? Women just can’t take it. Just can’t take it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle’s mother would cut her eyes at his father, but she agreed. “Shouldn’t have wasted her time,” was how Kyle’s mother saw the ill-fated candidacy of Carlene, whom she liked and played bridge with but who clearly didn’t get it. Not simple, bright enough, but unsophisticated, guileless. That is what Kyle’s mother said about her. “She should have gathered up that money and bought a couple of those sons-of-a-bitches struggling office buildings and started squeezing them a little. Four years of that and I would say that seat could have been hers.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At that his father would roll his eyes. They had worked together, his parents, when his father had been in private practice. She was a club woman now. That’s what she called it. “I’m a club-woman now, Kyle,” she’d retorted when he’d asked her if she missed being out in the thick of things. “I am swimming in the midst of those <i>things </i>your father spends his days trying to sort out. Swimming is much more fun than working, dear. More effective, too.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby’s smarts would only get her so far, Kyle had eventually reckoned. Certainly far enough, farther than most girls. But he was a man and he knew he had the edge whether Shelby admitted it or not. And whether she admitted it or not, she knew it too. If there had been any doubt that was cleared up the day her father had asked him to step in for a foursome at the club. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle had gloated and they’d had one of the colossal fights that got both their mothers praying for a permanent break-up. “But don’t you have a gold medal or something up there in that soccer shrine that might make you <i>feel</i> better?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby had been perfect in high school. Perfect in grade school and even middle school. She played the right sports and was good at them. She made almost straight As, not enough to tar her as unapproachable. But enough to nab a scholarship to – perfect – “go East for University,” as her mother took to saying. “to one of the sister schools,” Lucille announced frequently at bridge.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“More like a southern finishing school,” Shelby complained to Kyle. “But it’s all women, which is what I want. It’s the only way to be school president. Its history department is good.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby had decided in grade school she would become a history major. Political science was “too political to look good on a resume” while “history has a classical look to it.” While her explanations became more sophisticated, the reasoning remained the same. “And I could stand a look at some of the folks in the East without being in the thick of them. I'd look like a hayseed.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There was nothing Shelby feared more than looking like a hick. She’d inherited that honestly from her mother and understood just that fear was the source of Lucille's elaborations and grandiose elocutions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Her step-father would slightly raise his eyebrows, including Shelby in his amusement at the bragging by Lucille, he gave off a slightly embarrassed but bemused air of forgiveness when her mother overstated things. He would lean over and pat his wife's arm or sometimes lift the drink out of her hand. That was how Shelby learned the concept of a faux pas which she'd subsequently tried to explain to her mother who refused to consider either its meaning or pronunciation. Shelby feared this meant Lucille would in the future mispronounce and misuse the phrase . </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “She’s my step-daughter,” William Wolf was saying to the governor, opening his arm to invite Shelby into the room. She knew he had to say that. On a lot of documents she had a different last name. And not just any last name. Prentiss. Not merely had her mother eloped with a Prentiss, she'd naturally gone with the rightfully tarred black sheep of the entire clan. Just like that, Shelby admired the man she called "my <i>real </i>father," he comes clean with the governor, who of course would have already known.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Baggage is baggage,” Kyle said, “but money is money.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Kyle also said, “Everyone’s got baggage.” Shelby knew he was quoting both of his parents when he said that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Her "real" father had actually never formally adopted her, although he encouraged Shelby to answer to Miss Wolf and allowed her introduction as Shelby Wolf from virtually the moment he had married Lucille. She had been two at the wedding.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">By middle school she’d learned you could change your name by simply beginning to use another. "As long as you aren't doing it for nefarious purposes," she'd explain to her parents, "it's perfectly legal."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">"It certainly is," William Wolf had smiled and patted her mother's arm in genial amusement and relief at the ease with which Shelby was growing up. It wasn't much of a big deal. Her mother had been doing just that for years. Her biological father, Phillip Prentiss, had never paid attention to her so it occurred to no one to mention the change to him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby was shaking hands with the governor and thinking he was as good looking in person as on television. He <i>really was </i>good looking. She turned to catch her mother's eye and saw Lucille's jaw slack with the same realization. Her mother was usually much more careful than that. Caught herself, Shelby saw Lucille pull her neck taut as she began to talk. Then Shelby was being somehow moved back into the doorway and now even her mother was standing too close to her and pushing her through.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“The governor and Daddy need to talk in private, now" her mother was saying."You just scoot along, dear. Oh, and me too?. I’ll just see about some refreshments, Governor,” her mother was calling back and Shelby could see how annoyed she was at being expected to leave the room as well. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby knew her mother would be back in that room soon. Quite soon, Shelby was willing to wager. But she herself wasn’t interested in the talking details, she’d seen the governor and he had been in her living room. That was enough for her right now. She returned to her room.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Talking now,” she texted. “Gov = Gorgeous.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Shit,” Kyle texted back.</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-6424099451301058702011-02-19T09:46:00.002-08:002011-02-19T09:46:48.093-08:00Chapter Two - The Governor's Aide<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> </h3><div class="post-header"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You can’t carry Downstate, Governor.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It’s not the electoral college, Buddy. It’s a simple majority. Votes. It is about the number of votes. I don’t need to carry it. Downstate just has to hold Engleson below sixty percent.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Well you’ve got forty percent. You’ve maybe got fifty. <span> </span>You’ve given these farmers everything they’ve asked for. <span> </span>You don’t need to go courting these gee-gaws down here for forty percent.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You’re wrong Buddy. I need every gee-gaw I can get. <span> </span>I need their vote and their wives’ votes and brothers and their dear old moms. So who can carry more gee-gaws? Wolf or Harrison?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Wolf,” Bud Nowak said without hesitation. “Haden is the biggest county of the quad, it has the four-year college and Wolf is easier to deal with than Harrison.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And he’ll show?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yeah. Wolf will show better than Harrison.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So it’s decided. Wolf becomes the lamb.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Are you going Biblical on me, Gov?” Most of Governor Powell Paulie’s staff thought Bud Nowak’s use of such a nickname was pretentious and used to make clear his lifelong status in the governor’s life. But the name “Gov” was given decades ago to his friend Paul <span> </span>– as the governor had been known since birth to Powell Paulie the third and his father’s ambitious third wife, Annabelle – when the two teenagers attended the Illinois State Student Government Convention the year the fourth Powell Paulie was voted governor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“We’re asking a man to accept a sacrificial seat,” Paulie said to Nowak and turned to look at the short almost gnomish looking man who had been sitting next to him, informing him for a lifetime.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Not necessarily.” <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Both men knew Bud Nowak had meant, ‘not necessarily <i>sacrificial</i>’ even though both men knew perfectly well the sacrificial seat they planned for William Wolf to seek. Nowak had not meant to say ‘not necessarily <i>asking</i>’ even though both men heard this in the comment as well. That was true. Both men knew that they certainly weren’t asking. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“How long does he have left in his seat now?” Governor Powell Paulie asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He just won re-election. It was close. But it’s always close. He’s a Downstate Democrat.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Why don’t they stagger their terms?” the governor asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I think they do.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So we’re asking him to give up his seat <i>and</i> take yet another hit for a party that is all but in exile in his home town.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No. There’s nothing in the county code that demands he give up his seat while running for another office,” Nowak said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Both men were silent at this partial truth. Once a man lost an election it was easier to lose the next one.<span> </span>But Nowak forged onward as was his job.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That is no way to go into it, Paul,” he said, leaning in toward the governor from his traditional spot in the limousine that was so thoroughly his there was a slump in the seat . <span> </span>“John Johnson isn’t as strong as he used to be. He’s getting old. This would be good exposure for Wolf. <span> </span>This guy has some genuine attributes.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Genuine attributes,” Paulie repeated and turned to smile at perhaps his only friend. <span> </span>“Is that what I have, Buddy? Do I have genuine attributes?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You have sex appeal and Cook County,” Nowak said. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Ah yes,” the governor sighed and closing his eyes leaned back into his seat. Keeping his eyes shut he said, “Those are the stronger attributes, aren’t they.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And maybe this guy could make some inroads. Wolf is a decent enough guy. Hard campaigner. It sure in the hell wouldn’t hurt Springfield any to have a couple more Democrats representing Dixieland.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I’ve told you about that,” the governor snapped at Nowak, his eyes opened but he didn’t turn. To his aide’s well-tuned ear, convivial conversation was closed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>The governor considered himself a liberal. “A practical liberal,” he said. He demanded his chauffeurs be black. The Dixieland<span> </span>reference might have provoked a grimacing smile from Paulie in another venue, but not within sight of the chauffeur. It didn’t matter, Nowak knew, that there was no way the driver could hear them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A black chauffeur played well in Chicago and it played well Downstate. “Not many good deeds get you points the full length of this great state,” Paulie would say during his not infrequent arguments with Sandra Craleck on this demand. Sandra ran <span> </span>interference between personnel and a great deal of other agencies and the governor’s office. Paulie was exacting .</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes the governor’s mood would go darker even than cynicism and he would add to his good deed quips, <span> </span>“But we’re not really in the good deed business any more, are we Buddy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yes you are, Governor,” Buddy Nowak always replied. “You’re doing good every day.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Buddy Nowak believed that, and believed it as ardently as when the conviction was born in junior high when Class President Powell Paulie knocked nearly senseless in a single blow to the chin <span> </span>the class vice president who had called Nowak Paulie’s “ grubby little Polack friend.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You don’t deserve elected office in a democracy if you believe that,” Paul had said to the vice president whom he had immediately bent over and extended a hand to help to his feet. “That isn’t how things get done.”</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-9146803471425931102011-02-19T09:46:00.000-08:002011-02-19T09:46:00.657-08:00Chapter Three – The State’s Attorney<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><br />
</h3><div class="post-header"> </div><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Now what in the hell do you think Snakes wants with that poor Bill Wolf?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle and his father exchanged familiar smiles as Patsy Harrison Grosen revved up the diatribe against her cousin. Cousin once or twice removed , or something like that. Kyle didn’t know how the relationship wove exactly. But he’d been weaned on stories about Snakes, known more widely as Powell H. Paulie, governor of the Great State of Illinois.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Snakes had not gained<span> </span>this familial nickname for the most obvious sounding reasons but because he’d carried a pair of dice upon his first visit to the far-removed relations in the south. He had been five, maybe not quite that, and knew how to shake the dice in his right hand and say “I want snakes, I want snakes,” as he rattled them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle didn’t misunderstand the unimportance of the connection to the man who rose from congressman to governor. “He doesn’t remember us, Honeybun,” Patsy had told her only child when he’d asked why her cousin never came to family reunions. He’d perhaps been ten when Powell Paulie began making big enough news that local talk about him revived. “At best Snakes remembers there were some distant relatives in a diminished past living down south.” In Kyle’s memory it was the first grown-up thing his mother had said to him, despite his equally strong memory of his chin in her hand as she told him this.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He’d grown to recognize, but not understand, how importance and unimportance were like two ends of a telescope. While the governor had little or no memory of his downstate connections, since running off to marry a Chicago man, Patsy Harrison’s grandmother’s sister had never fully dropped from the conversational circuits in Harrison or Haden counties. When the increasingly convoluted and risqué liaisons, marriages, divorces and elopements ultimately produced a governor, well how could the story help but grow?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He doesn’t care shit from shineola about us,” Kyle told Shelby when she’d first confided in him that the governor was coming to her house. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Well,” Shelby had said, annoyed that Kyle would – as usual – downplay the whole significance of it all. Act like he was something because he was related. “So what? So what that he doesn’t remember being five years old in good ole Harrison County. Would you want to remember getting dumped for the summer in a farm full of these inbred brats?” Shelby paused but couldn’t hold the pause for long before adding, “Present direct relations excluded, of course.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It has something to do with something,” Kyle had tried to explain the strange reverse telescope-thing. It was not the first time he had tried to engage her in conversations about how importance worked. He stopped when he realized she was becoming angrier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So what, Kyle? So what? The governor of the entire state is coming to my house to ask my dad to be lieutenant governor. Only you would want to ruin that for me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And that is great for your dad,” Kyle said, knowing already that in his household that would not be the twist. “It’s just strange how that works. How he doesn’t even know about us and we know all about him. It’s symbolic or something.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Symbolism will get you nowhere in life,” Shelby snapped.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Fact,” Kyle <span> </span>conceded.</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-44045534772442663622011-02-19T09:45:00.000-08:002011-02-19T09:45:10.018-08:00Chapter Four -- The Councilman<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> </h3><div class="post-header"> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“A senator, Bill.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Stop it, Lucille. I barely won re-election to the board. I’m honored to be a commissioner.”<span> </span>But Bill Wolf’s smile quivered about him like a happy puppy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Senator.” Lucille sighed the word more than said it. “Bill, listen to how this sounds, ‘Senator William A. Wolf.’ Wouldn’t you want to be senator?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It was lieutenant governor a mere hour ago,” he told his wife, fighting the smile threatening to engulf him. They were the exact words in his head. Plus, the governor tapped him before Harrison, that little prick. Thinking of Harrison successfully tamped the puppy quivering. “A primary against Harrison wouldn’t be much fun,” Wolf said. And now he sounded as he wished, brusque, annoyed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille smiled. “You can wipe the floor up with Harrison,” she said. She cocked her head in what had become their connubial code. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille Temple Prentiss Wolf had a good face. William Wolf’s grandmother, a Haden County girl, had told him that after he’d brought Lucille and Shelby to Thanksgiving dinner. “She’ll age well,” his grandmother had said, “if she stays busy.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He smiled now at his wife, looking a decade younger than forty-three with that geometric face that William Wolf found attractive and knew others did as well, but which was not actually pretty, perhaps cute, but a bit too extreme for cute. <span> </span>Lucille’s face was triangular with high cheekbones and round eyes almost too large, like in the waif paintings his first wife had found endearing. There had been two staring him down in the bedroom. He would see them over her shoulder when she was on top, rearing back her head and shaking her red mane and acutely boring him. The night after the impossibly long day following the accident he had taken them from the wall and slipping them conscientiously from their frames broke them into halves then quarters as he walked through the house and out to the garbage pails behind the garage.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille kept her hair cropped short. It was so black it reflected blue in strong moonlight. She kept it clipped raggedly about her face like Liza Minnelli but neater. Much neater. He had grasped the meaning of the word ‘coiffed’ when overhearing one of the councilwomen describing his wife’s hairstyle to another woman. “It caps her perfectly,” Lydia Prince had said, “a precisely coiffed ragamuffin.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>Lucille was lean and nearly as tall as William Wolf, the fair-haired and proverbial prodigal son of Haden County. He had been aware from the moment the pursuit began that she had targeted him for marriage. He had enjoyed every moment of the pursuit and, well into a second decade later, <span> </span>still enjoyed the fruits of this power balance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>All of these thoughts – though not examined, never made cogent <span> </span>– flooded William Wolf when he saw desire come into his wife. She was game for yet another race despite the exhaustive campaign they’d just concluded. His grandmother had been right about her in so many ways.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You nailed her PawMaw,” he had told his grandmother the night he lost the senate seat. “I’ll have Grandpop’s seat back on the council in two years. You watch.” Old Helen Wolf had died before that winning election but not without knowing her grandson would hold it. If that had been said once at the quad-county wake it had been said a hundred times. The election ten days after her death<span> </span>made truth of it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille had both known that Bill was aware of her intentions and also that without that absolute constant gurantee from her that she was absolutely there for him he would not remarry. There had been no children. He wouldn’t have had to. He could have made a fine political career for himself as his grandmother’s fair-haired boy. A wife would be helpful. Very helpful. But only the right wife. Lucille knew this. William Wolf knew this.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She approached William Wolf more than sixteen years ago and worked side by side with him on his first campaign; his failed senatorial bid against the same Republican incumbent who still holds the seat.<span> </span>John Johnson had not faced an opponent since, not in five election cycles. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe he was vulnerable now. This was what crossed repeatedly through the Wolfs’ thoughts. Maybe the state party was right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What if it’s Thompson they want you to run against?” Lucille asked. “He’s going to go see Harrison too, right? The governor?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Run against Thompson? Don’t be crazy. Stanley Thorne is going to run again. I’m not challenging Thorne in a primary. And certainly not for an unwinnable seat.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And Johnson’s is more winnable?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Into the silence they both thought back sixteen years. They hadn’t at the time any idea at all just how young they’d been.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You’d slaughter Harrison in a primary,” Lucille finally said. There was no doubt in her mind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Nor William Wolf’s.</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-85970139692474931902011-02-19T09:44:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:44:21.357-08:00Chapter Five -- Senator<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><br />
</h3><div class="post-header"> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“The boys at the barbershop say he asked him about being lieutenant governor,” Matt Grosen told Patsy and Kyle, after the Snakes diatribe had ended. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“Well that’s bullshit,” Patsy said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yeah, I think so,” Matt laughed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Why?” asked Kyle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“There aren’t enough Democratic votes down here,” Patsy explained. “Snakes needs someone from up north who can pull a whole lot of votes to keep us Republicans out of the mansion come next election.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Nothing like a born-again,” Matt said, grinning at his converted wife.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>The Harrisons were just about the biggest horse breeding family in southern Illinois and the only such family to be Democrats. Patsy grew up believing, as the whole lot of arrogant jack-ass Liberals believed if you asked Matt’s opinion, that they were the anointed party chosen <span> </span>to lead the dumb-ass southerners into Liberal Lincoln Land. “Lincoln was a goddamn Republican,” was a phrase not often left out of any comments Matthew B. Grosen had to make regarding the races.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Although he alluded to others that it had been his influence, <span> </span>it wasn’t Matt who had drawn Patsy to a new world view. Rather a chance eavesdropping in the horse barn when she was an impressionable thirteen. Looking at the event now, decades later, her shattering event couldn’t even garner a shrug. After the past four elections, winning the last two, Patsy Harrison Grosen doubted that much of anything could even raise her eyebrows anymore. But at thirteen she’d been deeply shocked overhearing her father agree to back the Republican congressman as a thank you for his support of Nixon’s wheat sale to Russia.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At the time it seemed her shock grew from seeing her father cheerfully negotiating profits with his most sworn enemies: the Republicans and the Russians. But over the decades of looking back at that scene what Patsy has come to realize is that what she was staring at throughout the men’s entire conversation was that they were both standing in horse manure. It had been her father’s favorite lawyer joke – and one he never failed to tell or at least quote when he saw Matt. The punch line was the lawyer, on his way into a farmer’s home, looking down at what he’d stepped in and crying, “I’m melting! I’m melting!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">That was also the day of the night she’d learned her best friend’s older brother – whom she’d had a crush upon since first grade and who had been recently, handsomely drafted – had been killed in Vietnam.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The day had coddled her into, not a Republican, but rather a non-believer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“No longer a believer,” was how she’d explained herself to Matt when they began dating a few years later. When a few years later she agreed to register Republican they both knew what she was actually doing was saying “Yes,” to a man who could do nothing less than follow in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I said ‘I do’ to a hundred years of outlaw lawmen and their idiotic version of womanhood,” was how she described her marriage to a dynasty of right-wing lawmen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But there was no doubt in Haden County that Patsy Harrison Grosen relished her role. At forty she was slim and blonde and vivacious with time for volunteer work in the hospital, women’s center and Head Start. “I’m just a bleeding heart conservative,” she would laugh.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That’s going to break Lucille’s heart,” Kyle’s father said now to his mother. “I’ll bet she’d got curtains picked out for the governor’s mansion already. That poor son-of-a-bitch,” Kyle and Patsy knew he meant William Wolf. Matt and Bill had played ball together in high school. They had been friends. Their wives had not. Indeed, neither Matt nor Patsy had liked either of Bill Wolf’s wives. And Patsy’s outspokenness didn’t leave much doubt that she didn’t like Bill either.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You don’t much like anybody in Haden County,” Matt had once shouted at Patsy. They didn’t argue often but they argued loudly when they did. So Kyle didn’t feel particularly shocked or concerned when he overheard this argument. But he gained interest when he realized it was about the Wolfs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I like Kyle. I like you most of the time. I don’t lose you as many votes as I gain you. What more do you think you can ask?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Patsy had not yelled this answer and his father had not yelled back. Something Kyle didn’t understand had been settled between his parents, but their dislike of Shelby had not been altered.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“She’s not even a Wolf,” he had screamed once at Patsy. He hadn’t been a teenager yet. Perhaps he was as young as ten. Maybe even eight. He and Shelby were still young enough to spend the nights at one another’s houses. His mother had, this time, said, “No.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No,” she had said, “the Wolf girl cannot spend the night and it would be better if you saw less of her anyway. You’re both too old for this.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle remembers his sudden rage. It was the first time he recalled that type of anger. He had never even been in a fistfight. He just wasn’t that interested in being right. But at this he had become enraged with an intensity that surprised his mother and shocked him. Nothing specific had ever been said to him against Shelby or her family, but at this comment of his mother’s he suddenly realized his mother did not merely dislike Shelby Wolf, he realized that like his father, his mother saw some people as enemies. And Shelby was an enemy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No, she isn’t a Wolf,” his mother had said, “she’s a Prentiss in Wolf’s clothing. And if you were about a decade older with a lick of sense you’d know enough to run like hell away from her.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“He shouldn’t have married her,” his father was saying now, regretting he’d made the curtain comment in front of Kyle, but unable to keep himself from once again making his point against Lucille. “He would have done better to fiddle about with her and send them on their way.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You mean, and marry one of those church ladies. You are all sons of bitches,” Patsy had replied. “I don’t like her either. But Bill Wolf knew exactly what he wanted and he got it. No reason to go blaming Bill Wolf’s problems on his wife.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You ‘re such a feminist,” Matt teased and tried to plant a kiss on her neck. She shrugged him off.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Don’t start on me,” Kyle’s mother had said and dinner – which had consisted of open containers of various leftover on the counter and the three of them grazing among them with forks – was abruptly over. Like usual.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It was the next day Shelby had rushed over after school with the news. “He’s going to be Senator,” she told Kyle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“What do you mean?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He’s going to run against Johnson for Senator. The governor wants him to do it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This, Kyle realized, was what his father meant about women just not getting it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And,” she said and paused, “this is even bigger news, I think he’s going to resign his seat! Mother thinks he’s an idiot, that the governor is only going to screw him,” Shelby said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Your mother can be pretty smart, Shel,” he told her. “What does your dad say?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He says he won’t have that son-of-a-bitch Harrison saying he was using the office to run against him.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Harrision?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yeah. They think there’s going to be a primary. Mom and Dad do.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Wow, Shelby. When is he going to do this? Give up his seat? Why is he going to do that?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I don’t know when. But soon I think. You know you can’t tell anyone.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">That bond between them, that what they shared could never be repeated to their parents or the other kids they knew whose parents were political was so ancient that it was nearly an insult for Shelby to have verbalized it. And Kyle shot her a look. And Shelby realized it. And they both relaxed a bit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It’s just that, well, I think Mom wants the appointment.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What appointment?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Dad’s seat.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What? Your mom wants your dad’s council seat? She thinks the Democrats are going to appoint her to your dad’s council seat? He just won. Why is he doing this? He isn’t really going to resign, is he?” Kyle made himself shut his mouth. Stop talking. He knew he’d already said far too much. <span> </span>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Indeed, Shelby just smiled. “You don’t think she can do it?” she asked. She had heard her mother ask her step-father just that. And she knew Kyle would say the exact same thing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No,” Kyle said, “that’s not it at all. It just won’t look right.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That’s just what Dad said. Exactly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">They grinned at one another. They had been together their entire lives. There was a part of this life they shared that <span> </span>was just like sitting next to one another, watching the same movie. When Shelby had once suggested something like this to Kyle he’d readily agreed. “Except we’re the only ones who see it as a comedy,” he’d added.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What does it matter?” Shelby now asked. “If he quits; if she get it. You know what she says?” Shelby asked. “She says, ‘Who wants to stay a councilman anyway?’”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That’s right,” Kyle said and quoting his mother launched into the line that had become his and Shelby’s private anthem, “there’s another election just around the corner.”</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-3263837494387694012011-02-19T09:43:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:43:31.407-08:00Chapter Six - The Appointee<div class="post-header"> </div><div class="post-body entry-content"> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“I’m just saying,” Lucille Wolf said, for the fourth time since the meeting had convened an hour and a half before. “As chairman <span> </span>of the Democratic Central Committee for Haden County I am responsible for establishing how the deliberations and the interviews will be conducted to replace former-Council President Wolf. <span> </span>Of course <i>after </i>that <i>anyone </i>who wishes to be considered for the seat will have to remove themselves from the deliberations.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Lucille Wolf, for what seemed the hundredth time scoped the table, meeting the eyes of each member before moving on to the next; member to member to member, counting the votes over and over, returning always from where she’d begun, with Carlene Deluccio.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “<i>Everyone</i>,” she emphasized into Carlene’s eyes, “who wants to run will have to announce their intention and <i><b>then</b> everyone </i>in the running will excuse themselves. But first we better have a method in place to fairly assess the candidates on their merits and experience. Don’t you think, Carlene?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span> The women smiled with hatred as symbiotic as were their different affections for their very different husbands. Particularly different now that one was dead.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The committee members waited for the two women to settle whatever needed settling. They waited and if so asked would perform tasks, primarily out of courtesy to Lucille. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille had put in her time, stuffed envelopes, knocked on doors, married William Wolf who had been tapped by the governor. She deserved courtesy. But regardless of how long they waited or how many tasks came to be demanded of them, Lucille would not be handed her husband's seat.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> So Lucille grew more frenzied and Carlene grew smug. The room grew thick with their inability to stop Lucille and let the inevitable transpire.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">They, after all, could only wait so long, before they needed to turn their deference to Carlene.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Is she crazy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Stranger things have happened,” Stanley Thorne replied to Irene Hanley when the committee finally took a lunch break. It had been Irene, of course, who ultimately cut into Lucille's filibustering and demanded a break. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Well don’t you be a part of it,” Irene snapped back at Thorne.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> As longed for but nevertheless thoroughly unanticipated, lunch provoked Lucille into submission. Lucille expected such a thing least of all. She had hurried to the bank, determined to get Al Plover to make Henry Warren put her name forward for Bill’s seat. But a chance passing of Matt Grosen’s<span> </span>wife shocked her into recognizing the futility of her pursuit. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span> Patsy Grosen saw Lucille, head down, roaring toward her and was preparing herself for their traditional faux friendly greeting offered on behalf of their children. When Lucille looked up it registered with Patsy just where Lucille had been and the strain in Lucille’s face was clear. Both women realized the instant their eyes met that Patsy pitied Lucille.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> It would be hard put to determine which woman was more shocked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Lucille turned without gaining the bank, her business unfinished. No greeting passed between them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The unanimous vote came within a quarter hour of reconvening. Carlene Deluccio’s name was sent to the governor and five of the seven members of the committee confided to Lucille afterwards that she was the best choice, but that the circumstances wouldn’t permit it. They each concluded with the assurance that they knew she understood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Fucking bitches. Fucking seventh grade girl bitches,” Lucille said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Lucille,” Shelby’s step-father reprimanded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Shut-up,” Lucille replied. “I didn’t see you do a goddamn thing to help me. Not lift a finger. I have done nothing but help you from day one. You wouldn’t even stand up for me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“How in the hell could I have done that?”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">William Wolf asked. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“Behind the scenes. For god’s sakes, you’re <i>behind the scenes </i>all the time anymore. Drumming up more votes for Paulie than for yourself. You better be careful,” Lucille said, “that governor’s gonna play you for a sucker you don’t take care of your own self. And that means me, too, buddy.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “In a few weeks you’ll see it was impossible,” William Wolf said and packed his suitcase and said he’d be in Springfield for the next week.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The waters were smoothed when he returned. Lucille had made a few dozen calls on his behalf and brought in some money, not a lot, but the campaign could pay down the bill to the TV station now, enough to cut the second spot.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Lucille had also organized a dinner meeting of the full campaign committee to serve a buffet with beer and some wine punch, get everybody excited again, see if they could gin up some more worker bees for Bill. <span> </span>There was still a long way to go.</span></div></div><span class="post-author vcard"> </span>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-19443879083117978832011-02-19T09:42:00.000-08:002011-02-19T09:42:53.283-08:00Chapter Seven - New Councilwoman<div class="post-header"> </div><br />
Carlene Deluccio was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for. “Doesn’t say much, does it?” Carlene Santano Deluccio would loudly proclaim. “I just tell ‘em it doesn’t say much to be smarter than the zero they think I am,” she would tell her brother Alex, “and then I just laugh and laugh in their faces," she told her brother, "and look like a loud-mouthed Wop.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"> “You’re not a Wop,” her brother invariably snapped back.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Carlene would laugh some more and then she might grow suddenly annoyed and snap, “If I was as dumb as people say, what am I doing here?” </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> It was a trademark line with her. She would snap it out any time at anyone who annoyed her.<span> </span>But even victims of this line – for Carlene Santano Deluccio heard insults to her intelligence frequently – admitted that few other things annoyed her at all. Carlene was an affable, welcoming, even mothering type of woman, although she’d never had children. This was well known since her childlessness could prompt grand emotional outbreaks. “What am I doing here?” she would ask at the conclusion of these outbreaks as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> What was she doing here? That was the Haden County Democrats’ perennial question. An immigrant amongst such WASPs they would confess to one another.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span> She wasn’t an immigrant herself, but from an immigrant’s family. From Chicago. The Haden countians actually meant by this her husband’s family, the Deluccios. Her husband, Victor Deluccio, had been two decades older,wealthy and now dead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> It was assumed in Haden County that Victor Deluccio took care of the Chicago mob’s southern Illinois interests in horses and horse racing. According to his IRS filings, so said First National Bank of Haden County President Al Plover, Victor Deluccio reported ownership of a single racetrack and a few horses at Stovepipe Farm, which had, from the day the Hansen boys sold the place, been placed and remained solely in Carlene’s name. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Victor Deluccio was a big campaign donor, lending credence to his reputed<span> </span>mobster connections. He gave generously to both parties in all level of races. He himself was unelectable, too shady in reputation for appointments to local building committees or economic development boards, too rogue to fit with the local chamber or community chests.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> But Carlene joined everything, childless and tireless and with Victor’s checkbook in her hand. Each year she passed in Haden County brought more invitations to join foundations, boards and trusteeships. She worked for child welfare, battered women, cultural development. She ultimately became both a trustee of the local hospital and the college. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “If I’m so dumb,” she said in accepting the latter trusteeship, “what are all of you doing here?” <span> </span>The laughter was polite and quickly drowned in her own guffaws. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Sooner or later most people came to, if not exactly <i>like</i> her, at least appreciate her, albeit, preferably at a distant table instead of at their own table. She was loud and opinionated and generous.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Victor had been so careful in his giving neither party considered him a member of the other.And despite all those volunteer hours and the couple's appearance at social and fund raising events within the quad-counties, her political yearnings were unsuspected as well, indeed, as far as anyone could recall, unexpressed. No one remembered a single political or even general civic conversation with Carlene for all those years. She talked about money. Raising money. And she did it well on her own and leveraged that successfully on behalf of her boards.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Yet Victor’s corpse wasn’t cold, so went the talk in both parties, when Carlene Deluccio filed for a county council seat as a Democrat, within hours of the codified deadline, she forced a primary with the well liked and clean-cut WASP, William Wolf.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> It was obvious from the start she would lose and lose big. Wolf was popular enough to be a Democrat able to securely and hold a council seat in the largely Republican county. His respect from members of both parties routinely landed him the presidency of the board. He had honorably paid his party dues and his civic dues. He had served on boards and fund-raised for others. And throughout he had remained friendly with all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Carlene’s move was too sudden against too solid of an incumbent, said the shocked Democrats of Haden County. It appeared such a spur-of-the-moment peccadillo that many Democrats were surprised to see how many votes she did garner. Then further aggrieved when she did land a seat on the party’s central committee. Her numbers were so striking, some Democrats in Haden County speculated that had Carlene run as a Republican she might have beat Wolf in the general election.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “If I’m so dumb, what am I doing here?” Carlene slapped the various committee members on their backs and upper arms as she attended her first meeting, the first freshman member in more than a decade. Money <i>and </i>elect-ability gained Carlene Deluccio credentials other party workers had spent decades attaining or more often, failing to attain. Now it would be she, little more than half a year later, being asked to accept the seat she’d sought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “She outfoxed the wolves,” was how Irene Hanley saw it and repeated the phrase a number of times after first tossing it into William Wolf’s face when he told her he planned to resign.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Yes,” Wolf had said without inflection, “she did.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “And what does that tell you?” Irene had asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> He didn’t dislike women, which William Wolf reminded himself when he found himself sparring with Irene. Not because of Irene intrinsically but because somehow Irene made him think of all women rolled into one. That was just too much. That was just too much all-knowing, condescending and general priggishness rolled into a great big shaking finger.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “That I’m a chump?” Wolf asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “But loyal,” Irene smiled, reached up and patted him on the cheek before returning home and launching the telephone tree that would bring them all together to give Carlene Deluccio William Wolf’s council seat as soon as Bill resigned and Lucille got through with her hissy fit. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Poor boy, he didn’t know his granddaddy long enough to learn that honor comes even before loyalty,” she told Stanley Thorne as she started the telephone tree. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “So he isn’t a Marine,” Stanley had replied. “He could still beat Johnson.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span>“Not even his granddaddy could have beat Johnson,” Irene said. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Well, he’ll beat Harrison,” Thorne retorted, deciding he would not tell Irene at this moment that he would, again, be launching a campaign against Thompson.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Yes,” Irene sighed, “yes he probably will. But why does it sound like some kind of Carlene joke when you say it?”</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-41613939088858420372011-02-19T09:40:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:40:38.549-08:00Chapter Eight – The Campaign<h3 class="post-title entry-title"><br />
</h3><div class="post-header"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It wasn’t until putting the decorations away Shelby began shaking. Shaking so she nearly dropped the ornament she’d been told her paternal grandmother had given for her first Christmas. She’d been slightly more than six months old.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It was the thought that did it,” Shelby told Kyle. “I thought, ‘This is the last time I’ll be doing this.’ And I suddenly realized that with everything I placed back into its box I was thinking the same thing, ‘This is the last time I’ll be doing this.’ Just like I was going to be dead before next Christmas.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know that’s crazy, right?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">She was silent after that. So Kyle remained silent too. They sat huddled in separate sleeping bags in Kyle’s father’s Jeep. Neither Kyle’s truck nor Shelby’s compact had four-wheel drive. The snow had stopped only a few hours ago. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was after just this type of a snowfall, a snowfall heavy enough to take down small branches, followed by a north wind, you could hear the wolves. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The cemetery had huge old markers in the center. They configured just right for the wind to howl through. It was a small cemetery, deep within the forest that for the most part was what constituted Haden County’s Jefferson Park. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Unlike in the counties of the Metro East, the park in Haden County wasn’t named for the third president. It was named for its donor, Bernard Coates Jefferson, a man made wealthy in the Metro East from the railroad and riverboats and then made poor buying acreage in Southern Illinois. Jefferson had given five-thousand- plus acres to Haden County a century ago. The land at the time included the small cemetery, a large lake and thick woodlands abutting acres of inactive farm fields.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Mr. Jefferson saw a future in land, expected to capitalize on land in and of itself,” the executor of the B.C .Jefferson Trust explained on a field trip Shelby’s and Kyle’s ninth grade history class had made. “An idea before it’s time,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Still is,” Shelby had said within hearing of their teacher who smiled broadly.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Precisely, Shelby.” The teacher turned to the rest of the class, “Do the rest of you grasp this economic concept?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby had overheard Mr. Plover and her stepfather talking while mixing drinks for their wives in the Wolf’s kitchen. There was apparently to be a new racetrack in the southeast portion of the state. Haden County needed a state interchange built there to make it profitable according to the banking officials who were working on securing private investors for the region.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“There’s plenty of land over there at Jefferson,” Mr. Plover had said. “There are acres and acres the bank would love to move on.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby didn’t know how this was what Mrs. Turner meant, but treasured that five-year-old commendation and as a result registered for a freshman economics class first semester at her small private college in the East. Her grasp of economics in that class were a precise D on the bell curve. Her standing among her peers was a bit lower. A further surprise was discovering that she had an accent and that it was openly referred to as a “twang” and audibly behind her back called “hillbilly.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “They all went to pre-school together,” Shelby explained to Kyle her decision not to return. “Besides, Mom and Dad could use my help on the campaign. Even Dad said it would help. They can’t get the donations they need to hire any help at all. And Harrison is rich. He is so rich. The campaign manager says Dad has to compete no matter how much Harrison spends.” Shelby paused and looked at Kyle. “I think they took out a loan,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">They both knew the adage: If there isn’t enough money to support your candidacy, there aren’t enough votes to elect you.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“They just need help,” Shelby said. “And I don’t plan to go back there anyway. It was so phony.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The wind shook snow from the trees that surrounded the parking lot and the road in to the forest. A few other cars had crunched quietly past but presumably found their own private coves in the snaking lot circling the cemetery. Or they had driven on, content to repeat the ghost stories of Victoria Forest while driving past.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Jefferson had named the thick stand of hardwoods and pines for his maiden sister. Her tall grave stone was among those creating the winter cries. The forest had been long ago nicknamed Voodoo Forest. It stood alone on the horizon, one of the first stands of trees to mark the edge of the ancient prairies. There the land becomes increasingly hilly as it descends into the great rivers convergence at the tip of Southern Illinois.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby and Kyle had brought sleeping bags so they could turn the car off and listen for the wolves. They each had climbed into one and sat in the front seat of the Jeep. Snow had fallen all day, quitting only a few hours before sunset. It was early evening now but dark as night. The cemetery felt just barely beyond their sight. Sometimes it seemed one of the tall gravestones could be seen amongst the lean black trunks that swayed as the snow blew past. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">They remained silent, unusual just a few weeks ago but having become typical as Shelby’s winter break wore on. She received a crash course on how the campaign was running since returning home in mid-December. She returned looking brittle and unhappy and at first seemed quickly revived. But that was short lived.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Shelby arrived home on a Thursday and went with Kyle Friday afternoon to the Starbucks in Vernon County – he had taken her out of the county, knowing she wouldn’t want to be in Haden and still it hadn’t mattered. Susan Prince was there with a handful of her student council cheerleading bitches and asked loudly if anyone had ever heard of a Political Gold-digger? “They don’t do it for the money,” she said, “they do it for the party.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I get this is for me,” Shelby said to Kyle, “but I don’t get it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Harder to deny.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Ah,” Shelby said. “Brilliant in its own way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Whether she had known then, whether she had always known, Shelby couldn’t dodge the bile her mother was acquiring as William Wolf ran a grueling campaign that made the phrase no-holds-barred meaningless. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Harrison hadn’t hesitated to paint Wolf as the husband of a two-timing floozy who took the life of a good upstanding county man she’d tempted him into disaster and then death. And Harrison went on colorfully noting that Wolf’s current wife was so slatternly as to be tossed out by the wastrel Prentiss. Wolf himself, explained Harrison, was a man who had only come home from the city to help his old man drive the once illustrious Wolf Farms into bankruptcy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “Pains me to say of a native son of my neighboring county, but Bill Wolf is more akin to a carpetbagger than a prodigal son,” Harrison intoned at any number of church picnics. “Now Billy Wolf might be nice enough,” Harrison would concede. “It’s nice to have your commissioners be coming from the salt of the earth, and all like that. But you surely don’t want some ne’er-do-well with a questionable ability to choose uplifting company for himself to be representing your god-fearing interests in Springfield. Do you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">That Richard Harrison, better known as Dickie Harrison, could call anyone a ne’er do well with a straight face was testimony to a life lived unexamined. Richard Harrison was happy with his life, happy with himself, happy that his plump little wife stayed home with his plump five children leaving him most of the time to take care of his business and his pleasure elsewhere.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Business for Dickie Harrison was running his daddy’s harness and tack shop which provided a nice little income for Dickie so long as it was attached to the Harrison’s huge farm interests which produced thoroughbreds with Kentucky Derby trophies in their careers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Dickie didn’t so much run the store as conduct a farm to farm to convention to convention door to door service that did indeed increase orders and kept him on the road – sometimes for a couple of weeks in a well outfitted travel trailer – at least six days out of ten. He could be found as often at a home’s kitchen table in the middle of the day as in a man’s barn or a neighborhood bar. Conducting business and pleasure.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Betty Jean did not seem to mind. She had a beautiful ranch house with a swimming pool and a maid. No other girl in her entire graduating class had anything even close to it. Dickie was agreeable and charming when he was around and usually threw a party every week or two when he was home. She felt neither lonely nor maligned by any of the talk that surrounded her husband. “Dickie loves me fine,” she would giggle if anyone braved hinting with her about his antics.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Dickie would grab her ass at a party and squeezing it say to the people nearby, “Betty Jean’s got it good. I give her everything she could possible need.” And then he would growl and she would squeal.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The one time Lucille had seen the display – the one time she had attended a Harrison party – she had made a slight gagging sound and said, “I think I need a glass of water.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Dickie overheard her and hollered, “Getting’ too hot for you in here, Lolita?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill Wolf had blushed to his hairline and looked first at Lucille and then at Dickie and then back at Lucille to see what he should do. Lucille smiled. “I’m older than I look, Ducky,” and took to calling Harrison Dickie Duck when she had the chance.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">As insinuations of these attacks began appearing in Harrison’s ads and radio spots William Wolf began demanding his dwindling local committee come up with some counter slings. Lucille was adamantly opposed to the idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Buddy Nowak thinks it’s a good idea,” Bill hissed one night to Lucille as once again the campaign committee shrugged and failed to take up his request.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“”You can’t fight him back by saying Dickie Duck cheats on his wife, squanders his daddy’s money, is a redneck and a racist. Who in Harrison County doesn’t already know that? If Buddy Nowak wants to go around calling Ducky a sleazebag, more power to him. But don’t let him have you do it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“What makes you think you know so much,” Bill Wolf would snap. “You’ve already said what you think. But it isn’t you out there, is it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Right,” Lucille said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“ Well I just want to remind you that Buddy Nowak has won a lot of campaigns.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“So have you,” Lucille retorted.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Not like this one,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">They didn’t need to argue to gauge how grueling the campaign was. All they had to do is look at one another. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Since Shelby had left in early August Lucille had gained two dress sizes and found strands of gray hair. She began dying immediately. She lost her chair on the central committee as well as seats on three charity boards. Two of the boards lost major donors, both Harrison supporters. She was reappointed to neither and her third board announced she would have an honorary early retirement luncheon in light of her increased duties on her husband’s campaign. “Kicked me off before I had a chance to kill off another donor,” Lucille told her daughter. Shelby had escorted her mother to the luncheon the day after she returned from college. They gave Lucille a plaque. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill had lost two pant sizes, a collar size and looked haggard and old. He looked as Shelby remembered old Mr. Wolf, Bill’s father, who she’d known for the few years he’d still been alive when Shelby was a child. Those were the years the Wolf farm was finally lost and the old man died. She worried her step-father would die. She had heard her mother warn him he would have a heart attack if he kept it up. Shelby had heard him say the same thing to her mother. Shelby had thought about her mother dying, but could not conceive of such a thing and did not worry about her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">During the months Shelby had been away, Bill and Lucille’s bickering had become mean and intense. There had always been times when the three of them had perchance sat a meal together and found themselves all talking and seemingly speaking separate languages and talking about completely different topics. When they caught themselves all would laugh and they became a family again.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby looked up the kitchen counter that first Friday morning she was back from college expecting the same experience to end their bickering. They h ad scheduled this morning to eat breakfast together, joking that family time now had to be scheduled. Shelby had expected it would be the time for her to tell about her first semester and begin convincing them of her desire to leave the school.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So when they quickly fell into a tussle and caught themselves and fell silent, it was Shelby who first looked up with a chuckle, expecting them to all laugh. Instead Bill and Lucille gulped down the remains of their coffee in unintended unison and pushed abruptly back from the counter with barely a farewell to Shelby.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> She sat alone at the counter and began to feel afraid. Shelby herself had lost a dress size and her appetite and her perfect complexion. Her grades were abysmal compared to high school. Her mother hadn’t noticed any of these things. Shelby had seen the envelope from the school, surely her grades, unopened on her mother’s desk. As the days of her vacation passed the letter was buried in more envelopes which also remained unopened.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was some days after Christmas Day before the three of them found themselves again at the kitchen counter. Shelby blurted her intentions of remaining home for the next semester and helping with the campaign. Her father had looked up from his meal first at her and then questioningly at her mother. As soon as his eyes hit Lucille’s she turned to Shelby and said, “I think that’s an excellent idea, Shel. Do you know how to use Excel?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">By then Shelby had gotten a full dose of the campaign. In addition to Susan Prince’s Starbucks show, two other girls had let her hear “gold-digger” at holiday parties and one had even called her mother a gold-digger to Shelby’s face.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“How do you figure that?” Shelby had asked, stunned more into curiosity than anger.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know what I mean,” the girl had said and walked off.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“My mom has been married to Bill Wolf for longer than she’s been alive,” she said to Kyle. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">She heard and overheard her stepfather called both an opportunist and a buffoon. She heard people say it in adjacent restaurant booths, in store aisles, saw it on the growing local blog entries. The newspaper had always been Republican so she’d long ago learned not to expect kind treatment there. She’d been surprised, however, by how many of the old Democrats were quoting the paper they had spent her lifetime scorning. They quoted its criticism of her stepfather.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Not all of them,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Only the ones talking,” she replied.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> She herself had been called a slut by Bobby Hanley who had become a rabid member of the Republican Youth Club to spite his councilwoman mother, Irene. Kyle punched him in the jaw and landed in a great deal more trouble than Bobby.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I was a Republican in my youth as well,” Irene excused her badly behaved son. Irene called his behavior “independent thinking” and indicative of a well-adjusted son despite a no-good father who had walked out on them when Bobby was four. The abandonment forced Irene back to her parent’s farm next to the Wolf’s old place where Bobby grew up. Shelby had known him as long as she had known Kyle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “There,” Kyle whispered as a burst of wind slightly rocked the car. He turned the key to allow him to lower his window about an inch. He was on the lee. It was how he always parked at Voodoo Forest just for this reason.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby nodded.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The faint howling grew with the wind and the fresh snow blew across the windshield and it was exactly what Shelby had asked for, “I’d like to be neatly packaged inside one of those snowballs you shake and then set down,” she had said to Kyle, . “let’s go listen to the rocks.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“The winter wolves,” she said now as the howling picked up and then drifted away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle said nothing but kept his eyes on her. It felt he was more than watching her, more even than guarding her, he felt ready to rush in quickly and save her. Save her from what? He kept asking himself. As if what? As if she was about to whip a razor blade across her wrists? He had never seen her act like this. As if she had deflated. Except that she was angry, he knew that much. She was really angry and swallowing all signs of it. She just grew more silent. That had never been her style; his style, perhaps, but never hers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “You know he’s going to beat Harrison,” Kyle finally said. “Even my mom says it. “</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Do you think so?” Shelby asked so suddenly he reflexively pulled away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Yeah. Yeah, Shel, he’s going to win,” he leaned back toward her, reaching an arm out of the warm bag to touch her shoulder..</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Senator?” she asked, without turning toward him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Sure,” Kyle said. But he had merely meant the primary and she knew it. There was no consideration in his household that William Wolf stood any chance of taking the seat from John Johnson. “Maybe it will get better in the general. My dad always says primaries are worse than generals.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was a poor save. It wasn’t a save at all. Shelby looked at him and grimaced. “Yeah, fighting you Republicans will be clean after this,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle grinned. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said and pulled his arm back inside his bag.. Shelby gave him a brief smile.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby knew from Carlene Deluccio that primaries were worse than general elections. In the general election at least most of your own party puts on a face of supporting you. In a primary it is rigueur de jour to support no one but yourself. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Dad keeps saying that too, ‘Once we get through the primary, Shel.’,” she mocked a gruff voice, “ ‘ Once we get through this primary.’ They both say it, Mom too, to the campaign people, to the volunteers, to Lydia Price our <i>loyal </i>treasurer,” she says to Kyle and looks at him. “But they never said what that means. Once we get through the primary it gets worse? And which is worse? Winning or losing? Once we get through the primary, what? We eat our young? Float our dead into the sea? Throw the whores and money changers over the cliff? What?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Three months. She was only eighteen years old. Her big shot college had shot her down. Her acquaintances of a lifetime had turned vicious in her absence. She could hardly eat. Her big shot parents were unraveling. Shelby had never been so unnerved. Kyle had never seemed so tedious. But there he was. There was no one else. Absolutely no one else. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You might all be right,” Shelby said, “it really can’t get much worse short y’all eating us.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby leaned into Kyle and they touched heads, watched the snow swirl and listened to the wolves.</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-59437012628616586392011-02-19T09:39:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:39:28.841-08:00Chapter Nine – The Candidates<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> </h3><div class="post-header"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“WINNING IS EVERYTHING!” Buddy cried out. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">About thirty-five men and two women tried to raise their right arms in imitation of Buddy and tried to raise their voices in imitation of Buddy but it was a weak echo. The contingent of downstate candidates out of the primary were gathered for their first pep rally with Governor Powell Paulie. The governor would be arriving “soon” they had been told twice and were starting to grasp that they themselves were the warm-up act.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Few Downstate Democrats had faced contested primaries so hadn’t actually won anything yet. They were still new to the silly things that accompanied one-on-one campaigning or slate-building on behalf of the Party. This hollering and jumping up and down in an Elk Lodge <span> </span>was embarrassing, seemed juvenile to them. They still expecting gravitas and strategic conversations about policies and issues. They were to be disabused of that today. That was the purpose of today, to turn them into candidates running below the governor’s ticket.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“We got to all get on the same page,” Buddy Nowak told them. “We gotta get on the governor’s wagon and we all gotta push. We gotta push to the win. Let’s hear it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Winning Is Everything,” cried Bill Wolf. He believed it. He was a winner. Harrison had been gracious in conceding but had made no effort to throw his party support to Wolf. Instead it appeared his people were moving into Johnson's camp. Harrison had been seen politically only once since the primary, at a Paulie fundraiser. Wolf had seen him deep in conversation with Buddy and hoped Harrison was being encouraged to bring the Harrison County Democrats out for him in November.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Bill Wolf looked to the men on either side of him. They stood with their right fists clenched but not raised and said the words looking at the floor. “Winning IS everything,” Bill suddenly cried out again and the men to his sides slightly jumped and then turned and smiled at him. Bill reached out and patted both men on their backs.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“WINNING IS EVERYTHING,” Buddy called back. And now Bill, the men on either side of him and the men next to them cheered louder than before.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“BILL WOLF – WINNER IN HADEN COUNTY,” Buddy called back. A cheer went up in the room and Bill grinned and raised his arms into the air.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">He was on his way. He could feel it. The room was electric. He was electric. Electric and alive. He had won a grueling race. He was a winner. He was on his way.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Congratulations,” boomed the governor who stepped upon the plywood stage set up for military recognitions, fire department installations and politicians. “We stand here today as winners and in a few months will stand together in Springfield as leaders representing the citizens of the Great State of Illinois. But first we gotta get ‘em to the polls,” the governor said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The renewed cheering partially obliterated the rest of the governor’s sentence which ended as did so many of his campaign pledges, “…if we work together.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well that is sure as shit the fly in the ointment, isn’t it,” Lucille said that night. “Working together,” she snorted. She, too, had attended the rally, but she had attended to the seminars and orientations filled with the mishmash of campaign aides and treasurers and spouses. She had been surprised to realize Bill’s campaign committee was far more organized than most. She was surprised and disheartened. She’d expected to find support systems at the rally only to discover Bill’s primary win was drawing other campaigns to her, asking her for help on their fledgling efforts.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Tell Carlene Deluccio about working together. I didn’t think Carlene Deluccio could work any harder than she did for Harrison, but she’s outdoing herself for Johnson. She’s not even <i>pretending </i>she isn’t supporting a Republican. And she is holding your goddamn seat, for god’s sakes. You should never have resigned. That seat should have been mine.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">William Wolf was flat on his back on one of the two beds in the Holiday Inn where he and Lucille had decided to “take an extra night, away from the campaign, for a slight breather.” His right forearm was thrown over his closed eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“And don’t just do that big sigh,” Lucille said into the silence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know what I’m saying is the truth,” Lucille said into the continued silence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know she’s just a snake in the grass. They’re all snakes,” Lucille said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Now that,” Bill said, taking down his arm, “is the first true thing you’ve said. Carlene isn’t for Johnson, Carlene is for Paulie. Between her personally and three businesses she’s contributed about $350,000. Public contributed. God knows how much more she’s given.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille was silent and then asked. “What does <i>that </i>mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Let me rephrase that. Carlene is for Carlene. The public contributions came in four installments. One of them a year and a half ago, about the time the governor visited.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“What?” Lucille tried to catch up. “Your old seat is worth $350,000?”<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No,” Bill Wolf said, replacing his arm over his eyes, “Carlene is worth $350,000 to the governor. More.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I don’t get it. All this just to give her a commissioner seat? All of this?” Lucille looked around the motel room, their clothes strewn from open suitcases, a bottle of bourbon next to the coffeepot just outside the bathroom. “How much are you worth to him?” Lucille asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill was silent.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well you’ve just got to become more valuable,” Lucille said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill turned away from her and in a moment she realized he was sobbing. </div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-22659295269460990022011-02-19T09:38:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:38:30.527-08:00Chapter Ten -- The Suicide<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle and Matthew Grosen sat silently across the kitchen table from one another toying with the remains of yet another casserole left by yet another neighbor. Kyle wasn’t completely sure what prompted the neighbors to bring them casseroles the same as they were also carrying to the Wolfs, whether it was sympathy or cruelty.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">They said it was for the two men left alone. Patsy had been away, spending some time with her family. That’s what Kyle and his father and most of Haden County said aloud and to one another, their eyes sliding off one another and then glancing away. Patsy’s mother wasn’t well. Her mother hadn’t been well for a while. What some people in Haden County said was that whatever the suffering of her mother, maybe Patsy’s suffering was greater.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>People in Harrison County thought simply staying with Cecelia <span> </span>Harrison was punishment enough for anything. “Well good thing you didn’t take up poker for a living,” were the first words out of Cecelia Harrison's mouth when Patsy stepped into the kitchen. Matt set a suitcase on the floor, turned around and drove back to Haden County without further conversation with any of them.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby was away as well, also in Harrison County. She was staying with her grandmother, Ruth Prentiss, the matriarch of a fortune based upon property and the livestock it produced. There was no finer farmland, no clearer running streams, no better timber in the whole of Southern Illinois than on the thousands of acres that generations had acquired and passed intact into her husband’s possession. Her husband, too, had added to the holdings and increased production of what were arguably the finest racing horses and best breeding cattle in the Midwest.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">That reputation was lost during the brief tenure of their eldest son between his father’s premature death and then his own. The fortune was moving even more quickly through the hands of their youngest son who used much of it on a succession of trophy wives – even Ruth Prentiss knew the phrase – and to keep his own two sons out of jail. Shelby’s father, the middle son Philip, had never been given a stab at the company, showing himself at a shockingly young age to be not merely a natural dilettante but a wastrel and drunkard as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">It was astounding how fast it could go, Ruth Prentiss thought about the fortune, but she never remarked upon the money. It would do no one any good to hear her speak such awkward truths, which did not mean she failed to make the point to her remaining sons and grandsons when she ever saw them. She had not yet thought what to make of her granddaughter. She had seen very little of her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">It was rumored her husband actually called her "Ruth," but no one in Harrison County had ever called her anything than Mrs. Harrison or “Ma’am.” That included her sons, Shelby had been told more than once by Lucille. Shelby was thinking about that after the deputy had handed her off to a maid who was now closing the parlor door behind her and her grandmother.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Once the door had shut Ruth Prentiss said, “I hear that <i>now </i>your mother thinks you should live with me.” After Shelby remained silent the older woman asked, “What do you think of that?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“I think I shall call you Grand-Mama if I am to stay here,” Shelby said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“You’ll call me the devil if you give me any trouble,” Mrs. Prentiss replied.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Shelby was silent for a moment but then said,“I will call you Grand-Mama and I will return to my birth name.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">The old woman caught herself nearly smiling before she lifted and rang a small bell near her hand on a side table. Nearly immediately the door opened and the maid reappeared.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Show Miss Prentiss to her room,” the old woman said, nodded at Shelby and returned to reading a pile of documents she had let fall to her lap. “I think we understand each other,” Ruth Prentiss said as Shelby stepped out of the parlor.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span><span> </span>That both of these hugely unusual reunions were taking place seemed somehow normal in the wake of something so irregular and unexpected as Bill Wolf shooting himself in the stomach on his and Lucille’s bed. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">"Who would have thought it? Bill Wolf," Irene Hanley went around repeating like a drum beat. "I would have thought it of anyone before Bill Wolf. Who would have thought it?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">When Patsy heard she clutched her stomach and doubled over in an agony from which she could not emerge. She might as well have performed her exposure on the town square. As it was word reached her at Maxine’s. Patsy was done, blown dried and almost out the hairdresser’s door when the news burst in upon her and the women behind her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">To many the news of Patsy’s response was the greatest of the shocks and seemingly endless aftershocks which included Patsy’s husband, the state’s attorney, discovering in Bill Wolf’s closet a shoe box full of checks made out to the governor’s recently successful reelection campaign.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“A goddamn shoe box,” Matthew Grosen told Patsy that night.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Patsy was sitting on the couch when he returned home. Her red eyes were dry and swollen. “I’m going to go stay with my mother,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen looked at his wife and finally said, “I think that is a terrible idea.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">It was rumored the first words out of Lucille upon discovering the body – which she did upon her return from her own hair appointment in the clever little arty town of Platteville, the other side of Vernon County – were, “Well you son-of-a-bitch.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">But this was pure speculation. No one was in the house except Lucille who had a difficult time remembering any type of chronology from swinging shut the door of her small SUV and catching a pleasing glimpse of herself in the side mirror until sitting face to face with Shelby and holding her hands across the dining room table and repeating, “There is nothing, absolutely nothing any of us could have done to prevent this.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“I’ve got it, Mom,” was the rebuke from Shelby that awakened Lucille to chronology and efficiency.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille remained in black and in firm and complete control from that moment forth, which began with the decision to get Shelby out of town. Lucille handled the funeral arrangements, interface with the forensic people and the damage control. She made every decision necessary regarding the handling of the estate, declining assistance from the Wolf family attorney, the family physician, the husbands of either of Bill’s two aunts, a remarkable array of cousins some of whom she had never met and even from Al Plover.And, of course, from Bill’s dear baby brother Robert.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">The inconsolable Robert was in no shape to question anything, he was grateful, repeatedly telling her how grateful he was for her ability to handle all of this. And that mousy wife of his certainly wasn’t going to poke her nose into it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“You know he would never do anything wrong,” Robert kept telling Lucille. “I just can’t believe this has happened,” he would take off crying again.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Well Robert he <i>has </i>done something wrong,” Lucille finally said. “He shot himself on my bed.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“It’s not your fault Lucille,” Robert said instantly.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Thank you Robert. I know that. We need to move on now." Lucille said. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Other than that not even Al Plover – who witnessed her pulling every penny of the Wolf money out of his bank – ever received any comment from Lucille regarding her opinion of Bill Wolf or regarding her legal or financial standing. Lucille hired her own attorney, an almost young man from Platteville, but already turning middle aged. He was as circumspect as a choir boy. With him at her side she dressed consistently in a black suit. He wore medium gray. Together they met and were candid with the police and the investigators. She also had him accompany her to all meetings with the governor's aides, to Buddy's particular annoyance. They all came at her furiously for the first month, at which point the state investigations went on but she became a lesser and lesser piece of their inquiries.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">This was because even the state investigators ultimately came at the truth of the matter, which was that Lucille had been completely and totally ignorant of the shoe box of checks in Bill Wolf’s closet.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>She wasn’t surprised that Bill would be involved – albeit in a minor way – with campaign fraud. He was a pragmatic man. But a box of un -cashed, after-the-fact checks made out to a campaign entity struck her as just some kind of stupid oversight on someone’s part, as stupid as Bill perhaps forgetting to turn them in to someone. Nothing to kill yourself over.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">She had sent a sizeable chunk of cash with Shelby. She’d known exactly where Bill kept campaign cash. She’d accepted Bill’s explanation that the cash came from contributors who wished to remain anonymous. Lucille expected she and Bill would use the cash themselves as an unreported reimbursement of the debt they had accrued on behalf of the campaign. Not legal perhaps, but not really cheating. That was how Lucille saw it. It never occurred to her those few thousand dollars, well, maybe even ten thousand, would constitute campaign fraud. Never in the weeks of interrogation by police and investigators did she even in her mind make any link between the improbable checks and the cash she hoped would prove enough to get her and Shelby out of Haden.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">When she awoke from her hours of shock and sat facing her daughter Lucille knew she would never understand why he had done it. She wouldn't understand anymore than Haden County itself understood how their fair-haired Billy Wolf, one of the finest and most upstanding among them, could do this. And as time and investigations wore on, it seemed Bill Wolf crashed so hugely and irresponsibly into a scandal that was never defined. No one would ever understand.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“It was just scandal for the sake of scandal,” Lucille would soon tell Irene Hanley. “He was pilloried to death, Irene. And no one came to his rescue. No one.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Lucille was as angry at Bill as a scorned woman, as a threatened mother. But despite it all, the long and the short of it was this, Lucille made a convincing grieving widow, for Lucille did grieve. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Despite her jaw-clenched tenacity to see through what she viewed as a humiliating personal tragedy and its attendant anger at her husband beyond anything she had imagined possible, she sobbed nightly. She sobbed for hours into the pillow in the guest bedroom, which was as far as she could pull herself from their bedroom which remained gapingly empty where the bed had stood.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">While Lucille proceeded with her clenched jaw and ramrod spine and abrupt behavior <span> </span>-- winning her a begrudging admiration but no love – Patsy’s grief verily oozed from her house, which she didn’t leave, not even for the funeral.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">The ladies at Maxine’s attempted to stop by that first week and for the first few days were greeted at the kitchen door by a bathrobe clad, slack-faced Patsy who did not invite them in. By the end of the week Patsy wasn’t opening the door. By the weekend Matt took her over to Harrison where it had been agreed her mother needed her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Irene Hanley wasn’t any longer than an hour bringing a plate of chocolate chip cookies to Kyle. “I saw your dad taking your mom out 231,” she said after rapping at the window in the top of the Grosen’s kitchen door and seeing Kyle look up from the kitchen table. “I figured they were heading over to her people,” Irene called through the door. “For some reason I just thought you might like some cookies. I just baked some for Bobby. With your mom out of town and all.” She stood at the door smiling brightly and held the plate in the air a though she were an advertisement for fresh baked cookies. <span> </span>“May I come in?” she finally asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle stared at her. He couldn’t imagine what to say, he could only formulate things <i>not </i>to say. He got out of his seat and felt he was somehow hypnotized, walking toward the framed face of Bobby Hanley’s mother at the kitchen door. He suddenly realized his fists were clenching and unclenching. “Yeah,” he finally said and reached to open the door. He held it open and let her into the kitchen where they both stood staring at one another.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Well,” Irene finally said, “I’ll just leave them here on the table.” Placing them there, with her back to him, she tried again, “I hope everything is all right. Is your mother all right?” she asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Uh huh,” Kyle said which thankfully released him from his daze. <span> </span>It had made him sound like Bobby Hanley. <span> </span>“Oh,” he said, “oh, absolutely. Mom’s fine. Gee. Thanks for the cookies Mrs. Hanley.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Well, I was just worried,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Hanley. Tell Bobby hello,” he said and stared at her until she walked away from the table and back to the door. She stopped then and looked him in the eye. She was shorter than him, but not by a lot. Her smile twisted at one end and her smile turned briefly into a slight smirk and then righted itself back to her thin smile. She didn’t say anything more until she was out the door. “Bye Kyle. Enjoy the cookies,” she said and got in her car and drove home.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle stared at the cookies and felt suddenly that he might vomit. He turned to the sink and got a glass of water and held on to the counter until the sensation passed. He drank the water and filled the glass again at the faucet but this time only drank half of it before setting it down on the counter. He couldn’t even tell for sure if he was angry, let alone who he was angry at. Who wasn’t he angry at? Shelby. Maybe he wasn’t angry at Shelby. He could think of no reason to be angry with Shelby. But he knew that somehow they would never be the same kind of friends again. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">He had driven over to the Prentiss’ house the morning after William Wolf had killed himself. He had learned that night, from his father, where Shelby had gone.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“What?” he had screamed at his father, “why didn’t you tell me? I could have taken her.” He plunged toward the kitchen to get his truck keys when his father yelled.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Kyle! It’s nearly midnight. Get hold of yourself.” It was unusual for Matthew Grosen to raise his voice. It stopped Kyle and he started to cry but made himself stop as his father entered the kitchen. “Go to your room, I have to talk to your mom, I’ll come by your room in a little bit and answer what I can for you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Her grandmother?” Kyle said. He had been on his computer, trying to see what the news had about Mr. Wolf when his father came into the room. It hadn’t been long, maybe twenty minutes. He’d heard his father talking and then he presumed putting his mother to bed. She was acting really weird, he thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Keep your voice down,” Matthew confirmed as he closed the door behind himself, “I’m hoping your mother can get some sleep.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Doctor Bean sent over a sedative,” he said and only now looked at Kyle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle pursed his lips but said nothing. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“We were all good friends in high school,” his father said and sat down on Kyle’s bed. “Bill, your mom and me. He hasn’t had a happy life.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Yeah, I guess not,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen gave his son a sad, acknowledging smile. “Right," Matt said, "I mean before too. I mean his whole life. It never made sense. His life. Everything should have been perfect for him. He always had everything he needed for it to be perfect. And he knew it. He was appreciative. He worked hard and was always a good friend but, but, I don’t know. It would end up, whatever it was, that nothing about it had gone perfectly. Not at all.<span> </span>This isn’t making much sense, is it?” Matt suddenly asked, turning back to Kyle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“You mean like Mrs. Wolf? It looked like it was perfect but it was horrible.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matt looked still at his son and finally said. “Like both Missus Wolfs. But I don’t mean, Kyle, that they were horrible. It just was somehow everything turned horrible.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“So was that always the problem? You and mom never liked either Mrs. Wolf?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“That was a problem,” Matt said and his eyes slid off his son onto his hands clasped between his knees.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“So why did he kill himself? Because of Mrs. Wolf?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“No. No I don’t think so. No I’m certain not. No,” Matthew said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">"Why?" Kyle asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">"I don't have any idea."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Right,” Kyle said. “How’s Shelby?” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“She’s fine. She’s tough. She will be fine. She's like Lucille, no crying, just practical.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“In shock,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Yes. Probably in shock. Lucille sent her over to the Prentiss’ which, I have to say, was a piece of good clear thinking on her part.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Mrs. Wolf is okay,” Kyle said. “I don’t know why you and mom hate her so much. I mean, I know she’s kinda a pain in the ass. But she’s okay.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“We don’t hate her, Kyle.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Bullshit.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Stop it,” Matthew said quietly. “It isn’t the time for us to be bickering about this.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“I’ll go see Shelby tomorrow.” Kyle glanced at his father and saw no rebuke so hazarded one more remark. “Maybe now you and Mom can be nicer to her. She thought of Mr. Wolf as her father.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Kyle, it isn’t the time for this either, but I’m going to tell you what I always tell you about Shelby Prentiss, she won’t be staying in Haden County. Not for you. Not for anybody. <span> </span>And this is just going to speed that up.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Well maybe I won’t be staying either,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew slapped his knees and stood up and walked to his son to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He squeezed it once and turned to leave the room.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle was right thinking his father hadn’t heard him. Even if Matthew Grosen had heard, it would never occur to him that Kyle would leave Haden County. </div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-59002740972020217032011-02-19T09:37:00.001-08:002011-02-19T09:37:33.554-08:00Chapter Eleven -- The Secretary<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “I can’t face her down again,” Stanley Thorne said to Irene Hanley. He had opened the wooden door but still stood behind the tightly latched storm door. <span> </span>“I can’t do it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“For god’s sakes Stanley, open the door. No one is facing down anyone. The committee is in agreement. I’m sure it will be. She’s our best bet and what’s the governor going to do? Refuse? I don’t think so. Besides, somebody must owe her something.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I lost too and I didn’t kill myself,” Thorne muttered. “And I certainly don’t have half a million dollars worth of checks to the governor in my closet either. I can tell you that,” he muttered as he unlatched and then carefully re-latched the doors as Irene strode through.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No one would ever think of looking, Stanley.” Irene patted his arm on her way past him toward the dining room where he kept the central committee files. “We’re always sorry you lost, Stanley. You know that,” she said over her shoulder as he followed her down the hallway.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It is unspeakable,” Patsy said in her new, toneless voice.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Seems more like poetic justice to me,” Matthew said, trying for levity and winning a rising of his wife’s eyes to his, but no smile. He couldn’t remember her smiling. He couldn’t remember the last time she smiled. He couldn’t remember her smile at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It’s despicable,” she said and reached for the glass on the coffee table with its smidgen of scotch and three slivers of ice. Downing it she handed it up to Matthew who took it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>”What in the hell is wrong with all of you big dicks anyway? You can’t find Lucille’s fingerprints on any of this mess? What’s wrong with those big investigators up in Springfield? Are you all getting paid extra to stall? Just long enough for Snakes to slide through his final term untarnished? He just keeps smiling and bobbing that head up and down. He grins like a dog. He flippin’ nominates Carlene Deluccio to head the Licensing Bureau and now you can’t find anything on her either. How can you all find nothing on Carlene Deluccio? First she inherits the keys to the racetrack and now has bought herself a key to the governor’s mansion. You boys are just sitting around scratching yourselves. Probably scratching one another, too.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“What exactly do you think I can do about any of this?” Matthew Grosen asked his wife. His voice was nearly as toneless as hers and he surprised himself realizing he wasn’t even angered at her words. After awhile, he supposed, you really just don’t hear it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You can bring me another drink,” Patsy said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">He went to the kitchen where the scotch and melting bowl of ice set on the counter. He put a handful of ice in Patsy’s glass and carefully poured a level shot of scotch and drank it back. He poured a second level shot, dumped it into Patsy’s glass and after looking at it put in another. He returned to her in the silent living room.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Patsy wasn’t alone in her tirade. It was the tirade of the newspapers and talk radio, accusations appeared everywhere on the goddamn public access channel and now some idiot kids were doing something on the Internet, blabbing or blogging or something. It was all they talked about in the Haden County State’s Attorney’s office. Matthew Grosen was sick of it all.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">And it wasn’t just Haden County any longer. There didn’t seem to be a state investigator or a public counselor or a law official of any sort south of the sacred halls of Springfield who didn’t suspect the others of covering up what looked to them all like a governor tied into the racetracks in Southern Illinois. These men, “the dicks” as Patsy termed them all, crossed paths constantly. There wasn’t a one who didn’t believe the governor guilty of something. Few voiced such things to one another, though. They had no evidence to indict. There was no simple act that their superiors deemed strong enough to bet their careers upon. “This <i>is</i> the <i>governor,</i>” they continually reminded one another. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Not even the politicians wanted a stink. Not even, or rather, <i>certainly not</i> Paulie’s natural enemies, the Downstate Republicans. If anyone stood to lose in a Southern Illinois horse racing scandal it was them. Indeed, as it appeared to upstate and downstate pols, everyone stood to gain <span> </span>the most if business continued as usual. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So as the barbs of incompetence and accusations of criminality were leveled at dicks from their friends, enemies, local newspapers and ultimately late night monologues, the dicks continued to bob their heads, purse their lips thoughtfully, repeat their commitment to following all leads and repeatedly reminded their accusers that no matter what, “In the United States of America a man was innocent until proven guilty.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">As Matthew Grosen and his colleagues choked out the words again and again Powell Paulie basked in the glow of a decent win and was exercising fully its rewarding doling out of appreciative patronage. “Deliver the bacon to their doors,” Buddy Nowak repeated his friend’s old adage while accompanying the governor on a number of swings through Downstate to cut ribbons on new highway projects and open <span> </span>new branch agencies.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">This was certainly not the first time Illinois politics had provided such fodder or that pieces had trickled across Matthew Grosen’s desk. But it was the first time it had radiated from his jurisdiction. And it was personal. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It wasn’t that Grosen was so above the fray he hadn’t ever greased things along, glanced the other way, appreciated campaign contributions of all kinds when needed. But the kind of money-handling and secret-keeping opportunities that returned the big bucks were gut wrenching to him. This was partially his moral code, which he attributed to his pioneer ancestors or, as Patsy called it, “the Grosen male indoctrination.” But his visceral repugnance at large scale malfeasance was also that even the rumored amounts of the various pay offs always seemed puny compared to the horrific risk: To be stripped of your personal honor. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So like most of his brethren, he hated the men he suspected of these things as despicable. But he did not hamper or expose those he suspected. For that would have been dishonorable as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">In these ways Grosen suspected he was like the average American. He believed a certain degree of deal-making was inevitable, even advisory, to keep things moving; even if some of it would be distasteful to him. Even those who would never take a bribe, even those who would never offer – “all of us schmucks” Grosen would include himself – accept that <i>some </i>people did and that it was useful and necessary. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“And then we schmucks go back to our tiny piece of business-as-usual and continue to vote our self interests year after year.” If Matthew Grosen had told this once to Patsy and Kyle he had told them a hundred times. “That’s just how people are. Few of us are really crooks. But we all feel capable, thus slightly reprehensible and so we always feel a tad bit guilty ourselves.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">For all of that, Matthew Grosen and most of the rest of the dicks involved in the ongoing investigations, would like to find someone to blame for this. It wasn’t Lucille. From all accounts she appeared innocent of wrong-doing . So if she wanted to take her late husband’s seat back from Carlene, and the idiots on the Democratic Central Committee wanted to do that to themselves, well have at it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Poetic justice,” was Matthew Grosen’s take on it. <span> </span>Even though, like Patsy, as the unacknowledged betrayal grew between them, Matthew Grosen had really hoped that Lucille Wolf would just go away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Upon assuming the Haden County Commissioner seat that Carlene Deluccio relinquished with such protest, Lucille Temple Wolf reinstated her maiden name. She was in accord with the rest of Haden that Lucille Wolf did have to go. However it was Lucille, alone, who was pleased with Carlene’s big stink, which embarrassed the commission and the party. But it proved an opportunity for Lucille to say of her own ambitions, “I feel I owe to Bill, for the good of all Haden County.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Deluccio had not resigned during the weeks it took for the legislature to confirm her appointment as Governor Paulie’s Secretary of Licensing., which it did overwhelmingly. But then she refused to step down from her commission seat, intending to hold both seats concurrently. She responded incredulously to Irene Hanley’s conflict queries the same as she had during her state confirmation hearings. Owning a racetrack, Carlene told the legislators, gave her expertise for the job as Secretary of Licensing. Similarly, she told the central committee, all the better for Haden County to have such a well connected state appointee sitting on their commission. Furthermore, she told the local paper, the governor said she could have both seats.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">When that little snip Irene Hanley had found the prohibition in a deep subsection of state rules guiding central committees, Carlene ignored her. Finally Buddy Nowak called and expressed the governor’s wishes that Carlene serve only as his Secretary, that the post was too important to waste her time on county affairs as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Indeed a schedule conflict arose immediately and Carlene did not attend Lucille’s swearing-in ceremony in late February.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“This seems the exact definition of surreal,” Lucille told Shelby later that week. They were lunching near the community college in Vernon after a spa morning to celebrate. <span> </span>“I am serving out Bill’s current term. It seems a century has passed since that victory.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her mother still wore black but they had decided earlier, during their pedicures, that Lucille would lighten to navy in the spring. Shelby thought this was adequate. Her mother looked great in both colors. She now watched her mother dab her eyes with a lovely handkerchief, ivory with deep brown embroidered lace edges. Where does she find this stuff? Shelby wondered.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well, I have a bit more surrealism for you,” Shelby giggled. “Grand-Mama wishes to know if you’re planning on adding ‘Prentiss’ back into your ‘<span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">á</span> tois of names’.” Shelby giggled again and then sobered. “You aren’t are you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille looked up dry-eyed, not startled by the question. “No,” she said. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Mother and daughter had agreed that long ago time they sat across the dining room table with Bill Wolf's body still upstairs that Shelby would not merely move into her grandmother’s home but would abandon the Wolf name all together. Even in the midst of that insanity, Shelby, also grieving and betrayed, grasped immediately that it was a sensible course out of the catastrophe. “Grand’Mama,” however, had been purely her idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“This will not define our lives,” Lucille had said at the dining room table all that time ago. And Shelby had nodded.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was after this lunch that Shelby came to apply the word “surreal” to the house Bill Wolf had moved them to after he was elected to his first term. For the rest of her life, when she recalled that house, she tended to remember it as Kyle usually watched it, from across the park, at some distance. It appeared to Shelby as a surreal painting, at once seeming substantial and equally made of nothingness. She saw it as though only half the molecules were in place. In her memory it stood in the exact shape of a house but gaps surrounded every molecule, it was like a mosaic without its clay, seeming about to crumble into a pile of rubble.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby had never gone back inside the house. Her mother had brought her clothing and her grandmother had sent for a few pieces of her bedroom furniture. That had been that. The school in the East was never mentioned. Without fuss Shelby enrolled in the region’s community college and attended in Vernon County, the most collegiate of its campuses. She would <span> </span>transfer to Northern Illinois University for her degree. She and her mother had also agreed that Shelby would soon be done with Downstate.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her mother had moved out within days as well. She put the surreal house on the market. She too took only her personal affects and a few pieces of furniture. She rented a townhouse in a new neighborhood near the old courthouse. It was a tad chic, Shelby thought, despite being in Haden.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It wouldn’t help you in Haden anyway,” Shelby said, thinking still of the Prentiss name she had reclaimed. She found herself unable to hold her mother’s gaze. She picked up her fork to pick further at her salad.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No,” Lucille burst out with a laugh, “the Prentiss name probably wouldn’t help me in Hades where surely <i>Grand’Mama </i>also owns an acre or two. Or more likely, those boys left her in hawk for that too. Maybe as a result she might just escape at the last possible moment.” Lucille laughed some more then again dried her eyes, this time genuinely damp and reached across to pat her daughter’s hand. <span> </span>“Darling, you assure your grandmother that I have no intention of further sullying her name. I am working as hard as I can to get out of her precious quad-counties. You assure her of that.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby looked up surprised. “You’re leaving? You just got the seat.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know I can’t stay in Haden County. Your grandmother certainly does. Or she’s getting dotty.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“But your seat?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Oh my sweet dear, there aren’t even two years left in the term and in no way on this planet could I win Bill’s seat in a Democratic primary. <span> </span>I’ve got to admit I even impressed myself that I wrangled the appointment. Not that I didn’t deserve it. But, truthfully, that’s my skill, wrangling, arranging. I don’t think this glad-handing and sweet-talking is my favorite side of the business. I think that’s <i>your </i>side,” Lucille smiled and with a final pat lifted her own hand to reach for the bill.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her daughter raised her face which had lit up at what she took for a compliment, at what her mother had meant as a compliment. They smiled at one another, pleased with one another and with themselves. The pleasure slightly surprised both of them. This was new territory for mother and daughter.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The headlines moved slowly off Wolf’s shoebox and never touched Carlene. Her appointment fell deep into a story about five additional cabinet-level appointments. The headline was about the most controversial, pro-business environmental appointee and then the story was gone. The series of check-by-check discovery stories were still making the front page, albeit below the fold.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>The checks were turning out to be from dead people and long closed accounts. Others were from legitimate donors who ranged from complete innocents to outraged innocents. A few came from firms whose aggregate contributions had previously hit the legal limit. It was a grab-bag of potentialities, but still not a great deal more than a shoebox of loose ends. A gubernatorial campaign’s treasurer could have likely handled them all without a single headline. But they were found in the closet of a prominent suicide. The residue implications were of opportunism by Wolf inside the governor’s campaign. That’s what Nowak had said repeatedly to the investigating agencies. “But we’ll never know,” Nowak would shrug.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It seemed too coincidental to Matthew Grosen. In fact it seemed impossible for Haden County to have both such a big winner and such a big loser grow so quickly out of a gubernatorial election. Wolf had lost three times over, Grosen mused: His commission seat, his campaign and his life. And Carlene got two payoffs: <span> </span>Wolf’s seat and then oversight of her horseracing industry. So finally, when the checks led nowhere, Grosen managed to push someone in Springfield to probe deeper into Carlene Deluccio’s affairs.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">That Paulie owed Carlene was obvious, he argued, but no matter how you cut it, Wolf seemed nothing but a means. Maybe not even that, maybe Bill Wolf was nothing but a convenience. Grosen couldn’t see Paulie having anything to lose or gain from Bill Wolf.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Paulie surely had plenty to gain from Carlene Deluccio. So much that not even a rather grandly orchestrated route to a commission seat filled the debt. Grosen suspected that Snakes must now have something to lose from Carlene as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So what was this stupid shoebox about? Paying off Wolf in traceable checks? Dumb. Not even Bill Wolf could be that naïve, Grosen thought. And payoff for what? Handling something with Carlene? He’d already given up his seat to her. Or was the shoebox just a convenient smokescreen to keep the audience from noticing the racetrack owner taking the reins of the licensing bureau? Who would figure to appoint the racetrack owner head of the racetrack licensing unless nobody was paying attention. Grosen could perfectly see Nowak setting something like that up. It reeked of his touch.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">But no matter how Grosen looked at the suicide, that <span> </span>seemed to be nothing more than Nowak’s dumb luck, extending the smokescreen well beyond the daily news cycle. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen had no evidential reason to think these thoughts. But he did have a feeling he could not shake despite the lack of evidence. When he stood in Bill Wolf’s bedroom, looking at the mess his former friend had made, listening to the semi-coherent Lucille down the hall with Officer Duane Jesse, Matthew Grosen had thought of Buddy Nowak, could nearly feel him standing in the room beside him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The state people hadn’t yet arrived. Not even Jesse would have been there yet if Matt hadn’t told Lucille to call 911 when she hung up with him. As Matthew Grosen stood in Bill and Lucille’s bedroom – having somehow known the moment he answered the phone to Lucille’s voice what he’d basically find – he accepted for himself that it was a suicide.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Yet as Matthew Grosen stood in that room, looking at Bill and looking away, the state’s attorney pictured Nowak and the increasingly haggard Wolf at last summer’s Hambletonian. Nowak had Wolf by the arm and was talking and talking. The grip looked tight and vaguely unfriendly. Bill was looking down and grimacing. Perhaps that was why Grosen thought the grip too tight. Wolf was looking down, grimacing and nodding and nodding.</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-74958553942323249932011-02-08T10:08:00.000-08:002011-02-08T10:08:40.267-08:00Chapter 12 – The Wedding<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “escort me to wedding?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle was surprised at the unexpected text and more surprised at the request. For ten months Shelby continued to answer his texts, but she didn’t initiate. Her answers were brief. She answered his calls, but never called herself. She ended them with a rush to class, late for a meeting, an interview was scheduled. Twice she hadn’t picked up. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">She had become perfect again the day last August she’d stepped out of his truck at Northern. The past two years slipped from her shoulders and disappeared. He helped her move what amounted to a version of camping gear into the single room on a women’s only non-drinking floor where she intended to spend the next three to four years finishing undergrad, obtaining a law degree. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">He had reaffirmed his offer to help her move after she told him he would not be invited to stay and that she did not anticipate seeing him for some time. “This is it for me,” she had told him. “I don’t have time for Haden County and I don’t want to think about it anymore.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle had put his hands in his back pockets and kicked at the ground and pursed his lips. He had never won an argument with her despite feeling he had ultimately proven correct many times.<span> </span>He gave a shrug without looking up. He didn’t believe they would be far apart from one another for any length of time. It didn’t seem possible. Indeed, it seemed unlikely.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Are you paying attention?” she’d asked him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">That had annoyed him and he looked up at her and knew his lips were a mean slit. He had practiced this face in the mirror in junior high and she had stood beside him telling him when he had it right. Today she burst out laughing and threw her arms around him and then leaned back and kissed him on the cheek.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The two stood facing one another.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You don’t really care what I want, do you?” she asked</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I do. I care what you want. I just don’t always think you know how best to get it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“And you think you do?” she teased.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Yes,” he said simply.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby dropped her teasing and looked straight at her best friend. “You do,” she said. And then she added. “I’m not like Lucille.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Oh. Really?” Kyle said and opened his eyes wide to mimic surprise.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Really,” Shelby said, not laughing back. “I am going to be the first female governor of Illinois. I’ll always need a loyal aide-de-camp. I don’t know if I can afford anything else.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Okay,” Kyle said. He was somber faced again. He believed she meant what she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“My mother will always be an aide-de-camp,” Shelby said. “Some people always will be.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>They weren’t teenagers anymore, although just barely not. But they’d seen a lot and they trusted one another. And they were aged enough to see the value in both.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Okay,” Kyle said again.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“That is absolutely all I know and as far as I’m going on this point,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Okay,” Kyle said. And this time his tone was conclusive.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Okay,” Shelby nodded. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle had remained at home, living with what he could only think of as grieving parents. “It’s like they lost a child or something,” he would have told Shelby, if she had been there. But she was not there and he did not tell her. They never mentioned Bill Wolf’s death. Not he and Shelby, not he and his parents.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Kyle began criminal justice and law enforcement classes at the community college immediately after high school. It was expected he would continue at SIU where he would also get his law degree and return to Haden. Despite a more linear pattern, he was a half-year behind Shelby. He had dropped all of his courses the semester Shelby quietly became a Prentiss and his mother quietly broke down. He had never returned as a full-time student. He’d taken this spring off as well, to help with the start-up of a youth camp his father’s department endorsed. He had been working and saving money.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">By the time he received Shelby’s text, without any discussion, not even with himself, he’d applied and been admitted to Northern’s business school in the fall.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I’ve been telling you my whole life, Dad,” Kyle said when his father brought in the acceptance envelope. Kyle meant about leaving Haden County. He had not told his parents he was not continuing in law.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well I’m not paying for it,” his father said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The statement was so far off base in Kyle’s mind he wondered if he’d heard his father correctly. <span> </span>“I, I didn’t expect you to pay for it.” He had not expected their financial support. They seemed broken. He had only allowed himself to hope that they would heal enough for him to feel he could leave. They would, he told himself. They had to so he wouldn’t join them.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>He would have liked to check this, too, against Shelby’s read of his parents. But even if such a thing was possible, and he understood enough to know it would never be possible again, her opinion didn’t really matter. He knew whatever came that he would continue to tell himself they were fine without him, because he could not remain here. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I don’t charge you rent,” his father said now. “I buy your food.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle was again surprised. He and his father drank beer together, watched football together, talked politics together. He had no idea where these sentences were coming from. “Dad, I don’t know what we’re talking about here. Do you want me to pay you rent?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No, goddamn it,” Matthew Grosen said, “I don’t want you go to chasing after tail and using college as an excuse.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle shocked both of them, shooting to his feet and clenching his fists and screaming, “Why do you always do that? What is it with you two? What has she ever done to either of you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“She’s using you,” Patsy’s voice from the kitchen door made both men jump, Matt from his seat as Kyle whirled. She was leaning in the jam. “She has always just let you tag along, Sweetie, and we just hate seeing it. We just hate seeing you treated like poor Bill Wolf.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen looked across at his son and nodded his agreement. Then he sat down back down and gestured Kyle to sit as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle did and took a deep breath and then another. “It just isn’t like what you think it is,” he finally said, looking at his hands.<span> </span>“I’m not love struck following her up there. I’m not following her up for sex,” he said, looking up at his father, “Trust me on this,” he said. “Maybe I do love her, but it’s not that. It’s just that I am a part of whatever it is she’s going to do. And it’s sort of the other way too.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I don’t think so,” Patsy said, still leaning, watching her son’s back. “I don’t see anything changing about her life for you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well,” Kyle said, and turned to his mother, “no, not as much maybe. But she really is going to be governor. I can’t not be a part of that. I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. And I’m escorting her to the wedding.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Jesus Christ,” Patsy said and turned and left the room.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The wedding was going to be a small, private affair, which disappointed Lucille but she was used to disappointment and it did seem a small price to pay for the long-term reward.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>It would be held in Haden, so no matter how small and private, it certainly wouldn’t be secret. So there was that. What an opportunity to not-invite. She would not invite any board member who had voted her off. She would invite not a single central committee member who had ever sucked up to Carlene and that went for the commissioners as well. “So many not to invite,” she had chortled to her daughter. Not to invite Al Plover. So that part would be fun.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Who to invite was more difficult. She had a funny impulse to invite Matthew Grosen, who had been so good to her <i>that day.</i> He had done it for Bill, of course, which made it both more dear and more difficult to invite them.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I wish that silly little Patsy Harrison would just get over herself,” she had said just last week to Ruth Prentiss.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Lucille decided to ask Shelby about the Grosens.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“A June wedding,” Lucille had gushed to Shelby. “So much to do!”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her mother had come up to the city. She needed a trousseau and was “getting a few things” for Shelby as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“The campaign starts the minute we get back. Easier spending now than when the press starts monitoring every report,” Lucille said. “It’s legal,” she answered to Shelby’s raised eyebrows, “but it looks frivolous. Now this is a great deal more scrutiny than you’ve had before. You’ll be the step-daughter of the future governor.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Not exactly,” Shelby laughed. “Besides, I live in a nun’s room, Mother and study like a monk. I only come out to attend classes and occasionally network with the very ‘right kind’ of people as determined by my esteemed professors. <span> </span>You make a far greater stir than I.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Both women laughed, but Shelby regretted saying it. Lucille’s connubial background had been picked up by the press and she had confided to Shelby that she worried this marriage, less than eighteen months since her widowhood, would revive the negative headlines.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Indeed there had been headlines. Lucille Wolf had been escorted to her husband’s funeral by Lieutenant Governor Thornton Wilson whom the governor had tapped as the administration’s show of sorrow for a loss of one of its own. Paulie was correct in his assumption that his own appearance would displease Lucille.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Thornton had reappeared to swear her into office barely two months later. <span> </span>He had been widowed, more decorously by cancer, midway through his prior term as Paulie’s lieutenant. He was ambitious and wanted another wife.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille had shed her spring mourning suits by summer and began attending a variety of state functions on Thornton’s arm. She was introduced as Lucille Temple and little was made of some commissionership she held Downstate. The few gossip column mentions of her multiple marriages fanned out quickly.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The courtship created quite a stir in Haden County, but not as would be expected. It seemed everyone wanted the marriage. For one thing, no one wanted her to stay. Besides, the lieutenant governor needed a wife and it was becoming increasingly apparent he could become <span> </span>governor in the next election. It looked to Haden County like the proverbial win-win.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I want her seat,” Stanley Thorne told Irene Hanley.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Why you and not me?” she had asked, quite annoyed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Because I’ll be the one to win her the mansion,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Irene ignored him. She was having just about enough of Stanley Thorne and wondered who else she could get to run for central committee and get him replaced as the treasurer. Although, she admitted to herself, it wasn’t easy to get a treasurer.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Haden County had already won during Thornton’s courtship. Another road got underway – amazing to get two road starts in a single term! <span> </span>The new agency branches Paulie had doled out little more than a year before were expanded by the lieutenant governor. Each economic development project had Lucille and Thornton holding either side of the ribbon, smiling at one another, each at the head of long lineups of additional smiling dignitaries. The state’s attorney’s office got some new positions as well. It felt that everyone in Haden got a little something good from this serendipitous state of affairs. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Did you tell him I am going to be the first female governor?” were Shelby’s first words when her mother called to say she had been on her first private, actual date with Thornton, outside their colliding public agendas. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I might have mentioned it,” her mother had laughed over the phone. “But I am sure he has not so bored of the subject, so do not let this deter you from reminding him from time to time.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">In the early glow of finding such a fortuitous match, the happy couple had thought to wait until Lucille’s term concluded and have the big Springfield wedding to launch Thornton’s campaign. But it was become increasingly apparent that Paulie wasn’t going to weather the investigations. A wedding accompanying Thornton’s unfortunate ascent into the governor’s mansion would be unseemly, they decided. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So they decided to have the wedding quickly, determined to appear old-hat at marriage before – although they never voiced this aloud – becoming the First Couple of Illinois.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Events nearly overtook them. Lucille and Thornton never unpacked until they moved into the mansion. Once the snowball started rolling over Paulie there was no stopping it. In the middle of their honeymoon – five nights in Toronto – the governor was indicted for accepting racetrack stock from Carlene Deluccio. They cut the honeymoon short.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Paulie called a press conference, denounced the lies and fired Deluccio.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Carlene phoned Victor’s lawyer who immediately phoned the prosecutors who in turn spared her jail time in exchange for testimony. Victor’s lawyer went on to negotiate down her IRS fine and reinstated six months of back pay for firing without justification or notification. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">But the firing of Deluccio didn’t help Paulie any, nor did the convening of a commission, the extolling of personal virtues or the demanding of more investigations. The governor resigned in August. His wife and her personal possessions were long removed to her parents’ estate in northern Illinois. Paulie retired to a suite in downtown Chicago to prepare his defense and await trial. None of which turned out well. He ultimately moved a few blocks over for a room in the Chicago federal prison.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">And Stanley Thorne was the Haden County man in the know.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“She bribed him and deducted it,” Stanley Thorne told the central committee. “He won’t escape the IRS,” Thorne said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Don’t be ridiculous,” Irene had sad.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Yes. Carlene believes, as apparently did Victor, that bribes are a necessary cost for doing business in Illinois. What Carlene also believes is that bribes are therefore permitted business deductions on her IRS filings. Given the history of this state, wouldn’t be surprised if her lawyer convinces them,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">As the central committee members laughed and compared notes as to what they had heard and from whom, Irene turned angrily to Stanley. “How do you know so much about it?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“She asked me about it. I told her I saw her point.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“What?” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“She thought Victor’s lawyers were treating her as if she were stupid and withholding deductions only so they could charge her more. She came to me as a certified public accountant to ask my opinion.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“That doesn’t make sense,” Irene said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It made sense to Carlene. She started off just asking if she gave away stock wasn’t that a legitimate deduction. I said it was. And it is,” Stanley said. “I’m serious about her lawyers. She isn’t being charged with anything criminal. Right?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">He looked around the room for consensus. <span> </span>“She just has to pay civil fines for being late. We suppose it isn’t legal to pay bribes, but they’ve agreed not to prosecute, so the point really isn’t made either way, is it?” Stanley asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“But it’s illegal to take them,” Lydia Prince said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well,” drawled Stanley, looking happily at Irene, “you maybe can give them away and you maybe can accept a gift, but you can’t build a highway interchange to a single racetrack and pocket the stocks and not claim them on your own IRS filings, let alone your campaign filings.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The next day the Springfield papers reported the story exactly as Stanley had told it. The central committee did recommend that Stanley serve out the last six months of the seat that had held four recipients in four years.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille laughed until tears came to her eyes when her husband, Governor Thornton Wilson told her he had confirmed Haden County Commissioner Stanley Thorne to her former seat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span></span>Lucille had not kept tabs on Haden County. She had been incredibly busy moving in, re-appointing the mansion, hosting dinners, arranging and wrangling. Thornton had two years to pull the state out of its embarrassment with Paulie as he built his case to become the next Governor of the Great Stat of Illinois.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille felt she was just the woman to get him there.</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-90883672680708860342011-01-29T08:40:00.000-08:002011-01-29T08:40:23.130-08:00Chapter 11 – The Secretary<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “I can’t face her down again,” Stanley Thorne said to Irene Hanley. He had opened the wooden door but still stood behind the tightly latched storm door. <span> </span>“I can’t do it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“For god’s sakes Stanley, open the door. No one is facing down anyone. The committee is in agreement. I’m sure it will be. She’s our best bet and what’s the governor going to do? Refuse? I don’t think so. Besides, somebody must owe her something.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I lost too and I didn’t kill myself,” Thorne muttered. “And I certainly don’t have half a million dollars worth of checks to the governor in my closet either. I can tell you that,” he muttered as he unlatched and then carefully re-latched the doors as Irene strode through.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No one would ever think of looking, Stanley.” Irene patted his arm on her way past him toward the dining room where he kept the central committee files. “We’re always sorry you lost, Stanley. You know that,” she said over her shoulder as he followed her down the hallway.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It is unspeakable,” Patsy said in her new, toneless voice.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Seems more like poetic justice to me,” Matthew said, trying for levity and winning a rising of his wife’s eyes to his, but no smile. He couldn’t remember her smiling. He couldn’t remember the last time she smiled. He couldn’t remember her smile at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It’s despicable,” she said and reached for the glass on the coffee table with its smidgen of scotch and three slivers of ice. Downing it she handed it up to Matthew who took it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>”What in the hell is wrong with all of you big dicks anyway? You can’t find Lucille’s fingerprints on any of this mess? What’s wrong with those big investigators up in Springfield? Are you all getting paid extra to stall? Just long enough for Snakes to slide through his final term untarnished? He just keeps smiling and bobbing that head up and down. He grins like a dog. He flippin’ nominates Carlene Deluccio to head the Licensing Bureau and now you can’t find anything on her either. How can you all find nothing on Carlene Deluccio? First she inherits the keys to the racetrack and now has bought herself a key to the governor’s mansion. You boys are just sitting around scratching yourselves. Probably scratching one another, too.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“What exactly do you think I can do about any of this?” Matthew Grosen asked his wife. His voice was nearly as toneless as hers and he surprised himself realizing he wasn’t even angered at her words. After awhile, he supposed, you really just don’t hear it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You can bring me another drink,” Patsy said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">He went to the kitchen where the scotch and melting bowl of ice set on the counter. He put a handful of ice in Patsy’s glass and carefully poured a level shot of scotch and drank it back. He poured a second level shot, dumped it into Patsy’s glass and after looking at it put in another. He returned to her in the silent living room.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Patsy wasn’t alone in her tirade. It was the tirade of the newspapers and talk radio, accusations appeared everywhere on the goddamn public access channel and now some idiot kids were doing something on the Internet, blabbing or blogging or something. It was all they talked about in the Haden County State’s Attorney’s office. Matthew Grosen was sick of it all.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">And it wasn’t just Haden County any longer. There didn’t seem to be a state investigator or a public counselor or a law official of any sort south of the sacred halls of Springfield who didn’t suspect the others of covering up what looked to them all like a governor tied into the racetracks in Southern Illinois. These men, “the dicks” as Patsy termed them all, crossed paths constantly. There wasn’t a one who didn’t believe the governor guilty of something. Few voiced such things to one another, though. They had no evidence to indict. There was no simple act that their superiors deemed strong enough to bet their careers upon. “This <i>is</i> the <i>governor,</i>” they continually reminded one another. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Not even the politicians wanted a stink. Not even, or rather, <i>certainly not</i> Paulie’s natural enemies, the Downstate Republicans. If anyone stood to lose in a Southern Illinois horse racing scandal it was them. Indeed, as it appeared to upstate and downstate pols, everyone stood to gain <span> </span>the most if business continued as usual. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So as the barbs of incompetence and accusations of criminality were leveled at dicks from their friends, enemies, local newspapers and ultimately late night monologues, the dicks continued to bob their heads, purse their lips thoughtfully, repeat their commitment to following all leads and repeatedly reminded their accusers that no matter what, “In the United States of America a man was innocent until proven guilty.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">As Matthew Grosen and his colleagues choked out the words again and again Powell Paulie basked in the glow of a decent win and was exercising fully its rewarding doling out of appreciative patronage. “Deliver the bacon to their doors,” Buddy Nowak repeated his friend’s old adage while accompanying the governor on a number of swings through Downstate to cut ribbons on new highway projects and open <span> </span>new branch agencies.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">This was certainly not the first time Illinois politics had provided such fodder or that pieces had trickled across Matthew Grosen’s desk. But it was the first time it had radiated from his jurisdiction. And it was personal. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It wasn’t that Grosen was so above the fray he hadn’t ever greased things along, glanced the other way, appreciated campaign contributions of all kinds when needed. But the kind of money-handling and secret-keeping opportunities that returned the big bucks were gut wrenching to him. This was partially his moral code, which he attributed to his pioneer ancestors or, as Patsy called it, “the Grosen male indoctrination.” But his visceral repugnance at large scale malfeasance was also that even the rumored amounts of the various pay offs always seemed puny compared to the horrific risk: To be stripped of your personal honor. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So like most of his brethren, he hated the men he suspected of these things as despicable. But he did not hamper or expose those he suspected. For that would have been dishonorable as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">In these ways Grosen suspected he was like the average American. He believed a certain degree of deal-making was inevitable, even advisory, to keep things moving; even if some of it would be distasteful to him. Even those who would never take a bribe, even those who would never offer – “all of us schmucks” Grosen would include himself – accept that <i>some </i>people did and that it was useful and necessary. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“And then we schmucks go back to our tiny piece of business-as-usual and continue to vote our self interests year after year.” If Matthew Grosen had told this once to Patsy and Kyle he had told them a hundred times. “That’s just how people are. Few of us are really crooks. But we all feel capable, thus slightly reprehensible and so we always feel a tad bit guilty ourselves.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">For all of that, Matthew Grosen and most of the rest of the dicks involved in the ongoing investigations, would like to find someone to blame for this. It wasn’t Lucille. From all accounts she appeared innocent of wrong-doing . So if she wanted to take her late husband’s seat back from Carlene, and the idiots on the Democratic Central Committee wanted to do that to themselves, well have at it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Poetic justice,” was Matthew Grosen’s take on it. <span> </span>Even though, like Patsy, as the unacknowledged betrayal grew between them, Matthew Grosen had really hoped that Lucille Wolf would just go away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Upon assuming the Haden County Commissioner seat that Carlene Deluccio relinquished with such protest, Lucille Temple Wolf reinstated her maiden name. She was in accord with the rest of Haden that Lucille Wolf did have to go. However it was Lucille, alone, who was pleased with Carlene’s big stink, which embarrassed the commission and the party. But it proved an opportunity for Lucille to say of her own ambitions, “I feel I owe to Bill, for the good of all Haden County.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Deluccio had not resigned during the weeks it took for the legislature to confirm her appointment as Governor Paulie’s Secretary of Licensing., which it did overwhelmingly. But then she refused to step down from her commission seat, intending to hold both seats concurrently. She responded incredulously to Irene Hanley’s conflict queries the same as she had during her state confirmation hearings. Owning a racetrack, Carlene told the legislators, gave her expertise for the job as Secretary of Licensing. Similarly, she told the central committee, all the better for Haden County to have such a well connected state appointee sitting on their commission. Furthermore, she told the local paper, the governor said she could have both seats.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">When that little snip Irene Hanley had found the prohibition in a deep subsection of state rules guiding central committees, Carlene ignored her. Finally Buddy Nowak called and expressed the governor’s wishes that Carlene serve only as his Secretary, that the post was too important to waste her time on county affairs as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Indeed a schedule conflict arose immediately and Carlene did not attend Lucille’s swearing-in ceremony in late February.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“This seems the exact definition of surreal,” Lucille told Shelby later that week. They were lunching near the community college in Vernon after a spa morning to celebrate. <span> </span>“I am serving out Bill’s current term. It seems a century has passed since that victory.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her mother still wore black but they had decided earlier, during their pedicures, that Lucille would lighten to navy in the spring. Shelby thought this was adequate. Her mother looked great in both colors. She now watched her mother dab her eyes with a lovely handkerchief, ivory with deep brown embroidered lace edges. Where does she find this stuff? Shelby wondered.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well, I have a bit more surrealism for you,” Shelby giggled. “Grand-Mama wishes to know if you’re planning on adding ‘Prentiss’ back into your ‘<span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">á</span> tois of names’.” Shelby giggled again and then sobered. “You aren’t are you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille looked up dry-eyed, not startled by the question. “No,” she said. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Mother and daughter had agreed that long ago time they sat across the dining room table with Bill Wolf's body still upstairs that Shelby would not merely move into her grandmother’s home but would abandon the Wolf name all together. Even in the midst of that insanity, Shelby, also grieving and betrayed, grasped immediately that it was a sensible course out of the catastrophe. “Grand’Mama,” however, had been purely her idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“This will not define our lives,” Lucille had said at the dining room table all that time ago. And Shelby had nodded.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was after this lunch that Shelby came to apply the word “surreal” to the house Bill Wolf had moved them to after he was elected to his first term. For the rest of her life, when she recalled that house, she tended to remember it as Kyle usually watched it, from across the park, at some distance. It appeared to Shelby as a surreal painting, at once seeming substantial and equally made of nothingness. She saw it as though only half the molecules were in place. In her memory it stood in the exact shape of a house but gaps surrounded every molecule, it was like a mosaic without its clay, seeming about to crumble into a pile of rubble.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby had never gone back inside the house. Her mother had brought her clothing and her grandmother had sent for a few pieces of her bedroom furniture. That had been that. The school in the East was never mentioned. Without fuss Shelby enrolled in the region’s community college and attended in Vernon County, the most collegiate of its campuses. She would <span> </span>transfer to Northern Illinois University for her degree. She and her mother had also agreed that Shelby would soon be done with Downstate.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her mother had moved out within days as well. She put the surreal house on the market. She too took only her personal affects and a few pieces of furniture. She rented a townhouse in a new neighborhood near the old courthouse. It was a tad chic, Shelby thought, despite being in Haden.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It wouldn’t help you in Haden anyway,” Shelby said, thinking still of the Prentiss name she had reclaimed. She found herself unable to hold her mother’s gaze. She picked up her fork to pick further at her salad.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No,” Lucille burst out with a laugh, “the Prentiss name probably wouldn’t help me in Hades where surely <i>Grand’Mama </i>also owns an acre or two. Or more likely, those boys left her in hawk for that too. Maybe as a result she might just escape at the last possible moment.” Lucille laughed some more then again dried her eyes, this time genuinely damp and reached across to pat her daughter’s hand. <span> </span>“Darling, you assure your grandmother that I have no intention of further sullying her name. I am working as hard as I can to get out of her precious quad-counties. You assure her of that.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby looked up surprised. “You’re leaving? You just got the seat.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know I can’t stay in Haden County. Your grandmother certainly does. Or she’s getting dotty.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“But your seat?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Oh my sweet dear, there aren’t even two years left in the term and in no way on this planet could I win Bill’s seat in a Democratic primary. <span> </span>I’ve got to admit I even impressed myself that I wrangled the appointment. Not that I didn’t deserve it. But, truthfully, that’s my skill, wrangling, arranging. I don’t think this glad-handing and sweet-talking is my favorite side of the business. I think that’s <i>your </i>side,” Lucille smiled and with a final pat lifted her own hand to reach for the bill.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Her daughter raised her face which had lit up at what she took for a compliment, at what her mother had meant as a compliment. They smiled at one another, pleased with one another and with themselves. The pleasure slightly surprised both of them. This was new territory for mother and daughter.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The headlines moved slowly off Wolf’s shoebox and never touched Carlene. Her appointment fell deep into a story about five additional cabinet-level appointments. The headline was about the most controversial, pro-business environmental appointee and then the story was gone. The series of check-by-check discovery stories were still making the front page, albeit below the fold.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>The checks were turning out to be from dead people and long closed accounts. Others were from legitimate donors who ranged from complete innocents to outraged innocents. A few came from firms whose aggregate contributions had previously hit the legal limit. It was a grab-bag of potentialities, but still not a great deal more than a shoebox of loose ends. A gubernatorial campaign’s treasurer could have likely handled them all without a single headline. But they were found in the closet of a prominent suicide. The residue implications were of opportunism by Wolf inside the governor’s campaign. That’s what Nowak had said repeatedly to the investigating agencies. “But we’ll never know,” Nowak would shrug.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It seemed too coincidental to Matthew Grosen. In fact it seemed impossible for Haden County to have both such a big winner and such a big loser grow so quickly out of a gubernatorial election. Wolf had lost three times over, Grosen mused: His commission seat, his campaign and his life. And Carlene got two payoffs: <span> </span>Wolf’s seat and then oversight of her horseracing industry. So finally, when the checks led nowhere, Grosen managed to push someone in Springfield to probe deeper into Carlene Deluccio’s affairs.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">That Paulie owed Carlene was obvious, he argued, but no matter how you cut it, Wolf seemed nothing but a means. Maybe not even that, maybe Bill Wolf was nothing but a convenience. Grosen couldn’t see Paulie having anything to lose or gain from Bill Wolf.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Paulie surely had plenty to gain from Carlene Deluccio. So much that not even a rather grandly orchestrated route to a commission seat filled the debt. Grosen suspected that Snakes must now have something to lose from Carlene as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So what was this stupid shoebox about? Paying off Wolf in traceable checks? Dumb. Not even Bill Wolf could be that naïve, Grosen thought. And payoff for what? Handling something with Carlene? He’d already given up his seat to her. Or was the shoebox just a convenient smokescreen to keep the audience from noticing the racetrack owner taking the reins of the licensing bureau? Who would figure to appoint the racetrack owner head of the racetrack licensing unless nobody was paying attention. Grosen could perfectly see Nowak setting something like that up. It reeked of his touch.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">But no matter how Grosen looked at the suicide, that <span> </span>seemed to be nothing more than Nowak’s dumb luck, extending the smokescreen well beyond the daily news cycle. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen had no evidential reason to think these thoughts. But he did have a feeling he could not shake despite the lack of evidence. When he stood in Bill Wolf’s bedroom, looking at the mess his former friend had made, listening to the semi-coherent Lucille down the hall with Officer Duane Jesse, Matthew Grosen had thought of Buddy Nowak, could nearly feel him standing in the room beside him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The state people hadn’t yet arrived. Not even Jesse would have been there yet if Matt hadn’t told Lucille to call 911 when she hung up with him. As Matthew Grosen stood in Bill and Lucille’s bedroom – having somehow known the moment he answered the phone to Lucille’s voice what he’d basically find – he accepted for himself that it was a suicide.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Yet as Matthew Grosen stood in that room, looking at Bill and looking away, the state’s attorney pictured Nowak and the increasingly haggard Wolf at last summer’s Hambletonian. Nowak had Wolf by the arm and was talking and talking. The grip looked tight and vaguely unfriendly. Bill was looking down and grimacing. Perhaps that was why Grosen thought the grip too tight. Wolf was looking down, grimacing and nodding and nodding.</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-43674405254601220052011-01-21T12:57:00.000-08:002011-01-21T12:57:26.104-08:00Chapter 10 – The Suicide<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle and Matthew Grosen sat silently across the kitchen table from one another toying with the remains of yet another casserole left by yet another neighbor. Kyle wasn’t completely sure what prompted the neighbors to bring them casseroles the same as they were also carrying to the Wolfs, whether it was sympathy or cruelty.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">They said it was for the two men left alone. Patsy had been away, spending some time with her family. That’s what Kyle and his father and most of Haden County said aloud and to one another, their eyes sliding off one another and then glancing away. Patsy’s mother wasn’t well. Her mother hadn’t been well for a while. What some people in Haden County said was that whatever the suffering of her mother, maybe Patsy’s suffering was greater.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>People in Harrison County thought simply staying with Cecelia <span> </span>Harrison was punishment enough for anything. “Well good thing you didn’t take up poker for a living,” were the first words out of Cecelia Harrison's mouth when Patsy stepped into the kitchen. Matt set a suitcase on the floor, turned around and drove back to Haden County without further conversation with any of them.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby was away as well, also in Harrison County. She was staying with her grandmother, Ruth Prentiss, the matriarch of a fortune based upon property and the livestock it produced. There was no finer farmland, no clearer running streams, no better timber in the whole of Southern Illinois than on the thousands of acres that generations had acquired and passed intact into her husband’s possession. Her husband, too, had added to the holdings and increased production of what were arguably the finest racing horses and best breeding cattle in the Midwest.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">That reputation was lost during the brief tenure of their eldest son between his father’s premature death and then his own. The fortune was moving even more quickly through the hands of their youngest son who used much of it on a succession of trophy wives – even Ruth Prentiss knew the phrase – and to keep his own two sons out of jail. Shelby’s father, the middle son Philip, had never been given a stab at the company, showing himself at a shockingly young age to be not merely a natural dilettante but a wastrel and drunkard as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">It was astounding how fast it could go, Ruth Prentiss thought about the fortune, but she never remarked upon the money. It would do no one any good to hear her speak such awkward truths, which did not mean she failed to make the point to her remaining sons and grandsons when she ever saw them. She had not yet thought what to make of her granddaughter. She had seen very little of her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">It was rumored her husband actually called her "Ruth," but no one in Harrison County had ever called her anything than Mrs. Harrison or “Ma’am.” That included her sons, Shelby had been told more than once by Lucille. Shelby was thinking about that after the deputy had handed her off to a maid who was now closing the parlor door behind her and her grandmother.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Once the door had shut Ruth Prentiss said, “I hear that <i>now </i>your mother thinks you should live with me.” After Shelby remained silent the older woman asked, “What do you think of that?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“I think I shall call you Grand-Mama if I am to stay here,” Shelby said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“You’ll call me the devil if you give me any trouble,” Mrs. Prentiss replied.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Shelby was silent for a moment but then said,“I will call you Grand-Mama and I will return to my birth name.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">The old woman caught herself nearly smiling before she lifted and rang a small bell near her hand on a side table. Nearly immediately the door opened and the maid reappeared.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Show Miss Prentiss to her room,” the old woman said, nodded at Shelby and returned to reading a pile of documents she had let fall to her lap. “I think we understand each other,” Ruth Prentiss said as Shelby stepped out of the parlor.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span><span> </span>That both of these hugely unusual reunions were taking place seemed somehow normal in the wake of something so irregular and unexpected as Bill Wolf shooting himself in the stomach on his and Lucille’s bed. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">"Who would have thought it? Bill Wolf," Irene Hanley went around repeating like a drum beat. "I would have thought it of anyone before Bill Wolf. Who would have thought it?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">When Patsy heard she clutched her stomach and doubled over in an agony from which she could not emerge. She might as well have performed her exposure on the town square. As it was word reached her at Maxine’s. Patsy was done, blown dried and almost out the hairdresser’s door when the news burst in upon her and the women behind her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">To many the news of Patsy’s response was the greatest of the shocks and seemingly endless aftershocks which included Patsy’s husband, the state’s attorney, discovering in Bill Wolf’s closet a shoe box full of checks made out to the governor’s recently successful reelection campaign.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“A goddamn shoe box,” Matthew Grosen told Patsy that night.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Patsy was sitting on the couch when he returned home. Her red eyes were dry and swollen. “I’m going to go stay with my mother,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen looked at his wife and finally said, “I think that is a terrible idea.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">It was rumored the first words out of Lucille upon discovering the body – which she did upon her return from her own hair appointment in the clever little arty town of Platteville, the other side of Vernon County – were, “Well you son-of-a-bitch.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">But this was pure speculation. No one was in the house except Lucille who had a difficult time remembering any type of chronology from swinging shut the door of her small SUV and catching a pleasing glimpse of herself in the side mirror until sitting face to face with Shelby and holding her hands across the dining room table and repeating, “There is nothing, absolutely nothing any of us could have done to prevent this.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“I’ve got it, Mom,” was the rebuke from Shelby that awakened Lucille to chronology and efficiency.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille remained in black and in firm and complete control from that moment forth, which began with the decision to get Shelby out of town. Lucille handled the funeral arrangements, interface with the forensic people and the damage control. She made every decision necessary regarding the handling of the estate, declining assistance from the Wolf family attorney, the family physician, the husbands of either of Bill’s two aunts, a remarkable array of cousins some of whom she had never met and even from Al Plover.And, of course, from Bill’s dear baby brother Robert.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">The inconsolable Robert was in no shape to question anything, he was grateful, repeatedly telling her how grateful he was for her ability to handle all of this. And that mousy wife of his certainly wasn’t going to poke her nose into it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“You know he would never do anything wrong,” Robert kept telling Lucille. “I just can’t believe this has happened,” he would take off crying again.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Well Robert he <i>has </i>done something wrong,” Lucille finally said. “He shot himself on my bed.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“It’s not your fault Lucille,” Robert said instantly.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Thank you Robert. I know that. We need to move on now." Lucille said. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Other than that not even Al Plover – who witnessed her pulling every penny of the Wolf money out of his bank – ever received any comment from Lucille regarding her opinion of Bill Wolf or regarding her legal or financial standing. Lucille hired her own attorney, an almost young man from Platteville, but already turning middle aged. He was as circumspect as a choir boy. With him at her side she dressed consistently in a black suit. He wore medium gray. Together they met and were candid with the police and the investigators. She also had him accompany her to all meetings with the governor's aides, to Buddy's particular annoyance. They all came at her furiously for the first month, at which point the state investigations went on but she became a lesser and lesser piece of their inquiries.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">This was because even the state investigators ultimately came at the truth of the matter, which was that Lucille had been completely and totally ignorant of the shoe box of checks in Bill Wolf’s closet.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>She wasn’t surprised that Bill would be involved – albeit in a minor way – with campaign fraud. He was a pragmatic man. But a box of un -cashed, after-the-fact checks made out to a campaign entity struck her as just some kind of stupid oversight on someone’s part, as stupid as Bill perhaps forgetting to turn them in to someone. Nothing to kill yourself over.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">She had sent a sizeable chunk of cash with Shelby. She’d known exactly where Bill kept campaign cash. She’d accepted Bill’s explanation that the cash came from contributors who wished to remain anonymous. Lucille expected she and Bill would use the cash themselves as an unreported reimbursement of the debt they had accrued on behalf of the campaign. Not legal perhaps, but not really cheating. That was how Lucille saw it. It never occurred to her those few thousand dollars, well, maybe even ten thousand, would constitute campaign fraud. Never in the weeks of interrogation by police and investigators did she even in her mind make any link between the improbable checks and the cash she hoped would prove enough to get her and Shelby out of Haden.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">When she awoke from her hours of shock and sat facing her daughter Lucille knew she would never understand why he had done it. She wouldn't understand anymore than Haden County itself understood how their fair-haired Billy Wolf, one of the finest and most upstanding among them, could do this. And as time and investigations wore on, it seemed Bill Wolf crashed so hugely and irresponsibly into a scandal that was never defined. No one would ever understand.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“It was just scandal for the sake of scandal,” Lucille would soon tell Irene Hanley. “He was pilloried to death, Irene. And no one came to his rescue. No one.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Lucille was as angry at Bill as a scorned woman, as a threatened mother. But despite it all, the long and the short of it was this, Lucille made a convincing grieving widow, for Lucille did grieve. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Despite her jaw-clenched tenacity to see through what she viewed as a humiliating personal tragedy and its attendant anger at her husband beyond anything she had imagined possible, she sobbed nightly. She sobbed for hours into the pillow in the guest bedroom, which was as far as she could pull herself from their bedroom which remained gapingly empty where the bed had stood.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">While Lucille proceeded with her clenched jaw and ramrod spine and abrupt behavior <span> </span>-- winning her a begrudging admiration but no love – Patsy’s grief verily oozed from her house, which she didn’t leave, not even for the funeral.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">The ladies at Maxine’s attempted to stop by that first week and for the first few days were greeted at the kitchen door by a bathrobe clad, slack-faced Patsy who did not invite them in. By the end of the week Patsy wasn’t opening the door. By the weekend Matt took her over to Harrison where it had been agreed her mother needed her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Irene Hanley wasn’t any longer than an hour bringing a plate of chocolate chip cookies to Kyle. “I saw your dad taking your mom out 231,” she said after rapping at the window in the top of the Grosen’s kitchen door and seeing Kyle look up from the kitchen table. “I figured they were heading over to her people,” Irene called through the door. “For some reason I just thought you might like some cookies. I just baked some for Bobby. With your mom out of town and all.” She stood at the door smiling brightly and held the plate in the air a though she were an advertisement for fresh baked cookies. <span> </span>“May I come in?” she finally asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle stared at her. He couldn’t imagine what to say, he could only formulate things <i>not </i>to say. He got out of his seat and felt he was somehow hypnotized, walking toward the framed face of Bobby Hanley’s mother at the kitchen door. He suddenly realized his fists were clenching and unclenching. “Yeah,” he finally said and reached to open the door. He held it open and let her into the kitchen where they both stood staring at one another.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Well,” Irene finally said, “I’ll just leave them here on the table.” Placing them there, with her back to him, she tried again, “I hope everything is all right. Is your mother all right?” she asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Uh huh,” Kyle said which thankfully released him from his daze. <span> </span>It had made him sound like Bobby Hanley. <span> </span>“Oh,” he said, “oh, absolutely. Mom’s fine. Gee. Thanks for the cookies Mrs. Hanley.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Well, I was just worried,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Hanley. Tell Bobby hello,” he said and stared at her until she walked away from the table and back to the door. She stopped then and looked him in the eye. She was shorter than him, but not by a lot. Her smile twisted at one end and her smile turned briefly into a slight smirk and then righted itself back to her thin smile. She didn’t say anything more until she was out the door. “Bye Kyle. Enjoy the cookies,” she said and got in her car and drove home.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle stared at the cookies and felt suddenly that he might vomit. He turned to the sink and got a glass of water and held on to the counter until the sensation passed. He drank the water and filled the glass again at the faucet but this time only drank half of it before setting it down on the counter. He couldn’t even tell for sure if he was angry, let alone who he was angry at. Who wasn’t he angry at? Shelby. Maybe he wasn’t angry at Shelby. He could think of no reason to be angry with Shelby. But he knew that somehow they would never be the same kind of friends again. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">He had driven over to the Prentiss’ house the morning after William Wolf had killed himself. He had learned that night, from his father, where Shelby had gone.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“What?” he had screamed at his father, “why didn’t you tell me? I could have taken her.” He plunged toward the kitchen to get his truck keys when his father yelled.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Kyle! It’s nearly midnight. Get hold of yourself.” It was unusual for Matthew Grosen to raise his voice. It stopped Kyle and he started to cry but made himself stop as his father entered the kitchen. “Go to your room, I have to talk to your mom, I’ll come by your room in a little bit and answer what I can for you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Her grandmother?” Kyle said. He had been on his computer, trying to see what the news had about Mr. Wolf when his father came into the room. It hadn’t been long, maybe twenty minutes. He’d heard his father talking and then he presumed putting his mother to bed. She was acting really weird, he thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Keep your voice down,” Matthew confirmed as he closed the door behind himself, “I’m hoping your mother can get some sleep.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Doctor Bean sent over a sedative,” he said and only now looked at Kyle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle pursed his lips but said nothing. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“We were all good friends in high school,” his father said and sat down on Kyle’s bed. “Bill, your mom and me. He hasn’t had a happy life.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Yeah, I guess not,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew Grosen gave his son a sad, acknowledging smile. “Right," Matt said, "I mean before too. I mean his whole life. It never made sense. His life. Everything should have been perfect for him. He always had everything he needed for it to be perfect. And he knew it. He was appreciative. He worked hard and was always a good friend but, but, I don’t know. It would end up, whatever it was, that nothing about it had gone perfectly. Not at all.<span> </span>This isn’t making much sense, is it?” Matt suddenly asked, turning back to Kyle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“You mean like Mrs. Wolf? It looked like it was perfect but it was horrible.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matt looked still at his son and finally said. “Like both Missus Wolfs. But I don’t mean, Kyle, that they were horrible. It just was somehow everything turned horrible.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“So was that always the problem? You and mom never liked either Mrs. Wolf?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“That was a problem,” Matt said and his eyes slid off his son onto his hands clasped between his knees.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“So why did he kill himself? Because of Mrs. Wolf?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“No. No I don’t think so. No I’m certain not. No,” Matthew said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">"Why?" Kyle asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">"I don't have any idea."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Right,” Kyle said. “How’s Shelby?” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“She’s fine. She’s tough. She will be fine. She's like Lucille, no crying, just practical.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“In shock,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Yes. Probably in shock. Lucille sent her over to the Prentiss’ which, I have to say, was a piece of good clear thinking on her part.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Mrs. Wolf is okay,” Kyle said. “I don’t know why you and mom hate her so much. I mean, I know she’s kinda a pain in the ass. But she’s okay.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“We don’t hate her, Kyle.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Bullshit.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Stop it,” Matthew said quietly. “It isn’t the time for us to be bickering about this.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“I’ll go see Shelby tomorrow.” Kyle glanced at his father and saw no rebuke so hazarded one more remark. “Maybe now you and Mom can be nicer to her. She thought of Mr. Wolf as her father.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Kyle, it isn’t the time for this either, but I’m going to tell you what I always tell you about Shelby Prentiss, she won’t be staying in Haden County. Not for you. Not for anybody. <span> </span>And this is just going to speed that up.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">“Well maybe I won’t be staying either,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Matthew slapped his knees and stood up and walked to his son to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He squeezed it once and turned to leave the room.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle was right thinking his father hadn’t heard him. Even if Matthew Grosen had heard, it would never occur to him that Kyle would leave Haden County. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 1in;"><br />
</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-59632435827144742862011-01-19T07:56:00.000-08:002011-01-19T07:56:40.423-08:00Chapter Nine – The Candidates<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“WINNING IS EVERYTHING!” Buddy cried out. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">About thirty-five men and two women tried to raise their right arms in imitation of Buddy and tried to raise their voices in imitation of Buddy but it was a weak echo. The contingent of downstate candidates out of the primary were gathered for their first pep rally with Governor Powell Paulie. The governor would be arriving “soon” they had been told twice and were starting to grasp that they themselves were the warm-up act.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Few Downstate Democrats had faced contested primaries so hadn’t actually won anything yet. They were still new to the silly things that accompanied one-on-one campaigning or slate-building on behalf of the Party. This hollering and jumping up and down in an Elk Lodge <span> </span>was embarrassing, seemed juvenile to them. They still expecting gravitas and strategic conversations about policies and issues. They were to be disabused of that today. That was the purpose of today, to turn them into candidates running below the governor’s ticket.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“We got to all get on the same page,” Buddy Nowak told them. “We gotta get on the governor’s wagon and we all gotta push. We gotta push to the win. Let’s hear it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Winning Is Everything,” cried Bill Wolf. He believed it. He was a winner. Harrison had been gracious in conceding but had made no effort to throw his party support to Wolf. Instead it appeared his people were moving into Johnson's camp. Harrison had been seen politically only once since the primary, at a Paulie fundraiser. Wolf had seen him deep in conversation with Buddy and hoped Harrison was being encouraged to bring the Harrison County Democrats out for him in November.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>Bill Wolf looked to the men on either side of him. They stood with their right fists clenched but not raised and said the words looking at the floor. “Winning IS everything,” Bill suddenly cried out again and the men to his sides slightly jumped and then turned and smiled at him. Bill reached out and patted both men on their backs.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“WINNING IS EVERYTHING,” Buddy called back. And now Bill, the men on either side of him and the men next to them cheered louder than before.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“BILL WOLF – WINNER IN HADEN COUNTY,” Buddy called back. A cheer went up in the room and Bill grinned and raised his arms into the air.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">He was on his way. He could feel it. The room was electric. He was electric. Electric and alive. He had won a grueling race. He was a winner. He was on his way.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Congratulations,” boomed the governor who stepped upon the plywood stage set up for military recognitions, fire department installations and politicians. “We stand here today as winners and in a few months will stand together in Springfield as leaders representing the citizens of the Great State of Illinois. But first we gotta get ‘em to the polls,” the governor said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The renewed cheering partially obliterated the rest of the governor’s sentence which ended as did so many of his campaign pledges, “…if we work together.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well that is sure as shit the fly in the ointment, isn’t it,” Lucille said that night. “Working together,” she snorted. She, too, had attended the rally, but she had attended to the seminars and orientations filled with the mishmash of campaign aides and treasurers and spouses. She had been surprised to realize Bill’s campaign committee was far more organized than most. She was surprised and disheartened. She’d expected to find support systems at the rally only to discover Bill’s primary win was drawing other campaigns to her, asking her for help on their fledgling efforts.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"><span> </span>“Tell Carlene Deluccio about working together. I didn’t think Carlene Deluccio could work any harder than she did for Harrison, but she’s outdoing herself for Johnson. She’s not even <i>pretending </i>she isn’t supporting a Republican. And she is holding your goddamn seat, for god’s sakes. You should never have resigned. That seat should have been mine.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">William Wolf was flat on his back on one of the two beds in the Holiday Inn where he and Lucille had decided to “take an extra night, away from the campaign, for a slight breather.” His right forearm was thrown over his closed eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“And don’t just do that big sigh,” Lucille said into the silence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know what I’m saying is the truth,” Lucille said into the continued silence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know she’s just a snake in the grass. They’re all snakes,” Lucille said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Now that,” Bill said, taking down his arm, “is the first true thing you’ve said. Carlene isn’t for Johnson, Carlene is for Paulie. Between her personally and three businesses she’s contributed about $350,000. Public contributed. God knows how much more she’s given.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Lucille was silent and then asked. “What does <i>that </i>mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Let me rephrase that. Carlene is for Carlene. The public contributions came in four installments. One of them a year and a half ago, about the time the governor visited.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“What?” Lucille tried to catch up. “Your old seat is worth $350,000?”<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“No,” Bill Wolf said, replacing his arm over his eyes, “Carlene is worth $350,000 to the governor. More.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I don’t get it. All this just to give her a commissioner seat? All of this?” Lucille looked around the motel room, their clothes strewn from open suitcases, a bottle of bourbon next to the coffeepot just outside the bathroom. “How much are you worth to him?” Lucille asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill was silent.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well you’ve just got to become more valuable,” Lucille said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill turned away from her and in a moment she realized he was sobbing. </div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-47737210029106072412011-01-18T18:54:00.000-08:002011-01-20T13:21:03.911-08:00Chapter Eight – The Campaign<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 1in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It wasn’t until putting the decorations away Shelby began shaking. Shaking so she nearly dropped the ornament she’d been told her paternal grandmother had given for her first Christmas. She’d been slightly more than six months old.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“It was the thought that did it,” Shelby told Kyle. “I thought, ‘This is the last time I’ll be doing this.’ And I suddenly realized that with everything I placed back into its box I was thinking the same thing, ‘This is the last time I’ll be doing this.’ Just like I was going to be dead before next Christmas.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know that’s crazy, right?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">She was silent after that. So Kyle remained silent too. They sat huddled in separate sleeping bags in Kyle’s father’s Jeep. Neither Kyle’s truck nor Shelby’s compact had four-wheel drive. The snow had stopped only a few hours ago. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was after just this type of a snowfall, a snowfall heavy enough to take down small branches, followed by a north wind, you could hear the wolves. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The cemetery had huge old markers in the center. They configured just right for the wind to howl through. It was a small cemetery, deep within the forest that for the most part was what constituted Haden County’s Jefferson Park. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Unlike in the counties of the Metro East, the park in Haden County wasn’t named for the third president. It was named for its donor, Bernard Coates Jefferson, a man made wealthy in the Metro East from the railroad and riverboats and then made poor buying acreage in Southern Illinois. Jefferson had given five-thousand- plus acres to Haden County a century ago. The land at the time included the small cemetery, a large lake and thick woodlands abutting acres of inactive farm fields.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Mr. Jefferson saw a future in land, expected to capitalize on land in and of itself,” the executor of the B.C .Jefferson Trust explained on a field trip Shelby’s and Kyle’s ninth grade history class had made. “An idea before it’s time,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Still is,” Shelby had said within hearing of their teacher who smiled broadly.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Precisely, Shelby.” The teacher turned to the rest of the class, “Do the rest of you grasp this economic concept?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby had overheard Mr. Plover and her stepfather talking while mixing drinks for their wives in the Wolf’s kitchen. There was apparently to be a new racetrack in the southeast portion of the state. Haden County needed a state interchange built there to make it profitable according to the banking officials who were working on securing private investors for the region.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“There’s plenty of land over there at Jefferson,” Mr. Plover had said. “There are acres and acres the bank would love to move on.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby didn’t know how this was what Mrs. Turner meant, but treasured that five-year-old commendation and as a result registered for a freshman economics class first semester at her small private college in the East. Her grasp of economics in that class were a precise D on the bell curve. Her standing among her peers was a bit lower. A further surprise was discovering that she had an accent and that it was openly referred to as a “twang” and audibly behind her back called “hillbilly.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “They all went to pre-school together,” Shelby explained to Kyle her decision not to return. “Besides, Mom and Dad could use my help on the campaign. Even Dad said it would help. They can’t get the donations they need to hire any help at all. And Harrison is rich. He is so rich. The campaign manager says Dad has to compete no matter how much Harrison spends.” Shelby paused and looked at Kyle. “I think they took out a loan,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">They both knew the adage: If there isn’t enough money to support your candidacy, there aren’t enough votes to elect you.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“They just need help,” Shelby said. “And I don’t plan to go back there anyway. It was so phony.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The wind shook snow from the trees that surrounded the parking lot and the road in to the forest. A few other cars had crunched quietly past but presumably found their own private coves in the snaking lot circling the cemetery. Or they had driven on, content to repeat the ghost stories of Victoria Forest while driving past.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Jefferson had named the thick stand of hardwoods and pines for his maiden sister. Her tall grave stone was among those creating the winter cries. The forest had been long ago nicknamed Voodoo Forest. It stood alone on the horizon, one of the first stands of trees to mark the edge of the ancient prairies. There the land becomes increasingly hilly as it descends into the great rivers convergence at the tip of Southern Illinois.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby and Kyle had brought sleeping bags so they could turn the car off and listen for the wolves. They each had climbed into one and sat in the front seat of the Jeep. Snow had fallen all day, quitting only a few hours before sunset. It was early evening now but dark as night. The cemetery felt just barely beyond their sight. Sometimes it seemed one of the tall gravestones could be seen amongst the lean black trunks that swayed as the snow blew past. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">They remained silent, unusual just a few weeks ago but having become typical as Shelby’s winter break wore on. She received a crash course on how the campaign was running since returning home in mid-December. She returned looking brittle and unhappy and at first seemed quickly revived. But that was short lived.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Shelby arrived home on a Thursday and went with Kyle Friday afternoon to the Starbucks in Vernon County – he had taken her out of the county, knowing she wouldn’t want to be in Haden and still it hadn’t mattered. Susan Prince was there with a handful of her student council cheerleading bitches and asked loudly if anyone had ever heard of a Political Gold-digger? “They don’t do it for the money,” she said, “they do it for the party.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I get this is for me,” Shelby said to Kyle, “but I don’t get it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Harder to deny.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Ah,” Shelby said. “Brilliant in its own way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Whether she had known then, whether she had always known, Shelby couldn’t dodge the bile her mother was acquiring as William Wolf ran a grueling campaign that made the phrase no-holds-barred meaningless. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Harrison hadn’t hesitated to paint Wolf as the husband of a two-timing floozy who took the life of a good upstanding county man she’d tempted him into disaster and then death. And Harrison went on colorfully noting that Wolf’s current wife was so slatternly as to be tossed out by the wastrel Prentiss. Wolf himself, explained Harrison, was a man who had only come home from the city to help his old man drive the once illustrious Wolf Farms into bankruptcy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “Pains me to say of a native son of my neighboring county, but Bill Wolf is more akin to a carpetbagger than a prodigal son,” Harrison intoned at any number of church picnics. “Now Billy Wolf might be nice enough,” Harrison would concede. “It’s nice to have your commissioners be coming from the salt of the earth, and all like that. But you surely don’t want some ne’er-do-well with a questionable ability to choose uplifting company for himself to be representing your god-fearing interests in Springfield. Do you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">That Richard Harrison, better known as Dickie Harrison, could call anyone a ne’er do well with a straight face was testimony to a life lived unexamined. Richard Harrison was happy with his life, happy with himself, happy that his plump little wife stayed home with his plump five children leaving him most of the time to take care of his business and his pleasure elsewhere.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Business for Dickie Harrison was running his daddy’s harness and tack shop which provided a nice little income for Dickie so long as it was attached to the Harrison’s huge farm interests which produced thoroughbreds with Kentucky Derby trophies in their careers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Dickie didn’t so much run the store as conduct a farm to farm to convention to convention door to door service that did indeed increase orders and kept him on the road – sometimes for a couple of weeks in a well outfitted travel trailer – at least six days out of ten. He could be found as often at a home’s kitchen table in the middle of the day as in a man’s barn or a neighborhood bar. Conducting business and pleasure.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Betty Jean did not seem to mind. She had a beautiful ranch house with a swimming pool and a maid. No other girl in her entire graduating class had anything even close to it. Dickie was agreeable and charming when he was around and usually threw a party every week or two when he was home. She felt neither lonely nor maligned by any of the talk that surrounded her husband. “Dickie loves me fine,” she would giggle if anyone braved hinting with her about his antics.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Dickie would grab her ass at a party and squeezing it say to the people nearby, “Betty Jean’s got it good. I give her everything she could possible need.” And then he would growl and she would squeal.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The one time Lucille had seen the display – the one time she had attended a Harrison party – she had made a slight gagging sound and said, “I think I need a glass of water.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Dickie overheard her and hollered, “Getting’ too hot for you in here, Lolita?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill Wolf had blushed to his hairline and looked first at Lucille and then at Dickie and then back at Lucille to see what he should do. Lucille smiled. “I’m older than I look, Ducky,” and took to calling Harrison Dickie Duck when she had the chance.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">As insinuations of these attacks began appearing in Harrison’s ads and radio spots William Wolf began demanding his dwindling local committee come up with some counter slings. Lucille was adamantly opposed to the idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Buddy Nowak thinks it’s a good idea,” Bill hissed one night to Lucille as once again the campaign committee shrugged and failed to take up his request.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“”You can’t fight him back by saying Dickie Duck cheats on his wife, squanders his daddy’s money, is a redneck and a racist. Who in Harrison County doesn’t already know that? If Buddy Nowak wants to go around calling Ducky a sleazebag, more power to him. But don’t let him have you do it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“What makes you think you know so much,” Bill Wolf would snap. “You’ve already said what you think. But it isn’t you out there, is it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Right,” Lucille said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“ Well I just want to remind you that Buddy Nowak has won a lot of campaigns.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“So have you,” Lucille retorted.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Not like this one,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">They didn’t need to argue to gauge how grueling the campaign was. All they had to do is look at one another. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Since Shelby had left in early August Lucille had gained two dress sizes and found strands of gray hair. She began dying immediately. She lost her chair on the central committee as well as seats on three charity boards. Two of the boards lost major donors, both Harrison supporters. She was reappointed to neither and her third board announced she would have an honorary early retirement luncheon in light of her increased duties on her husband’s campaign. “Kicked me off before I had a chance to kill off another donor,” Lucille told her daughter. Shelby had escorted her mother to the luncheon the day after she returned from college. They gave Lucille a plaque. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Bill had lost two pant sizes, a collar size and looked haggard and old. He looked as Shelby remembered old Mr. Wolf, Bill’s father, who she’d known for the few years he’d still been alive when Shelby was a child. Those were the years the Wolf farm was finally lost and the old man died. She worried her step-father would die. She had heard her mother warn him he would have a heart attack if he kept it up. Shelby had heard him say the same thing to her mother. Shelby had thought about her mother dying, but could not conceive of such a thing and did not worry about her.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">During the months Shelby had been away, Bill and Lucille’s bickering had become mean and intense. There had always been times when the three of them had perchance sat a meal together and found themselves all talking and seemingly speaking separate languages and talking about completely different topics. When they caught themselves all would laugh and they became a family again.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby looked up the kitchen counter that first Friday morning she was back from college expecting the same experience to end their bickering. They h ad scheduled this morning to eat breakfast together, joking that family time now had to be scheduled. Shelby had expected it would be the time for her to tell about her first semester and begin convincing them of her desire to leave the school.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">So when they quickly fell into a tussle and caught themselves and fell silent, it was Shelby who first looked up with a chuckle, expecting them to all laugh. Instead Bill and Lucille gulped down the remains of their coffee in unintended unison and pushed abruptly back from the counter with barely a farewell to Shelby.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> She sat alone at the counter and began to feel afraid. Shelby herself had lost a dress size and her appetite and her perfect complexion. Her grades were abysmal compared to high school. Her mother hadn’t noticed any of these things. Shelby had seen the envelope from the school, surely her grades, unopened on her mother’s desk. As the days of her vacation passed the letter was buried in more envelopes which also remained unopened.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was some days after Christmas Day before the three of them found themselves again at the kitchen counter. Shelby blurted her intentions of remaining home for the next semester and helping with the campaign. Her father had looked up from his meal first at her and then questioningly at her mother. As soon as his eyes hit Lucille’s she turned to Shelby and said, “I think that’s an excellent idea, Shel. Do you know how to use Excel?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">By then Shelby had gotten a full dose of the campaign. In addition to Susan Prince’s Starbucks show, two other girls had let her hear “gold-digger” at holiday parties and one had even called her mother a gold-digger to Shelby’s face.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“How do you figure that?” Shelby had asked, stunned more into curiosity than anger.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You know what I mean,” the girl had said and walked off.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“My mom has been married to Bill Wolf for longer than she’s been alive,” she said to Kyle. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">She heard and overheard her stepfather called both an opportunist and a buffoon. She heard people say it in adjacent restaurant booths, in store aisles, saw it on the growing local blog entries. The newspaper had always been Republican so she’d long ago learned not to expect kind treatment there. She’d been surprised, however, by how many of the old Democrats were quoting the paper they had spent her lifetime scorning. They quoted its criticism of her stepfather.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Not all of them,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Only the ones talking,” she replied.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Well,” Kyle said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> She herself had been called a slut by Bobby Hanley who had become a rabid member of the Republican Youth Club to spite his councilwoman mother, Irene. Kyle punched him in the jaw and landed in a great deal more trouble than Bobby.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“I was a Republican in my youth as well,” Irene excused her badly behaved son. Irene called his behavior “independent thinking” and indicative of a well-adjusted son despite a no-good father who had walked out on them when Bobby was four. The abandonment forced Irene back to her parent’s farm next to the Wolf’s old place where Bobby grew up. Shelby had known him as long as she had known Kyle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “There,” Kyle whispered as a burst of wind slightly rocked the car. He turned the key to allow him to lower his window about an inch. He was on the lee. It was how he always parked at Voodoo Forest just for this reason.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby nodded.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">The faint howling grew with the wind and the fresh snow blew across the windshield and it was exactly what Shelby had asked for, “I’d like to be neatly packaged inside one of those snowballs you shake and then set down,” she had said to Kyle, . “let’s go listen to the rocks.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“The winter wolves,” she said now as the howling picked up and then drifted away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle said nothing but kept his eyes on her. It felt he was more than watching her, more even than guarding her, he felt ready to rush in quickly and save her. Save her from what? He kept asking himself. As if what? As if she was about to whip a razor blade across her wrists? He had never seen her act like this. As if she had deflated. Except that she was angry, he knew that much. She was really angry and swallowing all signs of it. She just grew more silent. That had never been her style; his style, perhaps, but never hers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> “You know he’s going to beat Harrison,” Kyle finally said. “Even my mom says it. “</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Do you think so?” Shelby asked so suddenly he reflexively pulled away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Yeah. Yeah, Shel, he’s going to win,” he leaned back toward her, reaching an arm out of the warm bag to touch her shoulder..</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Senator?” she asked, without turning toward him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Sure,” Kyle said. But he had merely meant the primary and she knew it. There was no consideration in his household that William Wolf stood any chance of taking the seat from John Johnson. “Maybe it will get better in the general. My dad always says primaries are worse than generals.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">It was a poor save. It wasn’t a save at all. Shelby looked at him and grimaced. “Yeah, fighting you Republicans will be clean after this,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Kyle grinned. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said and pulled his arm back inside his bag.. Shelby gave him a brief smile.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby knew from Carlene Deluccio that primaries were worse than general elections. In the general election at least most of your own party puts on a face of supporting you. In a primary it is rigueur de jour to support no one but yourself. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“Dad keeps saying that too, ‘Once we get through the primary, Shel.’,” she mocked a gruff voice, “ ‘ Once we get through this primary.’ They both say it, Mom too, to the campaign people, to the volunteers, to Lydia Price our <i>loyal </i>treasurer,” she says to Kyle and looks at him. “But they never said what that means. Once we get through the primary it gets worse? And which is worse? Winning or losing? Once we get through the primary, what? We eat our young? Float our dead into the sea? Throw the whores and money changers over the cliff? What?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;"> Three months. She was only eighteen years old. Her big shot college had shot her down. Her acquaintances of a lifetime had turned vicious in her absence. She could hardly eat. Her big shot parents were unraveling. Shelby had never been so unnerved. Kyle had never seemed so tedious. But there he was. There was no one else. Absolutely no one else. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">“You might all be right,” Shelby said, “it really can’t get much worse short y’all eating us.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 1in;">Shelby leaned into Kyle and they touched heads, watched the snow swirl and listened to the wolves.</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-38138687041997330092011-01-12T17:18:00.000-08:002011-01-12T17:18:38.352-08:00Chapter Seven - New Councilwoman<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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Carlene Deluccio was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for. “Doesn’t say much, does it?” Carlene Santano Deluccio would loudly proclaim. “I just tell ‘em it doesn’t say much to be smarter than the zero they think I am,” she would tell her brother Alex, “and then I just laugh and laugh in their faces," she told her brother, "and look like a loud-mouthed Wop.” <div class="MsoNormal"> “You’re not a Wop,” her brother invariably snapped back.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Carlene would laugh some more and then she might grow suddenly annoyed and snap, “If I was as dumb as people say, what am I doing here?” </div><div class="MsoNormal"> It was a trademark line with her. She would snap it out any time at anyone who annoyed her.<span> </span>But even victims of this line – for Carlene Santano Deluccio heard insults to her intelligence frequently – admitted that few other things annoyed her at all. Carlene was an affable, welcoming, even mothering type of woman, although she’d never had children. This was well known since her childlessness could prompt grand emotional outbreaks. “What am I doing here?” she would ask at the conclusion of these outbreaks as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> What was she doing here? That was the Haden County Democrats’ perennial question. An immigrant amongst such WASPs they would confess to one another.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span> She wasn’t an immigrant herself, but from an immigrant’s family. From Chicago. The Haden countians actually meant by this her husband’s family, the Deluccios. Her husband, Victor Deluccio, had been two decades older,wealthy and now dead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> It was assumed in Haden County that Victor Deluccio took care of the Chicago mob’s southern Illinois interests in horses and horse racing. According to his IRS filings, so said First National Bank of Haden County President Al Plover, Victor Deluccio reported ownership of a single racetrack and a few horses at Stovepipe Farm, which had, from the day the Hansen boys sold the place, been placed and remained solely in Carlene’s name. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span> Victor Deluccio was a big campaign donor, lending credence to his reputed<span> </span>mobster connections. He gave generously to both parties in all level of races. He himself was unelectable, too shady in reputation for appointments to local building committees or economic development boards, too rogue to fit with the local chamber or community chests.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> But Carlene joined everything, childless and tireless and with Victor’s checkbook in her hand. Each year she passed in Haden County brought more invitations to join foundations, boards and trusteeships. She worked for child welfare, battered women, cultural development. She ultimately became both a trustee of the local hospital and the college. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “If I’m so dumb,” she said in accepting the latter trusteeship, “what are all of you doing here?” <span> </span>The laughter was polite and quickly drowned in her own guffaws. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> Sooner or later most people came to, if not exactly <i>like</i> her, at least appreciate her, albeit, preferably at a distant table instead of at their own table. She was loud and opinionated and generous.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Victor had been so careful in his giving neither party considered him a member of the other.And despite all those volunteer hours and the couple's appearance at social and fund raising events within the quad-counties, her political yearnings were unsuspected as well, indeed, as far as anyone could recall, unexpressed. No one remembered a single political or even general civic conversation with Carlene for all those years. She talked about money. Raising money. And she did it well on her own and leveraged that successfully on behalf of her boards.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Yet Victor’s corpse wasn’t cold, so went the talk in both parties, when Carlene Deluccio filed for a county council seat as a Democrat, within hours of the codified deadline, she forced a primary with the well liked and clean-cut WASP, William Wolf.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> It was obvious from the start she would lose and lose big. Wolf was popular enough to be a Democrat able to securely and hold a council seat in the largely Republican county. His respect from members of both parties routinely landed him the presidency of the board. He had honorably paid his party dues and his civic dues. He had served on boards and fund-raised for others. And throughout he had remained friendly with all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Carlene’s move was too sudden against too solid of an incumbent, said the shocked Democrats of Haden County. It appeared such a spur-of-the-moment peccadillo that many Democrats were surprised to see how many votes she did garner. Then further aggrieved when she did land a seat on the party’s central committee. Her numbers were so striking, some Democrats in Haden County speculated that had Carlene run as a Republican she might have beat Wolf in the general election.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “If I’m so dumb, what am I doing here?” Carlene slapped the various committee members on their backs and upper arms as she attended her first meeting, the first freshman member in more than a decade. Money <i>and </i>elect-ability gained Carlene Deluccio credentials other party workers had spent decades attaining or more often, failing to attain. Now it would be she, little more than half a year later, being asked to accept the seat she’d sought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “She outfoxed the wolves,” was how Irene Hanley saw it and repeated the phrase a number of times after first tossing it into William Wolf’s face when he told her he planned to resign.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Yes,” Wolf had said without inflection, “she did.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “And what does that tell you?” Irene had asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> He didn’t dislike women, which William Wolf reminded himself when he found himself sparring with Irene. Not because of Irene intrinsically but because somehow Irene made him think of all women rolled into one. That was just too much. That was just too much all-knowing, condescending and general priggishness rolled into a great big shaking finger.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “That I’m a chump?” Wolf asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “But loyal,” Irene smiled, reached up and patted him on the cheek before returning home and launching the telephone tree that would bring them all together to give Carlene Deluccio William Wolf’s council seat as soon as Bill resigned and Lucille got through with her hissy fit. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Poor boy, he didn’t know his granddaddy long enough to learn that honor comes even before loyalty,” she told Stanley Thorne as she started the telephone tree. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “So he isn’t a Marine,” Stanley had replied. “He could still beat Johnson.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span>“Not even his granddaddy could have beat Johnson,” Irene said. </div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Well, he’ll beat Harrison,” Thorne retorted, deciding he would not tell Irene at this moment that he would, again, be launching a campaign against Thompson.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> “Yes,” Irene sighed, “yes he probably will. But why does it sound like some kind of Carlene joke when you say it?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-16512002590068133292011-01-09T09:39:00.000-08:002011-01-09T09:39:49.403-08:00Chapter Six - The Appointee<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:RelyOnVML/> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“I’m just saying,” Lucille Wolf said, for the fourth time since the meeting had convened an hour and a half before. “As chairman <span> </span>of the Democratic Central Committee for Haden County I am responsible for establishing how the deliberations and the interviews will be conducted to replace former-Council President Wolf. <span> </span>Of course <i>after </i>that <i>anyone </i>who wishes to be considered for the seat will have to remove themselves from the deliberations.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Lucille Wolf, for what seemed the hundredth time scoped the table, meeting the eyes of each member before moving on to the next; member to member to member, counting the votes over and over, returning always from where she’d begun, with Carlene Deluccio.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “<i>Everyone</i>,” she emphasized into Carlene’s eyes, “who wants to run will have to announce their intention and <i><b>then</b> everyone </i>in the running will excuse themselves. But first we better have a method in place to fairly assess the candidates on their merits and experience. Don’t you think, Carlene?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span> The women smiled with hatred as symbiotic as were their different affections for their very different husbands. Particularly different now that one was dead.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The committee members waited for the two women to settle whatever needed settling. They waited and if so asked would perform tasks, primarily out of courtesy to Lucille. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille had put in her time, stuffed envelopes, knocked on doors, married William Wolf who had been tapped by the governor. She deserved courtesy. But regardless of how long they waited or how many tasks came to be demanded of them, Lucille would not be handed her husband's seat.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> So Lucille grew more frenzied and Carlene grew smug. The room grew thick with their inability to stop Lucille and let the inevitable transpire.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">They, after all, could only wait so long, before they needed to turn their deference to Carlene.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Is she crazy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Stranger things have happened,” Stanley Thorne replied to Irene Hanley when the committee finally took a lunch break. It had been Irene, of course, who ultimately cut into Lucille's filibustering and demanded a break. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Well don’t you be a part of it,” Irene snapped back at Thorne.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> As longed for but nevertheless thoroughly unanticipated, lunch provoked Lucille into submission. Lucille expected such a thing least of all. She had hurried to the bank, determined to get Al Plover to make Henry Warren put her name forward for Bill’s seat. But a chance passing of Matt Grosen’s<span> </span>wife shocked her into recognizing the futility of her pursuit. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span> Patsy Grosen saw Lucille, head down, roaring toward her and was preparing herself for their traditional faux friendly greeting offered on behalf of their children. When Lucille looked up it registered with Patsy just where Lucille had been and the strain in Lucille’s face was clear. Both women realized the instant their eyes met that Patsy pitied Lucille.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> It would be hard put to determine which woman was more shocked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Lucille turned without gaining the bank, her business unfinished. No greeting passed between them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The unanimous vote came within a quarter hour of reconvening. Carlene Deluccio’s name was sent to the governor and five of the seven members of the committee confided to Lucille afterwards that she was the best choice, but that the circumstances wouldn’t permit it. They each concluded with the assurance that they knew she understood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Fucking bitches. Fucking seventh grade girl bitches,” Lucille said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Lucille,” Shelby’s step-father reprimanded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Shut-up,” Lucille replied. “I didn’t see you do a goddamn thing to help me. Not lift a finger. I have done nothing but help you from day one. You wouldn’t even stand up for me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“How in the hell could I have done that?”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">William Wolf asked. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-indent: 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“Behind the scenes. For god’s sakes, you’re <i>behind the scenes </i>all the time anymore. Drumming up more votes for Paulie than for yourself. You better be careful,” Lucille said, “that governor’s gonna play you for a sucker you don’t take care of your own self. And that means me, too, buddy.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “In a few weeks you’ll see it was impossible,” William Wolf said and packed his suitcase and said he’d be in Springfield for the next week.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The waters were smoothed when he returned. Lucille had made a few dozen calls on his behalf and brought in some money, not a lot, but the campaign could pay down the bill to the TV station now, enough to cut the second spot.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Lucille had also organized a dinner meeting of the full campaign committee to serve a buffet with beer and some wine punch, get everybody excited again, see if they could gin up some more worker bees for Bill. <span> </span>There was still a long way to go.</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-30817004561972353842010-12-28T14:42:00.000-08:002010-12-28T14:42:56.068-08:00Chapter Five -- Senator<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“The boys at the barbershop say he asked him about being lieutenant governor,” Matt Grosen told Patsy and Kyle, after the Snakes diatribe had ended. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“Well that’s bullshit,” Patsy said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yeah, I think so,” Matt laughed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Why?” asked Kyle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“There aren’t enough Democratic votes down here,” Patsy explained. “Snakes needs someone from up north who can pull a whole lot of votes to keep us Republicans out of the mansion come next election.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Nothing like a born-again,” Matt said, grinning at his converted wife.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>The Harrisons were just about the biggest horse breeding family in southern Illinois and the only such family to be Democrats. Patsy grew up believing, as the whole lot of arrogant jack-ass Liberals believed if you asked Matt’s opinion, that they were the anointed party chosen <span> </span>to lead the dumb-ass southerners into Liberal Lincoln Land. “Lincoln was a goddamn Republican,” was a phrase not often left out of any comments Matthew B. Grosen had to make regarding the races.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Although he alluded to others that it had been his influence, <span> </span>it wasn’t Matt who had drawn Patsy to a new world view. Rather a chance eavesdropping in the horse barn when she was an impressionable thirteen. Looking at the event now, decades later, her shattering event couldn’t even garner a shrug. After the past four elections, winning the last two, Patsy Harrison Grosen doubted that much of anything could even raise her eyebrows anymore. But at thirteen she’d been deeply shocked overhearing her father agree to back the Republican congressman as a thank you for his support of Nixon’s wheat sale to Russia.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At the time it seemed her shock grew from seeing her father cheerfully negotiating profits with his most sworn enemies: the Republicans and the Russians. But over the decades of looking back at that scene what Patsy has come to realize is that what she was staring at throughout the men’s entire conversation was that they were both standing in horse manure. It had been her father’s favorite lawyer joke – and one he never failed to tell or at least quote when he saw Matt. The punch line was the lawyer, on his way into a farmer’s home, looking down at what he’d stepped in and crying, “I’m melting! I’m melting!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">That was also the day of the night she’d learned her best friend’s older brother – whom she’d had a crush upon since first grade and who had been recently, handsomely drafted – had been killed in Vietnam.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The day had coddled her into, not a Republican, but rather a non-believer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“No longer a believer,” was how she’d explained herself to Matt when they began dating a few years later. When a few years later she agreed to register Republican they both knew what she was actually doing was saying “Yes,” to a man who could do nothing less than follow in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I said ‘I do’ to a hundred years of outlaw lawmen and their idiotic version of womanhood,” was how she described her marriage to a dynasty of right-wing lawmen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But there was no doubt in Haden County that Patsy Harrison Grosen relished her role. At forty she was slim and blonde and vivacious with time for volunteer work in the hospital, women’s center and Head Start. “I’m just a bleeding heart conservative,” she would laugh.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That’s going to break Lucille’s heart,” Kyle’s father said now to his mother. “I’ll bet she’d got curtains picked out for the governor’s mansion already. That poor son-of-a-bitch,” Kyle and Patsy knew he meant William Wolf. Matt and Bill had played ball together in high school. They had been friends. Their wives had not. Indeed, neither Matt nor Patsy had liked either of Bill Wolf’s wives. And Patsy’s outspokenness didn’t leave much doubt that she didn’t like Bill either.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You don’t much like anybody in Haden County,” Matt had once shouted at Patsy. They didn’t argue often but they argued loudly when they did. So Kyle didn’t feel particularly shocked or concerned when he overheard this argument. But he gained interest when he realized it was about the Wolfs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I like Kyle. I like you most of the time. I don’t lose you as many votes as I gain you. What more do you think you can ask?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Patsy had not yelled this answer and his father had not yelled back. Something Kyle didn’t understand had been settled between his parents, but their dislike of Shelby had not been altered.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“She’s not even a Wolf,” he had screamed once at Patsy. He hadn’t been a teenager yet. Perhaps he was as young as ten. Maybe even eight. He and Shelby were still young enough to spend the nights at one another’s houses. His mother had, this time, said, “No.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No,” she had said, “the Wolf girl cannot spend the night and it would be better if you saw less of her anyway. You’re both too old for this.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle remembers his sudden rage. It was the first time he recalled that type of anger. He had never even been in a fistfight. He just wasn’t that interested in being right. But at this he had become enraged with an intensity that surprised his mother and shocked him. Nothing specific had ever been said to him against Shelby or her family, but at this comment of his mother’s he suddenly realized his mother did not merely dislike Shelby Wolf, he realized that like his father, his mother saw some people as enemies. And Shelby was an enemy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No, she isn’t a Wolf,” his mother had said, “she’s a Prentiss in Wolf’s clothing. And if you were about a decade older with a lick of sense you’d know enough to run like hell away from her.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“He shouldn’t have married her,” his father was saying now, regretting he’d made the curtain comment in front of Kyle, but unable to keep himself from once again making his point against Lucille. “He would have done better to fiddle about with her and send them on their way.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You mean, and marry one of those church ladies. You are all sons of bitches,” Patsy had replied. “I don’t like her either. But Bill Wolf knew exactly what he wanted and he got it. No reason to go blaming Bill Wolf’s problems on his wife.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You ‘re such a feminist,” Matt teased and tried to plant a kiss on her neck. She shrugged him off.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Don’t start on me,” Kyle’s mother had said and dinner – which had consisted of open containers of various leftover on the counter and the three of them grazing among them with forks – was abruptly over. Like usual.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It was the next day Shelby had rushed over after school with the news. “He’s going to be Senator,” she told Kyle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“What do you mean?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He’s going to run against Johnson for Senator. The governor wants him to do it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This, Kyle realized, was what his father meant about women just not getting it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And,” she said and paused, “this is even bigger news, I think he’s going to resign his seat! Mother thinks he’s an idiot, that the governor is only going to screw him,” Shelby said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Your mother can be pretty smart, Shel,” he told her. “What does your dad say?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He says he won’t have that son-of-a-bitch Harrison saying he was using the office to run against him.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Harrision?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yeah. They think there’s going to be a primary. Mom and Dad do.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Wow, Shelby. When is he going to do this? Give up his seat? Why is he going to do that?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I don’t know when. But soon I think. You know you can’t tell anyone.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">That bond between them, that what they shared could never be repeated to their parents or the other kids they knew whose parents were political was so ancient that it was nearly an insult for Shelby to have verbalized it. And Kyle shot her a look. And Shelby realized it. And they both relaxed a bit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It’s just that, well, I think Mom wants the appointment.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What appointment?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Dad’s seat.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What? Your mom wants your dad’s council seat? She thinks the Democrats are going to appoint her to your dad’s council seat? He just won. Why is he doing this? He isn’t really going to resign, is he?” Kyle made himself shut his mouth. Stop talking. He knew he’d already said far too much. <span> </span>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Indeed, Shelby just smiled. “You don’t think she can do it?” she asked. She had heard her mother ask her step-father just that. And she knew Kyle would say the exact same thing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No,” Kyle said, “that’s not it at all. It just won’t look right.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That’s just what Dad said. Exactly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">They grinned at one another. They had been together their entire lives. There was a part of this life they shared that <span> </span>was just like sitting next to one another, watching the same movie. When Shelby had once suggested something like this to Kyle he’d readily agreed. “Except we’re the only ones who see it as a comedy,” he’d added.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What does it matter?” Shelby now asked. “If he quits; if she get it. You know what she says?” Shelby asked. “She says, ‘Who wants to stay a councilman anyway?’”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That’s right,” Kyle said and quoting his mother launched into the line that had become his and Shelby’s private anthem, “there’s another election just around the corner.”</span></div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-32080462760938622442010-12-22T07:20:00.000-08:002010-12-22T07:20:02.973-08:00Chapter Four -- The Councilman<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>“A senator, Bill.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Stop it, Lucille. I barely won re-election to the board. I’m honored to be a commissioner.”<span> </span>But Bill Wolf’s smile quivered about him like a happy puppy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Senator.” Lucille sighed the word more than said it. “Bill, listen to how this sounds, ‘Senator William A. Wolf.’ Wouldn’t you want to be senator?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It was lieutenant governor a mere hour ago,” he told his wife, fighting the smile threatening to engulf him. They were the exact words in his head. Plus, the governor tapped him before Harrison, that little prick. Thinking of Harrison successfully tamped the puppy quivering. “A primary against Harrison wouldn’t be much fun,” Wolf said. And now he sounded as he wished, brusque, annoyed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille smiled. “You can wipe the floor up with Harrison,” she said. She cocked her head in what had become their connubial code. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille Temple Prentiss Wolf had a good face. William Wolf’s grandmother, a Haden County girl, had told him that after he’d brought Lucille and Shelby to Thanksgiving dinner. “She’ll age well,” his grandmother had said, “if she stays busy.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He smiled now at his wife, looking a decade younger than forty-three with that geometric face that William Wolf found attractive and knew others did as well, but which was not actually pretty, perhaps cute, but a bit too extreme for cute. <span> </span>Lucille’s face was triangular with high cheekbones and round eyes almost too large, like in the waif paintings his first wife had found endearing. There had been two staring him down in the bedroom. He would see them over her shoulder when she was on top, rearing back her head and shaking her red mane and acutely boring him. The night after the impossibly long day following the accident he had taken them from the wall and slipping them conscientiously from their frames broke them into halves then quarters as he walked through the house and out to the garbage pails behind the garage.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille kept her hair cropped short. It was so black it reflected blue in strong moonlight. She kept it clipped raggedly about her face like Liza Minnelli but neater. Much neater. He had grasped the meaning of the word ‘coiffed’ when overhearing one of the councilwomen describing his wife’s hairstyle to another woman. “It caps her perfectly,” Lydia Prince had said, “a precisely coiffed ragamuffin.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>Lucille was lean and nearly as tall as William Wolf, the fair-haired and proverbial prodigal son of Haden County. He had been aware from the moment the pursuit began that she had targeted him for marriage. He had enjoyed every moment of the pursuit and, well into a second decade later, <span> </span>still enjoyed the fruits of this power balance. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>All of these thoughts – though not examined, never made cogent <span> </span>– flooded William Wolf when he saw desire come into his wife. She was game for yet another race despite the exhaustive campaign they’d just concluded. His grandmother had been right about her in so many ways.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You nailed her PawMaw,” he had told his grandmother the night he lost the senate seat. “I’ll have Grandpop’s seat back on the council in two years. You watch.” Old Helen Wolf had died before that winning election but not without knowing her grandson would hold it. If that had been said once at the quad-county wake it had been said a hundred times. The election ten days after her death<span> </span>made truth of it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lucille had both known that Bill was aware of her intentions and also that without that absolute constant gurantee from her that she was absolutely there for him he would not remarry. There had been no children. He wouldn’t have had to. He could have made a fine political career for himself as his grandmother’s fair-haired boy. A wife would be helpful. Very helpful. But only the right wife. Lucille knew this. William Wolf knew this.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She approached William Wolf more than sixteen years ago and worked side by side with him on his first campaign; his failed senatorial bid against the same Republican incumbent who still holds the seat.<span> </span>John Johnson had not faced an opponent since, not in five election cycles. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe he was vulnerable now. This was what crossed repeatedly through the Wolfs’ thoughts. Maybe the state party was right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What if it’s Thompson they want you to run against?” Lucille asked. “He’s going to go see Harrison too, right? The governor?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Run against Thompson? Don’t be crazy. Stanley Thorne is going to run again. I’m not challenging Thorne in a primary. And certainly not for an unwinnable seat.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And Johnson’s is more winnable?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Into the silence they both thought back sixteen years. They hadn’t at the time any idea at all just how young they’d been.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You’d slaughter Harrison in a primary,” Lucille finally said. There was no doubt in her mind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Nor William Wolf’s.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-79808212622068869922010-12-16T11:37:00.000-08:002010-12-16T11:37:48.157-08:00Chapter 3 – The State’s Attorney<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Now what in the hell do you think Snakes wants with that poor Bill Wolf?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle and his father exchanged familiar smiles as Patsy Harrison Grosen revved up the diatribe against her cousin. Cousin once or twice removed , or something like that. Kyle didn’t know how the relationship wove exactly. But he’d been weaned on stories about Snakes, known more widely as Powell H. Paulie, governor of the Great State of Illinois.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Snakes had not gained<span> </span>this familial nickname for the most obvious sounding reasons but because he’d carried a pair of dice upon his first visit to the far-removed relations in the south. He had been five, maybe not quite that, and knew how to shake the dice in his right hand and say “I want snakes, I want snakes,” as he rattled them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle didn’t misunderstand the unimportance of the connection to the man who rose from congressman to governor. “He doesn’t remember us, Honeybun,” Patsy had told her only child when he’d asked why her cousin never came to family reunions. He’d perhaps been ten when Powell Paulie began making big enough news that local talk about him revived. “At best Snakes remembers there were some distant relatives in a diminished past living down south.” In Kyle’s memory it was the first grown-up thing his mother had said to him, despite his equally strong memory of his chin in her hand as she told him this.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He’d grown to recognize, but not understand, how importance and unimportance were like two ends of a telescope. While the governor had little or no memory of his downstate connections, since running off to marry a Chicago man, Patsy Harrison’s grandmother’s sister had never fully dropped from the conversational circuits in Harrison or Haden counties. When the increasingly convoluted and risqué liaisons, marriages, divorces and elopements ultimately produced a governor, well how could the story help but grow?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He doesn’t care shit from shineola about us,” Kyle told Shelby when she’d first confided in him that the governor was coming to her house. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Well,” Shelby had said, annoyed that Kyle would – as usual – downplay the whole significance of it all. Act like he was something because he was related. “So what? So what that he doesn’t remember being five years old in good ole Harrison County. Would you want to remember getting dumped for the summer in a farm full of these inbred brats?” Shelby paused but couldn’t hold the pause for long before adding, “Present direct relations excluded, of course.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It has something to do with something,” Kyle had tried to explain the strange reverse telescope-thing. It was not the first time he had tried to engage her in conversations about how importance worked. He stopped when he realized she was becoming angrier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So what, Kyle? So what? The governor of the entire state is coming to my house to ask my dad to be lieutenant governor. Only you would want to ruin that for me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And that is great for your dad,” Kyle said, knowing already that in his household that would not be the twist. “It’s just strange how that works. How he doesn’t even know about us and we know all about him. It’s symbolic or something.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Symbolism will get you nowhere in life,” Shelby snapped.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Fact,” Kyle <span> </span>conceded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-51147129755868770152010-12-11T21:06:00.000-08:002010-12-11T21:06:07.808-08:00Chapter Two - The Governor's Aide<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:RelyOnVML/> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:DoNotShowRevisions/> <w:DoNotPrintRevisions/> <w:DoNotShowInsertionsAndDeletions/> <w:DoNotShowPropertyChanges/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You can’t carry Downstate, Governor.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“It’s not the electoral college, Buddy. It’s a simple majority. Votes. It is about the number of votes. I don’t need to carry it. Downstate just has to hold Engleson below sixty percent.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Well you’ve got forty percent. You’ve maybe got fifty. <span> </span>You’ve given these farmers everything they’ve asked for. <span> </span>You don’t need to go courting these gee-gaws down here for forty percent.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You’re wrong Buddy. I need every gee-gaw I can get. <span> </span>I need their vote and their wives’ votes and brothers and their dear old moms. So who can carry more gee-gaws? Wolf or Harrison?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Wolf,” Bud Nowak said without hesitation. “Haden is the biggest county of the quad, it has the four-year college and Wolf is easier to deal with than Harrison.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And he’ll show?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yeah. Wolf will show better than Harrison.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So it’s decided. Wolf becomes the lamb.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Are you going Biblical on me, Gov?” Most of Governor Powell Paulie’s staff thought Bud Nowak’s use of such a nickname was pretentious and used to make clear his lifelong status in the governor’s life. But the name “Gov” was given decades ago to his friend Paul <span> </span>– as the governor had been known since birth to Powell Paulie the third and his father’s ambitious third wife, Annabelle – when the two teenagers attended the Illinois State Student Government Convention the year the fourth Powell Paulie was voted governor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“We’re asking a man to accept a sacrificial seat,” Paulie said to Nowak and turned to look at the short almost gnomish looking man who had been sitting next to him, informing him for a lifetime.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Not necessarily.” <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Both men knew Bud Nowak had meant, ‘not necessarily <i>sacrificial</i>’ even though both men knew perfectly well the sacrificial seat they planned for William Wolf to seek. Nowak had not meant to say ‘not necessarily <i>asking</i>’ even though both men heard this in the comment as well. That was true. Both men knew that they certainly weren’t asking. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“How long does he have left in his seat now?” Governor Powell Paulie asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“He just won re-election. It was close. But it’s always close. He’s a Downstate Democrat.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Why don’t they stagger their terms?” the governor asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I think they do.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So we’re asking him to give up his seat <i>and</i> take yet another hit for a party that is all but in exile in his home town.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“No. There’s nothing in the county code that demands he give up his seat while running for another office,” Nowak said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Both men were silent at this partial truth. Once a man lost an election it was easier to lose the next one.<span> </span>But Nowak forged onward as was his job.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“That is no way to go into it, Paul,” he said, leaning in toward the governor from his traditional spot in the limousine that was so thoroughly his there was a slump in the seat . <span> </span>“John Johnson isn’t as strong as he used to be. He’s getting old. This would be good exposure for Wolf. <span> </span>This guy has some genuine attributes.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Genuine attributes,” Paulie repeated and turned to smile at perhaps his only friend. <span> </span>“Is that what I have, Buddy? Do I have genuine attributes?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You have sex appeal and Cook County,” Nowak said. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Ah yes,” the governor sighed and closing his eyes leaned back into his seat. Keeping his eyes shut he said, “Those are the stronger attributes, aren’t they.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“And maybe this guy could make some inroads. Wolf is a decent enough guy. Hard campaigner. It sure in the hell wouldn’t hurt Springfield any to have a couple more Democrats representing Dixieland.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“I’ve told you about that,” the governor snapped at Nowak, his eyes opened but he didn’t turn. To his aide’s well-tuned ear, convivial conversation was closed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span> </span>The governor considered himself a liberal. “A practical liberal,” he said. He demanded his chauffeurs be black. The Dixieland<span> </span>reference might have provoked a grimacing smile from Paulie in another venue, but not within sight of the chauffeur. It didn’t matter, Nowak knew, that there was no way the driver could hear them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A black chauffeur played well in Chicago and it played well Downstate. “Not many good deeds get you points the full length of this great state,” Paulie would say during his not infrequent arguments with Sandra Craleck on this demand. Sandra ran <span> </span>interference between personnel and a great deal of other agencies and the governor’s office. Paulie was exacting .</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes the governor’s mood would go darker even than cynicism and he would add to his good deed quips, <span> </span>“But we’re not really in the good deed business any more, are we Buddy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Yes you are, Governor,” Buddy Nowak always replied. “You’re doing good every day.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Buddy Nowak believed that, and believed it as ardently as when the conviction was born in junior high when Class President Powell Paulie knocked nearly senseless in a single blow to the chin <span> </span>the class vice president who had called Nowak Paulie’s “ grubby little Polack friend.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“You don’t deserve elected office in a democracy if you believe that,” Paul had said to the vice president whom he had immediately bent over and extended a hand to help to his feet. “That isn’t how things get done.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
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</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4101636772323258687.post-82310690626097075832010-12-09T11:56:00.000-08:002010-12-28T13:02:00.265-08:00Chapter One - The Governor<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The air is clearer, thinks Kyle, clearer now than at any other time of year.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“HAPPNING NOW!” Shelby texted and nearly immediately followed, “RITE NOW!!!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He already knew. Her father was being interviewed by the governor. Shelby too, in a way. They all were.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">William A. Wolf was actually her step-father. But “he’d brought her up,” which was how the official relationship was always stated. It was more that Kyle and Shelby had brought each other up, using their mothers and their fathers as guides, but not actual participants. That’s how it seemed to Kyle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby had no idea what he was talking about when he said this. That’s what she always said when he tried to make this particular point.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He had seen the caravan make the corner, still out of sight of Shelby’s upstairs bedroom window and was receiving her text after he’d seen them pull up at the Wolfs’ house. Kyle watched, irritated with himself for not bringing the binoculars. He now saw how childish his earlier notion had been, that someone would spot him, report him if he’d stood across the park and watched her house. He nearly flinched again, thinking what his father would say at receiving such a report. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She was texting again.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Living.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There had been a debate which room to host the governor in, the living room or the downstairs third of the split level, the area Shelby called the “basement” only so she could correct herself in her mother’s drawl, “oh- I-do- mean-den-slash-rumpus-room.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle knew this because Shelby had laughed at her mother’s setting up food and drinks in both rooms. “It’s imperative to be ready for anything,” Shelby quoted in her mother’s drawl, but as frequently in respect as mockery – although in this case she had proven correct. “The governor is not going to traipse through her <i>outdated </i>split-level. He’s going to see if we have three heads, probably kick back a shot of bourbon, compliment her on her outdated split-level and split himself.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle pictured the governor sitting in the Wolf’s living room, on the sofa where he and Shelby had once made-out, the sacredness of the off-limit-ness of this pastel living room more thrilling than the tumbling which, while also exciting, was more familiar. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It was, explained Shelby, finally an edge of danger, finally the threat of getting caught.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">They’d had free rein in both their houses their whole lives. By middle school the notion that any of the four parents would be home before dinner time – if then -- was so unlikely as to never be thought. Their parents and their various grandparents and another few dozen other family names were the committee members that ran Haden County, a wealthy agricultural district marbled thick and deep with successful thoroughbred stock. Some years their wealth alone could give Downstate voters the edge they needed to carry the long state.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Every great politician has this need,” Shelby told him that day on the sofa. “This need to be caught out and even to be admonished, beaten down, it’s like fuel, the proving you can come back. Winning is thrilling,” she said, and Kyle knew even this first time she said it she was quoting Mr. Wolf, “but coming back has that sweet, sweet taste of cold revenge.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“So it’s like power,” Kyle had said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“What is?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Revenge. If it tastes so sweet you’re willing to endure humiliation just to get it must be as aphrodisiacal as power.” Kyle could remember saying this. How she looked and how she nodded. He thinks it might be the only time she granted him superior political knowledge. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">For a long while this bothered him. And worse, Shelby knew it. But that was before Carlene Deluccio. Carlene Deluccio who thought she could win a seat on the county council because she was Victor Deluccio’s widow. Kyle laughed like his father. It had always been said he laughed like his father, even as a child. “Imagine, Matthew Grosen said, she <i>cried </i>when the reporter asked about Deluccio’s payoffs at the tracks. What did she think? Women just can’t take it. Just can’t take it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle’s mother would cut her eyes at his father, but she agreed. “Shouldn’t have wasted her time,” was how Kyle’s mother saw the ill-fated candidacy of Carlene, whom she liked and played bridge with but who clearly didn’t get it. Not simple, bright enough, but unsophisticated, guileless. That is what Kyle’s mother said about her. “She should have gathered up that money and bought a couple of those sons-of-a-bitches struggling office buildings and started squeezing them a little. Four years of that and I would say that seat could have been hers.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At that his father would roll his eyes. They had worked together, his parents, when his father had been in private practice. She was a club woman now. That’s what she called it. “I’m a club-woman now, Kyle,” she’d retorted when he’d asked her if she missed being out in the thick of things. “I am swimming in the midst of those <i>things </i>your father spends his days trying to sort out. Swimming is much more fun than working, dear. More effective, too.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby’s smarts would only get her so far, Kyle had eventually reckoned. Certainly far enough, farther than most girls. But he was a man and he knew he had the edge whether Shelby admitted it or not. And whether she admitted it or not, she knew it too. If there had been any doubt that was cleared up the day her father had asked him to step in for a foursome at the club. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kyle had gloated and they’d had one of the colossal fights that got both their mothers praying for a permanent break-up. “But don’t you have a gold medal or something up there in that soccer shrine that might make you <i>feel</i> better?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby had been perfect in high school. Perfect in grade school and even middle school. She played the right sports and was good at them. She made almost straight As, not enough to tar her as unapproachable. But enough to nab a scholarship to – perfect – “go East for University,” as her mother took to saying. “to one of the sister schools,” Lucille announced frequently at bridge.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“More like a southern finishing school,” Shelby complained to Kyle. “But it’s all women, which is what I want. It’s the only way to be school president. Its history department is good.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby had decided in grade school she would become a history major. Political science was “too political to look good on a resume” while “history has a classical look to it.” While her explanations became more sophisticated, the reasoning remained the same. “And I could stand a look at some of the folks in the East without being in the thick of them. I'd look like a hayseed.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There was nothing Shelby feared more than looking like a hick. She’d inherited that honestly from her mother and understood just that fear was the source of Lucille's elaborations and grandiose elocutions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Her step-father would slightly raise his eyebrows, including Shelby in his amusement at the bragging by Lucille, he gave off a slightly embarrassed but bemused air of forgiveness when her mother overstated things. He would lean over and pat his wife's arm or sometimes lift the drink out of her hand. That was how Shelby learned the concept of a faux pas which she'd subsequently tried to explain to her mother who refused to consider either its meaning or pronunciation. Shelby feared this meant Lucille would in the future mispronounce and misuse the phrase . </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> “She’s my step-daughter,” William Wolf was saying to the governor, opening his arm to invite Shelby into the room. She knew he had to say that. On a lot of documents she had a different last name. And not just any last name. Prentiss. Not merely had her mother eloped with a Prentiss, she'd naturally gone with the rightfully tarred black sheep of the entire clan. Just like that, Shelby admired the man she called "my <i>real </i>father," he comes clean with the governor, who of course would have already known.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Baggage is baggage,” Kyle said, “but money is money.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Kyle also said, “Everyone’s got baggage.” Shelby knew he was quoting both of his parents when he said that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Her "real" father had actually never formally adopted her, although he encouraged Shelby to answer to Miss Wolf and allowed her introduction as Shelby Wolf from virtually the moment he had married Lucille. She had been two at the wedding.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">By middle school she’d learned you could change your name by simply beginning to use another. "As long as you aren't doing it for nefarious purposes," she'd explain to her parents, "it's perfectly legal."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">"It certainly is," William Wolf had smiled and patted her mother's arm in genial amusement and relief at the ease with which Shelby was growing up. It wasn't much of a big deal. Her mother had been doing just that for years. Her biological father, Phillip Prentiss, had never paid attention to her so it occurred to no one to mention the change to him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby was shaking hands with the governor and thinking he was as good looking in person as on television. He <i>really was </i>good looking. She turned to catch her mother's eye and saw Lucille's jaw slack with the same realization. Her mother was usually much more careful than that. Caught herself, Shelby saw Lucille pull her neck taut as she began to talk. Then Shelby was being somehow moved back into the doorway and now even her mother was standing too close to her and pushing her through.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“The governor and Daddy need to talk in private, now" her mother was saying."You just scoot along, dear. Oh, and me too?. I’ll just see about some refreshments, Governor,” her mother was calling back and Shelby could see how annoyed she was at being expected to leave the room as well. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shelby knew her mother would be back in that room soon. Quite soon, Shelby was willing to wager. But she herself wasn’t interested in the talking details, she’d seen the governor and he had been in her living room. That was enough for her right now. She returned to her room.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Talking now,” she texted. “Gov = Gorgeous.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Shit,” Kyle texted back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div>Viki Volkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11593564379971842423noreply@blogger.com0