Wednesday, February 2, 2011

GRASS ROOTS

GRASS ROOTS

A Novel By

JERICHO RING









© Jericho Ring, Inc. 2008






DRAFT 012009


PROLOGUE

The empty portable hotel dais was swathed in low, indirect ambient light. It had been draped in purple velvet bunting with gold piping. The crowd of perhaps a hundred murmured politely but restlessly, as if waiting for a late opening curtain at the opera. Suddenly, almost as if by slight of hand, a figure appeared at the podium. He was dressed in a severely cut black suit that could have come from any era in the last two hundred years, white shirt and muted gray tie. The crowd hushed.
“Good afternoon,” said the figure in a quiet, serious, modulated voice, “as most of you know, my name is James La Salle…and I’m running for President.”

GRASS ROOTS

A Novel by

JERICHO RING


Chapter One

Loretta Wentworth awoke with a start. The world outside her suburban loft in Old Lyme was absolutely still except for the sound of…falling snow. She had drunk too much wine at an opening the previous night and suffered a slight hangover. Her head pounded and her tongue tasted like…to put it politely, cheese—old, bad cheese.
Loretta fumbled through the bed clothes for her glasses. Near-sighted from childhood and endearingly vain about it, Loretta wore her thick corrective lenses encased in black horn rims on a lanyard around her neck hoping they would be mistaken for reading glasses.
Her morning routine included a frantic five minute search as she always mislaid them the night before. She had complained good-naturedly on several occasions that she needed glasses to find her glasses. This morning she discovered they were where she had left them the night before, pushed up on top of her tousled, short, dark brown hair.
Loretta reluctantly pulled back the covers, shuffled into her mules and then to the bathroom. Having gargled away the morning taste of moderately priced merlot and feta, she felt slightly better.
She opened the blinds and gasped. The world, as far as she could see in any direction, wore a blanket of at least two feet of newly fallen snow. And it still came down. There was not a person in sight. She glanced at the clock on her dresser. It flashed, “12:00, 12:00, 12:00…”
She found her cell phone which told her it was 9:08 a.m. A habitual early riser, she gasped again. She had a meeting with all of the precinct captains at 10:30. “Crap.” It was a thought, not an overt expression.
Loretta padded into the studio of the loft, flicked on her new HDTV and found the local news channel. She learned from the “breaking news” crawler at the bottom of the screen that I-95 was impassable in all directions from White Plains to New London.
“Crap,” she exclaimed out loud to the TV, “crap.”

Loretta Wentworth embodied the prototypical eastern Democrat. She was, as Doodle Harris might characterize her, a “Daggone Jew bag Lear Jet liberal”. Except for the fact that she was a failed Lutheran agnostic and had never been in a synagogue or a private airplane bigger than a Cessna 172, the unkind label was strangely apropos.
Born the pampered only daughter of a comfortable local merchant and his socially prominent younger second wife in a small town in Washington State, Loretta attended Sarah Lawrence after matriculating a tony local prep school in 1966. While in college, she studied English literature and contemporary art appreciation. Except for periodic youthful volunteerism in local voter registration drives, Loretta stayed well under the political radar until the one true love of her life came home in a body bag during the volatile summer of 1968.
Loretta had only two other regrets in her nearly sixty years—that her breasts were not bigger and, try as she might, she would never be able to play the piano.
As for her breasts, fate and the years had been kind. The popular pneumatic high school cheerleaders and townie tramps that she felt marginalized by in her youth had fallen prey to gravity, gluttony, child-bearing and the slothful lifestyle of the dim-witted high school football stars with whom they tended to mate. On the other hand, with sensible exercise and diet, and without the deleterious effect of pregnancy and child rearing, Loretta had easily maintained a nearly perfect figure well past the time when most women had stopped trying.
As for the piano, no such luck. She was both tonally and rhythmically challenged. She sucked at 16 and she still sucked at 59. Although she took lessons faithfully every Thursday, she felt confident that she would continuously suck until the day she died.
Loretta was a complicated woman. Married twice, in love once and captivated never, she did fine, she thought, for a mousey brunette widow with weak eyes and a modest bosom.

The love of her life had died in a shit hole called Cho Lai for no good reason that she could ever fathom. Her late husband had given her a prominent name, the wherewithal to patronize the arts and credibility to make subtle but significant contributions to the cause of liberalism in America.
Loretta was not technically a widow. She had dumped her first husband, a charming but scurrilous and philandering bass man and part time pot dealer, in her twenties and her second died after she divorced him. She did, however, maintain his prominent name and a sizable portion of his estate.
Loretta Wentworth had, for a decade, influenced the art scene and voting patterns of Southern Connecticut. Soon, unbeknownst to her, an unlikely series of events would place the fate of the Free World in her hands.























Chapter Two

Dawn comes early to Panhandle County. Even on Halloween with a waning gibbous moon, daylight fully illuminated his bedroom by 6 A.M. Jenks McCracken arose, shuffled to and from the bathroom and poured himself a cup of Folgers from the Mr. Coffee. Then, as he had every morning for nearly 15 years, Jenks thought about nothing but whiskey for ten full minutes.
He did not engage in mere abstract conjecture about just any whiskey. He thought specifically about sour mash corn whiskey distilled in Tennessee and aged for 12 full years in new oak barrels. He visualized the trademark black label and classic square bottle. He paid due notice of color—not the light, almost yellow timbre of scotch nor the deep reddish brown of dark rum or Kentucky bourbon but, rather, an exact and unique shade of caramel amber.
He savored the aroma and endured the burn of it, neat, as he sipped it from a leaded crystal tumbler. He allowed his imagination to simulate the intoxicating effect as it first hit the back of his brain and creeped, slowly, to his extremities. He contemplated the pure illicit thrill of, from time to time, drinking it straight from the bottle until he collapsed by the campfire or sipping it over ice in a dark, smoky place while sharing conversation with ladies of recent acquaintance and questionable repute.
Jenks had a vast storehouse of whiskey memories and most of his contemplation on the subject sprang from personal experience. Before he took up the routine of thinking about whiskey first thing every morning, Jenks had developed the unfortunate habit of actually drinking it.
It started with high school beer busts, college bingeing and progressed to workday Bloody Marys for lunch on his birthday and other special occasions in his early twenties. The term “special occasion” expanded greatly over the years until it ended with a messy divorce, financial ruin, two DUIs and a six-month suspension of his precious law license in his mid forties.
Jenks McCracken had been clean and sober since his fall from grace as ex-president of the Florida Bar Association and one of the most prominent trial lawyers in the State in the early ‘90s. As a reward, every morning, with his first cup of coffee, Jenks allowed himself to think about nothing but whiskey.

Jenks McCracken finished his coffee, showered, and donned his boots, jeans and Jimmy Buffet shirt. He clipped A Ruger Vaquero to his belt and strolled to the Chevy Silverado bearing the unmistakable green and gold markings of a Florida county police vehicle. It sat in front of his modest cabin on the east bank of Choctawhatchee Bayou.
For the last ten years, Jenks McCracken had served in the elected position of County Sheriff of Panhandle County, Florida as well as a delegate to the RNC and Republican Elector to the Florida Electoral College. Politics, as Jenks was fond of reminding his constituents, was, indeed, the last refuge of scoundrels.






Chapter Three

Loretta had never seen snow in October. At least, not this much snow. She had lived in the Northeast since college. She had not once seen more than a few wispy flakes, maybe a desultory flurry or two leaving a couple of temporary inches on the ground from which the local kids invariably attempted skimpy, grass covered snowmen. At least, she thought to herself, she would probably not get any trick-or-treaters that night. One less hassle in the perpetual organized chaos that was her life.
Loretta picked up her cell phone. She had neglected to put it on the charger the night before. It beeped and flashed “low battery” at her. “Great,” she muttered, “just great.” She located the charger in her small, cluttered home office, placed the phone on it, gulped a couple of generic 200 milligram ibuprofen with a cup of cold coffee left over from yesterday and began making calls on her land line.
This was complicated by the fact that all of her phone tree numbers were in the memory of her cell phone. She had to rely on the tattered address book that she had kept since before there were cell phones. It wasn’t easy. The pounding in her head had subsided only a little from the pain killers. The numbers in the book were written in her nearly illegible left handed scrawl, obsolete and, in some cases, on sticky notes and napkins jammed into the book, not in alphabetical order. Nevertheless, within an hour she had activated the phone tree and contacted every precinct captain and poll watcher in her area. Her message: They had less than 48 hours to figure out how to get out the vote in knee deep snow.

























Chapter Four

As Jenks opened the door to his police truck and climbed in, Doodle Harris, his Chief Deputy, slewed around the corner in the red dirt road that lead to Jenk’s cabin. He slid to a stop next to him, cop style, with the driver’s windows juxtaposed so they could talk, face to face. Doodle seemed to be in more of a hurry than usual. He rolled down the window of his county issued Crown Victoria, releasing the blare of Confederate Railroad from his satellite radio and, without pleasantries, queried, “Been watchin’ the Tee Vee?”
“‘Mornin’ ta you, too, Doodle.” Jenks replied, “What’s your hurry? Widow Greene been chasin’ you again?” Doodle ignored the long running jibe about his apocryphal relationship with the outrageously buxom, notoriously amorous and much married Glenda Alice Greene. “Quentin’s still in the Gulf and’s moving toward Mexico Beach at four knots. National Weather Service puts landfall sometime Tuesday morning. Ever’where from Cedar Key to Mobile‘s on alert. Watcha gonna do, Boss?”
“Right now,” Jenks replied, “I’m headed to Crystal’s for a little country fried and a glass of OJ. Like to join me? I’ll buy.” Doodle, without reply, gunned the Crown Vic, spitting red dust and sand from the back tires and disappeared down the road in the direction of Mavis Crystal’s Country Kitchen. Jenks smile at his deputy’s perpetual impatience, did a much less dramatic one eighty and followed him down the rutted road.
When Jenks arrived at Crystal’s, Doodle was already sitting at the counter sipping hot coffee. Unlike Jenks, whose position afforded him the privilege of working in mufti, Doodle wore the traditional uniform of Florida local law enforcement—gray, pleated and creased blouse and trousers with red and blue piping, black, spit-shined boots and equipment belt. His spotless and newly blocked campaign hat lay flat on the counter. Not for the first time, Jenks remarked to himself how much Doodle, gold captain’s bars gleaming from his shirt collar, resembled a young cavalry officer from the old photos of the Florida Guard that adorned the courthouse.
Doodle listened to STORMTracker Four out of Dothan, Alabama and jawed with Mavis about Quentin. They both acknowledged his presence by eye contact alone. Mavis put a tea glass full of fresh squeezed Florida orange juice in front of him and turned to fixing a country-fried steak.
By tradition, Panhandle County sheriffs and deputies ate free at Crystal’s. They always parked their cruisers prominently in front of the restaurant and sat at the counter so as to provide the security of conspicuous police presence.
Ten years earlier, after Jenks had recently taken over the office, he offended Mavis Crystal deeply by insisting that he pay full price for an oyster sandwich with fried okra and a medium Dr. Pepper. He had made amends for the last ten years by allowing Mavis to present him with deeply discounted bills. He usually left a tip that more than made up the difference but the charade seemed to satisfy southern etiquette, tradition, the Florida State Ethics Code and, most importantly, Mavis Crystal.

It had been opined by no less higher authority than the Palmetto Leaf, the daily of the Panhandle County seat, that no county office could be attained by election without the support of the regulars at Crystal’s. The one exception that proved the rule had been Jenks McCracken.
Ten years earlier, Crystal’s had supported and campaigned for Jenks’ opponent in the Republican primary, incumbent County Sheriff, Bronson “Bronco” Lee. Sheriff Lee had the bad timing to be indicted by a federal grand jury in Tallahassee a week before the election. Ordinarily, a federal indictment by the carpetbaggers in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the state capital would not have much influence over the thinking of Mavis and her regulars but, in this particular case, the indictment included several counts of inter-state trafficking in child pornography.
Consequently, against all odds, Jenks got elected County Sheriff on his first try. And, he did it without any support by the county machine or any law enforcement experience whatsoever. Ten years of reasonably honest sheriffing, diligence to the law enforcement needs of Panhandle County, down-home common sense and regular use of the people skills necessary to be a top-notch trial lawyer had elevated Jenks from political stranger to mover and shaker. He and Crystal were among the king makers of Panhandle County.

“Boss,” Doodle stated, gesturing toward the TV as Jenks sat on the stool next to him, “that ‘cane is wobblin’ like a top out there. Latest landfall projection is Panama but they ain’t all that sure what he’s gonna do.”
“OK”, Jenks acknowledged with elevated concern, “that brings it a little closer to home. Let’s run down the emergency plan.”
“The shelters are the basement and fellowship hall of the First Baptist in Palmetto and the new VFW in West Bridge. They’s all secured, plenty of MREs and water, cots, blankets and stuff. Volunteers is standin’ by. We been broadcastin’ it for a week on FVLA and they put it in the Leaf ever’ day.”
“Check,” said Jenks in a serious tone that gently mocked Doodle’s military delivery.
“State 20’s designated an evacuation route. 79 and 77, too. Got the deputies, auxiliary and the county high school kids in the law enforcement program on standby alert for traffic. Roster’s ‘n phone tree in the car.”
“Check.”
“Hospital and the clinic in Choctaw Landing are ready.”
“Check.”
“Road guys got their own emergency procedures an’ they’s all ready.”
“Check. Who’s on patrol now—day shift?” Jenks looked at his watch for clarification because shift change took place at 7 a.m. It was twelve after.
“Betty Lee and Stevie in unit three, north; Jazzbo in unit four, central; ‘Cliff an’ Norm’, five, southeast; Jimmie Jo and Hymie the Bat in six southwest.”
“Check. Tell ‘em to lay off tickets and hit the red roads to be sure the double wides are payin’ attention.”
“Seven and eight are in for routine maintenance and available if we need ‘em; likewise the bikes. Escambia and Santa Rosa say we can use the choppers ‘less they need ‘em worst. Cessna’s tied down in the hanger for after. The fleet is loaded on trailers, gassed and ready. ” The “fleet” referred to a twenty foot aluminum outboard dory, several smaller john boats, two air boats and three brand new Ski Doos.
“Check. Have you called the townies?”
“Yup. Palmetto and New Bridge. Made sure they read the protocol. Gave ‘em a little quiz.”
“Good. Let me finish my breakfast and let’s get out among ‘em. You want north or south.”
“South.” Doodle answered without hesitation.
“You sure? Widow Greene’s place is north.”
“South!” Doodle repeated, again, without hesitation.













































Chapter Five

Having finished her calls, Loretta put on a fresh pot of Seattle’s Best and, while it brewed, began her morning yoga routine. When she had finished, she took a small Yoplait Light fat free from the fridge, removed the top, licked it clean and put it in the zip lock that she kept for such a purpose next to the coffee pot. She mentally queried her self as to whether the breast cancer people were still doing that. Seeing no pink ribbon on the yogurt container, she threw the entire collection into the aluminum recycle bin. She had forgotten to send them in. She folded the zip lock neatly and placed it under a stray coffee cup for next time.
Feeling slightly guilty for missing the yogurt top deadline, Loretta made a mental note to send a contribution to breast cancer. She began eating the light pink confection with a tiny spoon she kept for just that purpose.
Loretta savored every bite and, when the container was empty, licked the inside as far as her tongue would reach. She involuntarily snuck a furtive glance around the kitchen to be sure no one could see her. One of the benefits of living alone, she acknowledged, was that you could drink directly from the (low fat) milk carton and eat yogurt any way you damn pleased.
Although while in public or polite company, Loretta got most of her caffeine from white tea or green tea or what ever kind of tea everyone was drinking at the moment, at home— coffee. Seattle’s Best Dark Roast, extra strong.
Loretta drank the pot half empty while reading the Saturday mail and working the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. She had been a Mark Shortz fan for a long time, but she still did the puzzle in pencil. Although she did not have any way to know for sure, she always suspected that Mark Shortz was completely apolitical. At least she imagined him this way. What a refreshing change, she thought.
Loretta’s world was nothing but politics. Every gallery opening she covered; every NPR fund raising telethon she did volunteer phone duty for and every grant application she helped write oozed liberal elitism.
Back in the day, “liberalism” created in her a heady new cachet of ideas and concepts— social justice, economic and political equality, diversity, enlightenment, world peace, universal education, suffrage and tolerance. Lately, however, she had begun to feel stultified and trapped by an inbreeding of ideas turning stale with age and exposure to the open air—the sacred cows of liberal thought.
They were not so much ideas any more but rather commandments requiring rote responses dictated by Political Correctness, the Democratic Party and the Eastern Liberal Establishment. The nabobs of the movement became increasingly inflexible and dogmatic as it and they aged. Liberalism became less an integrated and cohesive social belief structure and more just pure and simple knee jerk anti-conservatism. The two political parties seemed to orbit around each other like a binary star system, like two circling boxers, less concerned with right and wrong and more concerned with beating the other to a pulp.
Statesmanship had given way completely to partisanship, gamesmanship and blatant one-upmanship. Petty “Gotcha” campaign tactics and political strategy had driven first rate people out of the game. The two parties in the American system appeared to be in a death struggle, oblivious to the fact that the house of state blazed around them.
But what alternatives were there?


Chapter Six

Jenks patrolled every county road between 77 and 79 south of I 10 and north of 378 to see if his deputies had effectively gotten the word out. He had been greeted by the waves of local residents, indicating that they had already been warned or the sight of home owners boarding up or packing to leave. Betty Lee and Stevie had, apparently, done their usual thorough job of carrying out his instructions.
Quentin had wobbled and veered 14 nautical miles closer to landfall, which had shifted from Panama City back to Mexico Beach. It was now predicted for somewhere west of Inlet Beach and east of Ft. Walton—Sea Side, Sea Grove or Sea Crest, maybe. One of those newly minted gingerbread “Sea” communities that could only be afforded, or, for that matter, tolerated by Dallas, New Orleans and Atlanta millionaires who didn’t really know any better.
The National Weather Service, due to the unstable path of Quentin, had expanded the hurricane watch from Tampa to Gulfport or New Orleans, depending upon which channel you listened to. The Weather Channel, which Jenks received on the XM radio in his truck, said New Orleans.
Jenks began to breathe a little easier as projected landfall moved west. Anything between Tyndall Air Force Base to the east and Destin, west, might cause problems in Panhandle County. The farther west the hurricane meandered, the more the problem became that of some other county sheriff—Okaloosa; Santa Rosa; Ron Mc Nesby’s problem over in Escambia County, Maybe.
The infamous hurricane season of 2004 had inflicted damage on various parts of Panhandle County from three separate storms within the span of six weeks, as well as two deaths from ensuing tornados and one drowning from flash flooding. This caused a paradigm shift in the thinking of even the most hardened and blasé Northwest Florida crackers. They now did not take a hurricane warning as lightly as they traditionally had. No one bragged about riding it out or complained about official overreaction when mandatory evacuation was ordered.
Already, the northerly traffic on both 79 and 77 was heavier than usual. Nervous residents and northern vacationers, cutting their stay short, evacuated the southern low-lying area beaches for the safety of Alabama and Georgia. Jenks mentally reviewed the procedure for reversing the southbound lanes to northbound if necessary.
Many headed east on 20 in the direction of Jacksonville. That, thought Jenks, would be his personal choice, based on his experience. A hurricane and its torrential rains often went north and socked in, hampering return traffic for a week. Coming back from the east or west was usually much easier.
His stomach, verified by his dashboard clock, told him it was nearly noon. He could do for some lunch. There was a dearth of the usually ubiquitous flyspecked roadhouses, country kitchens, barbeque and hamburger joints in north Panhandle County that supplied the majority of his dietary needs. Jenks, having loaded up on carbs and saturated fats at breakfast, decided he would settle for whatever they had today at the Panhandle Winery.
The usual Winery fare consisted merely of small chunks of malodorous cheeses, cocktail weenies and liverwurst on toothpicks, and, (for him) nonalcoholic wine samples out of mouthwash cups with French bread dipped in peppered olive oil. Jenks considered this to be what Doodle called fag food and much preferred a greasy burger or sausage sandwich.
Nevertheless, too hungry and tired after four hours of cruising to drive thirty miles back to Crystal’s, he pulled into the red crushed gravel parking lot and climbed the steps of the faux rustic rough-cut cypress porch. He found the place locked. He had forgotten, momentarily, that the Winery didn’t open until after church on Sunday.
As Jenks clomped back down the steps to his truck, resigning himself to a convenience store microwave burger and coke from the BP station five miles north on I 10, a lilting north Alabama female voice called,
“Sheriff! Oh, Sheriff Jenks! Somethin’ ah can do for you?”
McCracken peered into the row of grape arbors, recently verdant and heavy with reddish scuppernong and dark purple muscadine, that occupied the acreage behind the cypress-planked wine store. He espied the owner and proprietress of the Panhandle Winery—one Glenda Alice Greene—yoo-hooing in his direction. She waved with a pair of pruning snips.
“Mornin’, Mizz Greene,” Jenks replied.



































Chapter Seven

Loretta Wentworth was no fool. She had watched with impotent dismay as the American two-party system evolved into a single massive power grabbing machine with one huge, over-bloated, insatiable body and two heads. No matter which head gobbled up the power and money, it eventually went to the same grotesque belly—pork-barrel politicians, to squander on corrupt and wasteful government projects, slick talking influence peddlers to steal for multi-national corporate clients and, in the most glaring incident, a completely ill-advised war instigated by a mullet-headed president for the benefit of one hugely powerful multi-national corporation.
If Desert Storm was the first “Made for TV War”, she had often said, then Iraqi Freedom was the first “War Catered by Halliburton”. And, sadly, if the country maintained “business as usual”, it probably would not be the last.
Loretta hated (although she eschewed this word in speech but not thought) war. She prided herself on open-mindedness but could not see how any rational person could have any other opinion on this particular subject. Even “good” (meaning the opposite of evil) generals like Colin Powell, Omar Bradley and George Washington at least professed to hate war. She thought that good (meaning the kind that are proficient at winning wars) generals like George Patton and U.S. Grant should be kept in cages or cryogenic cold storage to be thawed out and released only when the wolf growled directly at the door. They should be returned at the first sign of peace.
Loretta did not blame the Republican Party for the Iraq War. The Democrats were equally culpable for gutlessly knuckling under when the first transparently flawed justifications were aired.























Chapter Eight

Widow Greene had been snipping and grafting grape starts in her small vineyard. She wore a white bra-like halter top. It would have set the ladies at the First Baptist in Palmetto to tongue-clucking, “I nevering”, “tsk, tsking”, declaring it to be “underwear pure and simple even if they are wearing them like that now on the Tee Vee what was she thinking with a figure like that at her age anyway and on Sunday Lord a mercy…!” Extremely skimpy and age inappropriate Daisy Dukes, a straw, low brimmed cracker hat, green gardening gloves, enormous white, heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses and bare feet completed her ensemble.
Unlike Doodle, Jenks had a certain affinity for the Widow Greene. He considered her to be a fellow stranger in this strange land of Panhandle County. Like Jenks, she had lived here for some time but considerably less than all her life. She had been brought here by forces outside her control; her last husband, late local big wig, Jubal Greene. She did not appear at the First Baptist on Sunday or any other day of the week, being, like Jenks, a lapsed Episcopalian. Widow Greene had a notoriously checkered past by the standards and traditions of rural Northwest Florida. She took no pains to hide or apologize for it. Unlike Jenks, she made no effort to fit in or be liked by her neighbors.
Truth be told, Jenks had a little thing for Glenda Alice and she for him. Under current circumstances, the mutual crush had gone unacknowledged and unconsummated. Widow Greene still had several months of mourning to do and Jenks had a hard and fast rule about romance in the workplace. For him, the entirety of Panhandle County, 24/7/365, consisted of work place. He was always on duty if physically present there. All of his past romantic endeavors had taken place well outside of the county line—Destin, Pensacola, and Tallahassee—anywhere big and far away enough to give him a reasonable shot at anonymity
“Do call me Glenda Alice,” she cajoled. “No body heah but us chickens,” she crinkled her nose, batted her improbably long eyelashes, smiled and gestured with her pruning snips as if they were a flashlight or laser pointer indicating the empty space around them.
“You ready to evacuate?” Jenks asked the question to side step the issue.
“Cootah an’ Boogah come by here already to warn me.” She drawled the word into three syllables—wo-ah-n—in her unmistakable cultured Northeast Montgomery accent.
“Betty Lee and Stevie,” corrected Jenks.
“Whatevah,” she sniffed, “It’s haaard for me to keep track of yo’ li’l swamp friends,” she smiled, mischievously, “by the way, which one is Betty Lee and which one in Stevie?”
He removed his baseball cap, scratched his head in mock consideration of the question and said, “I have trouble with that one myself, sometimes. I think Stevie is the pretty one.” They both chuckled. Betty Lee and Stevie, both blond, short, muscular, tattooed and pushing 200 pounds could neither one be described as pretty.
“Haven’t seen much of Noodle, lately,” she went on, “is he afraid of me?”
“Doodle,” he corrected again, “and he’s terrified,” answered Jenks.
“Well, tell him Ah won’t bite…unless, of course…” she tilted her head, smiled and left the punch line of the old joke hanging.
Aside from that fact that it was obviously, at least partially, self-cultivated, Widow Greene’s reputation as a rounder was highly unjustified. The fact of the matter was that, aside from her three husbands, a couple of college boy friends, and a brief and uninspiring revenge affair with her female trainer at Curves in Destin, she had extremely limited sexual experience. She had been the victim of careless and unhealthy marriage partners, an overly suggestive, flirty personality and provincial small town perceptions.
Her first husband, a high profile young lawyer for a large Montgomery lobbying firm, came to a fiery and untimely end when he lost control of his over-powered Donzi and ran it under a gas dock on the Florida side of Perdido Key at 60 knots. The double indemnity life insurance proceeds and settlement of the claims against the marina owner, Donzi and several of its component part suppliers left the Widow McClusky well fixed.
Her second husband collapsed at Lowe’s from a massive heart attack while selecting star jasmine plugs for the gardener to plant along the south wall of the carriage house. Once again, Widow Upchurch did not suffer, financially.
Recently, her third husband suffered a debilitating stroke under clouded circumstances last spring break in a modest rental condo on Sunnyside Beach. Mercifully, he died a week later.
In addition to several thousand acres of developable land on the banks of Choctawhatchee Bayou, free and clear, assorted blue chips and CDs, a lock box stuffed full of “tax free” hundreds and the twenty-five acres vineyard, Jubal Greene left his widow a Farley File on everyone of note in Panhandle, Bay, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Escambia, Washington and Walton Counties. He had a similar file for South Georgia and the Alabama and Mississippi Panhandles and a rolodex of private cell numbers. She had the political savvy, financial clout and will to use them.
Widow Greene now quietly wielded real political power. She, along with Mavis Crystal, Jenks, Doodle Harris, Jim Nickels (owner and executive editor of the Leaf), Bubba Clark, (formerly front man of Bubba and the Bubbettes and now owner and drive time DJ of FVLA) and Jazzbo Jackson, Jenks’ Second Assistant Deputy and deacon of the Afro-American Full Gospel Church of the All Seeing Eye, were the “boys in the back room” of Panhandle County politics.
She stood, hands on hips, arms akimbo, peering at him over her dime store sunglasses. A single rivulet of perspiration cut a trail in the fine red dust that adorned her ample, freckled cleavage. Her statuesque body, slightly overheated by the noon sun, smelled faintly of Kiehl’s lavender soap, girl sweat and cocoanut. Jenks found it highly arousing.
She removed the cracker hat, releasing a mane of Titian hair, and repeated the question, “Somethin’ ah can do for you, Sheriff?”
“Well, ah… Glenda Alice,” he replied, “I was hoping to get some lunch at the Winery. Forgot you’re closed on Sunday morning.” He paused. “Guess I’ll just go on up to the BP.”
“Wouldn’t heah of it, Sheriff,” she demurred, “Come on up to the house and ah’ll fix you a sandwich. Meatloaf be OK? Sweet tea or lemonade? You can keep me company while Ah showah.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned and, hips swiveling as she trod barefoot through the sandy red soil, headed for the house 100 yards up the gentle slope of the vineyard. Jenks followed silently behind her.
“Lemonade would be great.” He answered.







Chapter Nine

Loretta finished her coffee and puzzle. She filled in every square but one. Loretta had picked up this curious habit from her father. “Always leave one square empty, Lori,” he told her, “remember, only God can create a perfect thing.” Although she did not believe in perfection and had been skeptical about God most of her adult life, she always left one square blank in her crossword puzzles as an homage to her beloved father. In this case it was also because she wasn’t quite sure how to spell “Kwanzaa” and could not think of a seven-letter word for “Hebrew calendar”.
Although part of her Sunday routine, the crossword was, this Sunday, also a diversion from the task at hand. Not that she really had a task at this point. She had spent the better part of two hours on the phone exhorting her people to figure out a way to get working class and minority Democrats to the polls. The weather forecast predicted more of the same until mid-week with blizzard conditions for Monday night and all day Tuesday—Election Day. And not mid-terms, either—the first truly contested presidential election with no incumbent since Bush-Gore in 2000.
Loretta knew that the peaceful respite from her cell phone and land line’s constant ringing would cease very soon. As soon as her subordinates in the phone tree had finished their calls, they would be up-streaming information and ideas to her. She would then synthesize and pass them up line to the state party chairman.
She had left the HDTV on but lowered the volume. She found the remote and turned it up to “Designing on a Dime” which was just wrapping up the modest remodel of an Arizona tract house from tired 80’s Southwestern to sparse contemporary. Loretta wrinkled her nose at both the “before” and “after” photos. Tacky was tacky, she thought. It didn’t really matter what style.
As an art critic (post modern sculpture), Loretta had exquisite taste in interior decorating which was belied by her current abode. The loft condo, which she had occupied since her last divorce, remained nearly as “Shaker Spartan” (her phrase) as when she bought it nearly ten years earlier.
She flipped the channel to Animal Planet to check in on the antics of Zaphod, Flower, Mozart and the rest of the meerkats in the Manor. First season rerun. Mozart had just run off with Lazuli Lothario, Carlos, to start her own colony somewhere on the Kalahari. As an avid fan, Loretta knew that the Commandos would soon kill Mozart’s pups and that Zaphod would eventually fall from grace when the Zappas threatened the Whiskers. It made her too sad, so she switched it off and tuned her XM to Prairie Home Companion and the adventures of Guy Noire, PI.
There was a phony commercial for pre-sifted flour and then the wonderfully atonal voice of Garrison Keillor, accompanied by Emmy Lou Harris singing “Girl of the North Country” by Bobby Dylan. “When you’re travelin’ in the North Country fair, where the wind hits heavy ‘long the border line,” warbled Emmy Lou, “remember me to the one who lives there,” answered Garrison, “she once was a true love of mine.”
That song, like the smell of English Leather and the taste of Spearmint, took her mind immediately back to the front seat of a ’55 Chevy, parked on an isolated logging road in Southwestern Washington State. In that front seat, love had been made, vows exchanged and plans made. Plans that died aborning in a foot note incident of an unpopular war.
The triggered memory had always been so quick and indefensible that, to avoid it, she never listened to “oldies” radio, spent any time in chain pharmacies or chewed gum.
Loretta, unexpectedly transfixed by the song and the memories that it evoked, sat listening, powerless to turn it off. As it ended and Emmy Lou launched into bluegrass, sans Garrison, Loretta quickly killed the radio with a flick of her remote. She strode, reluctantly but purposefully, to her bedroom closet.
“Do I really want to do this today?” She asked herself. The question was rhetorical and she felt no need to respond. She knew that the answer was “no”. However, she had been sucked too deeply into the mnemonic vortex to turn back.





































Chapter 10

As he munched the sandwich, a huge slab of cold, ketchup slathered meatloaf on half a baguette of fresh sour dough, and sipped the enormous water glass of icy lemonade in Widow Greene’s spacious Florida room, Jenks tried to keep up his side of a conversation by shouting over the running shower through the bathroom door. He could hear her but, of course, she could not hear him. Fortunately, in a conversation with Glenda Alice, this was not usually a problem.
“We gonna have any trouble with this hurricane, Sheriff?” She queried, rhetorically “Looks to me like its gonna hit Ft. Walton or Mary Estha.”
“Doin’ everything poss…” came his reply, truncated by her next remark.
“Talked to the Chaahman yesterday,” she drawled through the door, “he’s worried.”
“That’s his job…”
“Not about Quentin,” she interrupted, inadvertently responding to his unheard and unfinished statement, “he’s very worried about the election.”

Indeed, Jenks had worried some about that as well. Prior to his first desultory run for county sheriff, Jenks was as apolitical as it was possible for a big city lawyer to be. He had become active in Republican Party politics, at first, because it was necessary to attain and then retain his present position. Now, it had become an addictive hobby.
Secretly, he disagreed with most of current Republican thinking. He did not believe that Christian Right or any other religious belief structure had a place in what had, until recently, been a very secular government system. He disagreed, down the line, with the Party on abortion, stem cell research, right to life, intelligent design as a reasonable scientific alternative to evolution, gay marriage, and the death penalty.
He believed that President Bush had co- opted 9/11 for his own agenda of jingoistic imperialism in the Mid East and war hysteria-fueled civil rights grabbing at home. He believed the Party had sold out completely to the Big Business Lobby. Although a registered Republican, in the privacy of the booth Jenks often voted, except for local elections, straight Libertarian. Twenty-First Century politics, he knew, was not about furthering idealistic moral positions. It was about getting elected and grabbing the power—and the money.
Although officially still a swing state after the 2000 election, Florida was so red these days that a vote in the national general election for either major party was pointless. Everything, at least in Northwest Florida, had already been decided in the Republican primary. Every protest vote for a third party, on the other hand, helped it get more federal matching funds.
Yet, practical considerations aside, Jenks could not bring himself to vote for a Democrat. Doodle had aptly stated it—“They just make me want to puke.” Political Correctness, harebrained social policies, gun control, and their historical assault on individual rights “for the greater good”, faith, against all historical evidence to the contrary, in big federal government and Clintonesque hypocrisy had forever tainted the Democratic Party in the mind of Jenks McCracken. Unfortunately, the Party of Lincoln had become, in many ways, far worse.

“We’ve nevah had a category three hurricane and a general election on the same day,” Glenda Alice informed as she cut off the shower and flicked on her hair dryer. “For once,” she continued, “we might have been outsmarted. ‘They’ been bussing ‘em in from all ovah Northwest Florida to vote early evah since Quentin got north of Miami.” “They”, Jenks knew, meant the local Democratic Party.
The dryer stopped and, in a few minutes Glenda Alice stepped out of the private dressing chamber that connected to the Florida room. She wore a new pair of Seven Jeans, red and white checked shirt from Wal-Mart, lightly starched and tied at the midriff, high-heeled Jimmy Choo “fuck me” sandals and a black Panhandle Winery baseball cap over her long, damp auburn hair. She had drawn it up into a very loose ponytail—a perfect synthesis, thought Jenks, subliminally, of the Mary Ann she had once been, the Ginger that she now favored with just a dash of the Mrs. Howell that she might easily become a few decades hence.
“Sheriff,” she stated, matter-of-factly as she walked past him to the door, “I gotta go open my stoah. Make yo’ self at home. Put the plate and glass in the sink,” she gestured to the wet bar overlooking the pool deck, “when you’re through.”
“Thanks again, ah, Glenda Alice,” Jenks stated through the last bite of the sandwich as he washed it down with the remains of the lemonade. He felt uncomfortable with the intimacy of being left alone in her house. “I’m just leaving now. I’ll walk you.”
As they approached the separation point between his truck and the porch steps, Glenda Alice turned to him, tugged lightly on his un-tucked shirttail and said, “Sheriff, after New Year’s, ah’m ‘bout to call it good on this mournin’ thing. Nine month’s plenty for a bastahd like Jubal Greene. Snortin’ cocaine or whatevah with college girls on the Red Neck Rivera at his age. Good riddance ah sez. Call me. No big thing. Ah’ll buy you an O’Doul’s down at the Landin’. If that’s too close to home, maybe we could slip down to Bud and Alley’s and watch the sunset over the Gulf from the Tarpon Room. Meantime…don’t be a strangah.”
She smiled, fluttered her long lashes and swivel-hipped up the steps to unlock the door to the Winery. This relieved him from the burden of responding. She opened the door, gave him an intimate finger wave, smiled, fluttered again, and closed it behind her.
“No wonder she scares Doodle,” said Jenks to himself as he fired up the Silverado, “she kinda scares me…a little.”





















Chapter 11

Loretta opened the closet door and, standing on her tip-toes, felt around on the top shelf. She wasn’t tall enough so she tried balancing on a plastic shoe box. Of course, it immediately caved under her weight. She fell off, nearly twisting her knee and ankle in the bargain. “Moron”, she said to her self—another thinking word that she had eliminated from her speaking vocabulary along with “idiot, lunatic, simpleton, cripple”…and, well, a host of others that, although accurate and very satisfying, were no longer PC.
She finally dragged over the aluminum folding bench that had come with her electronic key-board. She rummaged further into the recesses of the shelf, successfully dodging the falling plastic Menorah that she always placed in her front window along with a wreath and a brightly colored print of African women wearing the traditional uwole and bearing baskets of exotic looking fruit. She also had an ancient Qur’an, which she acquired to display on Laylat al-Qadr but she had quit the practice. She felt hypocritical in that she was agnostic, couldn’t read the Arabic and, anyway, it was very difficult to keep track of Ramadan. It jumped around on the calendar too much.
Her Atheist friends chided her for honoring any religious holidays at all and her Buddhist, Taoist, Omniversal and Existential acquaintances applauded her insight because she always left one window empty, they assumed, to signify the concept that everything flowed from nothing and vice versa. The truth was, however, that she just had an extra window.
She had, recently, decided to discontinue the multi-cultural holiday customs altogether and just go back to a small, tastefully decorated tree. It was all too confusing and, in addition, one of her swishy (another perfectly graphic thinking word she refused to abandon altogether) gallery owner friends had asked her, last Christmas, where she had put the Festivus pole. It took her nearly an hour on Google to realize she had been punk’d. (She learned about that on Google as well).
After five minutes of searching the back shelf of the closet, she found what she looked for: An old wooden cigar box from Cuba with one broken hinge.


















Chapter 12

As he headed southeast to his mid afternoon coffee break and debriefing with Doodle and Crystal, Jenks contemplated the personalities that made up the power structure of Panhandle County. They had been lovingly referred to since Jenks’ second term as the “Panhandle Mafia”.

Doodle, earnest young Republican, true believer, regular attendee at the First Baptist, had a life long goal of, someday soon, becoming governor of the Great State of Florida. Jenks had all but promised that he would retire after the next term, run for Circuit Court judge and support Doodle as his replacement. A stint as county sheriff, a couple of terms as state senator and he would be set up to run for the U.S. House of Representatives and then, governor. Florida was, perhaps, the only state where a name like “Doodle” was a political asset.

Mavis Crystal practiced politics as naturally as she breathed. It was just a logical extension of her perpetual coffee klatch existence. In a given week, everyone in Panhandle County stopped by to shoot the shit with Mavis and her regulars. She gathered and disbursed information, dispelled rumors, set the record straight on issues and formed public opinion on subjects as widely varied as the pros and cons of fluoridating public water supplies to whether or not the new airport in West Bay would ruin Panhandle County’s bucolic ambience.
Jenks and Doodle used her as a regular source of law enforcement intelligence and advice. She had been, for example, the progenitrix of the famous “marijuana tax” that highlighted Jenks’ first term as sheriff.

The only serious crime in Panhandle County, aside from sporadic drunken dueling with magnum pistols between neighboring doublewides, was the thriving pot farms that nestled among the sand pines and palmettos up and down Choctawhatchee Bayou. Jenks’ predecessor, Sheriff Lee, had been a silent partner in the business.
When he took office, Jenks confronted the problem, with the advice and consent of Mavis, head on. He called the farmers together, after hours, in the back room of Crystal’s for a summit conference.
“Boys, there’s a new sheriff in town,” he began with a line that he had been dying to use for a month. This got a few chuckles and broke the ice.
“Look,” he continued, “I know what you are doing down those red roads. I don’t have the time, manpower or energy to crack down. I do, however, have the ability to fuck up your profit margin, so here’s the new rules.” He looked around to see if everyone was paying attention. “One, I want each of you to pick a local problem and ‘donate’ Sheriff Lee’s share to it. Short me, and I’ll know. I may be a drunk, but I’m smarter than all of you combined. Comprende? I’m talking to you, there, Jethro.” He gestured toward a huge bearded and tattooed local wearing a camouflaged baseball cap that proclaimed, “Beer Is the Only Reason I Get Up Every Afternoon.”
“Jethro” looked around nervously at being singled out, gave Jenks the “who me?” gesture and responded, “Cletus…Name’s Cletus Brazzel.”
“Whatever. Cletus, who are you going to donate to and how much?” Jenks pressed the question. Cletus looked around again, clearly uncomfortable at being called on to speak in front of the others.
“Ah… five hunnert a month to, ah… the new YMCA upta Palmetto?”
“Y’s fine,” said Jenks, consulting a dog eared pocket note book he had found behind a loose piece of sheetrock in the sheriff’s private office, “but the amount’s twenty-five hundred.”
Cletus’ sheepish downward glance at being caught attempting to so grossly shortchange the sheriff signified consent. Jenks methodically went around the room extracting commitments and, occasionally, consulting Sheriff Lee’s notebook for conformation. Once or twice, he “suggested” a good cause that had been under-pledged or neglected to be sure the largesse got the widest possible distribution.
“Rule two,” he continued after the financial arrangements had been concluded, “don’t sell any of your crap in this or any surrounding county. Take it down to Panama City or Destin. Up to Tallahassee, maybe. Market’s better there, anyway.” He looked around the room, forcing agreement by individual eye contact.
“Rule three, it you must settle your differences with violence, take it up north of I 10 to Leon County or, better yet, across the state line. Someplace where Doodle, Doc Johnston and I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to process your shit-ass bodies and fill out a bunch of forms.” He glanced at his new Chief Deputy who, clearly, was not copasetic with any of these arrangements.
“Finally, Rules four and five,” he concluded.” Shoot a civilian or one of my deputies and I’ll personally hunt you down. In the unlikely event you survive apprehension and your stay in county lock up, I’ll see to it that Judge Periwinkle sends you to Old Sparky.” He paused to emphasize this important point and then continued, “last but not least,” Jenks concluded, “ these rules are subject to change any time I say. Got it? Oh, one more thing—I’m gonna burn a field now and then just to make it look good. I’ll pick one that belongs to whoever has pissed me off the most. We all on the same page in the hymnal? Good. Now, beat it before I arrest the sorry lot of you. Oh, and one more thing—no meth labs. I find any of you operating a meth lab and the whole deal is off. Got it there, Jethro?”
Clearly relieved to be dismissed, the group, all muttering terse affirmative responses, shuffled out to a gravel parking lot filled with disreputable red dirt covered off-road vehicles of various makes and models and disappeared in all directions into the dark night.
Contrary to Doodle’s initial trepidations, drug-related crime virtually disappeared in Panhandle County. The Y got a new building complete with indoor Olympic swimming pool and full sized hardwood basketball court. The clinic in Choctaw Landing got a new annex and open MRI. The county animal shelter added facilities for a hundred strays and the hospital in Palmetto got a surgical center. The high school was able to start a foreign exchange program and, ironically, a student run “Just Say No!” campaign.
The only gun crime in the county during Jenks’ first term occurred when Bitsy Boone caught her husband and second cousin, Scud Boone, in bed with two strippers from Sammy’s. She shot him in the groin three times with the .25 caliber Beretta Woodchuck. It had been a gift from Scud on Mother’s Day. Locals who knew them conjectured that Scud, anticipating that it might someday be used for just such a purpose, had chosen the diminutive caliber for its lack of knockdown power. Scud recovered without permanent disability, declaring that the experience had caused him to take Jesus as his personal Savior, and refused to press charges.

Jazzbo Jackson, of course, was a registered Democrat. However, privately he acknowledged that the black communities of Gideon and Titus would have no political power at all in this strongest and whitest of white Republican strongholds without some sort of alliance. Consequently, he acted as a liaison between the black minority and the white community.
As a lifelong member of both The Sons of Ham and the Church of the All Seeing Eye, Jazzbo knew every black family in the county. As a graduate of Palmetto High School and Panhandle Community College, where he set state records for the 100-meter dash and yards receiving before he finished his career at Florida State, Jazzbo felt at home among white folks and was invited into their homes as, more or less, an equal.
Jazzbo’s politically incorrect handle had actually been given to him by his mother. Only she knew that he had been named after an obscure blues player from Biloxi with whom she had cavorted, briefly and happily, as a young girl.
At Sheriff McCracken’s insistence, out of the “marijuana tax”, Titus and Gideon each got a new rec center with barbeque facilities, outdoor basketball courts and horseshoe pits. The All Seeing Eye got new vinyl siding. The Sons of Ham got a new HVAC system, refrigerator and wet bar.
Jenks also made Jazzbo his Second Assistant Deputy. He looked sharp, tall and lean, in his new red and blue trimmed grays with the gold lieutenant’s bars on the collar. In it, he strutted around the female population of Gideon as only a black guy named Jazzbo could strut.

Jim Nickels was born with the talent to run a high-powered newsroom in Atlanta, Dallas or Miami. He had the Pulitzer to prove it. Unlike Jenks, however, after success had graced him, he allowed his dipsomania get the better of him. Fired from his last chance job as a beat reporter for a rag in Tallahassee, Nickels purchased and ran the Palmetto Leaf with the modest proceeds from sales of pulp fiction authored under various nom des plume and a small inheritance from his mother.
Like most real journalists, Jim was completely jaded and disdained all politics and politicians. In the land of the small town newspaper, however, this was not a viable option. Jim depended upon the good will of his neighbors to buy, advertise in and even fill the pages of his modest daily. He published, for example, a regular column written by Bruce and Diego, co-proprietors of the Palmetto Garden Centre and an occasional article by Widow Greene on wine. The local theatre group, the Palmetto Players, provided pages of free photos and copy. Doodle submitted a regular weekly column, County Crime Stoppers, and Mavis published her menu specials.
Since he had no choice, Jim followed the line of least resistance and the Leaf supported local candidates that Jim deemed most likely to win—usually a self-fulfilling prophecy—and generally favored the position adopted by popular consensus. This usually put him squarely behind Jenks and Mavis on most issues.

Bubba Clark was sort of a wild card. He, along with his band, Bubba and the Bubbettes, had enjoyed regional success as a country and western favorite with crossover capabilities. His biggest hit, “Lap Dance Love”, had made it to number 2 on the Top Forty in both country and rock ‘n’ roll.
Touring the Gulf Coast and playing until all hours in joints like the Wonder Bar in Mexico Beach, Area 51 in Navarre and, of course, the Flora-Bama, had eventually wearied Bubba. In his early forties, he sold the bus, paid off the Bubbettes in tax free hundreds, hung the old Strat on the wall and bought the piss ant 50,000 watt local station, WVLA—The Voice of Lower Alabama—89.7 on your AM dial, Palmetto, Florida.
Bubba switched the format from local farm reports, football games and evangelists to old time rock to accommodate the increasingly younger, hipper baby boomer demographic of the area. He handled the 5 to 11 a.m. drive time slot himself and stayed in perpetual hot water with the FCC and the ladies at the First Baptist for his profane, off-the-cuff remarks on issues of both local and regional interest.
He had, for example, once suggested that Governor Bush solve every problem he faced by simply declaring the unstoppable cannabis, kudzu and dollar weed to be the official state plants of Florida and disbanding the Florida Public School System entirely.
If everyone had their yard choked with these ubiquitous pests, he declared, it wouldn’t be socially necessary to continuously spray them with noxious chemicals and spend thousands on lawn care professionals in a vain effort to kill them out. This would have the combined benefit of improving the rapidly declining environment, decreasing the state’s dependency on Mexican labor and putting dope dealers out of business because pot would grow free on every street corner.
His reasoning behind doing away with public schools was equally sound—the economy of the State of Florida increasingly depended on an influx of northern retirees. They paid more taxes, spent more money, used the roads less and were virtually no burden on the criminal justice system. They had already spent a butt load educating their own children and resented the shit out of school taxes. Florida Public schools weren’t really educating anyone anyway. They just babysat riff-raff until it was time for them to graduate to welfare. Anybody, he reasoned, too poor to put their kids in a private school could just goddamn move to Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi. A few more illiterate black and white trash urchins there wouldn’t even be noticed, he opined. That one cost him $10,000 and a week off the air, mostly, for the “goddamn”.
Bubba generally took whatever position on local issues that amused him at the time. Consequently, Bubba came into the fold of the Panhandle County Mafia as sort of a reverse endorser. He needed to be told, not who to support but, rather, who not to. The best favor Bubba could do for a candidate was to talk about the other guy.
He almost single handedly set prissy old circuit judge Lucian Periwinkle to a long over-do retirement of growing hot-house roses by harping on his irritating affectation of riding an antique Schwinn Cruiser to court every morning against traffic on 79 wearing a silk bowtie, straw panama hat and sear sucker suit.
Another time, all but one of the county commissioners were indicted and convicted of a vast conspiracy of corruption. The constituency of the lone honest survivor was convinced by Bubba to turn him out in the next election because he was so oblivious and ineffectual that it wasn’t even necessary for the crooks to bribe him to get his vote. He was, as Bubba summed it up, unfit for public office because he was “too stupid to steal”.

Along with himself and, now, Widow Greene in the place of her late husband, this unlikely cabal of disparate personalities held sway over the voting patterns of Panhandle County and Northwest Florida. Politics, mused Jenks, in addition to being the last refuge of scoundrels, also made for strange bedfellows.







Chapter 13

The box had been refitted with a nail in place of the broken hinge pin and a latch jury rigged from two small upholstery tacks and a piece of kite string. Loretta fingered the inlaid lettering on the lid of the box for a moment before she opened it. The box had been given to her by her father when she was just a little girl. After lighting up the last cigar from the box, he had taken her upon his lap and solemnly handed it to her.
“Lori,” he told her, “keep everything that means something to you in this box. When it doesn’t any more, throw it away. Then you’ll always be able to remind yourself of what’s important and what’s not.” She had made the repairs herself—the broken hinge when she was in college and the latch when she was twelve.
As she unwound the kite string and slowly opened the box, she felt gratified to note that it still smelled faintly of cigars. She stopped for a second to savor the aroma that always reminded her of her father.
The box had contained many and various items in the fifty-five years she had possessed it. “Lord,” she thought, “how could it be that long?” At five she put nothing in the box but statues of horses. At ten, it was a rubber ball and a set of jacks with one missing. In the seventh grade, she had thrown out everything. She replaced it with stories on mimeograph from the school paper about the exploits of junior high sports star Tom Somebody (she couldn’t remember his last name) and a Peewee Reese trading card that he had dropped in her presence in the hall at school.
Now, the box contained only six items—a faded and deteriorating Crown Royal bag, a small packet of letters bound together with the tassel from a graduation mortar, a larger packet wrapped in brown paper and twine, two photographs and a size eight class ring: Centralia High School, 1964. The ring had been wrapped with green yarn so that it would fit her size six finger.





















Chapter 14

As he turned south to Crystal’s for his evening meal and a debriefing with Doodle and Mavis, Jenks switched his satellite radio from NPR’s BBC News to The Weather Channel. He caught “Dr. Sam”, grandfatherly meteorologist well known to the folks of the Gulf Coast, explaining, for the umpteenth time, the short life of Hurricane Quentin. He had been born, explained Dr. Sam, about three weeks ago as a weather anomaly off the coast of Africa. As he traveled west, feeding off the increasingly warmer waters of the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, Quentin developed from a low pressure disturbance to tropical depression 32. Organizing more and more, he evolved into Tropical Storm and finally Hurricane Quentin. Currently, he was a massive and highly organized strong category 3 with sustained winds in excess of 125 MPH moving, for the moment, due north at four knots. Current landfall, predicted Dr. Sam, late Tuesday morning, Destin, Fla.
“Shit!” cursed Jenks to himself, “Shit, shit, shit!” Quentin had wobbled back east and once again threatened Panhandle County.
Dr. Sam went on to explain that, due to the lateness of the season, the huge low pressure system coming down from the nor’easters dumping record snowfalls on the eastern seaboard would have the effect of, eventually, killing Quentin. Presently, it just caused him to linger in the Gulf, wobbling back and forth like a kite without enough tail, churning, feeding and growing stronger on the warm waters of the Gulf. He would die much more quickly after landfall, but, before he did, would wreak havoc somewhere on the northern Gulf Coast. He could, Dr. Sam concluded, reach category 4 or even 5 before landfall.
“Shit, shit, goddamn shit!!” Jenks cursed again, slamming the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. The news could not be worse. On this course, Quentin would hit Destin and the surrounding highly populated areas, causing massive evacuation traffic through Panhandle County. He would then surge up the intra-coastal and the Choctawhatchee River causing the usually brackish and placid water of Choctawhatchee Bayou to increase salinity and rage over its banks into the massive floodplain that was South Panhandle County.
Jenks was always put off by the anthropomorphic nature of hurricane jargon. Everyone spoke of hurricanes as if they were organic and even sentient beings. Given Christian names, referred to as “he” or “she”, they were “born”, “fed” “evolved” and got “organized”. Floridians had a kind of perverted affection for them.
They separated Florida from ordinary states like Iowa. Hurricane survivors had a touch more status and talked about them by name as if they were real people. (“Erin and George wasn’t nothin’ compared Opal and Charlie. I know ‘cause I rode ‘em all out right in this here trailer, just me and a bottle of Old Rebel Yell!”). Jenks, recent memories of Ivan and the rest from 2004 fresh in his mind, hated, feared and loathed them with no affection of any kind.
He knew from experience that the real destructive force of the hurricane was, not the wind, but the enormous tidal wave or storm surge it pushed before it. The wind might snap and uproot sand pines, blow over improperly tied doublewides and old shotgun shanties and rip shingles from the roofs of newer, heartier buildings. The surge, on the other hand, could devastate any structure built by man, drown its occupants, scatter its contents and even change the nature of the topography.
He knew, for example, that in the 1700s a hurricane had wiped out thriving Port Royal, pirate capital of Jamaica. The entire city and its population ceased to exist and are now under water. In 1900, another had destroyed Galveston, killing 5000 people. As a result, Houston, its poor mud hole of a neighbor to the north, became the maritime capital of Texas. Galveston was relegated to just another ratty cruise ship stop and Gulf resort, certainly inferior to any in Florida.
In the ‘30s, paper mill town Port St. Joe, Florida was wiped out by a storm surge and Cape San Blas was cut, turning it into a key. Ivan had breached Santa Rosa Island near Ft. Pickens. It had to be repaired by the Corp of Engineers, not for the first time, at an undisclosed cost of millions to the U.S. taxpayers.
Jenks considered the barrier islands that protected the coast of Florida to be slow moving sea creatures, not solid ground upon which human habitat should be constructed. Nevertheless, FEMA, the banks, realtors, developers and local Chambers of Commerce encouraged the construction of multimillion-dollar Mc Mansions. High-rise condos sprang up like dollar weeds along the length of the panhandle turning funky, fun, sea oats and cinder block beach towns into soulless multi-zillion dollar enterprises complete with Starbuck’s, outlet malls, pretentious asshole yuppies, over-crowding, traffic jams, corruption and continuous political dissention among their residents.
Consequently, each bad storm did more damage, disrupted more lives and killed more people than the last. All subsidized, he knew, by the federal and state government.
Jenks came out of his silent rant against over-development of the Gulf Coast as Crystal’s hove into view. He saw Doodle’s Crown Vic and pulled the Silverado next to it. The northbound traffic had increased dramatically for a Sunday evening in October. They had some work to do before their shift ended.


























Chapter 15

Loretta reverently caressed the small packet of letters in the box and slipped on the class ring up to the second knuckle of her left hand ring finger. She stopped, hesitated and then quickly took it off. She placed it back in the box. Her heart pounded as it did the first time she ever saw the ring. She began to hyperventilate.
The old feeling had hit her so intensely that it was painful to wear the ring. She stopped to gather herself. She began to slowly un-wrap the tassel from the small packet. She placed the tassel back into the box and spread the letters out on the piano bench. She sat cross-legged on the floor with her white cotton night gown hiked indelicately to mid-thigh like a teenage girl at a slumber party.
The letters had a strange consistency about them. They were all addressed to her and written on cheap, light beige stationary. Some, the ones on the bottom of the packet, were tinged with ochre colored dirt. They were slipped into envelopes that matched the stationary. In addition, they were all addressed to her in the same hand and all bore one of several different APO return addresses. As she reached for the first envelope, her cell phone, pager and home phone erupted simultaneously.
The spell had been broken. Loretta gathered up the letters, placed them back in the box, closed it and slipped it under her bed. She did not, however, bother to wind the kite string around the two small tacks that latched the box.


























Chapter 16

Doodle sat at the counter chatting with Mavis and watching ubiquitous STORMtracker 4 on the TV. Obviously, he was well aware of the situation. The screen showed Quentin as a giant tornado-like top, hovering and towering over teeny Destin and threatening the Panhandle Gulf Coast from Pensacola Beach to Port St. Joe. There was a red “Hurricane Warning” band from Biloxi to Apalachicola Bay and a longer orange “Watch” band from Tampa to New Orleans.
“Shit!” Jenks greeted Mavis and Doodle.
“Bay County Sheriff ‘s goin’ crazy,” Doodle informed without pleasantries. “Walton County don’t even answer. We need to get those southbound lanes reversed—tonight!”
“Agree,” nodded Jenks, “Call the road guys—and call all the boys to the Choctaw Landing sub-station for a briefing ASAP.”
“Already done done it,” Doodle responded. “They’ll be there in a hour.”
“Good,” replied Jenks. “Get the ‘fleet’ down there, too. It’s too late tonight, but at first light, I want every dory, john boat, ski doo, kayak and air boat patrolling the banks of the Bayou to be sure the word gets out. Looks like we are gonna have one hell of a surge. Most of those places’ll be under 20 feet of water if it keeps on this course.”
“Check,” said Doodle without a hint of sarcasm. Jenks eyeballed him to make sure.

The “fleet” was the result of the gigantic pork fest arising from the Homeland Security legislation that had been hastily and gleefully cobbled into existence by the Republicans after 9/11. Billions had been appropriated to beef up security.
Although highly populated and politically significant places like New York, Los Angles, San Francisco and Boston were the stated and logical target of future terrorist attacks, the feeding etiquette of Congress dictated that the spoils be distributed equally to each state with 40% going to the rural regions irrespective of threat level. Consequently, places that really needed the stepped up security, like the Port of Miami, got short changed and had to make do while small towns in Nebraska made out like bandits.
Armed with this information and a well-honed proficiency for grant application writing, Jenks had convinced the Feds that Panhandle County in general and Choctaw Landing in particular were in grave and imminent danger of terrorist attach. All they would have to do, the application reasoned, was to secret themselves ashore in a small boat, wend their way 30 miles up the intra-coastal to the mouth of the Choctawhatchee River, plow upstream another 30 miles to Choctawhatchee Bayou, travel east another 40 miles, avoiding hidden and unknown navigational hazards all the way and, presto, they could wreak havoc on the dock, restaurant-bar and small village that comprised Choctaw Landing. The only way to stop them, the grant warned, was river patrols—with the new ski doos and other toys applied for in the grant.
Jenks got the toys from grateful Feds in Tallahassee who were having trouble spending the 40% allocated to rural Florida. The boats mostly sat in the chain-link fenced compound behind the Sheriff’s Office. Jenks had not the manpower, need or inclination to regularly patrol peaceful Choctawhatchee Bayou. Hell, any terrorist worth his salt would just wade ashore in Destin and rent a car or, more likely, fly in to Panama City International Airport on Delta. Additionally, a boatful of landlubber Arabs in black leather jackets, black tee shirts, baggy slacks and street shoes would have no more chance of making the day-long boat trip from the Gulf to the Landing, un-interdicted by redneck locals, than a white man would have getting a Rob Roy at the Sons of Ham or receiving communion at the All Seeing Eye.
The “fleet” was, however, extremely handy for the task at hand. Occasionally, it was necessary to lay eyes on and come within hailing distance of every shack, summer home, fish camp, tent, and travel trailer on the banks of the Bayou. This could not be easily done by car because some of these were not serviced by roads but, rather, hidden, rutted driveways and trails passable only by four-wheel drive. Many were not even permanent. The only way to get to them quickly was by water.

They went through the rest of the checklist and headed out for Choctaw Landing to get “the boys” organized. As he pulled his truck out of Mavis’ parking lot, his cell phone rang. Caller ID told him it was Glenda Alice Greene. Surprised, he picked it up and, in his most official voice, answered, “Sheriff McCracken”.
“Sheriff’, her voice lightly mocked, “are you with Boodle and Scootah?”
“No, ah Glenda Alice, I’m alone,” he lightened up, silently chuckling at being caught and chided for pretension. He took note of and ignored her purposeful mangling of his deputies names.
“You sounded so ‘official’, ah thought surely you were at a crime scene or bustin’ a perp. Maybe havin’ a conference with the Mayah or night-stickin’ a local darkie.”
“No, ah Glenda Alice, I’m alone in my truck headed for the Landing,” he assured her, “how did you get this number?”
“Havin’ the Chaahman’s back line on speed dial has its advantages,” she answered.
“Well, what can I do for you at this late hour,” Jenks queried.
“The Chaahman is very worried,” her tone got serious. “It looks like we could lose two, maybe three house seats from Northwest Florida because of this damned hurricane. These are seats that the Committee had as dead cinch locks. This could upset the whole game plan. “They” have been early voting like crazy. Honest Republicans wait ‘til Election Day. This Tuesday, howevah, half the panhandle will be evacuated and the other half will be gettin’ pounded by this heah storm.”
“That is a problem,” Jenks agreed. “What does the Chairman want us to do?”
“Put on your thinkin’ cap, for startahs,” she replied. “The absentee ballots could save us. They’re usually snowbirds and military. 90% Republican. Is theah any precedent for postponing an election ‘cause of a hurricane?”
“Don’t know”, Jenks replied, “never thought about it.”
“Well,” she drawled, “start. The Chaahman”, she repeated, “is very worried.”
“OK,” he agreed, “I’m kinda distracted right now, ah, Glenda Alice, but lets get the Mafia together at Crystal’s. Ten o’clock tonight. I’ll talk to Doodle, Mavis and Jazzbo. Can you call the rest?”
“Ah do love it when you go all ‘take charge’ like that,” she cooed, “tell Toodle ahm looking forwahd to seein’ him, heah.” She rang off without further conversation.
Jenks drove the rest of the way to the Landing sub-station in a lighter mood. It was not possible, it appeared, for him not to look forward to a meeting with Glenda Alice Greene.






Chapter 17

Seemingly, All Hell had Broken Loose in the coastal northeastern states from Massachusetts to DC. Loretta’s area of responsibility, Southern Connecticut, epitomized the problem. The Republican minority in the suburban areas were, for the most part, most likely to be able to get out and vote. Bad weather (and this was the worst) usually disfavored urban Democrats. If this snow kept up as predicted her primary area of concern, New London, would be a ghost town on Election Day. She had heard it from the precinct captains and her eyes and common sense confirmed it.

Loretta clicked on her laptop. Her screensaver, a colorized animation of the Mandelbrot Progression, began its mesmerizing pulsation as the icons popped up and, finally the green “start” prompt appeared. She stuck a 1 gig memory stick into the USB port, pulled it up through “my computer” as “Removable Disk F”, created a new Word file and began typing the report to the Chairman. Why, she had wondered for not the first time, did they call it a “Disk” when it was clearly a stick. It made no more sense to her than pushing a “start” button to turn the damn thing off or to “launch” a file which meant, apparently, the exact same thing as “open”.
Loretta had learned her limited computer skills, like most others of her generation, by monkey-see-monkey-do trial and error and only as it became clear that they were a matter of survival in the 21st Century. She now took pride in her increasing computer literacy and had an insidious addiction to Google.
She didn’t really understand the Mandelbrot Progression. But it surely was pretty on the screen. She began keying in the report.

After two hours, Loretta began changing the same language in the report back and forth. She called it good enough, emailed it to the chairman, took a shower and prepared for bed.

She pulled back the covers of the bed. It had not been made that day. The corner of the box protruded from under the frame. In the scurry of the impending issues with Election Day, she had suppressed the memory but the sight of the box brought it flooding back. “Crap,” she thought. She pulled the covers up around her ears and attempted, vainly, for an hour, to forget and go to sleep. Finally, exasperated by her lack of control over her own mind, she threw back the covers and opened the box again.













Chapter 18

The Mafia sat around two tables pushed together at the back of Crystal’s drinking coffee. Jenks noticed, with some glee, that Doodle had chosen a seat as far from Glenda Alice as possible. He did his best not to look at her for any reason.
“Heah is the situation,” outlined Glenda Alice, staring straight at Doodle’s averted eyes for, one could only assume, no reason but her own amusement. She went on to explain that she had had several in-depth conversations with the Chairman of the Republican National Convention about the effect of Quentin on the up coming election, less than 36 hours away. She recounted the fact that the Democrats had been bussing voters into Palmetto and other precincts in counties in the path of Quentin for the last week while most Republicans, not accustomed to being bussed, had not yet voted. Apparently, this was going on all over the panhandle.
“What aah you smirkin’ at, Jazzbo Jackson,” she digressed.
“Look like de nigga done outsmart de cracka fo’ once,” he chuckled, affecting a Stephen Fetchit accent, “look like de cracka gonna have de nigga for dey representative.”
“Ah think you might know somethin’ more ‘bout this than you’re tellin’, Jazzbo,” she stated with suspicion. He just smiled and rolled his eyes.
“Ah, Glenda Alice, you asked me to see if there is any way to postpone an election because of a natural disaster. I checked. There is.” Jenks had stopped at his cabin between the meeting with his deputies and auxiliary at Choctaw Landing and this one and looked up several statutes on LEXUS-NEXUS. “Florida Statute 101.733 says that the Governor may declare a state of emergency and postpone the election for 10 days in the effected areas.”
“May?” queried Mavis.
“May!” affirmed Jenks.
“What does ‘effected areas’ mean?” Queried Doodle. Jenks shrugged in reply, “don’t know, it’s never happened before. There is no precedent at all.

Silence fell over the members of the Mafia gathered at the table broken only by the light snickering of Jazzbo Jackson. It had now become all too clear why Democratic Governor Hudson had been uncharacteristically silent about Quentin.
















Chapter 19

This time, Loretta ignored the letters and reached for the Crown Royal bag. This had also been a gift from her father and she used it for extra special things. The golden cord that closed the bag had been knotted and she had a little difficulty untying the knot with her short fingernails. Finally it came open and she reached inside the bag to retrieve the items inside by feel.
She removed a set of campaign ribbons, the usual Viet Nam “I was there” collection except for the Air Medal, Bronze Star and Purple Heart. The Air Metal had several oak leaf clusters and the Bronze Star bore a small “v”.
Loretta held the decorations in her hand, marveling, as she always did, at how shoddily they were made considering what they represented. She laid the ribbons lovingly on the velvet bag and picked up the photos.
One was a fading color Polaroid of three awkward adolescents, standing just outside a baseball dugout. The boys wore dirty baseball uniforms and she a green tartan plaid skirt, knee socks and over-sized letterman’s jacket. One of the boys, tall and blond, had his left arm around her, resting it casually but possessively on her left shoulder. He still wore a lobster claw first baseman’s glove on his right hand. The second stood a foot from her left side. Both boys focused their attention on the girl. If she used a magnifying glass, she could see the ring on the third finger of her left hand. Her mother, she remembered, had taken the picture in the spring of 1963.
The second photo was larger and in black and white. It showed the tall young man, older now, perhaps taller and still rail thin, standing beside a Huey gun ship. He was dressed in a nomex flight suit, with an olive drab aviator’s helmet under his arm. His hair was blond, closely cropped and he did not smile as he squinted into the sun. The name on the nose of the helicopter was “Lori Jane”. It had been painted under a gossamer clad, voluptuous brunette female Vargas caricature, generic to the time and place… except for the black horn rimmed glasses.




















Chapter 20

As he left the meeting with the Mafia, Jenks McCracken reviewed the immediate situation in his head. Hurricane Quentin, currently a strong and expansive category 3, was projected to hit Destin, Florida with hurricane winds nearly 30 miles on either side—from Panama City to Ft Walton Beach—sometime on Tuesday, November 2, Election Day, thirty-six hours from now. All Florida Counties north of Choctawhatchee Bayou, although not in immediate danger, were due to be severely disrupted by evacuation traffic and extremely bad weather. This threatened to disrupt the outcome of the National Election and turn two to three seats in the House over to Democratic throwaway candidates in this normally Republican strong hold due to the enterprising use by the Democratic Party of early voting and the broad discretion of the Democratic Governor to declare, or not, emergencies in the various counties. To top it off, Quentin could just as easily spin back out to sea or hit Mexico.
Jenks felt good about only one aspect of the current situation. His deputies had each been given specific assignments and were well supervised by Doodle and Jazzbo. He could grab a few hours of sleep and take over for Doodle in the morning.
He felt good about something else, too, but his left-brain had not yet allowed him to admit it—the probability that he would see Glenda Alice Greene sometime tomorrow.

As he pulled into the rutted driveway of his modest cabin on the north bank of Choctawhatchee Bayou, he thought of the old Chinese curse that his father was fond of repeating, “May You Live in Interesting Times.”
























Chapter 21

Loretta clutched the photographs, letters and the Crown Royal bag to her breast. She made no attempt to stop or control herself. Her body convulsed with a series of heaving, barely audible, cleansing sobs. After sating herself with the flood of cathartic tears, she carefully replaced all of the items in their proper places in the box, wound the kite string around the brass nails and pushed it under the bed. “Damn you!” she spoke the words out loud to the inanimate box as if it were a person capable of hearing. “Damn you, you pig-headed fool!”
Spent by the emotional orgasm, she drifted off to a deep sleep. Her last semi-sombulent thought, before the dreamless black closed over her was the realization that, in the tumult of the day’s events, she forgot to practice the piano. She vowed to do two hours tomorrow.

Loretta awoke to her ringing cell phone. After fumbling around on the bed side table, she finally found it under her pillow. How it got there she had no clue. “Hold on…hold on!” She implored the pesky, ringing instrument. She punched the green button a nano-second before the call went to voice message.
At the other end of the line she heard the flat, cynical Flushing-Queens accented voice of her best friend and chief of the New London precinct captains, Kat Leibowitz.
“You asleep?” Kat queried. “Go look out the window.” Loretta found her glasses on top of her head and complied. She gasped, “crap”. The snow reached half way up the window. She had to jump up to see over it.
“Alberta Clipper. Early lake effect blizzard,” Kat informed her. Loretta jumped up again to see that, indeed, the snow no longer fell in quiet, idyllic New England snow globe fashion but, rather, was whipped and blown by a 40 MPH northwest wind.
“New London’s completely shut down. Nothing in or out. All streets completely blocked,” Kat tersely reported, “no letup until at least Wednesday. We’re fucked.”
“Surely the polls won’t be open in this weather!” Loretta ignored Kat’s crude assessment of their situation.
“No, we’re fucked, no doubt about it. Goddamn Republicans have their poll watchers at the polling places already. Snow mobiles, cross country skis. One asshole leased a Sno-cat. They are going to make sure the polls are open all day tomorrow.”
“Bbbut, that’s not fair!” complained Loretta, “People can’t get out to vote in this sh…mess!”
“Fucking Republicans can,” replied Kat, “they got snow mobiles, cross country skis and Sno-cats. All we got is a few beat up Eco-O-Line vans and a retired school bus.”
“That’s not fair,” Loretta whined again.
“What’s fair got to do with it?” Stated Kat rhetorically, “This is politics.”
They discussed the problem for an hour and determined that they couldn’t control the weather and, fair or not, the Republicans would be sure the polls were open.

Kat, a retired Justice Department lawyer, currently working full time for the ACLU, opined that there would be law suits but, although there was precedent for postponing an election when the weather prevented the polls from opening, nothing supported the proposition that they could postpone just because the weather made it difficult. “And,” she added, “you remember how the Supremes gave the 2000 election to Bush? Well, the Court hasn’t gotten any more fucking liberal since then.”

Kat Leibowitz, nee Katherine Rachael McPherson/Greenberg had always been a force of nature. The oldest daughter of redheaded Margaret McPherson and bespectacled Aaron Greenberg, she tore through PS 13 and Queens High School like Patton through Belgium. She had always been first—first in her class, first to get laid, burn her bra, try LSD and declare herself a lesbian.
She protested the war in Viet Nam as a sophomore in high school, while her classmates still grappled with acne and memorizing all of the continents. At NYU, she actually took part in an attempt to blow up the ROTC building. She and her cohorts had only succeeded in destroying the apse of the non-denominational chapel. Fortunately for her application and admission to Harvard Law, she never got caught.
Kat was one of the few lesbian/straight Catholic/Jewish Atheists in the world. Although her sexuality was subject to question and change, and her religion ambiguous, her politics were not. She had inherited the Democratic Party from both parents.
Her mother, working class Irish, had been a rabid New Frontier Democrat from Roxbury, Mass. Her father would be the prototypical “New York Jew” as an arbitrageur on Wall Street. They met at a gathering of the American Communist Party in 1937 and married 2 weeks later against the wishes of both families.
After law school, Kat opened a store front law office in the Bronx and catered to black drug dealers and addicts, welfare mothers, Puerto Rican garment district laborers and the under-class and downtrodden in general. She learned, on the streets, that to survive, she needed grant money from the guilt ridden US Government and large corporations. In addition to a street smart Harvard lawyer, she also became a savvy grant writer and a staunch operative of the Democratic Party.
When Jimmy Carter won the election in 1976, her tireless yeoman efforts as a ward healer in New York won her a job at Justice in its consumer protection division. Some how, she survived twelve years of Republicanism in the White House and, under Clinton, thrived and was promoted to GS 14 and head of her division. She retired with a government pension that allowed her to go full time with the ACLU at the paltry wages it could afford to pay.

“We’re fucked,” Kat repeated. “No chance, zilch, zip, nada, period, paragraph, end of memo. We are going to lose New London.”
“Crap,” replied Loretta, “Fucking crap.”













Chapter 22

Jenks eyes snapped open at 5 AM. He bound out of bed and flipped his new HDTV to STORMTracker 4. Quentin, the bleary eyed anchorman told him, had vacillated back and forth and back again during the night. He had stopped gaining strength but was still a strong category 3 sixty miles wide.
The red Warning line had not moved but the orange Watch line had expanded to Port Aransas Pass in the west and nearly to Ft. Meyers in the east. A feature had been added that Jenks had never seen—pulsating question marks at each end of both lines. Apparently, Quentin had stalled because of the increasingly strong cold front moving in from the north. Quentin now moved in a generally northerly direction but at a speed of only one knot. No one knew where he was headed.
Jenks took a two-minute shower during which he shaved and brushed his teeth. Because of the emergent nature of the situation and in spite of the clammy, muggy pre-hurricane atmosphere, he eschewed his usual casual garb and donned his grays, complete with equipment belt, Glock 9mm, campaign hat and gold star on each collar point.
He was in his Silverado, cell phone in hand by 5:25. For the first time in recent memory, he did not have time to think about whiskey.

He arrived at Crystal’s just before six. Mavis had tuned into The Weather Channel which now had wall-to-wall coverage of Quentin. She was, apparently, somewhere in the back but the coffee cauldron bubbled out the aroma of fresh coffee.
Jim Cantore spoke from the screen in a strident voice. He was notorious among Floridians for broadcasting from the projected eye of every hurricane. No one wanted him any where near their neighborhood during hurricane season. “Cantore go away!” bumper stickers were sold at local bait shops and jiffy marts.
Cantore was actually shooting a live feed from the front seat of a GMC Yukon headed east on Highway 98. It had been oscillating back and forth between Port St. Joe and Mary Ester like a compass needle in the Bermuda Triangle. He was dressed in his usual “TWC” baseball cap and black muscle shirt.
“…nothing like it. Even Quentin doesn’t seem to know where he is going to make landfall. Right now, the best guestimate seems to be somewhere between Perdido Key and Apalachicola…”
“Even Cantore can’t find the path of this one,” narrated Glenda Alice from the darkness of a back booth, “it’s a posah.” She eyed his uniform. “You goin’ to a funeral or have Jimmy Buffet shirts suddenly gone out of style in Lower Alabama?”
“Not likely any time soon,” he replied. “I just thought I might need a little more command presence than usual today. Surprised to see you up so early Ms. Greene,” he replied.
“Ah do love to see a man in unifoahm,” she looked him up from his spit shined boots to his collar insignia and made a little moue of concern with her freshly lip-sticked mouth, “looks a little loose across the chest, though, Sheriff. And do call me Glenda Alice, pleez and thankyew.”
Jenks correctly read the “pleez and thankyew” as a polite but firm southern belle imperative to be ignored at his own peril as well as a reminder of their previous informality. “Well, ah, Glenda Alice, I didn’t see the need for my vest this morning,” he replied, “looks like I might have more use for water wings.”
She drank black coffee from a crockery mug. A quart carafe sat in front of her. He grabbed a cup from the drying rack as he passed the counter and sat down in response to her implied invitation. They sat silent until he poured himself a cup and took a tentative sip.
“What brings you out in the dark on such a dreary day?” he repeated his inquiry.
“Ah did not sleep a wink last night,” she replied, “just tossed and turned.”
“Worry?” He asked with some incredulity. Glenda Alice did not seem the worrying kind.
“Mebbe, kinda” she replied, “no, mo’ like feah and dread. Lonesome feah and dread. Ah think it may be the weathah.”
“You’ve been through a lot of hurricanes,” he tried, lamely, to reassure her.
“Well, thankyew, too, Sheriff,” her eyes twinkled in mild reproach to the oblique but clear reference to her age, “ah’m sure that all of us have seen mo’ hurricanes then we would like.”
Sheriff McCracken, erstwhile trial lawyer that he was, knew when to change the line of questioning. “Have you been here long?”
“Just since five-thirty. Cootah drove into the parkin’ lot a while ago but, I guess somethin’ spooked him “cause he didn’t come in. No, it wasn’t the hurricane,” Glenda Alice had a disarming way of changing the subject without taking a breath, “it was this gawd-awful…melancholyness, if that is even a word, it’s cool and warm and muggy, all at the same time. It just makes me get all mournful and weepy inside. Ah hate it,” she took a sip of her coffee and waited for him to speak.
“Doodle,” he said patiently.
She looked at him with a silent request for more conversation.
“His name is Doodle, not Cooter, which you know full well and he probably left because he saw that Mercedes of yours in the parking lot. That’s probably what spooked him, Ms…,ah, Glenda Alice.”
“Whatevah,” she replied, dismissively, “fact is, ah came here to see you, Sheriff McCracken.”
The use of his title and last name chilled the booth a bit and signaled a switch from lightly provocative banter to serious business.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” He chose the neutral appellation as a compromise to avoid being too familiar for the new atmosphere and, also, another “pleeze and thankew”.
“Ah been on the phone with the Chaaman most all night. He says that Governah Hudson is not goin’ to postpone the election in any area unless it is actually hit by Quentin and ah mean the eye wall.”
“Is there any legal action we can take?” asked Jenks.
She gave him a “you tell me, you’re the lawyer” look and replied, “If theah is, it will be too little, too late. If this storm stays on its projected course, it won’t even make land fall until after the polls close on Tuesday. With early votin’ and absentee ballots, the democrats can make a real compellin’ argument that everyone had an equal chance to vote. The polls will be open. All the voters will just be in Jacksonville or Atlanta or somewheah other than heah,” she paused. “All the Republican voters, that is, and heah’s the real kicker—there is a snowstorm in the Northeast that is going to keep votin’ in some key precincts to a trickle.
“Well, that’s some consolation because New England is solid blue,” Jenks fished for a balm.
“Well, yes and no,” she replied. “If this continues as projected, we are going to lose at least eight Florida seats in the House and, possibly, both Senate seats. That’s the bad news.”
“What’s the good news?” he queried.
“We may pick up two seats in Connecticut…but,” she paused for dramatic effect, there’s mo’ bad news, and, it’s real bad…”
He gave her an annoyed “do tell” look. He had an inkling because he was already doing the math in his head.
“We could lose Florida.”
“That means we lose the election!”
“Not if we win Connecticut!”
Jenks head hurt. “Just tell me,” he implored her.
“It looks like we could lose all 27 electoral votes in Florida and gain seven in Connecticut. That means that neither party will have a majority in the Electoral College. To make matters worse…”
He finished her sentence, “there will be a six seat swing in the House and a two seat swing in the Senate in favor of the Democrats. The House will be equally divided depending on how Whatshisname, the Libertarian from Wyoming votes in this situation…”
It was not necessary to say any more. The election could, and probably would, end in an unprecedented stalemate. The Electoral College could not elect a president.
“So, this is why you couldn’t sleep, Glenda Alice?” asked Jenks
“No, suh,” she replied, “this is just politics. The day that keeps me awake, I’ll quit. But,” she hesitated a moment, “a lady can’t quit a long, lonely night.”


























Chapter 23

Loretta and Kat had one job—deliver New London to the Democratic Party. New London, populated by fishermen, dock laborers and blue collar cannery workers of all races depended upon every type of government handout from welfare and unemployment to subsidies and tariffs on foreign imports. It had never gone Republican in the history of …. well, for as long as either of them could remember. Yet, if they did not take action in the next 22 hours, it would be carried by the Republican Party. “Unfair; so unfair,” thought Loretta. They had worked 6 months on this campaign and now they would be undone by an unseasonable weather anomaly. “So unfair.”




































Chapter 24

Wednesday, November 3, 1:03 am EST

Dan Rather looked slightly rumpled and dyspeptic. Katie was cool and pretty, as if it were eight o’clock in the morning, not one. Behind them, the familiar Election Night blue-red map of the United States displayed, for all America to see, that the votes were in and both Connecticut and Florida were to close to call.
Dan had long since exhausted his supply of folksy Texas aphorisms such as “tighter than Dick’s hat band” and “closer than a store bought shave” to describe the election. And, speaking of shaves, it looked like he could use one.
They had been on the air since 6 pm EST and it didn’t look like the election would be called any time soon. Both candidates had predicted victory.
No one could tell from her cool demeanor that Katie’s eyes were killing her and that she had a serious jones going for a glass of pinot noir out of the bottle she had stashed in her dressing room fridge, behind the natural peanut butter and a two day old take out order of tuna rolls. “Let’s go over to Bob Schieffer for an eighth grade civics lesson on what is happening tonight,” she said.
Bob Schieffer, scholarly and low key as always, began his lecture: “As you all know, we don’t really vote directly for the President. Under the U.S. Constitution, we vote for electors who, in turn, vote for the President at the Electoral College. There are 538 total electors. Each state has an amount of electoral votes equal to the total number of representatives and senators from that state. DC has three. As you can see, Florida has 27 electoral votes and Connecticut has seven.” He paused to allow the viewing public to absorb what he had said. “If the Republicans take Florida and the Democrats take Connecticut, the Republicans will win the election. If either takes both states, obviously, that party will win.” He paused for the big reveal “but, and here’s the interesting twist, if the Republicans lose Florida and win Connecticut, there will be a virtual tie at 268 electoral votes for the Democrats and 267 for the Republicans. Two sixty eight and 267, you say only adds up to 535, not 538. Correct, but, the difference, 3, is the electoral votes for Wyoming, which all went, for the first time in history, to the Libertarian candidate, wildly popular, at least in Wyoming, Representative James “Mustang” La Salle.
To sum it up, the goal is 270 electoral votes, a bare majority. Under this scenario, neither party will have a majority in the Electoral College. In other words, Wyoming controls the outcome of this election. If the Wyoming votes go to the Republicans, they will win. If, and this is not likely, Wyoming goes to the Democrats, they win. If the Electoral vote stays as is, there will be a tie which will go to the House of Representatives. Here’s the rub there. If present trends continue, both the Senate and the House will be in a virtual tie for the first time in history. 50-50 in the Senate and 219-218-1 in the House. Again, the deciding vote could easily be Mustang La Salle of Wyoming. Back to you, Dan and Katie”
“Well,” said Katie, “you’ve really given us something to think about, Bob”
“You can say that again,” interjected Dan. “This could turn into a real goat rope that makes the Bush/Gore fiasco of 2000 look like Ned and the First Reader. We’ll have more from
Bob after this break.”



Chapter 25

James “Mustang” La Salle watched the election returns with unfettered amusement. Nothing had truly amazed him since a volcano blew most of its top into his parent’s yard in 1980. This was beginning to come close. As the deadlock in Florida and Connecticut went from interesting possibility to probable reality and the quart bottle of Bombay gin, his only Election Night companion, diminished, his smile had evolved into a chuckle, punctuated by the occasional outright guffaw. Once he had even clapped his hands together with glee.
His cell phone answering machine had long since filled to capacity and he had 249 unanswered emails on his laptop. He had ignored calls and emails from the President of the United States, both party chairmen, Dan Rather, Barbara Walters and all of his ex-wives.
He sat on the screened porch of a small pine log cabin in the foot hills of the Big Horn Mountains. He had built it with his own hands and a double-bitted ax. It had taken him three years.
The cabin had no heat except for a fire place and two Franklin stoves, one on the porch and a second in the main room. It had no electricity except for a bank of batteries charged by solar cells and a windmill. This was sufficient to keep his portable TV, laptop and phone operating and the well pumping. No one but he knew how to find the cabin.
To supplement the gin as a guard against the chill of altitude and season, Mustang wore a sheepskin rancher’s coat, flannel lined Levis and an ancient pair of logger’s boots that laced with hooks up to his knees. Woolen socks protruded out of the tops of the boots and were folded over the first set of hooks.
He watched Dan and Katie and, as they went to commercial, flipped to the other networks, CNN and Headline News, to verify the status of the returns. All had Florida and Connecticut too close to call with a real possibility of a tie in the electoral vote with no party receiving a majority. He turned the sound down on Dan and Katie after they began repeating themselves to fill up dead air. In their place, Chris Le Doux sang “Call of the Wild” from the speakers of his laptop.

After graduation, Mustang had served a brief and happy stint as a constitutional law professor at U of W Law School. He did not need any TV civics wonk to tell him the consequences of a tie in the Electoral College. He had already researched it for himself on Wikipedia. The 12th and 20th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were clear.
If the Electoral College could not elect a president or vice-president by the deadline set by law, the Senate would select a vice-president from the 2 candidates receiving the most votes and the House would select a president from the 3 top candidates. Each state would form a delegation of its Representatives and each delegation would have one vote. The first candidate to receive 26 votes would be president. If no president was selected by the deadline prescribed by law, the VP Elect would be president. If the Senate failed the elect a vice president, however, the Constitution left further selection to Congress “as prescribed by Law.”
Mustang did some rough math in his head. The Senate was deadlocked at 50-50. Knowing full well that the VP they chose would very likely immediately become president, it is not likely that they would stray from party lines and reach a majority.
The House was a different story. Although virtually tied in party affiliation, the voting of each state was not susceptible of easy calculation.
Texas, for example, historically blue, had been red since the Reagan coattails of 1980, but because of the War in Iraq, the Republican Party had lost some steam. There were many Democratic Congressmen from rural areas and South Texas. However, some of them were as conservative as their Republicans counterparts and could not automatically be counted upon to vote along party lines in a constitutional crisis. This pattern repeated itself through out the “New” South. Many other states had shown a tendency to swing back and forth.
He knew that the question of the Presidency after complete deadlock was an uncertainty. Would the existing President and VP remain in office? Would the Succession Act be applied? Would there be new elections? He also knew that constitutional ambiguity would bring the Supreme Court into play. They had shown themselves not to be above politics when the race was on the line.
Horse-trading would be the order of the day. Cabals and alliances would be formed. Voting blocs would emerge. Promises would be made…and broken. Treachery and deceit would abound. Deals would be made and remade.
Mustang clapped his hands together again. This would, indeed, be a giant goat rope and with the three electoral votes he controlled and one of 50 in the House, he would be just where he liked it—in the heat of the kitchen stirring every pot.


Mustang La Salle did not get his nick name, as many assumed, from the song but, rather, from the way he played quarterback for the Washington State Cougars, perennial step-children to the better financed Huskies, in the Pac 10. The name was given to him by a sports writer for the Seattle Times during the heady days when the Cougars were referred to as the Kardiac Kids and seemed to pull every game out of the fire at the last second. Mustang had been labeled, “can’t run, can’t pass, can’t lose” by the offensive coach of the Cougars.
Skinny, lanky and small for a college athlete, Mustang moved around in the backfield, opined the writer, like the small, wild horses that populated the American West. He scrambled, gained yardage on broken plays, made up school yard razzle-dazzle in the huddle and threw end- over-end passes for touchdowns. He gave coaches heart palpitations and fans a reason to hope. Although he never quite got the Cougars to the Rose Bowl or made All-American, he had been awarded the apocryphal honor of “almost all coast” by the same sports writer.
Mustang had lived life the way he played football. After law school, he taught for a year, joined a major firm in Spokane for a couple more, went out on his own and then decided that the private practice of law was not a fitting profession for a grown man.
He formed a small, independent exploration company, dabbled in local politics, got rich in a deep gas play in the early eighties, went broke in the late eighties, got rich again in the nineties and then went into politics full time. He was elected as the only representative to the House from the State of Wyoming in 1992.
A Goldwater Republican since high school, Mustang became disillusioned with the Republican Party shortly after September 11, 2001 when it became clear to him that the Republicans no longer stood as the party of limited government. By 2006, he decided to run as an independent but was convinced by the writings of Harry Browne to convert to the Libertarian Party. Mustang figured, correctly, that he could get elected in Wyoming no matter his party affiliation and became the first Libertarian candidate to win a national office.
Under Wyoming law, Mustang did not have to give up his Congressional seat to run for President, so he convinced his son, James Jr., to run for Congress on the Libertarian ticket and he ran for President. Both he and his son, who Mustang had endorsed, carried Wyoming.

Mustang had perhaps three hundred urgent phone calls from the most important people on Earth, all of which should have been returned immediately. Nevertheless, he consulted the phone book on his laptop, dialed a number and waited three rings until a sleepy, distant voice answered, “Hold it…wait a minute…I dropped the phone,” and then, “Hello!”
“Lori, is that you?” Mustang replied.


FOOLED YOU, YOU MULLETS...THIS IS ONLY THE FRIST 25 CHAPTERS. IF YOU WANT THE REST...BUY IT...SUCKERS...JOE SCHITTE THE RAG MAN