At the Twilight's Last Gleaming (26 page)

Lyndon’s eyes traveled around the tilted hallways. “Looks like the cellars of Hell to me.”

“Not far from it, sir,” said Emory. “We’ll explain everything later. Right now we’ve just got to get you away from —”

A roar sounded across the room.

All our eyes turned.

There, standing at the doorway, was Principal Canthorpe, his eyes blazing with rage.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

P
RINCIPAL CANTHORPE’S EYES seemed to glow like coals.

He growled, and that growl was as loud and threatening and unnerving as anything I’ve ever heard in my entire life. It made the hairs on the nape my neck stand up.

“What the hell is going on in here?” he demanded

Senator Clarke stood up tall and straight and dignified. “In the name of the United States Government, I demand you return us to our rightful stations.”

“Oh, it’s you, Senator Clarke.” Canthorpe said. “Thought that spell would work on you as well. But then vampires would seem to have been immune.” Those eyes, yellow now, cast over toward me. They flared. “But ah, my goodness… Those fangs of yours have been busy of late, haven’t they? You’ve got recruits.”

I stood up. “I didn’t realize you spelled werewolf — “h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e” — Doctor Canthorpe.”

Those baleful yellow eyes flared. Canthorpe roared.

“Shut your foul mouth!”

“I believe you buried a barb deep in a Republican hide, young lady,” said President Johnson.

“And you too, you miserable …” The werewolf cut a snarl off, half-delivered. His lips curled up, showing large, sharp teeth. He turned around, and gestured.

Moments later, a group of ten huge wolf-men marched in. They were seven feet tall, with bulging muscles and their heads looked far more wolfish than mannish. They gathered round the Principal snarling and leering at us, but seemingly held at bay by Canthorpe’s silent command.

“Meet my pack!” he said.

They snarled almost in unison, as though this were some call and response.

“Take them and chain them. You know where!” said Canthorpe, pointing at us. “But leave that girl with me and the President Johnson. I believe she might have her uses.”

The pack descended upon Senator Clarke, Emory, Cheryl and Harold. I found out very soon that in fact vampires were no match to werewolves in terms of strength. They got carried off in short order.

But as he was being dragged off Emory shot a look at me.

“Keep your mind open,” he stage-whispered. “Keep your mind open, Rebecca.”

“Hendricks!” Canthorpe raged meanwhile, not noticing. “Where are you, damn you!”

The custodian scampered up. In his hands he held a box.

“Is that it?” said Principal Canthorpe.

“I think so, my Leader.”

“Leader,” mused Johnson. “Bobby Baker used to call me that back in mah Senate days.”

“And the Nazis called Hitler Der Fuhrer, didn’t they?” I said.

“Well, we’re going to have to get them both hooked up now,” said Canthorpe.

“Both?” said Hendricks. “But why?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Yes sir.”

The two approached us.

It didn’t take long for President Johnson to get hooked up just the way we’d found him, and chained back to the wall.

I also quickly found myself in similar garb, similarly harnessed and chained. The helmet was tight and it scraped against my forehead.

“It would appear,” said President Johnson. “That my brain is gonna be washed out deeper than that gulley on mah daddy’s cotton farm he kept tryin’ to fill!”

“And not for the first time, is my guess,” I said. “But I’m not sure why the honor is being extended to me.”

Principal Canthorpe grinned. “I told you, my dear, I saw great potential in you!”

The custodian stood up from his business over me.

“But I don’t understand, Mr. Canthorpe,” I said. “I thought you were a patriotic American! The things you say to us. The flags in your office —”

Canthorpe swiveled on me, eyes flaring.

“I am a patriotic American. More patriotic than you can understand!”

“Well, I’ve never known a patriotic American before who kidnapped the President.”

“There are things you do not know about the truth!” Canthorpe thumped his chest with a fist. “The truth about what it truly going on below the surface.”

“You seem like just a crazy supernatural creature to me!” I said.

“No. I am a patriotic American, working against a grave danger to our country. A danger that the everyday politicians choose to ignore.”

“The Communists? We’re not ignoring the Communists? Besides, are they really all that powerful or persuasive? I mean, I’m a no nothing teenager and no way do I want to have the kind of life that people in Communist countries do.”

“Oh, but you do not understand the truth about who the Communists truly are!” said Canthorpe. “Let me tell you about the Lupinist Clan who took over Russia decades go, took over China and North Korea and North Vietnam — and now threaten South Vietnam.

“They are insidious!

He pounded on his chest with a fist.

“From time immemorial we valiant, brave Wolvine Clan have battled the forces of the Lupinists overseas — and in their attempts to infiltrate this great country!

“They are masters of deceit!”

“The Lupinists and their accursed communism is a vile infection in the Breast of Gaia! These cruel cysts in the backside of Mother Earth must be lanced before — “

He was interrupted by a snarling Hendricks.

“Leader, there is another unanticipated problem…”

“Well, my friends,” said Canthorpe. “I will leave you to get acquainted a bit while I put out another fire. But don’t get too comfortable.”

With a toothy smirk, the werewolf left the room, leaving me with a President of the United States whose hands were tied.

And I was in the same situation.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

“W
ELL YOUNG LADY,” President Lyndon Johnson said. “Looks as though I’ve gotten you into a Texas sinkhole of trouble.”

He leaned his big wrinkled forehead – not unlike a handsome bassett hound’s – into his hands. He certainly looked as mournful as a bassett hound. “You and my other fellow American’s.”

I gazed at him a long moment.

He seemed sadder than words can say, like a father on Christmas Eve with no toys to put beneath his children’s tinseled tree.

I felt a pang of sympathy and was suddenly flapping my lips without a thought to what I was saying.

“Mr. President,” I said. “I took American history and I took civics. I think you’ve accomplished great things.”

“I sure as hell have tried, Miss,” He looked at me. “Long as we’re cellmates, we might as well get on a first name basis. I’m Lyndon.”

“Rebecca.”

“I do believe of Sunnybrook Farm! You are a bright girl!”

“More like the Daphne Du Maurier novel, Mr… I mean, Lyndon.”

“Rebecca, mah wife Lady Bird can’t even get me to read history and biography books, let alone novels. But I do believe I saw the movie. Laurence Olivier? Correct?”

“That’s right. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.”

“Now that Olivier, that man can act! He’s in that
Hamlet
too.” His eyes grew wide. “There are things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, undreamt of in your philosophy.” Those dark eyes grew haunted as a lonesome prairie at midnight. “I wonder how many other times these hairy sons of bitches have hauled my butt into this damned place?”

“So….So you see… It‘s not your fault.”

“Pardon?”

“Vietnam,” I repeated.

“Oh. Vietnam.”

“They’ve been brainwashing you into getting into Vietnam … for their own purposes.”

“Thousands of brave American boys dying in a war that looks un-winnable.” Lyndon Johnson sighed. “Oh, I’m culpable enough…in a big way, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, back in ‘64,” he answered, “I thought I wanted that landslide win so bad.. I didn’t think straight. I thought, Hell. Let’s show that Goldwater a Democratic President ain’t soft on Communism.”

“But maybe afterward you would have de-escalated without…all this…” I snapped my fingers. “Yes! That must have been what happened.”

“This damned… well, I don’t know what to call it,” said the President. “This damned vampire and werewolf business.”

“Yes.

There was silence for a moment.

He shook his head sorrowfully.

“You know, Rebecca. I’ve been a fool. A damned fool. When I was a boy, I picked cotton in the Hill Country of Texas. I watched my Daddy — a fine man — fail and fail and fail. When I was in college, Rebecca, I worked a chain gang one summer under the hot Texas sun for tuition money. Rebecca, I suffered. I suffered hard. But you know what? I didn’t suffer a fraction of what I saw other folks suffer.

“And I thought, If there’s one good thing that I can do with this skill I have…This skill I have to work with people, to talk people into things…. Well, then it should be to help people not suffer so much. And you know, later when I taught school…I saw Mexican kids suffer….And always, always I saw black folks suffer.”

His brow furrowed.

“But you know what, Rebecca.” He took a deep mournful breath, a lonely sound. “All along I see now that everything is just a power struggle. And what I wanted most of all wasn’t to help folks — but to help myself. Help myself to power. Glory in it. Get high on it.”

“Now I know.

“And it’s beyond even my worse Texas sized dreams… Texas sized nightmares, I should say.”

He shook his head and his loose hair swirled.

“Worse. I’ve just been a tool of the Forces of Evil.

“I wonder if I can ever be a tool of Forces of Good.”

He raised his eyebrows and turned to me. He looked at me almost imploringly.

“And if so, how?

I took a deep breath.

I thought.

“You’re so human!” I said.

“Well, I do pull down my pants to take a …. oh, pardon me, Rebecca. I’m a damned boor and you’re clearly a real lady.”

I smiled.

And then it came to me.

The answer.

It came so fast I didn’t see how stupid it was. It just sort of rushed out of my mouth like a train on a whoosh of hot air.

I said, “Say, isn’t it an election year?”

“That’s right.”

“Why not just not run.”

He looked up.

His dark eyes blazed.

And for a moment, I thought maybe he was a supernatural being.

“Not run for another four years of a job I fought for, bled for — for three damned decades?”

“Yes! I mean, after all..” I cocked my head and raised a finger, pointing it at him. “You might lose anyway.”

True fear crossed his face.

He nodded sadly.

“That’s for sure.”

“And if you don’t run…I mean you can help get things straight. Not just with Vietnam. But these forces of evil. Maybe they aren’t really evil, anyway. They’re …They’re just a part of life…. A part of everything.”

President Lyndon Johnson sat up straight.

“Well, cover me in a ten gallon hat of cow manure. That’s a damned good idea!”

He nodded.

But then his eyes grew doubtful.

“But how the hell do we get out of this…you know, unaltered. For me to do all this?”

I nodded.

“I think I’ve got an idea on that score too. Let me tell you about Principal Canthorpe. He’s a martinet. He likes to be in charge. And you know what? He says he’s a patriot. He’s got American flag all over this school And a huge one on the wall of his office. He plays the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful at the drop of the hat from dawn to —”

Lyndon Johnson nodded. “The Twilight’s Last Gleaming.”

“That’s right.”

“So? He’s a patriot. A werewolf patriot. I guess he’s covered under mah Civil Rights Act too!”

I laughed.

I told him then about the speech that I’d received upon being admitted to Principal Canthorpe’s office for the egregious sin of my gloomy dress.

“In England, Lyndon, I had a very good American History teacher.” I said. “He claimed that the U.S. Senate had never quite seen the likes of you. He said that you had figured out how to get power there long before you got any seniority power. And when you became Majority Leader, you used that to get more power. And when you thought it was the right time, you used that power to pass the first Civil Rights Act from Congress in almost a century. The Bill that started things rolling toward what you did as President. And he said you did it by negotiation and compromise.”