Five Fortunes (45 page)

“Senator Turnbull asked the Forest Service to relax its inspections of Culbertson’s Charter Fleet.

“When Culbertson’s planes crash, Jimbo Turnbull says it’s a harmless coincidence.

“Cronyism. Favors to Special Interests. Business as Usual. We need a change in Idaho.”

Against swelling music, they showed a picture of Laurie Lopez in profile against the Sawtooth Mountains, and under the picture a banner that read “Laura Lopez for U.S. Senate.”

Laurie’s numbers were inching up. “I’ll be,” said Bliss Knox. Hunt and Bliss and Amy were meeting with the state party chair, talking through donor lists. “I’ll be,” Bliss said again, looking at the latest polling figures. “Laurie really read this timing right. I guess Big Jim is finally vulnerable. I got to hand it to her, I thought he had another term in him. Too bad I didn’t have the sense to jump in—we might have actually
won
this sucker.”

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Jimbo Turnbull, meanwhile, was mad as hell. He was back in the state campaigning every weekend and he had ads pounding away on radio and TV. Experience counts. Getting things done. Jobs for Idaho. He was lashing out in two directions like a maddened bull.

Laurie, a tax-and-spend liberal with no experience. Slash. Lloyd Prince, a fanatical tree-hugging carpetbagger. Slash. He made the mistake of calling Prince a “Greenie Weenie” in front of an open mike on the set of
Boise This Week
, and Prince took full advantage.

There were rumors that Turnbull’s campaign had a mole in Laurie’s headquarters. It was supposed to be a girl in the research office who was sleeping with one of Jimbo’s strategists. Walter and Amy and Ajax wracked their brains trying to figure out who it was.

Lynn’s team was working round the clock thinking up spots to respond to Jimbo’s. They hammered at Jimbo’s ties to special interests. His huge contributions from tobacco, from the timber industry, from the NRA. Jimbo hammered back. Laurie’s campaign was funded by limousine liberals from Hollywood. By Feminazis.

Laurie’s numbers held steady and Lloyd Prince went on his eccentric way, appealing to a bizarre coalition of Christian and environmental extremists.

“I’m getting kind of fond of Lloyd,” said Laurie. “He is pure, and he’s relentless.”

“See,” said Walter, “that’s just the problem. You’re true Idaho, you’re just contrary enough to like him. Look out, there may be more of you than you think.”

The President of the United States stopped in Idaho to campaign for Laurie. He made a stirring speech on the steps of the capitol with Hunt on one side of him and Laurie on the other. Laurie fell four points in the polls. Idaho hated the President.

The end of September brought the Idaho Senate Debates.

There were now six candidates in the race. The Idaho
Courier
had done a Sunday feature saying Idaho was a one-party state. It had 360 / Beth Gutcheon

urged non-Republicans to get into the pool. This had brought out a young woman running for the Natural Law Party, and an independent, described as a monk. The monk was unable to attend the debate though; he was out of the state on retreat.

The candidates agreed to a town meeting format, with the audience asking the questions. Then there was the Crisis of the Chairs. Since Lloyd Prince couldn’t stand at a podium, Laurie said they should all sit. Turnbull said it would cramp his style; he liked to stride around. Carrol Coney thought it would be cool if they all had wheelchairs. The final vote decided they would sit, but each could choose his own chair. That meant each campaign spent a week discussing Messages Sent by Furniture.

The Natural Law lady showed well. She was against political action committees, and by this time so were the voters. She supported Head Start and Transcendental Meditation in the schools. Laurie and Lloyd thought those were fine ideas, but then Lloyd got started on school prayer. Jimbo hated all of it; he sat in his big leather wing-backed chair and bellowed away about Tax and Spend and Limousines. Everyone was bored. The clear winner of the debate was Carrol Coney.

“I want the Air Force out of the Owyhee,” he cried. He was sitting on a kitchen stool. “You have any idea what kind of racket those planes make? And smoke bombs! I live in a house made of hay, how would you like it if I dropped smoke bombs on your house and it was hay?” He was addressing Senator Turnbull, who was very proud to have drawn the Air Force to make the Owyhee desert a training ground. “We have California bighorn sheep—you ever seen one of those suckers? California bighorns, population’s dropped in half since ninety-one. Explain
that
, Senator Air Force.” Jimbo Turnbull claimed that the planes did nothing to harm the wildlife. “I moved out there to hunt and fish, to live like a natural man. But I can’t hunt no bighorns if your goddamn airplanes make ’em drop dead first.”

The audience loved it.

“Mr. Coney,” said a questioner, “my name is Marilyn Joyce, I’m a dental hygienist from Ketchum? We have a lot of airplane noise in

Five Fortunes / 361

Blaine County too, from private jets. I was wondering if you think jets should land in unspoiled areas like that, or what you think about that.”

“Hell, no, I don’t think they should. I think you should shorten up those runways so the only thing that can fly in there is an eagle.

Something too small to carry skis. I think you should make it take as long to get in there as it took when you went by covered wagon.

You ever been to Aspen, Colorado, man?” The questioner, who was still standing, shook her head. “Go take a look at Aspen, Colorado.

It’s full of ghost houses. Great big houses people live in two weekends a year. What kinda community is that?”

The moderator tapped another questioner. “My name is George Garcia and I’m a schoolteacher. I’d like to ask Mr. Coney what is your position on storing nuclear waste at the INEL.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Coney. He crossed his arms over his chest. He was wearing a suit coat he’d bought at the Salvation Army that morning, so you couldn’t see his tattoos. The questioner, looking amazed, could only echo him.

“You think it’s a good idea?”

“Hell, yes. See, I don’t call it waste, I call it nuculer technology.

We ought to keep it. That’s the stuff that will put us on the map.”

Lloyd Prince was so cross he was doing wheelies.

Coney was mobbed after the debate. He went on sharing his views into the night, and when the next full-sample polls came out, he had 8 percent of the voters. The candidate who was down was Jimbo Turnbull.

F
lora had moved home to live with Delia the third week in September. It was DeeAnne who forced Carter’s hand.

“You’re thinking the longer you have her the more she is yours, right?”

“Right.”

“Because the longer you have her, the more her own flesh and blood is a stranger to her.”

“Right.”

“So the sooner she goes, the better.”

“Delia isn’t ready.”

“Probably not. How ready were you nine months ago? It’s a job most people grow into.”

“I can’t do this. I can’t stand it.”

“Yes. You can. You saved her, honey. Nothing will ever change that. But that doesn’t make her yours. Aunt Sallie will be right around the corner. She can play with Titus again. She can have a whole family, a whole neighborhood, not just one menopausal white woman.”

“Who loves her.”

“She’ll still have you. She can keep coming to work with Delia.”

Carter was stymied. It was right for Flora. It was right for Delia.

She gave up the afternoon she came into the office to see Flora on Delia’s lap. They were singing a song together that Carter had never heard before, not that she could sing if her life depended on it.

“You know every word of that, don’t you, baby? Smart baby Flora-bug,” Delia smiled at her. She looked up at Carter. “Mama used to sing that to Shanti and me when we were little.”

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Five Fortunes / 363

Carter’s house felt completely empty with Flora’s stuff all gone.

For a couple of days she kept going over to Shanti’s house in the evening—Delia’s house—to help feed the baby and put her to bed.

But she began to feel like some sort of unwanted uncle, hanging around. Flora was comfortable with Delia. She was glad to see Carter arrive, but she didn’t worry when she left. She was in her own house.

She’d see Carter in the morning. Aunt Sallie was delighted to have the baby back in the neighborhood, and she let Carter know that Delia was being scrupulous about going to “her meetings.”

“You think she’s going to hold it together?” Carter asked Sallie Spear on the phone one night.

“I do think so, I do think so. I pray about it. She likes that job with all you.”

“She’s doing it very well,” Carter said. This was true enough. For someone with no previous work experience of a lawful nature, Delia was doing better than anyone expected, although her number skills were weak and her spelling abominable.

“That’s why God made spell checkers,” DeeAnne said blithely.

She was cutting Carter absolutely no slack. She didn’t see any percentage in it. Rip it out, sew it up, get on with life. What other choice was there?

“So then she says to me,” Carter reported to DeeAnne, “she says,

‘I think Delia admires you so, she’d like to learn to be a detective too some day.’” Carter waited for a reaction.

DeeAnne was thoughtful. “You know, she’s not nearly fat enough, but other than that…”

“DeeAnne, come on. She’s got my baby, now you want her to have my life?”

“I want her to have her own. Go take a cold shower, buy a new hat, take up a hobby. How’s that friend of yours doing in Idaho?”

Carter had nearly forgotten to pay attention. She went home and wallowed in cable news shows for two nights, but she couldn’t find anything on Idaho. Finally she called the candidate.

O
ne of Turnbull’s researchers came up with a press clip from Laurie’s visit to the senior center in Twin Falls.

Back in the spring, early days of the primary. They built a TV spot around it and Jimbo started using it in his stump speech.

“Laurie Lopez is going to decide for herself if you’re too rich to get Social Security or Medicare. She doesn’t care how hard you worked, she doesn’t know how long you’ll live. That’s what you get with inexperience, folks. Laurie Lopez doesn’t know what it’s like to be old and alone. I tell you the senior people of Idaho are scared of this talk, and they should be.”

“Oh, shit,” said Laurie. “It’s out of context, I didn’t scare anyone…”

“It doesn’t matter, Laurie,” said Walter. “We’ve got to respond to this.”

Unfortunately, while Lynn and Walter were working on a spot to control the damage, Laurie got caught by a reporter at the end of a day, when she was wet with rain, had a headache, and was getting another cold. Asked the same question she’d answered that day fifty times, she snapped, “It’s ridiculous. If I’ve scared any old people, I’d like to meet them.”

Jimbo’s people had a field day. They had quavery old people by the carloads herded into gymnasiums. Jimbo would go from one to the next with a microphone, asking what Medicare meant to them, asking what would happen to them if it were taken away. They were all coached, it was way off the point, but it hogged the campaign news for

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Five Fortunes / 365

days. All Laurie could do was run her expensive rebuttal spot in as many markets as she could afford, and have every staffer who could read and write sending letters to editors and calling up talk radio shows, while she sent op ed pieces to the major papers explaining her true position.

Her numbers slipped again in the next round of polls. They had three weeks to go, and momentum was going the wrong way.

Laurie’s cold moved into her chest and she couldn’t stop coughing.

“Go home,” said Walter. “You need a night in your own bed.”

“I can’t, we have a town meeting in Moscow tonight.”

“You don’t need another night in a bad motel. Bliss will do it.”

“Don’t…it hurts when I laugh.”

“He’ll be great. We can all do your stump speech by now. Laurie, you’ve got to get a night’s sleep, and frankly, you need some distance. Go home. I can’t have you sick again. Where are the kids?”

“They’re at Billy and Cinder’s.” That was except for Carlos, who was working for the campaign full-time.

“I’m going to have Carlos drive you home. I want you to go straight to bed, and I’ll send someone to get you in the morning.”

She lay back in the seat with her eyes closed while Carlos drove.

She felt sick and sad. To come so far and screw up…it was too hard to bear. And it was her fault. Everyone had worked so hard and she had lost it.

The night woods were wild with yellow leaves. It was two weeks to the start of hunting season. One way or the other, it would be over. Her mind was racing.

“Honey?”

“Momski?”

“I left my goddamn briefing book.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I think where we were watching the tapes. You know what it looks like?”

“I’ll tell Walter. He’ll have it.”

“I should be in Moscow. I was ready for them. I was going to put it together.”

366 / Beth Gutcheon

“Momski, shut up, please. You have to save your voice.”

“Oh, thank you, Doctor,” she said. She loved Carlos. He was a goofball, but deeply trustworthy.

When they got home, the house was utterly dark. It had been days since anyone had slept here. Even the dogs were with Cinder.

Carlos turned up the heat and sent his mother upstairs. He heated some water and put lemon and rum in it and took it up to her.

“Thank you, Doctor.” She was in bed in a flannel nightgown.

“You look very cute. Like Old Mother Hubbard.”

She took the mug from him.

“You want anything to eat?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Do you want me to spend the night here?” Carlos asked. He had a room in Hailey, and she knew he would rather go back to town—there was a buzz about the last weeks of a campaign. It was exhausting but addictive. You’d been so out of sync with the rest of the world for so long it was like being out to sea with your own ship of fools. Even when nothing was happening, you wanted to be there.