The Arrangement (21 page)

Eli tread across the worn carpet to his father’s study. He barely remembered living in this house as a child. He peeked inside an empty room that he remembered as his nursery and studied the faded pastel walls. Stuffed animals and a small bed waited for the little boy who once lived there. His parents had not seemed very interested in redecorating the nursery since they only visited once or twice a year. As a teenager, he’d been perfectly happy in a room on the second floor for their occasional visits.

After closing the door behind him, he took slow, deliberate steps further down the hallway to the room where his father spent much of his time. When he reached in to flick on the light and enter the room, the mustiness of old books assaulted his nostrils. Solid oak bookcases towered along three walls. Dust obscured the outdated labels on his father’s collection of antique globes on the top shelf. In the middle of the large, open room sat a wide oak desk that matched the bookshelves. The surface remained clean, except for one pen, a legal pad, a wooden photo frame, a telephone, and a thick layer of dust. A large leather desk chair with a high back sat close behind the desk.

On the other side, two guest chairs with brown leather seats beckoned anyone who requested an audience with the politician. Thick green curtains covering a window on one wall billowed between two large game heads protruding from the walls on either side.

The room reminded Eli of men’s studies in old movies. He imagined his father sitting at the desk, pen in hand, scribbling on the legal pad. He blinked hard. When he opened his eyes, only the pen and pad remained, as though his father intended to return.

He did intend to return,
Eli reminded himself. The heart attack had surprised everyone. Unexpected tears stung his eyes. He and his father shared little closeness during his lifetime. He regretted not telling his father how much he wanted to follow in his footsteps. Eli didn’t realize how much politics meant to his life until his father died.

He ignored the boxes stacked against the bookshelves and walked, legs wobbly, to his father’s desk. He read the faded, scrawled words on the legal pad and recognized them as the first draft of a speech he gave years ago. Had it really been that long since his father sat at this desk?

Eli turned around and ran his finger across the dusty edge of a row of books. Dust covered most of the brightly colored hardbacks, hiding their titles and probably even their worth. Eli wondered if these shelves held priceless first editions of classic novels.

He knew somewhere Tom Sawyer’s adventures hid, waiting to be found by another young boy eager for adventure. Eli’s father had pulled the book from a top shelf one day when Eli was about ten years old and bored with a long summer ahead of him. He suggested Eli spend some time reading instead of merely idling his time away. At least his father knew him well enough not to suggest something dry, like Shakespeare. He appreciated the classic English poet now, but as a ten-year-old he knew the book would soon have been hidden under his bed.

Eli sneezed, not only clearing his airways but also his mind. He had a task—to sort through his father’s boxes in search of inspiration.

He squatted to read the writing on the box at his feet.
D.C. Study
the large, loopy handwriting of his mother read. He pulled open the flaps to find a stack of books. Lifting the heavy box to the side, he read the label on the next box:
Legislative files.
He dismissed that container without even opening it. Eli moved further away from his father’s desk to start at the doorway. Each box had its own label, such as
Letters, Awards, Photos,
and
Staff.
Eli stacked each box carefully back where he found it until he found a large box labeled
Campaign.
The box made a trail in the dust on the floor as he pulled it across the room to one of the leather chairs in front of his father’s desk. He hoisted the box into the other chair and slipped open the flaps.

A hodgepodge of buttons, fans, bumper stickers, tri-fold brochures, and headshots mingled together. Eli took out a few buttons from his father’s earliest campaigns. He grabbed the pen and paper on his father’s desk. His father wouldn’t be back to need them and, from the looks of the room, no one else had even been in the the study to care how his father left it. He turned the pages of the old pad and scribbled furiously with the pen until blots of ink appeared on the page.

Satisfied his method of note-taking would work, he pulled items from the box. While bumper stickers had been a staple of early campaigns, his father’s last campaign had used magnetic tags. His father had never liked bumper stickers anyway because they made a car appear cluttered and outdated. But he knew in order to get his name out to his voters, he had to promote them. When people began using magnetic tags, his father jumped on the idea immediately. Then when the election was over, people could pull the tags off without hurting their vehicle—a sound economic idea in his father’s eyes. Eli liked the idea, too, and made a note to have Michael contact a printing company about creating some tags.

For two hours Eli sorted through his father’s memorabilia and made notes of ideas for Michael’s campaign. His friend could win a local election without elaborate television spots or professionally created logos. But he did need a slogan to catch the ears of the community. Many of the new voters had moved into Duncan since the last election. They worked outside the community and usually only bought a few groceries and gas in the town before going to bed at night or heading to work in the morning.

That’s exactly what Michael wanted to correct. He wanted people to know the community where they lived and played even if they did not work there. He scribbled out some ideas for a slogan but scratched out each one as he reread it. He wished he could call Evie. She might have some fresh ideas.

With a shake of his head, Eli carefully slid his father’s smiling photos back into the box, settled some brochures on top of them, and nestled a bag of buttons into the box as well. After closing the flaps, he pulled it back across the floor to where a print of the box sat in the dust. He tore out his page of notes from his father’s pad and returned the pad and pen to the desk. He allowed his fingers to make a trail across the dust covering the top of the desk before turning out the lights and wandering back down the hallway.

Eli heard the television in the den talking through the day’s news and followed the noise to find his mother. She sat on a rich chocolate brown leather couch with her feet curled under her, listening intently to the nightly newscaster tell about the events of the day. A moment later the same newscaster interviewed a congressman Eli recognized as one of his father’s friends. His mother turned away from the television and toward her son.

“I haven’t even heard from him since I moved,” she mused. “I guess he’s been busy taking care of the living too much to think about the dead.”

“Mom,” Eli chastised lightly.

“I’m not being ugly, Eli. I remember when Senator Folkson passed away. I thought about his wife many times. We had tea together every couple of weeks and planned dinners together. But when he died in that car accident, she moved back to her family’s estate, and I didn’t have time to call her. We were in the middle of a hard election year,” she explained.

“I’m sure she understood.”

“I don’t know.” His mother shook her head.

“Whatever happened to her?” he asked as he perched on a recliner next to the couch.

“As far as I know, she’s living back with her family in Georgia. I think her daughter got married a year or so ago.”

“Why don’t you call her? There’s no reason you can’t still be friends, just because your husbands, who had a connection, passed away,” he encouraged. He often worried about his mother. The charity work and socialization she enjoyed in D.C. didn’t exist here. And, as she’d mentioned earlier in the evening, she was sometimes bored and lonesome in the large house alone all day.

“Hmm. Maybe,” she hedged.

Eli focused briefly on the television. The station replaced the senator answering questions with photos of a new baby panda born at the state zoo. Not sure he could endure the entire newscast without falling asleep, Eli stood, kissed his mother on the head, and said good night. Outside, the cool fall air reminded him he’d left his jacket and tie inside. He groaned. He would come back tomorrow, maybe at lunch, to retrieve them.

The silence of the evening comforted him tonight as memories of his father’s political career filtered into his mind. He barely remembered the first state races. His father would live in the state capital for several months and they would see little of him, but it made no extra requirements on him as a child. But when his father first ran for Congress, Eli vaguely remembered being shocked at the move from a small town to the metropolis of D.C.

Funny how he came to love that city and dreaded the summer vacations and winter breaks they would take back to Duncan each year. Now he felt no desire, no inner calling to return to the fast-paced life of a lawyer in a city like that. Maybe that was God’s direction for him. Surely if he intended for Eli to return, he would place a burning desire to escape the doldrums of small-town life in his heart.

Just as his father’s memories gave way to dreams about the future, his cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Eli,” Michael Hudson’s voice greeted him. “I got your message. What’s going on?”

“Oh, I had some ideas for the campaign.”

“You really are on top of this thing. Thanks. Can you tell me about them?”

“I don’t have a lot of specifics. I did find a couple of fundraising letters my dad sent out. I wanted to suggest that you come up with a few people who might contribute. You won’t need much, but it’ll take several thousand dollars to get signs, buttons, and magnetic bumper stickers made,” Eli rattled off his ideas.

“Great suggestions. I have a supplier we buy a lot of printing from that I’ll check with about a deal on those things.” Eli heard him writing notes. “How early should we start with the fundraising?”

“If the qualifying paperwork has to be in sometime during March, we should get started now. If we get the letters out before the end of the year, people can give this year and next year, which will help on the paperwork.”

“Okay, so I need a list of donors and a printer. What else?”

“I’ve been trying to think about a slogan, but I don’t have much. Have you thought of any ideas?”

“Not really. I’m good with organization and running a business, but marketing eludes me a little. Maybe we can find someone else to help us out with that. I have a couple more people I wanted to ask to help with the campaign. Maybe when I get the team together we can have a planning session over dinner.”

“Sounds great,” Eli agreed. “Just let me know a date.”

“Will do. Talk to you later.”

With that, both men disconnected. Eli drove into his driveway minutes later. He vowed as he walked into the house not to think about politics anymore that evening. Instead he settled onto the couch to watch reruns of a classic Super Bowl game.

12

)

week after the Thanksgiving holidays, Evie agreed to join Brooke’s Tuesday night Bible Study group. At 5:15 p.m., she tucked her red wool peacoat closer as the early December wind whipped through the courtyard outside the Christian Student Center. She almost ventured inside by herself but hesitated as her high-heeled boot made contact with the concrete walk. Instead, she perched on a wooden bench outside and scanned the sidewalk for any sign of Brooke.

In the month since her last conversation with Eli, Evie had spent most Sundays in church and attempted to read her Bible daily. She admitted only to herself in the quiet of her room that the words she read made little sense. She often wanted to call Eli and ask his opinion about a passage she’d read.

But she never made the call. She always stopped herself, stumbled through the passage another couple of times, and called it quits. Her inability to understand the stories and commands of that ancient book lured her into attending this Bible study more than her desire to please Brooke. Sure, she wanted to keep her friend from thinking she was a total flake, but inside something yearned to understand more about God and his will.

Dusk settled across campus as Evie caught sight of Brooke taking brisk steps toward the Center. Beside her walked another student Evie had not met. The other girl’s tall stature loomed over Brooke and her meaty figure forced her to walk part on and part off the sidewalk. Evie waved and stood to greet them.

“Evie,” Brooke squealed, “you came!” She reached an arm around Evie’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Morgan, this is Evie. She’s going to join our Bible study.”

Morgan shifted her large brown bag on her shoulder. “Hi,” she responded, her smile bringing a dimple out on her cheek. “I hope Juliana thought to make some hot chocolate or at least heat up the water for it,” she commented as she opened one of the double doors leading into the Center.

They walked into a large foyer filled with couches and game tables. Ping-pong and billiard tables alternated on one side of the room while an air-hockey table took up the space on the other side. Evie’s muscles relaxed as the sudden warm air surrounded her.

Evie took off her black leather gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of her coat. She followed Brooke and Morgan down a short hallway and into a smaller room, where three other women sat around a round table. The rich scent of chocolate wafted through the air, inviting Evie to remove her coat and settle in with friends, even though she didn’t recognize any of the other students.

“Anyway, Professor Jamison insisted on calling her ‘Soapie’ throughout the whole class,” one of the women said to another. The woman’s dark curls framed her oval face.

“Morgan, you’re here! I was afraid I was going to have to lead us again,” the second woman greeted them a moment later.

“A girl skips one meeting to have lunch with her sister, and you act like she’s run away forever.” Morgan held her arms out in an elaborate gesture. “Now, where’s all the hot cocoa I smell?”