The Best Laid Plans (21 page)

About 23 minutes later, I received a call from Pete1 – to clarify my directive further, I assumed. Nope. They were seeking their next assignment. They’d already finished calling all known Liberals in the riding and had time left over to frost their split ends electric neon blue. I then instructed them to use their voter lists to call all of the NDP supporters they’d identified when canvassing and to ensure that they voted. That would keep them busy for at least another 17 minutes. I then gave them the rest of the day off. Of course, I invoked our friendship when prevailing upon them to cast their own votes for the NDP candidate, Jane Nankovich. She was a little-known union activist from the beverage-bottling operation but would serve C-P admirably.

Lindsay had responsibilities on campus, so I was on my own for the day. Given my state of mind at the time, I would not have been scintillating company, anyway. In a moment when hope was briefly shocked back into normal sinus rhythm, I pulled a ball cap low and drove over to the NDP campaign headquarters. I walked with purpose into the election-day chaos. In C-P, chaos for the NDP was benchmarked at four volunteers, an overweight stray tabby, and Cat Stevens playing on a 20-year-old Radio Shack stereo. I’d have thought the Cameron crash-and-burn would have turned out more people. No reporters in sight. By scanning the Bristol board charts and lists on the walls, I quickly found the corner of the room I was looking for and approached the clipboard-clasping, heavy-set woman who looked in charge.

“I’m here to drive, and my car is just outside the door,” I opened, keeping the bill of my cap lowered.

With precious few volunteers, she took what she could get before it was gone; no questions asked. She handed me a list of voters along with their addresses and pick-up times and shooed me out the door. As I slipped out, I noticed an untouched plate of homemade granola
bran bars, a clear contravention of the fatty-campaign-snacks code. No wonder they had trouble attracting canvassers. On the bright side, I suspect they’d lost no volunteers to constipation.

I spent the next three hours driving NDP shut-ins to their polling stations. For many of them, voting was a highlight of their year.

“Vote early and vote often!” cackled one withered old man as he settled in the front seat of the Liberal campaign headquarters, his caregiver behind us in the back seat. After voting, he asked if I would drive them home along the water. Despite being somewhat behind schedule, we drove the length of the river that passed through Cumberland and parked for 10 minutes at the scenic look-off just beyond the town line. You could tell by his expression he didn’t get out much.

I ended up chauffeuring 15 different NDP voters to seven different polling stations. To say that Jane Nankovich was a long shot to win was the understatement of the millennium. But driving aging lefties to the polls was better than sitting at home, catatonic and drooling. It was midafternoon by the time I’d done my driving for the socialist cause – just another bizarre episode in a constellation of surreal experiences. This campaign had completely extinguished my capacity for surprise.

She was in her usual spot, facing the river. I had expected to find her wallowing in melancholy. I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt to have run in five futile elections only to sit on the sidelines in the sixth when the Tory juggernaut ran aground. Yet, there she was, wearing a look of triumph as she pored over the
Globe and Mail
opened on her lap.

“Hello, Muriel.”

She hadn’t seen me, and she jerked around. “Well, if it isn’t college boy! You’re just in time. I’m about to break into a rousing chorus of ‘Oh Happy Day’ and could use another tenor,” she exclaimed, looking ten years younger. Depressed, she was not.

My eyes narrowed as I stared her down, trying to see beneath the surface. “So you’re all right with all of this?” I asked as I dropped beside her.

“All right? If it weren’t for the fresh gum on my shoe, I’d be flying around the room I’m so tickled,” she bubbled. “Do you know how long we’ve waited for this moment? Do you know how good it feels to be sitting here on election day with a better-than-even chance of victory? I truly never thought I’d live to see this.”

“Well, Cameron hasn’t lost, yet,” I reminded her. “I’ve been clinging for dear life to the far-fetched notion that he can still pull this one out of the fire. I can’t imagine the people of this riding willfully electing a Liberal, notwithstanding the leather-and-leash business the other night.”

Muriel just shook her head – with purpose, not Parkinson’s – her grin still intact. “Ring the bell and slather on the barbecue sauce; the Minister is well and truly done. Yes, if Angus wins, he’ll be slipping into the Commons through the milk box. But this town takes its morals very seriously. A Finance Minister can’t parade his block and tackle around for all to see and expect to win votes in this town, Tory or not,” Muriel declared with authority. “Cameron is cooked.”

“But there’s no way they’re going to vote Liberal or NDP. They’ll hold their nose and mark the X for Cameron. The Tories can still win by default,” I insisted.

“Well, you wait and see what happens. I think a lot of folks will be putting a giant X across the entire ballot. Spoiling your ballot is also a legitimate and time-honoured expression of democratic will. Mark my words, Dr. Addison, bad-boy Eric is going down tonight. Someone else will win – but only as the less interesting flip side of Cameron’s defeat,” she stated for the record. “For your sake, I’m rooting for the NDP, but my heart is with Angus. Poor old soul won’t know what hit him when gets back. By tomorrow night, he may well be the highest-profile backbencher in the House.” She dissolved again in laughter.

That was not what I wanted to hear. I revered her political instincts, but I was just unhinged enough to hold out some sliver of hope for the most popular Finance Minister in Canadian history. But she certainly was in a feisty mood.

“Now do you wish you’d run this time around?” I inquired as I rested my hand on the top of her wrist, feeling the metronome of her illness.

“Hindsight is for geezers with nothing left to live for,” she spat. “I’ve completely lost interest in being elected and dealing with the piddling concerns and personal trifles of this sorry lot of voters. Let someone else expedite their passport applications and gun licences. I’m just as happy to sit here and read by this river for as long as I’ve got. What’s more important is that right now, a 150-year-old dynasty is teetering on its pedestal. In less than five hours, we’ll watch it crash to pieces at our feet. Who cares who wins? This time around, what really matters is who loses.”

I was tapped out, grasping at anything, thinking about myself. “Angus is going to hurt me very badly if he winds up as the MP for Cumberland-Prescott,” I whined.

“I think you’ve underestimated Professor McLintock. I’ve had a number of pleasant chats with him in the last few weeks, and I like him. You chose well, Daniel.”

“Muriel, he only agreed to run on the condition of his guaranteed defeat,” I moaned. “I’m no longer sure I can deliver my side of the bargain. He’ll refuse to serve, and it’ll be a monstrous embarrassment for the Leader and the party, to say nothing of me. I’ll be run out of the party on a rail and will be a ‘don’t do this’ case study in Liberal Campaign Colleges for years to come.”

“Snap out of it!” she interrupted. “Have you spent any time with Angus? Have you talked to him about his views? Do you know anything about him? For mercy’s sake, you’ve been living in his house for the last two months. Have you learned nothing about him?”

I held my tongue. Not that it was a struggle. I had no idea what to say.

“Daniel, based on my conversations with Angus, I think you may have read him wrong. I know he had no interest in running. Who would in this riding? But there’s a man of principle lurking beneath that Scottish brogue and bravado. Marin Lee saw something there, and I think I may have caught a glimpse of it, too,” she remarked. “He may well do you harm, but I would not assume he’ll refuse to serve.”

My puny and overtaxed brain simply could not assimilate this fantasy. I admit it. I’d spent plenty of time with Angus – hours and hours. Hell, I’d seen him naked. I still thought assault and battery would be his likely reaction to winning the election.

I left Muriel to her river and her private thoughts of what might have been. Lindsay was going to spend the evening with her, watching the returns. I needed some time to plan my strategy although I still prayed I wouldn’t need one. In any event, at midnight, I was heading to the airport to meet Angus and after that, perhaps my maker.

I had a very nutritious dinner of stale tortilla chips and mild salsa, and I had to force even that on my reluctant appetite. I’m not sure how old the chips were, but I don’t think you should be able to fold them. After dropping several limp-chip loads of salsa on my pants, the floor, and my shoe, I resorted to a bowl and fork. Afterwards, à la Angus, I stripped off my clothes, checked to see that the coast was clear, and ran off the end of the dock in the gathering darkness. I hadn’t been in the river for a few weeks, and in the interim, autumn had certainly taken a firm grip on the water temperature. In fact, it seemed to me that autumn’s faltering grasp had already surrendered to winter’s chokehold. Thankfully, sound doesn’t travel well underwater, or I might well have violated several municipal ordinances. I shot back out of the water onto the dock, barely touching the ladder. Shriveled and shivering, but in a whole new zone of consciousness, I toweled off and dressed in election-night attire – sweat pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. It would be a long night, so comfort was key.

I checked my voice mail before getting settled in front of the tele vision and listened to 14 messages from various media outlets, begging me to tell them the location of our Liberal campaign party so they could set up their remotes and provide on-the-spot reports as the count came in. I fired up my laptop and crafted an e-mail media statement, announcing that out of respect for Eric Cameron and the unique events of the past weekend, Angus would be watching the returns at an undisclosed location and would reserve comment until the morning. I hit Send and shut down (the computer, I mean; I’d shut down personally two days earlier).

I eschewed the election pregame shows and didn’t turn on the TV until the polls closed at eight o’clock. CBC, Global, and CTV all led with Leathergate – excellent way to start. To my dismay, CTV actually devoted the bottom right-hand corner of the screen to what they called CTV Cameron Watch where viewers could monitor the changing Cumberland-Prescott vote standings as each poll reported. It was sort of like tracking my own vital signs as a life-threatening infection swept through my body.

The other networks had screen crawlers along the bottom, updating Cumberland-Prescott every ten minutes or so.

When the coverage started in the Eastern Time zone, the Liberals had opened an early seat lead in the Atlantic provinces where we were traditionally quite strong. This surprised no one, least of all the political-pundit panels on each network, which was a staple of modern election-night reporting. As always, the political junkie’s great anticipation of election-night coverage soon
gave way to tedium as commentators tried to forecast trends based on a handful of polls reporting from a handful of ridings. “Well, in Athabasca-Ferguson, the NDP candidate has taken a commanding 12-vote lead over the Conservative incumbent with one poll reporting out of 45.” Very enlightening.

I flipped through the channels and saw videotaped coverage of the Liberal Leader, voting in his own riding. It was the same contrived spectacle played out in constituencies across the country – the wave to the supporters, the presentation of the marked ballot to the proud poll clerk, the positioning of the initialed ballot halfway in the slot of the ballot box as the candidate smiles for the cameras, and the final, friendly tap on the top of the box to punctuate the ballot’s induction into our democratic process. Absolutely riveting.

So far, so good. I silently prayed and pledged to go to church every Sunday, but I confess I left my worship options open in case the other religious and pagan gods offered any eleventh-hour deals.

Lindsay called from Muriel’s to compare notes. Nationally, it was shaping up to be a very close race, as we had all expected. Lindsay voiced concern over the results in Québec that were now streaming in. We were doing reasonably well, but if we hoped to stop a Tory majority, let alone win a Liberal minority, we couldn’t afford to lose many seats in
la belle province
. The Tories had already stolen two and were ahead in two others that we’d traditionally claimed for our side.

Interestingly, despite coast-to-coast coverage, the Cameron affair seemed to have little impact on the national standings – perhaps because the Prime Minister moved so quickly to cut his Finance Minister loose before the Government was dragged down, too. Lindsay reported that Muriel was in fine fettle, working both hands in the popcorn bowl, her eyes never leaving the TV screen. I mentioned that I was going out to the airport to pick up Angus. Depending on the changing numbers in the CTV Cameron Watch, I wanted someone to know where I was. I described what I would be wearing as well as the location of the minuscule Canadian-flag tattoo I’d had inked onto my left scapula after a night of revelry at the last Liberal Leadership convention. If Angus won, I thought she might need this information when filing my missing-persons report. Lindsay chuckled, but then asked for clarification on my shirt colour.