The High Road (22 page)

“Well, I’m bowled over by it. It’s wonderful.”

It took another twenty minutes and a full guided tour of the house before Bradley and I could corral Angus and the Leader and herd them back onto the bus. We left Muriel there to hold the fort. A suspect bus that seemed as old as she was no place for an eighty-one-year-old in the throes of Parkinson’s, although she would have kept the scribes in line. We didn’t really get around to briefing the Leader, but there wasn’t much to tell. On the way into town, the Leader remarked on all the red ribbons on cars, trees, and front doors, and commended the community’s enlightened support of AIDS research. I then remembered to explain our no-lawn-sign policy and that Cumberland’s red tide was actually in support of Angus, who was of course all in favour of more AIDS research.

As we turned onto our block, about seventy-five volunteers, dressed in, yes, more red, milled about in front of the campaign office with red streamers at the ready. I counted quite a few of Muriel’s fellow residents among the supporters. In my mind, I congratulated the two Petes on mobilizing such an impressive crowd on such short notice despite the January temperatures. I took back the kudos an instant later when I caught a glimpse of Pete1 and
Pete2 standing at the front of the melee. They must have thought the Liberal Leader’s visit to Cumberland constituted a special occasion, so they had dressed accordingly. How they gathered such a mob and then achieved their own special “look,” all in fifty-four minutes, I will never know, because I will never ask.

Pete1 seemed to have dipped his entire body, I’m talking full immersion, into a bathtub of Liberal red paint. “Go Angus!” was stencilled onto his forehead in white. He wore a red and black leather jacket, not unlike Michael Jackson’s in
Thriller
, except this one looked like it had been dragged behind a jeep for the duration of Rommel’s North African offensive. Through random holes in both shoulders (I’m still on the jacket here), there protruded several sharp chrome spikes that posed a threat to anyone standing nearby. Much to our good fortune, and despite the cold, Pete1 left the jacket unzipped. This allowed us all to see the gun-metal chain looped through both of his nipple piercings and meeting just above his navel, from which was suspended a portrait of the Liberal Leader himself in a small barbed wire frame. As for his pants, well, he wasn’t wearing any. His red-dipped legs ended in black Doc Martens laced to the hilt, no doubt so his feet wouldn’t get cold. If you must know, the other ends of his legs disappeared into what looked like a red fur Speedo. I’m sure it was fake fur. Both Petes were animal lovers. The crowd gave him plenty of room.

Pete2 was much more sedately attired. He looked up to Pete1 and, out of respect, would never try to out-punk him. His red Mohawk was outstanding, literally. It stood on guard, straight and tall, again with “Go Angus!” in white lettering on either face of the foot-high centre strip bisecting his skull. He wore a simple yet elegant white cape gathered around him with long vertical tears in the fabric every four inches or so giving him plenty of choices when he needed to poke his hands through to the outside world. Bare legs seemed to be the order of the day as Pete2 opted for a fluorescent red and green kilt with a black, iron capital “L” swinging where the sporran normally would. No Doc
Martens for Pete2. He went with his bladeless Bauer Supreme hockey skates, which I’d seen him wear once or twice before.

I looked at Angus, who had also just taken in Pete2’s garb.

“Aye, I can see him. All in all, a nice ensemble, well put together,” he observed.

By this time, we were nearly at the campaign office and the Leader and Bradley Stanton had taken a good long look at the two Petes. Both recoiled in their seats.

“Let’s just drive on and we’ll get out on the next block,” suggested the Leader.

“Rubbish!” protested Angus. “Stop the bus, we’re getting off here. This has all been put on for you.”

“But who are those two … those two … frightening beings at the front?” asked the Leader. “They look … dangerous and deranged.”

“On the contrary, sir, those are the two Petes, our Volunteer Coordinators,” Angus explained. “They’re harmless and have worked very, very hard for the cause. Aye, they have.”

I knew Bradley was staring me down but I refused to meet his eyes. The reporters at the back of the bus all seemed to notice the two Petes at the same time and then realized in unison that they’d just been handed that night’s TV visual and the next day’s front-page photo.

Ten minutes later, Angus and the Leader were walking up Cumberland’s main shopping street with the two Petes and the Liberal ribbon-waving chorus in tow. Several of the volunteers carried bright red plastic fire extinguishers, making a powerful statement about their party allegiance and their willingness to take on Flamethrower Fox. They were Muriel’s idea. Simple and effective political symbolism. The reporters walked beside the group to get their shots and footage.

Angus and the Leader were shaking hands and answering questions from dozens of shoppers along the route. People seemed quite willing to engage with them and several even allowed Angus to tie red ribbons onto their coat zippers. Each
time this happened, Pete1 would sidle up to the unsuspecting shoppers and get their names so we could update our marked voters list. None of them fainted. By the looks on their faces, most of them would gladly have given up much more than their names to satisfy Pete1, though he was unfailingly polite.

The sun was high and helped us all forget just how cold it really was. It was going quite well when in the distance, I heard the staticky strains of a loudspeaker. I looked behind us in time to see a Tory-blue Hummer turn onto our street with a large speaker mounted on top. I’d expected this. Word of the Liberal Leader’s arrival would surely have travelled fast in such a small town. This was Fox’s predictable response. His crew was trying to disrupt the visit. As the Hummer approached, I could just discern the ranting and chanting from the speaker.

“Vote Fox! Angus is a criminal! Vote Fox! Angus is a femiterrorist! Vote Fox! Angus killed your tax cuts! Vote Fox!”

Angus and the Leader were still far enough up the road that they hadn’t really heard the insults yet. As I watched the Hummer come closer, several GOUT agents in the crowd suddenly stepped off the sidewalk and into the middle of the road, forcing the gas-guzzler to stop. The driver tried to steer around the geriatric brigade but they shimmied to the left, then to the right, to block the Hummer at every turn. It wasn’t exactly the lone, courageous student staring down the tank in Tiananmen Square, but it did the trick. But they weren’t finished. The group then surrounded the truck so it could not reverse either. I saw plastic bags emerge from parka pockets and in the next three minutes or so, the gnarled but nimble fingers of the GOUT squad must have tied about four hundred ribbons on the immobilized vehicle, wherever they found purchase. The antenna, door handles, gas cap, wipers, hood vents, bumpers, grille, and even the rooftop speaker. So every time the Tories inside hollered into their mike, the sound waves made the long red ribbons on the rooftop woofer dance about in the air. The occupants wisely stayed inside. Had they opened their doors to challenge the GOUT
operatives, it would not have been pretty. The Hummer now looked more red than blue.

Then, on some prearranged signal, all the seniors just walked away from the Hummer and shuffled up the street to rejoin the rest of us. This seemed to flummox Fox’s team. They realized they couldn’t drive around with hundreds of red ribbons marring their Tory campaign Hummer. I started to laugh. I guess we could have let the air out of the tires instead, but the ribbons were more fun, more effective, and made for better T V. Eventually, the Foxites hopped out, trying frantically to untie the ribbons. It’s hard to untie a knotted ribbon, let alone four hundred of them. I jogged up to the front of our crowd, grabbed André’s elbow, and pointed out the spectacle behind us. He did the rest all on his own, along with sixteen other photographers and vidcam shooters. The Tory team was so humiliated, they finally gave up, piled back into their Hummer, pulled a U-turn, and squealed away. I didn’t see their retreat live, but I watched it on the news that night. Every campaign needs a fearless GOUT squad.

Half an hour later, Angus and the Leader stood together on the sidewalk in front of our campaign office for a quick scrum. The bus idled at the curb. Reporters and cameras jockeyed for position as a dozen microphones filled the space in front of the two Liberals. It was standard campaign scrum fare.

Towards the end of the scrum, André Fontaine piped up with a question for the Leader.

“You’ve had Angus in the caucus and in the House now for a couple of months. Do you always agree with him?”

I sensed Bradley’s hackles rising without even looking his way. The Leader chuckled and looked at his feet as he struggled to formulate a response. He would have come back with a solid answer I’m sure, but Angus seemed to think the question may have been directed to him.

“Now André, what kind of mischievous question is that to be hurling around,” he demanded. “You know very well that the Leader and I have not always agreed. In fact, we’ve been on
opposite sides of several rather fundamental issues. But that’s the kind of party he leads. One that encourages discussion, debate, even dissent, until we’ve finally hammered out the very best position we can. We won’t always agree on how to get there but you can bet we share a common view of the destination, and that’s more important in the end, isn’t it?”

Bradley intervened.

“Okay, we’re out of time, folks,” he said. “We’re due back in Ottawa in less than an hour. So, back on the bus, if you please.”

Angus tried to open the bus door for the Leader but it seemed stuck at the two-thirds open mark.

“It’s been doing that more and more lately,” volunteered the driver standing nearby.

Angus looked into the crack where the door met the bus. He turned to me.

“Will you apply your weight against this, lad?”

I leaned against it while Angus reached carefully into the hinge mechanism – about as technical a term as I can muster – frigged around for a second or two, then pulled out a bent and twisted metal Liberal campaign button that had somehow found its way in. Instantly, the door swung smoothly again. The reporters applauded. And yes, all the cameras had been trained on Angus as he operated on the door, while the Leader stood helplessly off to the side, yet still in the shot.

Finally, Bradley and the Leader followed the reporters back on the bus while we stood on the sidewalk to wave them off. I looked up and saw Stanton’s enraged face and icy eyes boring into me from the window. Angus had upstaged the Leader, again, so I was not surprised Bradley was livid. He looked as if he were passing a kidney stone. Given to melodramatic gestures, he held two fingers up to his eyes and then quickly pointed back at me. I smiled and nodded. Then, since he was into hand-talking, I gave him the traditional Vulcan “Live long and prosper” split-finger salute as the bus pulled away. By his darkening facial hue, I figured a second kidney stone was just coming into the chute.

——

Angus, Muriel, the two Petes, Lindsay, and I met after dinner in Angus’s living room. It had been a very long day, but we were less than two weeks out and needed to pound out our E-day strategy. Now that he was among friends, Angus gave the impression that he was among enemies. He was as morose and cantankerous as I’ve ever seen him. He just sat in the big chair by the window, looked out into the darkness, and unconsciously raked his beard with splayed fingers. Nobody would willingly pass a hand so deeply into the great unknown of his chin spinach, where lurk treasures and dangers alike. He was utterly disconnected mentally from the discussion. When the others were mapping out a plan to drive shut-ins to the polls, I bent over Angus.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “You seem distracted, depressed.”

“Aye, it’s been an enervatin’ day and I’m feelin’ it,” he said without eye contact.

“Is that all there is? Muriel is worried about you.”

“Today is today and it cannae end soon enough for me,” he nearly whispered. “But tomorrow is tomorrow, and I’ll be back. So fret not, lad.”

“It’s late. We don’t really need you for this discussion. Why don’t you sleep now? Pete1 can drive Muriel home and I’ll lock up here,” I suggested.

“Aye, I will, if you’ll permit me.”

The last two weeks of the campaign were a blur as we finally settled into a disciplined routine. The two Petes took the canvass into every nook and cranny of the riding with their ever-improving and growing team. They also spent some time on campus organizing a little group of engineering students in support of Angus. They called their little group “Engus.” A few engineering faculty colleagues also came on board. Small clumps of them would parade around campus with signs extolling the virtues of engineers in Parliament. Even though most members of the loose organization were not C-P voters, the moral support was welcome, and Angus got a kick out of it.

As for our candidate, he would mainstreet early in the morning to catch the commuters, do voter calls in the mid-morning, give a luncheon address somewhere in the riding over the lunch hour (hence the term luncheon address), mainstreet late in the day to catch the working crowd on their way home, canvass for an hour or so in the early evening in strategically selected areas, and then close with a nightly wrap-up campaign staff meeting at about 9:30 to plan for the next day. Then Angus would fall into bed, only to have the alarm rouse him all too soon to do it all over again. The days all melded together, making time seem like more of an elastic concept. But Angus hit his stride and actually seemed to enjoy some aspects of it, particularly the staff meetings and the going-to-bed parts.