the Plan (1995) Page 10

  "Pound the message home, Haze. It's the sure route to the White House."

  Haze looked down at his glossy, pale fingernails.

  "Okay, you want an issue? I'll give you an issue. All of these other guys are pandering to the Iowa voters. They're saying what they think Iowans want to hear, and none of 'em have a clue. Iowa's a farm state, so they're all supporting farm protection. Every damn one. So, let's go the other way. Let's take on farm subsidies."

  Haze looked at Teagarden like he'd lost his mind. "Attack farm subsidies in a farm state? What're you smoking?"

  "I've researched it. It's perfect. It makes you look courageous. Haze Richards talks the truth. You know this is political suicide, but fuck it, if you can't speak honestly, then this country is farther up shit creek than you thought."

  "We come out against subsidies, we're dead."

  "I don't think so. There's a big difference between the farm program, which you're going to support, and farm subsidies, which you're against. The farm program helps the little farmers, people like the Caulfields. They're all Democrats. It gives them low-cost loans and pays them to let their fields lie fallow. We support that. But subsidies only help the big corporation farms and those guys are all Republicans anyway and wouldn't vote for you if you were giving away flathead tractors. It's a perfect issue. You make the other guys look like pandering assholes, and the real Iowa farmers will know you aren't hurting them because, believe me, these guys know the difference between the farm program and farm subsidies. I'm telling you, it's a perfect issue. I'll give you all your lines. Just do it the way I say . . . okay?"

  A. J. thought Haze looked tired. Not a good sign for the beginning of the campaign.

  "Something else . . . Brenton Spencer is going to harass you during the debate. He's going to characterize your candidacy as unqualified and unsound. Mickey Alo says they've gotten to him. When the time is right, I want you to shoot him down. I'll talk to you about it tomorrow when I've got something written up."

  A. J. left Haze alone in the Iowa farm room. Haze looked out the window at the desolate farm that Bud and Sarah Caulfield had put their lives into and were about to lose. Haze thought they would be well rid of it.

  The Caulfields had given over their house to the Haze Richards for President Campaign and, after dinner, had driven off to spend the night with a neighbor. Haze had their bedroom; Malcolm and A. J. had borrowed their dea d s on's room. Susan Winter got a couch in the side room. Ryan had been given the couch in the den. Rell Sunn had elected to sleep in the back of the van, which was parked in the barn. Ryan had worried about her sleeping out there in thirty-degree weather but she shook him off and bundled up Bud's down sleeping bag, grabbed a pillow, and moved to the door.

  "Ain't ya heard . . . ? Wild rice won't freeze." She put a hand on his arm and smiled. "I like it cold. See ya in the morning." And she left, walking across the cold ground toward the wood barn.

  Ryan spent a while wandering around Bud Caulfield's tiny den looking at the books. He pulled down one about crop rotation and flipped it open. Parts had been underlined and there were margin notes.

  He was suddenly someplace else. In his mind, he saw another study with books all around. The red-haired boy was with him. "Come on, Ryan, come on," the boy said. "Race ya to the swing." Suddenly, he knew his name. . . . It was Terrance Fisher. And then the memory ended. He sat on the sofa in Bud Caulfield's cluttered den.

  On the coffee table, there was a photo album. He opened it and found pictures of the Caulfields in better days: There were shots of Bud junior growing up. The last one showed him at a bus station in his new army uniform going off to war.

  Ryan knew the pain of their loss.

  He closed the album and thought about Matt. Then he turned out the light and lay back in the darkness. He felt he was close to something important--close to the shadow. Soon he was asleep.

  And then he had the dream. . . .

  He was standing by a swing in a backyard he didn't recognize. But he knew he was seven years old. He was watching while the red-haired boy named Terrance pumped back and forth on the swing. "Race you, Ryan," he yelled and jumped off the swing and ran toward the house. Ryan was after him, both boys running for all the y w ere worth. In the dream, Ryan was everywhere, as in a poorly edited movie. . . . First he was behind Terry; then he was watching from the side: then he was back in his own body, chasing. His laughter came, tiny and hollow, as Terry rounded the pool. And then ... Terry's feet slipped on the pavement and he screamed--splashing, floundering. Ryan saw it now in black and white--crude still frames blurred the memory. Ryan stopped and looked down, his feet frozen. He wanted to reach out to Terry but he was held by an invisible force--he couldn't move.

  "Help!" Terry screamed, as he went down, gulping air and water, choking, fighting his way back up. The still-frame memories exploded in Ryan's head like emotional land mines. . . . "Help," Terry yelled . . . and then he sank below the surface.

  In the dream, Ryan was standing at the pool's edge. He watched in terror as the red-haired boy sank deeper and deeper. The last thing Ryan saw was Terry's green-andred paisley T-shirt as it flapped lazily against his dead playmate at the bottom of the pool.

  Ryan woke up.

  He was strangely calm and could remember the dream vividly. He was immediately certain it had really happened. And he knew he needed help. He moved to the phone, took out his AT&T card, and with hands trembling, punched in Lucinda's private line and then his charge number. The phone rang.

  "Yes?" she answered, sleep in her voice.

  "I've met the shadow," he said.

  "That's great," she said, trying to grasp his mood.

  "A boy named Terry. We were seven . . . playing in the backyard. He drowned. I let him drown, I didn't try to save him."

  Lucinda sat up in her bed. She knew this might be one of the most important moments in Ryan's life and she didn't want to screw it up because her mind was blurred with sleep.

  "Hold on a sec," she said and dashed into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Toweling it off quickly, she moved back and sat down on the bed. . . . Then she took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

  "I'm sorry, I had to close the door. You still there?"

  "I killed him," he said in a subdued voice. "Terrance Fisher lived next door, I think . . . or two doors away. I let him drown. I never told anybody." It was all flooding back into his head. He remembered running home, crying in his bedroom . . . afraid to tell anyone that his friend was at the bottom of the pool. His breath was now coming in gasps. He was starting to sweat.

  "I just stood there and let him drown and I didn't tell anyone."

  "Ryan . . . stop talking for a minute and listen to me. . . . " Her voice was smooth and controlled. After a moment, he stopped babbling.

  "Take a deep breath."

  She could hear him inhale.

  "I want you to tell me, did you know how to swim?" "I don't know. I guess so. . . ."

  "When did you learn to swim? Do you remember?" "At camp."

  "How old were you then?"

  "I went to camp in the summer after fourth grade." "Fourth grade. How old were you in fourth grade--nine, ten?"

  There was a long moment while Ryan thought about that. "Yeah," he said forlornly, "ten."

  "If you were seven when he drowned, you didn't know how to swim. If you couldn't swim, you couldn't have saved him."

  Ryan let that thought play in his mind.

  "Ryan. . . . Listen to me, I'm coming out there to be withyou. I'll get on an early flight tomorrow and be there after the debate, but I want you to think about something. I want you to think hard about it."

  "What?"

  "You watched your friend die when you were seven.

  You didn't save him because you couldn't, but you feel guilty . . . so guilty that you pushed it down in your subconscious . . . so far down you buried it completely. Then, thirty years later when Matt died, you tied the two events together." She stopped,
wishing she didn't have to do this on the phone, hating the fact that she couldn't look in his eyes, see the reaction her words were having. But his mind was completely open to suggestion now. She had to get to him now. "Ryan, do you think that Matt was drowned as some kind of divine retribution for the fact that you didn't save your friend when you were seven?" she said. She could hear him breathing.

  "Ryan," she pressed, "is that what you think?" "Yes."

  If you couldn't swim, you couldn't save him. One event is not attached to the other," she said, hitting the words for emphasis. "Do you hear me, Ryan?"

  "I hear you."

  "You've met the shadow. You've met him, now you can slay him."

  They listened to the silence between them for a long time.

  "Could I be in love with you?" he finally asked. "I hope so," she said softly.

  They talked for another half hour about other things. Lucinda was afraid to hang up until she knew he was steady. The dream had crushed Ryan's tender grip on reality, but she knew it was a beginning for him . . . maybe for them.

  Ryan never dreamed about the shadow again.

  Rellica Sum had been awakened at two A. M. by the sounds of grunting and moaning. She had been sleeping in the back of the van and she got to her knees to look out the window into the barn.

  Haze Richards was lying on top of Susan Winter. They still had their clothes on, but they had pulled their pants down to allow for coupling. They were pawing and rolling in the hay like two teenagers. Rellica watched for a few minutes, then settled back silently in the sleeping bag and listened as Susan ran the octaves, ending in a high, breathy squeal. Then Haze and Susan crept out of the barn, but Rellica Sunn couldn't get back to sleep. If someone like Haze Richards could get elected President, she thought, then something was desperately wrong.

  When the Iowa dawn broke at 5:55, she was still awake.

  Chapter 19.

  DEBATE

  BY FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON, THE SINGLE BLOW-DRIES, OR pod people, as A. J. called them, were setting up their e quipment in front of the nondescript Pacific Convention Center in Des Moines. The boxlike auditorium had bee n b uilt in the 1950s to house rodeos and farm events.

  Each candidate had been assigned a place on the rostrum according to a draw that had taken place earlier. Malcolm Rasher had drawn number 4, which put Haze in a black leather chair between Florida Senator Peter Dehaviland and New York Senator Leo Skatina on the right side of the stage.

  While Malcolm had been pulling the chair number out of a hat, A. J. Teagarden had gone off with a small overnight case he'd brought with him from Princeton. He was in search of the second-tier lighting box that was the control center for the stage lights. He climbed a metal staircase into the auditorium attic and finally found the lighting booth. He watched, in silence, as several technicians adjusted the carbon arc lights, aiming them through a glass window at the stage below.

  "When're you guys on your union break?" A. J. asked casually.

  "Who's asking?" a heavyset lighting technician wanted to know.

  "Bob Muntz, regional shop steward from six sixty-nine in Iowa City," A. J. said, consulting his watch for effect. "You guys are entitled to fifteen-minute breaks every two hours."

  "Break's in 'bout ten minutes, sir. . . ."

  A. J. sat in a metal chair, put his feet up on the rail, and looked out of the little glass booth, down at the stage fifty feet below. He saw Malcolm Rasher pointing at one of the chairs on the right side of the stage. A . J. tipped back in his chair and waited until the three lighting technicians looked at their watches and moved out of the booth on their break.

  A. J. got up and walked over to one of the follow spots and turned it on to see which chair it was aimed at; then he opened the lens covers, exposing the carbon arc bulb. He licked his fingers and unscrewed the arc, replacing the 250-watt spot with a 500-watt halogen light he pulled from his bag. Then he closed the lens cover and moved to the other lights and changed them, too. The only light he didn't touch was the one aimed at the second chair from the right. He put the old bulbs in the bag he'd brought and left the booth quickly, whistling as he walked down the stairs.

  Brenton Spencer arrived backstage early from his suite at the Savoy. He'd had a dull headache all day. They'd given him what they called the best dressing room. It turned out to be a yellow concrete dungeon with no windows and a brown-stained sofa. The makeup table had six lights out. He was going to complain but he thought, Fuck it, this was a suicide mission, no matter how he cut it. He'd brought his gray suit and his black bold-striped tie, which always looked good on TV. He took it out of a garment bag, along with a terry cloth robe, and stripped off his shirt and jeans. Before slipping into the robe, he stood in front of the full-length mirror in his boxer shorts and black socks and looked at himself skeptically. He fel t f unny, light-headed. The throbbing in his head started to build. Then, without warning, a blinding flash of pain hit his forehead and his vision went white. He sank to his knees in the dressing room, both hands went to his temples. It felt as if an evil beast had taken a bite out of the inside of his head. He sank lower onto the cold concrete floor and moaned. The pain in his head was so intense that he almost passed out, fighting to remain conscious, some survival instinct telling him to hang on to his consciousness. . . . If he let go, he knew he would fall into cerebral nothingness. He grabbed a towel off the chair and held it to his mouth, breathing in gasps through his nose. Whatever it was that caused the ripping pain started to subside. His forehead was throbbing horribly, but he no longer felt the razor-sharp cutting pain. He sat in terrified silence for almost ten minutes. Then he pulled himself up onto his feet and looked in the mirror. He was white and waxy. He moved on unsteady legs to the bottle of aspirin on his dressing table, shook half a dozen into his hand, and gulped them down with water from a pitcher on the adjoining table. Finally, he moved to the sofa and lay down, putting his feet up. He took several deep breaths.

  "What the fuck was that?" he finally asked himself in wonder. He lay there, afraid to move, until it was time to get made up, dressed, and go on stage to meet the candidates.

  Outside, the candidates started pulling up at the convention center, arriving like stars at a Hollywood premiere. Across the street, standing behind curb barricades, was a gallery of Iowa voters. The pod people were ready, microphones and cameras at port arms. Each candidate stopped to pose for pictures, and make a few remarks.

  Then the front runner pulled up in a black limousine with six people in the back of the car, including the president of the Iowa Democratic Committee. Skatina was the Party choice and they had orchestrated the arrival.

  The senator was confident. He was way ahead in the tracking polls and knew he was going to kick ass in Iowa. "

  Tonight is gonna be a very special night because tonight we're going to make some promises to the women of America. And I think it's time those promises were made and kept. . . ."

  The pod people had already started to pack up when a red pickup truck with the Caulfields and Haze Richards pulled up to the front of the auditorium. The fenders were muddy; the windshield was dirty. Bud had wanted to wash the truck before they left the farm but A.]. stopped him.

  It pulled to a stop and Bud and Sarah Caulfield got out; then Haze Richards stepped down on the concrete apron in front of the convention center. Single blow-dries looked up. Pod people turned. And then it dawned. . . . Oh yeah, that governor . . . from Rhode Island. Reluctantly, some of them got their cameras out again and back up on their shoulders.

  "Arriving last is candidate Haze Richardson," Lon Fredericks from WXYO-TV said into his pillbox mike. "Governor Richardson, Governor Richardson," he shouted. Haze paused in the TV glare to hug Sarah and shake Bud's hand, then moved over so that all of the cameras could focus on him.

  "Good evening," he said.

  "Governor Richardson, you have almost no voter recognition in Iowa. Do you have any hope to win?" Lon Fredericks said.

  "It's Richards . . . Govern
or Haze Richards. I don't know if I can win. I came here at my own expense to try and say what I believe."

  "Governor Richards, Governor Richards, over here," Ken Venable called. He had wedged himself in with the press.

  "Yes . . ." Haze said, looking into the eyes of his own campaign pollster.

  "Who are those people you came here with?" Ken asked, throwing Haze the slow, chest-high pitch.

  "That's Sarah and Bud Caulfield. They own a farm in Grinnell that is mortgaged to the hilt and about to go back to the bank. I spent the night with them. Bud and Sarah are the reason I'm in this campaign. I'm in it for them and for all the people like them. I want to make America work for people like the Caulfields."

  He moved into the convention center.

  UBC had parked their sixteen-wheel control room around the side of the auditorium. Nestled in beside it was the satellite news-gathering truck.

  Brenton Spencer walked onstage and stood for a moment. He had a lavaliere radio mike hidden behind his bold tie and had pushed the audio receiver into his ear so that the cord ran down the back of his neck and into his shirt collar to a battery transmitter on his belt. Ted Miller, the director, hit the intercom switch.

  " 'Evening, Brent. This is Ted in the truck. We're gonna be going live in two-twenty."

  "Okay," Brenton said.

  "We'll be giving you any political facts you need through your angel," he said, referring to the earpiece. "Whatever," Brenton said.

  Ted hit a switch in front of him, cutting Brenton out of the audio loop and turned to his sound man. "Is he okay? He sounds terrible."

  The sound man shrugged.

  Ted Miller hit the intercom, putting Brenton back on with him. "Brent, anything we can get you? Want any water?" But Brenton had taken the angel out of his ear. It was hanging down the back of his collar. "What the fuck?" Ted said. He leaned forward and spoke into his mike to the stage director. "Tell Brenton his angel is out of his ear. We need to talk to him before air. We're up in ninety seconds."

  They could see the stage manager on the camera 2 monitor as he ran to the stage and said something to Brenton, who nodded but didn't replace the earpiece.