Manifest Destiny
Matthew Murphy
©2007
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ONE
The colors flashed through the plastic blinds and danced along the white wall, bathing the entire room in brilliant shades of orange and yellow. A sudden jerk from terror roused Henri Dopplinger from sleep. The colors on the wall passed through his eyes and filled his head of remembrances past. Frames moved through the air, stained in sepia or drained of color, then soaked in black and white, suddenly the explosion and those colors. Oranges and yellows fade to deep reds then dissolve into blues and purples, finishing in a cloud of black.
There is joy, yet fear. The Old Man places a hand on Henri’s shoulder. Henri turns to face him, but he’s gone, disappeared into a cloud of cigarette smoke. The others follow. Henri is the last to leave. The desert turns back into sepia and the frames slow. The wind kicks the sand. The air feels different. Slow moving lips leave quiet remarks, stats and figures. Henri runs to speak to the Old Man but is too late. His wide brim and stream of Marlboro’s disappear with his Jeep. Henri stands alone…they’re all gone. The wind picks up. The picture moves faster. Cue sound: a whoosh from behind. The terror, he jerks and turns to avoid….nothing. He is awake.
Henri closes his eyes, but the color seeps through his lids. His old eyes can’t find the clock. He searches for the news story that lies in the back of his brain. Rogue nations holding the bomb. Could this be the moment they talked of? Millions dead in Asia…Pakistan and India…smoking villages…dead bodies lay burned, disfigured; indistinguishable from each other. Shadows spread across the ground the only imprint left from the poor souls…innocents, the only casualty of war.
His eyes open again the color is still there. The brightness starts to wane. The winter sets in around him. His body grows heavy. Henri lets himself fall and settles back into the bed. He sighs. His lids take on weight and close. Sleep surrounds. He is too tired this morning to watch the end of the world.
Still asleep. Nancy hates to wake him. He’s a difficult old man. They all are. Henri likes to accuse her of stealing, lying, trying to kill him. He points specifically to the diet. The dry diabetic meals assigned by his doctor. They are awful. She tried the turkey dinner once. The potatoes were a stiff, tasteless ball. The turkey, slivers of gray meat with red veins running through and the peas, soft and mealy. They come frozen in white polyurethane tubs covered in plastic wrap. The tubs are dated and placed in a freezer in the garage. Each day three are pulled and prepared. They need to be zapped in the microwave for 3 minutes then left to sit for one. The meals are provided through a Government hospice that delivers them the last day of each month in a large, cold cardboard box.
Everything is paid for by the Federal Government. Even her salary is paid every month in blue checks covered in small eagles. Must be some pension, she’s gathered. Although it doesn’t appear he ever worked in the government or served in any war. Doing a little research on the web she discovered Henri was a German immigrant during World War II who may or may not have worked on the atom bomb. The evidence is somewhat limited.
She’s tried to quiz Melinda - Henri’s granddaughter - who lives in the house with him. Melinda once told the nurse that Henri has met three presidents and worked with Einstein. Though Melinda doubts he had anything to do with the bomb. “Grandpa dealt more with rockets, I think,” she said. “Probably in the space program and, you know, going to the moon. They (he and her grandma) used to live in Houston.”
When he sleeps, Nancy searches through his life. There are pictures and notebooks. In his bedroom there is a safe with both a key and combination lock. The key he carries around his neck on a long chain. When she bathes him he keeps it on. When she pulls the sponge close to it he grabs and pulls it away. For the longest time she let the secret bother her. Her supervisor warned her that other nurses had come and gone before her. They all wondered about the safe and all of them were caught breaking into it. “It’s not yours,” he warned Nancy. “Don’t bother with it if you want to keep your job.” So Nancy decided to let it go. She doesn’t obsess so much over it now.
In the bedroom she can smell the drying piss. There are times when she knows he does it intentionally. She would find Henri asleep in clean pajamas on the other side of the bed, the wet spot festering alone.
She opens the blinds and slides up the window. A cold February breeze blows in the room and takes some of the scent with it. Henri shivers from the air and rolls away from it and Nancy. “It’s time to get up,” she tells him. There was a grunt or did she imagine it. He lays motionless but is awake. They all, especially the men, suffer the humiliation of waking in pool of their own urine. Just the sound of the plastic sheeting is bad enough. This is the third time this week. “I’ll run a bath,” she tells him leaving the room.
Henri rises. His feet search the floor for his slippers. They are turned away from him and just out of reach. The cold floor makes it difficult on his ankles. Water runs in the bathroom next door. He reaches for the metal pipe attached to the wall and lifts himself out of bed. He turns the slippers with his feet and slides into them. “What time is it,” he yells to Nancy.
“Ten.”
“Has the mail come?”
“I don’t know.” She lets the water run as she prepares the bath. Henri shuffles to the front door opening it on a gray skied and misty, Oregon winter. Rain today, no chance of nuclear winter. He opens the mailbox, empty.
The bath was too hot and took too long. She’s trying to kill me, Henri thought as the damn nurse takes forever with the towel. She hands it to him and leaves. “I have to get your breakfast, although now it’s closer to lunch. You’re gonna have to get up earlier if you want to keep this schedule your doctor appointed.” She leaves Henri alone to dry himself.
“Turn on the radio,” he yells after her. Melinda’s show starts at noon. He cannot miss a moment. The show is the only thing getting him up in the morning. It certainly is not those terrible meals or this infernal nurse.
The final few minutes of Considering our World is wrapping up. The thumping beats of the outro music feeds underneath the announcer’s voice. He’s a soft spoken man of thirty-five whom, like all public radio announcers, stops hard on every third syllable. The music grows louder as he hears the countdown. His guests for tomorrow include the author of a novel about Norwegian goat herders, the director and writer of this coming weekend’s thinking mans action movie and a commentary about popular music by a Midwestern U.S. Senator. “But now the news,” he says as the music grows only to stop as the hands meet at the twelve.
The hourly news comes on immediately. As she explained it to him before, this is where Melinda takes over. There is a red digital clock that counts down her time. When the number hits zero she turns up a knob, starts a cart, brings up the microphone of the news girl in the booth then gives her the high sign. The news girl reads off the local headlines in ten seconds, nods to Melinda who then slides in the feed from the BBC News via the satellite. Melinda waits three minutes for that news to finish, then brings it back to the girl in the booth who reads her local copy in just the three minutes she has. To accent the copy she also has a few carts she plays containing on-location reporters fattening out certain stories.
Melinda produces locally the last hour of the Considering Our World then produces The Northwest Considered in the studio with her host Cecily Langs.
The BBC news is slow. It’s a quiet day around the world. Henri leans in and listens ignoring the warm and frothing breakfast in front of him. No news on Pakistan and India. Did he imagine it? Probably not. That was yesterday’s story. Today, there is unrest in the Middle East. Tomorrow it will be the president making a decision about something affecting just a third of Americans. No news is good news as they say.
A final story comes on, one revolving around the small East African nation of Eritrea. The president of Eritrea is dying or maybe not. The state controlled press claims he is well and recovering from cancer surgery. Rumors from inside tell a different story. A man with a strong African accent relays the news from Asmara, the nation’s capital: “…If the people are to be believed then it truly may be a difficult time ahead for this fragile nation. With so many hungry and little in the way of international assistance, the Eritrean people can only hope that this type of publicity can help them to be noticed on the world’s stage. Reporting from Asmara I am Mutiu Dgunu.”
The smooth-voiced English hostess finishes her newscast, throwing it back to the local stations. Melinda points to Dena Chase for news.
Henri fades out of the local stories and turns to his meal. Styrofoam eggs and cardboard toast get choked down with a calcium enriched orange juice that has a texture and taste of snot.
Nurse Nancy pays him no mind and sits in a nearby chair with her knitting. She has the blue stripes to add to the end of the sleeves of a small sweater she’s making for her grandson. The right sleeve looks longer than the left. She doesn’t notice at first, but curses herself while pulling out the thread to even them.
Cecily comes on and promotes the afternoon’s topics. They include reforming state tax law to better education, local musical group The Mind Pirates and a feel good story about a single mom stripper who paints pictures. “I’m not a stripper,” she says with anger. “I am a dancer and I want to be taken seriously as an artist. That’s what I am. If I take off my clothes that doesn’t make me bad or immoral; it’s my job, you know?” The music comes on and kills fifteen seconds.
They start the show with the tax story and an expert about tax law. “The need for a sales tax can be avoided if the state can get creative with its other forms of income,” he says.
“How much more do I have to pay,” Nancy chimes in. “They’re killing us with this new property tax.”
Henri disagrees, but chooses not to respond. Starting a conversation with her would grind on his last nerve. It’s best to leave her to talk to the radio. Regardless of what Henri would say she’ll continue to spread her opinion.
“They should give the schools whatever they want,” she continues, throwing Henri’s concentration to the wind. “The children’s education is what’s important not whatever pet project those idiots in Salem have now. But God, we have no more to give.”
The story drags on. Henri thinks of Melinda turning her knobs and answering the phones. The calls seem to mirror Nancy’s concerns and feelings.
The changeover music kicks in again and a new topic has begun. A local band attempts to find success playing a lighter variation on late Middle Ages era baroque folk music. Their music is terrible. Henri tunes it out. He closes his eyes and leans back in his chair. Nancy assumes he is listening, maybe enjoying the music. She decides not to comment on it.
After a short afternoon nap Henri retires to his workbench. The bench had been in the basement but recently the stairs had become too difficult to walk up and down. Henri offered the basement to Melinda in exchange for her bedroom on the first floor. Putting a floor between herself and her grandfather, as well as having the entire basement instead of just one room was too much to pass up. She used an engineer at the radio station, who harbored a crush, to help move the heavy bench up the stairs then move her bed down. After a few adjustments, the basement was already furnished, she moved in.
The small room was more sensible for Henri’s craft of building watches. Time had always fascinated him. The idea of not just trying to understanding time, but also creating measurement devices spoke directly to the old engineer in him. The initiative came to him in 1958. He did little in his spare time and his mind just raced from one topic to another. There was nothing he could keep it settled on. Grace, his wife, suggested he read, but that only inflamed his brain more. A hobby was the next thing she mentioned. So after work one day Henri ventured into the Reed Street Hobby Shop in Houston. He walked the narrow aisles looking at the different model airplanes and cars; tracks and trains; the Eisenhower approved painting by numbers; stacks of wood carving books and tools, chemistry sets that reminded him too much of work; the tiny model rockets that launch twenty feet into the air using water pressure (also too much like work); jewelry making kits; rock tumblers; delicate flower arranging kits and lastly on the bottom shelf of the last aisle contained in a white cardboard box with blue block letters and a large picture of a clock face on top, a watch making kit.
Henri knew nothing about watch making. Once, when he was a child, he found an old pocket watch cracked and discarded in a gutter. He took it home and snapped off the gold back only to dislodge a spring and half a dozen little gears. The gears fascinated him. They were so small and so intricate. How anyone could create something of that size put it together and place it all inside of a crystal then somehow wind it to tell time just blew young Henri’s mind. Those tiny gears would later influence his quest to become an engineer.
The hobby store kit was a let down. The pieces inside did not contain the little gears and springs. There was a front and a back and three pieces in the middle that snapped together. Then a chain and fob that attached to a small loop on the outside of the watch. It wasn’t even gold or silver but a cheap post war tin that scratched and dented when you looked at it. It was not complicated and Henri put it together in a matter of hours. It was less a hobby than a waste of time.
The interest did not fade and the next day after work Henri went to Wexler Watch Repair, just two blocks around the corner from the hobby shop. The owner of the shop, a veteran with a lame hip, courtesy of a pair of Tojo bullets, recognized the cheap hobby toy immediately. He listened to Henri’s needs, and then explained the difficulty of building watches from scratch. It could take years to learn the craft expertly. Henri had nothing but years left. They discussed parts and designs. Henri was looking for a hobby he said not a business venture. The man at the watch shop understood and hooked Henri up with a Swiss catalogue. Henri signed up for the mailing list and soon started receiving his parts on a regular basis.
The first watches were crude. They took months to years of frustration to complete. Yet that frustration was a relief to the life that Henri led at his job. Eventually he was completing watches at a more rapid pace. Those watches he gave to friends and family as gifts. Some were excited to receive them. Others left them in the small boxes and buried them deep into the back of their sock drawers. Henri never cared if they wore the watches. It wasn’t the joy of giving that warmed him; it was the creation of the time pieces that left him fulfilled.
On his work bench sat the scattered pieces of a simple ladies wrist watch. It was a present for Nurse Nancy. It was not that Henri disliked her. He just didn’t trust her. Besides the watch he was building for her lacked numbers on the dial. As familiar with her as he was Henri knew this will drive Nancy mad.
He delicately inserted a small gear into the watch with a pair of tweezers. His hands were not as steady anymore. It takes much longer to place the spring than used to. At some point in the 90’s he started adding batteries. Everyone was tired of winding, despite the fact that winded watches last forever. There was a Mark Twain quote that Henri would repeat to them when they complained about the winding. He always changed and paraphrased but the quote was about opening a watch only leads it to not work right ever again. Of course Henri stood by his craftsmanship and when the batteries died he replaced them for nothing. His watches resisted the temptation to fall into old Samuel Clemons’ trap.
Old age had taken its toll on Henri once more leaving him incapable of finishing the work he had set aside for himself that day. The aforementioned shakes mixed with the heavy eyelids and the general malaise that comes with depending on a nurse weakens Henri against his will. In a matter of hours Melinda will be coming home. At least he can spend some time with her discussing her day before she leaves. Her life in radio just fascinates him. The interviews, phone calls, the bitchy host; all of it keeps Henri at the most rapt attention.
He slips a small spring into place against the pin. This watch would run without a battery. Give that miserable rubber food pusher something to deal with every ten to twelve hours, though Henri is too much of a craftsman to give her a bad watch. This one will be just as good as all the others.
* * * * *
Later in life Chris Gnomes would reflect on his first meeting with William Phillips in his stirring and inspiring autobiography Man on a Mission: The Path to Leadership with these words:
I had been in Spokane for about two weeks, basically stuck there. Diana (his wife) had wanted to remove me from the political life I was mired in and to try something new. It did not take long and I was itching to get back into the game. I went one evening to a Spokane Unified School District Board of Education meeting. It was less a meeting than a debate - a meet the candidates event - for the latest round of victims trying to change the world of local education. There were fifteen running for 3 spots. At the time the city did not recognize boundaries for each seat. They were open to all those who lived in the district. All fifteen were lumped into one place on the ballot and the top three vote getters got the open seats.
Bill was the dark horse. No one knew who he was or what he stood for. He wasn’t the youngest. There was an 18 year old college drop out who dressed in black and guaranteed the young vote. Nor was he the eldest, that was the 70 years young Grandmother of 17 who demanded stricter PE guidelines. Phillips was 32 at the time and his first born daughter was going to kindergarten in the fall. We met three days after the debate over coffee and he explained his desire to run.
“Maybe it wasn’t a sign but something out there encouraged me to run. I’m worried about her future. I had a horrible time in school. I wasn’t the best student, but I was no idiot. I just remember all the teachers telling me that I should be doing better…applying myself more. They would say that but never do anything to encourage me. No, they never really cared. Maybe they felt I was smarter than they were. There were something’s I did that they never understood. I’m running off topic here. What I want to say is that I woke up one morning and realized that my daughter is going into these schools and I didn’t feel she was protected. It was like the schools want kids to fail. I doubt that’s true, but that is what it feels like. I have to change it.”
He sounded confused but confident. He was raw. I knew it would be hard work. There was something about Bill Phillips, the way he sat there, the look of his face. I sensed I could do great things with this kid. If we played the game right, there was nowhere we couldn’t go. There was principle in him, just no way to organize it.
So it was during this debate that Gnomes found himself drawn to Phillips. The young candidate stood up there and commanded the room when he spoke. Sure they were school board candidates. They were the bottom of the political food chain. But this was the place where political futures are created or ended. Most of these people here would never be seen again. Even though he was probably the best candidate, Gnomes knew Phillips could not win. If he did it all ended here. This kid is going to rise fast. The party needs young blood and fresh minds.
The ideas he spoke of that night on education and on the school district were not much more different than what he would tell Gnomes during that famous stop for coffee three days in the future. He wanted better teacher accountability. He wanted them to take charge in their classrooms and be the ones on the front lines making everyone better. His naiveté showed through. Gnomes knew this as did some others in the room. You don’t tell teachers how to teach. A smile crossed Gnomes’ face. He just lost the teacher vote.
During the run for the White House and after the inauguration, that school board election was always a great story. The media interviewed the winners, some of whom still served on the board, and the losers. They talked how amazing Phillips was as a speaker and how ironic it was that he lost. Had he won, well he’d probably be chairing the board by now and certainly not president.
It wasn’t irony that lost him that election it was divine intervention, or at least that’s how Gnomes likes to look at it. He finished tenth in that final vote count. 6%. It’s not bad, Gnomes told him. No one ever wins their first election. What Gnomes knew about elections was almost nothing. What he knew about manipulating the system and turning out the vote was genius.
“It’s not just what you say,” he told Phillips after the loss and over a different cup of coffee. “It’s about how you say it. I could tell you cared nothing about the school board. What do school boards do anyway? Make lunchroom menus? Clean erasers? Who cares? It’s a dead end for you and besides you don’t even get paid. I know it’s not about money, so don’t give me that line. But if you don’t get paid than the job doesn’t really mean anything. You can’t feed your family on good ideas and the best intentions for improving fifth grade math scores. You don’t leave a legacy at a school board.”
“What do you mean?”
“I see you doing more…something bigger than Spokane. I can see you in Olympia in six years.”
“What?” Phillips wanted to laugh into his coffee. This man is insane. He searched his mind for a good reason to leave.
“You have it. The charisma, the smarts, the looks, the confidence, you’re very raw but that can all be fixed and straightened out. I can take you anywhere. We don’t need to start small, we can go real big. Next year the Attorney General spot is open.”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
“You don’t have to be. Anyone can run for the office. Besides I don’t think you’re gonna win it. You just need to place. Make a statement. We can go up from there.”
“This is crazy. Why me?”
“Trust me.”
“What do you know about any of this? I mean what do you know about politics?” Gnomes stopped to think. He had promised his wife he was out of the game. The last election had almost given him a heart attack. The race is killing you, she would repeat often. She could never understand that it wasn’t the races that were killing him, it was the candidates. He always lassoed the wrong calf. But Phillips was different. He was the real deal.
“We’re gonna need to start raising funds. We could go to the party but the Dems already have their guy. We need to start small. Bake sales, or bingo games. It’ll take time, but I know some people in Seattle. We could raise some real money there. They’re tired of the old guard. We all are. Aren’t you? That old boy’s club that runs the state…runs them all. Hell, they even run this country.”
“Sure. It’s frustrating. Those rich men don’t speak to me. I’ve always felt that.”
The fanfare for the common man. “Now we’re talking. Let me put together a team.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“No one can at first. But we don’t work for money upfront. We work for tomorrow’s glory. We’ll explore our chances. If it looks totally unfeasible then we’ll look elsewhere. But if we can finish in the top three, then three years after, four years from now, you, William Phillips, will be governor.”
Yes, it was insanity. No one had ever spoken to Phillips like that before. It was a dream. It had to be. Governor? What business does William Phillips, mid-level service manager, father of two, failed school board candidate have running for the office of Governor of Washington State? Yes, it was insane. It was also the last thing any of them expected.
So they ran for Attorney General. A local district attorney in Spokane ran as well. He criticized everything about Phillips. A non-lawyer, how can this man represent anyone’s interests? The DA had his own problems and Gnomes hunted them out. Sure he liked men…young men…real young men. For a Republican family values guy with a wife of twenty years and three kids of his own that was the not quite the right combo. He withdrew before anything became public.
Now, Phillips had control of the vote in the eastern half of the state. His Democratic rival was a slick ADA from Seattle. He had recently pulled of a big upset against the tobacco industry. The big city folks in Seattle loved him. The poor minorities in Tacoma didn’t care and back in the eastern half they didn’t know he existed. That was where the election was won. You can take Seattle and Olympia, toss up Tacoma, but you have to talk to the rurals in the east. They love a local boy and no one was as local as Bill Phillips. Gnomes had him drop the formal name. Gotta play to the sticks, he said.
“That’s too condescending,” the new Bill Phillips replied.
“Whatever works.”
So the polls came in. Phillips was holding steady in the east. He had almost a two to one advantage over his Democratic rival in Spokane with just two months until the primary. Gnomes pushed his location, his hometown appeal. They raised enough local money to run some commercials: Phillips sitting on the water front downtown, talking about all the hot button issues of the day; drugs, schools, gangs, all these things that the attorney general has little power to stop but everyone worries about.
He pushed the east-west divide, pointing out the worries of Olympia seem to exist on the other side of the mountains. “Out here,” he told a group in Walla Walla. “We’re like strangers. We’re a-whole-nother state. Our problems mean anything to them.” This, of course, was not true, but it sure did reinforce their fears.
During a debate held in Pullman (east side) at Washington State University the two Democrats faced off. Gnomes wanted to be cordial on the home turf. He wanted the other side to look combative and angry. There already flowed an animosity among the crowd against the westsiders (a term that Gnomes coined to feed said animosity.) So Phillips played it cool while leading his opponent into a series of traps. Soon the ADA was sweating and cursing under his breath about the damn hicks that were ruining his chances. After the debate the local polls read Phillips leading with 80%, the conservative Republican judge from Vancouver second with 12% and dead last the Seattle ADA with 4%. The Democratic leadership called Gnomes and Phillips to Olympia for a talk.
The Democratic headquarters were housed in a turn of the century, 19th that is, two story brownstone near the university district. Inside they had a large oval table surrounded by chairs. The chairs were comfortable and soon filled with all the state’s important Democrats. Phillips quickly noticed that the only thing separating them from their Grand Old Party counterparts was the red, white and blue donkey on their lapels.
“We’ll get to the point,” the state chairman started. “We want the east. That fool judge is gaining all over the place. If we can hold Spokane we can win.”
“What do you want from us?” Gnomes said. He told Phillips he would do most of the talking then turn back to Phillips for the answers to the most important questions. The last thing Gnomes wanted was to look like the puppet master.
“You can’t win. But we don’t want to lose. It doesn’t mean we don’t want you on board. We’re very impressed with what you’ve done, Bill. You’ve come from nowhere and taken us all by surprise. But the party needs you to be a team player here. We need all the support we can get. If we lose the attorney general and control of the house we could be set back years. You’re the only left candidate the east likes. Hell, they love you. We want to be in the Bill Phillips business but not with this election. There’s room for you in this party. The future of the Democratic Party is people like you, not Reggie Dread (That’s the ADA’s name, quite an unfortunate surname) There are seven state senate seats open next year including one near you. In two years, if you have the patience, a Lieutenant Governor spot could be in the works.”
It hit Phillips. No one wins elections. This is politics. Everything is a compromise. It was humbling and devastating. He looked to Gnomes, maybe not a wise move. They all gathered his moment of weakness looking to the master. Gnomes looked back. His eyes sparkled. A grin formed at the corner of his mouth. This was right where he wanted them.
“We can withdraw,” Gnomes said. “But can’t promise the votes. We know we can’t win out here, but there is nothing making them vote for Dread.”
“They don’t have to vote for him. Just not for the other guy. Winning doesn’t have to be pretty, Chris. We just have to win.”
So it was decided. Phillips would pull out of the election, throw his support behind Dread and later get the backing of the party for his next run at anything, they preferred something small. The pain of quitting wore off fast, much faster than Phillips anticipated. As usual he found solace in his loss through his wife Jen and their two kids. They took a party sponsored vacation to Vancouver B.C.
The Northwest Left came out en masse and put Dread in office. What the party did not fully realize, but Gnomes sure did, was that there was no way Dread would lose the race. Yes, Phillips was strong in the eastern half of the state on the other hand the Republican was not strong at all. In his memoirs Gnomes pointed out that the party had become blind to winning. He wrote:
They were so used to losing, whether in Washington or across the nation, that they never saw their chances for winning.
Gnomes rode this fear, which he coined “The Failure Syndrome” all the way to the top. In the mean time Phillips became a career politician. He made more money doing events and speeches for the party over the next two years, than he had made at any other point in his professional career. His rise was fast. It may not have been fast enough to precipitate his decision to run for Governor, but he had become too powerful and respected for them to say no.
At the State Democratic Convention, six months before he announced his candidacy, he gave a speech that brought the house down. The speech, written by Gnomes, touched on a few subjects at the core of the party. The speech had to be important and stick to the point. It was short. Gnomes studied the Gettysburg Address. If that speech was designed to bring the country together after the horror of the Civil War, then this speech was designed to bring the Democratic Party together to overcome the horrors of The Failure Syndrome. Phillips and Gnomes had spent hours together perfecting the delivery, not just his cadence but his gestures and look. Phillips had it memorized before they took the stage.
It was a success. Words like togetherness and lines such as difficult times call for strong messages slid off Phillips tongue. They stood and cheered. Whistles and catcalls followed. Phillips went from also ran anomaly to the party’s new rising star.
Shock was an understatement. No one ever expected him to drop his hat into the gubernatorial ring. Phillips had become too strong, there was nothing they could do but follow him. Thanks to a few appearances on the pundit circuit, he gained national attention. He became a prominent critic of the current administration. There was talk of writing a book on political thought. A modern history of the New Left is how Gnomes presented it to agents and publishers.
It was during these crazy times that Jen took Bill aside and asked him what his intentions were. “Well,” he said. “Chris is talking about making some real change. We could be running this party soon. I can be governor. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Not him,” she took his arm and looked deep into his eyes for answers. In the past they were always there. Now something was hiding them. “You, I’m asking you about you.”
It was just a few years ago that he was not only disinterested in politics but he barely voted. Jen had her own consternations about being a politician’s wife. Would endless campaigns along with mounting losses just for one win be the kind of lifestyle she’d want?
“Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s exactly what I want. I didn’t know it before, but now, all these people believe in me. I can’t let them down.”
“You’re still talking about others. I want to know about you?”
“I am talking about me. This is what I was put here to do. The people they need me. This isn’t about what I want. This is about what they need. They need stronger government. They need stronger leadership. Didn’t you hear them at the convention? They were on their feet. They cheered me. What was I three years ago? Nothing. I was doing a bullshit job for that jackass Carl Harris. Now look. I’m this close to being Governor of Washington. Can you imagine? It’s a great story.” It certainly was. Jen didn’t buy it. She saw him drinking the Kool-Aid with her and the kids following after for the ride.
After declaring his intentions the party backed off and no one opposed him in the primary. The Republicans threw four candidates at him. One stuck. Her name was Gretchen Yardley. She was an ordained Evangelical minister from central Washington. With her she brought the heavily growing Christian vote and big chunk of the divided minority population. She handled the church and state question with great confusing skill. “It’s not an issue,” She told the Seattle Post. “I believe in God and I love God, but I will be governor not Him. I feel it’s important that we find some sort of solace in faith. There will be difficult decisions in this job. I know I will turn to Him in those dark hours. But in the end it’s my decision and I will make it.”
Gnomes knew who Tal Quinn was. He also knew that as his equal in the Yardley campaign, Quinn was a master of spin. He turned everything that bitch said into a perfect perplexity that threw bones to both sides. They were small bones and neither side was satisfied, but both were not unhappy.
They debated three times. During all three Phillips shined. He was quick on his feet and she could not recover. He won on abortion: “It is not our job to legislate morality. Our job is to keep everyone’s rights in tact.” Gay marriage: “It’s not right to use our great source of individual freedom, the Constitution, to keep others from having freedom.” The economy: “Our employment numbers will go up, but what we need is investment from outside and from inside.” Education: “Our schools and their children are our must important resource. A better educated society leads to better business, a lower crime rate, and better citizens. Whatever it costs is whatever it takes.” Environment: “I want my children, your children, all children to breathe the cleanest possible air, drink the cleanest possible water, see the tallest trees and live in a consumption-light world.”
Watching her husband become a leader softened Jen’s stance. She loved to see him up there and was glad he was happy. During the campaign she found her own pet cause: the environment. The sight of more condos and less trees along with the filthy state of the Puget Sound drove her to the edge. It was the large corporations who were at fault. The people had to do something. She began organizing funds and people to Step Up and Clean Up, her slogan and the name of her new organization. It was brilliant. Gnomes loved it. Whether they won or not, they all could live off The Step Up and Clean Up Organization for years.
Poll numbers were up and down. Neither candidate was all that too well known across the state and there was little interest in the election. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, wrote the Walla Walla Picayune. Two days before Election Day they ran neck and neck a mere two percentage points with margin of error of +/- 4%.
The Phillips’s were up every night, sleepless. Bill paced the floors. Jen lay in bed staring at the ceiling. This queasiness reminded her why she did not want to be the politician’s wife. He would be devastated if he lost this time. That pain she could not handle.
On Election Day, they went back to Spokane to vote. They were the first ones there in line, as per Gnomes idea. They spent the rest of the day at home, again a Gnomes idea. There would be a celebration, win or lose at the City Pavilion downtown.
The day dragged. When the first results started coming in at around 4pm there was little surprise. Yardley had a substantial lead in the early votes counted in the south and central parts of the state. In Seattle and along the west coast they were close with Phillips holding a slight lead. In Spokane and out east he was crushing. The key was King County; the home to Seattle and its giant left leaning population should be a slam dunk. The early numbers were too close and she’s was gaining in Tacoma. She campaigned hard there for the minority vote. Her man Quinn knew her religious background would go over big. It did. She visited churches and listened to their concerns. A last ditch effort to get lapsed Presbyterian Phillips into his church backfired. He looked like a panderer and Quinn jumped all over it. On the plus side Phillips found himself a friend in Pastor Dan Farlings, who in the future will be a very close advisor to Phillips during a difficult time.
By eight o’clock the polls had closed. The new numbers made less sense. There were just a few thousand votes separating them with Yardley in the lead. Phillips got up from the chair and walked from the TV. He looked out his window. People walked up and down his front yard. There were a few reporters. They had microphones in hand and cameras mounted on tripods. He lowered his head and thought. When they caught sight of him and turned on their bright lights he pulled the curtains shut and returned to the TV. The numbers were similar. She led by 2000 votes.
“They’re still counting,” Gnomes said. “We better get ready to head out to the Pavilion.”
Across the state Yardley and her crew were praying over the TV, they looked to the big guy to expand their lead. God was apparently busy elsewhere. Their numbers shrunk down to 1000 then 500 then stopped at 150.
Phillips and his entourage rode in silence towards their party. Phillips had the radio turned off. He stared out the window and watched the trees go by. Jen placed a hand on his knee to steady it. Losing would be too difficult. Losing to Yardley would be impossible. She watched Bill became so angry with this woman. It turned to hate at one point. To think that the people might like her over him just crushed him. When their car pulled up and disappeared into the garage under the Pavilion only Gnomes leaning over his email device knew that the poll numbers changed.
In the VIP room they were hustled to the closest TV where the national media was coving their election. His face appeared surrounded in blue next to the phony smile of his nemesis. Beside her name were the numbers 41% 125,577. By his was 41% 125,999. That close. He turned to his wife, eyes drawn wide and expressive. She smiled and hugged him. “You’re gonna do it,” she whispered into his ear. “I love you.”
Sound had stopped and everything slowed down. Around their embrace everyone else was doing the same and cheering. His tired kids came up and grabbed their legs. Gnomes pumped his fist and grabbed his wife around the waist. “I told you,” he said to her. She shook her head and grinned.
It was close. The first count had them at 300 apart. It took two weeks and numerous recounts before Yardley had to give in. She had lost 3 out of 4 of the recounts. No matter how many votes they discounted or counted twice she never got ahead. After conceding she went back to her church where in two years she ran for and won the local State Senate seat.
Their first four years as Governor were unremarkable. They did a lot for the environment. They cleaned up the factories and forests. There were problems with the right and left. Phillips had his hands full. He was more of a centrist than either side would have liked.
Gnomes took his skills and ran races for state legislature candidates as well as a few on the federal level. He still stayed close with his golden boy. He kept an office in Olympia and the two had lunches and conversed often about politics. Phillips kept him on the payroll as a consultant.
Poll numbers were always high. Phillips, despite his problems with the budget and a few other technical matters, always legislated with his heart. People loved that he was accessible. He held regular town hall meetings in person and on-line, a Gnomes idea. He supported lots of Washington state businesses. He purchased art from local artists. He walked to churches and met with the worried parishioners. His best quality, one that Gnomes had nothing to do with, was his ability to listen to the populace - despite their background, party affiliation, gender, sexual preference, race, etc. They not only appreciated it, they respected him for it. Left or right loved the fact that this regular guy, this non-rich, smart, handsome guy was one of them. He genuinely cared. The fact was that he really did.
After a quick and easy re-election Gnomes began talking about something bigger. With Jen and the kids sitting there in the living room of the Governor’s mansion he laid out his plans.
“President?” Phillips was taken aback. “I couldn’t. Who would want me to be president?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? They love you, all over the state. You’re carrying a 78% approval rating with a 6.8% unemployment rate. Come on. The rest of America is ready for you. Are you ready for them?”
“When would it start?” Jen asked.
“I already have an exploratory group working on it now. In a matter of months we should have some sort of idea as to where our options lie. The party is hot for you. You’re the sexy vote right now. If we can keep interest for four more years, remember the public is very ADD about politics. On top now and gone next week, they can be very much Bill who?”
“Ok,” Phillips tossed his arms into the air. “What can it hurt to look into it? We can’t lose anything by looking.”
So it started. The true dark horse stormed out of the Northwest and conquered the nation. It was not easy. There was a lot of difficulty along the way. His home state poll numbers hurt when he began campaigning nationally. This bothered him immensely. He owed more to the citizens of Washington then the rest of the US. “They elected me,” he told Gnomes somewhere in Maine.
“They’ll understand. They are giving up their best son for everyone else. It’s hard at first, but they’ll remember how important it is for you to be president. Just wait and they’ll catch up.”
After a slow start with a loss in the early primaries, Phillips gathered momentum and rushed through the small states; he took big wins along the way and suddenly, out of nowhere, was the front runner. He knocked back the highly touted lady Senator from the northeast, crushed the minority messiah from the Midwest, and finished off the other candidates with ease.
At the convention his acceptance speech was similar to the Gettysburg Address copy that Gnomes had written for him five years ago. It seemed like forever since he delivered that speech. Again they roared their approval. Phillips was in. Even the pundits began agreeing this kid was for real.
It was his youth that made people take notice. His generation was now starting to take control of the country from their parents. The days of the baby boomers were coming to an end. The next group was up and it was their turn to shine.
His Republican opponent was the former Senate Majority leader. The middle aged, stiff haired, conservative was serving the same brand of right wing pap that their party had been pushing for the past eight years. The country yearned for a change.
Gnomes knew that the right would dig for the church vote as well as dig deep into their trenches. For his guy to have any chance he needed to grab the people on the fence. There resided a group of voters who either did not care enough to vote or wanted a message that would encourage them to make a choice. Like all the past elections in Phillips life they all thought damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Gnomes set out with TV commercials deriding his opponent’s record in the senate. They criticized his lack of action on most things relating to the top worries of voters, primarily terrorism, the economy, and education.
“Terrorism you can’t stop,” Gnomes told Phillips when these topics began to worry the candidate. “You can try and contain it. Make it happen elsewhere. If it happens elsewhere Americans don’t notice it. With the economy it goes up and down no matter what you do to. If you’re lucky you catch a wave. If you’re like the last guy well, you can wait out the trough and hope the rest of the stuff you do doesn’t mess things up too bad. And education…well I guess some kids are dumb and some kids are smart. The media only looks at failures in the system and talks about those. They never look at the positives. If 99% of kids passed with A’s they would still hold you responsible for that 1%. Don’t let it get you down, Bill. Despite what that fucking idiot says you’re more qualified than he is and you’re not going to ruin the country.”
Both Jen and Gnomes had noticed Phillips confidence dip during the home stretch. They decided to keep poll reports from him unless he asked. Whenever they needed him to gather himself Gnomes gave him a pep talk and Jen would give him sex. To Phillips it seemed that Gnomes had the better solutions.
Then one morning they woke up to a crisp and cold day where the sun was shining and the leaves that littered the ground had been gathered into piles and removed by trucks. Thicker coats appeared with fashionable scarves and tight fitting gloves kept cold hands warm. It was November.
Any last ditch campaigning was always for show. No one ever had their mind changed by what happened in the last week. They both pandered to their bases. Gnomes figured they had the majority of the undecided. It was going to be a close finish decided by this part of the electorate. The hard campaigning in the south may go for naught. Their opponent being from Kentucky turned on his southern charm and accent. That was enough to turn their heads. Gnomes had made the decision to abandon the campaign in the usual blue stalwarts and hit the road in the middle of America. He wanted to break the red divide between the oceans. This left states like Pennsylvania and New York open to the Republicans. The gamble could cost him a big chunk votes for just a little bit in the Midwest. The party leaders disagreed with this strategy. Some even began creating a plan for the next election giving up on Phillips. But Gnomes saw it differently. He assumed those states were a lock. The close votes weren’t in Florida or Ohio this year…those were a split. Instead they were in Kansas and Iowa. Wyoming had just a few votes but all those little votes add up.
When the big day came, Phillips went home to Spokane to the City Pavilion to wait out the results. At first everything started to progress nicely. With a quick sweep of the Northeast and New England, Phillips was in the lead. The south quickly went red with Phillips taking a surprise win in Louisiana.
The bi-colored spider worked its way across the country. Dotted amongst the landscape were gray states too close to call by a chicken-shit media scared into submission. They played games talking about where Wisconsin would fall. “California is a given but what about Washington?” the pundits ranted. “That’s Phillips home state. He’s there right now. Could he lose it?” It was impossible. There was nothing the proud citizens of that state wanted more, as Gnomes predicted, than for their prodigal son to be president. It was more important than politics. This was going to put their state at the forefront again. The only problem was where the Presidential Library would be. Spokane was the logical choice but Seattle sure put up a good argument considering its size and value to the state. What about Olympia, where Phillips did his best work.
Of course he had to get the job first. They stayed up late. The news media had adopted the style of their entertainment brethren. They decided to cover the news with some drama and suspense. So it wasn’t about who won or not, no they needed a hook and a twist at the end. They deliberately withheld results just to give the audience some suspense. They dragged the proceedings late into the night taking with them their loaded advertisers whose deep pockets kept everyone paid even the candidates.
It was with great reserve that Phillips accepted the money from the corporations. It was these millions that put the wheels on his bus. Of course it was his opponent who allowed those same corporations to plaster his bus like a NASCAR driver. “It doesn’t matter how we get there,” Gnomes told him. “It’s how it ends.”
“But we have to take care of them later don’t we?”
“Probably.”
At one o’clock in the morning the networks felt confident enough to declare a winner. Here were their numbers:
William Phillips (D) 51,755,800 47%
The Opponent (R) 49,345,333 45%
Third Party Fellow (I) 8,133,711 2%
Yes, there was a third part candidate but he served such little notice that no one cared, except the Republicans who later blamed him for taking their votes. Here’s the Electoral College:
Phillips (D) 272
Opponent (R) 167
It was much closer than these numbers let on just look at the Popular Vote count.
Needless to say there was much celebration. Two separate staffers got pregnant. One couple married then divorced before Phillips left office. The other was married…to other people. They were both glad that they supported abortion rights.
They partied that night and again on the inauguration. Bill had his favorite band reunite for his ball, sound familiar? Then they got down to business and oh my, what a business.
Chris Gnomes got himself the dream job, presidential advisor or Deputy Chief of Staff. He was just steps from the Phillips at any given moment. Now seated in his office he waited for the call. There was to be a briefing with the National Security team concerning terror and Iraq. With each briefing Phillips looked more and more like he was in over his head. It was Gnomes’s most important job to keep his golden calf from looking like an idiot. That was still a major problem with the press. They called Phillips a child. Some nicknamed him the Freshman or Frosh. He was the youngest President since Kennedy. Of course they all revered JFK. Then again had he not had his brains splattered all over his wife, their memories would be a lot less rosy.
When the phone rang Gnomes stopped typing. He looked over his words while listening to the president’s secretary. Phillips was ready. He clicked the little floppy disk icon and saved the latest piece to his memoirs. Then he takes his staff portfolio and notebook and heads for Phillips office.
* * * * *
The sun had long crossed the sky’s apex and was now descending into the Mediterranean. Cpl. Tyrone Jackson shelved papers, capped pens, closed inkpads and finished all the little tasks that were involved with closing his desk for the weekend. The base closed down at 1500 every Friday, which was still later than the nearby town of Catania. The troops could enjoy an early dinner, a short rest then hit town for the evening’s festivities. His boss, Lt. Col. Francis Shelby, as was his prerogative, left two hours previously. Jackson was then left alone to finish his work for the day which happened to be Shelby’s work and it involved the stamping and processing of the weeks requisition forms.
A few months ago Shelby realized he was tired of writing his signature to every single form he saw. When he went to his superiors and asked for a stamp they turned him down citing that he was a Marine and Marines have endured much more difficult tasks other than signing one’s name. When his carpal tunnel became too much to handle he went to the infirmary and was outfitted with a brace. Yet despite the brace the act of signing his name became excruciating. Since the Corps wouldn’t give him a stamp he took matters into his own hands and hired someone to do so. He was directed to small village at the base of Mt. Etna. There in a tiny house, no larger than a one car garage, he met Gi, a reclusive artist who specialized in miniature replications. Shelby made numerous copies of his signature from which he and Gi decided which one was the best. They had narrowed it down to three. One had an elongated Y at the end. The flourish brought power and command to the signature but looked arrogant. Another signature was small and compact, no flourish or command. It demanded respect but compared to the first was quite boring. The one they decided on was a compromise of the two. Its flourish was small yet the letters stretched out well across the page. Gi took the signature and carefully cut it from the paper. It would take at least three weeks to complete. He was backed up and special rock had to be taken from the crater of the volcano. As disappointed as he was with the delay, Shelby agreed and returned to his office.