Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (61 page)

I had no good answer.

After our first breakfast the next morning, the Rabbit Creek trio began working to salvage a dilapidated house about one hundred feet above the river. Descending into the cellar on a rough-hewn spruce ladder, I wondered if the structure above our heads was stable. The receding water had created a large mass of diesel-filled mud that had knocked over the retaining walls and bowed the supporting beams. There was oil-soaked insulation everywhere, surrounded by gravel and wood debris. In a corner, a toppled hot water heater lay like a corpse.

Our initial chore involved shoring up retaining walls when not shoveling and hauling bag after bag of petroleum-soaked earth across a suffocating crawl space, up the wooden ladder, and through the hole in the main floor. The harder we labored, the sweatier and smellier we became, and the better I felt.

After having collectively hauled fifty or more bags out of that hole on day one, my back rewarded me with a purposeful and fulfilling ache. Pain well earned and appreciated.

That night we did not bother turning on the heat in the camper. It felt good having the night breeze flow across my face, taking in cold, Alaskan air scented with cranberry blossoms.

As the days passed, I fell in love. Groups from backgrounds as diverse as Habitat for Humanity, Mennonite Disaster Service (in their red T-shirts), Samaritan's Purse, and Rabbit Creek tirelessly toiled side by side. Workers went about their tasks of cleaning and repairing while members of the community cooked meals in kettles or delivered them in foil containers.

The week passed quickly, each day full of good work, nights promising heavy slumber. I experienced honest teamwork that led to efficient progress toward an important goal. Here the talk was about survival—everyone had a story about watching the water rise and the icebergs crushing cars and homes. We focused on time management, cooperation, and finding parts and tools and pumps.

Meals were a time to refuel, get direction, and take a brief rest before rebuilding a cabin. One evening after playing in Redman Mess Hall I earned the nickname Piano Man, a name so much better than anything I'd been given in recent years. I liked that nickname (especially as we had a man specializing in constructing outhouses whom we referred to as Crapper John). Relearning how simple fun can be came easily as we talked and laughed, listened to the river rumble in the distance, and watched the orange sparks from our nightly open fire rise toward a sky pierced with bullet hole stars.

On the final night, around the fire, the conversation turned to politics.

Part of me dreaded going in that direction, but how, I wondered, was I to get on with life if I hid from the past?

Soon all eyes turned to me. “Politics can change people,” I began as I poked the fire with a stick, hoping the flames might contain an explanation that made sense. “It has the power to turn people into something they weren't before—and I'm not just talking about ordinary people, but extraordinary ones as well.” I suspected most everyone understood I was referring to Sarah. That the passion and honor I hoped she once had somewhere became lost and corrupted. “The process is seductive, the game addictive, and the feeling of power can end up devastating lives, much like a river of ice, I guess. I've seen it happen to too many people.” Keith's eyes read my face, and he nodded.

For a moment, we all watched the sparks from my ash stirring flitter
and disappear like excited fireflies. Keith leaned across with elbows resting on both knees, thumbs holding up a squared jaw. “I understand,” he said. “Frank, all I know is that you're here—we're both here for the same reason. That's good enough for me.”

If ever a man had a right to negative preconceived notions, that man sat across from me; but instead of judging me, he was being a friend. He didn't care about Frank Bailey the Troopergate guy.

The morning of our last day, we ate a final home cooked breakfast and readied the vehicles. Single file, we departed, with me taking up the rear. Down that narrow shale and cliff road, slowly but surely. Miles later, my pickup suddenly lurched as a tire hit a piece of razor-sharp shale and blew. As the caboose to the caravan, I was left alone. Eventually to the rescue, a State Department of Transportation employee arrived and raced down the mountain to retrieve Allen—a member of our team—who returned up the mountain to assist.

As we set to remove the blown tire, the lug-wrench spun. And spun and spun. Corroded lug nuts, like a bike wheel with no resistance. We needed a vise grip. I recalled placing the key to the toolbox in the side-door pocket of my pickup, but it wasn't there. I checked under the seat, on the floor, between the seats, in the ashtray, in my pockets, on the dashboard, back to the ground—this time on hands and knees. No key.

Anger, frustration, and a dose of homesickness went into a mighty crunch of my foot into the pickup door. I'll always appreciate the resulting dent, because when my foot landed against the driver's side door, I heard a series of jingles—sounding like a piece or pieces of metal. Surely this was the key—having slipped behind the side-door pocket—rattling down behind the pads.

I flipped open the door and, at the bottom of the door pocket, saw a crack just big enough for a key-sized object to slip inside. I reached in as best I could but felt nothing. Desperate, I tore the door pocket from the upholstery. To get to the key, I needed to do more damage. I began ripping the whole door panel to pieces. Over the years, it turns out, more than just a key had found its way into that crack. As if I'd
broken open a four-wheel-drive piñata, spare change flew out and onto the road. Along with maybe a buck ten in nickels, dimes, and quarters was the key. But in that moment, I cared nothing about the toolbox, the flat tire, my desire to get off that rocky road in Nowhere, Alaska, or that key.

I bent down, no longer aware of aching muscles. My eyes riveted on a message I will forever believe came from the God who never abandoned me, who stood alongside me, even while I went off the path of righteousness. In this last week I'd traveled across the most beautiful land His hand bestowed on us, worked side by side with people who humbled me with their moral strength and felt as proud of my labor as I'd ever felt. The result was a pledge to reprioritize my life, to reconnect to family and make up lost time. So, with that in mind, I had to believe the object drawing my attention—delivered with impeccable timing—was something to always remind me of my Eagle mission vows to reprioritize my life.

Among the debris lying on this lonely road was the thing I'd once removed during the early days of the Palin campaign and lost. Reaching down, the metal reflected the day's dwindling light. Etched in tiny letters I read: 11–30–91 JMS to FTB.

November 30, 1991, my wedding day.

JMS
, my wife's initials.

FTB
, mine.

I took off my replacement ring and slipped on this simple and cherished original.

40
 

The End

B
y the time I returned from Eagle in late summer, Sarah was physically out of the governor's office. She couldn't wait to get out, get going, and get rich. On July 3 she resigned; on July 26 she was officially an ex-governor. Some predicted that quitting would be the end of her fifteen minutes of fame. Boy, were they wrong. Sarah not only did not fade away, she became an omnipresent fixture on every news show pretty much across the country, the human equivalent of Kodiak Island's tsunamis and earthquake rolled into one tiny package.

But not everyone remained infatuated. Alaskans, whose lives depend on perseverance, could not abide a quitter and saw through Sarah's me-first ideology long before the rest of the nation. Approval ratings, which once surpassed 80 percent, would plunge into the low thirties. Protestors, referring to her tenure, called her “our half governor.” Signs read
Quitter
wherever she appeared, even during her book tour in hometown Wasilla. During television filming, a thirty-foot banner proclaiming
Worst Governor Ever
was hoisted over the dock in the Homer Harbor. If she was known to be en route to an event anywhere in state, former supporters who once waved New Energy for Alaska signs now shouted, “You quit on us!” Eventually the Palins found themselves largely holed up in their newly constructed gigantic family compound on Lake Lucille, when not traveling to more supportive red states in the lower forty-eight for $100,000 speaking fees (or, triple that, traveling to Hong Kong). Fox News built her an in-home
studio from which she can comment—critically and at times incoherently—on current events. No more ventures into “lamestream media,” where unscripted questions might pop up regularly.

Unfortunately, my own tiptoe from office drew parting shots from the local media who rehashed all of my misdeeds. Much of it deserved; but all of it stung. Governor Parnell, who I came to believe was an honest man without Sarah's interpersonal loose wires, offered me the airport director's job. For that gesture—actually finding a spot where my fourteen years in the airline industry would prove ideal—I remain grateful. But finally, with lesson learned, I realized that my life was no longer in government, fighting idiotic wars with only Pyrrhic victories. Coffee stands that pulled in just enough to scrape by but left time to spend with my wife and kids would do just fine. While I continued to have an occasional nightmare about Trooper Wooten holding a gun to my head, there were no more hysterical calls from Todd Palin about his ex-brother-in-law riding a snow machine or illegally shooting a cow moose, and no more chasing after phantom enemies or participating in Sarah-orchestrated circular firing squads.

As it turned out, I never did officially resign. No formal letter—as I'd written on three occasions during Troopergate—no exit interviews or gold watch. For the remainder of that August, I continued working while waiting for a replacement to take over boards and commissions. Sarah and Todd, from the moment I returned until I left the offices for the final time on September 7, spoke not a single word to me. Kris Perry, once my closest friend in the administration, gone from my life. Palin attorneys acted friendly and communicated when they needed me in the fall of 2009 to help out with a case involving a college student in Tennessee who'd hacked Sarah's emails. The young man, David Kernell, twenty-two years of age and the son of a Tennessee lawmaker, was accused of obstruction of justice, unauthorized access to a computer, and wire fraud.