James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (8 page)

If somebody asks me where I come from, I always tell them, "I come from where you come from. I come from a small town where the people are kind to each other and look out for each other and go to church on Sunday and bake stuff like there's no tomorrow and always have time for a 'good morning' and a 'how do you do?'"

But should this person press me, I'll say, "I come from Wonder Springs, Georgia. Location: thirty miles south-west of Savannah. Incorporated: 1936. Population: Just right. Weather: Never less than perfect."

I was born there. Raised there. Have kin there. Still own a home there. I'm a Wonder Springs girl through and through. The name of that burg is tattooed on my heart. Whenever I can get back there, I go, and whenever I'm wandering down Main Street, that wide old avenue where the cottonwoods are draped with Spanish moss like chiffon accents on a gown, everybody greets me as though I've never been away. It isn't "Oh, lookee here, if it ain't Miss Grand High Mucky-muck, come down from Washington to see how us ordinary folks are gettin' on with our lives." It's "Hi there, Lois!" and "Long time no see, Lois!" and "You drop on by for some iced tea, gal, y'hear?"

Wonder Springs exists. You'll find it on a map. You can visit. You'll be welcome.

But for me, it's way more than just a place. It isn't even home.

It's goshdarn Heaven.

I was all the things a woman of my age and social standing was expected to be. I was a mom, a homemaker, a baker of cakes, cookies and cobblers, a supportive wife to Ted, a good friend to my gal pals. I was on the PTA at Brian and Carol Ann's elementary school. I volunteered as a parishioner at the First Baptist Church on Mulberry Drive, helping hand out the hymnals and straighten the hassocks. I worked one evening a week at the soup kitchen down on Okefenokee Lane, doing my bit for the homeless. I drove Brian and Carol Ann to more soccer games and cheerleading practises than I care to recall!

I don't think it occurred to me even once during the first thirty-one years of my life to have ambitions beyond the world of Wonder Springs... to have dreams whose scope extended past the town limits. I was happy to be what I was, content with small-town life and my part in it.

As you doubtless already know, a vision from the Lord changed all that.

Now, there's some as would be embarrassed to admit to having received an honest-to-gosh visitation from the Almighty. Ashamed of it, even, like it's a dirty secret they'd not want others knowing.

Not me. I'm proud of it. So proud I'll state it here again.

I had a vision from the Lord. He came to me in a blaze of light and glory, and He said to me, "Lois, you have been chosen. Here's what I want you to do for Me..."

For weeks afterwards I discussed it with Ted, and with Reverend Johnson, and I thought long and hard about it, and I prayed for guidance. All along, though, I knew deep down what course I should take. In my heart of hearts I was sure. What else could I do?

There was no mistaking the Lord's message to me. I may have been sitting in my kitchen when it came, doing nothing more extraordinary than fixing grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids, but the splendor and righteousness the Lord filled me with were overwhelming and the feelings I had at that moment have never gone away. I can see now in my mind's eye, as clearly as when it happened, that image of the White House hovering before me, superimposed right in front of the fridge with all its magnets and shopping lists and the kids' drawings on the door - the White House, and myself standing outside on the lawn, ready to walk in, assume my place in the Oval Office and take command and set this country back on the straight path.

The Lord had been explicit in His instructions. America, His chosen country, His most favored nation, was in trouble. It had become a land of incompetence, impotence, immorality and iniquity.

But I could, with His help, get it back on track, make it a land that was strong, noble, feared, respected and confident once more.

When I put myself forward for governor of Georgia, people said I was crazy. I didn't have a hope. The incumbent, Jerry Forbush, was a shoo-in for a second term. The state loved him. Local businesses loved him. His approval ratings were astronomical.

Was it pure chance that that videotape of him came my way? Did it just happen to fall into my lap?

I'd say the answer was yes, if I didn't know better, if I didn't believe that whoever sent it to me had received an inner prompting to do so from a Higher Power. Just as I experienced an inner prompting from a Higher Power to take the tape to the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
.

Now, a sex scandal is one thing. A governor getting caught on camera with his pants down in the company of three women of ill repute - in this day and age, sad though it is to say, that's not unusual. Politically it can be survived. State-level officials have bounced back from worse, national-level ones too.

Not the use of the n-word, though. There was Jerry on the tape hollering it at that trio of busty African-American ladies he was cavorting with, all "Take that, you n***** b****" and "I'm gonna spank that hot n***** a** of yours." White men can't get away with talk like that except, maybe, if they're paying for it.

And Jerry Forbush surely did pay for it. With his job.

Which then became mine.

I can't say I was surprised when a consortium of certain rich and powerful Republican individuals approached me about throwing my hat into the Presidential ring. After all, these were all churchgoing men and women, God-fearing folks. They may not have realized it but the Holy Spirit was moving within them, steering them towards me.

They told me they'd been impressed by my gubernatorial sass and savvy, and they wanted to see me go further and felt I had the, pardon me, balls to. They said they had people who could oversee and organise my candidacy. They had financial backers up the wazoo, a whole bunch of them, including a couple of
Fortune
500 CEOs, all ready to bankroll me. Was I willing?

Little old me, willing to run for the top job in the land? The girl born Lois Lynchmore, now Mrs Edward Keener, soccer mom and car dealer's wife turned state's governor... president?

Well of course, what else I could say to those guys but "Sure!"

I'll never forget the day of my investiture. The first female President of the United States of America! I appreciate that that is of great significance to some people, and I'm no feminist, but I can see that it's a giant leap for womankind.

But more important than any of that were the proud, teary-eyed looks my Ted, Brian and Carol Ann gave me as I strode up to the podium to deliver my inaugural speech. That, to me, meant more than anything - my family being so overjoyed at what I'd done, what I'd achieved in just a few short years, how far I'd come.

I've heard a lot from the carpers, the naysayers, the critics, the commentators, all the heathen so-called intelligentsia who talk down my policies time and again. They say my pro-life and anti-gay-marriage bills - passed through both Senate and House of Representatives with scarcely a murmur of dissent, I'd like to remind you - are an affront to human rights. They say my giving increased powers to the police to stop, search, arrest and robustly interrogate whomsoever they like, as a means of preventing Terror, infringes civil liberties. They say my proactive approach to overseas military intervention is hawkish, anti-UN, inflammatory, and possibly illegal under international law, and that my doubling our annual defense spending budget to two trillion dollars is unsustainable and threatens to derail the economy.

I have a number of counterarguments which I will set out below. But mainly, in response to the people who make these accusations, I have three words.

Get. A. Life.

Was it wrong of me to send US troops to Venezuela to root out political corruption there? Was I mistaken to invade Iran in order to put a stop to their uranium enrichment program and head off the prospect of nuclear conflict in the Middle East? Was the bombing of North Korea an act of warmongering?

As far as I'm concerned, these aren't even questions. They don't merit addressing. The answers are obvious.

Growing up in Wonder Springs, I used to hear this saying a lot: Good fences make good neighbors.

I would add to that.

If your neighbors misbehave, sometimes you gotta aim the garden hose over the fence and give 'em a darned good soaking!

I'm just an ordinary girl still, even after all that's happened to me. Come the evening, when the workday's done, all the paperwork's been gone over and signed, the staff have been dismissed for the night, I check on the kids, make sure they're keeping up on their homework and not just goofing around on Facebook, and then Ted and I curl up on the sofa together with a glass of Chardonnay and catch up on TiVo'ed
Judge Judy
and watch
Fox News
(which always gets it right, unlike the biased left-wing liberals at CNN and CBS). We devour DVD box sets of our favorite series.
Leno
is the late-night chatshow we like to round off our evening's viewing with - I adore Jay's jokes, and he's been kinda sweet on me ever since I went on the show and launched the old Lois charm missiles at him.

I'm usually worn out by bedtime, but never so much that I'm not up for a little cuddling and canoodling. Ted and I are still very much active in that respect, thank you very much, even after nearly twenty years together. In fact, since I got sworn in Ted's been even more of a tiger in the boudoir than before. They say power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and boy, are they right! Ladies, if your husband's letting you down in the divan department, let me tell you - just get yourself elected to high office and those he-turns-out-the-lights-rolls-over-and-starts-snoring nights will be a thing of the past!

I still feel I have much to offer, and if it is God's will that I get a second term - and I know it is - then I'll gladly show the American people that their First Lady has plenty of fresh schemes bubbling away on the back burners of her stove, plenty of fresh ideas keeping cool in the pantry. Some of them'll surprise you, some of them might give you pause for thought, but I guarantee, none of them'll bore you or make you regret re-electing me.

But this book isn't a manifesto. I'll leave the promises and the pledges for the actual election campaign. The one pledge I'll give you now is that if you thought my first term was a wild ride, well heck, mister, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

Eight

A couple of days later Odin returned. And he brought a walking stick with him. Nice-looking chestnut one with a crook handle.

"For you, Gid. Time you got up and stretched those legs. Don't dither. This is the grand tour."

The castle was well lit, airy, with bare beams, white plastered walls, and little in the way of decoration apart from tapestries, usually showing a forest or a hunting scene. All the furniture was solid oak, the chairs richly carved and adorned with images of animals and helmeted warriors. Spiral staircases wound everywhere, and Odin took me on such a twisty turny route through the building that within about five minutes I'd completely lost my bearings. I couldn't have found my way back to my room if you'd paid me to.

There was a huge kitchen, and next to it a splendid banqueting hall with a high vaulted ceiling and tables and benches to seat a couple of hundred. These were arranged in long rows leading to a top table dominated by a single massive chair, a kind of wooden throne, backed up next to a large open hearth.

"Yours, I take it," I said, with a gesture at the throne.

Odin twisted his mouth. "I preside at mealtimes, yes. Someone has to. Things can get rowdy. Someone must very evidently be in charge, to maintain order."

We went outside. It was a crisp, clear day, the sky bluer and the sunshine brighter than I could remember them being in a long time. Snow lay knee-deep all around, but a series of paths had been cut through, tidily spaded out.

We followed one of them towards a vast tree which stood a couple of hundred metres from the castle. It was, honestly, the biggest fucking tree I'd ever clapped eyes on, and - surely an optical illusion, this - it seemed to expand as we approached, the squat, gnarly trunk thickening, the branches increasing in number and spreading, the leaves multiplying into infinity, the whole of it rising higher and higher from the ground, arching up further and further into the sky. I didn't think I was imagining this, but probably I was. The tree was growing, swelling, right before me. From a distance it had looked as though it would have given a Californian redwood a run for its money, but up close, absolutely no contest. It was the daddy. The mother of all evergreens. The three roots anchoring it in place were the size of buses, and you could have built a house inside that trunk - not just a house, a ruddy great mansion - and still had room to spare.

"That," I said, gazing up, "is reasonably large. What is it, a cedar?"

"An ash," said Odin.

"That was going to be my next guess." I shivered. It was chilly in the tree's shadow, chillier than elsewhere. Barely a chink of sunlight penetrated its maze of bare branches. But that wasn't the only reason I shivered. No form of plant life had any right being so enormous. It was wrong. Unnatural.