Riders on the Storm (3 page)

The applause surprised me. Close to half the group clapped. A few whistled.

“But I didn't come here tonight to belittle anybody. I came here tonight to say that with your help we can put a true man and a true patriot in this Congressional seat—and I don't have to tell you who that is, do I? A very successful businessman as well. Come over here, Steve!”

This time everybody applauded. I joined in. He was a shit most of the time but then there was a decent, generous side to him that almost, but not quite, made you like him. I'd known him since grade school. He'd always been this way.

Donovan was a slick package. A fit, blond man who'd played good basketball at the university in Iowa City, he'd just gotten his business launched when Uncle Sam dragged him out of his house. Tonight he was dressed much like the senator. Golf shirt, in his case black; tailored yellow slacks; a large and no doubt real gold watch; and a smile that could not quite hide the smirk inside.

My eyes strayed to his wife Valerie, who stood at the front. A perfect fit for him. A lithe brunette of brutal beauty in a chic emerald fitted dress and a smile very much like hubby's. Practiced and cold. She applauded just the right, proper way and gazed just the right, proper way on our next congressman. The too liberal for these times—and face it, uninspired—congressman presently holding the seat would undoubtedly stay in Washington, but now as consultant or lobbyist.

“Those of you who know me know that I'm not really practiced at giving speeches. Valerie and me”—the classic ungrammatical pronoun to go along with this whole shuck and jive I'm just a regular feller bullshit—“we're private folks. So this doesn't come natural to me.”

“You do great!” a man in the back shouted.

“Well, thank you. I appreciate the support. And I'll need that support when I run.”

The orgasm moment. He's running. Applaud until your hands run with blood; scream until you lacerate your throat.

The camera man—a young guy interchangeable with most hippies you saw on the street—panned the faces of the excited people up front.

Donovan started waving for them to calm down, but that smile said who could blame them? A hot-shit property like me? Just who the hell
could
blame them?

“I'll tell you what, my friends. I'm going to accomplish things when we get to Washington. I'm going to cut the terrible taxation we all suffer under and I'm going to make sure that every single country on this planet is either our friend or our enemy. And if they're our enemy then all I've got to say is—watch out! I'm sick of hearing this country denigrated by all these third-rate loudmouths. And it's happening right here at home. Just look at our morals. Moral people can't go to movies anymore. And the songs on the radio. I'm not afraid of censorship. You heard me say that, right? Sometimes you have to have censorship. And one more thing—I won't let any so-called American citizen run this country down. And that goes for soldiers who sign petitions that claim that our honorable service was immoral!”

I couldn't take any more applause. I let my bladder lead me into the house. When I finished I put the lid down and sat on it. I smoked and did a little smirking myself. I knew just enough about politics to know that he had to use groups like these to get the initial support he needed. When he started appearing before large groups he'd have to be much more moderate. The TV news tonight would be kind to him. He'd get at most a minute and a half and the sound bite would be how he was going to make our country safe again from porno and songs of sex. He sounded good; he looked good, didn't he? And who among the voters gave a shit anyway? He was as much against hippies and lust as they were, wasn't he?

I sat there a while longer, enjoying the fact that my headache was fading. I was tempted to call Mary, but what would I say? If I said I was lonely she'd interpret that as meaning that the break was over. But I needed the break.

I had left a patio loud and ripe with good times. But when I returned it sounded as if the party was winding down. It wasn't even eight thirty yet.

A beer sounded good but first I wanted to find out what was going on. I noticed that the crowd had split into smaller groups of fives and sixes. And I noticed they were talking quietly but earnestly.

What the hell was going on?

Then I heard the voices erupt from around the east wing of the house. I recognized Will's voice first. Then Donovan's. Donovan was drawing down on Will and Will was meekly trying to tell Donovan that he still wanted to be friends with all the vets. That his decision to sign the anti-war petition was nothing personal. I felt sorry for him then. There was no way that most of the vets would not take it personally. I understood that; apparently Will didn't.

And then they appeared on the patio.

My stomach churned. Sometimes the three different meds I took backed up in me but I didn't think this was the meds. It was these feelings of anger and sorrow and defeat that were so common these days. Will just looked so damned sad and played out and confused.

Donovan was dragging him. It almost looked like an old TV comedy routine. Donovan had Will by the collar of his button-down shirt while Will's arms were trying to push against Donovan. Will kept saying, “These're my friends, Steve. At least let me talk to them.”

This was the scene Senator O'Shay returned to from somewhere inside the house. He must have been using one of the four bathrooms, too.

He commandeered the patio instantly. “Steve, stop it! What're you trying to do to this man?”

But Donovan was too angry to stop. His face was ruby and sweat drained off him. “This is Cullen, the guy who signed the anti-war thing! He snuck around the side of the house! I'm just escorting him out!”

O'Shay advanced. Not too difficult to understand why he, too, was angry. But not at Will, at his protégé. Donovan had sounded too angry on his first on-camera appearance tonight but he could slide past it. But dragging somebody—even an anti-war vet—out of the party … O'Shay knew the rules. You could be a lot of things and hold a Congressional seat, but you could not be a madman.

O'Shay had to be reading the crowd as well. While maybe a fourth of the people shouted agreement with Donovan's rage, the majority looked unhappy and some looked disgusted. They knew Will as a mild, quiet man; they knew Donovan as a charming but dangerously short-fused man.

O'Shay reached out to grab Donovan much as Donovan had grabbed Will. But instead of releasing Will, Donovan launched into a real beating. Before O'Shay even had a chance to stop him Donovan pounded punches into Will's face and stomach and then started all over again. Blood spurted from Will's nose and the roll of his eyes indicated that he was unconscious before he hit the flagstone floor.

By now I and five other men had surrounded Donovan and forced him to stop throwing punches. His entire body surged with his fury. He screamed over and over that he wanted to kill Will.

Many women and more than a few men watched all this in fear and revulsion.

Donovan got his shirt torn in the process of the manhandling it took to hold him back. He raved on. He'd never been like this before the war; not this kind of lunacy. I would've heard about it.

Slowly, reason came back into his eyes. Not apology or shame but common sense. He gaped around as if he'd just been dropped here from another planet. You could see him begin to recognize not only faces but context. Maybe he wasn't sorry for what he'd done to Will but it was easy to see that he was embarrassed about it.

O'Shay was at the bar. I'd glimpsed him earlier flirting with the woman running it. Not flirting this time. When he got his drink he gunned it in a gulp and then held the glass out for a refill.

No doubt his people had vetted Donovan and no doubt they'd learned of his temper and no doubt they'd weighed that temper against his points as a businessman and Nam vet. But temper in the abstract is not the same as stories witnessed in real time.

O'Shay was in a dilemma. His people could minimize this with the press. Area reporters would not be eager to take on a war vet, particularly one who was also a prominent businessman. Maybe he could slide by this whole night. But what about the future?

I knelt next to Will. A woman who identified herself as a nurse joined me. She checked his vitals—not what they should be—and then checked his nose—not broken—and then she said the best thing would be to get him to an ER. He'd been savagely beaten.

His eyes fluttered open and he said, “I kicked his ass, huh?” He loved jokes. But then, his mood swings worse than mine, he started crying. The nurse took one arm and I took the other and we gradually got him sitting up.

A large number of people encircled us. Even a few vets I recognized as friends of Donovan were saying sympathetic things. Maybe Donovan wasn't such a hero to them anymore.

Just after I stood up a large sinewy hand fell on my shoulder. When I turned around I looked into the wary green eyes of O'Shay.

“I'm very sorry about this.”

“I'm sure you are. He's one hell of a candidate.”

“War vets are often stressed to the point of anger. I'm sure someone in the VA can deal with his anger problem.”

Right now O'Shay was doing his own public relations. I couldn't dispute that Donovan was a brave man. He had the medals to prove it.

“I need to get Will to the hospital.”

“We're here to help you,” a vet I recognized from Iowa City said. “We'll help you get him in your car and we'll follow you all the way to the ER.”

But O'Shay wasn't quite finished. “Someone pointed you out to me. Told me what happened at boot camp. I'm very sorry. If there's anything I can ever do for you, please let me know.”

This guy could kiss your ass under water.

He turned away. He had a lot of work to do. He had to sell this crowd on what a great guy his seriously disturbed Congressional candidate really was.

Right now that was going to be one hell of a job.

W
E WERE TALKING ABOUT SHUNNING.

There was an Amish community not too far from here and one of its rare but controversial practices was to shun a member who had violated certain beliefs or rules of the sect. They pretend the shunned person does not exist.

So Karen and I sat in the ER waiting area and smoked our cigarettes and kept glancing at the large round clock above the ER desk. As if checking it would hurry the intern who was examining Will. Karen had called a neighbor, who was now watching Peggy Ann.

On the way over here Karen had told me about some threatening letters that had been sent to their house over the last three months. Each looked like a kidnap note and each hinted at an ominous future. These really needed to be looked into.

She'd also told me about other letters. “About a month ago I was cleaning his den and I found this shoebox on the shelf of the closet. It was pushed way back. I couldn't help myself. I took it down and opened it. There were all these love letters he'd written and never sent. Longhand, the tiny way he writes. He's been seeing Cathy Vance again.” No tears; dead cold voice.

Cathy Vance was the college sweetheart he'd been engaged to, but he'd thrown her over when he met Karen.

Then we were in the Emergency Room.

Tart smells of medicine, hospital sounds including whispery calls over the intercom now that most of the patients would be sleeping or trying to, and the whoosh of the double ER doors as people passed in and out. I'd dated an ER nurse for a time and learned some things about the department. It was the Wild West. You never knew who or what you were going to get. One night a man with a gun had confronted her, demanding to see his estranged wife whom he'd just beaten half to death. Fortunately, in his rage and rush he hadn't noticed the police officer behind him. The officer had just brought in a drunk who'd fallen and cut his head. The officer now walked up behind the crazed husband and managed to take away the man's gun without incident.

“He used that word ‘shunned' more than a few times in the past few days,” Karen said. “You know he can be pretty dramatic sometimes but I know that's how he was feeling. Being in the army made him feel accepted as a man. He was afraid to go but I always sensed he thought he could prove something to himself over there. I don't think he ever felt adequate about being tough. God, I love him so much. I tried to warn him that this would happen if he signed that petition. Look what's going on in Washington.”

A small faction of the anti-war vets (whose large numbers were being disputed by some in the press) had clashed at a demonstration with regular vets near the White House the other day. All the expected name-calling and bitterness. A particularly sad day for the country, I thought. A feast for the blowhards in Congress who loved to pout over alleged heresy.

“Then when he left tonight for the party—”

“He just said that he needed to buy oil, so—”

I smiled. “Oh, right. He learned how to change oil when he was over in Nam—”

“So he worked on his car whenever he could. It was another thing that made him feel good about himself.”

A heavyset middle-aged Negro came in with his wife. She pointed to a chair and said, “Sit there, Bob. I'll get you all checked in.” He wore a Cubs T-shirt and jeans. The way he gritted his teeth and held his right arm as if it was an infant suggested that he had broken it.

“He's in this softball league at work and he tried to slide into second base earlier tonight,” she told the woman at the desk. She glanced back at him. “He thinks he's still sixteen, I guess. Anyway, we went home after the game but the pain's getting worse and worse.”

The man had smiled at her when she'd said he thought he was still sixteen. He knew she'd been telling him that she loved him.

Our doc came along just as the woman was taking a seat next to her husband.