Dawn of the Unthinkable (18 page)

“What’s it say, dammit?” he hissed into the
phone. That was a mistake, because now she had something to tease
him with, and she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.

“What does what say?” she asked innocently,
using her best little girl voice.

“The letter, what does it say?” he asked
again, this time in an assassin’s monotone.

She laughed and said, “Ha, you don’t scare
me, and if you’re not nice, I won’t read it!”

“Okay, okay, let’s try this again. Beautiful
goddess of all that is wonderful in the universe, would you please
read me the letter?”

“Now that’s more like it! Why of course I’ll
read you the letter. Actually, it’s a card, about the size of a
three by five card, with I guess the seal of the president embossed
on top? And it says, and I quote…” she paused for dramatic
effect.

“
Read it
!” he screamed.

“It says,

Dear Citizen: Thank you for your
contribution of the work that you sent to me. I appreciate the
thought that obviously went into your correspondence, and will keep
it for further consideration. Together, we will continue to improve
the United States of America.

And it’s signed by George W. Bush himself!”
she said triumphantly.

He sat with his brow furrowed in
concentration.
Now what did that mean?
It didn’t seem like
an invitation for further correspondence, or even an overnight stay
in the Lincoln bedroom.

He asked his wife, “Does it look like a form
letter?”

She paused for a minute while she studied it
more carefully.

She said, “Well, now that you mention it, it
does look like a copy of something, the signature is definitely a
copy. Sorry, dear, they probably mail this to all non-dangerous
goofballs like you they hear from.” She knew how much this article
meant to him, and personal approval from his ultimate boss would
have been huge.

He was stunned. Of course, he was happy for
some type of recognition, but to get the same run-of-the-mill
response that any other post card writer got was insulting. He had
put a couple months’ work into that damn thing, and here it
probably never got any further than some clerk’s desk. What a
disappointment!

“Damn,” he said sadly.

His wife felt his pain and rushed to his
defense, “Now, hon, this isn’t so bad. It’ll be a neat souvenir you
can show the kids. You can’t expect the president to answer all his
mail personally, even the ones that have a little more thought than
usual put into them,” she said in a consoling voice.

She was right. “I know. It was just so
different I thought it might catch someone’s eye who would forward
it on to him. I guess I’m a little naive,” he said dejectedly.

On the other hand, not having ever submitted
anything to anybody outside of work before, he couldn’t really know
what to expect. So he started to not feel so foolish and to look
forward to seeing the card himself.

Though he was disappointed that there wasn’t
a bigger impact, he knew there was promise in his plan. Too often,
no one set formal goals for themselves or their organization, and
kind of just wandered aimlessly through life. While in the end,
most people did lead purposeful and fulfilling lives, they might do
better if they had a goal for all society, then a goal for their
particular community or neighborhood, a goal for their family, and
finally, a goal for themselves. He resolved that if nothing else
happened, he would start with his own family, having a meeting and
setting individual and family goals. There would be no punishment
if they didn’t make the goals, but each would be expected to give
their best effort, and to help each other try to meet theirs. In
that way, the lessons of cooperation could be taught in the family
early on, and maybe some of the competitiveness of American life
could be overcome.

Weeks passed, and the silence from the many
recipients was deafening. He got a small rejection notice from US
News and World Report, but none of the other major magazines
bothered to respond to him. None of the politicians did either,
except for the Secretary of the Treasury, who sent a form letter
much like the President’s. The presidents of the universities that
he went to did not respond, nor any of the talk show hosts. The
only person he sent it to that did respond was a local FM radio
deejay, Pierre Robert, who actually gave it a thoughtful reading
and made a few insightful comments. His response was very
heartening in that it affirmed
someone
had read it, which he
was beginning to despair of.

So, it appeared that nothing was going to
come of his effort. What to do now? Should he just give up? That
seemed to be the coward’s way out. His life would go on much the
same as before, and a new idea that might be exciting to other
people would never see the light of day. No, he couldn’t let that
happen. Even if it was a bad idea, he felt compelled to share it
somehow so that it could be talked out to its natural resolution.
As it stood now, just he and a few skeptical friends had heard
about it. He reread the article, not having really looked hard at
it for a couple of months. He was now unimpressed with its
simplicity; sometimes people didn’t take things seriously unless
they couldn’t understand it. He thought again about taking a
college course in political science to brush up on some
governmental concepts and maybe cautiously bounce the idea off some
policy junkies in academia. Get a read on what someone who does
this for a living thought.

Yeah, that’s the ticket
. It would be
good to be back on campus. Of course, work would have to pay for
it, or it would be out of the question. As it was, it would be hard
enough to convince Kathy that he needed to be out of the house a
couple nights a week for recreation. He could justify it by
pointing out that he wasn’t out with Douglass anymore, him having
been sent to Kosovo for nine months of “peacekeeping.” He didn’t
know if this argument would fly, but it seemed reasonable to him.
After all, hadn’t he thought up the perfectly reasonable idea of
doing away with all money?

Senator Kincaid weathered the storm from the
feminists’ upset over his skirt-pulling by issuing an apology. The
sniggers from the rest of the exclusive men’s club, the Senate,
were harder to take. Sexual excesses were looked upon as routine,
but apparent cowardice was something that men could be pretty mean
about. Now, whenever he retreated on an issue, he had to hear
comments like, “What’s wrong Kincaid, no balls to hide behind?” or
“Let me find that page for you, Senator.” It was a problem to deal
with, but he had many in his life, so this one just had to get in
line.

One item that had become a problem that
really hadn’t been before the incident was re-election. As with
most incumbents, he had amassed a considerable war chest, so
financing a campaign was not really a problem. The difficulty was
now himself and his lack of desire to get out and gain the votes
that he needed. He had never been a great campaigner, elected
mainly due to the influence of his family in tiny Rhode Island.
They were one of the pre-eminent employers in the state with
manufacturing plants throughout and having many family members in
state and local politics, including the governor, allowed him to
sit back and watch the votes flow in. Based on this, it was an
unwritten law that you voted for any Kincaid that decided to run,
and you would be rewarded with a job either in the state or local
government or one of the plants. Some of his competitor’s would say
this formula was as old as dirt and usually led to the stagnant
thinking that comes with just one set of leaders bent on
self-perpetuation, being in charge for too long. Fortunately for
the Kincaids, the typical Rhode Islander was content with the
status quo and did not feel the need to be on the cutting edge of
anything. So there was no need to set the world on fire for him to
keep his job.

He had nursed presidential ambitions at one
time, but his distaste for campaigning would make that futile. He
watched with amazement the ones who did make it to the highest
office and marveled at their ability to press flesh, even when he
knew some of them were just like him and did not like much contact
with strangers. Bush positively floored him; he probably shook more
hands in a week than most people, including himself, shook in a
lifetime.
Why, the germs you could accumulate by doing that
would probably kill a horse, and yet, there he went on, probably
for two terms, still smiling despite all the scandals that swirled
about him.
Kincaid was smart enough to realize his own
limitations and content to live the life of a senator, which if
done right, was very comfortable.

Besides, he had skeletons in his closet that
he preferred stayed there. He thought of his “friend” who had
berated him on the day of his sapping and the others like her
before. It wouldn’t do to have that type of thing looked into, and
even the rather stolid Rhode Islanders might turn him out if they
knew too much about his proclivities. He started to think about her
and how he discovered her right in the midst of the Senate! Most of
the women that worked there were either not very attractive, being
more content to curl up with a policy brief than a man, or they
were such obvious bimbos that a married man couldn’t be seen within
ten yards of them without ruinous rumors starting. One thing he and
his wife had agreed upon was to keep their inclinations toward
other people discreet, and as she now sought the company of Jim
Beam more often than another man, her end of the deal was working.
He had to be more careful, of course, as there was now a much
greater tendency for the press to publish a public figure’s
foibles.

So, all in all, he would be content to keep
on winning terms in the Senate like old Throm, who apparently was
going to bury all of them. Which probably wouldn’t have been a
problem, but not only had the Tree Girl incident shaken his
standing among the women voters in the state, there was now a woman
challenger for the primary. She had gained from the incident as
well as having stature herself. She had been a coroner in some of
the state’s larger cities and had then gone into the state senate
where she had made a name for herself pushing legislation for
family care and the ecology, two issues he was not strong on. So in
addition to appearing smarter than him by being a doctor, she was
an incumbent herself, albeit on a smaller scale. With the primaries
less than nine months away, he had to decide on a strategy for
defeating this admittedly creditable candidate. There had to be
some angle he could work this time, as it appeared that mere money
was not going to erode this woman’s base of support. He didn’t want
to risk getting into a mudslinging campaign because that would risk
having his own mud overturned, but maybe there was something in her
past public life he could make hay over. Perhaps a botched
autopsy?

He called Jordan on the intercom. Jordan,
while not being his campaign manager, knew what Kincaid felt
comfortable with while he was out on the road and acted as an
intermediary between the senator and his campaign managers. Kincaid
and Jordan had been through this drill before, but not against a
woman, so some thought would have to be given as to how to proceed.
Jordan came in and sat down with a grunt that made Kincaid look at
him quizzically.

Jordan answered his look by saying, “It’s
getting harder to keep in shape as I get older. The roads I run
seem to be growing hills, and someone keeps tightening the rowing
machine.”

Kincaid snorted a laugh in return. “You
should do what I do; nothing, let nature take its course—much less
effort.”

Jordan sighed. “If I hadn’t been a Marine, I
might tend to agree with you. But there is something about having
gone to Paris Island and making it through all that that makes it
hard to let yourself fall out of shape. I just wish it got easier
instead of harder.”

Kincaid shook his head at his aide, but
secretly envied him. He had not been able to enter the service due
to having flat feet, a fact that not only pained him emotionally,
but affected his political credibility. He would have loved to join
the Air Force ROTC and been a weekend warrior, but they didn’t take
people that couldn’t run, and the senator had been timed with a
calendar as a youth. Fortunately, one of the perks of being a
senator was having people who were always willing to drive you
someplace, so he could keep his walking to a minimum.

“Rudi, we need to figure out where the
esteemed Dr. Goldhaber is vulnerable. The percentage of women who
registered to vote went up twenty-five percent last year, and that
would be enough to knock me out if they all decided to go to her.
As it is, I’m going to have a tough time hanging on to all my men
votes, thanks to ‘Tree Girl’,” he said bitterly. She was due to be
released soon from the institution they had sent her to for
treatment. He had wanted jail for her, but in retrospect, that
might have hurt him even worse with the women.

“Well, it’s going to be tough. Most of the
women in the state really respect and trust her. From the time she
helped solve that serial rape/murder case, she’s been like a god.
I’ve met her; she seems like a pretty decent lady. I’m not looking
forward to trying to drag her down.”

“Yes, well unfortunately the name of the
game is survival. She can always fall back on medicine if she
doesn’t get this job. Being a senator is about all I know how to do
now, and I’m not ready to head out to pasture yet.”

“I can understand that, and I’m all for
winning, too, but I wish there was some way to do it that wouldn’t
cause us to have to find an abortion or two in her background,”
Jordan said ruefully.

Kincaid’s ear perked up at that. “Why, have
you heard anything like that?”