The Governor's Lady (11 page)
“So I want you to get on the phone and call the Corrections Department and tell them the
governor
wants you and the rest of the staff picked up immediately and delivered safely. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can.”
Cooper turned away, took another sip of wine, then held the phone to her ear. “Okay, Pickett.”
“Look, the reason I called … I just talked to Colonel Doster.”
“And?”
“This business of the National Guard …” She could tell he was making a great effort to keep his voice light, even.
“What about it?”
“This isn’t a good idea.”
“Pickett, do you have any notion of what’s going on down here?”
“I’ve been briefed, yes.”
“By whom?”
“Doster, Roger. Look, I think you’re getting way ahead of yourself. Calling out the National Guard right now, it’s premature. Rousting all those people out of their homes, putting them in the armories and on the roads tonight, all the expense of it … It’s just not necessary.” Ten seconds of silence, and then he added, “I’m just trying to be helpful.”
She could feel anger rising. “You’re meddling.”
“No, Cooper, I’m trying to keep you from making a big mistake.” An edge was in his voice now. “I’m trying to keep you from looking like you don’t know what you’re doing. Playing right into Felicia Withers’s hands.”
“And if I don’t know what I’m doing, that makes you look like an idiot, too,” she shot back.
“Yes,” he snapped. And then he got himself under control again. “Look, hon, we’re on top of the situation. Doster tells me there’s no need for the Guard. He’s got everything under control. No harm done, good
intentions and all that. Doster’s the only one who knows, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut. We’ll alert a few Guard units, then see what we need in the morning. It may not snow much. You know how unreliable the forecasts can be. Just let folks do their jobs.”
“It’s
my
job.”
“Cooper,” he said firmly, “the National Guard isn’t going anywhere.”
“Pickett, you are a gold-plated asshole!” But then she realized he had already hung up.
Her face burned. She was still holding the wineglass, holding it so tightly the stem might snap. She poured it full again. It was dark now across the back lawn, snow swirling through the glow of the security lights. She drank, seething. As the wine began to take the edge off, she calmed a bit and asked herself,
Is he right? Did I go off half-cocked
? But then the other:
Being called to heel like a disobedient dog …
From upstairs, the distant sound of laughter. Mickey, Nurse Dubose.
And then the sudden bark of the intercom above the kitchen counter, startling her: “Governor Lanier, this is Sergeant Veazey at the guardhouse.”
She set the wineglass down, crossed to the intercom, and keyed it. “Yes?”
“The newspaper guy, Kincaid, is here. He says he needs to talk to you. I tried to get him to leave, but he’s still out there on the sidewalk. Nothing on but a sports coat.”
Good Lord. All this, and now Wheeler Kincaid
.
“Did he say what he needs to talk to me about?”
“No, ma’am. Just said it’s urgent. And Governor … he seems a little … tipsy. Should I arrest him?”
“My God,” she said softly. She stood there for a moment, feeling utterly drained, wanting nothing more than to go to bed. A deep, dark, blessed Ambien hole of sleep. But Wheeler … He had told her this
morning about Felicia. She was still puzzling over that, wondering why he had done something so plainly out of character. Why her? And what now?
Sergeant Veazey had a firm hand on Kincaid’s arm.
Kincaid clutched himself, shivering, face a pallid gray in the porch light, snow flecking his jacket and hair. She ushered them in and left Veazey nervously reluctant in the front hall while she took Wheeler to the den and motioned him into a chair. He bent at the waist, elbows on knees, wobbly but trying hard to keep himself together. In the small, closed room, the liquor smell was overpowering. His eyes were feverish.
“Do you want some coffee, Mr. Kincaid?”
He considered that for a moment. “I quit.”
“You quit drinking coffee?”
“I quit the paper.”
“What?”
“Felicia. A big row.” He stared at his hands, then looked up at her. “I don’t do dirty work.
For
anybody,
on
anybody.” He sat back in the chair. “I want to go to work for you.”
She blinked, stared. It took her a good while to recover enough to say, “Do you have any idea what I’m dealing with at the moment, Mr. Kincaid?”
“It’s snowing like a sonofabitch, I know that.”
“My God, this is just incredible. It’s too much. Go home and sober up. Do you have your car?”
“I walked. It’s not far.”
She called to the front hall, “Sergeant Veazey, come get Mr. Kincaid and find him a ride home so he doesn’t freeze to death.”
When she saw Kincaid to the door, he stopped and gave her an arch look. “You didn’t say no.”
She went back to the kitchen and her wine, sat for a long time staring out at the gloom, snow drifting thickly in the harsh glare of the security lights. Her mind was a jumble—the snow, the National Guard, Mickey, Pickett, Kincaid. Mostly Pickett.
Out of the howl, one thought kept repeating:
Pickett lied. How can I possibly be surprised
?
Cooper had experienced, throughout her life, an abiding sense of loss she associated with politics, with the people it took from her. Beginning with Jesse, son of Cleve Spainhour’s first marriage, already eleven when his father, a widower state senator, met and wed Mickey.
By the time Cooper was born, Cleve was a rising force in state politics and Mickey was busy learning what it would take to help him make the next step. They didn’t seem to have a great deal of time for Cooper, so Jesse became as much parent as stepbrother.
He was a wispy, beautiful boy with wavy brown hair like his father and nice lines and angles to his face and a slow, almost sleepy smile that seemed oddly to complement his sad eyes. When Cooper thought of her early childhood, it was always of Jesse. Sweet, sad Jesse, often in trouble, usually with Mickey. Even at that age, Cooper could feel the stubborn battle of wills between them. When Mickey yelled at Jesse, he seemed to go off someplace inside himself where she couldn’t reach
him. He didn’t complain, he just went into that someplace and stayed awhile until things smoothed over. When he came back, it was always first to Cooper. She worshiped him and thought of herself as his ally. In return, he filled a great many of her empty hours.
She was six or thereabouts, her loneliness stretching into days as Cleve and Mickey were consumed with his campaign for lieutenant governor.
Jesse found her playing with dolls at the base of the enormous oak tree that filled most of the side yard of the Big House. Huge, gnarled roots made a hollow where she had set up house.
He eased down beside her, back nestled in the crook of the tree, hair tousled, shirttail out, shirt unbuttoned with a sliver of torso peeking out, that slow, sad smile spreading across his face. “How’s Ginger’s cold today?” He knew all her dolls’ names. Ginger had the sniffles, and sniffles in July heat were the worst. Cooper had suffered from a cold last week, and now Ginger had caught it.
“She’s some better, but she still has the dripples.”
Jesse laughed. It was a word they had made up together. Drips and sniffles. Jesse was always coming up with funny words. Like mucous membrane. It was part of your nose, Jesse said, but it didn’t sound like anything nosey.
“Maybe she ought to see the doctor,” Jesse said. Cooper thought he sounded funny, his words sort of running together like thick syrup pouring slowly from a pitcher.
“Yes, she might,” Cooper said. “She’s got a rash, too.” She showed him where she had painted red dots on Ginger’s face with some of Mickey’s nail polish.
“Yeah, that could be serious. It looks like it might degenerate”—another
one of those big, delicious words—“into galloping consumption.” Jesse was full of big, delicious words. He read a lot of books, and sometimes he would read aloud to her. Jesse was seventeen and could read everything, pronounce all the words, and even knew what most of them meant.
Cooper’s eyes widened. “Is galloping … whatever … is that pretty bad?”
“Well,
I
wouldn’t want to have it.”
“Me, too.”
“Then maybe she really ought to see the doctor.”
“Could you call him for me?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t wait for him to get all the way out here. I’d take her to town right now.”
It was awkward at first, Cooper perched on top of a stack of thick, leather-bound law books from Cleve’s library. The books kept slipping and sliding every time she tried to turn the steering wheel as they headed down the long gravel driveway toward the two-lane. Ginger sat on the seat between them, looking dripply.
“I don’t like this,” she said, irritated at the awkwardness of it. “I want you to drive.”
“I can’t. I told you, I don’t have a license. And Mickey said she’d skin me alive if I drive without a license.”
Yes, she did remember somebody had taken Jesse’s driver’s license away from him because he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. Mickey had been upset about that and said she ought to skin him alive. Cleve had been upset, too, but not as much as Mickey.
“We’re gonna stop on the way to the doctor’s office and pick up my license,” Jesse said. “They said I could have it back after thirty days, and
that’s today. So I can’t drive until I get it back.”
“But you’re doing the brakes and the gas. Iddn’t that driving?”
“Aw, no. If you ain’t got your hands on the wheel, you ain’t driving.”
“Well, I’m gonna fall on the floor any minute now, and then you’ll have to drive.”
So Jesse stopped the car just before they turned onto the two-lane, tossed the books in the grass, and got a sack of sunflower seed from the toolshed. That was better. She was up high enough that she could see through the steering wheel, and Jesse was right beside her with his feet working the brake and gas pedals. When the car would start to ease too far one way or the other, wheels bumping on the shoulder to the right or across the yellow line to the left, Jesse would help her with a light nudge of his hand on the wheel.