The Governor's Lady (36 page)
“Is that your
position?
” another reporter asked, to the laughter of several others.
Gladstone’s icy gaze swept the crowd. People stopped laughing.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am not some illiterate, holy-roller kook.
I speak for thousands of godly folks in this state. You can laugh if you want, but just put what I said in your newspapers and on your newscasts, and see what kind of response you get.”
Then he stowed his placard in the trunk, climbed in his old sedan, and left.
The news people did what Gladstone asked. The reaction to the Highway 69 business among viewers and readers ranged from guffaws to clucking, depending on what Pickett called “the prude scale.” But then the viewers and readers got past that and began to talk about the road and all its baggage. Gladstone organized a caravan along the highway, ending in a rally in front of the Capitol steps attended by several thousand people, who listened and muttered to themselves and each other as he blistered Pickett and his administration with accusations of cronyism, waste, arrogance, fraud, and godlessness.
A series of unfortunate events followed. A state trooper was arrested for running a prostitution ring out of his patrol car. A member of Pickett’s cabinet was slapped with a divorce suit by his wife, who said in her complaint that he was addicted to pornography, and produced disks copied from his home computer to prove it. And finally, the news of falling revenue from the oil and gas fields along the coast, which had pumped billions into the treasury and fueled Pickett’s health, education, and economic development projects. The wells were beginning to play out. One piece of bad news piled on top of another.
There was enough fodder to feed Gladstone’s charges that Pickett’s administration was a disaster, the state was in moral decline, and the evil of tax increases was lurking just around the corner. Fueled by the reverend’s incessant carping and the staggering number of times he carped, from pulpits to street corners up and down the state, the mud began to stick. Sure, people said, Pickett Lanier had seemed to be a good governor. But behind the scenes, something stunk. Did the state need four more years of this?
Pickett’s inclination was to ignore him, which he mostly did until
Gladstone announced he was running for governor as an independent. The state’s legion of fundamentalist ministers piled on his bandwagon. The ministers were a powerful force, and Pickett had felt their wrath before, in what had turned out to be the only major blunder of his first term. In his run for office, backed by opinion polls, he had championed a state lottery to raise money for education. Once in office, he quickly pushed a lottery referendum through the legislature. It appeared certain for statewide approval—until the preachers went to work. They railed against the lottery from their pulpits and raised money for radio and television advertising. Evil trying to pass itself off as good, they said, a program that preyed on the poor and marked the state as a haven for gambling and all manner of associated sin. Almost overnight, the tide swung and the lottery was crushed. Pickett was chastened. For the rest of that term and all of the next, he made nice with the preachers. But they had never forgotten.
And now, with the Reverend Micah Gladstone carrying their banner, they became a howling horde, crying for Pickett Lanier’s political hide—and by implication, his wife’s as well. Gladstone handily gathered the petition signatures required to get on the ballot and prepared to skewer the Lanier bunch in the November general election.
In public, Pickett maintained an air of equilibrium. At home, he was nearly hysterical, no more so than on the evening he barreled in, color high, eyes wild, holding new poll figures that showed Gladstone only ten points behind Cooper and closing. The other party’s nominee was third.
“The sonofabitch!”
“Isn’t that a little strong to describe a preacher?”
“He’s not a preacher, he’s a demagogue.”
“A sonofabitch demagogue. If his congregation only knew.”
“Cooper, goddammit, this idiot could screw up the whole thing!”
“Yes,” she said, “he sure could. But Pickett, that’s politics.”
But Micah Gladstone had a past, and Pickett’s Posse found it.
As a teenager named Haskell Feaster in his native Oklahoma, he had served time in a juvenile facility on drug and weapons charges. He had fathered a child and been briefly married to the mother. Not long after abandoning wife and child, he had some sort of come-to-Jesus experience at a tent revival. He legally changed his name, served a hitch in the army that gave cover to his new identify, and, once discharged, began a life as a self-proclaimed evangelist. He said he was an orphan but in truth still had a large, nasty family in Oklahoma with a sizable collective criminal record.
A cousin, long ago ratted out by Haskell/Micah for an armed robbery that landed the cousin in prison, tipped off Pickett’s people. They sat quietly on the information until October, then discreetly told Wheeler Kincaid at the
Dispatch
. The story broke in the Sunday paper. By sundown Monday, it was on nationwide television and virtually every political blog on the Internet. The preachers who had been Gladstone’s core of support fell all over themselves in a righteously indignant stampede to denounce him. Gladstone called an emergency meeting of his mega-congregation. As live TV cameras beamed the spectacle, he sobbed confession, pleaded for forgiveness, and collapsed in a wretched heap at the altar. It was all over. Whatever taint had clung to Pickett Lanier was buried with the corpse of Micah Gladstone’s political ambitions.
There was no need for Cooper to say a word. The campaign scaled back her appearances in the days before the election. Nothing to do but let the debacle unfold while the state and nation watched with morbid fascination.
When the votes were counted the first Tuesday in November, Cooper had a handful over fifty percent. Gladstone’s name was still on the ballot, and he got almost two percent statewide. Through two recounts,
her vote held up. Micah Gladstone, it turned out, had helped her win.
Her campaign headquarters hosted a big celebration when the last recount was done and the state elections board certified the outcome. Champagne, some stronger stuff in the back. Cooper and Pickett stayed until the last inebriated volunteer stumbled out the door.
Pickett sat on the floor, his back to a desk, champagne bottle in hand. She sat beside him. They nestled against each other. For a long time, neither said anything.
He took a swig. “We did it.” He passed the bottle to her.
She took the last swallow and set the bottle aside. “Yes,” she said with a smile, “I sure did.”
He kissed her. Then: “Yes, you sure did.”
From the airport, she went straight to Mickey, who sat stone-faced while Cooper told her about Pickett and Woodrow.
When she finished, Mickey said, “It never sounded right to me, what Woodrow said about backing out. Did you suspect anything?”
“No,” Cooper said, “I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to.”
“I can understand that. And I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. If I’d known at the beginning, I’d never have run.”
“I don’t mean I’m sorry about the political thing. I’m talking about you and Pickett, the personal.”
Cooper bowed her head.
Yes, that most of all
.
“Cleve and I, we didn’t always agree. And when we disagreed, it sometimes stopped just short of trading blows. Two bull-headed people. But we thrashed it out, and when we were done, we said, ‘Okay, this is how we’ll do it.’ And we did it. Never once did we lie to each other.”
Cooper was close to tears, her voice strangled. “It wasn’t so much that Pickett lied …”
“There’s all kinds of lies, honey. There’s the kind when you misuse someone’s trust, not so much about the obvious things, but about the big picture—what you both had back there at the beginning. Over the years, you’ve cut Pickett enough slack to stretch the length of the state. You went along.”
“And I’ve seen what it’s done, to both of us. I share the blame.”
“Yes, you do.”
Cooper raised her head now, choked back the tears. “You started it.”
“The State Senate thing?”
“Yes.”
“Guilty.”
“I thought back then you were trying to steal him from me.”
Mickey blanched, fell silent. “I saw Pickett as a young man with a helluva lot of potential, and I thought the two of you would make a great team—not so much the way your father and I did, but in your own way.”
“We were never a team.”
“I know. You fought it for a while, and then you just gave in. But you’re right, I started it, and both of us left you out. No wonder things turned out the way they have. And I am profoundly sorry, Cooper.” Tears were now in Mickey’s eyes. “That’s why I want so terribly to help you, to help clean up the mess I’ve made.” Mickey’s face collapsed.
Cooper, without giving a thought to what she was doing, went to Mickey’s wheelchair, knelt beside it, took Mickey’s hands. No words were necessary.
“So now,” Mickey asked after they both got control of themselves, “what are you going to do?”
“I told Pickett I won’t quit, no matter what. But on the way here from the airport, I thought,
It’s too much. I can’t do this. Let Woodrow have it
.”
“That,” Mickey snapped, the old bite back in her voice, “is goddamn
well what you will
not
do. I won’t let you, for your sake and mine. There’s not much piss and vinegar left in me, daughter, but there’s enough to help you kick some butt.”
Wheeler, like Mickey, didn’t seem a bit surprised. “What Pickett owned up to, do you think that’s all of it?”
“What else?”
“I’ve been around a lot of devious, ambitious politicians. Pickett will cut your nuts out and hang ’em in a tree for suet. Or rather, get Plato to do it. Am I speaking out of school here?”
“Under the circumstances,” she said, “no.”
“So you’re gonna stick it out. You’re firm on that.”
“Yes.”
“What about Woodrow?”
“I’d love nothing more than to haul him in here and tell him.”
“To what end?”
“Instant gratification. But I won’t. Pickett’s right—it would wreck the legislative session, and I won’t do that. I’ve got things I want to accomplish. So I will keep my own counsel. I can always change my mind. That depends partly on Pickett.”
Wheeler’s brow furrowed, his bushy eyebrows danced. “You know that this makes things more complicated. When the legislature gets here, with Woodrow believing the deal is firm, he’ll do everything he can to throttle you. No sense in you getting credit for something if you’re gonna be out in a year.”
“You make it sound damn near hopeless, Wheeler.”
“It’s not. You’re the governor, and there’s power in that alone. There’s a helluva lot you can do, or refuse to do. But the best thing you’ve got going is
you
.”
“What do you mean?”
Wheeler smiled. “You’ve got the best of Cleve and Mickey. And I think you’re beginning to realize that. So fine-tune your bullshit detector, keep your head up and your ass down. I’ll do my best to help.” Then he looked up at the portrait of Pickett on the wall behind her desk. She turned to follow his gaze. “What are you going to replace that with?” he asked.
“My father.”
“What do you think he’d do next?”
“What I’m going to do. Get Pickett’s cabinet in here.”