YES WE CAN!

This is just like that other time, Martin thinks, as he scans the big room. He’s at a meeting like any other, in a little town like any other, on a day like any day on the endless campaign trail. His gaze has fallen upon an old-fashioned radiator at his left near the window. Now he remembers — yes, that radiator — it’s just like that other time, in the basement room of the old Studebaker dealer. It was after all the votes were cast and counted. We won that one.

Martin Stollard is a professional operative, arriving at birth with politics in his blood, passed down from three generations of all-American do-gooders and glad-handers. It is said that amateur is Latin for one who loves. Does that mean professional is one who doesn’t, who won’t, who can’t? Someone like Martin? The professional without much of a life outside the game. He likes trying to elect somebody else.

Jesus, that’s no cause for shame, Martin thinks. Certainly no cause for what happened to me, you know that’s true. There were plenty of other people he could have picked on, Mother of God, why me? Why was I so special? This is what he thought, if he thought about his life. Why target a single, pathetic, depressed campaign drone, a rootless, soulless, cipher bouncing from precinct to precinct in search of enough hope or adrenalin to make it through just one more day? This is what he really thought, if he thought about his life at all.

Martin looks at the eager volunteers, mostly young, mostly white. There are no cynics in this crowd, the faces before him so eager, so trusting; no haters in this crowd, these faces regard him as the man with the plan; no killers in this crowd, the faces before him so different this time, he tells himself that, no killers this time. Have courage before you speak, he thinks, the killers are all gone. He wants to believe it, one more time.

He stepped into the center of the room, looking up at the faces. He was the only staffer running orientation tonight, and he liked it that way. “What would you think if I told you that you can change the world in a week?” he said to them, pacing across the worn planks at the front of the cavernous room.

Florescent illumination gave his bland features a greenish cast, or maybe it was his shirt, green, with blue stripes. His face was smooth, the day’s stubble barely visible. His thin blond hair was inching back wards, away from his eyes, even though he was only 32. His waistline sagged, melting into rounded, almost feminine hips beneath the khaki.

“Yes, we can!” the room erupted, the kids screaming it out, like they were at one of the big rallies. They cheered and laughed and giggled at themselves, with the pleasure of being part of a club that was so potent in the world, repeating the chant over and over. Yes, we can.

Their greenish faces shimmered like a desert mirage through Foster Grants, off in the distance, coming closer, closer, detail sharpening. Martin felt a familiar quiver in his gut. He’s here, he thought. Sure enough, at the the back of the room, one pair of eyes, hazel eyes grew larger, telescoping themselves into the space directly in front of Martin, completely filling his field of vision with the luminous helix of a single hazel iris floating in a sea of very, very white, a wall of white, in fact, closing in around him .

The public version of Martin’s captivity was prosaic. But for him, privately, secretly, it was a golden time. He had been bound, and deprived of his senses by means of a soft acrylic ski mask that his adversary had pulled down over his head backwards, so tufts of blond poked out of the eyes and mouth on the back of his head. It made Martin feel contained, tidy. It was comforting. In place of his sight, he had a circle of clear, unsullied crystal blue light over which the man beyond hovered, like a stranded saint, crossing into the glow in a series of tiny moments of startling beauty and bliss. His captor was a god.

“People, people,” Martin yelled over the crowd, which had now become completely unruly from the chanting. More than anything he feared losing control. He clapped his hands, and quiet descended upon them again.

“Let’s get down to it,” he said, placing two heavy boxes filled with 9x12 manila envelopes onto the table. He began handing stacks of them to the volunteers at each end of the front row, and watched until every kid had an envelope.

/instruction/ Green face/regulation/nice, crisp spank to the flank/mommy/daddy / no-daddy/no-daddy/Plymouth in garage/ darkness in my closet/invading ice cream trucks/biggest possible banana.

“So people, you came here to work, yes? To win this thing big…please, nod your heads yes. OK, so get out there with passion and commitment, you know what I mean, right? Make your enthusiasm contagious. Our time is now, let’s get out there, big time, and win!”
New life beyond/ passing clouds in gear/notice every crevice/crawling/strangle / monkey/don’t touch it/ fascinating rhythm /king of the small domain / beyond /take me please.

You there, you know who you are, back of the room, that’s right motherfucker, hazel eyes, you mother fucker, following me around again, jesus H., the son of God, I can tell you this, you won’t get away with it this time, this time I’ll struggle, this time they won’t find me, this time….

Martin stepped behind the desk to hide the wetness he felt on the leg of his khaki pants. He hoped nobody would notice. He sat down, staring at the manila envelope. Maybe it would dry before the kids left the room to man their stations. He noticed an imperfection in the surface of the manila paper. He wanted to look up and find the one with the hazel eyes, but he was afraid.

This was like the other time, no matter what anyone else said. It was. If he kept his secret, maybe they wouldn’t find out, maybe he could go back to the golden time again.