Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

He had that right.

I hadn’t hit the record button on my phone yet. Nothing Randy had said so far stood a chance of rescuing my family. Or saving his ass, either.

“This nation needs to be put back on the right path, and I believe that if you send me to Congress, I can help put it back on that path. I am the person for that job.” He paused, giving the room a chance to cheer and applaud. Everyone obliged.

“And there are a number of reasons why I may be,” he said, “the perfect person for this assignment. I know what it means to be on the right path, and I know what it means to have strayed from it.”

I held up the phone, got ready.

“As you know, I speak my mind, I’ve gained a bit of a reputation for doing things to excess occasionally. I’ve had to pay to clean a few rugs in my time.”

That brought laughter.

“I think a real leader needs to have done a few things wrong in his life to know how to get things right,” he said. “My father, God rest his soul, was a wise, decent man, and he used to say to me, ‘Randy, you show me a man who’s made no mistakes along the way and I’ll show you a man who hasn’t gotten anywhere.’ He was the kind of man who knew that to embrace life, to accept its challenges, meant making mistakes, because without mistakes there are no accomplishments. If it weren’t for mistakes, and failures, how would we be able to measure our successes?”

He was taking the long way there, but he seemed to be going in the right direction. Maxine Woodrow whispered in my ear, “He’s gone off text. What’s he doing?”

I held up my hand to shush her. Randy glanced over, locked eyes with me, and I felt him sending me a message. Something along the lines of If this is what you want, you’re going to get it, and then some.

I started recording.

Randy looked back at the crowd and continued, “There are many different kinds of mistakes. You design a bridge, you make a mistake in the engineering, that can result in catastrophe. You overthrow a dictator with the best of intentions, to eradicate his weapons of mass destruction, and they turn out not to be there, well, there are consequences to those kinds of mistakes in judgment.

“But I want to talk to you about a different kind of mistake today. A mistake of the heart. A mistake of the soul.”

There wasn’t a person in that room not listening to every word Randall Finley had to say.

“My wonderful wife, Jane, is here today,” Randy said, looking down at her. Jane Finley, fiftyish, plump, black hair piled on top of her head into something that looked like a bird’s nest, blushed. She had in her lap a copy of the prepared speech, and if she’d been reading along she must have been as puzzled as Maxine.

“A lot of you know Jane, and you know how she’s always been there for me, how she’s stood by me, sometimes through very dark times, often when I didn’t deserve her support. I’m not an easy man to stand by. I live to excess. I am a man of appetites. And far too often I’ve indulged those appetites without thought to how my actions might affect others.”

“What the hell is he doing?” Maxine whispered into my ear again. I ignored her and kept holding up the phone.

“I don’t have to tell you people,” the mayor said, “the kind of scrutiny public figures live under. Some politicians and celebrities will tell you it’s terrible, that they want to be left alone, that their private lives are nobody’s business. Well, I’m not so sure about that. I think, when you vote for me, when you trust me to make decisions on your behalf, you’re entitled to know what kind of a man I am. My values, what I stand for, what I believe in. Like when I’ve accomplished great things, like the new hospital wing I pushed through this past term, with its state-of-the-art burn unit, or the grant I delivered only yesterday to Swanson House to help young women whose lives haven’t gotten off to the perfect start they might have hoped for.

“But you’re also entitled to know about the less than great things I’ve done, because how can you trust me if you don’t know everything there is to know about me?”

My phone stopped recording. I set it up to start again.

The crowd could feel Randy getting closer to something, and judging by their rapt expressions, the suspense was killing them. I knew what was coming, and I was feeling the suspense, too.

“So here I am before you tonight, announcing my intentions to represent you in the nation’s capital, to do greater good than I have ever done before, but I also stand before you tonight to tell you about a period of darkness in my life, a darkness I was able to emerge from only through my own personal commitment to be a better man.

“What I have to tell you I’ve never revealed before, not even to my wife, because I’m not proud of it. I allowed my baser instincts to control me, I surrendered to a power greater than greed or alcohol. It was lust. I was unfaithful. But I was more than that. There was an occasion when I availed myself of the services of a sex worker, and as if that was not bad enough, I subsequently learned that this person was underage.”

There was a collective gasp in the room. Jane Finley looked decidedly unwell. Maxine said, “Oh my God.”

“I exploited this young woman in a way that shames not only me but all men everywhere. Not a day goes by that I’m not tormented by my contribution to this woman’s life of degradation. I have done detestable things. I have hurt people. But what good is a man if he cannot learn from his misdeeds? If a man cannot be redeemed, even a man such as myself, then what point is there in going on? If I knew in my heart that my past misdeeds made it impossible for me to do good in the future, I’d end it all right now, right here, on this stage. But that’s not what I believe. I believe I have the ability to make this nation safer, and stronger, and more committed to the values that have made it the greatest country on the face of the earth, and that’s why tonight, I stand before you, a humbled man, a man with many faults, but still a man with a dream, a man who is asking you for your support so that I may take my fight to Washington to make this country everything it should be!”

At first, silence. And then, a smattering of applause.

“I know you’re shocked by what I’ve told you,” he said, “and you’re entitled to be. You’re entitled to judge me. And some of you will judge me harshly. I certainly deserve it. But I would ask any of you here tonight who has not strayed, who has not sinned, who has not had a dark moment in his or her life, to come up on this stage right now and strike me down.”

He paused, and we all waited for someone to rise to the challenge. No one took the bait.

After waiting an appropriate time, Randy finished up. “Let my challengers make of this what they will. Will they be as honest with you as I’ve been tonight? Are they willing to lay bare their sins for others to judge? If there’s someone else out there willing to be more open with you than I have been tonight, then not only will he deserve your vote, he’ll have mine as well, because that’s the kind of man that I am, faults and all!”

This time, a bit more than a mere smattering of applause.

“I know that this room is filled with good people. I know each and every one of you wishes you could go back in time and change at least one thing, one thing that you wish you could undo, a time when you hurt someone close to you, a time maybe when you were deceitful, a time maybe when you broke the law even though you knew better, and believe me, if I had such a time machine, I’d be putting so many miles on it it’d be out of warranty in no time.”

No applause, but actually a few chuckles.