Mark Costello - Big If

Boone finished the roundup and sat down. Herc played poker until the others quit, then prowled the cabin with his belt undone. Bobbie read a pillow catalog until she fell asleep. Tashmo, starved for reading matter, slipped the catalog from her lap. He turned the pages and was soon asleep.

Vi sat by the window, jutting her jaw to pop the blockage in her ears. She was thinking that she ought to go and see her brother, Jens, at some point in the next two days. The team would be in Portsmouth Monday night and Tuesday morning — maybe she could slip away for an hour somewhere along the line.

Vi hadn’t seen Jens since the weekend after Hinman when the Service gave her stress-related leave. A lousy fucking visit — Vi shuddered, thinking of it. Vi’s mother, Evelyn, had moved to Florida by then — a town outside of Tampa with Plantation in its name; everyone played tennis and the weather was better for her knees — so Vi stayed with Jens and Peta and their kid. Jens was working at his war game, turning out his monster logic. Vi had come home to belong, to join the crowd for once, but she couldn’t stop scanning hands as they walked along the streets of the downtown that weekend. Jens caught her at it. He said, “Your eyes are always moving, Vi, like REM sleep only you’re awake — it’s giving me the creeps.” Vi denied it but she couldn’t stop, which only made her feel more like an outsider. Jens insisted that they go out to Santasket Road to celebrate Walter’s birthday with a picnic in the backyard. Jens had this vision of them picnicking and telling funny stories of the Coopers and the Buckerts and the bomber dads, and Kai, Jens’ son, blowing out the candles on a dead man’s birthday cake. Vi wanted no part of it and said so. Jens was offended — because he had this whole idea, a plan, his plan. Vi hadn’t seen the old house since Walter’s death, and it looked so small and ordinary she wanted to cry. Jens told Kai about Major Wade, the arrow through the tree. Jens kept asking Vi to join in, help tell these stories they both knew. Vi did not remember how it started, something led to something, and then Jens was saying — shouting—“Why did you even come back here, Vi? I feel like I don’t even know you.”

Vi popped her ears, in and out, riding on the jet, steeling herself to work the crowds, to forget them all, Walter, Jens and Peta, to get herself to emptiness and vacant mode. Herc dropped without warning to the deck and did twenty clapping push-ups. Vi counted the claps without wanting to, staring out the porthole at the gray brainy softness of the clouds.

Shaking hands, shaking hands, shaking hands, the VP moved along the ropes outside the airport Marriott in Manchester, New Hampshire. Tashmo had the lead foot, pulling as Vi pushed, scanning as she scanned. The VP was moving at a grazing pace, reaching out, reaching in, shaking hands in bunches, reeling off a continuous greeting, “ Howyadoin howyadoin goodtaseeya howyadoin—”

The comm was clear that night, no static and no breaks. Vi heard the pieces working, Bobbie, Gretchen, Herc, the snipers and the SWATs, all around the horn.

Shadow hands in TV lights, the VP cried in steam, “ Howyadoin goodtaseeya goodtaseeya howyadoin—”

A woman swooned, “ Ooo — there he is .”

Vi saw a man in a Celtics’ hat, two kids with air horns, a mother with a child on her shoulders, pointing. Reporters shouted questions from the darkness—

“Sir, is it true—?”

“Sir, have you considered—?”

“Sir, your polls are showing—”

Photographers snapped pictures. A cameraman walked backwards, taping as he walked. Gretchen was on the top step of the hotel entrance, watching her perimeters, talking in Vi’s ear.

O’T—

Checking white male, red cap, like a stocking cap. He’s about mid-crowd, ten feet to your left.

The snipers said, We have him.

I’m near the guy, he’s homeless —this was O’Teen, plainclothes in the crowd.

Right , said Gretchen. Can we get some troopers on him please?

K.

K for copy means I hear you.

Seeing movement, roof area. Check it please, whoever’s closer. They’re hotel guys, security.

K, okay. Tell ’em move back.

Let me have that female script again —Bobbie in the crowd.

Okay, we have a vehicle on the access ramp. Blue van and two males.

O’T, say again .

Do you have that?

Say again.

Female white, white ski parka, appears to be alone. She’s on bush line now, really pushing forward, guys.

Van is media.

Okay.

Vi’s feet and legs were pushing, her pelvis to the VP’s flabby trousered thigh. If she saw the muzzle of a pistol coming up, a muzzle in the blur, she was trained to shout Gun gun and pivot on her outside leg and curl across the VP’s chest, pushing him backwards as she did. Tashmo, hearing Gun gun, would be curling too, and they would shove the VP stumbling to the fast extraction team, Gretchen, Herc, and Sean Elias on the steps, who, hearing Gun gun , would be rushing up. They drilled the move in Beltsville, pivot, curl, and backward shove, until it was muscle memory, as fast and natural as flinching.

“Sir, is it true—?”

“Sir, does the defeat in Iowa—?”

I don’t have your female, O’T —this was Bobbie.

Teenaged members of a marching band in red. The mother with the child on her shoulders. The mother slipped, trying to get free, but a crowd against a barricade will always crush its front, and the mother couldn’t move. The child wailed, “Momma down. Momma down .”

Okay —Gretchen— parka female, moving lot side now. Coming down the cars. She’s trying to go around. Herc and O’T—

“Howyadoin howyadoin howyadoin—”

They were nearly at the lobby doors when Vi saw the woman in a white, gray, or beige ski parka, fighting through the people to the ropes. The woman hit the ropes just in front of the VP. Her mouth was shouting. Vi tensed to start her pivot-curl as the woman’s hands came up. She fell back in the crowd and Vi lost sight of her.

Tashmo’s shudder passed through the VP into Vi. They moved down the ropeline like a beast of fable, a creature with six arms, three heads, and one nervous system.

Flashbulbs flashed, unsynchronized, a sparkling effect.

Coming down from Portsmouth in the clear bright winter morning, the van of canvassers passed the harbor on the river, saw the runty oceangoing tugs wearing beards of dirty ice, the long container ships pushing up the Piscataqua, the navy base across the churning straits, a tall gray water tower, a skyline of idle cranes.

The people in the van were party faithful, volunteers, here to help the VP become P. All of them were Texans, half of them were women, and all of these were active or retired employees of the Longmont-Delgado Unified School District. The other half, the men, the husbands of the women, were in carpentry, pest control, or refrigeration, except for the driver, Raymond Rios, who was twenty-four and single and taught science in the bright and gifted program at Longmont-Westside High. He taught Life Science I and II, worth four credit hours each. He also taught Life Science III, a two-credit-hour elective, which was said to be a bear.

They came around the headland, open ocean to the left. To the right was a line of bungalow motels, shuttered for the season, a line of signs, NO VACANCY, NO VACANCY, NO VACANCY, and t-shirt shops and tackle shops and similar establishments, white and aqua-blue, and also shuttered. Farther on, they would hit the year-round condominiums, and after that the mansions, and after that the junction with Route 32. The navigatrix knew this, the woman in the front seat with the map. Her name was Jackie Kotteakis, retired teacher of ninth grade. She had worked this primary twice before, becoming over time a troop leader and den mother to the placard-covered vans of campaign volunteers, a service to her party for which she expected no reward except the excitement and the fun of it, like a camping trip with friends. These people were her friends and she felt good, riding with them on a winter morning by the sea.