NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Walking with Lark through one of the last bits of undeveloped land in the Fauxmont area. Cockcroft lane takes us on gravel and dust, up through the woods on Maxwell hill and down the other side to Maxwell Avenue and the Pie Shop. I ask after Boyd, who moved in with her recently.
“My son has taken off again.”
“Where to this time?”
“He’s gone to the beach with Maria del Sarto.”
“You mean they have something going?”
“Seems like. He’s been spending a lot of time over at the Elegant Ostrich.”
The humidity is so thick in the air we can see hanging damp illuminated by the odd sun beam shining through the white oak leaves. It is cooler in the woods than on the street, but the fresh air we seek is soaked and dark. When we come out of the woods and turn right on Maxwell a small cloud briefly shades us, while the pavement in front of the Pie shop radiates heat. Albrecht Intaglio is sitting just inside the door wiping his revolver.
“You going to join me?”
Lark has stepped past without looking at him, greeting Mrs. Rutherford behind the counter,but turns when Albrecht and I exchange pleasantries.
“Oh, hi there.”
Albrecht gets up and arranges two more chairs at the table.
Mrs. Rutherford serves ice teas and Lark and I walk back from the counter to sit down.
“It is one hundred degrees Fahrenheit out there, folks.”
He drains his ice tea and puts down his glass of ice cubes rounding like pebbles as they melt.
“Not the best time for a walk through the woods, I guess!”
“Augie is away, Fred, and Boyd has taken off. “
Lark sips her tea.
“I love those woods, even in this.”
Albrecht holsters is weapon and wipes his hands on a napkin.
“You need to talk to that boy Lark. He is very mixed up.”
“Maybe he is.”
“Maybe he will figure it out at the beach.”
“Fred, Boyd and I had some good years together. He isn’t going to figure anything out with that vaping chick from the gift shop.”
Lark opens her bag, looks in and closes it and then she looks away from us.
“Maybe he is bi?”
“I doubt it very much Fred.”
Albrecht leans back to stuff his gun rag into the front pocket of his jeans.
Lark gets up, goes to the counter and comes back with a napkin.
“Lark, I have plenty right here.”
He pushes a stack of white paper napkins across the deep brown grain of the varnished table top.
“Oh, okay … ah, thanks … what’s that noise?”
The site on Albrecht’s extralong gun barrel is catching on the stretcher under his chair, and he moves slightly to one side.
“Poor Boyd isn’t the only one mixed up, either.”
“No, our politics are in utter chaos.”
“When have they been any other way Fred?”
“I think the last administration was a lot more stable, Albrecht.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea! Our President was elected to shake things up and he has the power skills to do it.”
“He seems too full of himself, and too ignorant to be in office.”
“All these Liberals, they’re the ignorant ones!”
“What do you mean?”
“All these college graduates from fancy schools who think the rest of us are just trash. What was it? ‘A basket of deplorables’!”
“Well, yes there’s a certain amount of snobbery out there.”
“A certain amount! Fred, they do nothing but criticize our president for being vulgar, illiterate, boorish, lying, and … what do they know?”
“They know what they hear and read.”
“They are not his audience!”
“That is for sure!”
“Look at what he has accomplished already.”
“I am looking, it is appalling!”
“You think full employment and jobs for the rest of us ‘deplorable’ people is so bad? You think the invasion by MS 13 from south of the border was fine? You think freeloading allies should just get away with it, like his sappy ivy league predecessor?”
“I think we need allies in this world, and we are turning on them all!”
“We need jobs and prosperity.”
“I don’t think this is the way to get either?”
“Those jabbering Liberals all have cushy jobs. Would they be so sweet, guilty and condescending if they had to scramble to make a minimum wage in Appalachia?”
“They have to scramble in their world.”
“Yeah, to get junior into the right preschool!”
“No, professional jobs can be ‘uber competitive’ and ruinously stressful.”
“Okay, but they get the bucks and we don’t.”
“It takes a lot of work and dedication you know.”
“Don’t say any more until you have grown up in a poor white community! Until you have seen minorities getting a leg up and over you from the so-called progressives!”
“You didn’t, Albrecht. You grew up here in Fauxmont.”
“No, I grew up when I went West and found the real America!”
“Why is it any more real than here?”
“Because they are fighting for their lives and liberty against government power. Not sucking on the Federal taxpayer’s tit.”
“Are you talking about lost jobs?”
“Yup, over the last forty years, thanks to trade deals, NAFTA and so on … our lives were stolen, but now we are fighting back with a champion.”
“You think this guy’s Whitehouse tweets are solving anything?”
“They ARE! Sure, beats a generation of … of national decline.”
“Relative decline was inevitable. That issue is arguable.”
“Oh give me a break. Arguable! While you professors are arguing the rest of are going down the tubes!”
“Albrecht, I think you are being duped by orange hair’s tone and swagger. So, he talks your talk. So, what! He is an oligarch, and a bankrupt too!”
“Wait a minute, he came out of bankruptcy a bigger celebrity than he was before!”
“Look at his cabinet appointments.”
“No, I don’t care who is in the cabinet … I mean he is an instinctive communicator. He knows in his gut what my people want to hear and says it like it is.”
“That is my point. You are being taken!”
Lark is looking at her fingers. Still quietly examining her nails.
“So much of his talk is self-contradictory … it is incoherent.”
“No Fred, what he says reflects people’s feelings, and you can’t accept it!”
Lark looks up from her hands. Still saying nothing.
“Oh! come on, feelings change all the time.”
“Now you are getting it!”
Lark sips her ice tea, then puts it down and slaps the table with the flat of her palm.
“You can’t run our country on hatred, it will no longer be our country.”
“Listen, there has been plenty of hatred running this country since the beginning.”
“It is the hatred we must fight against!”
“What about your own hatred?”
“That too.”
“There you go, all your ‘liberal bleeding’ again!”
Lark grasps the edge of the table in one hand and her glass in the other.
“I see a vain pathetic man-boy sweet-talking Vladimir Putin and that Korean creep and pandering to the worst our country has in its heartland.”
“No, no, no, Lark, you have no sense of the real pulse of our country.”
“Pulse? We are talking about the politics of greed and grievance.”
“Okay, my guy, Macadamia would have done it better. He would have been more Presidential. We fought a tough primary, but the president is the president and I support him.”
“Can’t you see the evil of reaching out to racism, nationalism, paranoia, especially about emigration! To name only three of the ugliest…”
“Aha, all you have is a put down!”
“Right, I find his behavior offensive and disgusting.”
“Lark, has it occurred to you, up there on that dried out, hyper-educated, dead branch you are perched on, that he is speaking for an excluded majority of real live white American voters?”
“Whites have never been excluded, they’ve always been privileged.”
“Tell that to the West Virginia coal miners crooked Hillary went after!”
“Besides Albrecht, his majority was only a function of the electoral college and gerrymandering … AND voter suppression!”
“He is president all the same …. If crooked Hillary had won, you wouldn’t be finding any of that a problem.”
“No, but you would. You would be saying the system is rigged. Trump set that up early in his campaign.”
“Yes, he did, and he had a point too.”
“So, Albrecht who rigged what?”
“Fred, it wasn’t the Russians, okay?”
“That remains to be seen! Looks like they had a good try.”
“Look Fred, he beat the odds by being honest and saying how it is in America, how the real America feels.”
“Yes, the lies, racism, and all that are real enough.”
“Yup, low hanging political fruit my friend … That is reality. This is a representative Republic, alright? What people feel matters.”
“Low, it is! But, once again, it takes more than that to govern.”
Lark stands up, ignoring Albrecht, turns her back and looks past counter where today’s pastry specials are handwritten on a chalk board, out the window towards the shimmering hot air in the parking lot.
“What my people feel has been ignored and excluded by the elites for generations.”
“I think Dubya said a few words in your direction.”
“Right, he paid lip service to get votes then he turned and became just another politician.”
Albrecht picks up his glass and holds it up. Looks at a remaining ice in the bottom. Rattles it around and put it down again.
“He invaded Iraq. What a dumb move that was!”
“Agreed!”
“Well, Fred, there is hope for you yet, my friend.”
Lark turns and leans towards Albrecht, bending down with both hands on the table.
“You think Trump isn’t a politician? Don’t say you buy that line!”
“He isn’t just another politician! That’s why you hate him so much!”
“Okay, so he is an outlier!”
“Yes, and he speaks for all of us other, ‘didn’t-go-to-college-outliers’ who won the far-out election.”
“Do you really believe that cutting taxes for his buddies is going to help you and America?”
“I don’t know, and neither do you! I do know unemployment is way down. I also know that no one can predict the future, and there’s a lot of drones writing fake news in the elite media who think they can.”
“Albrecht, think this through! Don’t let yourself be fooled!”
“Back at you Fred! Like I said, Macadamia would have done it better, subtler, but this president tweets to the raw living pain in our country.”
“He’s just a political opioid!”
“Whatever he says goes for the feelings of the moment, and my feelings are truths … facts about me. He is always fresh, and always on liberty’s pulse!”
Albrecht stops, and turns to look out the window.
A moving picture of apples, bananas, tomatoes, cabbages, carrots and celery fills the windows, to our right. I can see the word “Safe”.
“Wake up Fred! My president has defeated the terrorist Caliphate in Iraq.”
He pats his holster and the gun barrel taps sharply on his chair.
“This is the twenty-first century my friend, the cyber century, the dawn of social media and a Great …”
A tractor trailer loaded with food, is maneuvering in the parking lot, headed for the Safeway loading dock down the alley opposite.
Customers open the door next to our table and walk out letting in heat and noise. The truck’s diesel drowns out our voices while the driver revs to move clear of shopper’s cars.
