Charles Sheehan-Miles

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Republic: Chapter Five

Republic

Charles Sheehan-Miles

Chapter Five

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Chapter Five
May 27


Valerie Murphy arrived at work early the day after the attack and found the office in chaos. The phones were ringing off the hook, and already there were four people waiting in the reception area, without appointments, hoping to see the Congressman. She quickly sorted out the office, allocating emergency jobs to the staff to quickly deal with the onslaught of constituent calls, then prepared for a brief meeting with Ambrose.

Al Clark was in meetings this morning, so they used his office, away from the rest of the staff. The walls of his office were covered in plaques, mementos from campaigns, photographs from the district. Opposite his desk, at the other end of the long office, a leather couch faced matching chairs over a glass coffee table overflowing with files and documents.

First on the agenda was the bombings. The Department of Homeland Security had come down unusually strong across the country: according to some reports, they were picking up immigrants off the street and arresting them with virtually no due process. Given that one of the main targets was a DHS office, she wasn’t terribly surprised.

From there, they moved on to the Skaggs bill.

 “What we need to do is make sure the hearings are a complete circus,”Valerie said. “Get hardworking Americans who will be devastated by this bill as witnesses. Get half a dozen to sit in front of the committee and speak, maybe appear in media interviews. We need a public groundswell against the bill if there’s to be any chance at all to kill it.”

“You know Senator Parkinson endorsed the bill this morning?” Ambrose said. He twirled the tip of his mustache between his fingers.

“No, I didn’t. That means most of the democrats will follow suit.”

“They will if they want to preserve their political careers.”

“It just means we’ll have to work harder, that’s all. We can win this.”

Ambrose grinned. “You know something, Valerie, that’s what I like about you. It doesn’t matter who we have against us, you are always confident.”

“I usually win, don’t I?”

“’True,” he conceded. “But when I look at the support this thing is generating, I feel the same thing I felt living in Morgantown when I realized I was gay—like there was a very bad dude just around the corner ready to kick my ass into the next county.”

She took a sip of tea, then set the cup back down on the table, away from the pile of papers. “I know what you mean. It did work out for you in the end, though.”

“Of course it did, honey, after I fled West Virginia.” After he said the words, a tremendous smile appeared on his face.

“Well, for God’s sake, we’ve got to make people see it. The people in our district will be killed by this, with all the job losses in the last couple years. Even the high technology folks aren’t immune; Christ, my father got laid off along with everyone at his plant. He worked for his company for twenty years. His wife is dead, and he’s raising a son with a terminal illness that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to treat, and what will he do if this bill goes through? Don’t they understand what this will do to people?”

Ambrose leaned forward. “You’re right. Valerie, you need to tell that story. Better yet, your father needs to. Isn’t he a general or something in the National Guard, too? And a war hero?”

 “He’s not one to talk about anything in public,” she said, her voice subdued.

“Look, don’t hit me, Valerie, but he could be the story. Christ almighty, we couldn’t pick a better poster child if we made him up. You get your father on the cover of Time, and maybe you can win this one.”

She felt her cheeks grow hot. Ambrose seemed to sense the approaching explosion and leaned away.

“Now don’t get mad at me; you have to see it.” He ticked off fingers on his right hand. “Look, everyone likes and respects your father, I’ve seen it. One, he’s a hardworking American. Two, he’s a veteran of a war.”

“Two, actually.”

“Even better. Third, he’s a widower, and his wife was killed by the very type of random crime people are so afraid of.”

She sat up straight, now truly outraged. “Damn it, Ambrose. That’s going too far. There’s no way I will ask him to talk about that in public. It’ll kill him.”

“Do you want to win this, Valerie? Stop trying to take care of your father for a change and look around. He might just be able to do it. Number four, after all that, he paid his daughter’s way through college. Number five, his beloved son is very ill and now that he is out of work the only help he’ll get will be from the government. The only thing that could make it better is if he were a disabled vet.”

“You cynical bastard,” she said, laughing in half admiration. “You didn’t know, did you? He hides it so goddamn well. He lost his left leg below the knee in Iraq.”

“I rest my case,” Ambrose said. He leaned back, a smile on his face.

She sighed and closed her eyes, annoyed that Ambrose looked so pleased with himself.

“All right, I’ll talk to him. But I’m telling you now, he won’t have anything to do with this trash.”

“All you can do is ask.”

***


That Sunday, Valerie slipped away from the office and drove north on Interstate 270, then west on US 340 until she passed Harpers Ferry and reached home in Highview.

The newscasters on the radio went on incessantly. The Department of Homeland Security had announced they had a suspect in the Arlington bombing, a radical militia group called the Shenandoah Sons of Liberty, operating out of the West Virginia mountains. Agents were at a standoff with the terrorists at a remote compound near Baughman Settlement. At least they weren’t rounding up Arabs all over the country anymore.

She changed radio stations without any luck: all the news stations were talking about the same thing. She had heard a little about them before; Baughman Settlement wasn’t close to her home, situated in the mountains near Front Royal, but because of the most recent redistricting, Baughman had ended up in Clark’s district. It was a strange group. Situated a few miles out of town in the backwoods, they weren’t at all connected to the outside world: no running water, electricity or telephone lines. It seemed odd to her that they were involved in terrorism—they seemed almost fanatically apolitical, and terrorism was by nature a political act.

Experts were being interviewed, as well as obscure professors and former military analysts, most of whom probably knew nothing. The current speaker on the radio was hysterically calling for a national database to track everyone, so people could be profiled based on their movements, their purchases, their religious affiliations. Valerie grimaced. Didn’t they know the Defense Department had had that set up for ten years now?

She switched off the radio.

She reached home after an uneventful drive, and was immediately thrown off balance. Normally, when she arrived, Kenny barreled out into the driveway to hug her, soon followed by her father. Not this time: when she arrived, Murphy came to the door without his young son and waved. She felt a sigh of relief when she walked in the door, embraced her father, and saw Kenny listlessly reading a book on the couch.
Now that Kenny was home from the hospital, she spent the morning playing games with him while her father cooked. She tried to hide her distress. His left eye didn’t track with the right, and seemed to wander aimlessly, and his hands shook like an old man’s. He hadn’t been so bad when she’d last seen him, only two months before. It was hard to believe how much he had detiorated in the two months since she’d been home.

Every once in a while she looked up at her father, in the kitchen, and wondered how he would survive losing his son so soon after Mom died. Since her mother had died, he seemed more and more like an old oak tree, strong on the outside, but hollow, ready to break. He’d lost a lot of weight, though he’d been fit and muscular all his life. Now his clothes hung too loose. Then there were the spells—they’d talk, and something would make him think of Mom, and he would stop talking and just stare out into space, remembering, not aware that his face had gone slack, and at moments like that she thought he was nearer to death than life, or wished he was.

Valerie knew it was morbid, but visiting her childhood home sometimes felt like visiting a mausoleum. Her father was so burdened, with sadness, with worry about Kenny. Sometimes after a visit, she would cry all the way home, though she didn’t know whether it was her mother she cried for or her heartbroken father.

After lunch, Kenny went around the side of the house to play in his sandbox. Murphy brought out a pitcher of iced tea and poured glasses for both of them. They sat in rockers overlooking the side yard, and he eased his left leg off with a sigh, setting it on the ground next to the chair. He rubbed both hands in the stump, massaging it.

“He’s much better now,” Murphy said. “Yesterday it was all he could do to sit in his room and read books; he just didn’t feel well enough to go out. Thanks for coming. I think seeing you made a big difference.”

“Thanks, Dad. I just wish I could be here more often.” As she said the words, she felt guilty. Visits to her father were so emotionally charged that it was almost impossible for her to visit more often, whatever the circumstances of her job.

He reached for her hand. His hand was large, calloused and scarred, around her small, delicate hand. All the same, his ring hung too loose. “I understand. You’ve got a very demanding job, and an important one. Tell me, how’s it going with you and David? You haven’t mentioned him much.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“Well, I don’t. But he’s yours. I suppose I have to try.”

She looked down and shrugged. “I don’t know how things are going, Dad. Did you know—with Mom—when did you know? I mean, that you wanted to be with her?”

“Well, it was a little different for us, I guess. We met in grammar school; I was about twelve when we dated at first.”

“So you knew—you really knew what you wanted when you got married.”

“Hell, I don’t know. We got married right out of high school. My father said I was dumb as a post, and wouldn’t ever amount to nothing if I got married at eighteen. But I didn’t want to be with anyone else, and neither did she, and we loved each other, and it just made sense.”

Valerie shrugged. “I don’t know if I feel that way about David. He’s pretty mad right now—I was supposed to meet him in New York yesterday, and had to cancel. I don’t miss him anymore.”

“Well, you need to do what’s right for you. I won’t tell you what to do; you wouldn’t listen to me anyhow. Follow your heart. You may end up with regrets, but at least they’ll be worth it.”

“Do you have any regrets, Dad?”

He glanced over at her and smiled, a stark smile. Looking in his eyes was like stepping up to the edge of a cliff.

“Only that you and Kenny are still so young I can’t go with her, wherever she went. I miss her so much… I’d follow your mother anywhere.”

Oh, Dad. Don’t say that, we still need you so much. She changed the subject.

“How is Kenny, really? Has he been any better?”

Murphy shook his head. “No. He’s slowly getting worse. Sometimes I’m afraid he’ll wake up one day and not recognize me. He gets these attacks; this was the third one, excruciating pain in his wrists and hands. Nobody can tell me what’s wrong, it doesn’t fit the normal profile for ALD. He gets these mood swings—makes him seem more like a two year old than six. And you know how many doctors and specialists I’ve talked to, all over the country. Last time they had to put him on a respirator to keep him alive.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know that.”

“You were at work then, and it—it just didn’t make sense to call you until I knew…” His eyes watered and he paused. “It didn’t make sense to call until I knew if he was going to make it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, to tell you the truth. I got the mess with the insurance straightened out, but it’s so expensive I’m only going to be able to pay it for about three months. After that I guess… We can probably get him on disability, I talked to the social security office about it. That may cover the insurance. He won’t be eligible for Medicaid for another year—my income was too high. The sad part is I just wrote a check to the IRS for almost twenty thousand dollars.”

“What!”

“Yeah, that was my tax bill this year. I sold some stock last year to pay off some debts—student loans and the like—I got whacked on capital gains. I really could have used the money now.”

“You know about the Skaggs bill, don’t you?” she said.

“Yeah, isn’t he trying to cut welfare rolls, shift the money to social security?”

“Well, yes, but they are also cutting social security disability and veterans disability,” she answered.

“You’re kidding. Would Kenny be covered?”

“I don’t think so, Dad. He’ll probably lose any government assistance, unless the state has something.”

“People are so overtaxed here by the feds, the state government has to hold the line. There’s not much in the way of services. I’m sure you deal with it every day, in your job.”

She nodded.

“You can’t let that bill pass, if there’s anything you can do, hon.”

“That’s part of what I wanted to talk with you about, Dad. I think—I think you can help.”

***


The noise of the crickets and cicadas drowned out the creak of Murphy’s rocking chair as he sat on his front porch, staring out at the falling darkness. Murphy rocked; the sound was soothing, a reminder of so many nights before on this porch, listening to the same sound. Through the trees, he saw headlights as a car passed on the highway.

Two weeks had passed since he’d been laid off. Two weeks since the bombing, and the day his son went back to the hospital. Not much had changed. School would be out in another week, and normally Murphy would be worried about day care for the summer, but that didn’t look to be a problem this year. In two weeks, he’d sent a hundred resumes, made fifty cold calls, and received no response.

He was starting to think there just weren’t any jobs out there for him. He wasn’t just looking at a job change. After nineteen years with the same company, he faced a complete career change. It wasn’t like there were any chip manufacturers left in the United States. And he’d be damned if he’d move to Indonesia, after serving his country 26 years.

So the question was, what could he do?

He closed his eyes. If only Martha were here.

That thought brought a fresh bout of pain. They’d known each other since third grade, dated in junior high and high school. Voted “Most Popular Couple” by their senior class. Murphy lost his job with GM in ’90 when she was six months pregnant with Valerie. She stood by him while he searched for work, with almost no luck. For a while he found work with a big landscaping company—cutting grass, that sort of thing. After she had Valerie, she kissed him goodbye and saw him off at the airport when he enlisted in the Army.

They lived together in Germany, at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He’d been deployed to the Gulf War and later the Balkans. Whenever he left her behind, she wrote almost every day. After the Army, when the position came up at Saturn’s new chip manufacturing plant in West Virginia, she’d picked up and moved there with him.

In October 2004—by that time he was an officer—his National Guard unit mobilized and went to Iraq, where he’d seen more of his share of death and pain than anyone deserved. He’d been gone over a year that time, a year he almost never talked about, but that sometimes haunted him, especially when he looked at his son and remembered the children who’d died in Iraq. The year had ended with a roadside bomb that destroyed his humvee, killing his driver and shredding Murphy’s left leg below the knee. Martha had nursed him back to health when he got home, helped him work himself back into shape, then stood by him when he fought the Army National Guard to get back on duty. Except for short periods training in the Guard, he’d never again left her.

They had made their lives here, in this ramshackle old farmhouse built of grey stone, with a tin roof and a wraparound porch. The dirt driveway led a half-mile out to US 340. They had experimented with various crops in the fields closest to the house—tomatoes and cabbage—but neither of them were meant to be farmers.

Over the last two decades he and Martha had redone the house’s interior, making a wide open, bright space. She loved music and art and had decorated the house accordingly, with unknown artists from rural West Virginia. Murphy had once believed that if she died, he couldn’t live a day longer. But she died early, and left responsibilities behind, and he had to meet those responsibilities.

That day in February three years ago, she had climbed into her jeep, driven out the two miles west on 340 to the gas station and convenience store, and met her fate at the hands of a seventeen-year-old drug addict. Murphy had seen the security film. The blotches on the boy’s face must have been dirt or something, because they were gone at the trial. Unkempt hair, pale skin. Rail thin.Too many late nights, Murphy guessed. Too much drugs. He made off with fifty-three dollars, too strung out or stupid to look under the plastic cash drawer, where three hundred dollars in twenties lay.

It was almost ten minutes before the next customer came in, saw the bleeding woman writhing in agony on the floor, and called for an ambulance. Martha’s telephone sat on the dashboard in the jeep. Murphy had tortured himself for months wondering why she hadn’t carried it into the store with her, why she hadn’t used the compact 9mm pistol he’d taught her to use.

Walter died instantly, a survivor of a brutal war in Southeast Asia fated to die at the hands of a teenager in his own place of business. Martha might have made it, had she not lost so much blood lying on the floor for ten minutes, and then the ten more before the rescue helicopter showed up to take her to the county hospital. She’d been in emergency surgery for hours; they just couldn’t revive her. She died, leaving behind Murphy, their two children, and their life together.

Sometimes Murphy thought he was dead too. The other times, he wished he was.

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