CHAPTER FIVE

“General LaMonde is, in my mind, the greatest military mind in our country
today. He is a worthy successor to the legends of so many earlier
great men, men like George Patton and Douglas MacArthur.”
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“I have seen the future, and it is filled with people making the
mistakes of the past.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

Lyceum lectures were usually held at the middle school auditorium, a structure more than large enough to house the audiences that would attend the high falootin’ speakers the group would generally bring to town. The large demand for tickets to the LaMonde talk required it be moved to the Desert Fiesta, a large pre-fab structure built on the outskirts of town on the highway to El Paso. The building had been intended to do for Carlsbad what Palo Duro Canyon had done for Canyon, Texas—provide a venue for a song and dance production (in Canyon’s case, a play appropriately entitled Texas) that would keep tourists and their dollars in town for an extra night. It proved to be a popular idea with everyone but the tourists, and the venture closed its doors its first summer in production, leaving a building which had eventually housed city storage, an occasional “Up With People” production, and most recently, a bedrock Christian church. It was the largest meeting place in Carlsbad, and tonight it was standing room only.
Hal had seen no reason to arrive too early, knowing he held reserved seats in the front row. But he did not anticipate the draw that General LaMonde would have, and after circling the parking lot twice in a futile effort to find a parking place, drove his Camaro back down the road a half mile before pulling in between two white pick-ups. He locked the car doors and held Ruth’s hand as they began walking toward the lecture hall.
Hal’s thoughts wandered as they ambled toward the building’s front entrance. Were gun racks de rigueur for pick-up trucks with Texas license plates? Who owned the single Prius he saw on the road dominated by trucks and SUV’s? As he neared the front entrance, he wondered where the long black Hummer limousine had been driven in from. When Ruth misstepped and almost fell in the gravel near the entrance, he wondered who had invented high heeled shoes and why. And more importantly, how had they been so successfully marketed? They certainly didn’t look too comfortable. Then he thought about his tie and loosened it a bit more.
He shook a few hands and nodded acknowledgement a number of times as he and Ruth navigated the crowded aisle toward the front of the auditorium. All seats were filled. There was a sea of t-shirts and cowboy hats. There was a long haired character in sunglasses, his motorcycle mama standing closely next to him, each missing a front tooth, each holding a beer in a plastic cup, each with the stars and bars brightly emblazoned on the backs of their vests. He had written “LUV IT OR LEVE IT” in chalk under his flag; were the misspellings intentional? A little kid dressed up in an army camouflage suit, perched on his father’s shoulders, waving an American flag. Three “Fuck Obama” t-shirts, another with “What Should Obama And Lincoln Have In Common?” Hal was certain that Presidential libraries in Illinois were not the shirt’s intent.
Toward the front, the crowd seemed more subdued. The first ties, a number of suits. A magistrate judge, the chief of police, a half-dozen lawyers, three doctors and most of the Lyceum members. Hal saw Pete Price, a distant cousin of the country and western singer Ray Price, slouching in the second row, resplendent in his white shirt and red, white and blue bow tie. Hal called him “Goober,” his nickname for everyone that reminded him of Andy Griffith and Mayberry RFD.
Five minutes after the scheduled beginning of the speech, Gayle Jerrells, the Lyceum’s president since its inception, approached the podium. A tall, thin, somewhat stately woman with dark grey hair, Gayle rarely agreed with Hal’s politics but each shared a mutual respect for the other’s ideas and ideals. Hal had once wanted to ask her if she had ever owned a pair of pants; neither he nor anyone else in Carlsbad had ever seen Gayle in a pair of slacks. Actually, he remembered, he did ask her once. He wondered whether she just hadn’t heard the question or thought it too silly to bother answering. Either way, Hal mused, she did have great legs for a woman her age. Course, shouldn’t a woman her age wear skirts that extend over her knees rather than to them? As if on cue, his answer came when he heard whistles and cat calls from the back of the auditorium.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special program brought to you by the Carlsbad Lyceum.” Then the predictable acknowledgements and thank-yous, the recognition of the area dignitaries, the voices of the disinterested in the audience. It dawned on Hal only now that he had seen only a couple of Hispanic faces in the crowd. There were no blacks. Like a Jimmy Buffett concert, he thought, only way scarier.
“Our very special speaker tonight is known to all of you. General Kurt LaMonde is a true American hero who has seen fighting on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and behind the desks in Washington, D.C.” Applause and snickers from the audience. “I need not give you a long resumé of his accomplishments for they’ve long been reported in national media and our own Current Argus. So without further ado, our man of the hour, Marine General Kurt LaMonde!” Loud applause. Cheers. Syncopated foot stomping. I’m getting a headache, Hal thought. He looked left at Ruth, who was smiling broadly and, he thought, clapping too vigorously. He felt his necktie tightening.
LaMonde walked onto the stage from behind the worn purple velour curtain to Gayle’s left. He strode toward the podium forcefully, back erect, in long steps, seemingly oblivious to the applause that greeted him. He did not smile until he took Gayle’s hand and shook it; she seemed to grimace slightly, Hal thought. Maybe the General was using a real Marine’s let’s-show-you-early-who’s-boss handshake. LaMonde weighed more than Hal thought he would. Maybe that D.C. infighting allows long lunch hours. Still the man looked—what would the word be? Dangerous.
It wasn’t until Gayle moved away from the podium that LaMonde turned to face the audience. He didn’t seem to focus on anyone, but he seemed to see everyone all at once. A bit unnerving. He made no attempt to quiet the crowd. Shit-eating grin. He had no notes. He simply stood at the podium, taking it all in. Reconnoitering.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for that welcome. And thank you, members and of the Carlsbad Lyceum, for this opportunity to speak to all of you today about the dangerous set of affairs now facing our country.
“Those of you who know of me know that I place the honor of my country above all other things. Of course, to serve that country and help preserve its honor, I must admit that I have bent the rules a time or two.” Chuckling from the back rows.
“I had a horrible family life growing up in southern Missouri. My father was abusive and would often take his shortcomings out on my mother and me. When I was fifteen, I knew I could take it no more. I could have moved out, gone to Hollywood and a few years later written some tell-all book in which I blamed my parents for all my problems. Or I could take my life and my future into my own hands. I did that. I obtained a fake driver’s license showing me to be three years older than I actually was and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.” Hoots and hollers from across the hall.
“In the Corps, I discovered the importance of camaraderie of those with a common goal. Our goal was to protect America.” Loud applause. LaMonde looked like he was irritated by the interruption. “To protect America against all costs. Even if that cost was laying down our lives. We found no sacrifice to be too great to be offered up to this noble land of ours.
“Without belaboring my history in the Corps too much, I can tell you that I was an apt student of its procedures, values, and judgments, and over the years, as you all know, rose to the rank of general.” The syncopated foot stomping again. Loud applause and cheers.
“This country now faces threats as serious as any ever confronted before in our two-hundred and forty year history. We are at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. But, my friends, make no mistake about it: we are involved in a World War.” Silence.
“We have the resolve, we have the resources to win this war. We can beat those who want to see this country brought to its knees just as we defeated the Axis powers in the last World War and the Central powers in the World War before that one.” Loud applause. Chants of “Kurt, Kurt, Kurt” from the back rows.
LaMonde held up his arms to silence the crowd. He slowly surveyed his audience, passing his gaze from left to right. Reconnoitering. “No one recognizes this ability better than Samuel Parsons, the great senator from your neighboring state of Texas. Senator Parsons, as you all know, is currently seeking the Republican nomination to run as that party’s candidate in November, and he has amply demonstrated in his many speeches, his support of various bills in Congress, and in his private conversations with me, his total commitment to the future of American interests, both at home and abroad.” Loud applause again. LaMonde sipped from a glass of water and cleared his throat.
“It has been well reported in the media that I advocated the limited use of nuclear weapons in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can win our war against the Taliban and Muslim extremists. We can bring to an end the number of brave young Americans giving their lives to achieve this victory. Harry Truman was not afraid to use the full power of our military strength against the Japanese.” A formulaic pause. “Neither will Samuel Parsons hesitate to use that power against our enemies around the globe.”
People jumped to their feet. Even the lawyer to Hal’s right, usually so dour and devoid of emotion, shot up and applauded vigorously. The cry, “Parsons, Parsons, Parsons” was almost deafening. Hal loosened his necktie again. Was he sweating? The second coming couldn’t elicit this type of enthusiasm. What the hell are they thinking?
The rest of LaMonde’s speech was predictable enough. Obama was timid, Parsons would be brave; Obama was weak, Parsons will be strong. Yada, yada, yada. Vote for a great American. Vote for Samuel Parsons in November.
Gayle returned to the podium, grinning broadly. Now she took LaMonde’s hand and shook it forcefully. The predictable questions: Will Samuel Parsons stand up to China? Will Parsons reinstate the draft and make out military great once again? Will Parsons tap Sarah Palin as his running mate? The predictable answers: Yes, Yes, and No.
A few words from the president of the Carlsbad Young Republicans, Reggie Campbell, decked out in a shiny black leather jacket. Good God, he looks like the Reggie in the Archie comics, Hal told himself. Then Campbell, LaMonde, and a couple of other teenagers also in black leather jackets left the stage together.
Huh, Hal thought. Weren’t black leather jackets mentioned in news feeds over the last few months? Small bands of young people in black leather jackets had been seen running away after a synagogue was firebombed in Atlanta, mosques were destroyed in fires in Detroit and Los Angeles, and a Chinese man was attacked and killed in the Chicago subway. Odd.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’ve always considered myself a fair student of history. And one thing I’ve
learned is that nations and empires get just plain lazy. People get lazy. It
begins at the bottom and works up to the top. For instance, the liberal
agenda is to make our schools nothing but some kind of centers of
learning; they couldn’t care less about physical education and
sports. Apparently, they think if we graduate liberal weaklings rather
than students with strong healthy bodies, we can handle our lives
better. They take this attitude all the way up the line to our
foreign policy—but history has shown that a strong army beats
talks and embargos at every turn."
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“Civilization itself is man’s crowning achievement. A few thousand years
ago, we lived in caves, clubbed our women, and instinctively killed our enemies.
The weak died silently and the strong were feared. Civilization allowed the
evolution of morality, and with morality came the acceptance of our obligations
to the weak, the sick, and the poor. Perhaps the greatest culmination of this is
seen in the America we know today”.
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

Unlike its sister city of Hobbs, located some seventy miles to the northeast and subject to the boom and bust vagaries of the oilfield, Carlsbad’s economy for many years had been based on potash mining. Whereas in Hobbs, families moved into town with each boom cycle and moved away when the oilfield would again go bust, Carlsbad miners had jobs with year-round work and security. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the city had been the strongest union enclave in the state.
Hal had always credited the mines with the mindset that cities like Hobbs seemed to lack. Because people had their jobs year in and year out, they were able to stay in one place and thus took pride in community. Neighborhoods were stronger. Lawns and houses were better kept. The performance of children in schools was important. People knew each other.
Over the years, however, the quality of the potash ore had diminished. Canadian potash could be produced and shipped to American markets more cheaply than the Carlsbad miners could deliver it upward through their own mine shafts. An anti-dumping suit filed against Canadian potash companies in 1987 could not stem the tide, and over the next two decades jobs dwindled and people disappeared.
Though still a key player in the Carlsbad economy, potash mining was now only slightly more important than its traditional also-rans—tourism, ranching and farming, and oilfield production.
Hal had covered it all many times in his editorials. The town was in trouble, new sustainable industry was needed. Too many homes were being vacated and allowed to become run down; too many neighborhoods saw home values fall too far. The fights, the robberies, the rapes and the murders—why couldn’t he leave his front door unlocked when he went out as did his parents thirty years before?
Hal often felt like a throwback to more simple times. His friends kidded him that James Cameron would one day make a film of his life and call it Atavist.

Hal grimaced as he stood in front of the mirror trying for the third time to get just the right length on that tie he was knotting. He wanted the tip of the tie to reach just above his belt buckle; any farther down and he’d look like an old man. Any farther up and he’d look fat. He hated ties. And suit jackets. And polished shoes. Most of all, he hated formality, because formality meant neckties, suit jackets, and polished shoes.
But, hell, he was the editor of the newspaper, and that meant that dressing up was part of the game. He finished tying his silk knot and examined himself in the mirror, then loosened the tie from around his neck and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Comfort—one; formality—zero.
“I’m ready if you are, Houseboat,” came a chirpy voice from behind him. His wife, Ruth, walked into the bedroom from the adjoining bathroom. She had once shortened Houseboat to Homer; perhaps he was too brusque when he told her Homer does not go with Simpson and she was never to call him that again. His name was definitely not Homer, Homebody, or Homeboy.
“I really hate these things, you know,” he said, trying not to sound judgmental.
“Oh, do try to stay awake and not fidget, Houseboat. Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something new,” Ruth replied with a grin.
The thing was the monthly meeting of the Carlsbad Lyceum, a group whose stated purpose was to provide the community with knowledgeable speakers to discuss politics, economics, science and religion. Hal had always felt this was a commendable idea, even though no world federalist, socialist, anthropologist, rabbi or Buddhist monk had ever been invited to speak.
Tonight’s speaker was to be General Kurt LeMonde, who up until a few months ago had been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. LeMonde was a third generation military brat who was born into and would have died in the Marine Corps had he not tried to run an end game around the White House and convince a half dozen senators to authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. When the President tried to rein him in, LaMonde did what any good Marine would do—he stood his ground and told the enemy to go to hell. He was forced to withdraw from the field.
It was a scandal, Bill O’Reilly charged, and within weeks, LeMonde was one of America’s most popular speakers on the lecture circuit. Some went so far as to advance his name as a candidate on the ticket with Samuel Parsons.

CHAPTER THREE

“It might sound odd, but as a kid, I was fascinated with ants. I would watch
them for hours. It was amazing what they could accomplish working
together the way they did—under all those anthills were huge cities with
endless tunnels going in all directions. They could accomplish this with
brains no larger than the head of a pin. But I think what I really admired
was their marching. They’d crawl in single file lines, one after the
other, half way across the yard, all following a leader to some place
he alone knew existed”.
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At The Zero Hour

“We live life as if were a carnival. We give our attention not to he who
has something to say, but to he who yells the loudest.
We listen not to those who can speak with authority,
but to those who tell us what we want to hear. We elect
not those most qualified to serve, but those who are most popular.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

The 2012 presidential election was pretty much typical in every way. The Republicans condemned the Democrats, with a great deal of truth, as the party of the tax and spend. Democrats, as is their knee jerk reaction, condemned the Republican Party as the mouthpiece of the rich and famous. Republicans reminded the populace over and over that “liberal” was a word that meant intellectual (not like you and me) agent of (malignant) change; below the Mason-Dixon line, it was synonymous with an odd-sounding New Yorker-type who doesn’t know shit about what life is really all about. Democrats called for an election of inclusion, one in which all people of all parties could come together, all the while casting the Republicans as those cold uncaring in-laws who could tell you everything you were doing wrong yet somehow could never stop to help you make things right.
Both parties played the old time-tested charges and arguments. But Samuel Parsons played the game on a level that made Richard Nixon and Karl Rove seem like touchy-feely California new agers sitting down to a spot of organic tea.
While many thought Parsons was an unthinking loose cannon, to Hal Simpson, it appeared that he had willfully taken a page from Spiro Agnew’s 1972 game book. Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” became Parsons’ “palpable pulse of piss-poor political palaver.” Just as Agnew was happiest serving as Nixon’s attack dog, Parsons found he relished his role as his party’s hit man—his shoot from the hip, take no prisoners attitude fit him like a glove. There were recurring rumors Romney and his staff were disenchanted with the name calling, the quoting of statistics that could not be found, and the presentation of truths that were, at best, deliberate fabrications, but no one would say so on the record. After all, it wasn’t like he was waving a paper in front of the cameras with the names of hundreds of subversives in the State Department.
But did the voters know that Obama had promised the ayatollahs in Iran enough uranium for six nuclear weapons so they could destroy Israel, thus drawing America into a war in order that Nancy Pelosi could be installed as the American Governor in Tehran? That Obama had secretly colluded with Yemeni pirates to board only vessels of companies that had refused to pay tribute to the Democratic National Committee? That the liberal media that had so punished Tiger Woods with stories of his indiscretions with white women refused to do the same to Barack Obama, even though the two of them had spent a weekend in Chicago with three of Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends?
That the Democrats had included a secret provision in their Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 to create death panels in which doctors could decide who would live and who would die, even if you were sick with no more than a common cold? That if the Health Act were overturned, the government would be able to give $75,000 to every man, woman and child in the country between the ages of nine and ninety?
Or that the CIA had photographs of Obama’s mother in bed with Leonid Brezhnev? (Stories about Ann Dunham being in bed with the pope that first showed up on Facebook and then spread around the internet were apparently posted by a minor Republican office holder in North Carolina when he “sort of” got his facts wrong in his post.) That Mexican drug cartel thugs had crucified three Border Patrol agents when they attempted to arrest a drug runner from Juarez?
These and other such rantings were carried in daily news reports, were replayed dozens of times every day in paid political ads on televisions and radios, and were related and repeated thousands of times in internet blogs and postings. At first, the Obama campaign, against the advice of Secretary of State Kerry, ignored these ridiculous charges, discovering only too late one of the unalterable laws in the age of mass communication and questionable media coverage: many will think that if it’s in the paper and on TV, it must be true. Others might be dubious, but just as they are accustomed to think where there is smoke, there must be fire, so will many voters feel that behind each overstatement, there must be some element of truth. After all, if Obama and Bill Clinton smoked cigars in the Oval Office as they watched secret tapes of a tryst between Nancy Pelosi and Hillary, then something must have happened, right? By the time the Democrats began denying the silliness threatening their campaign, their denials were seen as admissions of guilt. After all, if nothing had happened (and by now many voters were convinced something had), why were they denying it?
In the end, as in so many recent elections, the victor came out on top by the narrowest of margins, a winner in name only. In the weeks following the election, many feared the real winner was Samuel Parsons. Though Obama had been re-elected President, the media credited Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate to Parsons’ coat tail. While exit polls showed he was shunned in the election by the better educated, by the more affluent, and by minorities across the nation, early December post-election polls revealed an astonishing level of support for him to be the Republican nominee for President in 2016.

CHAPTER TWO

“For months, the talk at our dinner table was all about what a mess the
world was in, how Washington didn’t seem to know what to do about
it, how we needed new blood in that stale capital. Newsmen all said
we needed to elect as President someone familiar with the world,
a senator or an ambassador perhaps. But we knew a governor would
make a darn good President. Growing up near Lubbock, I could almost
see Mexico. And as governor of Texas, a state with an international
border, I came to understand how governments act with one another.”
--Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At The Zero Hour

“Perhaps we in the media are to blame for the current dearth of
satisfactory Presidential candidates. We report the comings and
goings of reality show stars when the shows are not reality and
the participants are not stars and they themselves are
not really news. We give time to the fringe
believer equal to what we give the studied government official.
We have created a world in which mediocrity is something to which
our youth aspire and our learned accept.”
--Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

As was his habit every day at 4:30, Hal Simpson was sitting in his office, his legs stretched out before him on his old mahogany desk, the backs of his brogans resting on a stack of wrinkled papers. He had a Landshark, his beer of the week, in his left hand and a half smoked cigar in his right. His chair creaked each time he leaned forward to set his beer down or pick it up.
Carlsbad, New Mexico, was a city of almost 22,000 inhabitants when Hal had moved there with his family in 1959. There were four of them then. His father, whom Hal worshipped, was a tall thin man whose hair had grayed in his early twenties. He had wanted to be a lawyer; in his youth, Hal had thought his father looked like a thin grayed Carl Betz in Judd For The Defense. He had met Hal’s mother while a sophomore in college in New Jersey; when she became pregnant in his junior year, he dropped out school and began what would be a succession of jobs—short order cook, record shop manager, trucker. He took college classes whenever he could and eventually became a successful paralegal. By the time Hal turned twelve, his father was the office manager of the largest law firm in Carlsbad. One day in July, returning to his office after securing a deposition, his father's car was struck by a drunk driving a company truck. Hal saw him after the accident only once; he had walked to the hospital and sneaked by the nurses to get into the room where his father lay in a coma. He sat for what seemed like hours, saying nothing, holding his father’s hand. He still remembered how cold and clammy his skin had felt, how shallow the breathing seemed, the constant beep-beep-beeps of the different monitors. He didn’t cry; he only sat there, staring at his father, somehow knowing he would not see him up and around again, trying to almost to breathe in the way his father looked, the way he smelled, the way he felt; knowing that those memories would stay with him forever and would be a sad substitute for the time he could never share, the attention he would never have. He remembered the prayers he whispered, the deals he offered if only God would make his father wake up. Did he whisper to his father that afternoon how much he loved him? To this day he wasn’t sure.
The managing partners of his father’s firm were only too happy to sue the company that owned the truck that collided with his father's car. Hal was never sure it was fair that they should pay for an errant employee over whom they had no control, but fair or not, the partners did and obtained for Hal, his mother and his younger brother a multi-million dollar judgment.
The settlement meant nothing to the remaining Simpsons. Hal’s mother saw no reason to change her lifestyle with blood money. Though she was quite possibly now the richest woman in Carlsbad, there was nothing to prove to anyone. She was dedicated to her children but saw to it that they would grow up without airs and develop into responsible adults unaffected by the wealth that had taken so much to obtain. Her pet name for Hal was Halbert. His brother didn’t seem be able to pronounce that and always called him Houseboat, a nickname that stuck.
Like his father, Hal saw himself as a lawyer. Throughout high school, he had rather grandiose schemes about graduating from law school, joining the ACLU, and proceeding to save the world from itself. Once in college, though, he found it was more fun to have fun than to study, and he realized law school would not be his future. He thought perhaps being a newspaper reporter might be to his liking--after all, he was good at English, could sort through people’s b.s., and liked to be at the center of all sorts of happenings, both large and small.
He was en route to an interview with the St. Louis Post Dispatch when he received a phone call that his mother had suffered a stroke. He turned his blue Ford Falcon around and managed getting three speeding tickets as he headed west on Interstate 40. From Amarillo, he headed toward Lubbock, from there to Hobbs, New Mexico, and then to Carlsbad.
He sped through town and west on Pierce Street to Memorial Hospital, a one story, red brick structure that always seemed to smell of sick people. At the nurses’ station, he identified himself to a portly redhead with a stethescope dangling around her neck that made an odd clanging sound each time it hit the countertop. The nurse did not look him in the eye, but she really didn’t seem to look away either when she told him his mother had passed away a few minutes before. She conveyed no warmth, no sorrow. Only a look that said death happens.
It seemed full circle as Hal sat by his mother’s bedside. The cold, clammy skin seemed too familiar to him as he sat and held her hand. He combed her hair, still dark, so much like his, but it was full of static electricity and would not obey the commands of his brush strokes. He finally just sat there. Should he say a prayer? He had not prayed since his father died. Why believe now that there would be anyone out there who would hear him? Where is the logic in the universe when the good are taken so early?
Now it all seemed so long ago. When the estate was settled, Hal decided to stay in Carlsbad. He quickly became the Current Argus’ star reporter. He was proud of his achievement, even though he knew the only other reporter never left his desk, ferreted out his news only by telephone, and made up as much information as he discovered. Late in his second year at the paper, irritated over an editorial change in the flavor of an article he had written (okay, it only took five minutes to write, but that wasn’t the point), he bought the paper. At age 23, he was owner, editor, and publisher of the largest newspaper in Carlsbad, New Mexico, albeit the only newspaper in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The city’s high and mighty and its lowdown and dirty all looked up to him. He wanted to say he could make or break people, but he really didn’t think he knew how.
Hal had discovered he had a deep, almost reverential, respect for news. News is facts. Facts is truth. Truth needs no blandishment, it needs no editorial gussying up. Yes, the Argus had an editorial page, and yes, he knew he was known around town for his often wordy editorials, frequently out of step with local opinion. But page one and all the other pages were for news. Hal knew that while a lot of people in town subscribed to area papers like the El Paso Times and the Albuquerque Journal, they still read the Argus. It was homey. It was truthful. It could be trusted.

Now it was 2016, and he had been editor of the Argus for 41 years; looking back, he’d say most of those years were good ones, both professionally and personally. Yes, there was that disastrous first marriage, but the second one had been a charm, more or less. True, he was a bit bored at home, but he had a wonderful child, a damn nice house, a brand new Camaro, a kick-ass AV system, and unknown to almost everyone, a special friend in whom he could confide, let his guard down, and be himself.
He took a deep puff on his cigar. He wasn’t really sure why. Cigar smoke is such a nasty taste. A nasty manly taste. Oh well, that’s why I’ve got the beer, he thought; it makes a great cigar chaser.
He tossed the empty beer bottle into the trash and turned to his credenza, in which he had a small refrigerator stocked with a couple dozen more bottles. He popped the top off another Landshark and asked the two men sitting in front of him if either wanted another. This is the life, he thought. Where else can you drink beer, talk politics, say whatever you want and not have to worry about who agrees with you and who doesn’t? Freedom to kick back, freedom to mouth off. What were the words of that CS&N song? “Find the cost of freedom, hiding . . .” Hiding where? He was trying to remember the next line when he heard,
“Yep, I woulda been damned if I'da thought Obama had a snowball’s chance in hell in ’12. I still don’t know how he pulled that election outta his ass.” The political commentator was Allen Jeffries, a friend of Hal’s since elementary school. He was a regular at these 4:30 smokefests. Four years younger than Hal, Allen had never married. He often talked about living la vida loca, but Hal and everyone else knew he hadn’t had a date in five years. Hal never thought of Allen as particularly articulate, but he gave him high marks for common sense. And while Allen’s reasoning may often have been somewhat circuitous, Hal found that the two of them agreed on most things.
“He won because this country isn’t ready for a Mormon President,” came the reply from Hal’s left. Somewhere behind a climbing waft of smoke sat Frank Greene. “He plays well in Utah and I guess Massachusetts, but there was no way this country would elect him. What’d he take in the Electoral College? Six states?” Hal liked Frank’s company, but he found him to sometimes be a bit of a bore. Like Allen, Frank kept abreast of news and happenings, but whereas Allen could explain both sides of an issue, Frank generally found his own to be the sole compelling argument.
Allen blew out a mouthful of cigar smoke. He always looks so ridiculous when he tries to blow those smoke rings, Hal thought. “Yeah, but six states don’t tell the story. Remember how close the popular vote was? What was the difference? Like 0.5% of the total? That’s a helluva lot of non-Mormons voting for the guy.”
“You know,” interjected Hal, “I truly think the Republicans could have won in ’12. I think the reason they lost was Parsons. He scared away the independents.”
“Where do you get that?” demanded Frank. “Parsons is the best damned governor Texas has ever had.”
“Well, compared to Bush . . .” began Allen.
“Don’t even go there,” said Frank. “Parsons turned that state around. Crime dropped . . .”
“Frank, crime dropped because under Parsons, Texas judges incarcerated more people than at any period in the state’s history. And early parole became almost non-existent. More people were in prison and people in prison were in there longer. Hell, there wasn’t anybody out on the street to commit any crimes,” Hal said. He knew he didn’t believe what he’d just said, but heck, he knew Frank would take the bait. And he wasn’t ready to go home yet.
“And you have a problem with that? Damn guilty people need damn longer sentencing. And besides, they built six new prisons under Parsons’ term. Lotta new jobs. More than your boy Obama can say for his policies.”
Hal and Allen exchanged glances, both rolling their eyes upward a bit. Frank always carried his arguments too far, Hal thought, but he was never really sure how much of what Frank said was real and how much of it was . . . well, bait.
“C’mon, Frank-o, get real.” Allen took another swig of beer. He liked these afternoon bull sessions, even if Hal’s taste in beer was a bit strange; Landshark this week, Red Label last week, what was it the week before? “The only reason Parsons was even tapped was because Texas has one helluva lotta electoral votes. Pure and simple. The guy’s a bozo. They didn’t even know each other before they met on the day of the announcement.”
“Al, buddy, think about it. Doesn’t matter if they knew each other. It’s all the staff guys that do the research and all anyway. Look at the facts. Parsons is one fine law-and-order man. Hell, every time I hear that theme music to Law & Order, I think Governor Parsons and get goose-bumps. Look how he shored up security at the border when the feds couldn’t do it. How he cut back on welfare and got the cheats off the rolls. Too damned many of those blasted welfare recipients driving Cadillacs.”
“Get real, Frank.” It was Hal’s turn again. “Next you’ll be telling me welfare mothers have all those babies just so they can get another $80 a month. I give credit to Parsons for firming up security at the border. Lord knows we needed it. But what about all those reports of shootings by state militia? These aren’t army guys. They’re not National Guard. They’re a bunch of trigger happy NRA guys concerned that someone from Mexico or Central America is going to come across the border and take their jobs. Parsons did nothing to keep those people in line.”
“There’s a song that reminds me of Parsons, too,” piped up Allen. “Theme from Sesame Street.” Both Hal and Frank looked him. “What? I missed the moment?”

Samuel Parsons was born in Post, Texas, where he was an indifferent student before he graduate from high school twenty-first in his class of thirty. Post was a small town of about 3500 people, dependent on agriculture and the vagaries of the weather. Voters elected Parsons mayor in 2008. Post mayors generally had little to do other than occasionally direct a letter to the state utility commission or attend a monthly council meeting. Fortunately for the future Presidential candidate, however, he was able to show his mettle when a crime spree occurred in his town. After car window was shattered by a rock and a motorcycle was stolen, Parsons ordered the sheriff to place anyone out after dark into jail for the night. He gained regional attention when it was reported in Dallas newspapers Post had no curfew hour and that 95% of the people jailed were either Hispanic or black. Within a year, he resigned his position and moved to Lubbock, a city of about a quarter-million people about forty miles west. Buying a percentage of a local television station (Hal thought it odd no one had ever explained where the funds had come from), Parsons gave himself prime time airplay, using his time to interview guests, the locally famous and the not-so-famous, extremists from both the left and the right. He patterned his interview style after Joe Pyne, one of his childhood heroes. He rarely subjected militia members, pro-life, pro-death penalty, or anti-immigration guests to any particularly deep questions. He reserved his grilling and name calling to those guests who were pro-choice, anti-death penalty, or just plain pinhead liberal Socialist Communist anti-American pink namby-pamby jackasses. He insisted he slipped when he called Howard Stern a motherfucker on the air, but he was quickly developing a reputation as the Texan Rush Limbaugh. Even Glenn Beck traveled to Lubbock to be on his program and call him “Lubbock’s answer to the sissified Obamafied politics that have taken over our country.” Parsons’ television exposure and his reputation for straight talk allowed him to stage an upset victory over incumbent governor Rick Perry to take the Republican nomination for governor of Texas in 2010.
The election pitted him against Democratic nominee Kinky Friedman, a relative newcomer to politics whose main claim to fame was a song titled, “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” Parsons won a lopsided victory in November.
While governor, Parsons pursued a law and order agenda. (Hal saw this as right-speak for the whittling away of civil rights.) He spoke out against the ineffectiveness of the federal government’s domestic and international policies in the weekly television addresses he used as his pulpit. His detractors were “jackasses,” liberals were “dangerous morons,” pro-choice adherents were “cold blooded baby killers who would stick a vacuum cleaner hose in a women’s body for a few lousy dollars.” It was insinuated, though never quite said, that all Latinos (Parsons labeled everyone in this category as “Messican”) were thieves, Jews were bigger thieves, and blacks were murdering thieves.
And the public just ate it up. A year after his election as governor, Texas’ junior senator died when his plane crashed in Bermuda, where he was en route on a fact-finding tour. Samuel Parsons appointed himself to fill the now empty senate seat. When informed he was unable to do this by Texas law, Parsons resigned his gubernatorial seat. His successor’s first job in office was to appoint Samuel Parsons the new junior senator from Texas.
When the Republican National Committee helped cast about for a vice-presidential candidate in 2012, Parsons was regarded as a Texas hick, opinionated and quirky, a man who liked his alcohol (too much) and his women (dangerously young). But he was a populist in a state with big electoral votes and someone the powers that be thought they could control. For this he was crowned the nominee for vice-president.
He was off and running.