long as I can. If I can expose him for what he is, we’ll win. If not, then maybe it’ll be time to move back to Chicago. Time to go home.”
Deep down inside, Alba wondered if her husband hadn’t grown tired of Washington, anyway. Life as a target for every bleeding-heart special interest was tough. Certainly, they could swing the financial aspects of retirement. Maybe this was all an omen that the time had come to quit.
“So what happens first, do you suppose?” she asked.
Clayton sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, the way I figure it, nothing happens until I want it to happen. The press will let this run its course for a couple of weeks, running my daily denials and the president’s daily suggestions that I retire from office. After that, it’ll get pretty hot, as the papers start collecting quotes from my own party, condemning me for godlessness and sanctifying you for your willingness to stand by such a horrible creature as me.”
“Maybe I can go on Oprah,” Alba teased.
Clayton laughed. “Pedophile Legislators and the Women Who Love Them,” he added in his best announcer’s voice. “If it goes the way these things usually do, we won’t be invited to a single Christmas party, but come Easter, we’ll be back on the A list. Then I announce my retirement at the end of the term, and in a few years we’re back in Chicago, and I get to live off speaking fees and book advances.”
“Sounds like you have it all planned, Senator,” Alba cooed, rubbing his stubbly face gently with the back of her hand.
“Oh, I do,” Clayton confirmed. “And best of all, I’ve got five full years left to figure out a way to break all of this off in Frankel’s ass.”
“Jake, you’re crazy.” Carolyn seemed outraged that he would even mention such a thing. She turned her back on him and stormed into the trailer.
Jake followed, with Travis close behind, despite his father’s warning to stay out of it. “Why am I crazy? This is a way to get our lives back.”
“Bullshit! This is a way to get our lives ended!” She seemed close to tears.
“Like this isn’t death?” He swirled his arms to take in the whole scene. “Christ, Carolyn, we’ve got to take a chance.”
“Why now?” she insisted. “Last time we discussed it, you said yourself it was a stupid idea. What suddenly makes it any less stupid now?”
“You’ve been caught,” Travis said evenly, stating the obvious.
“You stay out of this!” His parents said it in perfect unison.
Carolyn thrust her fingers into her thick hair, a gesture of ultimate frustration. “It’s too late,” she insisted. “The evidence is gone, and we’re too old.”
Jake tossed his hands in the air. “Okay, we’re pushing forty,” he conceded. “But you know what? Next year we’ll be another year older. And so will the evidence. Now is a bad time only because we should have done it sooner!”
“And what about Travis?” She was grasping at straws now.
“What about me?”
“Stay out of this!” Another perfect chorus.
“What about him?”
“He’s just a boy, Jake. We can’t get him wrapped up in something like this. It’s illegal.”
“I’ll just tell them that you forced me to do it at gunpoint,” Travis offered helpfully, bringing the argument to a dead halt.
“Thanks a lot, buddy,” Jake said, planting his fists on his hips. “With family like you, who needs prosecutors?” With just this glimmer of hope, Travis had become Jake’s ally; albeit a conditional ally.
Carolyn worked her jaw muscles hard as she considered her husband’s plea. “There’s a million things that could go wrong,” she said. Her voice had softened, and even Travis recognized it as the time to tread carefully. The right words now would make it a go. Say the wrong thing, though, and the option would be shut down forever.
“We only need a couple to go right,” Jake countered. He moved closer. “Think of it. It’s this for the rest of our lives, or we can take a shot.”
She absorbed the words, looking first to Travis and then to Jake. “Suppose no one wants to help?”
Jake shrugged. “We’ll never know unless we ask.” He was careful to smile.
Closing her eyes, she sighed deeply and thrust her hand into her hair one more time. “This is insane,” she moaned.
Travis cheered, “Yes!”
They jammed themselves into the mildewed kitchenette and discussed the details for a good hour, re- creating long-forgotten logic paths and mapping out the logistics of what had to be done and in what order.
With the initial plans complete, they headed back for the van. Jake started to lock the trailer’s door, then paused, recognizing the futility of it. “My contribution to young love,” he mumbled, and he put his key away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Donovans needed a pay phone, but they may as well have been searching for the Holy Grail. In this part of southeastern West Virginia, it was hard enough to find buildings with foundations. The Gulf station up the road sported an international symbol for a telephone on the side of one of the service bays, but closer examination revealed that it had been out of service for quite a while-since, say, the Civil War.
They drove for fifteen miles, seeing nothing but shacks and endless forests, all situated on near-vertical slopes. “Why would anyone ever want to live here?” Jake wondered aloud.
Finally, they came to Homer and Jane’s Roadside Diner, whose status as the only restaurant in this part of the state was plainly illustrated by the number of old cars and pickup trucks in the parking lot. The building was classic backwoods construction. The red brick center section may have had some charm in its youth, but as time had worn on, wooden additions had been slapped onto both ends of the place, with an eye toward nothing but efficiency and economy. Overall, the place had a droopy, unappealing feel. Not that it mattered; every window in the place displayed the profile of a live diner. More important, according to the sign affixed to the brick, Homer and Jane’s had not only a telephone but rest rooms as well.
The van’s suspension moaned painfully as Jake piloted the vehicle into the crumbled and pockmarked driveway. “What do you think?”
“I think-” Carolyn stopped before she could complete the thought. “Oh, God… take a look at the newsstand.”
The gravity of her tone brought Travis forward. “What newsstand?”
Jake didn’t see it either at first, but when he followed her finger, his stomach flopped. In the windows of their coinoperated dispensers, three competing newspapers-two from West Virginia and one from Washington, D.C.- displayed pictures of the world’s most notorious environmental terrorists. Instead of the old Wanted-poster shots, however, the press was using current photos lifted from their driver’s licenses.
“Shit,” Jake said. “Looks just like us.” Something about seeing the story in the paper made the threat to them more palpable.
“Well, we certainly can’t go in there,” Carolyn said. “Those people are eating breakfast. Half of them are probably reading about us as we speak.”
It was a very good point. Wanted posters, as such, never posed much of a threat. People rarely made eye contact to begin with, and they certainly didn’t remember pictures of people they’d never met. In a tiny community such as this, though, where everyone undoubtedly knew everyone else, strangers couldn’t help but draw attention. When the focus of that attention was the very people whose pictures appeared before them in the paper, God only knew what might happen.
“I can go in,” Travis volunteered. “I don’t see any pictures of me.”
Instinctively, Jake and Carolyn started to say no, but then stopped.
Jake arched an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
“C’mon, Mom, I can do it.” Travis was anxious to prove himself. “Hell, it’s only a phone call.” Simultaneous
