mark, or the bullet of a rival, or the baton of an aggressive cop. But ALS. How the fuck could he have prepared for that?
Andre takes Hector’s hand, which is soft and fleshy. He knows that Hector isn’t near death, that Hector has another couple years. But the doctors have warned that ALS is unpredictable, that Hector’s decline will break his heart. For Andre and Vera, the experts have also recommended therapists and support groups. Vera goes each week; Andre hasn’t gone once.
* * *
Somewhere forty thousand feet over Appalachia, a pudgy girl, no younger than six, though old enough to know better, races along the business-class aisle. The flight attendant has twice asked the girl’s parents to restrain the child, but her father naps, her mother reads. The girl disturbs each passenger, singing, laughing, but what can anyone do? The flight lasts about ninety minutes, and the plane, already behind schedule, has cruised across the halfway mark. So the attendant folds her arms, perhaps hoping they’ll hit a patch of rough air. The pudgy girl, wearing a tricorn hat, bumps Andre’s elbow, causes his scotch to spill onto the open pages of his dossier.
The attendant brings a napkin. Yes, her eyes say, I pray that turbulence will bounce this brat against the hull. Now you and I have a secret. Andre gives a flirtatious nod—I hope your prayer comes true; I will cherish our secret forever—then returns to work.
The firm’s briefing memo, now blotchy and wet, is succinct. South Carolina nears the end of a modern-day gold rush, and PISA, an international precious metals conglomerate, has discovered traces of gold in the mountains of Carthage. The gold sits deep below publicly owned land, one thousand acres of Appalachian rain forest that the county refuses to sell. Thus, PISA will sidestep the five-member county council and solicit the land directly from The People.
In fairness, Andre can’t blame the county for refusing to sell. The county’s struggling economy depends upon fishing and hunting. Tourism is, by far, the largest source of revenue. Gold mining, the memo notes, puts all that at risk. To extract the gold, PISA won’t dispatch a wagon train of gray-bearded, pick-wielding prospectors. No. Mining in the twenty-first century is a nasty business, requires pumping millions of gallons of cyanide deep into the earth to leach gold from solid rock. The state has tentatively blessed the mining operation. So have the feds. Imagine how much PISA had to fork over to make that happen, quickly and with little fanfare.
Andre predicts he’ll supervise a small team: a social media expert, a volunteer coordinator, a private investigator to conduct opposition research. He hasn’t led a team this small in years, not since Mercedes County, his first assignment as a team leader. He made his bones working that referendum. The client, an online retailer, hoped to build a shipping center in Mercedes, but county officials refused, an ill-conceived protest in the name of some righteous cause he can no longer remember. Was it the environment? Union jobs? Free trade? Municipal governments are full of big-principled fanatics with little practical experience. But Andre made Mercedes see reason, made them understand that if he lost this time, he’d be back the next year. Printing ballots, hiring poll workers, mailing registration cards. Each special election would cost the county a quarter mil. A quarter million dollars each year until he won. Mercedes buckled.
An announcement from the cockpit: “Please take your seats. We’re approaching our destination.” To Andre’s surprise, the girl, her tricorn hat in hand, stops and stares overhead, slack-jawed, as though bearing witness to the voice of God. She climbs into her seat, fastens her belt. Now she’s ready to land.
Thirty minutes later, the crew opens the concourse door, and the girl bursts through the gate. The clock stands at half past ten, and the airport has bedded down for the night. Merchants have shuttered their shops. A kiosk hums behind an accordion gate. A prune-faced janitor waters a fern, and a hickory scent taunts the travelers, as though to say: If you’d arrived only minutes earlier, you could’ve appreciated our fine restaurants, but please, instead, enjoy your choice of stale vending-machine snacks.
The hickory reminds Andre that he hasn’t eaten, yet his belly is drowning in airline scotch. He’s not drunk—not by a long shot—though he welcomes the feeling of freedom that the liquor brings. He carries his pack over his shoulder, follows the sleepy crowd through the concourse, burdened by the feeling