“You from around here, honey?” Jackie asked.
“Yes,” said Peta. “C.E. — Center Effing. Born and raised.”
“I can tell by how you drive. You know your way around.”
“You’re from Texas? Your whole group?”
Jackie nodded. “Longmont, north of Denton. You know Texas at all?”
“Not really,” Peta said. “I went to Houston once. I had to take this two-day ethics seminar for my realtor’s license. They give it all around the country, but Houston was the place that fit into my schedule.”
“You like it?”
“Houston? It seemed like a weird place to learn ethics. It was really humid.”
“Oh, Houston’s super-humid,” Jackie said. “It gets humid up by us, but not that Houston kind of humid.”
They ran out of things to say about Houston and the conversation flagged. Peta glanced in the rearview at the women from The Truth. She was trying to decide whether to ask them about their group, its positions and beliefs, the problem of gun violence and school shootings generally (the scariest thing going, Peta thought — the phrase itself, school shooting, made her kind of sick). There had been a rash of shootings that year and the year before, one in Oregon, one or maybe more in Southern California. Peta saw the stories in the paper, on TV, children shooting children after study hall, parents asking why. There was always at least one hero story in the mix, the brave teacher who disarmed the kid or led the other kids to safety through a locker room.
Peta wanted to ask the women from The Truth why children shot children, why there was, or seemed to be, a trend, and what could be done to stop them in the future, all the talk-show questions one might ask. But the women from The Truth were kind of spooky, Peta thought, the way they scrunched together on one bench, even though there were three benches in the van. One of them was named Hilly, or it sounded like Hilly when she said her name. The second was named Shannon (Peta heard it clearly) and the third one didn’t say her name, or did, but mumbled it, or mumbled something. The women from The Truth came from Oregon, different parts of Oregon. They had driven east together in a battered little camper to save money. They parked the camper at the inn, slept in back, and didn’t go out for pizza with the other volunteers, eating nothing or buffets. Peta had seen them that morning before Tim’s pep talk, feasting on the wreckage of the continental breakfast in the pressroom, obviously starving from the night before. They had a wounded, disemboweled look, and a Moonie farawayness in the eyes. Peta saw many people like these women in grassroots politics, victims-rights types, AIDS activists, ghost-souls brought together by some awful loss or tragedy. Peta guessed or suspected that what bound the women to The Truth, and to each other, was that they had all lost children in school shootings. It fit together suddenly, the gypsy life, the camper, the cultic closeness, the harrowed gaze. For a moment Peta felt for them. It’s Kai ten years from now who dies in the hallway with the others. It was fully real to her for as long as she could stand it, a moment and no more. Peta wanted to learn about gun violence, how to stop it, a truth, The Truth, anything at all, but she was afraid that if she asked the women about their group’s proposals, they would come out with something crackpot, angry and extreme, and Peta, feeling for them in one part of her brain, would be disagreeing with them in another part, and thinking they were crazy too.
The rain was thinning to a drizzle as they came into C.E. Hilly and Shannon got out at the Gateway-to-the-Wetlands Nature Center, the polling station for the area. Hilly took some signs, Shannon took a box of leaflets. Tim had assigned them to visibility. They would wave the signs and distribute literature, staying at least a hundred feet from the doors, as required by state law.
Peta took Route 32 to Belvedere Estates, a low-end subdivision in the hills above C.E., new houses by the hundreds, saplings wrapped in burlap, gutters without curbs. Peta, Jackie, and the quiet woman from The Truth tried to find the first address in their action packet, but the unit number was evidently wrong. Two voters weren’t at home — Jackie rang their doorbells, waiting on the stoops, drizzle running down the bricks. They moved on to voter number four, a man named Leonard Nichols, a fat mechanic with a bushy Fu Manchu.
“I appreciate the ride,” he said as Peta pulled away.
“That’s no problem,” Jackie said.
Leonard Nichols wore a too-small leather jacket and a concert t-shirt for a heavy metal band, WORLD TOUR ’98, with the names of forty cities listed in small type, none of which were outside of the United States.
He said, “Is there any way you could run me up to Willingboro when I finish voting? I’ve got a job interview up there and my Buick’s fucking totaled in the shop.”
“Willingboro?” Peta said. “That’s halfway to Manchester.”
Jackie was more diplomatic. “Another van will pick you up at the polls, Mr. Nichols.”
“Call me Leonard.”
“Leonard. Maybe they’ll have time to drive you up to Willingboro.”
Leonard Nichols seemed to buy this. Peta heard him pawing through the ice and free drinks in the cooler, looking for a beer, settling for a juice box. He sipped and started a long rant about the builder’s broken promises, town water and town sewer, the builder had promised, but everything is shoddy-like in Belvedere, he said.
The next successful pickup was a man named Bob Mangano, out on disability from the navy yard in Kittery, who was listed as a four, strong for the VP, because he felt the VP would do more for people who were out on disability from the navy yard in Kittery.
“Could you get my buddy?” Bob Mangano asked. “He votes religiously, but he lost his license over Christmas. He’s three-time DUI.”
“Where does he live, Willingboro?” Peta asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Leonard Nichols said.
Bob Mangano’s buddy wasn’t on the list, but he lived nearby and Jackie thought it was probably okay. The buddy trotted down his walk, climbed into the van, and introduced himself to everyone as Al. He was a sociable old sport, dressed entirely in tan. He sat in the backseat, next to Leonard Nichols and the free drink cooler, and soon they were discussing the shoddiness of Belvedere, the sewer lines and water lines.
“What street are you on?” Al asked Leonard Nichols.
Leonard said, “Tippecanoe.”
“Over in the battle names,” said Al. “I hear you’re having problems with the deer pest over there. They come out of the state forest after dark, eat your shrubbery, I hear.”
“Not lately,” Leonard said. “They put this box up on a pole, makes a noise the deer just hate, drives ’em down to Rye. Our problem is the water pressure. I haven’t had a shower in three days. It’s more like a dribble, what I got.”
They passed a van from the senator’s GOTV operation. It was bigger and nicer than their van. As the two vans passed in the street, the senator’s van veered playfully at them.
“Assholes,” Peta breathed, swerving to the right.
The last stop in Belvedere was a deluxe unit, a steep-roofed palazzo with numbers slanting down the door. Peta pulled into the driveway, honked the horn, and flashed the lights. Two men in fur-lined raincoats came out of the house and approached the van. One was Boone Saxon. The other was the trainee agent, Christopher. They flashed their credentials, a practiced flip and back in their pockets.
Boone Saxon said, “Do you know the woman who lives here?”
“No,” said Peta.
“We’re a pull team for the VP,” Jackie explained. “These are his supporters. This lady’s name was on our list. We’re taking voters to the polls.”