Dispatch 5 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

If you’re interested, start with Dispatch 1

The Journalist

Elizabeth Owle--Liza to her friends--looked from her apartment’s small third floor balcony over the city and to the sliver of the Ohio River. The sun was just coming up. This was why she had chosen this apartment, for its balcony with its river view, even if she couldn’t see much in the summer when the trees had leafed out. Though she was in the middle of the city, this was a place in which she always felt alone. Not lonely. Peaceful, free from watchful eyes. When she was awake early, on her balcony, she almost felt that she was in another world, or at least on a farm far from the city. She loved Louisville, but she also loved peace, and the two didn’t often go together. Up here, though, she was surrounded by green, the tree-tops of the smaller trees, the tree line along the river bank further away, the big oak a few lots over. The birds were up, and she kept hearing the loud call of a particularly close and persistent bird but could not find it. She sipped her morning tea. The city was coming to life around her.

An hour later, dressed for work and carrying a small case in which she kept her dictaphone, a few emergency snacks, her current reporter’s notebook and, this morning, the final draft of an entertaining little human interest piece she had finished last night, she exited the building. At the end of last week, she had wrapped up a months-long investigation into a scam involving the duplication of permitting fees. It had taken many hours of painstaking research, including the cultivation of sources in city and county offices. She had attended countless bureaucratic meetings, some less than fully official, and several cocktail parties. She knew it would be quite a while before she would actively seek out another shot of bourbon. 

As a break-- and to ward off the sense of flatness that often engulfed her upon completion of a major project--she had taken on a fluff piece about the upcoming release of a contest-winning new glaze pattern designed by a local potter’s apprentice. She had talked with the young potter and written up a nice little article telling how the young man had dreamed of becoming a potter and describing notebooks of potential designs. The fact that his design won a contest delighted him, and it had been easy to write a cheerfully typical “local boy makes good” story to accompany a photograph of his smiling face next to a prototype mug and plate, each featuring the River Bends design, a simple blue line of Commonwealth Cobalt modeled on the curve of the river at Louisville. It was actually a pleasing design, Liza thought. She would buy a few pieces for herself when the new collection was released. 

With that story done, she was ready for something to dig her teeth into. Something complicated. With luck, her in tray at the office would contain some provocative complaint or tantalizing incongruity. As she walked into the street, she could tell that the restaurant on the ground floor of the building next to hers was making tortillas, and soon she caught a whiff of charring peppers mixed with the usual warm comfortable and appealing smell of popcorn. It always made her want something to eat, even if she had eaten breakfast. Preferably popcorn with chillies and a couple of tacos. Maybe she would find the time to go to a taqueria for lunch. There was a particularly good one near the government buildings. She could already taste their tomatillo pawpaw habanero salsa. Tangy, sweet, hot. 

And their popcorn. Liza was an adequate cook but popcorn was one of those things she preferred to get out. Maybe one day she would get a Cambridge Popper. She always appreciated them when she was visiting family and old friends in New England: A box for popping corn that didn’t burn anything and contained the flying kernels as they exploded! It would be a bit of a luxury, but everyone in New England had them. Unfortunately, export was still illegal, even almost 70 years after the invention of the Cambridge Popper, because of rumored military applications. Liza was skeptical: What did New England think the rest of the states were going to do with a Cambridge Popper other than pop corn? 

She was figuring out what she might look into that day, having filed the completed story she had taken home for a final edit. She nodded her greetings to the other reporters who were already at their desks. Her editor was not. Before she had finished sorting through her in tray, he had arrived. Within minutes, he called out “Liza” and beckoned her over to his office. He shut the door. 

This was unusual and she waited expectantly. “Busy?” he asked. 

She shrugged. Everyone was always busy. But there was nothing that she had to do immediately, unless it was buried in her in tray. Besides, he had closed the door. That seemed to promise something exciting. “Nothing crucial,” she said. 

“Right. Something’s just come through. You know Little View?”

She shook her head. “Of course not,” he said. “Small town, corn country. No reason to know of it. Nothing ever happens out there.”

“Until now,” Liza interjected.

“Right. Until now,” he said. “Here’s the deal. I’ve just heard over the wire that a small plane has gone down out there.”

Liza looked at him sharply. A small plane crash was hardly reason enough to send someone way out to Little View, wherever that might be. Especially someone like her. Liza was modest, but not unduly so. She was an investigative reporter, not someone to spend her time running from Pikeville to Paducah covering small-town crop-duster crashes.

“Right. You’ll want to know why I’m sending you out there,” he said. 

The fact that he kept saying “right” was not lost on Liza. It was what he did when he was excited or nervous. She nodded, all thoughts of the popcorn and her possible taqueria lunch banished. It wasn’t that Liza relished a plane crash. She wasn’t bloodthirsty, after all. But though she had been told she was too nice to be an investigative reporter, she relished a big story as much as anyone in her profession.

“What I’m hearing is that the Tres Amigos were on that plane,” he said. Liza’s heart skipped a beat. She had spent months watching the new gaming secretary before he had been appointed out of nowhere to fill the role. Nothing definitive had come of it, except that when Plunkett’s name came up, she was the one in the newsroom to whom everyone turned. 

Of course once Klair Plunkett was named the Honorable Secretary of Gaming, she knew she would never get to publish a real explanation, even if she got to the bottom of anything. She might do a personal profile, but she did not care for that kind of story. It wasn’t why she had gone into journalism. She had gone into journalism to watch people, to figure things out. And Liza had known Plunkett was a figure to watch as soon as she first saw him across the room at a Derby party at Churchill Downs that she had begrudgingly attended. The celebrity beat was not for her. But she had gone, and there, she had watched with interest as dapper business men and beautifully dressed young women were seemingly drawn to Plunkett. He was so warm, so down to earth, so expansive. He had implausible crowd-pleasing ideas: A Bubbleland outpost in Louisville! He was playing the crowd, playing the slightly hapless fool to draw them all like moths to the flame, or that is what she’d thought then. So she had kept an eye on him,  and had taken her “vacation” to Bubbleland when she knew he would be there. She had ruthlessly expensed an evening at the high stakes Blackjack table to get closer to him, and she had been rewarded by the realization that the dealer was handing it to Plunkett. But Plunkett had no idea. He was just having fun, a night of Blackjack and bourbon. That Liza would bet on, with her own money, if she were a betting woman. And that is when she revised her assessment of Plunkett: A pawn. That’s what Plunket was. 

Things were starting to make sense, but Liza’s investigation was cut short by  one of the sudden shifts in Commonwealth politics: An ostensibly bloodless coup. White Hall would be behind that. Obviously. Well, if the coup had been bloodless, here was some blood.

Plunkett was in a plane crash. Injured possibly, dead probably. And not just Plunkett--the Tres Amigos. Liza could feel her heart beating in her chest. This wasn’t anxiety. It was gratification, excitement, pride that she was being given this story.  There could hardly be bigger news. As much practice as had she projecting professional unsurprise, she knew that shock registered on her face. 

“Right. That’s what they’re saying.” Her editor paused. “And now you know as much as I do. We’ve got to get on this now. Obviously.”

“Right,” Liza said over her shoulder, wondering whether he would notice her use of his favorite all-purpose word. She was already on her way out of his office. This was precisely the kind of story she lived for. Her notebook and dictaphone were still in her bag, ready. Back at her desk, she checked her train schedule and found that she had a little bit of time before she needed to go to the train station to catch the first train from Louisville that would take her to the Little View station. She went to the politics board and checked the current whereabouts of the Tres Amigos: Yesterday they were to have been in Lexington for a ceremonial baseball game. Today they were to give a press conference in Central City. No other details were listed.

So they were en route from Lexington to Central City. It must have been a very early flight. Ridiculously early. She checked a map. Yes, it could make sense that they would fly over Little View. She checked her watch. She still had a few minutes if she hurried. She went to the research room. The front desk was unoccupied. The support staff wouldn’t arrive for another ten or fifteen minutes. She found a pamphlet on corn and one on the history of the Little View region. She would read them on the train. She signed for them and left the newspaper office for the train station.

Dispatch 4 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State

If you’re interested, start with Dispatch 1

Rhetoric Department’s Morning Briefing for White Hall

The Tres Amigos departed Lexington 5 am. The plane went down in flames in a corn field near Little View.

Recommendation 1: Emphasize the continued safety of air travel in all comments to media. This will focus the public’s attention on their own safety and suggest pilot error.

Recommendation 2: In the coming days, allow the possibility of mechanical failure to gain traction as the “real story.”

Recommendation 3: If we are responsible or wish to be thought responsible, bring up corrosion due to saltwater because someone, probably LB among others, will figure that out and ask about it at a news conference.

Recommendation 4: If we do not want any responsibility, deploy Lexington Blues Health and Safety Manager et al to state radio with distracting pronouncements about safety of teams. Mention seasonal allergies for additional distraction.

Dispatch 2 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

Dispatch 1

Introduction to the First Victim: Part II

The way the Commonwealth insisted that even gambling boats moored outside Cincinnati and Evansville were Commonwealth property. That was absurd too, and who benefited from that? People said it was good for the bottom line, but Plunkett felt that mutual promotion of gaming would make for better relationships with neighboring states to the north. Obviously. A Commonwealth Gaming Industry unhindered by corruption and stifling rules and partnering with Indiana and Ohio Gaming-- that would be good for everyone. He had tried to involve the new Secretary of Alcohol and Tobacco, too: Trade of bourbon should be opened, if not with Indiana, at least with Ohio. Small batch bourbon distillers should not be subject to impossibly high export taxes if they wanted to expand their markets beyond the Commonwealth. At the very least, the so-called tax trifecta situation, where both the mayors of  Covington and of Newport implemented-- or attempted to implement--taxation of exports to Cincinnati, and Cincinnati exacted tariffs on many goods, needed to be streamlined. But his counterpart at A and T had no desire to fix things, didn’t even seem to understand Plunkett’s careful explanations of what was wrong. Energy was beyond Plunkett’s interest, but he had attempted to sound out his counterpart on Energy as he sought to build support and been met with nothing but equivocation. 

Plunkett’s attempts to improve things were getting nowhere, and he was not recognized as significant in his own right. The work was disappointing. All he did was go to meetings arranged for him by his adjutant, a sharp-dressing youngster who was carefully deferential, but who possessed an alarming confidence and self-contained energy. 

He remembered the surge of triumph he had felt on the morning of his swearing in, the taste of success, the chance to implement his long-cherished dream of what Gaming could be. To become the Gaming Secretary had been a worthy ambition, one anyone had a right to be proud of achieving. He had dressed with care, with the help of his adjutant, and he knew he looked the part. He had been pleased then to have a former military man at his side, a man who knew his way around a razor and effortlessly selected the right socks for the suit.

 For the swearing in, and even into  the early days of his prominence, as he worked to avoid the mistakes he would have made as plain “Mr. Plunkett,” the grandson of a farmer. He had been grateful to have a military man assist him in his toilette. Now, he felt himself to be cowed by his adjutant. He had thought that, with time, he would gain sartorial confidence, and his adjutant would recognize that competence and find a new job. Then, too, Plunkett himself would know what to do in any situation. 

At first, when people came to him at cocktail parties with requests for favors -- special permits; exemptions; a faster, smoother route through the stifling bureaucracy and whatever arcane legislation stood in their way -- he found himself stumbling along, as unsure of himself as he had always been. He didn’t want to master the machinery of the bureaucracy. He just wanted it gone. Its machinery was stubborn. Well, Plunkett was stubborn too. And if he had been clueless and naive when he stepped into the role, he was no longer. 

Now, he would be wearing a beige and white seersucker suit, spit-polished spectators, and appropriately dashing pink bow-tie and matching socks. He was the gaming secretary, after all, and a bit of flair was just the ticket. He was no longer an imposter. He had picked out his own clothes, and he was learning what to say, who ought to be given special treatment, and who deserved to be left to muddle through paradoxical rules. 

Sometimes he thought his wife was right: He was a fool, in over his head. But he was catching on. Just because he liked a good time didn’t mean he was unable to figure out how things worked, he told himself. It was no accident of Fate that he was the Honorable Secretary of Gaming now. He finished his grits and mentally steeled himself for the arrival of his adjutant. It was an unreasonable hour. Why hadn’t he put his foot down and refused to be talked into this painfully early departure? It was definitely time for his adjutant to move along to a new client. 

Thus it was that his adjutant found Klair Plunkett in an unusually belligerent mood when he arrived at 5 am sharp. 

Nevertheless, being good at his job, he cajoled his reluctant charge and master onto the plane. The Tres Amigos were ready. After a pleasant evening of baseball and bourbon, they were going out to Central City to do a press conference. Flying over the horse fields, even Plunkett felt a sense of satisfaction. Take-off was smooth.  Once he had only dreamed of flying all across the Commonwealth from his Lexington home. Now, that dream was a reality. Here he was, up and flying, while lesser folks slept below him or blearily stumbled home from nights of debauchery he tried to convince himself held no appeal for him any longer. He fell asleep almost as soon as the plane reached its cruising altitude.

When Plunkett was awoken about forty minutes later, the fields and trees below were illuminated by a warm and delicate morning glow. For a moment, he felt the optimism of a new day, but then everything shuddered and a loud buzz filled the plane, which picked up speed. “Buckle up!” called the pilot, his voice tense and hard. 

“S____ ” muttered the adjutant. Plunkett looked up in alarm and the men met each other’s eyes. The usual curated expressions were wiped from their faces by the exigency of the situation. It gave Plunkett pause to see the man’s expression, eyes wide with a terror he could feel reflected on his own face. The adjutant was never alarmed. Things must be bad. 

There was a rumble. “Duck” someone yelled. As if that would help. “Impact in 6” said the pilot “prepare to brace” he added mechanically, certain that the angle was too steep for it to make any difference. 

Plunkett sat bolt upright, as he realized that none of the pilot’s adjustments were doing any good. They were going into the ground. He might be a pathetic gaming secretary and a weak man who would never achieve his dreams, but he would not duck like a coward. He looked out of the window at the cornfields and his eyes fixed on the green leaves on the corn stalks, bending in the breeze and reflecting the morning sun. Despite the icy sweat running down his back, he noticed that his skin felt uncomfortably hot, numb, tingly.

It was the last conscious thought of his life.

Dispatch 1 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

In this character-driven absurd bureaucratic romp mystery set in an alternative, popcorn and pepper obsessed world in which the North won the first Civil War but fragmentation triumphed and the United States of Disunion was born, we follow an intrepid journalist and a loyal inventor as they uncover part of the truth about the potential murder of the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s three top leaders.  With the exception of accurate historical references, any relation to actual persons or news is purely accidental and illustrates that old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

The Scene

Down the Little View Road, just outside Little View, Kentucky, an emergency crew poked at the wreckage at the scene of the crash. Popcorn. The charred bodies had been removed. As they moved about the scene, they crunched occasional popped corn kernels underfoot.  

The first victim 

Just a few hours earlier, Klair Plunkett  had dragged himself out of bed to face yet another day as  the Honorable Secretary of Gaming for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. If you had told him before the take-over that he would hate his new job, he would have laughed in your face and felt distinctly superior. He would have thought you were jealous of him for landing on the right side of a coup. He would have told you that he deserved his happiness. Regular people--even some mayors--thought it was glamorous, being in Cass’s crew. Thought he had all the power and had it easy. But it had taken him years of hard work-- drudge work. In other words, flattery. Now he was poised for prominence and success at last. People would have to flatter him for a change. 

That should be starting at home, he felt, but his wife had made it clear that, fond of him though she was, she was still not impressed by him, coup or no coup. She wasn’t picking up his dirty laundry or hopping out of bed in the morning to fix him breakfast as his grandmother had done for his grandfather. Those were the good old days, whatever anyone said, he thought wistfully. Of course, as his wife was only too happy to point out, his grandfather had spent his days out in the fields and needed a big breakfast. A small bowl of grits was really enough for a politician, especially one who was only in charge of games. He was lucky that his wife left him to fix his own breakfast, he thought ruefully. If she had done it, the serving would doubtless have been smaller, not to mention salted and buttered less liberally. 

Nothing was working out as well as he had hoped. His wife seemed not to notice that he was now important. The media called him one of the Tres Amigos, which was something, but on his gloomier days, he was disappointed to be merely one of three, and the other two weren’t his friends. They were fools.

Brinkman, The Secretary of Energy, seemed to have no plans.  the Secretary of Alcohol and Tobacco, was obsessed with minutiae regarding bourbon and had no vision. With people like that in charge, no wonder nothing ever improved. As Secretary of Gaming, Plunkett had ideas and plans for implementation. He would modernize the Commonwealth’s approach to gaming, work to allow Commonwealthers to play again. Throughout the Commonwealth, not just at Bubbleland. The hypocrisy of the rules that deemed Bubbleland exempt from the usual prohibitions simply because it was surrounded on three sides by the Ohio River and on the third side by  Tennessee was absurd. The mayor of Bubbleland benefited tremendously from this arrangement, but Plunkett felt sure that he would find powerful allies in the mayors from other areas of the commonwealth. Plunkett would straighten things out.