The Best Laid Plans (9 page)

I’d pegged them as militant anarchists, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. So there it was – a barely discernible silver lining, glinting in a black cloud the size of Saskatchewan. And I would take it. I would take it. “Hallelujah!” I shouted, startling them. I clapped them both on the shoulders in a way that I hoped they would consider avuncular and not weird. Pat Boone flanked by Ozzie Osborne and Sid Vicious. Nice. “Our volunteer ranks have just doubled.”

Muriel Parkinson, her right hand vibrating all by itself, sat on a slatted park bench in front of the Riverfront Seniors’ Residence. When she noticed the twitching, she tried to quell the shakes with her other hand, leaving both trembling in unison. It was ten minutes to seven. I leaped out to escort Muriel to her chariot while Pete1 and Pete2 stayed in the back seat so as not to frighten the residents.

I’d broken the news of our “in name only” candidate to the two Petes on the way over. After some initial misgivings (actually, they freaked), I persuaded them to stay on the team. It cost me a weekly two-four of Molson Canadian, two tickets to PunkPunk-palooza, and daily chauffeur service to and from the campus. In return, they agreed to manage the door-to-door canvass, which was the toughest campaign job to fill. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the
prospect of two Sex Pistol understudies canvassing for us, but I was out of options.

I made it to the bench, offered Muriel my arm, and we started across the sidewalk to the car. The rhythmic grip of her shuddering right hand felt strange on my wrist but, in another way, comforting.

“You’ve been very mysterious about our campaign headquarters. What have you got up your sleeve?” she inquired as we shuffled in lockstep to the car. I held my tongue.

We had almost reached the car when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lindsay emerge from the building and bound down the steps towards us. She modeled different jeans this time along with what I guess women call a top – a word I’ve never been comfortable saying out loud – which was orange, sleeveless, and, well, tight. Her hair peeked out beneath a Toronto Maple Leafs ball cap.

“Grandma! I step away for two seconds, and you’re halfway into an abduction.” She smiled at me, and I briefly lost track of where I was.

“Relax, Lindsay. Can’t an old woman paint the town red once in a while?” Muriel joked.

“Hi again, Lindsay,” I fairly blurted. “I’m just stealing Muriel so we’ll have quorum for our first campaign meeting. I think we have room in our headquarters for one more if you’ve got nothing on for the next hour or so,” I concluded, trying to be casual and, instead, sounding eager. Lindsay noticed the visually arresting Petes in the back seat and winced.

“You don’t think I’m letting her ride in a car with Daniel and the delinquents without her trusty chaperone, do you?” she replied. While I helped Muriel into the front seat, I heard Lindsay open the back door.

“Shove over, boys; I’m coming aboard.” They shoved over all right.

Introductions were made all around, and the five of us pulled away from the curb. In hindsight, driving around with the entire Cumberland-Prescott Liberal brain trust in the same car may have
been ill-advised. I decided to get started and turned off the radio.

“I call this first meeting of the C-P Liberal campaign committee to order,” I announced as I headed out of Cumberland into the surrounding farmland.

“Why don’t we wait until we get to the headquarters before we start the meeting?” asked Muriel.

“Ah, well, we’re already at the campaign headquarters,” I replied. Muriel and the others looked out the window at the farmers’ fields ending in the river. Not a building in sight. “Actually it would be more accurate to say that we are already
in
the campaign headquarters,” I concluded and waited for the fallout.

With no money and few volunteers, we simply couldn’t afford the conventional storefront headquarters – nor did we require it. My 15-year-old Ford Taurus station wagon, complete with balding tires, a coat-hanger antenna, suspiciously mushy spots in the floor, and a permanently lowered driver’s window was to be campaign central – our HQ of no fixed address.

Lindsay started the barrage. “You can’t be serious!”

“Where will we put the phone bank, coffee machine, and boom box?” asked the ever-practical Pete1.

“Yeah!” was Pete2’s thoughtful and provocative contribution.

Muriel held her fire. The three in the back seat shot questions and comments for several kilometres as I waited for them to tire themselves out. We were in the northeast corner of the riding when the guns finally fell silent.

“Look, we’re broke,” I said, “but we do have an obligation to the party and to the people of C-P to run a campaign – a shoestring campaign maybe – but a campaign, nonetheless. With such a small team, a remote chance of victory, and a somewhat dis engaged candidate, it makes sense to husband our resources.” I spoke in a calm and measured tone, hoping to smother them with logic. Muriel tagged me and jumped into the ring.

“Let me read the subtitles for the rest of you,” she started. “With five demented volunteers, no chance of victory, and an absent
candidate, spending the $160 we have on storefront space makes no sense and would only cover 18 hours of occupancy, anyway.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I was encouraged by the begrudging silence behind us. “Isn’t that what I just said?” I asked. “Anyway, I intend to position our headquarters-on-wheels with the media as another one of Angus McLintock’s brilliant ideas. It’s a revolution in campaigning that will allow us to take the election directly to the voters wherever they live in the riding. We have room in the back for all of our campaign necessities, and the car’s just been tuned up and has at least another 200 miles left in her. So let’s make them count.”

Lindsay piped up next. “You mean you think you can load 2,000 lawn signs in the back of this beast? I thought men were supposed to have superior spatial abilities and a packing gene to boot. I say you’ve only got room for 10 or 12 signs.”

“First of all, Ms. Dewar, based on recent polling, 12 Liberal signs in Cumberland-Prescott is five more than we need. Secondly, we actually aren’t using lawn signs in this campaign, anyway. It was part of my deal with Angus,” I revealed.

“No lawn signs in an election campaign? It’s like Trudeau without the rose, Diefenbaker without jowls, or the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. It’s unnatural,” Lindsay countered.

“We simply don’t have the money, let alone the candidate’s permission,” I said. “I’m going to issue a news release, announcing our no-lawn-sign policy as part of Professor McLintock’s deep commitment to reducing solid waste and protecting our environment. We’ll make it fly,” I insisted. “Besides, organizing the lawn-sign program is a colossal pain.”

Muriel smiled as the back seat deliberated. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the wheels turning.

“That might work,” Lindsay conceded after a time.

“Cool,” Pete1 offered.

“Yeah, cool,” said Pete2.

A loud instrumental chorus of “London Calling” by the Clash
broke the mood, causing me to veer onto the shoulder before regaining control. I liked the Clash, but this Muzak version was a travesty.

Muriel fished inside her aging Margaret Thatcher handbag and put the cell phone to her ear. “Cumberland-Prescott Liberal campaign,” she intoned, using her political power-broker voice. She listened and rolled her eyes. “Ernie, you dirtbag, what do you want?” she growled in a striking impression of Roseanne Barr. I managed to stay in my lane this time despite the shock of hearing a kindly and perfectly mannered 81-year-old woman morph into a longshoreman. I heard snickering from the back seat.

“Of course, we’re up and running, and we’re coming to get you, so you best keep a weather eye open. Cameron is going down this time around. You’re going to collapse under the weight of your own complacency,” she snapped then listened with widening eyes to the response. “How dare you refer to me in that way? I know your parents. There was a time in this town when Tories were at least civil to Liberals. Thanks for marking the end of an era.” She slammed the phone shut but then immediately opened it again and started dialing.

“Yes, I’d like to order 20 large pizzas, all with double anchovies. Of course, I’m serious. It’s our campaign kickoff, and I’ve got 75 hungry volunteers salivating all over the phone bank, so shake a leg. Yes, 224 Riverfront Road. Yes, we’ll pay cash. Yes, I’m Petra Borschart, Mr. Cameron’s campaign manager. An hour is fine. Thank you,” Muriel concluded and hung up. “Those assholes.”

Muriel sat stone-faced, with her arms crossed and her eyes aimed forward. I thought I detected a small curl of smoke issuing from her left ear, but I might have been wrong. The back seat had erupted in a gleeful cacophony. I was laughing hard.

When the ache in my side passed and we’d finished singing “For She’s the Jolly Good Fellow,” we completed our circumnavigation of the riding. The two Petes had grown up in Cumberland, but I still wanted us all to familiarize ourselves with the geography and
diversity of the riding. Lindsay agreed to develop a canvassing schedule and a list of priority polls so that the two Petes could get an early start on door knocking. While we knew it was futile, we all felt enough loyalty to the broader Liberal cause at least to raise our flag in the campaign, even if it would only ever fly at half-mast. Besides, the smug behaviour of the Tory camp that night lit a fire under us all. Anger is a powerful motivator.

With Lindsay and the Petes looking after the canvass and Muriel managing the campaign phone from the Riverfront Seniors’ Residence, my first priority was to develop Angus’s positions on the key local issues, run them by him, and then manufacture a reasonable facsimile of a campaign brochure. Without a flesh-and-blood candidate, the Petes at least needed a pamphlet to hand out.

With a few more organizational matters dealt with, I dropped Lindsay and her grandmother off, helping Muriel up the steps. She gave me a quick hug and promised to let me know if we received any noteworthy calls. Lindsay waved good night, one hand around Muriel’s shoulders. Nice smile.

I drove the two Petes home and arranged to drive them back to campus in the morning as per our agreement. They lived together in a kind of bunkhouse behind Pete1’s family home. They called it their “punkhouse.” I’d checked with the admissions office after class that afternoon and discovered that both Petes had been accepted in engineering with academic scholarships on the strength of outstanding marks. Hard to see it in the package, but intelligence comes in diverse guises, including skull studs and lip rings. Their postgraduation job interviews would be interesting.

Angus kicked my sorry carcass all over the chess board that night. With election planning rattling around in my head, there was little room left to devise knight forks and impregnable pawn structures. Angus was in an ebullient mood, and I sensed it was due to more than the thrashing he was giving me.

“What are you so pumped about?”

“Beyond the satisfaction I derive from takin’ the rubber match in our little world championship, I’m pleased because at two o’clock this afternoon, I was here, assemblin’ the steerin’ linkage on the hovercraft instead of spoon-feedin’ Dr. Seuss to first-year engineers who know just enough English to order beer and to proposition nurses,” he replied, contented.

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said. He fixed me with a steely gaze. “Okay, it was bad. Quite bad. In fact, very, very bad.” He was delighted. “But on the positive side of the ledger, I did recruit two able-bodied volunteers to canvass on behalf of the newly confirmed Liberal candidate. You’ll be pleased to know that there’s little hope of them converting any voters to the Liberal cause. In fact, I figure most residents will call the police when they find the two Petes pushing your pamphlet on their doorstep. They are quite a sight.”

Angus stood to refill his glass – Lagavulin again. There were three local campaign issues on which I needed positions for Angus. I figured this was as good a time as any to put them on the table.

“Angus, the national campaign understandably insists that all local candidates adhere to the party’s positions on the major national and international issues, be they economic, social, or just political. However, they do grant us some latitude on local issues, recognizing that their influence over your electoral fortunes can be profound.”

He sank into the couch and rested his tumbler on his barrel chest. “All right, strictly as an academic exercise, what are the local issues that are likely to come up in this little campaign of yours?” he inquired with a little smirk teasing the corners of his mouth.

“Three major issues are in play: federal subsidies to prop up the Sanderson shoe factory in the southwest corner of the riding, the proposed Corrections Canada halfway house in Cumberland to ease the reintegration of paroled inmates into society, and I’ll get to the third issue in a moment.” I stopped and waited.

“What positions are you proposin’ I adopt, Dr. Addison?”

“Well, there are 60 jobs at stake at the Sanderson plant. The federal subsidies will lower their costs and help make them more competitive on the export market. I think you should support the subsidies and pressure Eric Cameron to make them happen.” I paused but then went on. “You know, Tip O’Neill, the famous U.S. politician once observed that ‘all politics is local.’ I think he was right.” I stopped and waited while Angus pondered.

“No,” he replied.

“Pardon?”

“I said no. Let me ask you a question, Dr. Addison, English professor and political-organizer-at-large. Do you really believe it is in the national interest,
our
national interest, to pour tax payers’ money into an inefficient and outmoded factory so we can dump artificially discounted shoes in other countries and compete unfairly with their strugglin’ shoe factories? Hell, we even send some of those countries foreign aid. So we give with the right hand and take with the left. And we haven’t even considered the environmental implications of supportin’ a 35-year-old factory.”

Now, I pondered. “Well, with the writ due to drop, I’m focused right now on your local interests here in Cumberland-Prescott,” I commented. But it sounded weak to me.