Chapter Seven - Dave Returns to Texas

“Elections are futures markets in stolen property.”

- H. L. Mencken

Dave Returns to Texas

The conventions were both over and done with and the summer had burned itself into the crisp of almost autumn. It wasn’t here yet but you could smell it on the air when you walked through Central Park. Dave knew that his friends wondered why he was not returning to Columbia Law right away. They had accepted his burning desire, expressed just months ago, to change careers. Most of them had found this sea change commendable. Politics was a risky career. But why on God’s good name would anyone want to go to Texas?

Dave wondered that himself right now, another long grey highway stretching out ahead of him. But Texas was still a long ways away. He had other things to do first.

The call had come in from Bert Sowers to his home in Connecticut, a call delayed by the fact no one had called Bert to let him know that Gramps had died in February. Bert was shocked; he later told Dave he would have come up for the funeral if he had known.

Dave was sure that was true. Bert was that kind of guy, and he and Gramps had been good friends. That exchange had lead to Bert getting Dave’s new phone number from Dave’s Dad and calling him, leaving the message Dave found on his answering machine when he came in from the train following the Republican Convention. The conversation that took place when Dave called Bert back had lead, step by step, to Dave packing up a motor home in Indiana and heading out, Texas his final destination.

Dave picked up the sleek Fleetwood American Condor at the factory in Decatur, Indiana. He would hand it over it to Bert for sale at his dealership in Texas as direct from the factory. Which it was, sort of. This model had dark wood paneling and Debonair Plum interior. The bed was amazingly comfortable and all of the appliances worked perfectly.

Dave had flown into Ft. Wayne, rented a car, and headed out to the factory for a tour before signing for the vehicle and hitting the road.

It had taken some time for him to put this together but his reasons were compelling.

When he called Bert back he discovered that George Weston was dead. George had been found in the RV Bert had sold him, apparently a suicide by overdose of sedatives last January. This had not rung true for Bert, but he had done nothing for a few weeks after attending the funeral service at the local Elks Lodge, Garland Elks No.1984, where George had been a member. He had ruminated over the circumstances and considered who he might talk to about it. Bert told Dave he had called the distant cousins who had been contacted by the authorities. They hadn’t known anything but the probable date of death, January 7. There had been no note found in George’s papers. There was also no record of George having a prescription for the sedatives. As far as Dave knew, George’s sedative of choice was cognac and his preferred brand was Five Star Hennessy.

It just didn’t seem like George to kill himself like this. George had been gregarious, determined, and directed. He decided what he wanted to do and then did it.

It was actually the purchase of the Fleetwood that had moved George to join the Elks. From George Dave had learned that members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks could use the facilities of any lodge as they traveled across the country. This had struck George as a good thing; club facilities while fleeing the attentions of Craig Humstead. It was also very inexpensive. George, for all his lavish spending in some things, was thrifty at heart.

Dave decided that joining the Elks was the only way to find out what had been going through George’s mind during the five months he had been wandering around the United States. So Dave was now an Elk himself; having joined the slightly decrepit organization dedicated to patriotic brotherhood, now admitting women, just three days before at Lodge No. 2533 located in Islip, New York. This was not particularly convenient to Manhattan but they were a nice bunch of folks. He felt badly that he would become one of the phantom members who sent in their dues but never appeared at a meeting after being initiated. They had been so excited to have him and urged him to become active. The Exalted Ruler, the CEO of the Lodge, had asked hopefully if he might consider taking an office the coming year and had pressed into his hands a book on the history of Elkdom. Dave read it, amazed to discover that the Elks were actually the ones responsible for the first veteran’s hospital. At the end of World War I they had contributed the money that built the first one. They continued doing the same kind of thing today and still saw to it that otherwise forgotten veterans had a meal and health care.

Dave stayed with a friend from Columbia while he was going through the process of joining up. He told them he was thinking of relocating (true), that he was interested in recreational vehicles (true) and that he was a loyal and very patriotic American (also true). They were delighted to take his money and paid for his first drink in their paneled bar. He was the youngest person in the building and younger than the whiskey served up to him at the bar. His membership card in hand, he took a plane from La Guardia to Ft. Wayne, changing in Chicago.

The call from Bert had chilled Dave. As much as he disliked Craig Humstead he hated to believe that he would have killed to protect his secrets. Dave had thought of Humstead as faintly ridiculous no matter what George had said.

The evening that he and George had talked into the grayness of dawn had been shocking. He had learned that George kept a cache of guns, always loaded, and was prepared to use them. There had been no guns found in the motor home according to the reports of the police. He could see the palpable fear on George’s face when Humstead was mentioned. But really, all Dave knew was what George had told him. Just words. Dave reminded himself how easily words lie.

His own take was that George was not the kind of guy to kill himself, especially with drugs. If he had blown his head off Dave would have had no problem believing it was suicide. But Dave could not believe that the feisty George Weston he had gotten to know so well had pulled off the road far from an Elk’s Lodge in Northern California and taken a lethal dose of barbiturates. No. That just could not have happened to the man who had served in the Marines all through Korea with distinction. Or could it? Not knowing bothered him. Now he wanted badly to find out.

Dave had the mileage of George’s motor home, if that was accurate. And he had a list of Elk’s Lodges that roughly covered the area between Garland, Texas where George had begun his final journey and the truck stop where he had died between Lake Tahoe and Reno. No one had bothered much to inquire. George’s family was dead; his only relatives were the distant cousins who had arranged for the funeral and sale of the vehicle. Old widowers get depressed and kill themselves; it happens. George himself had said he didn’t have much to live for, but Dave had taken that for empty rhetoric. George had a goal; more information on Humstead - and George had enjoyed living. Dave had a hunch that the story of those five months would be interesting--if he could find it.

Dave had found in his research that Elks lodges had created for themselves something of a presence online. Therefore, finding places where George had passed a few days was not too difficult. The Good ‘ol Boy had passed up through Oklahoma, cut across Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Nevada, stopping for several days at each of several lodges. They remembered him – and he had carefully signed into their guest books. So did Dave when he passed through.

Dave had no problem with the motor home. He had learned to drive one and to service them the year before while still working for Bert. But he felt like he was chasing a phantom. It was clear that while George had used the RV parking and services provided by the Elks, he had not talked to them about much but which brand of liquor he preferred.

That changed when Dave drove into a lodge a few miles from Salt Lake. George had parked in their tiny motor home park and signed in at the office just before the office closed.

As he was signing in he immediately noticed George’s signature just at the top of the same page where he was now signing. The lady at the window noticed he was looking at the other names.

She smiled. “Anyone there you know?”

Dave had discovered that Elkdom was like a not very large town. People knew each other.

It turned out that George had been here for a while, leaving on January 2nd, just five days before he died. Dolly, the lady who ran the office and it seemed about everything else here, had known George pretty well.

His intentions regarding the widow had raised expectations and fostered gossip. Dolly was attractive in an older lady kind of way, just a touch plump with clear skin and short curly hair just turning to a very nice silver that was far more attractive than the original brown had been, he could see. Her eyes turned up into crescents when she smiled, which was often. She seemed anxious to learn more about George when she realized that Dave knew him. He had been careful to notice the signature and comment when he signed into the guest book late one afternoon in the last week of September. Dave did not mention George’s death. As far as the Elks knew George had gone on west, wandering through a long life furlough.

The next week became something of a contest. Dave doled out snippets of information on George, receiving some in return from Dolly, who obviously hoped George would be back one of these days. At first it was interesting, but did not seem to be immediately useful. George had spent time going over records in the local city hall, looked over deeds, shot the breeze with some of the boys and taken Dolly out to dinner at The Salty Miner, the fanciest place in town. He was a generous tipper when accompanying a lady, according to the waitress who worked there. Everyone in town seemed to know almost instantly who Dave was and that he knew George. George had become something of a personality around town.

Then, over their third drink sitting in the Elk bar just before closing one night, Dolly had asked a question.

“I wonder if George found the father of that boy? Do you know?” Her voice carried the slight tremble of someone asking a question that is phrased to sound casual. Darla Farnsworth, called Dolly around the Lodge, was sharp. The question was anything but casual. She looked inquiringly at him.

“Boy?” Dave mouthed the words, wondering what the hell that meant.

“You bet. The boy from Texas, the one George was so interested in finding out about.” Dolly pursed her lips slightly, wrinkling her nose. She looked slightly anxious, her inquiry perhaps long in formulating.

“Do you remember the boy’s name?” Dave asked hesitantly, wondering if he had chanced on some unexpected aspect of George’s last days.

“Name of Craig, Craig something or other. Had a hard on for that boy, he did.”

Dave’s mind reeled. “Craig Humstead?”

“That would be him.” Dolly nodded affirmingly. The name obviously meant nothing to her except as someone George had wanted to know about very badly.

“His daddy. Said he got a line on him just before he took off. I did wonder. Hasn’t called again and it had been months now since I heard from him.” Dolly was obviously considering some further thoughts and the pause in the conversation gave Dave time to confront his own lack of forthcoming.

He looked at Dolly again. Her eyes showed a real concern. Dave knew at that moment that there had been some real contact between her and George. George had stayed in the trailer park in back of the lodge here for three weeks, much longer than you would have expected. Dave moved restlessly in the bright red Naugahyde covered seat of the bar chair, glancing around the walls of the place, seeing as if for the first time the faded photos of Past Exalted Rulers, their Ladies, and the beaming clumps of Elks and citizens memorializing the ordinary events of life in a small and undistinguished town.

When his mind returned to the moment he found Dolly looking at him.

“George is dead, isn’t he?” The words slammed Dave across the face with an extraordinary wave of shame.

“Yes. I’m sorry.” Dave choked slightly, not knowing what to say.

Dolly nodded her head just a little as if releasing some misspent but harbored hope.

“I thought it might be that.” She looked up at him, a glaze of tears now hovering as a mist over her eyes. She wiped her eyes carefully on the pressed, clean, white hanky that she drew out of the pocket of her carnation flowered shirtwaist dress. Dolly dressed differently, more formally than the other women who spent time around the Lodge. The undercurrent of tension that Dave now realized she had been carrying was gone. She looked sad and a little lost.

“What happened?” Dave knew as she asked the question he still had only part of the answer.

The package Dolly put into Dave’s hands that same night provided no direct answers to how or why George had died. It did fit in with the story George had told him the year before about the kind of man Craig Humstead really was though. Dave wondered how George had put his hands on so much of what appeared to be notes and documents that Humstead himself had generated during his checkered career. Any sensible man would have shredded them as soon as the need for notes was outlived.

Leafing through the two-inch thick swath of pages provided no particular surprises at first. They appeared to be notes prepared by Humstead on the dirty tricks he had perfected over the years. Gloating and smug comments on his original dirty election ploy staged while a member of Young Republicans was exhaustively laid out. There was not a nuance of shame reflected into the rather verbose prose to show that regret lingered in the mind of the writer, just pride at his cleverness.

The document covered every campaign, abruptly ending just eighteen months before.

There had been articles on just how Humstead had managed this earliest political triumph for years. It had taken place while he was still a Young Republican running for the chairmanship of that organization. The vicious and backbiting attack had ended in a dead tie. The tie had been broken by an appeal to the Chairman of the National Committee of the Republican Party, Randolph S. Branch. Now, of course, Branch was also a former president. Branch had never forgiven the loser for calling him on the outrageous decision; in fact, the senior Branch had made it his job to destroy any chance the guy had in politics. The Branches never forgot and never forgave. In some people you would think this was a personal quirk. For the Branches it was policy. Dave found this strangely at variance with their public reputations as good, family oriented Christians. But it accorded very well with what Gramps had told him and explained what they and Humstead saw in each other.

Many of the articles written on Humstead’s political history had been generated from interviews done by mainstream journalists who interviewed now repentant Humstead followers. The specifics were actually too well known to anyone who had studied the Branch’s political Svengali to be sensational.

This document read like a combination of ‘how to book’ on dirty tricks, and one long gloat over essentially petty triumphs. Then it struck Dave. This was just that: A copy of Humstead’s instruction manual on dirty tricks in rough draft form. Well, Machiavelli the man was not. The tricks were painfully obvious, sneaky but simple reformulations of strategies that would have better been left in the frat house. The book could well have been titled ‘how to lie, cheat and steal your way to success’. Given the Humstead propensity for optimizing the use of existing tactics like direct mail pieces to more and more specific special interest groups, it was only a matter of time before other political consultants caught on.

And when they did?

For a moment Dave was physically nauseated by the vision of the decent men and women who would be driven out of politics. That always happened, he realized. It was the untrammeled behavior of people like Humstead in government who had turned it into the lawless jungle it was today.

Before now Dave had concerned himself with avoiding Humstead. Now he realized he needed very much to understand him.

Dave had not come on this quest without being equipped for all contingencies; his computer connected directly to the internet via satellite, though he was also free to use the office phones at the lodges, he discovered. He preferred using the phone lines. It was both cheaper and friendly. Gramps hated wasting money.

While sitting in the office at a counter next to the heavy old wooden desk that had been Dolly’s seat of power for twenty-five years, Dave discovered to his astonishment just how little he could find out about Humstead. The available bios were obviously taken from the same very terse source. Normally, it was very possible to find out about siblings, mother, father, where the person had grown up. Not here. It was as if no Humstead had ever lived in the town where he was born, gone to school, worked, or died.

Dave paused, fingers still on the keys, thinking about what all of this meant. Dolly looked over at him from her desk, her attention drawn by the cessation of tapping. Dave smiled wanly. Suddenly he could almost hear his Grandfather talking to him when he was assembling a particularly complex model airplane. He had broken off all of the parts, sanded them down carefully over a period of two weeks, and managed to lose the instructions. He had thought about throwing it away but then his own thrift and the look of amusement on Gramp’s face had driven him back to the table of tiny parts. “Look at them from every angle,” Gramps had advised.

Dave looked down at the keys and up again at the screen. He had figured out the model by looking at the finished picture and seeing in his mind the parts that composed it. With Humstead, he could look at each known action and extrapolate backwards first. Then he would be able to see the trajectory of his life forward and understand just who Humstead is.

The memory the model and a dollop of cluster theory worked. About six the next morning the pieces started to make sense. He was now in the motor home. Dolly had locked up at two in the morning, her patience and sense of humor exhausted.

Humstead’s approach had been honed over the years but really, in the main, had not changed very often. When it had you could look around and find the strategy he had copied from someone else. Humstead optimized; he never really innovated. You could almost tell who he talked to and what he read if you knew the literature of politics at a given time.

The backbone of Humstead’s strategy was to approach a campaign using a ‘platform’ of promises. He made sure this included promises of personal preferment to those who supported him. That was the carrot. To this he added disinformation, some people call these lies. Lies were used as media events or to destroy the reputation of the opposition just like Dave had just seen done in the Lawrence campaign. This was routine and had caused some potential opponents to withdraw before the campaign really started. Dave’s thought process slowed and veered off to the image of Humstead and Dicks smiling together. Dicks, Dave had discovered, seemed to be at the center of the same kind of activity centering in media that Humstead used in politics. Dave had been working up profiles on every prominent figure in public life, trying to see patterns since he had read Gramp’s letter. Dicks had waged what looked like a similar war on Jeb Franks, the attorney for Quince who had shot himself to death in the Rose Garden. No, Dave shook his head. That was crazy. Dicks could not be like Humstead.

Dave noticed something else, too. While Branch was Governor in Texas, the use of actual policy to stroke money and allegiance out of donors and voters, pretty much absent in previous administrations, became standard operating procedure. Dave set up another line of inquiry, uploading the changes to the website.

It was amazing that the man had written it all down. Reproducing it would certainly embarrass him. But that was all it would do. Dave wondered again how George had come by the papers.

Then at the very back of Humstead’s over written paean to his cleverness there were a few pages of what appeared to be notes in George’s handwriting. Copies of notes, Dave then noticed. With dates. It appeared to be a running record of the Xeroxed copies George had run at the City Hall here and elsewhere along the road referring to two original pages produced by someone else.

The page numbers appeared to be for deeds. There were also copies of entries from old phone books with names Dave did not recognize. Then, looking further down the list, he noticed that one of the names was circled and referred to a birth certificate. The date this woman had given birth was the same date and location as given out in Humstead’s bio. There was a number and date for certificate of death and one for her birth. There was also some other dates and places noted.

What did it matter? What had George been doing?

The bartender, a fellow Elk, graciously changed the channel on the Lodge’s television so Dave could watch Saturday Night Live. Dave hated to miss what had become one of the most relevant pieces of political commentary available. The spoof on the presidential debates was funnier than he had imagined possible. Logan Hobbs, one of the regulars, watched solemnly, remarking later that he thought they made more sense than the last time. Dave realized that Logan thought this was the real debate. He did not disabuse him. There really had not been very much difference, all things considered.

Tough Talk that evening featured Brusk Crimshaw nattering on about the presidential race. It was less than a month now until Election Day.

The night sky was a blaze of stars as he walked out of the Lodge, heading for his bed in the decadent dark-wood interior of the motor home. Dolly had forgiven him for yesterday and tonight he had moved the computer into the bar to work when Dolly quit at closing time. Once again Dave had had too much to drink. It had seemed appropriate tonight.

Aspirin and water. Dave reached for them even before he crawled out of bed. It was late morning when the sounds of birds chirping and the distant hum from the highway that ran by the Lodge’s trailer court finally penetrated. It was pretty nice, all things considered. There was electricity, water, cable for the television and other niceties. Not all but some meals could be had very inexpensively at the Lodge. Dave was not going to bother with breakfast today. His stomach told him that would be a very bad idea.

Dave found Dolly working in the office when he finally walked into the Lodge just after noon. There was always a lot to do. Paperwork from members, bills to be processed, cubbyholes to be filled and phone calls from more members to be answered were all her responsibility. Dave had learned that on top of being the entire paid staff, except the barkeeper and a cleaning crew, Dolly was also Secretary. He had attended the Lodge meeting out of a sense of obligation. During that meeting he’d been impressed by her efficiency and quiet sense of humor when dealing with the cadre of old timers still unused to having a woman in a seat of power. Most meals and projects were all carried out by volunteers.

The repartee and comments told Dave there had been a little grumbling from the other members when she broke through the gender barrier and joined in her own right, but not much. Her father had been a founding member of this Lodge and her deceased husband was a Past Exalted Ruler.

Glancing up as he walked in, Dolly got out some more papers for him; these papers had been crumpled and pressed flat again. They were not more of Humstead’s political fantasies. These were letters; personal letters, hand written from Craig Humstead to the father he had not known.

After he finished reading the letters, Dave felt sick. Obviously Humstead had written these letters a long time ago when he was young and emotionally vulnerable. He might never have mailed them. All of the letters were from him to the man he had discovered was his biological father when he was 19. Now Dave vaguely remembered that there had been some story about this floating around. His parent’s marriage had ended on his birthday and soon afterwards some relative, an aunt or uncle, had casually mentioned that the man who walked out wasn’t his “real father” anyway.

It was an ugly thing to have been done to Humstead. Dave wondered about the kind of relative who would have dumped that on a young man, obviously already distressed. Then his mother had killed herself. Dave glanced down and looked at the date of death.

What kind of people were Humstead’s family? Dave did a search and found practically nothing on the family. No names of mother, father, siblings. A Google search brought up nothing that correlated for a date of birth or death for either legal parent. Nexis also bombed out. He tried the same procedures with another well-known personality. The bio had a full rundown, including smiling faces at a reunion.

When Humstead tried to get in touch with his biological father he was ignored. Dave leafed through the papers, looking for a name, anything about the biological father. Grimacing, he read through the painfully personal words that filled the letter to a man who obviously did not want fatherhood.

Humstead was very anxious that no one know about his background. Dave noticed that he had attended, but not graduated from, the University of Utah; he had been born in Denver, Colorado. He had gone on from there to enroll and presumably take classes at seven other colleges and eventually to teach at a prestigious college in Texas without having a degree himself.

Humstead’s early interest in politics had been all encompassing. Instead of collecting pictures of sports heroes, he had collected bios and photos of politicians. He had shared that in one early interview and though the tiny story had been picked up from time to time, it had never been enlarged on. Humstead never talked about his family.

At the time of his birth Humstead’s last name had not been Humstead. His biological father had been a prominent man having an affair with a woman whose family came from the Ozarks. She already had one illegitimate child. The man who became his father when he was less than a year old had some curious habits. He was now dead.

It was an ugly history. But it explained a lot about Humstead’s need to succeed no matter the cost. Sometimes what is absent is more important than what is present.

Dolly received a box from George through FedEx on January 5th. It had been dropped off in Reno. The package contained the Humstead notes in one folder and two other folders. The first was labeled Research, the second Storage File. Finally it had occurred to Dave to ask Dolly if she knew any more. It turned out she did. Those facts had, however, receded in importance when she confronted George’s death.

George had called and asked her to keep the ‘package’ for him. He did not want it on him where he was going. He did not tell Dolly any more except that he would be back if he lived. Before he had left, he had slipped a ring on her finger but told her not to tell anyone. It might not be safe, he said. She was not to wear it until he came back. If that happened he would be safe. Dolly showed Dave the gold ring with the five diamonds lined up across the top. It was engraved with the date they had first met.

As he and Dolly sat in the office she slipped it on her right ring finger and told Dave about those weeks. Dave did not quite cry but he wanted to. Somehow this unlikely romance reminded him of the poetry his grandmother and Gramps had exchanged. He had never imagined that passion could well up in the eyes of a woman who seemed old to him, but there was passion in Dolly’s eyes when she talked about George.

They had taken walks, holding hands under the one full moon they saw together. He had kissed her for the first time then; just a petal light touch on her lips. They had talked about everything but his research, covering his early life in Texas and as a young soldier. He had told her about his wife and kids. She had told him about her dead husband. Soon, she was spending nights in his motor home or driving him to her house nearby. There has been a lot of gossip at the lodge, of course.

Then, when he gave her the ring, he told her about the boy, Humstead. George had gotten the files from a cousin who had named him his executor. He had found the first file with the ‘how to’ manuscript and the letters while cleaning out his cousin’s filing cabinets, noticed the name with surprise, and started reading.

Everyone is related to someone. The cousin, Bobby Joe Meredith, who died leaving George with the duty of clearing out his office and home in Garland, had gotten the files via Xerox from the guy who cleaned Humstead’s office. They had been acquired for one of his clients, a former political opponent searching for information. Bobby Joe had made a copy for himself.

Bobby Joe was a private detective who sometimes fudged the lines of what was exactly ethical. His death, caused by cancer, had been swift but certainly natural enough.

Mostly, George had burned the contents of the files. These files had attracted his attention because of his own run-ins with Humstead.

George was worried because, Dolly said, corruption was rampant. George was sure that Humstead was the tool that enabled the Branches to continue behavior that had bothered him during his many years in Texas politics. She did not know who George was going to see.

“Had Humstead known George had the files?” Dave asked. Dolly had nodded yes. He knew; George had told him so when he saw him the last time. That is why George was scared. He hoped that making peace between father and son would save his skin. Evidently it had not worked.

The Houstonian - October 2000

The elder Branch had used the place as quarters while he was in transition. The group gathered here had flown in from various parts of the country to discuss the narrowing lead of the younger Branch and to consider the transition questions. They knew only part of the plan. Humstead never shared everything.

Not that they doubted that next January they would be part of the incoming administration heading to D.C. to occupy offices in the White House.

Humstead settled into the seat looking out onto the patio as others talked. The foliage was lush and perfectly manicured. Beyond the patio he could glimpse one corner of the golf course. Could life have been more perfect?

It was much nicer meeting here than in the Fortress down the hill. The facilities of the Our History Foundation looked more like a bunker than a think tank. These petroleum types were always thinking ahead. Humstead approved of that. Perfect security there, with no windows an inconvenient photojournalist or marksman would aim through. And this, a posh resort with everything he could want at his fingertips.

This was not just food. It was an experience in lavish excess served up with all of the extras. Humstead was used to perfection now. He glanced down at the buffet, well sampled, and smiled to himself.

He had spent the last four years laying out, in depth, the strategy for this election. He had revised the assumptions on their base of support, long, shaky and growing more so, and forged new alliances that continued and deepened Republican control of a voting block through evangelical churches. The voting blocs had been manicured as well as the lawn out there; seeded and curried to perfection with other safeguards in place.

Israel had been useful and would be more so. Issues, an annoyance for many political consultants, had proven to be more useful than gold to Craig Humstead. And with issues, you could promise forever and not have to come across. He would be disappointed if he was off by 2.5 percent.