Lucifer's Hope the Guv

LUCIFER’S HOPE…THE

GUV

James L. Clark

Writers Club Press

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Lucifer’s Hope…the Guv

All Rights Reserved © 2002 by James L. Clark

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse, Inc.

2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 0-595-25798-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 0-595-65343-X (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4697-4589-3 (ebook)

Contents

C H A P T E R 1

C H A P T E R 2

C H A P T E R 3

C H A P T E R 4

C H A P T E R 5

C H A P T E R 6

C H A P T E R 7

C H A P T E R 8

C H A P T E R 9

C H A P T E R 10

C H A P T E R 11

C H A P T E R 12

C H A P T E R 13

C H A P T E R 14

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton (John Emerich Dalberg), 1887

C H A P T E R 1

Even though the election—or, hopefully, the reelection—was still well over a year away, Governor Joseph Latimer Carne was itching to get a more structured campaign underway. After all, due to the passage of the succession amendment in 1992, he would be the first governor in the history of Kentucky to be allowed to run for a second consecutive term. Though the prestige accruing to a win would constitute an enormous enhancement of his already well-developed vanity, the power and money to be had from yet another four-year shot at both the public and private tills formed irresistible compulsions to win at any cost. This is not to say he had no altruistic designs with respect to his position vis-à-vis the people, only that they were secondary. With some of the millions he had made in his eastern Kentucky interests—coal mines, gas wells, a chemical plant and real estate—he had bought the lieutenant governorship in the 1991 election (edging out poorer candidates before the 1992 law mandated a ticket requirement for both offices), announcing boldly at the time that he sought the office only as a steppingstone to the top spot in the 1995 election, as the lieutenant governor before him had done. Lieutenant governors in Kentucky are about as important as three-dollar bills, just about as worthless and often just about as counterfeit. He had used the old ploy of lending himself campaign funds at the time, but had collected every dime with interest since becoming governor and sweating the cash out of whoever needed the favor du jour. Ever since its admission to the union in 1792 as the fifteenth state, vote-buying had been accepted as a normal way of political life in Kentucky. The succession amendment was a shocking, surprising stroke of luck he had only hoped for, since the citizens had consistently rejected it for years.

Again using a portion of his millions, augmented by a cache of special interest money, most of it legit (with the under-the-table money still finding its way to the very private places), which he had gained by tapping rich resources he had cultivated in the lower office, he had barely squeaked out the gubernatorial victory in 1995, though it had been tainted ever since by an ongoing investigation of voting irregularities. The consensus among the politicos and the media hacks was that the election had been stolen; rather, bought, through the old money for transportation to the polls scheme, mainly in the population centers of Louisville, Lexington and the Kentucky suburbs across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. John Colby, his campaign manager then, and now his chief of staff, and two of Colby’s lieutenants were in danger of indictment now, in the summer of 1998, but they had provided the governor with ironclad deniability. He, in turn, had promised to take care of them if they eventually took up residence in the penitentiary at Eddyville for what he promised would be a short time, since, besides the monetary considerations they could expect, he had promised his influence (and whatever else it took, probably cash) to secure drastically shortened sentences. That he would deliver was never in doubt, since the extortion game would be played from both sides. This arrangement was nothing new. In an insurance scam back in the seventies, a party functionary had taken the hit for a previous governor, doing his time quietly and in comparative luxury, then rejoining society and never working another day.

At 49 and five-feet-eleven, the guv, as he signed his memos and liked to be called, was square-jawed, had a paunch at 185 pounds, a full head of hair streaked with gray and fully graying at the temples, and alternated contacts with eyeglasses, depending on how young he was trying to appear on a given day. His speeches induced a charisma roughly equivalent to that of an earthworm attacking a pile of garbage—damned teleprompters—and he had the disturbing habit of losing his place, absent a teleprompter, when reading whatever someone else had typed for him to deliver, his passion hardly rivaling that of a brown bear in hibernation. Off-camera, he was a charmer, however, the back-slapping, baby-kissing, woman-hugging, penultimate practitioner of politics. More importantly, he had no peer in the strong-arm tactics of backroom bargaining, a number of legislators having felt his wrath and seen pet projects for their districts disappear from the drawing board, much less reality. He knew, though, that the republicans were making small but gradual inroads in the power structure, and that he probably would be opposed in the primary the next year and fiercely opposed, of course, in the general election, assuming success in the primary. The narrowness of the last victory—if indeed it was an actual victory—practically dictated such to be the case.

Though he and the speaker of the house, Melvin Carson, appeared friendly for the benefit of the public, he knew that Carson wanted the top spot, and made no bones about not going the lieutenant governor route to get it. Also, he couldn’t be too sure about Henry Lee Baley, his lieutenant governor, who also had put out the word that he was gunning for the governor’s chair after Carne’s eight years were up, but Carne was sure Baley was behind the rumors that seemed to be floating through the media lately, mostly having to do with the governor’s sabotaging of the workman’s compensation machinery right after he took office, such actions constituting a windfall of millions for coal and gas operators at the expense of employees with injuries (real or imagined) whose monthly payments and/or pensions had been greatly curtailed or even suspended. The rumors were filled with the innuendo of kickbacks, even though there had never been any proof that Carne was on the take…at least from anybody but himself, since he still profited from all his businesses.

In the biennial legislative session that had just ended at the end of March, Carne, having betrayed the worker vote before but needing it now, had tried to use his influence to redress the worst grievances of the workers, but had been only partly successful. His cronies in the east end of the state had greatly profited during the two years since the first session, and had not ridden him too hard about the slight adjustments in the session just ended, though they were unhappy with having to see any of their money go to miners and others who were suffering from black lung or from the effects of virtually any of the inevitable accidents that were a part of everyday life in the mines as well as in the factories. Baley, formerly a Louisville corporate lawyer, had become wealthy representing the interests of the operators and other industry-related types. Carson, with wavy hair and handsome at six feet and 175 pounds, was a lawyer from the small city of Ashland, located just inside the Ohio/West Virginia borders where the Big Sandy River empties into the Ohio River, and had made a small fortune representing workers suing whomever he could think of for everything from black lung to hang-nails. The governor’s workmen’s comp coup of 1996 had practically put him out of business, since WC cases were about all that interested him. Before then, he had long since withdrawn from most general practice work, such things as divorces, planning-zoning and other time-consuming and messy affairs. WC settlements were usually made out of court, sometimes up to a million or two, and he raked off thirty percent before the worker got a dime.

So, Baley might reasonably expect the monetary support of the operators, who were mad about the turnaround; and Carson, besides the huge power connected to the speaker’s position, had the grassroots support of the state’s workers, as well as union money. Revenge was an obvious incentive for both. Though Baley was not now practicing law, the 1998 legislation had caused him a great deal of embarrassment, since he had urged influential people in his circle, many of them coal operators, to support Carne in 1995, and for good reason, simply that the workmen’s comp enactment would be (and had been) a windfall for them, too. The recent legislation meant loss of money for his friends, though not to near the extent that workmen’s comp had cost them before 1996. Carson had simply lost a lot of money the first time around, and the newest legislation didn’t help much.

Then, there was the usual infighting in the party. Democrats in Kentucky were better known for their internecine fights than for their tolerance of each other. There were two main factions, each with an array of other factions within it. The schisms went back many years, and even some of the old-timers often forgot what caused them—even forgot which side they were on, although the prospect of personal gain generally dictated which side at any given time. The seasoned practitioners of the art of Democrat politics in Kentucky had always been wary of each other, especially if they claimed to be on the same side. Knowing one’s enemies was far superior to knowing one’s friends. Enemies could always be counted on to do the predictably, harmful thing; but friends…well, thought Carne, staring through the windows of his paneled office on the west end of the second floor of the capitol at the orange-tinted shafts emanating from the setting sun, they can stab you in the back while looking you straight in the eye. He and Baley were on the same side in the same faction…at least he thought they were, but now there were those rumors. Carson could be depended upon to monkey-wrench most things he tried…worse than the damned republicans. He and the speaker had been good friends at one time—they came from the same end of the state—until that business in 1996. Since then, I’ve had to watch him like a hawk. He and his cutthroat lawyer buddies and courthouse gangs out in the mountains waste no love on me. Indeed, Carne now had to depend for his heaviest support on the central and western parts of the state, even though his greatest support in 1991 and 1995 had come from his native East.

John Colby, the sweaty, jowly, balding 44-year-old, roly-poly (5’7, 230-lb.) chief of staff, smoking the ever-present cigar whose aroma helped smother his bourbon-inspired breath, knocked on the open door and sort of poured himself into the office and settled in an overstuffed chair. So you think we need to get the troops moving already, Joe, he said with that nasal twang that bothered most folks after about two minutes of conversation. He laughed. You know we shouldn’t be talking campaign on the state’s time, of course. That’s just like some old county judge building a road to his best buddy’s house…or more likely, to his significant other’s. He winked. I was just a twenty-something kid with great ideals back in the seventies when that famous mile-and-a-half parkway was built next door over in Woodford County to serve three houses, one belonging to a member of the governor’s cabinet, as I remember. I lost my political virginity right then."

Unless somebody has the place bugged, I don’t think we have to worry too much…though, y’know, it might not be a bad idea to have this office swept…some outfit from out of state, of course, replied Carne. I know what you mean about the state’s time. It didn’t used to be that way. When I was county judge-executive, I did a little bit of everything from driveways to a couple roads for some loggers…even a road or two to my places…just good business. Carne had served two terms as its chief executive officer in Martin County, on the eastern border of the state where the Tug Fork joined the Big Sandy River, which separated Kentucky from West Virginia, and where coal mining was the biggest industry. He held that office when he ran for the lieutenant governor spot in 1991. Though he lived in the county seat of Inez, his business office was in Pikeville, a much larger town in the next county south of Martin, and the town of choice for a large number of millionaires who had made their fortunes in coal mining. Yeah, the good old days are gone, but the good old days I remember were nothing like the good old days back in the thirties and forties…at least from what I’ve been told. Back then, before television, especially, a man could stay in office as long as he wanted to just by handing out those little goodies. Nowadays, there’s some kid made up like she’s on her way to a cocktail party standing in front of a camera on the news every night, with a strip mine in the background, wailing about how the country has been raped by us ruthless operators…or with a non-bid building lease in her hand, standing on the capitol steps and telling all the world about the crooks in Frankfort. Yeah, it’s been that way since TV came along, especially. That road in the seventies made it on the nightly news night after night…and remember the ‘warehouse deals’ about that same time, and the governor flying his kids back and forth to college on the weekends in state planes? I got away with a few things because TV cameramen with pretty girls didn’t show up too often in little old back-woodsy Martin County, but here in Frankfort they pretty well follow you to the damn john and report on whether you washed your hands or not when you got through doing your business.

What about all the stuff in the eighties, like in one of old Marcus Winn’s businesses where the odometers on cars were run back to cheat the car dealers out of a few bucks? chimed in Colby, laughing. Winn had been governor during 1987-91. One of his head honchos went to the big house for that, if I remember right. And then, I guess the FBI started that disastrous investigation on the kickbacks and bribes during his administration. He walked, but, how many was it…fourteen or fifteen of our esteemed lawmakers and some of their buddies…made it to the big house…even the speaker. One guy sold his vote for a measly four hundred bucks, if I remember right. Only Slick Willie’s change of federal prosecutors when the new administration took over in Washington in ninety-three saved the rest, I guess…no telling what else those prosecutors had. The new DAs promised to finish the deal, but—and I’m thankful—they never pushed it. I’ve been around here for a while myself, and I was too close for comfort to some of those old boys. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in Lexington in 1976, Colby, a Lexington native, tried law school for a year, gave it up and headed for Frankfort, where he worked in various state jobs and for a number of legislators, finally landing on Carne’s staff in 1992 and managing his successful election campaign in 1995. His two marriages had both gone on the rocks. He had lived with a couple of women since the last divorce, but even before he became Carne’s chief of staff, the governor had told him that the shack-up arrangements had to go, citing the fact that Kentucky was a Bible belt state, and anybody with a chief of staff’s high profile couldn’t be fornicating—at least as a matter of public knowledge by participating in a live-in arrangement—lest the cause be hurt. Colby moved out, but his liaisons, as well as his drinking, were a constant source of amusement and notoriety in Frankfort. Though they respected him as possibly Frankfort’s most astute politician, his friends as well as his enemies referred to him simply as Fatso.

I nearly lost it back there in ninety-five, you know, said Carne. I think we know a lot of the reason for that, and it wasn’t my fault. The party carried a lot of baggage then, what with old Winn’s crazy education reform act in 1990, and those greedy dumbasses that went to the pen, and that idiot Wiley’s total destruction of the health insurance business. Kyle Wiley, a racehorse tycoon and millionaire, served as governor during 1991-95. The only people in Frankfort dumber than he was sat out there in the legislature and helped him run all but one health insurance provider out of this state, and, since I was his lieutenant governor, the people blamed me, too. He was used to tellin’ his damn horses what to do, and I reckon he thought he could tell the insurance companies how to run their business. What was it…forty-five companies just walked? The newspapers said he hadn’t done a thing for four years and was tryin’ to leave a legacy of insuring everybody in the state for everything from leprosy to snakebite. It turns out that more people than ever before don’t have insurance now, and those that do have it face bankruptcy to pay for it. What a mess! And I’m stuck with it. Carne was up pacing the floor and slammed his fist down on his desk so hard he sent papers flying everywhere. And then he and that willing bunch of bootlickers passed that thoroughbred act, whatever the hell it was, and be damned if Wiley didn’t get the first payoff.

Well, you gotta go easy on that, Guv…at least for now. Remember…old Thoroughbred Kyle just got the trouble started good in ninety-four. You helped the legislature finish the companies off in the ninety-six session, and then didn’t do a damn thing about it in the session last winter…so it’s a kinda kettle-callin’-the-pot-black thing…and I told you last December you’d better get it right.

Okay, so you told me…you’ve told me ‘you told me’ plenty of times since then…and now you’ve just told me again. Carne spoke sharply. You know as well as I do that the legislators mean for me to take the rap. They’ve all got insurance paid for by the state, as well as by their companies or their wives—or, I guess I’d better say spouse’s—companies. Truth is, they’re too damn proud to admit they were wrong, and so they let me swing for it. You know how it’s always been in this state…the governor is here everyday and the legislature shows up every two years for three months; therefore, the governor has the upper hand…so, the governor takes the heat for what that bunch of idiots dreams up. And what’d they do all last session…yell and scream about some kind of a ‘bottle bill,’ when nobody in the state is much bothered by refrigerators, car tires, old stoves or anything else piled-up on the creek banks. Most people never see the creek banks, and they figure it’s a local matter anyway…which it is. My county’s a mess because most of the people out there don’t give a damn. They figure that’s what the regular floods are for anyhow…just wash the stuff away. And when they couldn’t decide what to do about the beer cans and bottles, they got real busy and passed a law that allows preachers to carry pistols in their churches. He laughed. I’ve heard that deacons can be right hostile, so maybe preachers oughtta consider bullet-proof vestments, too.

Fact remains, Guv, if you want to look at it that way, you had the upper hand about the insurance fiasco and didn’t do a cuspidor’s worth of warm spit about it. Colby took a deep draw from his cigar and shifted it from one corner of his mouth to the other, his tongue and glistening lips approximating a smooth conveyor operation. "And no governor will have a shot at that problem until after the election next year…unless, of course, you call a special session. The law allows that, as you know…a special session to handle only one matter. Unless you do something, you’ll be chopped liver on this issue…the Lexington and Louisville newspapers have already seen to that."

Nobody pays any attention to those rags, John, and you know it. Hell, they always endorse a democrat for governor because two-thirds of the people in this state are registered democrats. They endorsed me, and they’ll endorse me again, even if they hate me. In fact, they’d endorse J. Fred Muggs or Donald Duck or Fidel Castro before they’d endorse a republican. But, their local and national endorsements are routinely scorned at the ballot box…and you know it…not worth a tinker’s damn. They’re already endorsing old Bobby Whitson for November, but when the Senate convenes in January in Washington, old Bobby will be coolin’ his heels and sellin’ his tobacco in Kentucky and the state will have two republicans in the Senate. You’ll see. Whitson, currently a congressman from Lexington, was running for the Senate against Big Jim Mueller, another congressman from the north-Kentucky-Cincinnati-suburb area.

Carne stopped pacing and sat at his desk. What kinda issues can we get started on…if you think the insurance thing is out? Can we maybe use the education thing? The statistics are not too bad there, are they? I’ve supported the reforms…at least I think I have. Frankly, I can’t get a sensible answer from anybody over in education as to what the damn act amounted to, except it raided the treasury to give money to school districts in counties where the tax guys didn’t even appraise property or expect anybody to pay school taxes on it if they did. In Elliot, right there almost in my back door, they didn’t even send out tax bills one year. A big part of that act was supposed to get rid of nepotism, as if that could ever actually be done in this state. They didn’t say so over at education, but everybody knows the locals just took the state money, hired enough school people—like janitors—to keep themselves in the saddle, and education was only a secondary proposition…but you never did hear me say that, John. The whole thing was the mother of all con jobs, and the counties and districts where the people were paying through the nose for good systems got the back of the legislature’s hand for their trouble. And what do we have now…all kindsa districts where maybe one-fourth of the high school grads can read at the highest level…which isn’t too high, to start with. I keep askin’ myself…‘who in the world took enough money under the table to pass that thing?’

Yeah, that’s even worse baggage than you and Wiley’ve concocted with the insurance fiasco. In the first place, that reform act was forty percent pork, and in the second place, our esteemed legislators and governor knew about as much about education as they knew about Einstein’s theory of relativity. I was here when they held hearings on what to do about education. I never saw so many nutcases in my life, long-haired hippies, a lot of them, spouting about self-esteem as the end-all and be-all of education…the hell with learning such unimportant things as facts. But, think about it, do you actually want to dredge up all that fraud brought on by administrators and teachers…fixing test scores so they could collect that reward money for supposedly doing a better job? I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, but old Marcus Winn and these characters masquerading as lawmakers actually thought you could bribe schoolteachers into doing a better job. Hell, they made fellow crooks out of them. Can you believe they’ve wasted more than fifty million on that garbage? That way of doin’ business may work here with the lobbyists and all the other blood-suckers in this town, but it won’t get it in education. Anyhow, you know as well as I do that the teachers and principals quietly ignore that act and go about their business. Why, that bunch over in education can’t even construct a decent testing system, much less determine what ought to be taught to be tested, in the first place. What do they call it…outcomes-based education? It was already being phased out in other states when it was bought into here. If you want to get some votes on it, maybe you should just yell and scream for a recall on the whole miserable mess.

You know I can’t do that, John. Too many people are sold on it. Well…maybe they aren’t now, but there again…you’ve got a bunch of legislators that passed the idiotic thing, and a lot of them are still around, and they’ve already shown that they won’t eat enough crow to fix it. And I’m damned if I’ll take the fall for ’em. I wasn’t even around here when they parceled out the pork and passed that mess. I understand they’re finally getting away from mixing the kids in kindergarten through the third grade in some systems now. Imagine that. The state spends a hundred-fifty years trying to get out of one-room schoolhouses and Winn and his legislative partners in crime listen to a bunch of loonies and start sticking ’em all in the same room again. This is one state where the government grinds on in spite of its officials, rather than because of ’em. It’s a wonder our two-bit lawmakers haven’t bankrupted the state, what with wasting millions bribing the voters back home with everything from golf courses to four-lane highways that go nowhere.

Carne banged his fist on the desk again, this time knocking a glass to the floor. D’ya suppose Harry Jinness will run again, not to change the subject…which, of course, I just did. I’m too mad to think about the other now, anyway. He almost knocked me over in ninety-five, and he can get his hands on plenty of money, especially since that rich crowd of his figures we stole the election. Jinness, a wealthy Lexington lawyer and political activist in the Republican Party who made most of his money representing coal companies in east-Kentucky, as well as holding partnerships in some of them, ran against Carne in the previous election.

I don’t like to tangle with him. He’s got the conservative label, and I sense the people moving in that direction. Hell, I’m as conservative as he is, but the national party label has been branded on all of us. That Washington crowd of liberal dope-heads has painted us all as a bunch of sex-crazed, sexually perverted, weed-smoking flower children…relics of the sixties who just never grew out of it. That’s what’s wrong with the schools…those nutcases running them came of age in the sixties and they’re as loony-tunes with education as they are with everything else. No wonder somebody like Jinness looks good…anybody’d look good. You’d look good…unless you fully sobered up…then, you’d be as bad as them, probably. Both men laughed.

"I may be wrong, Guv, but I think he’s a bit gun-shy this time around. Besides, times are just too good. The only people hurting now are mostly in east-Kentucky and the ones on welfare in the cities…and they’re not hurting all that much. The unemployment rate is way down…the only people not working around here are the so-called homeless, most of them just too drugged-up or trifling to do a day’s work. We practically have a Mexican colony right here in Central Kentucky, half of it probably made up of wetbacks. They think minimum wage is a gold mine, while the natives around here won’t go for seven bucks an hour tossing burgers, and they’re sure’s hell not about to clean stalls in the horse barns or do any other farm work. Why should Jinness spend another whole year fighting the prosperity. We were just pulling up normally in ninety-five, but we’re rockin’ now, and the end’s not in sight.

Look at the market. Look at how much more in taxes is being collected—and thrown away. Jinness gave it his best shot…almost good enough…but, he’s no fool. He can clean up in corporate law. Why should he throw away a year’s worth of megabucks to fight in what he probably knows now would be a lost cause? Neither man offered to discuss the circumstances surrounding the pending vote-fraud charges, but their eyes locked for a moment and, then, each looked quickly away. Frankly, I can’t see anybody with even slight name recognition putting up a fight. What you need to worry about is the primary. Your main competition, no matter who the republican or anybody from any other party is, will come from your loyal constituency.

So…who d’ya think that competition will be…Melvin, maybe, or Henry Lee? Carne had gotten up and was pacing again. Henry Lee owes me a bundle…after all, I put him on the ticket…I had to have somebody, and he seemed harmless enough. Besides, he had cash, and I got tired of usin’ all my own cash. He’s already said he’s not interested until 2003. Melvin hates my guts…him and all the rest of them blood-suckin’ lawyers out there. Damn! I’ve even read that Kevin Maddox is considerin’ a race. You’d think—as young as he is—that he’d at least wait his turn." Maddox was the 38-year-old attorney general. He belonged to a politically well-connected family and had managed, with other state attorneys general, to squeeze millions of dollars out of the tobacco companies through lawsuits or settlements, even though Kentucky was the second-largest tobacco-producing state in the country.

Could be any o’ those guys, Guv, any of ’em. Colby waved his cigar toward the window. And there’s a lot more out there just waiting for an opening. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the old weed-smoker, but he’ll be in the picture…might start another party, but he’ll be in the picture. Colby referred to Calvin Goodnight, a perennial office-seeker—any and every office—who initially made his entrance into election politics many years before as a promoter of the legalization of marijuana.

Old Calvin’s branched out with policy positions into all the other stuff since that crazy stand on the ‘mary-jane,’ of which I guess he smoked his share—at least he always looked like he was high on it—and he makes more sense than most, but he cooked his goose from the very beginning by antagonizing everybody about the weed. The irony is that plenty of weed-smoke is in the rest rooms right here in the capital, and in most schools and all the bars. Fact is, before you came in ninety-one, Jerry Scantlin smoked it at his personal table in the Bluegrass Bar, while he conducted the state’s business there every night. He mixed it with a lot o’ whiskey, too, so…well, you get the picture. Jerry Scantlin was the former speaker, in the late eighties and early nineties. He went to the penitentiary for five years, for his part in the scandals that rocked Frankfort at the beginning of the decade. Fact is, most all the bills were decided in that bar, and not on the floor of the legislature, and old Jerry, who didn’t even finish high school, bought himself a big farm and was so well off the judge ordered him to pay for his keep while he was in prison. I believe he’s out now, or will be pretty soon, or in some kinda halfway house or whatever it is where they ease folks back into a so-called normal life. I expect he’s got enough stashed away to not worry much about the cost of feed or his tobacco base anymore.

Well, I gotta get some issues ready for Fancy Farm, John. That’s right on us here. Let’s see…it’s right on August first this time and this is July sixteenth, so…that’s just over two weeks. There’s that big Senate race this year. You know everybody’ll be smellin’ blood this year, and the incumbents are always the ones with the choicest blood. I don’t mean for anybody to lap up my blood like they did old Jezebel’s.

Like whose? asked Colby, I’ve never heard of old Jezebel.

Yeah, like old Jezebel’s. You never heard of her? She was that evil old queen in the Old Testament. She and her wicked husband, King Ahab, both had their blood licked up by the dogs, and Jezebel’s body was eaten by the dogs, just like God told Elijah the prophet to tell Ahab it would happen. Some men threw her off a balcony and the horses down below trampled her to death. Until I left home, my mother made sure I went to church every time the doors opened, so I know about Ahab and Jezebel.

Well, I’m not too religious…not religious at all, for that matter, said Colby, but exactly why did all that happen?

Jezebel made a habit of killing God’s prophets—we’d call ’em preachers today…hey, maybe they needed that preacher’s gun law, or sword law, or whatever—and Ahab was so greedy he allowed Jezebel to kill their neighbor so they could take the neighbor’s vineyard. Those greedy cutthroats out at the Fancy Farm Picnic—that’s at a church, you know—will be after my vineyard…but I need to be ready for ’em, so that means you better start getting me ready.

The Fancy Farm Picnic was started as a family reunion in the 1830s, held in the small Graves County community of Fancy Farm, about twenty miles east of the Mississippi River and a little south of the big river’s junction with the Ohio River. After the Civil War, the reunion, totally sponsored by the St. Jerome’s parish, became an annual political rally on the first Saturday in August of each year, featuring stump speeches by the state’s politicians of both parties. Members of the parish prepared thousands of pounds of pork, mutton, chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs, along with potato salad, cole slaw, pies and cakes. Whether they liked it or not—the event was always held in very hot and humid weather—all serious politicos made it a point to show up. Sometimes, the affair could be rowdy, but it was always a must on the political calendar. The speeches were filled with partisan hyperbole, not calculated to show any friendship between the combatants or their parties, though such extreme enmity was not actually the case, at least most of the time. Indeed, in 1995, the affair practically became a riot as rowdies blew horns, shouted speakers down and attacked each other with campaign signs. One senator put it this way: equal parts carnival, barbecue picnic, church social, political theater.

Have you thought about the ‘right to life’ and the ‘pro-choice’ thing…or I guess I mean, have you thought about it any since the last time you made a statement about it? asked Colby. You know the abortion thing comes up every time politicians get together, and if you want the women’s vote, you’d better get on the right side of that can o’ worms…if there is a right side. The women and the ethnics make the difference, as you well know, and you have the black vote in your pocket. Democrats always have that, here and everywhere else.

What did I say the last time around?

Pro-choice, of course…are you crazy? The republicans shoot themselves in the feet every time on this issue. It’s automatic. The majority of men, democrats and republicans, are pro-life, and the majority of women in both parties are pro-choice, and there’s more women than men. Add that plurality to the black vote, and that’s the ball game. Men vote the party line more than women do, as you well know, so the office, and not the fetus or the unborn child or whatever any of these people call the stuff in the womb, is the issue.

Damn, John, that’s about as cold-blooded as anything I’ve ever heard. I gotta have a reason to be pro-choice, and it sure as hell can’t be that that’s the best way to get elected. That sounds like trading an office for a life…or maybe a bunch of lives. I know I was pro-choice in the last election. Now, what was the reason…surely not just the convenience of the mother?

Simple. Two reasons. A woman has a right to govern her own body…a constitutional right of choice or privacy or whatever. Don’t you remember…the democrats slaughtered Robert Bork in his nomination to the Supreme Court on what they called the right to privacy? Second, a child is better off not born if it’s not wanted…plain, common sense. And, as far as the abortion folks are concerned, a fetus is just another appendix…fine to have it as long as it doesn’t create a problem. When an appendix gets infected, it has to be cut out. When an egg turns into a certain nine-month ordeal, just cut it out. You don’t have a problem with that, do you? You didn’t have one the last time around.

I have an older sister, John, a widow who has one daughter. Carne turned away and looked out the window. After four years of marriage, the daughter got pregnant last year six weeks before her husband said he was leaving her. He’d been foolin’ around with one of his secretaries. My sister was ecstatic over havin’ a grandchild. My niece got an abortion…broke my sister’s heart. She was all set to be the full-time baby-sitter-grandma-whatever. Now, my niece is an emotional wreck, too. I think she’s headed for either a monastery or an insane asylum. So, y’see, things that happen cause…

Well, Guv, interrupted Colby, that makes the point. The girl didn’t want the baby, so the baby’s better off. Carne was still looking out the window. Besides, everyone’s entitled to…

Oh, shut up, John. I get the point. Carne turned back quickly. "Everything’s okay as long as the fetus is the same as an appendix or the tonsils or the gall bladder that’s gone wrong. I don’t necessarily disagree…it’s just that I’ve seen the other side, up close and personal. In that case, the kid would have been loved. In most of these cases, where a kid is conceived in the back seat of a car or in an alley somewhere or between a coupla teenagers with about as much sense or morals as an orangutan, the kid probably is better off. Most of ’em wind up on welfare or in the prison system, and the state pays for their care and feeding either way."

You got a point there, Guv. Let’s see…Roe/Wade was passed in seventy-three, so, let’s see, now conservatively—allowing for a million and a half a year since then—there have been thirty-six million abortions, meaning at least half of ’em have kept people off the welfare rolls…a real saving for all government agencies, state and national. It takes at least twenty thousand a year just to keep a guy in prison. That’s a good point we need to remember. Abortions keep down government expenses.

Oh, yeah, that’s a good point alright…Fancy Farm is at a Catholic Church, John.

Makes no difference, Guv…lotsa high-profile Catholics don’t pay any attention to the pope on abortion, birth control and a whole lotta other things. Just check out the Catholic political pooh-bahs in Massachusetts or Cincinnati, where they outnumber everybody else. Just remember, most of the republican politicians in favor of abortions are women, and there aren’t too many of them yet. Practically all the women democrats are for abortion, and the men vote the party line, so that’s where the bread is buttered. Don’t waver on this one.

Well then, John, my prognostication that Bobby Whitson will lose out won’t hold up, will it? He’s democrat and pro-choice, while Big Jim Mueller is republican and anti-abortion…and Catholic, to boot. There are a lot more Baptists in Kentucky than there are Catholics, I believe, and they’re also anti-abortion.

That’s a national race, Guv, abortion won’t make a damn in that one. Kentucky democrats don’t trust their own on the national level, no matter what the subject is. In the state, they can watch each other like hawks. You’ll see, come November.

Okay, that takes care of abortion. What else can we use?

You’ll have to take a stand on whether or not, or if and when, or how and how not to do sex in the public schools, Joe, whether you like it or not. Carne laughed. "Okay, I didn’t mean do sex…I meant how to teach it, if at all. That’s a hot question right now, with all kindsa crazy opinions out there…everything from the fourth grade explanations to condom-distribution in the middle and high schools."

What did I say the last time, John?

You said a lot and said nothing, which is the way we planned it, if you remember. No matter what you say, you make a bunch of people mad, so you just have to figure out how to make the least number of them mad. We got away with saying nothing anybody could understand the last time, but the issue was not as hot then. It is now. Next year, it’ll even be hotter. The National Organization for Women is hot on this now—this and abortion—and they got a pretty strong organization in Louisville…so you gotta stake out a position.

Well, John, what about the plan that guy had a few years ago to put condoms in the vending machines in the college coed dorms that have become so popular? Some people call ’em ‘shack-up sororities’ and others call ’em ‘free-love fraternities.’ Any thoughts on that? Should condoms be in the high school drink machines, maybe?

Colby laughed. I can just see a couple gettin’ it on up on the third floor…the guy runs down to the vending machine in the basement to punch out a condom…inserts his coins…hits the wrong button…runs upstairs in a fit of passion…jumps in bed and unwraps a Mounds Bar. Nine months later…chocolate-covered twins.

You have a weird sense of humor, John. Seriously, what can I say?

You could say that parents oughtta tell their little darlings to keep their pants on…in both college and high school, but that’s not too popular right now. Abstinence is considered both old-fashioned and beyond human accomplishment, anyway. Mind over matter is simply not kosher now. Y’gotta remember, kids nowadays—at least an awful lot of ’em—have parents who back in the 60s and 70s adopted the slogan ‘if it feels good, do it’ and fornicated with regularity in their youthful days, so, it’s a tough call. Why not just say the experts insist that 14 percent of condoms leak, and that abstinence is best for that reason? That’s very scientific, supposedly the best way to approach questions in academia. That way, you won’t make any moral judgment. People don’t like to be told about morals.

"Sounds good to me. Besides, the church people are all in favor of that…and there’s an awful lot of church people in this state. It’s true that they divorce as often—or more often—as everybody else, but they talk the talk,