DIRTY POLITICS: CHAPTER 43 OF UNDERCOVER

Alice Price was distraught the day she called me long distance from Emory practically hyperventilating over the phone. “Vandy,” she almost shouted, “ Do you know who is running for Chairman of the County Commissioners against my Dad next November?”

“No.” I didn’t have a clue. I was too busy partying with my friends, and keeping my grades up, to keep up with Clayton County Politics. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

“Mac Leonard.” She almost yelled it through the phone line. “Mac Leonard is running against my Dad! It’s in the paper.”

Suddenly I cared. “Oh shit.” Where could I find a copy of the Atlanta paper? “I’ll pick one up,” I told Alice. “This is just too bad to be true.”

I got off the phone, and called Mark immediately. “Mark, have you read the Atlanta paper?” I asked.

“I’ve got a test coming up,” he complained. “If I read anything, it needs to be my chemistry text book. Why?”

“Because according to Alice, Mac Leonard is running against her father in the election next November.” Silence on the other end of the phone. Suddenly Mark broke the silence.

“Holy shit,” he stammered. “I’ll go pick up the paper. See ya in a few.”

Mark showed up at my dorm room about thirty minutes later with the Sunday paper in hand. “This is some shit,” he said. “Look at this shit.”

Mark tossed the paper onto my bed. The headlines jumped out and hit me in the face.

MAC LEONARD MAKES A STAND FOR FAMILY VALUES

PROMISES TO GET TOUGH ON CRIME

It was enough to make me want to throw up. Forest Park and Clayton County had gone to hell in a handbasket since I left, and it had not been quite a year, yet. “What can we do?” I was so mad my pulse was racing.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Mark said, frowning down at the paper. “I need to call Robert whether he’s pissed at me or not, and do it quick. He knows about Mac Leonard. Family values, my ass. This is some shit. Don’t you think?”

“Definitely. But is there really anything we can do other than vote against him. If anyone told the truth, he’d only deny it, anyway.”

“Yeah, and Alice’s reputation was so bad in Clayton County, he’d probably accuse her of lying. Everyone in town knew she went to rehab. He’d either just deny the whole thing, or say her Dad got Alice to make it up for political reasons. You’re right. There really isn’t much we can do.” Mark looked pretty annoyed. “Sometimes the world just sucks,” he said. He was sitting on my bed staring down at the newspaper, still frowning.

In the weeks and months that followed, there were many angry phone calls from Alice, and more newspaper articles about Mac Leonard. According to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Leonard promised to crack down on drug use, and impose longer sentences, even on marijuana users. He seemed to believe a lot of kids were getting off who needed to go to jail. He also said colleges and universities had become hotbeds for radical thinking, and were even supporting the homosexual agenda. I decided I needed to talk to my soul sister right away, even if it had to be a collect call.

But Joan already knew about Mac Leonard, and she also informed me I did not have to worry about her coming out of the closet, because she had decided against doing it. I figured Jeff and Jessica had talked some sense into my sister, but I was still concerned about having a sexual pervert running against Alice’s Dad. I knew Alice’s Dad was no saint, but at least his misguided behavior involved other adults.

My soul sister told me she was heavy into politics, and assured me she and Lawrence were doing everything they could to insure the democrats won in as many elections as possible. “Having democrats win can not assure politicians won’t abuse power,” she said. “Those who have power tend to use it to their own advantage. I wish it was as simple as simply favoring one political party over the other.”

Clarence Price managed to win the November election by a small margin, but the problem didn’t end there. The opposing party continued to look for dirt on Price, and unfortunately, it was not difficult to find. Alice called me right before Christmas break of my sophomore year at Georgia Southern University, distraught and angry. “Vandy,” her voice echoed through the phone, “have you read the Atlanta paper?” Alice’s tone had a far away haunting aspect to it. Something told me this was going to be something big.

“No. What is it this time?” I held my breath, and waited for the sky to fall. It did.

“I don’t know if I can forgive my Dad this time,” she uttered in the same far away tone. “He got caught purchasing lace underwear for a stripper, using the county credit card, and must have been drunk out of his mind.”

“That’s pretty bad. Is all that in the paper?”

“Yes, and it’s worse than that. Do you know who the stripper was?”

No. No. Please tell me Alice was not going to say what I suspected I was about to hear. “Who?” I was miserably resigned to the truth before I actually heard it.

“Janice, the Indian Princess. That’s who the stripper was.”

A number of thoughts came to mind. Why hadn’t I called Janice’s mother more than once to obtain her number? Why had I allowed myself to get too involved in school, and my own life, to take the time to talk to Janice? Even though Mark unhappily insisted it had been Janice’s choice to buy the heroin from Fat Cat, that didn’t mean we couldn’t have made a difference. Alice must have received the shock two fold since Mark and I had not shared the truth about Janice with her. We were hoping something would change before she had to find out, but something had changed, and she had found out.

“I just wanta die,” I heard Alice wail. “I am so embarrassed, I just want to die. I wish my Dad had never gotten into politics. I’m afraid Mom will leave him for good this time.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Many events took place in Clayton County the following month. Chairman Clarence Price claimed he was an alcoholic, and checked himself into rehab. Shortly afterwards, Alice’s Mom was arrested on a DUI charge, and was also court ordered into rehab. While Alice insisted her father was no more an alcoholic than my sister was a lesbian, she seemed to understand why he found it necessary to enter rehab.

Pretty soon after the news of Chairman Price and the Indian Princess hit the press, Robert’s Mom was admitted into a psychiatric unit after making a suicide attempt. Mark said Robert was pretty upset about his mom, but was also accusing Alice’s Dad of being a dirty old man, something else Alice had difficulty accepting. Janice was nineteen now, and a legal adult, but that still should have felt like a kid to Alice’s Dad. At least that was how Robert and Alice saw it.

Mark said Janice needed to go into rehab too, but he didn’t know how comfortable it would be for her, since everybody else involved in the situation was already in there. I told Mark that Janice wouldn’t be able to go to the same rehab they were all at anyhow, because her family was poor, but that I was definitely in agreement with him that she needed to go somewhere. She was still dancing at the Cheetah for drug money; her family didn’t have any image to protect.

Mark said Robert’s Dad was working more than ever, still trying to be the richest man in Clayton County. There was, evidently, still one man in Jonesboro who had more money than he did. Mark said he thought Robert’s Dad just drowned his feelings in his work, and pretended not to care about anything. How could he not notice his own wife had tried to kill herself over another man having a sexual indiscretion? We thought they all sounded like a pretty sad bunch.

DIRTY POLITICS IS CHAPTER 33 OF UNDERCOVER; CLICK LINK BELOW TO READ PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

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