The Broken Broker
This was from a flash fiction with the following straightforward prompt:
This week I'd like to read about festivals, real or imagined. What people are celebrating (or otherwise), how they're celebrating it, and how the participants feel about the whole thing. Who is going above and beyond, who is doing their best to avoid the whole thing, and why?
I took the flash challenge, which has the prompt-giver provide both the season and the central concern of the festival. I got the following:
- Spring
- Healing
I try to find a couple emotions to center my story around, and given current events of this time I had a lot of anger and bitterness and feel that really drove this story.
The Broken Broker
“We have two very good candidates already in positions of power in America. Seasoned. They know how to play ball and stay out of the media.”
David sensed a lull in the buyer’s attention and paused. He picked up the impossibly small and incredibly hot cup of strong coffee. He blew over the surface.
“That’s an expression. ‘Play ball’ means to know our arrangement, do as they’re told, and not bring us any trouble.” He took a sip.
The buyer nodded and took in the sights of the hotel room they sat in. It was no suite, nor an upscale room. Just one door among many in a long hallway. But this was Dubai and everything about the room screamed luxury to David.
“You will find their rates, and my commission, are all very reasonably priced. After the purchase I remain involved in management capacity. I offer a layer of indirection between you and your politicians. There’s many advantages to that, I have found, compared to employing your own people as go-betweens. Born citizen, reasons for access, and I can advocate strongly for your side should ah, should any of your instructions be met with resistance or complaints. All that hassle goes to me. You sit back and enjoy the results.”
Now the grey-haired man was standing near the window of the room, observing the beach below. Bush league negotiation tactics. David wanted this sale but was not desperate for it so feigning disinterest wouldn’t work. Hungry yes, but never be desperate for it. Rule one. Well, it’s in the top three anyway.
“We have another, more of a prospect. So far they have kept with local politics in their home state, but still under 40 and just brilliant in front of a microphone. We expect many great things from them, and they’re in the market. They know their worth and are eager to find someone like you. A smaller investment with long term growth, but once they go national I can’t guarantee they’ll still be in the market.”
He wasn’t expecting to close in this meeting and didn’t, but he understood this client better after meeting face to face and the outlook was promising. Still though, only three politicians in inventory really limited arranging the shop, as it were. He needed to get stateside. He texted his assistant to get their pilot ready.
He slept twice, so it must have been 48 hours later that he was in the deep south arranging his notes in the back seat of last year’s Camry. His assistant had the wheel, under strict orders to mind the limit. Their jet was hours away. They could have landed a lot closer, but a major airport and a rental car were the way to go for the congressman’s peace of mind.
“Are we there yet?” he asked while maneuvering documents on his laptop.
His assistant glanced at the gps. “40 minutes.”
They were on state highways full of semis and state troopers parked out fishing for tickets. A billboard approached them. The form of a spherical man in sharp rural formal attire broke out of the rectangular medium like a cardboard cutout. He had a large dialog bubble saying:
“COME SEE MY GIANT HOG!”
David and his assistant both stared at the sign in silence as it passed by.
“We’re strangers in a strange land,” his assistant said.
“We’re time travelers today. Polite and accepting, that’s the mask to wear here. Agreeable. Just not too thick though. We want to blend in. Someone’s family from the city looking at our phones too much, but we don’t want to condescend and get people asking about us.”
His assistant nodded. “This an Easter festival?”
He sighed in thought. “Yeah, the only eggs you’ll find here are gonna be scrambled. This is an old time religion crowd.”
They were greeted warmly by parking attendants doing their best to organize sanity to the dirt lot filling with vehicles as families poured out of them. In the near distance was a large white pavilion, the area around it speckled by smaller tents, trucks with generators, and other logistics usually associated with carnivals.
Up ahead was his quarry. Congressman Daniels sat amid grandchildren–presumably–in a nest of fold-out chairs away from the main excitement of the festival. He looked like a younger Colonel Sanders with a lifelong thyroid condition. He waved a hand-fan under his chins, sensible with this heat. Jesus, it wasn’t even May. Fucking south.
Daniels had been approached twice already, and each time was positive progression. Men like this played coy. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust the arrangement. It was their own pride they had to navigate, and David held the map. It just took convincing to let him help. They knew they were better than you, but were far too well-mannered to admit it, even to themselves. The mean side of Minnesota Nice was nothing compared to the fangs of Southern Hospitality and the centuries-old maw it sprang from.
The congressman recognized him immediately. “Cumh here young man! Sit for a spell.”
David brushed his silverfox features. “Young?” He gave the briefest chuckle. “It’s been a while since I’ve been called that.” He sat next to the rotund congressman.
“Ah well, here you see we don’t have the fountain of youth itself, but the next best thing is being ad-ministered presently by pastor Tim Bundy over yonder. We grow them old ‘round these parts and the power of faith, and the pastor’s hands, sees to it.”
“Is that so?”. A ghost within twinged reflexively.
“Yessir. Take my auntie Ruth up there.” He gestured to an indistinguishable crowd clustered around the pastor’s pavilion. “Not my auntie by blood, but she was our family’s neighbor for ‘round fifty years. Ninety-eight years young. She receives the healing found only from our savior and every year it clears up her arthritis, an’ keeps her blood pressure where it ought to be.”
David was an expert at compartmentalization, but memories of his mother broke through the barriers and entered his thoughts. He had a worry about this the instant he knew he would go to this festival.
In addition to setting his career back, it was the worst two years of his life. Certainly that of his mother’s. It was unfair how the last years of life were so often the worst. The best treatments did little but slow her cancer’s march of conquest. She asked for faith healing near the end. Staunch athiest. She pleaded. When dilaudid barely helped and talks about “how long” with the doctors were commonplace, she believed someone’s palm on her head would ease her bones and liver. They never arranged one and she passed without knowing if it would have helped. She had delirium, was the rationale. A desperate and defenseless woman with no faith in anything beyond her family and a zealous 11th hour hope that the world wasn’t this cruel.
“Well that’s great to hear.” He kept subtle watch of who was nearby them and within earshot. It was mostly the children and they were preoccupied. “Since we talked, do you have any thoughts? Questions I can help with?”
The congressman folded his hand-fan, his own eyes taking in what surroundings they could without drawing notice. “Yes, it all sounds… well you know my concern. The folks here don’t care for ‘nter-national business and the like. The world is very simple when you’re out here, and my duty is upholding that for them. I don’t need no spotlight,” he said irritably. “People rufflin through my own affairs.”
“Me either. We’re not ones to upset the applecart, if you’ll excuse my yankee expression.”
Daniels smiled with only a little venom at the reminder of David’s roots. “I can’t say I trust you, but you’re honest with me and that’s something. Assure me one more time about how I see my end.”
“You will strain to see it, and be grateful for that. Investment opportunities to your son in law, your niece getting that job she wanted, strong donations to…” he glanced at the children and quieted his voice even lower, “...your Pee-Ayy-See.” He sat back, relaxing. “You’ll see it because you know. Everyone else sees a successful patriarch. What’s more American than that?”
His fingers drummed the hand-fan as he surveyed David with iron eyes. The moment lingered, children laughed nearby them. Daniels got up from his seat. “Come with me young man, I’ll be addressing the crowd in a little bit but first, let us consummate this in my fashion.”
Not quite knowing his intentions but being certain the moment was critical, David followed wordlessly.
He felt the rise of a deep anxiety, one emotion of many that he troubled himself to gain mastery over a long time ago. They were headed straight for the pavilion.
“Now don’t take offense but I shouldn’t be seen with you too exclusively, so I’m going to part ways and visit with this crowd, this one right up ova hea. But I want you to see the pastor and let him work his faith on you. I only carry on with healthy types, you see. Spiritual. Do that, and when we’re back in DC we can talk turkey.”
His mother was kind to him, one of the very few humans he would do anything for. The only person who would tell him the world is good and he believed it. He certainly wouldn’t sully her memory by doing anything for this southern hog. To deny her this and then do it for himself? What would she think?
Daniels was lathering up the crowd of constituents he said he would, and David was on his own to approach the pastor. The line for healing was not very long.
“Tell me what ails you, my son.”
Please find someone. Someone good. I need it. I don’t care! I want it! His mother’s voice assailed him, words preserved in mint condition from all those years ago.
“I uh… my shoulders twinge painfully sometimes. I don’t sleep half as much as I should. I–” he stammered. He hated this man. He hated this festival. He hadn’t fought the urge to punch anyone so strongly since he was an adolescent. David lived a life selling anything to anyone, but hope should never be sold to the suffering like this. “I’ve got too much on my mind. It troubles me sometimes,” he felt defeated. Giving honesty to this charlatan felt like the only sin he’d ever known.
Pastor Bundy took him in a half embrace, open palm hovering “Oh lord, hear me and the plight of this young man…”
* * * * *
“Get me out of this bullshit,” he sneered at his assistant as he crashed into the backseat of the Camry. Hands trembled slightly, sucking wind like he’d just lifted something heavy, he threw his satchel onto the seat next to him.
“Yes, sir.”
David, feeling the opposite of healed, stewed and let his thoughts wander as he watched the world go by out the window as they drove that long drive back in total silence.
