All of the Above Read online

  All of the Above

  Timothy Scott Bennett

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2011 by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Published by: Blue Hag Books, Eastport, Maine

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. And remember: the best way to thank an author is to write a review. Thank you for your support.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First Edition: August 2011

  Smashwords Edition: March 2016

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Connect With the Author

  An Excerpt from Rumi's Field

  Smashwords Interview With the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Endnote

  Those who cannot remember the past

  are condemned to repeat it.

  George Santayana

  There are none so blind as those who will not see.

  John Heywood

  Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

  there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

  When the soul lies down in that grass,

  the world is too full to talk about.

  Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

  doesn’t make any sense.

  Jelaluddin Rumi

  (translated by Coleman Barks)

  To Sally, my sine qua non.

  Chapter One

  1.1

  “She’s gone, Bob.” Mary spoke into the darkened room, her voice clogged with disbelief.

  “What happened?” Bob rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her palm.

  “Slipped away somehow. At the farm.” Mary’s voice hardened. “We fucking lost her.”

  Bob ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging an elastic ponytail holder. She squinted at the opened door. “She should never have been told.” Bob untangled the rubber band and placed it on her bedside table.

  “It wasn’t our decision. You know that. Spud insisted. Despite what the General said.”

  Mary reached over to flip the light switch, stopped when Bob shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Bob laid her head back down on her rumpled pillow and closed her eyes. “We’ve got to stop her.”

  Mary nodded. “Yeah. I’ll work the public side. Manhunt, cover story, the works. We’ll find her.”

  “I’m not so sure. She’s not like the rest of them.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “Guess I’ll go back to sleep,” said Bob with a smile.

  “Sweet dreams.” Mary left, closing the door quietly behind her.

  1.2

  Cole Thomas frowned at the stop sign before him. He scrunched his nose. How long had he been sitting here? He couldn’t say. His head felt strange, unclear, as though spattered with thick mud, and he shook it, trying to dislodge the heavy gobs now clinging to the inside of his skull. A gust of cool air buffeted him through his open window and he shivered. The woods to his left were strangely silent, stripped of the usual cackling laughter of waking thrushes and jays. The street sign said he was at the corner of Boston Spoke Road and Gray Mountain, but he had no recollection of the past couple of miles.

  A flash to the right caught his eye, a movement through the wall of white pines lining the ditch, back-lit by the rising sun. Darkness eclipsed him for a moment, then passed, as though a huge bird had just glided by. He knew, without even knowing it, that that bird was not a bird. He looked at the clock on the dash: eight-ten. It had taken him twenty-five minutes to drive the three miles from the kids’ school. It didn’t make any sense.

  Cole glanced up Gray Mountain Road. Nothing. Of course that didn’t mean much. The rise to the right blocked any reasonable view of an oncoming car. Bad design, thought Cole, the same thought he had every morning at this particular spot. Someday he was going to ask the selectmen to put up a sign, or one of those huge convex mirrors. Not that the tiny Vermont town of Hindrance had the money for such things. But for today, nothing to do but take your chances and hope that if somebody is coming they know enough to slow down. There was never much traffic on this road anyway.

  Gravel from Boston Spoke flew off into the ditch as Cole gunned the engine of his dusty, white Subaru, turning left onto Gray Mountain. The morning air fluttered his dark, thinning hair as Cole reached out to turn on the radio. He glanced up into his rear-view mirror. “Shit!”

  The car behind him leapt over the hill, huge and dark, a striking shark. It gave no sign of slowing. Cole floored the accelerator, jerked the steering wheel to the right, and punched his horn, all without conscious thought. The car behind honked in return and swerved into the other lane, grazing his Forester’s left rear corner as it sped past. Its horn blared on, shouting high then low as the car skidded counterclockwise and plunged over the hill on the road’s opposite side, punching deep into a shuddering tangle of pine saplings, sumac and honeysuckle. Cole hit his brakes and pulled over onto the grass-choked shoulder. “Shit!” he spat again.

  Late September’s morning sun peeked through the treetops, reaching across the front passenger seat with its offer of comfort and warmth as he sat, stunned. His breaths came in ragged gasps, each fighting the others for attention. Slowly he raised his shaking hands to his face, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. He reached down and shut off his engine and sat. The silence cooled his pounding heart. A full minute passed.

  “Hey!” A voice came from far away, ragged, angry. Who was yelling at him? Cole couldn’t remember, didn’t care. He wanted only to close his eyes and rest.

  “Hey! Is there anybody there?” The voice again. Cole remembered.

  Pushing the door open, fumbling his seatbelt, Cole clambered out, steadying himself with a hand on the luggage rack. His lanky legs were numb and heavy, still drunk with the toxins of fear. He pocketed his keys, glanced up and down the road. Not a car in sight. Dust settled slowly onto the pavement, flickering as it fell through the tiny spotlights that filtered through the trees. Hidden in the branches above, a mourning dove sang a timely lament. Latching the car door, Cole walked stiffly forward, brushing at his jeans with scarecrow flourishes. He knew that he had to help, but he didn’t want to go. There might be blood. Shards of memory hit Cole like shrapnel: a severed arm with three fingers missing. He crumpled that old photo in his mind and tossed it away. Cole did not like blood.

  The other car had almost disappeared down the ditch’s deep bottom, leaving only the right rear corner to protrude from the vast curtain of honeysuckle and sumac, the skeletons of wild chervil and the fading blossoms of Japanese knotweed. Faint tire tracks led back up through the wet grass to the road. A passing motorist would likely notice nothing. Cole picked his way down the hill.

  “Hello?” he said, choking on the word. “I’m
coming!” Near the bottom he slipped, lurched forward to catch his balance, stumbled right into the back of the car, banging his shin on the rusted bumper. Cole bent to rub his leg. “Hello?”

  The car was old, a dark green Oldsmobile Cutlass with a shredded vinyl top that had once been white. The lock had been ripped out of the trunk long before. A piece of wire looped through the rusty hole to hold it down. Cole moved around to the left, running one hand along the car’s top as he pushed back knotweed with the other. The smell of gasoline assaulted his nose and set his eyes twitching. Once through the wall of foliage he could see the rest of the car. The front end had crumpled into an awful smile, the Cutlass having been finally stopped by a thick white pine. Fluids leaked out in hissing drips.

  There was a woman in the car, shoulder-length blonde hair spattered with blood, leaning to the right from the driver’s side. Her left hand flopped erratically on the steering wheel. Cole moved forward. “Hello?”

  At the sound of Cole’s voice the woman’s head jerked up and around. Cole froze. He knew that face. Everyone knew that face. From the covers of magazines. From the net. From the evening news. It was bloodied now from a cut on the forehead, and the eyes were crumpled and worn and wild with fear, but there was no mistaking that face. This was Linda Travis. The President of the United States.

  “So, are you gonna help me or what?” said the President.

  1.3

  “Oh, God,” Cole mumbled, looking around for help. This couldn’t be the President. Not here. It didn’t make any sense. Up on the road a car slowed and passed by, a prattle of rubber on gravel and it was gone. They must be wondering about his car parked on the roadside. Cole turned back to the woman in the car, lurched forward on wobbly knees to paw at the door. “Let me get you out of there. I, uh—” He pulled at the handle.

  Pinched by the crumpled fender, the door would not move. Cole jerked on the handle. Again. He put a foot up for leverage. With a snap and a moan the door swung open, sending Cole backwards into the tangle. He landed on his backside with a crunch and a yip, laughed nervously and rose to his feet. “Are you—?”

  The woman in the car glared back. “We’ll deal with that later. Right now I’d like to get the hell out of this car in case it’s thinking of catching fire.”

  Cole nodded frantically. “Sure.” But Cole wasn’t so sure. With the door now open he could better see the situation. This woman’s legs, presidential or not, were pinned beneath a broken dash and steering wheel. Sticky blood seeped through her khaki slacks where part of the dashboard, a jagged dagger of green plastic, had plunged into her right thigh. The blood’s rich, rusty scent crept into Cole’s nose and sat there, poking and teasing and sneering at him. Cole wasn’t sure he could pull the woman out. “Perhaps we’d better call for some help.”

  The woman in the car shook her head fiercely, her eyes wide. “No! You can do this. Pull the knob and slide back the seat and help me out.” She fumbled with the seatbelt latch, yanked it open and pulled on the belt to free herself. “Just try the knob.”

  Cole squatted to find the black plastic handle under the seat, thankful for the instructions. “Slowly,” said the woman, pointing at the wound in her thigh, her face a stern mask. She closed her eyes. Cole nodded. He was sure now. This had to be the President. The face, the voice: there was no mistaking her.

  Cole glanced back over the length of the Cutlass. “The car’s pointing downhill a bit,” he said, trying to wrap his mind around the situation. “You’ll need to push against gravity. Against the steering wheel. And the floor.”

  The President opened her eyes, grasped the wheel with both hands, and nodded. Cole put one hand on the plastic dagger to hold it in place and with his other hand pulled the adjustment knob. The seat started to move forward and the President gasped in agony as the plastic dagger pushed deeper into her leg. With an angry cry she pushed against the floor. The seat slid back and Cole released the knob, locking it into place. The President bit down hard against the pain.

  With the seat back, Cole could better see both legs. The right leg, in addition to the gash, had a noticeable bend in the wrong place, just below the knee. Cole’s stomach sprang forward, searched frantically for escape and, finding none, fell back into place with a frustrated splash. “We’ve got to get some help!” Cole rose to go.

  The President shouted “No!” and lunged forward to open the glove box. The door swung down from the broken dash at an awkward angle and something black and heavy dropped into the President’s hand. Cole drew back. Too late. The President brought her arm up, pointed a gun at Cole’s heaving chest. “Sorry,” she said. “I hate this, but you have to listen to me right now. No help. You’re gonna have to get me out of here yourself.” She nodded back toward the road. “Let’s get going.”

  1.4

  Linda Travis had moved into the White House only eight months earlier. Because she was an independent, with no real money and little political experience, not to mention the fact that she was a woman, the pundits had been certain that it could never happen. Yet Linda Travis, just forty-four years of age, had taken forty-eight states.

  Her political career had begun just eight years earlier when her husband, Earl Travis, a Michigan State Senator, had up and died on her two days before her thirty-sixth birthday. He’d been away for the weekend, fishing with some friends, when, inexplicably, he drove his bass boat straight into a concrete pier, killing them all.

  Because he would have wanted her to, Linda Travis, who had spent the previous two years running the family farm while Earl had served, ran as a Democrat for her husband’s vacant Senate seat in the special election that followed. She won. Most said that her victory was due to her husband’s glowing reputation. Others declared that she would never have won had not her opponent, a Republican lawyer named Richard Sims, checked himself into rehab shortly before the election.

  In any event, it soon became apparent that none of that mattered. Linda Travis deserved to serve in the Senate if anyone did. Her strong and certain manner, and her blunt honesty, made her popular with both press and public, though many of her colleagues – “shoeshines,” the new Senator called them – regarded her with scorn. To them she was nothing more than a farmer’s wife now pretending to be one of them, floating along on a wave of sympathy.

  But a senior Senator, Ed Billings, an old farming man himself, impressed with her courage and intelligence, took Linda Travis under his wing. They became good friends and political allies. Two years later Billings ran for Governor, bringing Travis on board as his candidate for Lieutenant Governor. They won easily.

  Billings died three months into his term. A massive heart attack. Close chapter.

  Linda Travis, now the Governor of the State of Michigan, eulogized her friend and mentor with grace and humility. She would do her best to carry on, she said, and she vowed to always tell the truth. This she did. As the U.S. economy continued its long, slow death spiral following the disruptions of ‘07 and ‘08, as the housing bubble deflated and the market collapsed in on itself like a planned demolition, as the bankers splashed about in their quickly-draining betting pool of liquidity and solvency, jumping into their lifeboat bonuses and shouting for bailouts, Governor Travis was quicker than most of her peers to see that the situation was far more systemic, and far more serious, than they were willing to admit, and she warned the people of Michigan that the road through this would be long and hard. As budget deficits piled up, even in the face of drastic cuts, and as jobs in the hundreds of thousands disappeared overnight in a puff of smoke and mirrors, she hammered at the state political apparatus, demanding and getting the cuts and concessions she asked for, to delete the waste and keep online the essential services people would need if they were to avoid falling through the cracks. At the same time, she used her bully pulpit to call people together as communities of first responders, helping them organize themselves as much as possible into the interwoven and resilient safety nets she knew they could become. She said straigh
t out that things would be changing dramatically in the coming years. Many, at the very least, appreciated the straight talk.

  As surprised by her current situation as anyone, Linda Travis plunged into the job. She was a quick study. While there were those who pointed out that Ms. Travis was now governor as the result of two tragic deaths and one mental meltdown, most of her colleagues grew to respect and admire her for her own abilities.

  There was no doubt that she could touch the public. When asked, at a news conference, why she and her husband had never had any children, her response was quick, charming and to the point. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, looking about the room in mock confusion. “I thought we were talking about state government.”

  When the reporter persisted, asking the governor whether or not she agreed that the people had a right to know who it was who governed them, Linda Travis put down her notes, took off her glasses, and smiled.

  “Have you ever flown on an airplane?” she asked the young man sweetly.

  “Of course.”

  “When you got on the plane, did it matter to you whether the pilot was married, or had kids?”

  “Uh … no.”

  “Did it matter to you what the pilot had for dinner? Or whether he enjoyed the opera?” She arched an eyebrow. “Or whether she wore boxers or briefs?”

  The reporter just stared.

  “What did matter?” asked the governor.

  “Just … whether he …” the young man flushed, “or she … knew how to fly the plane.”

  Linda Travis nodded smartly and looked out over the pressroom. “Any other questions?”