—But it’s hardly as if this has been handed to you, Max. You’ve worked hard to do what you’ve done, to get where you are. This hasn’t happened to you. Surely there must have been some motivation there, if not just right this second, then at some point. And if you had it once, you’ll have it again.
—That’s just it. I look at my life, I look at my daughter, and sometimes I can’t remember how I got here.
—So are you saying you don’t want to be Mayor or that you don’t know?
—I’m saying I don’t know.
—Is this serious enough to make you drop out of the campaign?
—I don’t know. Maybe.
—Well, I’ve got to be honest if it kills me, I suppose. It’s not too late to quit. You’d lose a little face, and there are people who’d be mighty disappointed, but four months is enough for someone new to step in if they had to. I’ve no idea who, frankly, but you need to do what you need to do.
—I don’t know if I want to quit. I’m not sure.
—Then how about this? Why not take tomorrow off and just have a three-day weekend? Spend a ton of time with Talon, don’t think about the campaign, although you’ve been doing a pretty good job of that on your own already, and just, I suppose, reflect. Search your heart and mind, Max. Being Mayor is something you shouldn’t do half-assed. There’s a lot of nonsense you have to put up with, and the job is only worth it if it’s worth it to you.
—I’m not sure that’s going to help.
—It either will or it won’t. Do it anyway. Unfortunately, the way things lie, I’m going to have to know one way or another when you come in on Monday. As much a martinet as it might make me, I want to have some say over who the next Mayor is, and if you’re out, there are a mind-boggling number of things to be done.
—All right. Sorry for the wrench in the plans.
—No, no, my fault. I’ve been the advisor in this whole thing. I thought you were having doubts, but I thought they’d take care of themselves. I was wrong. Take the weekend. Hell, go home right now. Let me know what you decide on Monday, okay?
—I can agree to that.
—My grandmother always told me that if you search yourself top to bottom, then there’s no such thing as a wrong decision. Whichever way you decide will ultimately be the right way, Max. I trust you.
—I’m assuming your grandmother didn’t tell you the part about how we sometimes make wrong decisions so we can be taught unpleasant lessons.
—Of course she didn’t. My grandmother was a very smart woman.
27. ‘Cleave’ Has Two Meanings.
Luther Pickett was born in Tishimongo Fair, that small, incongruously wet burg stuck deep in the crook of the Molyneux Valley, near the disputed Mohair Pass on the mountain border to the Rumour Land. Besides its more common and justified reputation as a literary bedrock – being the birthplace of both Joan Reachpenny and Christina Ungulate, as well as the summer home of Midge and Lolly Tottering and the location of the Alms Hotel where Shelbert Shelbert famously ended his life with Fergus Pangborn’s triple-barreled rifle – Tishimongo Fair was also the primary production spot of Archie Banyon’s Vallée de Molyneux Merlot, a ‘deeply spicy wine with a tart sensuality’ that made Hennington society matrons blush as they reached for another sip. Lachlan Pickett, Luther’s father, was the winery’s head of distribution. Having been raised by teetotalers, Lachlan knew effectively nothing about wine, but he was good with a clipboard, had a strong profile with a virile haircut, and exuded a calm confidence that deflected attention away from what was marginal competence at best. He had all the usual blessings of the physically beautiful: an equally beautiful wife, an array of jocular friends, and a golden son with a beatific smile and the usual knack for sports. This last, of course, was Luther.
The memories of Luther’s childhood before the tragedy were lit by warm, soggy sunlight. Tishimongo Fair caught both the rain from the mountains on either side and the heat that came north from the Rumour deserts. Long, steamy summers melted into long, steamy winters. The family wasn’t especially wealthy – Luther’s mother Annika was a stubbornly unsuccessful portrait photographer – but he could never recall wanting for anything. He remembered his home as a casual place with friends dropping by for dinner parties, baby showers, the whole list of middle-class fêtes. Luther was popular at school, did well in his studies to the surprise of his perplexed but proud father, and was a child of whom the dreadful word ‘potential’ was often applied. In short, he was happy, which just couldn’t last.
At twelve, the tragedy, shocking enough in its casualness to hit the newspapers and ultimately enter Tishimongo lore, came along and took Luther’s parents. On an unusually chilly autumn night, the Pickett family slept soundly in their beds. Sometime during their slumber, a Caucasus Asp, out of season and no doubt freezing to death, slithered into their house through an open vent near a basement window. The basement, unfortunately, also served as the master bedroom for Lachlan and Annika Pickett. The snake, sensing the room’s most potent source of heat, slowly coiled itself under the sheets, between their warm, dozing bodies.
First Annika stirred and was bitten, then Lachlan. Neither of them woke up before their deaths, witnessing only sudden and permanent ends to dreams. Wondering about breakfast, young Luther found them lying there the next morning. He jostled his father’s shoulder but was unable to rouse him. When he did the same to his mother and touched her exposed, cold skin, he realized something more was at work than simple oversleeping. His jostling awakened the snake, which now realized that its haven had cooled. The Jungle Dangers training Luther had taken at school probably saved his life. He stayed completely frozen while the red-and-white-speckled asp slunk across the floor to another snug sanctuary at the bottom of the linen closet. Luther dialed Crisis Services on his parents’ phone and waited, wide eyed and quiet, on the front walk until the paramedicals arrived.
At the same time, Archie Banyon was in town, making the dreaded annual inspection of his Molyneux vineyards. The dismal weather was not encouraging. His merlot required day after day of steamy sun, to the point where the grapes almost boiled on the vine. Drear could turn the year’s harvest sickly sweet if it stuck around too long. He was irritable and opprobrious and growing increasingly furious with the head shipping clerk for having the insolence to be late to a morning meeting where he would be asked to share his portion of the blame for the weather. Archie had, in fact, gone as far as making a great show of firing Lachlan Pickett in absentia in an attempt to strike fear into the vineyard’s other managers. He was mid-rant when the police showed up.
There is no more potent driver of charity than saving face, a fact which coupled nicely with the realization that Archie had also been in a vineyard when his wife and daughters had perished. He felt some fateful request was being made of him. Perhaps it was a reprimand for firing a dead man. Conversely, maybe the fates were giving him a child as recompense for the loss of his own. Whatever the reason, Archie adopted the blond-haired, serious-browed Luther without hesitation, sweeping him out of Tishimongo Fair and installing him in a hilltop mansion overlooking Hennington.
To Archie’s surprise and delight, Luther immediately turned out to be the ‘son I feel I’ve never had', always whispered out of earshot of Thomas, of course. Young Luther Pickett – he never considered giving up his last name, and Archie, in a rare show of modest sensitivity, never pushed it – was courteous, intelligent, hard-working, and showed an interest in Archie’s work. All of which could also be said of Thomas Banyon, aside from courteous, but Luther was just so much more likable. He wore none of Thomas’ surliness, none of that considerable anger that threatened to flash in inappropriate places, and perhaps most importantly, none of that resentment that made Archie