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Naomi's Fate
By the time I reached our temporary home, John had heard the news on the radio, and spread it through the house. I was welcomed at the door with ridiculous compliments but brushed straight through the crowd, grabbed Sheila by the arm and upstairs to the bedroom, closing the door.
“Look” I said, “I may be in a little over my head, but I know this job isn’t over yours, and it will be a nice house for all of us. It has a fountain.”
She burst into laughter when I said this but that’s what I wanted, no complex discussion of the situation, just her acceptance of it, and that I received with a kiss.
“Together we can get through this, maybe even do some good. You handle the management and I’ll handle the speeches. We’ll make decisions together, as we always do.”
Everyone gathered in the dining room, all full of questions, how it came about, what would happen next, were we moving soon, what to wear and how to act. Like a tactful politician I evaded all questions and simply said:
“Well, I’ve got everybody a job, anyone who wants one. We’ll be moving into a fine house with plenty of amenities, starting tomorrow. But don’t let it get to your heads because it won’t be like former times. There’s very little media, just a few radio spots, maybe some interviews. You won’t be famous but all of you can help serve the country, whatever. Jane and Jim, I’d especially like you to come along and you too Myra, so the children can be together. That’s one reason I took the post. Tom, I would really appreciate your advice in military matters. If you need a few days to prepare for the move, so be it. Miranda, Anya, you’re coming with Sheila and me tomorrow first light, so go pack.”
That sent them running upstairs and gave Sheila and I an excuse to retire for more serious talk. I brought up the matter of Naomi, told her I would like her as a sort of hostess, to arrange ceremonies and manage guests, play the courtesan she was so good at, that is, if she was still alive and consented. Sheila knew of our past affair and her charm and asked why I was dredging up old memories, as if reliving the past.
“She’s more than a memory. She’s a human being who helped me long ago and I owe her. I’ve never had many friends and I’ve lost two of the dearest, Nancy and Bill. Let me collect the few I have left. You know I’ll never be unfaithful to you. But her presence there will lift my spirits and at the same time humble me, remind me of my roots. I’ll love you all the more for accepting that.”
She agreed, saying she still felt guilty over the way she treated Nancy and, in a way, alienate me from her, and that this might help heal that wound, being a parallel situation which this time she would handle more wisely. There’s always a secret jealousy between women over physical beauty, even when they know they have better qualities, because they know that most men, in their stupidity, will always chose the shallow charms. Sheila gave me the benefit of the doubt in this case, and I promised to live up to it.
We arrived the next morning by plane, assembled the skeleton staff and asked them for a list of the people who had worked here before general Kurtz died and the place went into mothballs. A small military unit was at our service and their first order was to find as many of these people as they could for interviews, which Sheila would handle. The other urgent business was to set up a public address system, a communications room, so that I could be broadcast from here. The one station in operation was in New York. They sent their experts to link us in. The General never bothered to go public. He was absolute dictator and didn’t need to.
I began the arduous task of leafing through the thousands of pages his staff had left behind. These were orders with his signature on them, the programs they suggested he implement. I quickly learned the names of the few who were competent and those of the sycophants to be ignored. They were at the top of each decree, a few carried out, most forgotten in the whirlwind of parties and hangovers that soon followed. But in the first months he did attach a few good advisors to his office, with the plan to form a civil administration for the country, to wean it off the military rule of the previous three years.
One of the few projects that got off the ground, (for all the wrong reasons) was the establishment of a national mint. A few thousand silver and gold coins had been stamped with his face as a dashing, young military officer on each one, the word ‘president’ underneath and a bald eagle on the other side. The small factory that made these coins was nearby. A few hundred coins went into circulation as the only legal tender the country had. Most remained in his vault in the basement. He opened up Fort Knox and transferred some of the gold for these smiths to begin their work. But after a few inspection tours, worried about his gold, he thought someone was stealing from him, though the place was full of his soldiers. He had some of the metal workers shot on the spot. He spared the two engravers because he liked his picture and they couldn't be replaced. The project was nixed.
I restarted it on a scale that would serve us. We needed a standard currency and for now coins would do. Up until now the barter of goods was all we had. Most of the population not in the military was employed in farming or fishing. The farms had been self-sufficient. But with tractors and modern boats and gas their output grew tenfold. People began to specialize, and shops were sprouting up in small towns, bakers and meat and fish shops, besides the weekly open-air markets where they traded.
There were stores with soaps and candles, pickles and sweets and sundries in some of these towns. In cities a few dentists and optometrists set out their signs. Bad eyes and aching teeth couldn't be ignored. In the past all items were freely looted by anyone who wanted them. Now some things were growing scarce and for convenience these new stores met the local demands. We needed a standard currency. It fostered a new class of specialists, promoted talents in various fields, a small, middle class of tradesmen. Someday you wouldn’t leave your broken tractor beside the field and drive a hundred miles to gas-up a new one or tour the ghost malls for a few years supply of clothes and shoes. They’d be emptied out and shoemakers and tailors would be in demand.
I ordered the face removed, with the heads of our former presidents in its place, three silver coins and three gold ones, their size representing their value, minted in large amounts and slowly put into circulation in each state by their governors, exchanged for services and goods.
Before this the military had a system of tickets issued to their ranks. Cafeterias fed everyone, with nicer commissaries for the higher ranks. They covered the few scientists, doctors and civilians working in refineries, and staffs like my own. They controlled the gasoline, which was free to any vehicle that drove up, allotted to farmers and fishermen for the food they supplied. The system was simple, and I didn’t want to complicate it. The people abhorred the idea of taxes, which the recent memories of the Church kept vividly alive.
But in long talks with Wilde and Johnson, they agreed to supply me with some of their troops for civil purposes. We re-established a postal service. I convinced them the first priority in organizing a nation was to know its strengths and this would entail an accurate census, which hundreds of mailmen in local offices could carry out. They’d stay in uniform, ready for war, and their officers would be assigned something like counties and take on the role of postmaster and civil administrator, mayor in other words. The two men were delighted with these suggestions.
In our first meeting they offered me the roll of president for four years. I thought about it and decided I should only hold the office for two, as an unelected, interim, president, what the Romans called an ‘interregnum’. In that time the census could be completed, and an election held. I used my full store of historical knowledge in the planning of our new government. I knew I had the advantage of forming it from scratch, a rare opportunity for correcting past mistakes, a small population to manage, with everyone busy in the business of daily survival.
The generals spent most of that first month with me, and what they thought would be tedious discussions, hashing out the limits and details of my administration, turned into long fireside chats, after dinner, always with Sheila and Tom and a few of their staff who most impressed us, some of us smoking cigars with a brandy in hand.
I knew our agrarian society would soon turn into a village based one, with the mint and mail. But I insisted the government grow as slowly as possible, no wasteful institutions and functionaries, the Church’s mistake, few laws, something like the Roman twelve tables, which served them for four centuries, no police, soldiers could handle disputes. My unique idea was no punishment for any crime except relocation, the worse the crime the further from the community it happened in. I wanted to design a utopia for all and believed there was a place for all. The few serial killers or predators we might find could be dropped off in Oklahoma, or better yet, handed over to Pirate Jack. He and his gang would gladly take on the chore.
“Let our ruffians take care of them” I said. “They have a code somewhat looser than ours, which smiles upon the petty sins of drunkenness, fist-fights, adultery, thievery and lying, especially if well done. But it compensates for this in one quick and simple solution for anyone who crosses these lines, a disappearance in the woods within days. They have no need for people behind bars. You’re either living or you’re dead. Who knows? They might even gain a few recruits.”
They were intrigued by my philosophic views and laissez-faire approach. I was lucky in one matter that plagued most societies, a divisive religion, since the Church had blemished any thought of that in this generation. Anyone could believe what they wanted in private or assemble in small groups for worship. I opposed any organizations, any ethnically biased clubs, any business monopolies, even public education, as that would require rules and regulations and teachers we didn’t have. No forced assimilation, no indoctrination. That was my motto. We were too busy for schools anyways. Beyond good behavior to others, people could live as they pleased.
By Christmas these simple innovations were under way. I delivered a one-hour speech to the nation then and another on New Year’s Day. I don’t know how well they went over, as I got little feedback. But I did get some. The first recruits to our national mail service were being put in place and the first letters addressed to the White House started flowing in, because in both speeches I asked that anyone with ideas on how to run this country send them in. The mail was free. I promised a response. Sheila had organized a crew of secretaries in our building to handle correspondence, another for files and another for international affairs. Miranda and Anja joined this small office in the basement, helping translate the trove of documents we acquired with the Russian ships, Anja’s English improving by leaps and bounds.
My one disappointment was in not being able to locate Naomi. Many of the former staff of general Kurtz were gathered up and interviewed and some of them re-employed. They said that in the days after his death the White House emptied out. They’d heard of the coup of the three generals in Calgary and assumed that Johnson would soon be here with an army, for a radical change in the order of things. The puppet generals vanished, along with the governors who had hardly visited their states. Kurtz, in his last year was handing out appointments like candies to his select club of banqueteers. Those who praised him the most got the biggest states. They knew their tenure was up and they vanished like fruit flies with the platter taken away. They grabbed whatever loot they could pilfer, from a house full of booze and gold and disarray. Naomi vanished too in this mad exodus.
I’d given up on ever finding her, even the thought of her, with all my new concerns, when one day in the third week of January a letter addressed directly to me was brought to my desk. It had a very distinctive envelope, and the staff knew it must be personal. It was pink and it was perfumed, heavily so. Inside I found your typical Hallmark greeting card embossed with a rose and opening it, on a blank page in beautiful handwriting I read:
“Glad you finally made it to the top. I always knew you would. Best of luck, Naomi.”
It had no return address. Such details in our land were still far and few. I was overjoyed that she was alive and immediately summoned the clerk who handled our mail to my office. Within an hour the postman who delivered it stood in front of me. The fact that it was pink and so perfumed made it stand out in the small stack of white or brown envelopes we received daily. The postman distinctly remembered receiving it from a courier from the south, Florida, he believed.
He seemed like an intelligent fellow and I sent him off with my presidential order to find this woman as soon as possible, describing her looks as I scribbled my note, giving him command over any postman in the field. He rushed off, probably thinking it was some matter of national security from my urgency. He must have travelled through the night. The next morning, I received a personal, almost frantic, call from him in Gainesville. He’d questioned the seven mail carriers for that region and found that the envelope had come from the general store in Pensacola, a town now boasting a population of fifty. The clerk distinctly recalled receiving the letter, it was so odd. A woman fitting my description, well-tanned and wearing sunglasses dropped it off and drove off in a Mercedes, not your typical farmer’s wife. He promised he was sure to find her soon. He was on his way. I promised the man a big promotion. This was one of the few moments I fully relished the perks of being the president.
I told Sheila the story that night. She’d been silent on the subject since our first talk, but now that the woman was likely to appear, she still had her doubts about her influence over me.
Sheila had never met her and only seen her from the far end of a long banquet table, where I pointed her out one night long ago. The next afternoon, sitting in the oval office with my feet up, smoking my pipe and doing little else, Sheila enters and tells she just saw Naomi in the West Wing lobby, directing the doorman to have her four suitcases taken to her suite, adding that she looked stunning, and that all fears were justified.
I gave her a hug, reassured her and had her pull up a chair beside me while Naomi was ushered in. I introduced Sheila as the First Lady, as I took Naomi's gloved hand and showed her to the couch opposite us. Naomi was indeed resplendent, with a dark tan as if she’d been lounging on some beach the last six months. She was wearing a knee-length, green skirt with pleats, stockings showing off the shapely contours of her legs, and stylish shoes with heals. She had on a pink blouse and a small, tight leather jacket with fur borders, for the winter I suppose. She also wore full make-up, red lipstick, eye shadow, dark eyelashes and a green beret cap, a highland look, matching her skirt and on a tilt, gracing her curly, blond locks playing on her shoulders, just as I remembered them. She remained silent, looking down at her hands as she calmly and slowly rolled off each white glove and put them in a small red purse at her side. Her fingernails matched the purse.
Sheila and I stared, speechless. I had to marvel that such a model of elegance was not only alive but in full bloom in this grey world, a splash of color on a black and white canvass, with all the poise and composure of that vanished high society as if nothing had changed. I asked politely how she’d been, a stupid question, as I could see she was doing just fine.
“First let me congratulate you on your promotion” she replied. “You seem so comfortable, both of you. This job must suit you. And you, Sheila, I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet and talk the last time you were here. Those days were so hectic.
“After you departed, the day he died, it was as if a riot broke out. Each of his tinsel generals were claiming they were in charge. It almost came to fistfights. But none of them had any regiments in town, only their personal guards. Our General would never allow such a thing, as if someone might depose him. One drove off to New Jersey, where he did have a few squads of tanks, but before he could return the news was out about the meeting in Calgary and we expected a real army to show up at the doorstep soon. That’s when everyone panicked and fled, the new governors with their escorts, taking everything they could fit into their luggage, stripping the house bare and their chauffeurs whisking them away. I watched but had nowhere to go.”
“I’m sorry we left you that day, Naomi. But we were in a rush, and we had to sneak away. Sheila had a waiting ship to catch, to deliver the vaccine around the world. It had to sail before the news broke out. She was away for three years.”
“I know you had urgent business Luke. You told me. Don’t blame yourself. Remember our last talk, everything between us was settled. Though I’m so glad to see you again. It’s been a tedious four years. At some points I thought I’d go insane.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“At first my plan was to remain behind and see who the next president might be. I had secrets he would need to know. The first day I just stayed in my room, looking out the window, watching the others flee across the lawn and hearing gunshots in the streets. The next afternoon there was a banging on my door. There were only a few left. It was the governor of Florida, with two guards. He was an overweight, balding man in his sixties. He could almost have doubled for the General. They were both loud, vainglorious and serious drunks. I think that’s why the General appointed him to such a large state; he trusted a man with all the same vices, as if he could predict him. They drank and smoked cigars together, put their boots up on the desk, and boasted of the women they’d conquered.”
As she said this, I felt a pang of embarrassment, too much similitude. I’d set my pipe down before she came in. Now I slipped it in a drawer, which only Sheila noticed. I also made a mental note never to put my feet up in front of her.
“This man was one of the lackeys” she went on, “who was closest to him. He was also a thief, making trips back to Florida for a few days, whenever some new find was brought here and the General showered gifts on everyone. I knew he had several mansions stocked with all sorts of treasures. Those were the rumors. I rarely talked to him, only a few times, sitting on the General’s knee. The General guarded me like a cat. But this man knew exactly who I was.”
“That’s why they kept an eye on me and stayed behind. The General had a wall safe behind that picture over there.”
She pointed to one on the wall across from her. I was so curious I got up and looked. Sure enough, she was right.
“There’s not much in it now. Just some treaties and such. We emptied it of all the gold and diamonds.”
Here she caught herself. “Oh, I’m sorry. I still have those, in my luggage. You can have them back if you want.”
“No problem” I replied. “But I will want to take a look at the papers. I never knew it was there. And I don’t know the combination. You could help us with that. But no rush. Go on with your story, please.”
She did. “Well, you saw the General in his last days. His mind was almost gone. Months before that, he started confiding in me, secrets, combinations, in case he forgot them. His crony suspected this, or maybe he told him. Anyways, they came for me when everyone else was gone. He knew about this safe and asked me to open it. This is when I made my deal with the devil.
“I knew I had no choice and that he’d hit me if I didn’t. But I also knew, from his leering looks all along, that he desired me. I told him he could have both if he promised to keep me safe in Florida. He instantly agreed. He repulsed me and I thought this arrangement would only last until things settled down, a few months. But he kept me a prisoner for two, long years using his guards, moving from one hide-away to the next. Then he died, much like the General.”
“Poor dear” Sheila exclaimed.
“It wasn’t so bad” she went on. “He never molested me. Drunks at that age can’t perform. He just wanted my comfort and a trophy wife, ‘the mistress of the president’, he would boast to his friends. He treated me like a queen. All’s I had to do was smile. We had parties on the beach, barbecues and bonfires. We even had yachts and took sailing jaunts at first. Then, when his health declined, his friends disappeared.
“I knew I’d have to deal with the two guards before he died. They had bad intents on me. One I sent away with a bribe, not to him but a local girl he fancied. For a matchbox full of diamonds, she seduced him and convinced him they had to flee the state, showing him the stones and saying they were stolen. This was when my protector was on his deathbed. A few friends still dropped by to say their last farewells. The other guard was a foul brute just waiting to rape me. I don’t want to say what happened to him, except that the house staff were all on my side and now he's at the bottom of the sea.
Chapter One ...
