Chapter 128: Stormy Weather

Thursday, July 20, 2000

They learned, all right! By Thursday they were heartily bored and sick and tired of the whole thing. The first day or two had been interesting. Marilyn and I had never taken the kids to Kentucky or Tennessee, not even on vacations, so everything was new and interesting to them. We would roll into some little town, and the local Republican committee would have a stage set up somewhere, maybe the local school or the courthouse or veteran’s hall. The local organizer would introduce Holly and Molly, who would then do four or five minutes and introduce me. I would come out and hug my daughters, and then deliver a stump speech. Afterwards we would meet the local reporters, have a meal, and climb back on the bus. Two hours later we were someplace else.

During all of this I would be surrounded by ‘consultants’, who would basically plan everything I did, from the time I woke up, until the time I went to bed. There was a wardrobe consultant, so that I would be appropriately dressed. If I had to wear a suit, they would decide what color suit and shirt and tie; if I was in shirtsleeves, they would decide how far up the arm they would be unrolled. If they didn’t stay at the appropriate height up my arm, they would be more than happy to staple them into position. There was a speech consultant, to edit the stump speech as needed. There would be somebody to liaison with everybody locally. There were food consultants to tell me what I was eating and when. There was probably a bathroom consultant, to make sure I took Vice Presidential dumps at appropriate times.

You have to be real damn careful with consultants. Consultants are professional worriers. You can’t make a joke since it might just offend somebody. You can’t say you are for something, or against something. You can’t give details lest they be turned against you. The best politicians know when to ignore the consultants and let the chips fall where they will. The worst campaigners ended up like Mitt Romney, afraid to say anything to anybody without it being run through a consultant and ending up looking phony and plastic.

Do all this for twelve hours a day or more, and it gets real old, real fast. The twins learned not to eat very much at these things. By the end of the day, I wasn’t sure where I even was, and I needed help to not fuck up by not knowing where I actually was and who I was speaking to. By Thursday the girls were making up mock versions of their speeches, and our chief handler caught them practicing them in front of some laughing reporters on the bus. As a VP candidate, I had national correspondents along with me, not so much to cover what I was saying, but in the hope I would manage to fuck up massively on camera. I was sent back to stifle my daughters, and it really burned his britches when I sat down with the reporters and laughed along with them. Afterwards I told him that so long as my daughters were poking fun at their dad, the reporters would laugh along. If they poked fun at the Governor, I’d clamp down on them. What a nitwit.

I figured I’d call Marilyn and get them sent home over the weekend. It would give them a break and she could use some feminine companionship for a bit. I probably wouldn’t see her again until the convention. At 2:00 we rolled into Springboro, Oklahoma, which was somewhere east of Shawnee, which was somewhere east of Oklahoma City. We had already been through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Friday and Saturday would see us into Nebraska and Kansas. By Sunday I would be doing mock speeches in the back of the bus myself!

Still, everything looked normal. It was warm, but not ridiculously so. The weather forecast was for a heavy thunderstorm in the afternoon. My speech was in the high school gymnasium, and even though it was the summer, they had the “Pride of Springboro” - the Springboro Okies basketball team and the Okie Cheerleading team - there to liven things up. Well, that was the plan, anyway. As we got off the bus and headed into the school, I commented to the girls that it looked like we were going to get a real thunderboomer, it was dark and getting darker, with clouds on the horizon, and that in these flat plains, they’d probably be able to see it coming from miles away.

We went inside and used a couple of empty first grade classrooms as makeshift dressing rooms before heading towards the school gym. Outside the sky kept getting darker, and the wind seemed to be picking up as well. Still, I’ve been in thunderstorms before, and as long as the power stayed up, nobody cared. We were directed to the gym, where a stage and backdrop were set up, and were moved to hide behind the backdrop. The local dignitaries were there, the mayor, the school principal, the town council, and the local Republican honchos. I would meet the various Congressmen and Senators at dinner that night in Oklahoma City.

After a few minutes, Holly and Molly made their way to the stage, amid a lot of cheering and applause. They did their speech and then called me out. I came out and gave them both a hug and sent them off the stage. “Thank you! Thank you! I am so glad to be here! Now, let me ask you, are those girls great, or what!” There was some more cheering and applause, and the twins dutifully came back out with smiles on their faces, waved again, and departed. “It’s good to see the cheerleading squad here, since my girls are cheerleaders back at Hereford High. As for you fellows on the basketball team...” More raucous cheers - basketball is a big deal in Oklahoma! “ ... Sorry guys, they’re still a little young for you! I might let them start dating when they hit their thirties!” More laughter at that.

Suddenly the world’s loudest siren went off, seemingly right over my head! Everybody in the room started talking, and I looked over at the guy next to me, who happened to be the mayor. “Fire alarm?” I asked.

“Like hell! That’s a tornado siren, mister!” He grabbed the microphone from me and started giving orders. “Everybody, down to the crawlspace! We’ve got the time but drop your stuff and get down to the crawlspace!” He kept exhorting people to move their butts, while the school principal and a few members of the basketball team started directing people.

One of the campaign guys yelled in my ear, “We should be leaving now!”

Just that moment I heard a big crash outside, probably from the wind picking something up and throwing it around. I grabbed my girls and yelled back, “Like hell! We’re going to the crawlspace!” Maybe the twit could go outside and check, and he could beat us to Nebraska, air express, so to speak. I pushed the girls in front of me towards the crowd heading down a flight of stairs. Suddenly the lights went out, but emergency lighting kicked in, and we found ourselves in a large and filthy concrete basement. The noise from outside the building reminded me of a freight train, and the ceiling above us was shaking and dust was raining down. I pushed the girls to the floor in a corner and lay on top of them. Then I felt somebody land on top of me, and I looked around to find the terrified face of Jerry McGuire, one of my traveling security guys. I was protecting the girls, but he was protecting me.

The freight train kept getting louder and louder, and there was a sound of screeching torn metal, and dirt was falling around us, probably decades’ old dust off the ceiling of the crawlspace. I should have been terrified, but I was too scared for that. I had my eyes closed to keep the dust from blinding me, and around me I could hear people crying and screaming. I don’t think I was one of them, but I know my daughters were. Eventually the freight train left, just vanished suddenly, and all we could hear were some sirens, regular sirens. The tornado siren was quiet, mercifully.

People started climbing to their feet and helping others up. Somebody opened the door to the school, and light came in, and people began moving out of the crawlspace. Everybody was gawping at the sight. The roof was missing over part of the school, and that’s where the light was coming from. We kept moving out. All of us who had been in the crawlspace were filthy, and the twins had runnels of tears going down their faces. They had their arms around me. “It’s okay, it’s over,” I told them. “Let’s keep moving.”

The surprising part to me was that after the storm blew through, the weather outside was bright and sunny. The general direction of traffic was towards the outside, so we moved in that direction. For once the reporters were ignoring me. They had a real-life calamity to play with! Outside it became obvious that Springboro had been well and truly trashed! The tornado siren over the school had been toppled over and had crashed through the front end of the campaign bus. We were stuck in Springboro for the foreseeable future. Around us, the remains of several houses were laid flat. Off to one side a sudden fireball lit the sky, and a bunch of people began running that way, including the reporters.

Organization began to grow, however. The school gym and lunchroom were still viable and safe, and they would be a makeshift shelter. A volunteer fireman and the mayor were on a walkie-talkie sorting things out. Another local big shot called for volunteers to search some of the nearby homes. I turned the twins to face me. “You two need to stay here. I want you to go down to the gym and volunteer. People need help.”

Molly started crying. “NO! You have to stay here!”

“Molly! Molly! I have to go help! You two are safe here. You help out here, so I can help out there.”

“Daddy!”

“You have to help!”

I pushed them into the arms of their security guard, a young woman in her late twenties named Amanda Baines. She and Jerry were listed in the entourage as campaign staffers, not security. She hugged the girls and herded them towards the building. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up and help out.”

As soon as they were out of my hair, I turned to Jerry and said, “Come on, let’s go.” I ran up to the fireman, and asked, “Where do you need us?”

I don’t think he recognized me, and he just pointed at the next street over, which didn’t look as badly hit. “Check those places and see if anybody is trapped inside.” He turned away from me when somebody yelled that nobody was under one pile of rubble, and they moved on to the next. I shrugged at Jerry, and we went in the opposite direction. We went over a block and looked around. Looking down the street, it seemed that these houses ranged from just some loose siding and shutters to imminent collapse.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and everybody was at the campaign rally,” I told Jerry. That had been the reason that the destroyed house had been abandoned a moment ago; people knew everybody in the small town of Springboro and the family was at the rally.

“Let’s hope so,” he replied.

People were coming out of their homes around us and staring in amazement. At the house we were in front of, however, nobody was coming out. We wandered around to the back yard and yelled out, “ANYBODY HOME!” as loud as we could.

We were on the verge of leaving when Jerry said, “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“From over there!” He led the way around the corner and there was some crying from what looked like a basement door, one of those things on a slant with some doors on top. Now I could hear the sounds, but no way were we going down to the basement. Part of the garage had collapsed onto it, and we weren’t going in that way without a chainsaw and a crane. “ANYBODY DOWN THERE?”

“SAVE MY CHILDREN!” came out weakly.

I looked at the house and then at Jerry. “Oh, shit!”

“Mister Buckman, this place is going to come down any moment!”

“Then we’d better move quick.” The place looked like a traditional center hall colonial two story. I ran back around to the back and scrambled up onto the remains of the back porch. It didn’t collapse under my weight, so Jerry joined me, and we managed to pry the back door open. Inside it was dark, and everything looked like it had been knocked off every shelf and out of every closet. I ducked my head and slowly went inside, stepping softly.

“Oh, this is a bad idea!” I heard behind me. Then there was a loud creak as Jerry put his weight on the floor.

I turned and said, “Hold it!” I heard some voices ahead of me and to one side. “Wait for me. Give me a moment.” I kept moving forward through the kitchen, as the building creaked around me, and got closer to the voices. They were from a door to the cellar, just off the hallway, which looked sprung. I got down on my belly and stuck my head through the opening. “Anybody down there!”

“HELP! WE’RE TRAPPED! YOU HAVE TO GET MY BABIES!”

“Oh, shit!” I muttered to myself. “WE’RE COMING!” I yelled down the stairs. I began tugging on the door and opened it enough to be able to slide through. I turned back to Jerry. “I’m going down into the basement. You can probably make it over to here.”

“I’m coming with you!”

“No way! I’ll send the family up. You have to get them outside!” I wriggled my way through the cellar door, and wedged my back against it, pushing it even further open. The door shrieked at the abuse, but I got it to the point somebody could come back up. “I’m going down now!”

There were a couple of windows in the basement, so I had some light. It looked to be about eight feet deep. I was halfway down the stairs when there was a loud crash, and I went tumbling into the basement. When I climbed to my feet, I saw the stairs had detached from the wall and collapsed under me. Jerry’s head was at the top, at the door. “You alright?”

“Just peachy! You stay there. I’ll send people up.”

“How many?” he asked.

Good question! “I don’t know yet!” I went towards where I heard some voices crying and found the problem. A rack of canned goods had fallen across a doorway into their little emergency shelter. I pushed the rack out of the way and was able to easily open the door. “I’m coming in!” I called out.

I was greeted with a scene from a bad movie. Two little children were there, along with their very pregnant mother. She was bleeding badly from a cut on her right calf. Over in the corner a dog was nursing some puppies. All I needed to make this a disaster-of-the-week film was the requisite escaped convict and a nun.

Mom was crying for me to get her kids out, but she was in bad shape. I tried applying pressure to her cut, but it wasn’t helping. Meanwhile Jerry kept yelling for me to tell him what was happening, and I couldn’t answer. I looked around wildly and found a roll of cotton clothesline. I had no choice. I fashioned a tourniquet just below her knee, using a piece of scrap lumber to twist it. Thankfully she had passed out by that point, so I managed to get her up into my arms and carry her towards the steps. The little kids were trailing along with a flashlight.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.

“Sightseeing! Listen, she’s hurt bad. You need to drag her outside and get her some help!”

“Oh, crap! Lift her up here!”

I managed to pull over a couple of crates I could step on, and then lifted the young mother up as high as I could. It wasn’t enough. I just didn’t have the strength to lift her over my head and to where Jerry could grab her. I set her back down and ran back for the clothesline. I tossed it up to him, and he let down enough for me to tie it under her arms. Then, with him pulling and me lifting, we got her out. “I’ll be back!” he yelled. Above us the floor creaked ominously, and I grabbed the kids and ran back the other way.

They were little kids. The boy looked about five or six, his sister about three or four. “Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Carl. What’s yours?”

“I’m Billy. That’s Molly. She doesn’t talk to strangers,” he answered.

“That’s cool. I have a little girl named Molly, too. When we get out of here, I’ll introduce you to her.”

“Is Mommy going to be all right?” he asked. Molly just looked at me with the widest blue eyes I had ever seen. They were both blond and blue-eyed.

“Oh, sure! You bet! She’s going to be fine! We’ll see her as soon as we’re out of here.”

Just then the dogs moved around some, and one of the puppies came over and sniffed at me. “You have to save the puppies!” cried Molly. It was the first thing she had said. “We have to save the puppies!” she insisted.

“I promise! How many are there?”

“Four. There’s three boys and a girl,” said Billy. “Maggie’s the mom.”

I looked over at Maggie, who was nursing the pups. She was a big shaggy dog with strains of golden retriever in her. This was going from bad to worse. “We’ll save everybody!” I said. I just hoped somebody would save me!

“Do you like puppies? Dad says we can’t keep them all. Would you like a puppy?” he asked.

This kid was going to be a salesman someday! I bit off the idiot reply I wanted to make. I just had to say something to keep these kids calm and under control. “I love puppies! I’d like the girl puppy.”

Just then, I heard a voice at the top of the stairs, and I went back, followed by the kids. Jerry was back at the top and had thrown down the rope again. “Come on! Let’s get going before this whole place collapses!”

I tied a bowline around Molly, and we got her out fast, and then Billy went up. Outside I could hear Molly crying for the puppies. Jerry yelled down, “Come on, get up here!”

“In a minute!” I ran back and found a couple of big plastic trash bags. I scooped up a couple of pups and tossed them inside and then ran back down to the stairs. “Here! Take this!” I tied the clothesline to the bag, and he pulled it up.

The bag was squirming, and he yelled down,” HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FUCKING MIND?”

“Yes! There’s more coming!” I ran back and corralled the last two pups into the other bag and went back. This time I was followed by their mother, Maggie, who did not look overly amused. The last two pups went up. A minute later, Jerry was back, and I tied the rope to Maggie’s harness. Thank God she didn’t have a collar! She went up. “That’s it! Get the dog out and come and get me out of here!” I told him.

I heard the floor creaking as Maggie was dragged barking from her house. Jerry was cursing the mutt but managed to get her outside. By now I could hear sirens around the house, so somebody must have figured out where the fun action in town was. Then I didn’t care anymore. The creaking became a crashing, I tried diving for the floor, and everything went dark. I screamed from something ripping into my chest and left arm. It got quiet at that point.

I saw what happened on the news later. One of the reporters, with a cameraman lugging around his equipment, missed the mad rush to the explosion on the other side of town, and caught the tail end of Jerry and me heading to the other street. They caught Jerry crawling into the house after me, and started filming, and then others started gathering. By the time Jerry got the mother out, somebody had called an ambulance. When word hit that Congressman Buckman was involved, all the reporters left the scene of the fire. They were there by the time the kids started coming out. It was decided that the place was too dangerous for more than one person, so Jerry would go back in and hand off the kids and dogs to one of the people outside. After Jerry got the dogs out and was on the verge of coming back for me, the house shifted and partially collapsed a second time. That was when something fell on me and knocked me out. After a couple of minutes, things settled down and a bunch of guys were able to pull me out of the rubble. I came to as I was being pulled out.

The sunlight outside looked pretty good to me. I hurt all over, so that was probably a good sign as well. A paramedic type was trying to work on me, so I grabbed him with my right hand. My left arm didn’t seem to be working so well. “The woman, is she alright?” I asked. I hadn’t wanted to use a tourniquet, but I didn’t have a choice. You can do more harm than good if you fuck it up!

“Settle down, Congressman.”

“The woman, did she make it?” I demanded, a little more strongly.

“Yeah, she’s fine. She’s on her way to Shawnee. You’re going next,” he told me. “Now, calm down.”

I sagged back a little at that. Maybe I hadn’t cost her a leg. “The kids.”

“The kids are just fine. And the dogs, too. That was stupid, Congressman!’, he told me.

I couldn’t argue with him. Just then I heard a screaming rampage and the words, “DADDY! DADDY!” Holly and Molly came busting into the circle around me.

I grinned at them and gave them a thumbs-up sign with my right hand, and that got a lot of applause and cheering around me. A cop was keeping them back, but they outflanked him and ran to the gurney I was being lifted on. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

The final part of the entire mess was when a little blond-haired boy managed to sneak through the entire group and made his way past the cop to the gurney. “Hey, Mister! You want your puppy?”

I twisted my head enough to see that Billy had a squirming brown fuzzball in his arms. “Oh, my sweet suffering Jesus!” I muttered to myself.

Holly and Molly stared at me and then at little Billy and the puppy. “Daddy?”

I laughed, and that hurt. “Holly, take care of those two kids. Molly, take care of my puppy!”

Holly wanted to argue, and Molly just stared in confusion. “We’re going with you.”

“No room!” replied the ambulance guys.

“Take care of the kids!” I ordered her. Then something went into my arm and things began getting fuzzy. “Take care of the kids...” Things got dark and quiet again.

When I woke up, I had that hospital room feeling. It was bright and white and out of the corner of my eye I could see a window. I tried to twist my head around a bit, but that hurt, and I groaned a touch. Then I heard something rustling and I kept twisting around and saw a very nice sight. Marilyn was in a cheap armchair near my bed and was stirring awake, sitting up slowly and rubbing her eyes. She saw me and smiled. “We have to stop meeting like this!”

I smiled and laughed, but that hurt, and I said, “Oh, don’t get funny. Where am I?”

“You’re in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in the hospital. How are you feeling?” Marilyn stood up and came over to me. “Oh, God, why do you have to keep scaring me like this?” She bent down and kissed me quickly.

I groaned a touch. “Even that hurt!” I said, smiling. “How are the girls?”

“They’re fine. They’re back in Springboro, taking care of the kids you rescued.”

“Huh?” What was she talking about? “What’s going on? How’d you get here, anyway?”

“What, do you have amnesia or something?”

I gave her a perplexed look. “No. The last thing I remember was being dragged out of the basement of that house and talking to the ambulance guy and the girls. Then he stuck a needle in me and here I am. What happened? What day is it?”

“It’s Friday. It’s only been a day. You’re national news, Carl!”

“Huh?”

“Some of the reporters managed to get a satellite feed going while you were in that basement. They reported live on your rescuing the Torquists. They even cut into the afternoon soaps and Oprah. I watched them drag you out of that house!” she told me.

“Who are the Torquists? Was that their name? We weren’t really introduced.”

“No kidding. That’s the family’s name. Andrea called me when they pulled you out all covered in blood, and she told me the Gulfstream was being fueled up and to get my butt out here. I landed last night, while you were in surgery.”

“Huh! Are they alright? The Torquists, I mean. And why are the girls there? And can I get some water?”

Marilyn smiled down at me. “You bet, hero.” She poured some water in a glass and held the flex-straw to my lips. I sucked it dry. “Yes, everybody is fine, everybody except you. And Mrs. Torquist. She’s in intensive care right now, and she had her baby last night.”

“Oh, Christ!” That would have been all I needed! “So, what’s with Holly and Molly?”

“Don’t you remember? The last thing you said to them before being loaded into the ambulance? You ordered them to take care of the kids. They said you kept repeating it, that and something about a puppy. Did you get a new puppy, Carl?” she asked, grinning.

It started coming back to me, the idiot promise to the little kids in the basement and the scene around the ambulance. I groaned and mumbled, “Oh, Christ!” again. I looked over at her. “Did I?” She grinned and nodded. “Oh, Christ! So, the girls are still there? Why?”

“They were saying something about you giving them your final orders, your dying orders. Molly was very melodramatic about it all. They’re fine. Mrs. Torquist’s sister lives nearby and she took the kids and the dogs and the twins in. I went over there last night after they started working on you and calmed them down, but they insisted on staying there.”

“Where’s their father?”

“He’s a long-haul trucker. They tracked him down in California. I sent the plane to bring him home. He’ll be here this afternoon.”

“You’d better call them and tell them I made it after all. Good Lord! My dying orders? You’re kidding me, right?” I rolled my eyes. “So, you flew here from home, saw me here, drove to Springboro, saw the girls, and then came back? Did you get any sleep? What are you, Superwoman?”

“Able to leap tall husbands in a single bound!”

Marilyn opened her purse to pull out a cell phone, and a nurse came into the room. “Congressman! You’re awake!”

I nodded, which hurt, and asked, “What happened to me?” From what I could see, most of my left arm was bandaged, and I could feel some pain in my chest and some constriction there, and what felt like a bandage on the left side of my head.

“I’ll get the doctor!” She scurried out of the room.

I glanced over at my wife, who was talking into her phone. “ ... he’s fine. He’s wide awake and chasing a nurse out of the room. Here, you can talk to him.” She handed me the phone. “They’re your daughters!”

That’s never a good sign. I took the phone and held it to my ear, all of which hurt. “Who’s there?”

“DADDY!” screamed Holly. Then I heard her yelling to somebody in the background. “IT’S DAD!”

“Hi, I’m just fine. Now, you two are relieved of duty! Let those poor people have some rest and I’ll see you later today.” I felt suddenly tired, and Marilyn took the phone from me.

She smiled at me and said into the phone, “Now, will you two calm down? I’ll be there sometime around lunch and rescue the people you are staying with.” I heard the ‘That’s not funny!’ from where I lay in the bed. My wife hung up on the girls and turned back to me. “How old were you when your family kicked you out?”

“We still have a few weeks to go before they’re that old.”

“Feeling better?”

“Water, please.”

Marilyn got me some more water and then the nurse returned with another woman, about the same age, but with a more serious look about her. She smiled as she saw that I was awake and alert. “Congressman Buckman, I’m Doctor Elizabeth Shooster. How are you feeling?”

I gave her a wry smile. “I think you’re supposed to be telling me that, Doc. What happened to me?”

She looked at Marilyn. “Is he always like this?” she asked, smiling.

“No, usually he’s much, much worse.”

I shrugged, but that hurt. “How about, I hurt all over?”

“That’s to be expected, but it will pass. All right, here’s what happened to you. When the building collapsed, something jagged - probably a wooden floor joist - clipped you on the side of your head, and then kept moving down, and buried itself in your left pectoral muscle and...” She stopped when she saw I had no idea what she was talking about. “It dug in here and here...”, she explained, tracing a few areas on her own chest, “ ... and also dug into your upper left arm.” She tapped her own arm in emphasis. “While that was happening you also cracked a couple of ribs on the left side. They’re not broken, though. You also lost a lot of blood. So, when you came in, we pumped some blood into you and removed the wood and splinters and sewed you back together and taped your ribs.”

“Now what?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Now you get better. We have you on lots of antibiotics and some painkillers. You’ll be here a few days and then we can send you home. You’ll be wrapped up for a few weeks, but you’re in excellent shape. Three months from now and you’ll just have a few more scars to talk about.” She sounded like she was finished, but she didn’t leave, and she looked like she wanted to ask a question.

That was interrupted when Marilyn’s cell phone rang. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the name pop up on the little screen. She flipped it open and said, “Governor?” After a few minutes chatting, she gave the phone to me. “It’s Governor Bush.”

I wasn’t surprised. “Carl, how are you feeling? I hear you’re out of surgery and awake.”

“I’m just fine, Governor. It was nice of you to call. Thank you.”

“Listen, I’ll be flying in later. I’m at a fundraiser in Denver right now. We can talk and make a few plans, do a press conference, that sort of thing.”