Chapter 13

There was now a political vacuum in Dothan, and I rushed to fill it. I filed the necessary papers to be on the ballot for the new mayor. I had been ready for this, so I was the first one in with the paperwork. That put me at the top of the ballot; and I wanted to use any advantage that I could get. I also had my ring push my aura up to the maximum in attractiveness to both genders, but to try to keep a lid on the sex angle.

I made a TV spot plea for votes mostly because my ring said that my aura would come through over TV. That was worth testing, but it was the most expensive thing I did for the election.

I held another one of my bar-b-cue suppers to let voters see me in person. Dammit, I hoped that everyone who came to the supper was going to vote for me because this was nearly as expensive as the TV spot. Also, my harem electioneered hard for me in the high school, since there were a lot of potential voters who were Seniors. I think that I was the only one who went after the high school vote because the other candidates forgot that so many of the Seniors were 18 years old and eligible to vote.

Anyway, we all worked hard on the campaign and I won. I don't know the exact cause, but I got more votes that all of the other candidates combined. That was gratifying, but now I worried about justifying the trust of that many voters. I truly found out what was so attractive about politics to so many people when I first experienced being called Mr. Mayor and asked for my opinion and approval on so many subjects.

I followed Dad's advice and replaced all of the department heads who had been cronies of the former mayor and the Old Guard. That led to a lot of promotions from within the various departments, and that won me a lot of loyal followers among the city workers. Thank God that I was able to find so many competent people to head the departments because I had very damned little knowledge of the details of running each one. Anyway, after a few weeks of madly scurrying around, I was able to relax and spend my time on general policy matters instead of being buried in details. From this point on, being Mayor was fun!

Well, that idyllic utopia lasted for about five weeks. The largest United Methodist Church in Dothan suddenly was sent a Black pastor. It seemed to me that 90%+ of the members of the church were okay with that, but a few left the church amid all kinds of recriminations. I was not a member of the UMC, so I figured that it was none of my business what they did. HA! The whole town wanted a statement from the Mayor. The loudest side of the argument wanted me to condemn the UMC for the effrontery to the City of Dothan and its historic Confederate heritage.

I almost choked with laughter when I heard that one, but I didn't do it in public. At first, I refused to say anything on the subject, but, in keeping with my nature, I couldn't stay silent forever. In as diplomatic manner as I could manage, I did say that I figured that this was something for the UMC to settle among themselves. I also said that those people who were not members of the UMC should keep their mouths shut!

Well, that caused a real uproar. Mom and Dad were still in Singapore, so I did not have their advice to guide me, and Mary was not the kind who would go against my convictions, The result was that three days after my comments, a gasoline bomb went off in our front yard!

Nobody was hurt, but we all had the shit scared out of us. I did not know what else to do, so I asked for police protection. HA, again! I might be the Mayor, but I was way down on the popularity list of some of the cops on the force. Oh, I got a squad car parked outside my front door 24/7 (24 hours and 7 days per week), but most of the cops brought along reading material and snacks or slept through their assignment.

What the Hell could I do? That kind of guard duty was not what the local cops were trained for or had joined the Police Department to do. Chasing speeders and such was a Hell of a lot more fun, and the cops knew that they would never catch anybody with another bomb at my house. Anyway, after about three weeks, I canceled the guard duty as a waste of money and everybody's time. We didn't relax, but we gave up on getting outside help.

I had even called HS (Homeland Security) in Montgomery to see if they had any ideas about what to do. I talked to someone who seemed to know his way around the HS operations, and he said that there was not much that they could do. Their budget had been cut, along with all of the others, so they didn't have the manpower to look into my case. However, if someone was killed, then they could move in to solve the crime, but there was not much that they could do before that.

My God! That was a shock to hear! There was no way we could be protected, but they would try to solve the case if one of us were killed! I managed to keep my temper in check for the few minutes it took to finish the call, but I exploded after I had hung up the telephone. I was in my office in City Hall at the time, and my secretary came running in to see if I was going to survive. Well, with her help, I did, but it was a close thing!

When I got home, I called a meeting of the entire family, and that included Mary, to discuss how we were going to handle the situation. I didn't want to run, because that would mean that the bomber had won. On the other hand, I didn't want any of my harem harmed in the fallout from my earlier statement. I told them that I was not going to move, but I would do whatever was necessary if any of them wanted to move away from me until this was cleared up. Ann and Juanita had moved in with us, so now I had five women to worry about.

Of course, none of the women were willing to leave, and that did make me feel good, even though I was worried about them. We talked about the things that we might do, and the only solution that we could come up with was for me to investigate on my own. My ring could protect me, so that was not a problem. However, there was a problem in finding enough hours in the day.

I was tied up with high school all morning and part of the afternoon. The rest of the afternoon was spent in my office in City Hall or else out doing the myriad of public appearances and such that the Mayor was supposed to do. That left the evening for my investigations, but there would be no time for sex. None of us wanted that, but Sally came up with a workable solution: I would fuck only one of my concubines each night. That left me some time to investigate at night. I needed very little sleep; in fact, I could go for several days without sleep if I had to, but my ring cautioned me that I still needed about 10-12 hours of sleep per week.

None of us found this a happy solution, but nothing else seemed to present itself. I left it to Sally to set up a schedule for the women, and I would take whatever they came up with.

Meanwhile, I was getting so much flak from all sides that being mayor had lost a lot of its appeal. I refused to back down on my position that there was nothing inherently wrong with having a Black pastor in a mostly White church congregation. The thing that really scared me was a second attempt at assassination. This time, it was simply an attempted hit and run with a large van.

I had worked late one night at my office trying to catch up on some of the things that I had let slide while I was playing detective, and it was already dark when I walked across the parking lot to my car. I had refused a special parking place right by the door, so I always had to park across the lot because I never got to my office before 3:30 PM on school days.

Anyway, I had made it about 50 feet onto the virtually empty parking lot when a large van roared up and struck me dead center with its reinforced front bumper. I guess that my ring had anticipated something like this happening because my skin had been reinforced to the point of being indestructible, and all of my internal organs had the same treatment. The result was that I was thrown about 35 feet through the air, and the front of the van was smashed almost beyond recognition.

Naturally, the air bags in the van deployed. The driver, who was the sole occupant of the vehicle, was stunned and just sat there when the air bags deflated. I picked myself up off the ground and looked around to assess the situation. Seeing no further danger, I trotted over to the van to see what had happened there.

The driver looked like most of the male population of Dothan in that he was dressed in a tee-shirt, jeans, and canvas shoes. The driver was not unconscious, but he was still stunned enough not to be able to think straight, if he ever could. I called 911 for medical help for the driver, but I thought to try to question him while I had him alone. I asked who had put him up to this, and he answered, "Mr. Strango ordered me to run you down."

That was a surprise because I had never heard of anyone in or near Dothan named "Strango." I figured that must be a cover name or else Strango was from out of town. I was not surprised to hear that the driver's name was Billy Joe Harmon. Of course, I did not know him, but that name marked him as a local Redneck.

I did not get any more from Billy Joe before the EMS people arrived. I wondered why the cops were so slow to show up: police headquarters was only two buildings away and shared the same parking lot. The situation was beginning to look more and more frightening. Eventually, a cop did amble from the police building to take a statement from me.

The story I told did not include anything about actually being struck by the van, and, strangely, nobody asked why the front of the van was so totally destroyed. It was a if somebody very high up, higher than me, wanted to hush the whole thing up. The van was towed away, and there was no record of the affair in the police files when I checked later the next day. At first, I attributed that to sloppy clerks and cops who did not know how to type, but there was nothing a week later, so that really made me suspicious.

Having the file missing a week after the incident really shook me up. There had been no news reports on TV or in the Dothan Eagle, so there had to be a significant coverup. Certainly, a report of the mayor being struck by a van would have made the local news under normal circumstances. I asked Rachel Anderson about it, and she said that she was completely ignorant of the incident. That made me even more suspicious, especially when Rachel said the next day that she had checked the police log and had found no mention of the incident.

Obviously, from all of this, I deduced that there was a large scale conspiracy against me. That may had just been a flare up of paranoia, but it sure seemed justified at the time. After the experience with the van, I was confident that my ring could take care of most of my protection needs, but I worried about my women dependents. I might be invulnerable, but they sure weren't!

We discussed the ramifications of the situation and tried to find a way around the obvious problem. Finally, it seemed that the only solution was for me to disappear. If I did disappear, then the implied threat against my women would also vanish.

We spent several hours hashing out how we could make this happen without the women also getting into trouble. We had reached nearly to the end of the school year, so it was decided that I would visit my parents in Singapore for two weeks right after school closed for this session. The plan was that I would tell them what was going on so that they would not think me to be dead, but I would pretend to vanish on my way home. I would leave Singapore only a day or so after arriving and leave the airplane at some intermediate point. My parents would act as if I had decided to stay with them even longer, and I hoped that my enemies, whoever they were, would think that I was safely out of the way.