HIZZONER DE MARE

  

“Mayor Mike Wilson, 69, died in his sleep last night. His wife, Mary Ann, told our reporter that he had gone to bed around 9:00 PM and when she went to check on him an hour later, she found him sitting up in his bed with an open bible on his lap. The distraught widow refused to answer any questions, begging callers to leave her to her grief.”

So read the top story in the “Rancher’s Weekly” in Shorthorn, TX (population 6000). Only four of those 6,000 knew that the Sheriff, responding to a frantic call from an unknown female, found the Mayor out behind the stockyards next to his car stone cold dead, with his pants down around his ankles. The caller was never found.

The death of a small town mayor is usually not news anywhere except among the locals who then gossip about it for years afterwards. But in the faraway state capital, Austin, the news was a shock to legislators and lobbyists who depended on Mayor Wilson in every statewide election for decades. It seems he had a gift for supplying whatever numbers of votes were needed to swing a victory for his party. How a small city in a small county could routinely provide more votes than there were eligible voters was a mystery no one in Austin could fathom but none of them cared to wonder about for too long.

Mayor Mike Wilson had become very rich during his 30 year tenure as mayor. His second wife, Mary Ann, 28, had once been 2^nd runner up in the Miss Dairy Queen pageant, 2^nd runner up in the Texas Teen contest, and 2^nd runner up in the Miss Texas competition. Now she was the 2^nd richest widow for 500 miles around.

By the time the real truth of the mayor’s death became known six months later, Wilson’s heir apparent had re-established the connections to Austin’s grifters, and the graft resumed as before. But at least the locals had the mayor’s inglorious death to sift through; and small town grist mills grind exceeding fine.

I was a traveling farm equipment salesman ranging from the Panhandle to Brownsville in South Texas. Shorthorn was on my route and I had made a habit of stopping for a short beer at the “Almost OK Corral Bar & Grill”. Jesse the bartender set a mug of beer at my usual place at the bar when he saw me drive up.

“Hey, it’s good to see you again. How ya been?”

“Doing ok. Sales are better than last year. The new Slice n’ Burn nutcutters are a hit with the ranchers all up and down the Panhandle. I think it’s the mother-of-pearl inlays on the handles and the built-in cauterizer that does it; all electric, two lithium batteries; go all day. Bull to steer in under a minute. Probably sell just as good here. Might even sell some to the Mexicans across the border.”

Early prototype of "Slice n' Burn"

The three cowboys sitting at the far corner of the room were guffawing loudly. One of them said something else and the laughter got louder.
 

“What’s that about?”

“Oh, you heard about how Mayor Wilson really died, right? Well, since the truth came out that’s all anybody is talking about. First, they said they were shocked. Then they said, oh yeah, I knew all about it. Then with each telling somebody added a new tidbit, true or not. Then when that game got old they started making jokes. Now they’re making jokes about Wilson’s young widow being the 2^nd easiest lay in the county; the cowhands going back for seconds, that sort of thing. Not saying she’s slow witted or anything but you ask her anything and she says, 'Just a second.' Tending bar I hear all this stuff over and over.”

The front door opened and a man stood there for a moment as though he had forgotten why he’d come.

“That’s Cal”, said Jesse as he set a longneck on the counter. “He must be at least 80 by now, lookin’ better n’ me and I’m only 60.”

He was 170 pounds of old cowboy, sunburned sinew and gristle spread over 6 ft. 2 inches. He took off his greasy hat, gave it a dusty slap against his thigh, grabbed the longneck and sat two stools away from me. He gave me a squinty sideways look that told me he’d decided I was harmless, took a long swallow of beer, and signaled Jesse for another.

The cowboys started laughing again and Cal snorted in disgust. “Sumbitches call themselves cowboys. Just sittin’ there gossiping like a bunch of old hens. Don’t know shit about cattle or horses. What’r they cackling about now, Jesse?”

“Same as yesterday, the Wilsons.”

“Shit.”

He caught me looking at him. Turning to me he said, “You’re not from around here, I can tell. California, I bet.”

Before I could answer he said, “Mister, Mayor Wilson was the slickest Texas politician you never heard of. I didn’t like him much but then there’s damn few people I do like. Wilson had the good ole boys in Austin eating out of his hand for years. Imagine that! A dirt poor cattle rancher become a millionaire from miscounting votes. Paid off for Shorthorn, too -- a rodeo arena and Community Center that holds more people than live in the whole county for god’s sake. You tell me how a pissant town like this gets the State and the Feds to build us brand spankin’ new courthouses. First Class all the way, too. A lot of money got spent out here in the middle of nowhere.”

He didn't say any more, turned back to his beer. I couldn't help myself. I just had to ask. “So how did a dirt poor cattleman become mayor?”

Cal winked at Jesse who shook his head, grinning, and started polishing his beer mugs. Cal turned full on to me and said, “Well, now we’re talking about the mayor’s race in ’81. That’s how he got in the first time. He won again two years later. After that nobody bothered to run against him. But that first race --- that was something to behold. There weren’t no TV commercials and stuff. It was just old fashion rallies with lotsa speechifying. Hell, nobody running had any money; and besides, this county’s so poor there wasn’t any spare money to donate. The campaign signs looked like cheap copies of “Wanted” posters like you see in the movies.

 

“Jesse, do you remember the first time Wilson got elected?”

Jesse put the mug down and leaned against the bar. “Yeah, I thought the town had gone nuts. Five candidates for a job that pays nothing. It was Big Bill, Randy, Cody, the blind Meskin guy Raúl, and Wilson.”

Cal said, “What a hoot! Big Bill ran his campaign from the county jail. Randy was in the psych ward in Amarillo. Everybody knew Cody was nuts. And Raúl was blind and deaf!”

I looked back and forth at Jesse and Cal. The hook was set. I swallowed it and followed with the line and sinker. I put a twenty on the bar and asked for another round of beer.

Cal paused and waited until Jesse came back with fresh beers, including one for himself, pocketed my twenty and laid a stack of ones next to my mug. Fresh beer in hand, Cal said, “Big Bill had a fine opinion of himself and he liked his guns. He strutted around town campaigning suited up like a TV gunslinger; six shooter strapped low, snug up against his leg. His big idea was to bring law and order to Shorthorn, except the only crimes we had were petty vandalism. Hell, the last big crime was the Calahan boys rustling a half dozen steers back in ’78. Them dumbasses got lost out past Wild Rose Canyon. Me and the boys rescued them a week later nearly dead from thirst. Had to keep their daddy from beatin’ ‘em to death.

“Jesse, you were at Big Bill’s last rally, before he went to jail, right?”

What Big Bill saw in the mirror

“Yeah, I was. Ole Bill was holding a rally at the town square going on and on about how he didn’t want Shorthorn to become like the big cities full of crime and drugs. Some guy standing in the back asked if he knew who was shooting campaign signs full of holes. Big Bill ignored him at first but the guy kept on about it. I was standing next to a guy who was holding up a sign with a picture of Cody’s face on it. Big Bill saw it and pulled out his shooter and put two bullets in it. One in each eye, quick like. Everybody scattered or hit the dirt except for the Sheriff who stood his ground and arrested him. Judge Porter put Bill in the clink for a 30 day stretch at county."

Cal said, “UFO’s, the Marfa Lights. You travel around a lot. Ever see any? Randy did, all the time. Don’t rightly know what UFO’s had to do with being mayor but he ran for it anyways. For years Randy told the folks about triangle shaped aircraft flying over his land but nobody else ever saw ‘em. Everywhere he went, everybody he talked to got an earful about his visions. Nobody believed him, of course. Some of us laughed in his face. About a month before the vote he started hallucinating about being abducted by aliens and being probed like a hamstrung hog. That last thing made the folks at his rallies kinda uncomfortable, but I think it was the tinfoil covering the windows in his house that made his wife commit him to the psych ward in Amarillo for six months.

Got Milk?

“The hell of it is that in 2005, the flyboys at Lackland AFB in San Antone, fessed up about experimental, triangle shape aircraft they had secretly tested about the same time that Randy said he saw them. Now he won’t stop talking about how the Air Force was just covering up the truth about alien visitors.”

“Then there was Cody”, Jessie said. “Lotta folks here and about thought maybe he spent too much time alone in the desert. He had a fossil museum over on Third and Main. Visitors would go in and look at the fossils he’d dug up over the years, which was fine until Cody went into his talks about how the earth was 6,000 years old; how his bone collection proved beyond a doubt that men and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. Some tourists stood and listened (he could go on for hours). Most of them backed out as fast as they could.

“But, I gotta tell you. At one of his rallies he did say one thing that almost made sense.”

 Cal’s eyebrows shot up and he glared at Jesse.

Cody's Flintstonemobile

“Now, don’t look at me like that, Cal. It’s crazy, I know, but it made me stop and think for a minute. He was telling the crowd that Shorthorn would do itself real proud if it elected him, a God fearing Christian. There were some ‘Amens’ in the crowd. Then a kid in the front row asked how did Noah get the dinosaurs into the Ark? The crowd got real quiet, like they never thought of that before. Thinking, how did dinosaurs get on the Ark?

“’That’s easy,’” Cody said “Dinosaur eggs”.

Cal said, “Nobody ever thought Big Bill, Randy, or Cody stood a yella dog’s chance of winning but there ain’t much to do on market day after the shopping’s done so going to the voter rallies was a way to pass the time. Make a day of it, you know?”

Jessie added, “Well, with the three of them out of the way, that left Raúl and Wilson as the only candidates with any chance of winning. Which I thought was kinda funny because I didn’t figure Raúl had any chance at all, being a Meskin and all of us being whites but people were talking him up. The tide was moving his way just 10 days to go to Election Day. Didn’t I say things were crazy? Maybe something in the water.

“I couldn’t figure it until he came into the bar one afternoon and started talking to me about my ex-wife. He knew stuff nobody else could know except my divorce lawyer and my ex.

“That’s when I knew that blind and deaf Raúl was blackmailing half the town. He mighta been half blind but his hearing was real good.

“How did he do it? Raúl made his living by being a gopher and courier for a lot of the lawyers working out of the old courthouse. They paid him a buck or two for each delivery. They gave him contracts, settlements, and decrees to deliver from one lawyer to another. He wore bad suits, looked sloppy, didn’t ask any questions, and was always available. Everybody knew him and paid him no mind. He just hung around the offices, listening to lawyers talking among themselves or on the phone. He read the documents they gave him to deliver. So, if the Sheriff got you on a domestic beef, Raúl knew all about it. Divorced --- details. Bad debts – details. Raúl was the fly on the wall in the town’s livin', breathin' soap opera.”

I know everything. Everything

Jesse took the empty bottles off the counter and went to fetch another round.

Cal cleared his throat and said, “Only thing Wilson was good at was lyin’. Smart people thought he was dumb. Yes, sir. He was so dumb he got rich. He didn’t know much about ranching but he knew people. You might say he was coyote smart. No matter what you did to protect your chicken pen or your pocket, he’d find a way in.

“He always had big plans that never worked out, like the idea to make his place into a Dude Ranch. Or the time he thought NASCAR would come to Shorthorn if it was promoted right; always looking for an easy way to make a fast buck. Couldn’t rightly tell why he wanted to be mayor. The job wasn’t much at all.

“Ya know, the Meskin, Raúl, almost won, too. If it wasn’t for the County Clerk giving Wilson the votes we woulda had a blind, deaf, Meskin mayor. If anybody thought there was something fishy they didn’t say nothin’. Wilson wasn’t anybody’s idea of a mayor either, but at least he was white.

Cal saw the look on my face when he said that. He put his hands up to his chest palms up and said, “Things ain’t like that anymore. Town’s changed; people changed.” Glancing over at the laughing cowboys in the corner, he said, “Well, most of us anyway. Maybe you can leave one of your nutcutters with me on account. Might have a need for it after all.”

Jessie cleared the empty the longnecks on the counter, rubbed his chin and said, “Best move Wilson made was to marry Betty Jo, the County Clerk, a few months after the election. Folks scratched their heads over that. Betty Jo was plain as can be; thirty years old, a spinster for sure. But when Wilson looked at her he saw a beautiful thing. He saw POWER and an easy way to get it. With Betty Jo counting votes he could sell Shorthorn County votes to Austin --- as many as they wanted. All he had to do was propose to Betty Jo and win the first time.”

It only matters who counts the votes

                         

Author’s Note:
This story is fiction. However, some of the characters in it are based on an real election that took place in a real town in Texas in my lifetime. For the purposes of this story, the candidates’ attributes were modified to make the story believable. They were more bizarre in real life.