The Voting Machine

Friends in Need

Annabelle took the wheel again after this close call. By the time we finally arrived in Las Vegas it was past 2:00 a.m. We pulled into a business motel off of Sahara Avenue and she paid for two single rooms so we could crash and regroup in the morning.

I should've been exhausted by that time, but instead I couldn't sleep a wink. My adrenaline was going from all the changes I'd been through in the last 24 hours.

My thoughts returned to Annabelle again. I remembered how scared she looked when the police sniffer dog went through her car. Maybe this was another trigger for the flood of painful memories, the days when she was a desperate junkie driving a car full of cash for Los Empresarios.

Then my mind turned to the overnight in the Twin Towers, the chance encounter with Juan Ricardo. Then there was the murdered inmate, the old man with no face and a tattoo crawling up his arm. The image stuck with me. Maybe it wasn't a snake after all. It was thinner and longer, like a vine. The image haunted me as I tried to recollect exactly what I'd seen.

I turned on the light in my motel room and found a Bible in the top shelf of the nightstand.

I'd tried to read the Bible a few times before in my life. It seemed to me like a random collection of episodes. Some of these stories had a deeper meaning. Some of them didn't make much sense at all. I guess it was kind of like life in that way. Maybe that's why the book had held up for such a long time.

That night I read a chapter I'd never come across before. It was the story of Job, the man who lived a good life and lost everything for no apparent reason.

Annabelle greeted me in the morning with a Styrofoam cup coffee in hand. It was still early but the desert sun was already baking the asphalt of the motel parking lot. She was dressed for the heat, wearing a tank top and hiding her hair under a Salinger for Senate baseball cap.

The campaign field office was run out of the chapter of a carpenter's union on South Jones Boulevard. A white room in the back was full of tables cluttered with cheap phones and laptop computers. Most of the volunteers were college kids making calls and typing information into the PCs.

On a wall behind packs of bottled water, energy bars, and juice, a huge whiteboard listed campaign goals:

Location Hours per shift Goals

Phone Banks 2 60+ voter contacts

Neighborhood Walk 3 10+ contacts

Voter Reg Stand 3 5+ voter reg forms

High Trafficked Areas 3 12+ contacts

Location Scouting for Voter Reg Stand

- DMV

- Social Security

- Unemployment Center

- Post Office

- Library

- Discount Store

An old man by the white board greeted me. He was thin with white hair, spectacles and a generous smile.

This was David Stone, the main organizer for the Salinger campaign, the man who would become my mentor in Las Vegas. Annabelle left me with David and explained she had to run some errands at the Sunflower clinics.

David offered me coffee and a granola bar.

"Are you OK?"

I laughed self-consciously. "Not really. It's been a rough couple of days."

"Annabelle told me you had some trouble back in LA. She said you were a great person who had a bad string of luck."

"I'll be OK," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I couldn't sleep too well last night. I ended up taking the Bible out of the night stand and reading the story of Job."

David smiled. "Are you religious?"

"Depends how things are going. When life is good it doesn't matter whether God exists. When life is trouble I need him as bad as ever."

"I know what you mean," he said. "I am not religious but I do read the Bible. God and Satan had a debate whether Job was really a good man. Satan argued it was easy for a man to be good when he had the things he wanted. So God decided to take everything away from Job and challenge his integrity."

"The part that really struck me was the way Job's friends treated him," I said. "They all thought he must have done something wrong to fall so low. They figured Job had to be at fault. Otherwise, why would all these bad things happen to him?"

"It's hard to know if we're at fault sometimes, Temo. We have to look inside ourselves for the answer. I don't know you very well. But I can see that you're a compassionate man. I think you'll find a way to forgive yourself. Maybe you'll find some satisfaction working with me. It's really up to you."

"Let me give it a shot."