The Voting Machine

Defending the Vote

Brenda showed up at the campaign office every morning. She'd make outbound calls and do database updates. We were a little nervous about sending her out for face-to-face campaigning and she was too.

Brenda's presence in the office definitely energized David. Sometimes the two of them would talk and laugh for hours in the meeting room, reminiscing about Cheyenne High School. Most of Brenda's fellow classmates were still hanging around Las Vegas. Most of the guys from her graduating class were unemployed or in jail. The girls could make good money while they were young and pretty, working as waitresses or strippers in one of the hotels.

A few kids entered the service like Brenda and went off to Iraq or Afghanistan. Time was usually not very forgiving to the students after they left Cheyenne High, each year would hit them like a boxer's punch. They'd learn to bob and weave. Or else their body would just absorb the blows until they collapsed.

The challenges of Cheyenne High were the sort of thing that David loved: working in a school that everyone else had given up on, helping kids that the world no longer cared about. Watching David and Brenda together reminded me what a remarkable man he was. We were all lucky to have him in our life.

David was such an oddball in Las Vegas, an idealistic intellectual in a city centered on money and cheap thrills. It seemed like an isolated existence in some ways, but I knew David thrived on being different. No one ever forced him to stay in Las Vegas all these years. He loved to try to make something beautiful grow in a barren landscape.

The following week, Brenda asked if she could go down to the Dollar Delight booth by the DMV. It was time to get some experience in public, she felt. It was all part of her plan to get out of the cast and start walking in the world like an average citizen.

She'd progressed tremendously since she began volunteer work. It reminded me of how desperate I was when Annabelle and David took me in, how their care and support helped me turned things around.

Still we were all a little nervous about sending Brenda out into the field. So we all went down for her first shift at the registration table.

By the time we arrived at Dollar Delight, Fatima, Ravi, and Paula had already attracted a circle of interest. Brenda wore an Air Force cap and T-shirt. Strangers approached her to find out if she was a veteran and praised her for her service.

It was interesting to watch how many people signed up simply because Brenda caught their attention. Macho, old white guys who did tours in Vietnam and Korea. Young Latinos returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They wouldn't have had the slightest connection with the rest of us, but when they saw Brenda, they saw one of their own. If a fellow soldier was taking her time to register strangers, then maybe it had some value after all.

An Army sergeant named Sally walked by and remembered Brenda from time spent in Kuwait, when the troops were mobilizing for the initial invasion. Sally introduced her girlfriend and announced they were moving to Iowa where the two women could legally marry.

A crew of Founding Fathers cronies arrived around 3:00 p.m., holding American flags and signs that read "DEFEATOCRATS" and "SORE LOSERS." It was over five weeks since the incident with Fatima and the arrest of the Midnight Riders. Zeke was missing from the group, but he'd clearly sent them with a message. His team was back in action and last month's failures were a distant memory.

"Salinger wants America to fail!" a husky man in a cowboy hat hollered. "His supporters have lost the game of life. They want to drag the whole country down with them."

"Losers! Losers! Losers!" They chanted as they waved their flags. They were even nastier than usual. It must have been the August heat. A few of Zeke's sweaty thugs pushed against the people at the table. The man in the cowboy hat shoved Ravi and the kid shoved right back, still fuming after what happened the last time they showed up. David and Annabelle were pinned to the wall of the Dollar Delight as the whole crowd retreated as Zeke's team advanced.