The Voting Machine

Scattered Seeds

The arraignment ended with Brenda's release without bail. The next step before going to trial was a preliminary hearing scheduled for the first week of September. Todd made it clear that his strategy allowed no room for compromise with Jane Holiday. He would take the case all the way to a jury before he'd concede any ground to the prosecution.

As the assistant district attorney left the courtroom, she appeared visibly weakened and seemed embarrassed by the hearing. Todd made it clear that her political bias and potential conflicts of interest would be a central part of his defense argument. Jane Holiday seemed alarmed to realize that she would be on trial in any prosecution of Brenda Savage. Her fairness and integrity as a lawyer would be held to scrutiny in a way that could damage her own career, as well as the prospects for Sandy Turner in the upcoming election.

Now all we could do was wait another couple weeks until the preliminary hearing.

The following weekend, Annabelle had travelled to Victorville to meet her father. I decided to walk to David's house three miles north of my motel. I was still worried about his health and David had a bad habit of leaving his cell phone off, which made it hard to check up on him.

When I arrived at David's house, I was surprised to find Brenda leaving from the backyard. She smiled and waved at me before getting in her car and driving off.

I found David in the back, sitting on the veranda by his flower garden.

"Temo? You just decided to drop in?" he said, smiling and a little suspicious.

"Sorry, I didn't know you already had company."

"Who, Brenda? Oh she was just leaving."

"You two were discussing her case?"

"No. We were just chatting about the old days back at Cheyenne High.

"Let me get you a glass of water or something," he said, ducking in the back door to his kitchen.

I waited in a lounge chair by the veranda. An awning protected the patio from the sun and kept the place remarkably cool. It overlooked a garden of marigolds, orchids, and roses. I wondered how he managed to grow beds of flowers in the middle of the desert.

After waiting at least five minutes, I went into the kitchen and found him passed out on the floor.

"Oh, my God, David. You OK?" I bent down to check his heartbeat.

"I am fine," he said, waking abruptly. "Just slipped."

"I should call the ambulance."

"Don't, Temo. I am fine," he snapped, rising to his feet quickly. "Anyone can take a fall. I am not some pathetic invalid." He was moving about with no sign of serious injury. His anger alone was proof that he still had some strength in him so I decided not to push it.

"Sorry," David said. "I get agitated so easily now. I am not mad at you or Annabelle. You are just trying to help. I am not even mad at Zeke and the people fighting us in this election anymore. They are just doing what I would expect them to do. What I am really upset about is time. My time is running out and I will never get it back."

David wandered into his living room and picked up the picture of his wife.

"I shouldn't complain," he said. "I've had a lucky life. I found love. That's more than anyone should ever hope for. It's something you can never expect and something you can never take for granted."

He set down the picture and turned to me absentmindedly. "Let's go out to my garden."

We went out to the back and walked alongside his flowerbeds. He stopped in front of a plant of white orchids.

"Most people don't realize you can grow flowers in the desert. Nevada actually has more native types of orchids than Hawaii."

"All my friends back east thought I was crazy to come out here to the desert. They thought this place was a spiritual wasteland, a city of desperate, empty people chasing sex, luck, and money. I wanted to show them you can grow something natural and beautiful in the most barren place imaginable.

"Every place you go follows the rhythm of nature, Temo, the cycle of birth and death. And finally you realize it's your turn to reach the end of the cycle. So you try to plant the seeds of what you've learned for the next generation."

David picked one of the white orchids and handed it to me.

"The truth is like seeds, Temo. We have to nurture it. If we don't, it will die when we die. If that happens for too many generations, there won't be any truth left. Our children will only know a world of lies and ignorance."

"That's not going to happen," I said. "When I met you, I realized how much we need the truth. I'll never be happy in a world of lies."

"Temo, there's a truth that's been hidden. It can't stay hidden forever. It has to come out."

"What is it, David?"

"I don't know yet. But I am getting closer. Finding this truth is my final mission, Temo. The problem is I don't know how long I have."

"How can I help, David? Tell me."

David walked back to his chair on the veranda. He covered his face to try and hide his torment. "I can't do it to you, Temo. It's not fair. You have your whole life ahead of you. I've got to do this alone."

David told me he needed to rest. I bought him some groceries from the corner market and then I finally walked home, stopping at a taco shop on the way home for carnitas on flour tortillas.