Jameson County Game Thread: County Commission Race

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I'm reserving this space for later, but I have a quick question: will we format this like the Americana timelines or will it just be letters to the editor?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

A Boring Day in the Boring Life of Gatewood Baxter.
Gatewood stared solemnly at his eggs and the small bit of still smoldering ash that sat between the baked apples from last night’s dinner and the biscuit smeared in honey and butter. For a man who was as skinny as he was tall, he didn’t live well. And he certainly never smoked at the breakfast, nor did he eat it at the table in the backyard. A gentle breeze made the morning edition of the Hensley Record flutter. It was fortunately weighed down by a coffee mug. There was only one obituary (written by him of course, in his capacity as director of the town’s only funeral home) in the paper that morning for a Mrs. Harriet Baxter, of whom he was sure he was a distant relative of in some capacity. It was not shaping up to be a busy day. He was beginning to regret buying out the funeral home, a rarely rash decision on his part.

Caroline and Julia had just left on the bus for another day at Hensley Elementary, a school that was not servicing them as it once had serviced him. While his two little girls performed admirably, he knew there instructors could certainly perform better.

The sliding door behind opened behind him, and Hannah walked out on the porch. It was a lazy morning for the family-little Olivia sat in front of the television, barely awake as a cheap, animated rip-off of Gatewood’s beloved Mr. Rodgers played on the screen. Hannah too was enjoying the easy morning, clad in a pair of gym shorts at a loose fitting t-shirt as she sat down silently next to Gatewood. Her long black hair hung in a ponytail over her left shoulder. For Gatewood, this type of casual dress was impossible. He was dressed in his usual black suit, even though he would not have to be at the funeral home for hours to conduct Mrs. Baxter’s wake.

With a slight smile, Gatewood inquired “too lazy to even put it into a hair clip?”
“You know it” Hannah said with a smile. Her smile was as radiant as it was when he first met her in Washington DC, following his divorce. He was at the time working for the Department of Agriculture for the Commodity Credit Corporation, a job he quickly grew to despise. Yet, his desire for a simple life has now only lead to a too simple life, one quickly growing boring even by his own standards. Yes, he enjoyed his work at the funeral home. There was a dark luster to it, yet in Jameson County, those not being busy born are certainly not busy dying.

“Do you ever think of returning to DC, Hannah?”
“I like it here. It is far more peaceful than DC, and the tensions and the lingering resentment that I experienced back home are just…just gone.”
“But it certainly seems….so boring. Nothing is getting done. Everything has stagnated. I don’t ask for much. We never go out. We never wanted too. But I want to work. And I want the girls to go to a good school.”
“I can call daddy-”
“We don’t need money, we are doing better than we could have dreamed in that arena, Hannah.”

Hannah’s father was one of the few men who shook Gatewood to the core. A former South Vietnamese colonel, he fled when Saigon fell, and ultimately became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In DC, he raised his younger daughter Hannah, who spoke English flawlessly, and without any trace of an accent (she was born five years after Saigon fell), and it was in DC where he first met Hannah when she was interning in the Department of Agriculture and he was her supervisor. The Colonel did not disapprove; on the contrary, he looked upon Gatewood as a promising young man with an upright background. Yet times change. Gatewood and Hannah returned to Jameson, and their fortune seemed to stagnate. Yet the Colonel never expressed an opinion. Never, even when he was pressed. Gatewood did not fear his approval or disapproval. But coming from a county where just about everyone and their brother had an opinion, it was greatly unnerving not knowing exactly what the Colonel thought about him.

“Want to go get lunch or should I cook something” asked Hannah? “I’m in the mood to make something nice.”
“I’d love to, but I need to be out of here by noon. Want to go to Mary Jo’s?”
“Do you ever tire of that place honey?”
“I haven’t yet, that’s for sure. She knows what’s going on in these parts.”
“What is going on?”
“Hannah, why is Hensley Elementary being celebrated for being a C school? You went to good schools in Washington-”
“But they had a much bigger budget-”
“Of course! But we can do better with the funds we have. We need to fire some people. They got rid of a math teacher at the high school and everyone’s crying henny-penny about it!”
“Gatewood, before you continue, I forgot to tell you. Your mom called this morning and told me to tell you that the woman you’re burying-
“Harriet Baxter?”
“Yes, she is not related to you directly. She said that she was married to her Uncle Ulysses-”
“Ohhh, so she was his crazy first wife! Dad had a lot of stories about her. She was off the reservation!”
“Did she remarry?”
“No, I guess she just kept the name. She has some cousins two counties over who are her only surviving relatives and a few close friends in Pinkerton.”
"Did they not give you this information for the obituary?"
"No, not at all. One of the least informative obituarys I've ever written."

A thought came over Gatewood at that moment, a thought that would preoccupy him for the duration of Mrs. Baxter’s wake later in the afternoon……