Sen. Bob Dole

Sen­a­tor Bob Dole rubbed his swollen jaw. “Tooth’s killing me,” he barked. “Head­ed to the den­tist.” He ges­tured toward a young woman stand­ing behind him. “Suzie can tell you all you need to know about . . .” He frowned at me. “Remind me again what you’re here for.”

“Hillary Care,” I said.

He waved his hand in the air dis­mis­sive­ly. “Noth­ing to wor­ry about. It’s dead in the water.”

“We sup­port the bill, Sen­a­tor.”

He scowled. “Well, it won’t get a sin­gle Repub­li­can vote!” He winced and grabbed his mouth. “You tell em what-for, Suzie.” And he hur­ried out the door.

Stand­ing in the Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader’s office beside Safeway’s CEO and its Senior VP of Pub­lic Affairs, I stared bale­ful­ly at the emp­ty door­way, Sen­a­tor Dole’s toothache hav­ing tor­pe­doed an hour-long meet­ing we’d sched­uled weeks ear­li­er. Not an aus­pi­cious start to our trip to the Hill, I thought, wor­ried that this day might turn out to be a career lim­it­ing expe­ri­ence.

Labor rela­tions was one of my areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty at Safe­way. The company’s con­tracts with the Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW) union required us to pro­vide Cadil­lac health­care cov­er­age to our store employ­ees. Our nonunion com­peti­tors didn’t offer health­care, giv­ing them a huge cost advan­tage which they used to under­cut our prices. They were killing us.

Safeway’s CEO made the prag­mat­ic deci­sion to sup­port Hillary Care because it would lev­el the play­ing field. We were skep­ti­cal that the bill would actu­al­ly pass, but we thought we could gain a side ben­e­fit by sup­port­ing it. The UFCW was a major pro­po­nent of the leg­is­la­tion. By join­ing hands with the union, we hoped to improve our rocky rela­tion­ship and enhance our cred­i­bil­i­ty about cost reduc­tions at the bar­gain­ing table.

Sen. Craig’s Arrest­ing Offi­cer and Mugshot

We sched­uled a full day of meet­ings at the Capi­tol Build­ing to lob­by for Hillary Care, start­ing with Sen­a­tor Dole. After he vamoosed for the den­tist, I pre­sent­ed our argu­ments to Suzie, his staffer. She dis­agreed with every point I made, end­ing with, “The last thing we need is politi­cians decid­ing what a bro­ken leg is worth.” Sen­a­tor Dole’s oppo­si­tion remained firm.

We trun­dled down the hall to Idaho’s Sen­a­tor Lar­ry Craig. You may remem­ber him. An under­cov­er police­man arrest­ed him in the men’s bath­room of an air­port for pass­ing a note under the stall solic­it­ing a sex­u­al encounter. The sen­a­tor claimed he had a wide stance when squat­ting, saw the note beside his shoe, and picked it up out of curios­i­ty. He resigned from the Sen­ate in dis­grace, but that was a decade after our meet­ing with him. In the ear­ly 90’s, wide-stance Lar­ry still wield­ed a lot of clout. He must have been up late the night before our meet­ing (doing God knows what) because he nod­ded off about half-way through my elec­tri­fy­ing pre­sen­ta­tion. Out num­ber two.

My par­ents had met Vir­ginia Sen­a­tor John Warn­er and his wife, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, at a clam bake on the North­ern Neck. Dad didn’t like him. Mom didn’t like his movie-star wife because of her track record with hus­bands (the sen­a­tor was her sev­enth mar­riage) and her wardrobe at the clam bake. “Some­body ought to tell that woman she’s gained too much weight to traipse around in tight jeans.”

At least my par­ents got to meet the sen­a­tor. He didn’t grace us with his pres­ence, send­ing his chief of staff in his place. I made my pitch. He looked at me like I was a Russ­ian spy and showed us the door.

On a roll by then, I whiffed with Sen­a­tors Kempthorne and Gor­ton.

I was 0 for 5 when we talked to Sen­a­tors Rock­e­feller and Fein­stein. They said they were in favor of the bill, but that didn’t improve my bat­ting aver­age. They’d announced their sup­port for it months ear­li­er. The way things were going, I was relieved that noth­ing I said turned them against it.

We closed the day with Oregon’s Sen­a­tor Mark Hat­field. He’s gen­er­al­ly for­got­ten now, but he was a big deal in his day. Insid­ers say Richard Nixon’s choice for VP at the 1968 G.O.P. con­ven­tion came down to Hat­field and Mary­land Gov­er­nor Spiro Agnew. Nixon chose Agnew. A bribery scan­dal forced Agnew to resign dur­ing Nixon’s sec­ond term, and Ger­ald Ford took his place as VP. I’ve often won­dered what the world would be like today if Nixon had cho­sen Hat­field and he had suc­ceed­ed Nixon to become our 38^th Pres­i­dent.

When we met with him, he was a grand­fa­ther­ly 72, dressed in a blue shirt and red sus­penders that flanked a lit­tle pot­bel­ly. When I fin­ished my pre­sen­ta­tion, he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I’ll tell you how this will play out.” Hillary Care would receive no Repub­li­can sup­port, he said, and Sen­a­tor Dole would block it from com­ing to the floor with the fil­i­buster rule. As time dragged on, Democ­rats would jump ship and pro­pose com­pro­mise bills. None would gain momen­tum, and uni­ver­sal health­care would die with­out a vote in the sen­ate.

And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader George Mitchell declared the final com­pro­mise bill dead on Sep­tem­ber 26, 1994.

Although Hillary Care failed, we achieved the bet­ter rela­tion­ship with the UFCW we had hoped for and our con­tract nego­ti­a­tions were less con­tentious from there on.

An unex­pect­ed byprod­uct of our efforts came along lat­er when the Pres­i­dent of the UFCW invit­ed me to a lun­cheon with Pres­i­dent Clin­ton and a small group of his sup­port­ers. These affairs usu­al­ly require a huge cam­paign dona­tion, so I begged off. “Can’t fit it into the bud­get,” I told him.

“You won’t have to pay,” he said.

F.O.B. Ron Burkle, Host­ing Fundrais­er

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. The Pres­i­dent wants to thank Safe­way for its help with health­care.”

The lun­cheon took place at bil­lion­aire Ron Burkle’s Bev­er­ly Hills estate. Safeway’s VP of Pub­lic Affairs and I walked up a ser­pen­tine dri­ve­way to a mas­sive man­sion where Secret Ser­vice agents searched us before we were admit­ted to a spa­cious din­ing room that was obvi­ous­ly way above my pay grade.

Pres­i­dent Clin­ton entered from a side door and worked the room, spend­ing one-on-one time with the thir­ty atten­dees. When he came to me, he beamed and thanked me for Safeway’s help. I’d heard that some politi­cians have a charis­mat­ic mag­net­ism, but I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced it. I did then. I wasn’t a fan of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton before or after that lun­cheon, but when I was in his pres­ence, talk­ing with him about our daugh­ters going off to col­lege, I felt a pow­er­ful grav­i­ta­tion­al pull into his orbit that I didn’t expect or under­stand. I want­ed to like him. I want­ed to believe in him.

After the lun­cheon, he stopped on his way out of the room to speak to me again. He said he might make anoth­er run at expand­ed health­care. I offered our help. I heard cam­eras click­ing as he shook my hand. The call for help nev­er came, but pho­tographs of the hand­shake arrived in the mail.

Think­ing I’d impress my par­ents with what a big wheel I’d become, I sent them the pho­to­graph of me shak­ing hands with the Pres­i­dent. On our next call, Dad’s first words were “I hope you washed your hands after they took that pic­ture.”

In the end, my for­ay into the polit­i­cal world on behalf of Hillary Care left me kind of cold. Pres­i­dent Clin­ton was by far the most tal­ent­ed politi­cian I met, and he turned out to be spec­tac­u­lar­ly flawed. Look­ing back on those days now, I’d say Dad’s pithy hygien­ic advice made good sense in the polit­i­cal are­na even before Covid-19 came along.

Post script: I met Pres­i­dent Clin­ton once more years lat­er. I’d heard he had an astound­ing mem­o­ry for peo­ple he’d encoun­tered only briefly. The rumor was true. He remem­bered my name and I felt that pull again, at least until I got out of the room.

Bo Slyapich

“I caught this one on the oth­er side of Hid­den Hills,” Bo said, bang­ing his fist on a plas­tic stor­age tub in the back of his pick­up truck. Inside, a rat­tlesnake big enough to swal­low my arm struck the tub’s translu­cent wall, spray­ing ven­om all over it.

I jumped back.

“Don’t wor­ry,” Bo said. “I taped down the lid.” I eyed the tub war­i­ly while Bo picked up a plas­tic shoe­box. “Here, look at this.”  

Cov­ered with goose­bumps, I watched three shoe­strings with dia­mond-shaped heads and con­i­cal tails crawl around inside.

“Baby rat­tlers,” he said. “They’re dead­ly. They don’t know how to con­trol their ven­om glands. They dump the whole load when they bite.”

Rat­tlesnake Removal Expert

A few days after we moved into Hid­den Hills, a rat­tlesnake crawled up our dri­ve­way to say hi. When I told the man next door about our unwel­come vis­i­tor, he laughed rue­ful­ly. “They’re all over the neigh­bor­hood,” he said. He told me to call Bo Slyapich, a rat­tlesnake wran­gler extra­or­di­naire, who cap­tures and relo­cates rat­tlesnakes.

I hired him to assess our property’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. “You’ve pur­chased a Four Sea­sons resort for rat­tlesnakes,” he said after inspect­ing our lot. “Ample ground­cov­er for hid­ing out. Patch­es of hard­scape for sun­bathing. Plen­ty of mice, rats, and gophers for snacks, and your swim­ming pool makes a nice water­ing hole. When the fire con­trol peo­ple mow the brush on the vacant lot behind your land, scores of rat­tlers will speed-roll into Ken’s Din­er and take up res­i­dence for the sum­mer.”

Rat­tlesnake Fence

Over­reg­u­lat­ed Cal­i­for­nia requires real estate sell­ers to dis­close prox­im­i­ty to elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields, fun­gus, mold, nuclear radi­a­tion, radon, methane, and reg­is­tered sex offend­ers, but inex­plic­a­bly state law­mak­ers don’t con­sid­er teem­ing nests of poi­so­nous vipers haz­ardous enough to make the list, so I didn’t dis­cov­er the rat­tlesnake prob­lem until after I bought the place.

“I can’t have rat­tlesnakes crawl­ing all over my yard,” I told Bo. “I’ve got grand­kids. My dog, Zoey. What can I do?”

“Clear away the ground cov­er. Hire a pest con­trol ser­vice to clean out the food sup­ply. Install a rat­tlesnake fence.”

I hired a bush­whack­er to remove the brush. Hydrex killed off the rodents. Four guys from St. Patrick’s Fenc­ing spent three days installing a three-feet-high fine-meshed fence buried one foot in the ground. They assured me a rat­tlesnake couldn’t climb over it, slith­er through it, or bur­row under it.

I felt safe until Bo came to take a look. “Good work,” he said. “That’ll keep most of them out.”

“Most of them?”

The Train­er

“No prop­er­ty is com­plete­ly snake-proof. Teach your grand­chil­dren to be watch­ful, and they’ll be fine. Zoey’s your prob­lem. Dogs treat rat­tlesnakes like chew toys. The vet can give her shots, but a bite to the face is still usu­al­ly fatal. Your best bet is to train her to stay away from rat­tlesnakes.”

“How do I do that?”

Bo hand­ed me a busi­ness card. “Rat­tlesnake Avoid­ance Train­ing,” it said. “Humane, safe, and effec­tive.”

Think­ing we were going hik­ing, Zoey dog-grinned at me as we drove to her train­ing class over a wind­ing road in Mal­ibu Canyon. We parked under Cal­i­for­nia live oaks and walked over to a pic­nic table. As we reg­is­tered, a fright­ened black Lab passed by us, strain­ing with all his might to get to his car, his own­er strug­gling to hang on to his leash.

A woman in kha­ki work clothes pet­ted Zoey and sweet-talked her before clip­ping on a shock col­lar. I’m against train­ing ani­mals with pain, but when I enrolled, the train­er explained that the col­lar deliv­ered a low-lev­el shock that would cause no last­ing dam­age. “Remem­ber,” she said, “it’s a mat­ter of life and death.”  

The course was the size of a base­ball infield. There were rat­tlers coiled at first base, sec­ond, and third. The snake han­dler had attached a hard plas­tic bub­ble over each snake’s head so it could strike, but not bite.

The train­er led Zoey to first base. Tail wag­ging, she ran right up to a furi­ous­ly rat­tling snake for a sniff. As it struck at her face, the train­er hit the shock but­ton. Zoey yelped, jumped in the air, regained her foot­ing, and des­per­ate­ly scram­bled back­ward.  

The train­er pulled Zoey to the snake on sec­ond base. She approached it war­i­ly, but still got too close and took a sec­ond shock.

Some Cal­i­for­nia Dia­mond­backs don’t rat­tle before they strike. “Dar­win­ism at work,” the train­er said. Zoey had to learn to avoid the silent rat­tlers by their scent. A snake that didn’t rat­tle lay on third base. When Zoey got close enough to pick up its odor, she retreat­ed.  

Zoey

The ulti­mate test was the last step in the process. The train­er had set up two par­al­lel chain-link fences five feet apart to cre­ate a grass cor­ri­dor about twen­ty feet long. The snake han­dler, a guy with greasy black hair, scars all over his arms, and a droop­ing left eye (what­ev­er they paid him it wasn’t enough), dropped the biggest rat­tler I’d ever seen in the cen­ter of the cor­ri­dor. They put Zoey at one end and told me to stand at the oth­er. “Call your dog,” the train­er said.

“Come, Zoey!”

Vis­i­bly dis­tressed, Zoey looked at me long­ing­ly, but wouldn’t budge no mat­ter how enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly I called her.

“Smart dog,” the train­er said. “You’re good to go.”

When P.D. came along four years lat­er, he was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. He has such high tol­er­ance for pain the train­er had to adjust the volt­age meter to the max­i­mum before he got the mes­sage, but after two trips through the infield and three heavy jolts, he was as rat­tlesnake averse as Zoey.

Shock Col­lar Packs a Jolt

His prob­lem was the grass cor­ri­dor. When I called him, he dashed toward me and tried to jump over the rat­tler. It struck at his bel­ly and the train­er zapped him. The shock knocked him side­ways. He fell, strug­gled to his feet, and ran into my arms.

They set him up again. He ran for me and took anoth­er jolt. 

On his third try, he hes­i­tat­ed, look­ing back and forth from me to the snake, then sprint­ed across the grass, and suf­fered the blow again. This time when he reached me, he bur­rowed his head in my chest, pant­i­ng hard and whin­ing.

I want­ed to quit, but the train­er insist­ed. They pulled him back to the head of the cor­ri­dor. He stood at the line, trem­bling all over, still whin­ing, look­ing at me, wait­ing for my com­mand. I knew what he would do if I called him.  

Fight­ing back tears, I walked around the fenc­ing, took off the shock col­lar, and hugged him. “That’s enough,” I said. “I can’t do it to him again.”

Back at the pic­nic table, the train­er told me she thought P.D. had learned to avoid rat­tlesnakes even though he failed the last test. “It’s rare,” she said, “but I’ve seen it before, a smart dog so faith­ful to his own­er he’ll run to the snake when called no mat­ter how much it hurts him.”

P.D.

Zoey and I have a spe­cial rela­tion­ship. She loves me above all liv­ing crea­tures, but the only way they could have dragged her across that big snake to join me would have been to hitch her leash to a Mack truck.

P.D. is devot­ed to my wife. Before that day, I liked him, but our bond wasn’t over­pow­er­ing.

On the dri­ve home, he lay on the front seat beside me, exhaust­ed. I stroked his neck where the shock col­lar had deliv­ered the juice. It was still warm. His yel­low-brown eyes looked up at me, trust­ing, loy­al, coura­geous. I won­dered then, and I won­der now, how I could be so lucky.          

Post Script: After eight years in Hid­den Hills nei­ther dog has been bit­ten, and only one rat­tlesnake has ever made it through the fence. Iron­i­cal­ly, my grand­daugh­ter found him in our back yard the day after I fin­ished writ­ing this post. The snake fence guys return on Mon­day, and Zoey and P.D. are enrolled in refresh­er cours­es in July. 

The Back Stoop

Fifty years ago, I was sit­ting on the back stoop of our house on Park Road in Crozet when the sound of shat­ter­ing glass pierced the still­ness of a sum­mer night. I looked across the side yard at my neighbor’s home. His storm door’s bro­ken pane glint­ed in the moon­light. A vol­ley of angry shouts came from inside.

Maynard’s drunk again, I thought.

I stared at the house uneasi­ly. May­nard was a binge drinker, sober for long stretch­es, then blind drunk for days on end. Late­ly, his binges had become vio­lent. He drove his fist through his bed­room wall a few months ago. Bust­ed up a cof­fee table dur­ing the last one. Now the storm door. I wor­ried that his whiskey-rage might esca­late to attacks on his wife, Birdie, or their two lit­tle boys.     

Storm Door

There was more shout­ing, much loud­er than the first round.

Curs­ing under my breath, I stepped down off the stoop and walked over to their car­port. The house was qui­et by the time I reached the storm door and looked inside.

The kitchen/family room was a small rec­tan­gu­lar box, the sink and appli­ances to the right of the door, a sit­ting area and tele­vi­sion to the left, the kitchen table across the room. May­nard and Birdie sat side by side at the table, fac­ing me, their backs against the far wall. They were in their thir­ties. He was aver­age height, built like a tree stump with a round bald head and thick red eye­brows that came togeth­er over his nose. Birdie was as stocky as May­nard with a per­ox­ide blonde bee-hive and a dou­ble chin.

“You guys all right?” I said.

“Come on in and see for your­self,” Birdie said.

I opened the storm door care­ful­ly so as not to get cut and stepped inside.

May­nard was shirt­less. His arm rest­ed on the table in a pool of blood, a deep wound on the meaty inside of his fore­arm run­ning from his wrist to his elbow, a half-emp­ty bot­tle of Jim Beam beside it. In Maynard’s oth­er hand he held a shot­gun, its butt propped on his thigh, the bar­rel point­ed toward the ceil­ing.

The two lit­tle boys, eight and ten, stub­by lit­tle repli­cas of their par­ents, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the tele­vi­sion, star­ing wide-eyed at May­nard.

Smirk­ing, Birdie took a deep drag on a Marl­boro and casu­al­ly blew smoke across the room. “Rammed his fist through the storm door,” she said. “Damned near cut his arm off so’s he could show me what a big man he is.”

“Shut the hell up,” May­nard said. He lift­ed the shot­gun off his thigh with one hand and placed the mouth of the bar­rel under Birdie’s chin. 

Her blue eyes widened. “What you doin, May­nard?” she said soft­ly. 

“Fix­in to blow your head off.” May­nard shoved the bar­rel upward hard, bang­ing the back of Birdie’s head against the wall, and cocked the ham­mer with his thumb.

Birdie winced. “Go ahead,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Pull the trig­ger you hate me so much.” A tear slid down her cheek.

The boys whim­pered.

I swal­lowed hard and took a step toward them. “May­nard. Put the gun down.”

May­nard didn’t look at me. Hold­ing the shot­gun tight under Birdie’s chin, he glared at her, his hand steady, the mus­cles in his face tight as wire.

Scared breath­less that a sud­den move­ment might set him off, I crossed the room slow­ly and stopped on my side of the table. “Don’t do it, May­nard. Please. Think about the boys.”

His angry eyes fixed on Birdie, he didn’t even glance at me.

No one moved, the only sound the boys’ qui­et mewl­ing. Five sec­onds passed. Ten.

A crooked smile crept across Maynard’s face. He low­ered the shot­gun, propped it against the wall, and took a swig of Jim Beam.

I let out a long breath.

Birdie’s hand trem­bled as she brought her cig­a­rette to her mouth. Blink­ing back tears, she French inhaled a cloud of smoke through her nose and blew it out again. “You a piece a work,” she said under her breath. 

It took me a full minute to build up the courage to go around the table and get the shot­gun. May­nard made no move to stop me, thank God.

Stand­ing by the sink, I broke open the sin­gle-shot twelve gauge with numb hands and clum­si­ly with­drew a shell from its cham­ber. Num­ber 5 shot, designed for small game, squir­rels and rab­bits, but pow­er­ful enough at point blank range to blow Birdie’s face off. She’d have been brain-dead before her body hit the floor.

I put the shell in my pock­et and called the res­cue squad on the kitchen wall phone. Light-head­ed and nau­seous, I hung the phone on its hook and sat down at the table to pull myself togeth­er before I called the police.

The three of us said noth­ing. Birdie smoked down her Marl­boro and lit anoth­er. May­nard fin­ished off the whiskey. The edges of the oval-shaped pool of blood under his fore­arm crept out­ward across the pine-wood table-top. The boys turned on the tele­vi­sion and stared blankly at an episode of Pet­ti­coat Junc­tion, its canned back­ground laugh­ter jan­gling my frayed nerves.

When my hands stopped shak­ing, I stood and picked up the phone.

“Don’t call the law,” Birdie said.

I looked at her.

“It’s a fam­i­ly mat­ter,” she said. “It’s between me and May­nard. It’s no one else’s busi­ness.” 

I dis­agreed. In a deter­mined con­fi­dent voice, she argued with me for the next five min­utes while May­nard stared at the emp­ty bot­tle and said noth­ing.

“It don’t involve you,” she said. “Stay out of it. Leave it be.”

The ambu­lance pulled up in the dri­ve­way.

“Don’t tell the res­cue squad boys,” Birdie said. “Don’t tell the sheriff’s men. Don’t tell nobody.”

The EMTs ban­daged Maynard’s wound, marched him out to their van, and drove him to the hos­pi­tal.

Many of the posts on this blog recount expe­ri­ences I’m proud of. This is not one of them. I didn’t tell the EMTs what May­nard had done. I didn’t call the police. I didn’t tell any­one except my wife, Cindy.  

Most peo­ple liked May­nard when he was sober. We told our­selves for­give­ness and friend­ship were the best med­i­cine for his alco­holism, but I knew bet­ter. He need­ed to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four, “tough love” they call it today, but I didn’t have the strength of char­ac­ter to do it. No one around him did. So he kept right on drink­ing.

The Judas Mur­ders

The man put a gun to his wife’s head, and I did noth­ing. Some­how I ratio­nal­ized my behav­ior back then, but as I sit here writ­ing this, I can’t under­stand it and I’m ashamed.

Cindy and I didn’t mix with May­nard and Birdie after that. Friends back home told me they split up about ten years after we moved away to Char­lottesville. If they’re still liv­ing today, they’re in their eight­ies and their sons are push­ing six­ty. The boys were nice kids. I hope they turned out okay, but it would be a mir­a­cle if they did.      

In Chap­ter 18 of The Judas Mur­ders, Deputy Toby Vess opens a bro­ken storm door to find Grover Sipe at his kitchen table press­ing a shot­gun under his wife’s chin while their two lit­tle boys cow­er in the cor­ner. Toby dis­arms Grover. Grover’s wife begs him to let Grover off. Toby arrests him, locks him up in the coun­ty jail, and calls Social Ser­vices to see after Grover’s wife and lit­tle boys.

It was a sat­is­fy­ing scene to spin out. I wish I’d writ­ten it that way fifty years ago.

Post Script: For obvi­ous rea­sons, I changed the names of my neigh­bors in this post and in The Judas Mur­ders.