Let Them Look West

Chapter 1-2

Rob had read about all of this and the governor’s life in the days leading up to his departure. The son of a Dakota oil worker, James Alexander had no interest in politics or religion for most of his early life. He worked in agriculture in his youth, as a mechanic, and eventually put himself through school to begin work in finance. He tried his luck at this for several years and made a comfortable living for himself in New York City. In his mid-thirties, Alexander had an awakening of some sort and left his career in the city for local politics in his home state: first as treasurer of a county and then mayor of a modest town of over ten thousand. That was when the transfigured James Alexander fully appeared. His gubernatorial run as an independent candidate against the sitting Republican was the surprise of the political season. He organized his political base in the churches, speaking as a guest in every congregation he could find, no matter how small. The pastors liked him because his antics brought people in the doors who would never attend a Sunday service otherwise.

Rob Coen figured it was a smart play. He could not fault the strategy from a tactical perspective. Hot potluck meals, some good speaking from a charismatic man, and an opportunity to feel for a little while like you were a part of something, had been the winning combination of local and state politics for about as long as it had existed.

The incumbent governor hit back, of course, framing Alexander as a radical and a hypocrite. National pieces condemning Alexander’s cold-hearted and ruthless moves in the world of finance broke in the major papers of record. Nobody seemed to care. Alexander addressed the bad press in his stump speeches with the reply that “God can transform even the most ardent sinner into a loyal disciple. I will never deny the iniquity of my former life! When I belonged to the devil, I wanted to be his best soldier. The same holds true now, but now I’m working for the man on the white horse.”

The people of the state, by and large, loved it. There was no ambiguity in James Alexander. Unlike the other politicians, he never hedged or adjusted depending on who was his audience. He famously went on a hostile evening talk show and took his licks from the host with a placid grin. The host asked him, “How are things going in the nineteenth century these days?” The audience broke into thunderous laughter. Alexander replied without missing a beat, “Well, we don’t have television or stand-up comedians, so I’d say we’ll probably make it just fine.” He was the internet sensation the people loved to hate, but he had also discovered a weary undercurrent searching for a secret love.

Rob flipped down the tray table and opened his laptop. He minimized the research tabs on his browser and opened the document of potential interview questions. To say that he wanted to trap the governor into saying something controversial would be too explicit. Controversial statements would come from the man to be sure. Alexander was a bigot after all. He was, however, a clever bigot. Rob’s goal was to guide the conversation toward a c****x of some kind. He had not yet decided on what the crescendo of the overall movement would be. He found religious talk boring but was willing to suffer it to get at some deep-seated and yet unrevealed idiosyncrasy of Alexander’s identity.

The governor was not married and had no children. There could be something in that. It seemed a contradiction that a religious fundamentalist of his kind had no family. Following such an avenue could be tricky. Rob did not want to come across as overly ruthless in his inquiry. Surgically extracting some hidden hypocrisy with too much zeal may backfire, although he doubted the readers of The Times would bat an eye. The two of them would probably spend most of the conversation talking past one another.

A feeling of emptiness surged into the journalist as he stared at the screen with slowly unfocusing pupils. What was the point of this? The plane would land and he would go to meet the man and they would speak different languages and the readers of The Times would taste the blood in the printed lines and smile knowingly to themselves, and nothing would change. Rob would return to writing his politics in the city pieces and Alexander would return to ruling his theocracy. The sun would rise and set, and everyone would move on unchanged.

With a deep sigh he rested his head back in the seat and closed his eyes. He focused on the slowly morphing darkness behind his eyelids and tried to clear his thoughts entirely. With luck, a good idea would come to him before he landed. He daydreamed into a sudden oblivion.

The next thing he knew, he was waking in the cold breeze of the air vent blasting down from above and the sharp voice of the flight attendant declaring that the plane was making the final approach to Jackson. Hours had been wasted. A feeling of indignation overcame him but slowly gave way to slightly apprehensive resignation. Rob stared down at the small city below nestled in a smooth spot beneath the towering Teton Mountains.

The plane landed without much jostling on the runway of the tiny airport, and after a moment of muted stillness, the passengers began filing out. Rob sat at his window seat, bleary-eyed and groggy from the unexpected sleep, and retrieved his carry-on bag from the overhead bin only after the plane was nearly empty. The stewardess smiled and thanked him as he stepped over the small gap from the plane to the boarding passageway into the terminal. The airport was quite small but inviting in a frontier sort of way. A rich, amber-colored timber comprising the support columns and ceiling of the interior gave an alien, rustic feeling right out of the gate. He had to finalize his rental vehicle and sleeping accommodations before anything else.

Rob followed the signs for the car rental desk, but as he passed through the arrival gate into the main portion of the airport, a voice stopped him.

“Mr. Coen? Is that you, Mr. Coen?”

Rob stopped in his tracks and turned slowly toward the voice, rather startled that anyone in this place would know who he was on sight.

A thin man in gray slacks and a sage-colored button-down shirt approached him while holding out a slightly shaking outstretched hand. He looked to be in his late fifties with a tanned and creased, clean-shaven face and bristly, well-groomed dark hair with upwardly creeping gray areas at the sides.

“Yes.” Rob confirmed a little hesitantly. This was an unexpected development.

“Mr. Coen, I’m Jordan Banks.” He paused as Rob took his hand and shook it. Banks wore a distracted smile as he thought of what he was trying to say. “Well I guess you could say that I am your concierge service for your time here.”

Rob let the hand go and furrowed his brow as politely as possible. “The Times is paying for my rental car and hotel, so I shouldn’t be needing anything right now.”

“Nonsense,” Mr. Banks replied. “You are a visitor in this state and a friend of the governor, so we will show you hospitality.”

A ripple of abrasive annoyance coursed through the journalist. This was a twofold affront: the politeness of the request combined with the insistence formed a grating assumption that he would accept the offered hospitality. “It is not a good policy to accept gifts and favors from an interview subject,” Coen stated firmly. “It raises the question of bias or favoritism.”

Mr. Banks laughed through his nose. “Mr. Alexander reads The Times. He’s not worried about people thinking a ride and free board means he’s suddenly your favorite politician. A thousand free rides and a thousand free beds wouldn’t make up for half of the editorials.” The older man’s wry grin remained on his face as he turned and began to walk toward the exit. He waved for Rob to follow with one arm held high over the shoulder.

Rob was paralyzed. “Let me call my editor.” He slipped his phone out of his laptop bag. Banks merely nodded in an understanding way and took a few steps back to wait patiently at a polite distance. The call went straight to voicemail. Margaret must be in some sort of editor’s meeting. He kept the phone held up to his ear to give himself a moment of consideration. What would happen, exactly, if he went along with whatever Governor Alexander had planned? He wanted his own hotel room and car, but snubbing the man right away might carry its own set of complications. He lowered the phone.

“What exactly is the plan you’re proposing?” he asked Banks.

Banks perked up and returned to conversational distance. “Governor Alexander is staying at Camp Hope currently. He thought it would make sense for you to stay in the lodge there for both your convenience.”

“I told his assistant over the phone that I would have my own accommodations,” Rob explained.

Banks smiled and reached one hand back over his head to rub the skin on the back of his neck in a bashful gesture. “When I told the governor a few days ago that this was the week you were coming, he was pretty insistent you get the full Wyoming treatment. He said that if you are going to write about him and the place, then it makes more sense to experience it as much as possible.”

“And if I stick to my plan?” Rob asked.

“You’re welcome to stay here in town if you like,” Banks replied with a shrug. “Honestly, you’ll get much better access at the camp. You’ll have your own room and free run of the place.”

Rob gave his phone one last glance in the hope that maybe his editor had sent him a text message in reply. Nothing. “Ok,” he relented. “We will do this Alexander’s way.”

The older man smiled. “That’s good to hear. You’ll have your privacy and space to work. Camp Hope is not very busy this time of year.” He turned and began to move toward the exits. “You don’t have any luggage, do you?”

“Just my carry on.” Rob concluded that this was an obvious power play by the governor, a clear attempt to put him in an unfamiliar situation, one where he was not in control. He would not let Alexander have the upper hand. After the fog of his unintended sleep began to wear off, he drew on a newfound resolve.

The air was cool outside, and the massive sky hung over everything in an immense pale blue canopy. Rob slowly turned a circle as they walked into the parking lot and stopped as he noticed the immense Teton Mountains jutting up to the west over the top of the terminal building. The scale of them was jarring to his urban sensibilities. They seemed to sit back broodingly over the open plain below and stare down with unassailable condescension. Banks had reached the vehicle, an old, cream-colored Lincoln Town Car in pristine condition. He opened the trunk, and Rob dropped his carry-on bag into the yawning mouth.

“Feel free to sit in the back or the front. I don’t mind,” Banks commented after closing the lid and crossing over to the driver’s side door. Once the car was unlocked, Rob slid onto the tan leather of the front passenger seat.

“Coffee? Food? Anywhere you want me stop on the way?” the older man asked helpfully.

“How far is it to the camp?” Rob asked.

“About a half an hour’s drive.”

As part of his famed Wyoming Plan, Governor Alexander had constructed camps all over the state in the past few years. They were complexes of lodges and cabins with barracks to house state workers and depots to store the equipment for projects they undertook. Rob had read a bit on them in preparation for the trip. State residents could stay in them at no cost for an allotted number of days in the year, and they attracted paying tourists from all over, especially those who had come to see Mount Calvary or partake in the guided hunting, fishing, or hiking available in the surrounding areas. Alexander had often referred to it as “Frontier Mobilization.” About a year prior, an old-school nature reporter had profiled them over the course of a few months and wrote a long-form narrative entitled: “Tabernacles in a Strange Land.” It missed the Pulitzer by one half of a split hair.