Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in southwest Kentucky near the Tennessee line. Although I live on the east coast now, I still eat cornbread with hot sauce at least a couple times each week. And yes, I make my own cornbread without a damned mix from a box. If you can’t at least make cornbread, you cannot cook.
The Floor
Looking down at cheap blue, red, and gold carpet, the representative owned a visceral, knowingly irrational, hatred at both the carpet and the situation. The most consequential conversation in living memory was about to happen behind a closed door mounted o’re this gross, low pile, synthetic, unwitting fuzzy witness. It was almost internally offensive that the tourists and school children saw positive, gleaming, Mark Twainian gilded French marble floors in the main capitol building while the actual work got done by people milling about on this dilapidated excuse for a textile. Standing outside an office suite door, there was no escaping the senator’s locked gaze. Really a glare disguised as a gaze, with no attempt to hide intent, the person behind those eyes made a bee line for the point of carpet in front of the representative’s shoes. They had been fast friends since their first legislative session, twenty-three years earlier, and inseparable in bipartisan negotiations since they’d both risen to leadership positions in powerful committees of the state house and state senate a decade earlier.
Times were different now. True bipartisan friendships were becoming rare, and the senator’s party had a stranglehold on the Senate while the representative’s party held on to control of the House by their collective metaphorical fingernails. One issue, more than any other, had created this division that ended both legislative friendships and once thriving pragmatism born of bipartisan cooperation. This issue, which threatened the representative’s political career while positioning the senator for a possible gubernatorial run, was the reason the latter bore down with a feigned friendly stare and walked towards the former.
“Hey, can we talk?” The senator had the most amicable of tones and also smelled very nice that morning. Nicer than usual.
“Sure.” The representative removed hands from pockets and gestured into the office suite. Administrative assistants behind their small desks in the waiting area pretended not to look up but both legislators felt poorly hidden glances. Everyone in the suite knew this conversation was coming. Everyone in both legislators’ caucuses knew this conversation was coming. Everyone in the state who followed politics, every lobbyist in the building, and all the press in the politically obsessed southern state also knew this conversation was inevitable. And now it came.
The representative’s committee held the paramount issue at bay. Committee chairs were the most powerful people in the system, yet they were relatively unknown to the average citizen. They controlled the flow of legislation by deciding which bills would and would not come to a vote. Even more than that, they wielded their role as gatekeepers to accumulate and dole votes out for legislation of all types. In this way, the representative could pass a bill through committee or kill a bill’s chances. It was a great balancing act that this chair had mastered, at least for a while. The ground was moving under the feet of everyone in the House majority party due to national trends outside of their control. Soon they would not even be able to withstand them. Their majority was shrinking.
Despite every House committee member in the senator’s growing party—and quite a few in the representative’s own party—pressuring their outwardly stoic chair to bite the bullet and move the bill, their committee leader maintained the roadblock. With every collegial conversation, the representative felt like a freshman listening to Sam Rayburn in 1947 (“if you want to get along, go along”) but this chair would not cave. No mid-morning talk with an old friend was going to budge the chair. The chair had principles. The chair also had constituents.
The chair/representative, still in charge of the committee for now, was unmoved; it was the constituents who were changing. The senator’s party kept chipping away at the representative’s district boundaries, carving out more and more liberal voters until the last two elections had been almost competitive. A couple more cycles, and it might be over. Over, that is, unless the incumbent chose to move on this one issue.
They entered the corner office and sat, representative behind the big desk and senator at one of the two smaller chairs facing it.
“How are the kids?” The senator was determined to small talk.
“They’re fine. Sarah made the volleyball team.”
“That’s wonderful.” There was almost a smile, but not quite. “And the boat, catch any fish this
summer?”
“Haven’t had a chance. I might try over the holiday if the weather holds up.”
“And Jason, still hoping to go to college in the east?”
“Only if my 529 can handle it.” The representative wanted a way to get the conversation over quickly. He searched his desk for some excuse to say he had limited time. He didn’t have to; his old friend read his face.
“Look, I’ll get right to the point.” Too late for that. “You’ve seen the news?”
“I have. Your president appointed another one.” The senator didn’t flinch at the insult to the electoral college or the casual way with which the representative referred to the high court. This veteran legislator wasn’t in this rapidly tensing office to bicker or be baited. The senator was there to save a friend’s career while advancing their own.
“That’s a six to three majority. It’s only a matter of time.” The representative broke eye contact and sighed. Hearing one of by them say it out loud didn’t make it any easier. A half-eaten package of breath mints sat on the desk earlier that day. Where the hell had it gone? Up against the representative’s shoe, the minty confections inaudibly bumped as the right foot tapped nervously. If they were on that carpet, they were as good as in the trash. The representative would not be eating them now. Disgusting carpet. There was a hole forming where the right shoe tapped during this painful confrontation. It’d been forming for years as the carpet wore down.
“What is inevitable, exactly?”
“You know what.”
“And you know my position. This conversation is a waste of time.”
“Like hell it is. Do you know what you could do if you just moved on this one damn thing? Everything else you want would pass out of your committee, and then through the Senate. All of it could finally be real.”
The senator tried to dramatically let words sink into ears, but a constant humming kept anyone from fully concentrating. The hum came from a desktop style water feature sitting on a buffet table to the senator’s right. Against the exterior wall, the long slender table had several stacks of paper amongst curios given to the representative by constituents and friends. The tiny water feature ran a fountain over a flat rock in the middle of it all. The senator must have sat in the same chair within the same office a hundred times, but the loud ass hum from that stupid little Sharper Image device never registered until now.
“Do you like it?” The senator must have been unwittingly looking at the noisy little thing.
“I think I’d just never noticed it. It’s loud for such a little thing.”
“I like that it makes a noticeable sound. Have you ever looked at it?”
“I don’t think so.” The senator could have been annoyed, but with candid self-reflection, realized that the representative’s turn back to small talk was comforting.
“Look at it. Closely. It’s just one flat rock under the constantly running water. I leave it running 24/7 and Amanda comes in to change the water during the interim when we’re away from the capitol.”
“Interesting.” It wasn’t. But the small talk was still comforting.
“A class of third graders gave me that the first session we were in office. Over the decades, the water has started to make a noticeable indentation in the stone. Do you see it? Do you see the groove?” The senator did not get up, but from the vantage point three feet away, there was a noticeable little gulley in the four-inch square stone where the water ran from a crude tiny fixture above it into the dish holding the slab.
“Well I’ll be damned.” The senator felt changing air and knew the conversation must get back to the real topic at hand. The representative knew that the stone was real the topic.
“The governor hates me.”
“Not if you move the bill. I promise you, he will sign everything else in your hopper, if you just move this one.”
The representative thought. The senator’s face showed no emotion.
“Everything else?”
“Yes, I will get him to sign whatever you want, no line-item veto, no bargaining, just give us this one bill.”
“Medicaid expansion?”
“Yes.”
“Increased funding for the needle exchange?”
“Of course.”
“Assault rifles?”
“That’s not in your committee.”
“I still want it.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Are we negotiating?”
“Always.” The senator finally smiled. The representative reluctantly did too. It had been a very long time since they’d smiled in the same room. It had been at least a couple of years since the representative smiled at all in private. Their smiles mostly persisted as their conversation became silent—one person thinking, the other waiting.
Although they’d never discussed the carpet, the senator shared their colleague’s disdain for it. A senatorial study through the office guest’s eyes started low between two shoes resting on the floor, then in and upwards slowly until it reached the observer’s hands gripping the ends of parallel armrests. Even the chair was dated and frustrating. Studded seams in faux leather furniture said more about the state capitol’s office annex than any tour guide ever could. The chair had little chips of the top layer missing like cheap leather shoes. No one had bothered to try and repair these aesthetic inconsistencies, and this was a committee chair’s office! The senator rubbed one of the armrest upholstery studs between thumb and forefinger, then spoke.
“So, can I tell them you’re thinking about it?”
“No.”
“Jesus Christ, why not?”
“You know why.”
“I know what you say in committee, and on social, but you and I haven’t had a real talk about this in a while.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
“You’re still bitter because the caucus committee targeted you in the last cycle?”
“The last two.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“You have the power to stop them.”
“I really don’t. You are holding up our single biggest priority.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“As what, a martyr?”
“As an elected representative of my district.”
“You represent people who are with us on this issue.”
“A few.”
“You’ve seen the polls.”
“I have internals.”
“Then you’ve polled the surrounding districts and you know what will happen if you run on this bullshit plank again.”
“I’ll win again. It’ll be close, but I’ll win again. I’ve won eleven elections. You, your caucus committee, and the weight of your personal ambitions can’t scare me off.”
“Then how about this? I can call off all of the funds targeting you, as well as pass all of your legislation, if you just move the bill.”
“I’d want the ARs too.”
“I’ll see what I can do, but I bet I can make that happen.” The representative played footsie with the package of breath mints rolling around on the carpet under the desk. The senator looked up and to the right through the window at passing clouds. That damn water feature kept humming.
“Fuck it. No.”
“No? No to which part?” The senator flashed simultaneous anger and panic. From a seasoned politician, this look was rare and never surfaced publicly. Both legislators dropped all facades.
“To all of it. I won’t move.”
“You are unbelievable.” The senator tried to contain it.
“What could you have possibly expected me to say?”
“I expect pragmatism from you. We’ve been through worse, far worse.”
“No, we really haven’t.” At wit’s end, the senator had to ask:
“What is your goddam deal with this issue, anyway? You’ve seen how the state is trending. You know the writing is on the wall. Why are you pretending to be bound by a few people you’ve polled in your one little district?”
“You know why.”
“I know what you said twenty years ago. That was then. We are living in a time when opinions are changing rapidly and people are voting with us, not with you.”
“I don’t know if that’s all true. I know that you’ve become very good at driving the wedge between me and forty-seven percent of my district. I know that your president did the same thing with your messaging in four or five states and won. I don’t like the man, but he won. Now I have to pretend that he won my district and fight like I don’t know my constituents better than you and your party. But please, tell me exactly what it is you want to know about my position, senator.”
The senator focused on memories of their friendship and was able to maintain the low decibel level of the preceding ten minutes, but not without noticeable strain.
“I want you to tell me why you not only block our legislation but refuse to even articulate your true feelings publicly. Why, with a historic headwind, you won’t just embrace our momentum, move this bill, pass the rest of your personal priorities, serve out the rest of this term, and then for Christ’s sake, switch parties after next year’s session?”
“Are you finished?” The representative wasn’t being coy. It must have felt good for the senator to finally say that out loud. The caucus had sent a messenger, with what some would interpret as an olive branch, but instead the representative felt like Caesar finally seeing Brutus’ true face. “And do you really want me to say it out loud? Should I have to, in this, the year of our lord 2019, have to say this? Do I have to say it to you, old friend?”
“Yes.” The senator’s tone had changed. That was fine with the representative because the time for niceties had finally ended.
“Because I can’t get pregnant! I lack that capacity, and you know that. You fucking know that but you keep after me. I lack the ability to be pregnant, so I listen to those of my constituents who I consider friends and do have that capacity. We were friends, Senator. You were my best friend in this God forsaken place and now I can’t even be seen with you or any of your fucking party in the hallways. I’m a baby killer and you’re a self-righteous, smug winner. I’m the loser. My position is a loser in this state now, but it is my position. It’s what I stand for, and you can’t take it from me, from the people I represent. Just, leave; I need you to leave.”
“We’re still friends.”
“We most certainly are not. Please leave.”
“I will not. I want to talk this through.”
“Talk what through? We have a fundamental disagreement. That will not change. Your party has targeted me in election after election because of my rational and heartfelt stance. That will not change. When consulted by your committee about targeting your ‘friend’ with ads and protests and mailers calling me a murderer, you either said nothing, failed to stop them, or acquiesced. We are not friends, Senator, we are enemies. All because of this fundamental disagreement. So please, tell me—what is there to ‘talk through?’”
The senator looked down at the ugly old carpet, then pushed down on the studded seam armrests and rose from the chair.
“I will always consider you a friend.”
“Get. Out.”
