Chapter Four D: Dinner with the Congresswoman

Aaron and Pol sat in the living room eating. Aaron hadn’t moved from his chair since she arrived. She found a serving tray that she could bring him food on. Her own, she held in her lap with a glass of sparkling water on the coffee table in front of her. It was a solid meal of turkey, dressing and potatoes with gravy, and broccoli. The helpings were huge and Pol doubted if she would be able to eat the whole meal, but it was very tasty.

Aaron had dozed off for a few minutes while Pol cooked, but he seemed to be lively and alert and companionable now that they were eating.

“I can’t help but think I should know you,” Aaron said. “The name and face are both so familiar. Of course, I suppose you hear that from a lot of guys.”

“Well, yes,” Pol answered, “as a matter of fact I do. They’ve heard the name. They are sure they’ve seen the face, but can’t remember where. And of course, they are all correct. They have seen my face and heard my name. But people don’t really pay attention to who they send to congress except during an election. As soon as they’ve done their civic duty they completely forget about Washington. Or at least they try to. That’s been my experience.”

Aaron sat with a fork halfway to his mouth, his mouth hanging open in amazement.

“You’re not Representative Pol Stamos?” he gasped.

“Yes. One and the same.”

“But. Well, you must surely have more important things to do than sitting with a guy you rescued and bringing his briefcase around and cooking dinner. I mean you could have sent a courier with the stuff. You didn’t have to come yourself. I mean…” Aaron realized he was stammering and shut his mouth abruptly. Pol was laughing.

“Does this seem like a poor use of taxpayer’s dollars to you?” she asked. “We have to show that we actually care about our constituents.”

“But you’re not, I mean, I don’t think you’re my representative are you? I mean from my congressional district?” Aaron asked.

“No. I’m from the next district south, number six. But I came home for the weekend to deal with some family business and that’s how I happened to be here. I really don’t like living in Washington very much. I prefer to be out here when I can be. We’re not in session Monday because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But I’m speaking at a small gathering in Greenwood. Of course there is always the possibility that it will become a large gathering. We chose the venue because of its reputation as a center of the Ku Klux Klan. A lot of people don’t realize how active the clan still is in Indiana.” Pol was comfortable talking and Aaron was finding out more about his government than he’d thought about in several years.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but actually, I hadn’t paid much attention to the congressional races outside our district and I thought Pol Stamos was a man. I obviously should have been paying closer attention. I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about your politics, but I’m glad to hear that at least you are speaking on behalf of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and not as a part of the supremacist movement. I haven’t kept up as much on politics in the last few years as I used to. In fact, I guess you’d say I’ve been avoiding it for a while.”

“Why is that?” Pol asked. “All the signs I’ve seen are that you are pretty savvy about politics in general, and might even have been considered an activist at one time or another.”

“What signs are those?” Aaron asked.

“Well, to start, there’s the framed letter from Jimmy Carter hanging over your fireplace. I haven’t been close enough to read it yet, but I recognize the signature and the White House stationery. Then there is the wide array of history books on your shelves, the Indian artifacts on display, and the history degrees hanging over your computer. Sounds to me like someone who has more than a passing interest in politics,” Pol summarized.

“Had,” Aaron corrected. “Don’t get me wrong, the things that you see are treasured artifacts of a past life. After President Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 I pretty much gave up on politics. Oh, Bill Clinton almost got me suckered in again, but look what we’ve had since. I’m glad there are people like you working in Washington, keeping things balanced as much as possible, but every time we make any gains, corporate big business and right wing politicos buy their way back into power and we lose more than we’ve gained. It just doesn’t seem worth it to keep banging your head against the wall.”

“So you’ve just given up and gone into hiding?” Pol exclaimed. “I over-estimated you!”

“I’m doing what I can in my own way,” Aaron came back with his reply.

“And what way is that?”

“I write history. I collect stories and preserve them and hope that someday the next generation will read them and understand that there is a pattern to what happens in history and hope that when the big decisions come along that they will understand and act wisely.” Aaron paused and sipped his water. “That’s really all I’m able to do.”

“Unable or unwilling?”

“It amounts to the same thing really.”

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t know why I feel compelled to find out more about you, but I really want to know what changed and what we can do to change it back. If it was that bad, we must have done something really wrong.” Pol waited in the silence, then spoke one last time. “Tell me, please.”

Aaron finished his meal and thought carefully about whether he wanted to show this side to a woman he hardly knew and who was a politician as well. If it weren’t for the fact that he found himself craving her company and not wanting her to leave him in his own lonely silence again just yet. She stood and reached for his tray.

“Leave it,” he said. “Please sit down and let me tell you.” Pol sat back on the sofa and looked intently at Aaron. “I was an idealist in college. A war protester (that was Viet Nam. You probably don’t remember it since I think you are quite a bit younger than me). I came out of college in the winter of ’73 with a degree in History and a desire to get right into government. I became a civil servant and was assigned as an assistant social worker at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

“Oh no,” Pol said involuntarily. Good, Aaron thought. She understood what that meant. She actually studied social history. What he had found at Pine Ridge when he was assigned there as a “social worker” was a gun and orders to shoot anyone who came near the office of the BIA. It didn’t take long to discover that the problem of the people was a corrupt tribal government propped up by the BIA and supported by squads of private police and white vigilantes. And he was plopped into the mess as a 22-year-old college grad thinking he was going to help people get aid and support that was needed. By March, his job consisted mainly of trying not to be shot at as FBI agents in full military camouflage surrounded 200 of the poorest people he’d ever seen who occupied Wounded Knee, a historic site of the massacre of native peoples. When the 71 day occupation ended, two of the defenders and two FBI agents were dead.

But those were only two Native Americans who died that year of nearly a hundred who were American Indian Movement members or supporters that were murdered that year. Aaron narrowly missed his own death when BIA headquarters were bombed in June. He was seen as an enemy by the Native people he had come to help and a traitor by those who had hired him. In September, Aaron overheard a conversation discussing a renewed attack on the house where he was billeted. He grabbed his duffle-bag and gear and hiked out of the area, avoiding Goons (corrupt cops hired by the Tribal chairman) and hiking east out of the Badlands and into Minnesota. Once there, he caught a student stand-by flight to Egypt and spent the next three years trying to understand the roots of the anti-western atmosphere of the Middle East.

“I knew some of the people who died out there that year. I knew a lot of people who were afraid they’d die. When I left for South Dakota as a government employee, I thought I’d avoided Viet Nam. Instead, I found it on the plains.”

“Was that it, then? Did you give up on our system because of one bad experience?” Pol asked.

“No. I learned a lot in the next three years exploring the Middle East and living on the good graces of the people I met. But this was home and I came back. I went out to California and became a political correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. That’s where the Carter Campaign folks picked me up to run the San Francisco press office. It was so obvious to me that Carter was the right man in office. And I believe he’d have won if it weren’t for the Teheran affair. They played straight to Reagan. They even let all the hostages go as soon as Reagan was elected. I watched an entire nation be duped by a bunch of teenagers holding hostages. And nothing we said made a difference. We lost big time, and there really aren’t a lot of jobs available for former press coordinators of losing candidates.

“The good thing was that I’d fallen in love and got married while I was in San Francisco. We were still both idealists out to change the world and if we couldn’t do it in a presidential election, then we’d go out and do it one kid at a time out in the desert. We moved to Bakersfield and I registered as a substitute teacher. It wasn’t long before I was a basketball coach as well. My wife was working as a guidance counselor in the high school and we were happy that we could see changes in some of the kids we helped.”

“What happened, Aaron?” Pol asked gently. “Where is she now?”

“In the desert. Ashes scattered to the four winds the way she always said she’d want to be buried.” Aaron paused again. It was hard to bring this part out and tell it to someone, but since he’d told Jack and Theresa the story twenty years ago, he hadn’t told any one what happened.

“Two students, drunk, ran a red light and plowed into her car. She was killed instantly. Thank God. She never new that they were the two she helped through their probation which had ended that day.” A tear pooled in Aaron’s eye. He knew he couldn’t sob through this story as he had when he told Jack and Theresa, raging about what a waste of time it was to try to be out improving the world. If he let go like that his ribs would kill him. Instead he straightened in his chair the best he could and looked Pol straight in the eye. “That, Congresswoman, was where it ended. That was when I decided someone else would have to be on the front lines from now on. It was too hard for me to do. It was just too much.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. It was like a confessional. Aaron regretted that he was not being treated to her laugh anymore, but what could he expect? You don’t dump on someone like that and get light heartedness in return. Pol got up and cleared the dishes away. He could hear her washing things up but he still didn’t move. He was going to have to say good night to Congresswoman Stamos soon so he could go to sleep with his ghosts and his pain. He needed to hide and not be seen. She was a pleasant interlude to his solitude, but way out of his class. Best say good night now.

When he looked up, she was standing in front of him with her coat and scarf on. He started to say good night but she placed a finger on his lips and hushed him. Gently she said, “Aaron Case, come to work for me and I will show you how we can change the world. Think about it and give me a call.”

She walked to the door and let herself out.

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