Chapter Text
The words ran through her head again and again, as relentlessly as the ground moved beneath her. They were her own words, and yet not. The woman who spoke them—that wasn't her anymore. Not entirely.
“Look, Senator, I wasn’t given a brain just to tell a Boy Ranger what time it is.”
Clarissa Saunders had a brain, all right, but a lot of good it was doing her now. All she knew for certain was that if her former self, all jaundiced eye and dry certainty, could somehow catch a glimpse of who she’d become, she’d have been aghast. Because from that vantage point, this much was clear: She'd lost it. She’d gone out of her gourd.
For here she was, completely in thrall to a fellow whom she’d once called a flag-waving infant—and with good reason! She still had enough sense to see that. By all accounts, Jefferson Smith didn’t belong in the Senate. He hadn't the faintest clue what he was doing. But there lay the paradox of it, because he’d also proven to be exactly the kind it needed more of. He was one heck of an orator—a prodigy, even. And for all his remaining ignorance, his moral compass pointed true north, and he was willing to push himself beyond human endurance to follow it. He was a different kind of Don Quixote, one who somehow made those windmills change into giants before your eyes as he raced toward them. And now, despite herself, she saw them too.
Yet as she looked out the window of the cross-country streamliner carrying her to places unknown, she felt uneasy. It had all happened so fast: the bill, the hearings, that glorious, gut-wrenching filibuster. And that little scene at the hospital, which still made her cringe at the memory of it.
“Saunders,” Jeff rasped, eyes still half-closed. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
She put a hand on his head. “Shh. Jeff, please. Save your voice.”
But he continued. “I was thinking, I—I wanted to take you back home with me.”
He looked up at her.
“But that wouldn't be right, would it? That note you sent me, I tell you, it gave me the biggest thrill of my life. But I’ve got to face facts: You probably wrote it just to keep me going.”
Clarissa, taken aback, yanked her hand away and stood up.
“So that’s it, is it? Little Boy Blue’s gotten so wised up that he’s pegged me as—a what? A mercenary? A Mata Hari for the cause?”
Jeff shut his eyes.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Saunders. You were only trying to help.”
“I don’t play around with people’s affections, thank you. I’m not your old pal Susan Paine.”
“Now Saunders, I—”
“That note was on the level, Jeff! And I’ll be hanged if you’re going to claim otherwise.”
She forced herself to meet his dumbstruck gaze.
“Or is it you? Are you the one who wants out of this? Well, do you?”
To rail at him like that, after what he’d been through! She had no idea what came over her. Fatigue? Guilt? After all, she had been a little cruel to him in the beginning, before he’d proven himself to be something other than a bug-eyed hayseed.
Jeff scrambled upright. His parched lips broke into an awed, slightly confused smile.
“Why Saunders, I—Clarissa! You mean it?”
She gasped back a sob before replying:
“Of course, you dope!”
And that’s how, days later, just before sunrise, Clarissa found herself sipping coffee in the dining car of a train barreling through a wheaten moonscape—Kansas, maybe, or perhaps eastern Colorado.
She still didn’t know quite what possessed her. She was throwing away everything she’d worked for. But of course, what was there to work for? Before Jeff’s arrival, she’d lost sight of it. The spark that ignited her ambition had never been money or prestige, but seven years of the daily grind and the stench of dirty dealings had all but snuffed it out. Jeff, well, he was offering something irresistible: a return ticket from cynicism. Was she a fool for thinking such a thing existed? Even now, she couldn’t be sure.
The train groaned to a stop at a crossing as another passed in front of it. She looked out at the bald prairie and a broad, meandering swath of water that cut through it. Not too far out, she could see a small group gathering by its edge, people wearing what looked to be their meager Sunday best. She saw an older man in white wade in, and after him, a nervous teenager in braids.
“What the—” she wondered out loud.
“Oh, that?” The voice behind her had attained a new kind of homespun authority. “River baptism. Never seen one before?”
She turned around. “You should be asleep, Jeff.”
“Nah, I’m caught up for the next week, I think. But that’s what they’re doing.”
“I see.”
He took the seat across from hers. “They didn’t do it like that in Baltimore, I take it?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? You try that in any of our water, and the gunk would stick to you for years. No thanks, we stayed indoors.”
She glanced down at her coffee.
“Say, what are you, anyway? Do your people dunk their heads in rivers?” There was still so much she didn’t know about him, or where she was going, or what she was getting into.
Jeff tilted his head back.
“Oh, let’s see. How do I explain this? I was brought up Methodist—that’s my mother’s side. Confirmed at thirteen. But as I grew older, well, I don’t know, but to me the home of the Almighty is way out in the wilderness, where it’s just Him and me. Not in any church I’ve been in. And as strange as it sounds, there's so much beauty in this world that I just can't bring myself to believe it's been dirtied up by original sin. Not when there's—”
Something had apparently plunked him back down to earth. His expression turned sheepish.
“Why, this has gotta be boring you out of your skull.”
“Not a bit,” insisted Clarissa. “Only, well, I gather that kind of talk might not play too well back home.”
Jeff frowned in consideration. “Hadn't thought of that. I guess I ought to be more careful, if I want to stay in public life. Some folks build their whole lives around the church, you see. And for me to just—well, I could lose a whole lot of support that way.”
“I can't stand that,” she replied with a grim edge to her voice. “All that holy-roller stuff. It should have no bearing on any of this.”
Jeff took her hand. “Well, if you’ve taught me anything, it’s to see things as they are and not just as they ought to be.”
“I know, but this is basic—separation of church and state! I mean, how much of a hick do you have to be to just—”
“Now look,” Jeff interrupted, his tone now uncharacteristically stern, “I can tell you one thing: You won’t do me one bit of good by throwing that word 'hick' around. The people in my state, they—they’re good people, and if I didn’t think so I’d have thrown Governor Hopper’s offer right back in his face. And I mean that. So if I were you, I’d retire that word right now. All right?”
“All right,” she said quietly.
He moved over to her side of the table and put his arm around her.
“Besides, that last fellow you called a hick—well, you remember what happened to him, don’t you?”
Clarissa returned his self-conscious smile.
“Last I heard, he’d gotten himself engaged."
She nestled back against him.
"A sad case. But I make no apologies. Serves him right."