Let Them Look West by Marty Phillips

Author:Marty Phillips [Phillips, Marty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

The Singing Mountain

CHAPTER

9

R

ob had been correct in his initial assessment. He sat awake for hours cutting up and editing the audio files of the interview because he did not feel tired at all. The shock of finding Walden in his room and the strange conversation that followed, kept him in a perpetual state of restless nervous energy. For the man to go digging through his trash to find the envelope from the anonymous sender was unfathomably invasive. It was clear that there were no rules or standards of propriety when it came to Walden. The man would do anything necessary to pursue his aims. What of the writer of the strange letter? What had Walden called it again, sedition? Clearly there were some factional politics or sabotage at play in the camp. Or was it the whole state? Surely there was dissent. Alexander remained overwhelmingly popular, but could there be some sort of underground force working against him? Was this “Nico” character the face of that element? Rob did some internet searches on the topic and found nothing.

Finally, as the time neared midnight, he stretched out on top of the bedspread. He forced his eyes closed, despite the undercurrent of apprehension, and tried to let his mind wander. Yet it did not drift jellyfish-like in the tranquil, bluish-green and translucent tropical waters of a calm mind. It darted urgently, like a slick-skinned and blind being of the deep, to huddled posts to warm itself beside hot vents releasing acrid delirious dreaming of the day’s most haunting events. Walden stalked him in the woods. Paul Alexander ran an inner-monologue on enmity and the Jews in the back of his brain. Rob opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling.

There was one other thing he had been intending to do, since sleep seemed entirely out of grasp. Rob took his phone from the bedside table and put on his headphones. After a few moments of browsing, he found a video of Bill Stevens’ first speech at the Wyoming Leadership Convention. He turned to stuff a pillow under his shoulders so that he could sit up comfortably against the headboard.

The footage began with a bubbling murmur of voices and a still shot of an empty wooden podium. The event looked to be held in either an auditorium or large church with dark blue carpeting and wood paneled walls. The angle of the camera was maybe one hundred feet straight ahead of the speaker’s lectern and slightly above.

After about half a minute, Stevens appeared near the bottom of the frame in a white button-up shirt. Unlike his ally Alexander’s dark haired and clean-shaven appearance, he had blond hair, graying on the sides, green eyes under a tawny brow, and a short beard groomed carefully along his jawline. Where the governor was somber and sad, Stevens smiled frequently and widely. He held a clear plastic water bottle in one hand and toyed with the cap while weaving back and forth along the bottom of the frame.

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