Grandpa's Ballot

 

1.

Hubie filled out his absentee ballot carefully, checking every box and marking his preferences even in judicial and congressional races in which the names of the candidates were unfamiliar to him.  He scratched his mark in the box next to politicians running unopposed.  Hubie was not about to leave anything to chance and he thought that if some of the boxes on the form were left blank, someone might contest his vote or, even, disregard his ballot.  Everything had to be done properly.  Elections were governed by enigmatic rules that no one really understood – at least, this was how he grasped the situation.

After completing his ballot, Hubie signed it carefully and, then, slid the form into a stiff manila-yellow envelope.  After sealing it, he signed that envelope as well and, then, slipped it into another larger white envelope marked with the words Official Ballot.  Then, he drove to the Ballot drop-off box standing in the center of the parking lot at an old K-Mart closed now for several years.  A couple of pickup trucks and a van were angled toward the ballot box, parked several car-lengths from the sheet metal cube.  Someone on a bicycle was warily circling the ballot box.  A jogger darted past ignoring the polling place.  

The sheet metal box stood on four sturdy-looking legs bolted to the asphalt.  The top and edges of the box were decorated with the red, white, and blue of Old Glory.  Airplane cable girdled the box and, then, was latched around the steel stalk of a light pole.  Overhead, where the mercury halogen lights drooped down atop the pole, the round eye of a surveillance camera surveyed the crinkled asphalt around the box. The side of the thing was labeled in big yellow letters OFFICIAL BALLOT DROP OFF BOX. The abandoned store made a gloomy backdrop at one side of the big, empty parking lot.  In places, the asphalt had split at the seams and withered thistles and golden rod grew from the fissures in the parking lot.  The mountains rose in a great wave, blurred by shadow, over the edges of the city sprawling above pale grey terraces cut into the foothills.

A man with a black mask ambled toward the ballot box, looked suspiciously in both directions, and, then, pressed an envelope through a slit in the side of the metal container.  He hurried back to his van and sped away.  Hubie could see the silhouettes of people in the pick-ups.  The bike rider veered close to the box and dropped his ballot.  Then, he rode away, passing between the parked pick-ups that seemed to stand sentinel.  In the cab of one of the pickups, someone rolled down a window and a plume of cigarette smoke curled into the cool air.  Hubie got out of his car and approached the box.  He heard his footfalls sounding on parking lot.  – There, he thought: it’s done.  One of the pick-ups backed up as if taking his cue from Hubie’s casting of his vote.  Some headlights shone over the edge of the parking lot.  The nettles and thorns were crooked and brown like the dismembered legs of giant insects embedded in the tar.  The padlock on the ballot box caught the headlight’s glare and, across the lot, the beam raked across the silent, aghast facade of the abandoned K-Mart, all plugged and stoppered with plywood sheets over doors and windows.  

2.

Hubie’s grandpa didn’t walk so well and, because he had poor vision, he could no longer drive.  The old man lived in a little bungalow on an arid side-street slipped between some anonymous-looking warehouses and a fuel depot where eight or nine big white tanks rose between hedges of iron pipes.  Hubie’s mother said that grandpa had completed his ballot and wanted someone to come to his house and take the form to the official box at the old K-Mart parking lot on Arapaho Lane.  Hubie had better things to do and grumbled a little, but his mother said that it was important to the old man and that she would pay him 20 bucks for performing this service.

The old man didn’t come to his door.  It was open and Hubie went inside.  The place smelled of the old man, a faded odor of stale beer, perspiration, and urine.  Hubie’s grandfather was reclining in his Easy-Boy, watching Fox News.  The room was dark and the curtains were all tightly drawn.  The bright colors on the TV leaped like flames, flickering on the walls and coffee table – it was more colorful during advertisements.  A little dog limped across the carpet, the fur around its eyes discolored.  

Hubie asked his grandfather if he had completed the ballot.  The old man grunted and gestured toward a little desk in the corner of the room.  The TV screen cast color on the old man’s silver walker, the metal cage standing next to where his legs on the footrest were extended.  The ballot in its white sheath was sitting on the desk top.  

“Did you sign both the ballot and the inside envelope?” Hubie asked.  The old man nodded his head.  His eyes were dark and without luster.  

“Who did you vote for?” Hubie asked.

“You don’t ask a man that,” his grandfather said.  “It’s a secret ballot.”

“Yes, it is,” Hubie said.

Hubie asked the old man if he had eaten.  “I can go out to McDonald’s if you like,” Hubie told him.

“You’re a good boy,” the old man said.  “I appreciate everything you do for me.”  He continued: “But I’m not really hungry right now.  Later on, I can open up a can of something and microwave it.”

“If that’s what you want,” Hubie said.  “Do you need anything?”

The old man had a glass of something on a folding TV-table next to his Easy Boy.  The little dog walked in circles as if confused.

“I’m okay,” Hubie’s grandfather said.  “I’m pretty tired.  But I’ve been fretting about my vote.  I want to exercise my franchise.  You’ll help me, right.”

“Of course,” Hubie said.  There was something conspiratorial about the old man’s side-long glance at Hubie.  It was as if they were planning some kind of crime together.

The old man groped in his pant’s pocket.  Hubie saw that his trousers were a little dirty, flecked here and there with dropped food, and clotted around the ankles and knees with dog hair.  

“Come here, come here,” the old man said.  Hubie approached and the old man suddenly reached for his wrist and took his hand.  He shoved a twenty-dollar bill into Hubie’s fist.  

“I really appreciate it,” the old man said.  “Now, you better get going.  Before the polling place closes.”

Hubie thought that he should tell the old man that the polling places were open 24-7, but supposed that this might be hard to explain.  “I’ll get it done, grandpa,” Hubie told him.  He said goodbye and went outside.  It had been hot and stuffy in the old man’s house and it was good to be in the open air.  A breeze that smelled of sage and pinyon pine swept down from the foothills.  In the darkness, the housing developments high on the sides of the front range glittered above like constellations in the night sky.  

He drove down the avenue, crossing the hissing bright groove of the freeway.  The old K-Mart was about a mile away on a boulevard lined with fast food places, Mexican and Chinese take-out joints occupying old insurance agencies and laundromat buildings.  When he came to that road, Hubie turned in the opposite direction and drove down a ravine where silent, dark buildings perched on the hillsides.  At the bottom of the ravine, a railroad crossed the lane and there was a stark, empty intersection supervised by a traffic semaphore suspended overhead like a brooch necklace on the dark throat of the night.  A bar called the Rodeo Club was beyond the intersection, a furtive-looking concrete block building where a red neon light outlined a bucking bronco.  Most of the neon sections were burned-out and the sign was all dots and dashes that looked like a character written in Arabic or Japanese.  It was after Covid curfew but the bar was still open.  No one came down here unless they knew where they were going and the people who frequented the bar lived in the neighborhood and regarded it as an extension of their kitchens or living rooms.  Hubie had twenty dollars in his pocket and the expectation of another twenty when next he saw his mother and so he decided that he would have a few drinks.  Then, he could drive up the lonely ravine, join the traffic starting and stopping at the timed lights on the boulevard and drop off the ballot at the box in the K-Mart parking lot.  The bar was a quiet place where people minded their own business; Hubie went there to drink when he wanted to be alone.

The little parking lot shadowing the tavern smelled skunk, marijuana that someone had recently smoked.  The bar was most empty.  The bar maid inspected Hubie from head to toe as if to ascertain that he was a legitimate customer and not someone sent to bust the place for serving drinks after curfew.  She had sleepy eyes and was wearing a loose-fitting sarong that looked like pajamas.  A TV was tuned to a show in which amateur singers competed for fame and fortune.  The ads were all political, black and white for the negative commercials and warm amber colors for the positive endorsements.  Election day was still a week away.  

Hubie kept his surgical mask over his mouth, although he had slipped the face-covering down so that his nose wasn’t covered.  He discretely slipped the mask down to drink his whisky-seven.  Hubie didn’t want to risk a drunk driving charge and so he told himself that he would have only two drinks before departing for the K-Mart.  

He was on his fourth drink, when his cell-phone hummed against his breast bone.  He pulled out the phone and saw that it was his mother calling him.  

The TV show was now a basketball game played to an empty auditorium.  The empty stands made the players vicious.  They elbowed one another and fought under the hoop.  

Hubie’s mother said that grandpa had fallen in his kitchen.  The old man had managed to croak out his address before passing out.  The Life-Alert signal had summoned an ambulance to his house and he was now at the Riverside Hospital, apparently in Intensive Care.  Grandpa’s condition was not good and members of the family were gathering at the hospital.  Hubie’s mother told him to go to Riverside and take the elevator in the new building to the Fifth Floor.  Intensive care was the top level in the hospital, closer to heaven people sometimes said.  Hubie shuddered.  A close friend had died there a year earlier after a bad motorcycle crash.  In Hubie’s experience, no one survived intensive care.

3.

Riverside Hospital was in a crease in the foothills.  Hubie drove down toward the building where a red beacon for helicopter landings flashed on top of the roof.  At first, the hospital was below him and he looked down at it as if it were in a well with the red eye of the helipad blinking at him.  Then, the descending road was on the same level as the helipad.  When he parked, the beacon light flashed overhead, on the tall rampart of the building.  The surface lot, normally full of cars during the day and early evening, was half-empty.  He pulled up close to the Emergency Room door.  That entrance was barred and so he had to hoof it across the front of the building to the Acute Care entrance.  At that place, a masked woman with huge black eyes took his temperature by tapping a little wand against his forehead.  He was okay and so she let him pass.

Hubie found his mother standing near the doorway to a little non-denominational chapel.  Inside the chapel, Hubie saw some people kneeling in front of small table with a pale cloth covering it.  

“You can’t get any closer,” Hubie’s mother said.  He looked down the long corridor and saw a barricade of the kind you might encounter at a highway detour.  Several security guard with their faces ominously covered were sitting on folding chairs next to the detour sign.  

“How is he?”  Hubie asked.

“It’s a stroke, a brain event,” Hubie’s mother said.  Her sister came out of the chapel with her eye-shadow streaming.  

“He’s in a coma,” Hubie’s aunt said.

Hubie flashed on the ballot resting on the front passenger seat in his car.  

“I don’t think he’ll recover,” his aunt said and, then, gasped a little for air.

Hubie went into the chapel and sat in the last pew.  A few people were sighing and sobbing noisily.  The sound bothered him and so he left the chapel to sit with his mother in a nondescript niche labeled on its door: FAMILY ROOM. After a few minutes, Hubie’s sister appeared, her lips pale-looking and screwed tightly together.  Hubie’s cousin, a big fat man with a tiny beard, slouched into the family room.  

“We can’t go down to see him?” Hubie’s cousin, Leon asked.

“No,” Marcy, Hubie’s sister, said.

Hubie’s mother sniffed the air and turned to him.  “Are you fuckin’ drunk or something?”

“I had a few drinks,” Hubie said.  “But I’m not even remotely drunk.”

Hubie’s mother glared at him.  

Hubie didn’t like the atmosphere in the Family Room.  Marcy said that she was going down to the parking lot to smoke a cigarette.  

“You can’t smoke on hospital property,” Leon said.

“See if they can stop me,” Marcy replied.

“I’ll go with you,” Hubie said.  

4.

Although it was called “Riverside”, there was no river in the stony dry gulch under the hospital building.  Some cottonwood trees leaned thirstily into the cleft in the hillside but no water was flowing there.  A few big, grated storm sewer openings were cut into the hillside of the draw.  The round storm sewers were like empty eye sockets opening into the loose gravel above the dry river-bed.  

A jogging path ran beside the dry creek on a shelf overlooking the dusty-looking watercourse.  Some benches were set at intervals along the path, each illumined by a single dimly lit bulb atop a metal stanchion.  Several of the benches were occupied by solitary nurses in scrubs.  One of them was weeping loudly.  

Hubie and the fat man, Leon, sat side by side on one of the benches.  Marcy stood socially distanced from them, smoking her cigarette.

“Well, he’s best out of it,” Marcy said.  “Things have gone to shit.”

“I don’t know that,” Leon said.

“He didn’t think it was hopeless,” Hubie said.  “You know, his last act was to vote.”

“Vote?” Marcy said.

“How did he vote?” Leon asked.

“He filled out an absentee ballot just like they say you should and gave it to me to drop in a box,” Hubie said. “That shows a some optimism.”

Marcy nodded and said in a wondering voice: “So he voted?”

“Not exactly,” Hubie said.  “I got the sealed ballot still in my car.  I didn’t get time to drop it off before all this shit hit the fan.”

“Well, you know what the law is?” Marcy asked.

“What’s the law,” Hubie said.

“That ballot can’t be cast.  He’s a dead man.  Dead men don’t get to vote,” she said.

“But he’s not dead,” Hubie protested.  

“Coma,” Marcy said.  “Same difference.”

“I don’t think you have to show any particular level of awareness to cast a vote,” Hubie said.

“That’s true,” Marcy replied.  “Just look at the current President of the United States.  Obviously, half the electorate is brain-dead.”

“Very funny,” Leon said.    

“He was completely lucid when I saw him a couple hours ago.  The vote was already sealed in the envelope, all ready to be delivered.”

“What was he doing?”  Leon asked.

“Watching Fox,” Hubie told him.

“Then, you ought to throw that envelope in a ditch somewhere,” Marcy said.

“No, no,” Leon replied.  “It’s a valid ballot.  You know the law don’t you?”

Hubie said that he didn’t know the law and that none of them knew the law.

“It’s a felony to interfere with a validly cast ballot,” Leon said.  “You could go to prison if you don’t cast that vote for him.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Marcy said.  “The poor man’s gone.  His vote can’t be counted.  You can just throw it away.”

“You’re saying that just because you don’t like the way he voted,” Leon said.

“We don’t know how he voted,” Hubie told them.  “I asked and he told me it was none of my business.”

“I know how he voted,” Leon said.  “Grandpa was a patriot.”

“I know how he voted,” Marcy said.  “The old man was senile and a bigot.”

“Don’t talk about grandpa that way,” Leon said.  He stood up from the bench as if offended to be anywhere near Marcy.  He walked a dozen paces down the path.

“Don’t be that way,” Marcy said.  “We shouldn’t let political differences come between us at a time like this.”

Leon grunted.  “Political differences are all we got in common.”

“And our grandpa,” Hubie said.  He paused.  “Listen, I told him I would cast that vote.  That was my promise.  I gave him my word.”

“Well, you didn’t follow through on your promise,” Marcy said.  “You went to a bar instead and now this has happened.”

“I didn’t know he was gonna keel over,” Hubie replied.

“They’re just waiting to pull the plug,” Marcy said.  She had worked as a nurse’s aide for a few years and spoke confidently.  “For all intents and purposes, he’s a dead man right now.  He’s going to the light, to be with Jesus.  There’s no way back from this sort of event.”

“I’m not that sure,” Leon said.  “Medical science is pretty wonderful.”

“Not that wonderful,” Marcy replied.

“I owe him,” Hubie said.  “When I’m done here, I’m going to go out to the ballot box on Arapaho Lane and cast his vote.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” Marcy said.  “You might be casting a vote for someone you know to be dead.  That’s a felony.”

“You ain’t no lawyer,” fat Leon said.  “You don’t know that.”

“Well, I’m pretty damn sure,” Marcy replied.

“I gave my promise to him and I’m gonna keep my word,” Hubie said.

“You don’t owe any obligations to a dead man,” Marcy said.  “He’s beyond our politics right now.  I see him kneeling at the Great White Throne.  A promise made to a dead man can’t be enforced.”

“Where did you get your law degree, Marcy?” Leon scoffed.

“It’s true,” she said.  “The dead don’t have any rights.”

“I’m not going back up to the hospital room,” Hubie said.  “Right now, as far as I’m concerned, grandpa is alive.  I don’t know nothing to the contrary.”

“You’re just gonna stick your head in the sand?”  Marcy asked.

“You promised,” Leon said.  

The air smelled faintly of fire.  Parts of the Front Range were burning.  It had been a dry, hot season.   The creek bed was full of finely sifted dust that shone silver-white in the diffuse moonlight.  Hubie’s cell-phone rang.  

“I’m not gonna answer,” he said.

“Who’s calling?” Marcy asked.

Hubie took the phone from his pocket.  It was his mother.  He pressed the button on the side of the phone to mute it.  “Some kind of sales call,” Hubie said.

Hubie looked along the paved jogging path.  Where the trail turned, a couple were huddled together on a bench kissing.  A nurse in scrubs walked wearily up the trail toward the ramp that led to the hospital parking lots.

“Voting is for the living,” Marcy said.  “I’m not even all that sure that old folks ought to be able to vote.”

“That’s crazy, Marcy,” Leon said.  “So where do you cut it off – after eighty you don’t get to vote? after seventy?  Fifty-five for Christ’s sake?  Where do you draw the line?”

“You should have an investment in the future,” she replied.

“‘Investment’?” Leon snorted, “that’s like saying you can’t vote unless you own a house or have a big 401K.  You know, I think that’s been tried.”

“That’s not at all what I mean,” Marcy said.  “If you’ve got one foot in the grave, what makes you qualified to vote.  It’s about a future that you’ll never see.”

Hubie looked at the dark trees greedy for the creek’s intermittent moisture, all of them a little wind-torn and ragged, clustering around the dry stream-bed.

“You know,” Hubie said, “people plant trees whose fruit they know they’ll never taste.  That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” Marcy said.

Leon said: “You plant an apple tree so your grandchildren can eat fruit that you’ll never see.”

“It makes you think,”  Hubie said.  “I’m not sure that we don’t owe something to the dead.  After all, we wouldn’t be here except for them.  They suffered for us.  They came before.”

“So what?” Marcy said.  “A vote is about the future.  You’re voting on what the future should be.”

“Make America great again,” Leon said.  

“That’s bullshit,” Marcy said.  “But you vote because of how you see the future.”

“But the future is made from the past,” Hubie said.  “The future is all about what has happened in the past.”

“The dead should rest in peace,” Marcy said.

Leon said: “Dude, go put that vote in the box.”

Hubie pondered the situation for a moment.  “You know, they talk about the dead not dying in vain,” Hubie said.

“That’s patriotic nonsense,” Marcy said.  “The dead don’t get a say.”

“Grandpa would die in vain if you don’t cast his vote,” Leon said.

“You’re putting a pretty high estimate on politics,” Marcy said.  “Grandpa didn’t live and breathe politics.  Some years, he didn’t cast a vote at all.  He didn’t care that much about it.”

“But this year,” Hubie said, “he wanted to vote.  I have his ballot in my car.”

“Grandpa always said that they were all crooks,” Marcy stated.

“Crooks and scoundrels,” Leon said.

“People put too much emphasis on politics,” Hubie said.  “There’s a lot more to life.”

“But this is the most consequential election of our lifetime,” Leon said.

“I suppose,” Marcy agreed.

“I don’t know what to do,” Hubie said.

Rotors battered the air overhead.  They looked up and saw a Medi-vac helicopter hovering above the hospital.  The chopper’s lights flashed red and it was so bright that Hubie and fat Leon and Marcy  all seemed dipped in blood.  Slowly, the helicopter lowered itself onto the roof of the hospital. 

5.

At the official polling places, where there were election judges, voters were given a little round adhesive sticker printed in red, white, and blue: I VOTED!  An election judge handed you this sticker after you had cast your vote.

Old Pioneer Cemetery had once been in the country, on a hill overlooking a village now absorbed into the city’s suburbs.  The white limestone grave markers were scattered along the prairie ridge, rows of dark green cypresses outlining the tract of land.  Some comedian had stuck I VOTED! decals on many of the ancient, weathered stones.  A news crew with camera filmed the gravestones marked with the stickers.  The dead, it was reported, had come out of their graves to vote.

People claimed intimidation at the polls.  The political parties each sent Poll Watchers to voting places and there were some clashes.  Anonymous callers claimed that thugs were abroad with kerosene and gas in jerry cans and that they were incinerating ballots in the drop-boxes.

Reports of voter fraud were managed by a bipartisan volunteer committee.  One Democrat and one Republican were assigned the duty of scanning surveillance footage taken at drop-box sites where voting irregularities were claimed to have occurred.

Randy and Melinda, both election watch volunteers, were handed a thumb drive by their Committee chair.  They took the thumb drive with a laptop computer into a small conference room at City Hall.  Both were wearing lanyards with badges showing their names and pictures.  

The conference room was brightly lit but airless, without windows and behind a heavy metal door.  It looked like a place where a crime suspect might be interrogated or, even, tortured into a confession.

In the real world, Melinda was a real estate agent.  She had dry, sharp, bright features – a pointed nose and pointed chin.  She was stylishly dressed and had a nice figure – it looked as if she spent weekends hiking in the mountains or whitewater kayaking.  Randy was overweight and had trouble keeping his shirt tucked in to his jeans.  He was a union steward at a factory that produced plastic parts used in the telecommunications industry.

Melinda opened the lap top, booted it up, and, then, looked at the complaint form, a single sheet of paper on which they were to write their observations, mark a box either “Confirmed” or “Not Confirmed”, and, then, both sign at the bottom.  

“Let’s see here,” Melinda said.  She read the complaint typed at the top of the form.

“Ballot Drop Box 132,” she read.  “Arapaho Lane.  It says: ‘Dead People Voting Here’.”

“How do dead people vote?” Randy asked.

“Damned if I know,” Melinda replied.  “I guess we’ll see.”

She plugged the thumb drive into the side of the laptop.  The image on the monitor screen was clear.  At the center of the picture, a metal drop box stood on asphalt shattered into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.  The drop box gleamed and they could see the cold, bright reflection of a steel padlock latched onto a metal cable tied to the pole on which the camera was mounted.  There was some fish-eye distortion at the edges of the image where Randy and Melinda could see a couple of pick-up trucks parked at eccentric angles. 

“Pretty desolate location,” Melinda said.  

“I’m surprised that even the dead would hang out there,” Randy said.

“I guess we’ll see,” Melinda repeated.

A man wearing a black mask appeared at one corner of the screen.  He strolled up to ballot box and dropped an envelope in the slit in the steel container’s side.  The camera-angle showed the bald spot on top of his head.  Then, a bicycle rider appeared.  He was riding slowly and the bike seemed to wobble under him.  Without stopping, the rider approached the ballot box and slid his vote envelope into the gill on the side of the container.  A minute later, a small dumpy man with unkempt hair and a limp walked decisively up to the drop box, put his ballot in the slit, and, then, patted the container on its top as if it were a small child or a dog.  

Randy and Melinda watched for a while.  Nothing interesting happened.

“Don’t see any dead, do you?” Melinda asked.

“Nope,” Randy replied.

“Okay if I fast forward?”

“Yep,” Randy said.

She sped up the footage and the voters now were like divers appearing for a second, plunging across the screen, and, then, surfacing again at the edge before disappearing.  They watched in silence for a few minutes.

Suddenly, Randy thought he saw something. It was just a momentary flicker on the screen, something that he perceived only after the image had flashed across the monitor.  For an instant, Randy imagined that he saw a long procession of people gathered by the ballot box.  It was the solemn republic of the dead.  Randy glimpsed them standing humbly under the fish-eye lens of the camera: the poor tubercular dead, emaciated in their faded, old-fashioned clothes, pale mothers and fathers, an Indian wearing rags, some women in black long gowns made from crepe as if in mourning, business men with dust on their tophats and the shoulders of their frock coats.  

“I saw it,” Randy said.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” he said to Melinda.  “Run it back please.”

She reversed the direction of the thumb-drive’s feed. Then, they watched the pictures for ten minutes, slowing the imagery down to a crawl and, often, freezing the frame.

Whatever Randy had seen didn’t appear again on the lap-top screen.

“I don’t see anything,” Melinda said.

“Me neither,” Randy replied.