Marshall Ramsey

The sun dipped below the horizon as it finished its assault on the beach. The white hot sand cooled as the gulls danced in the early-evening sea breeze.  The tranquil Gulf transitioned from a clear aqua blue to a murkier dark cyan.  Most of the tourists had packed their lobster-red sunburned skin in for the day and were headed to Destin’s numerous seafood restaurants.  Jimmy looked out the condo’s sliding glass door and knew it was his time to play.

Like a child forced to stay inside and practice violin while the other kids played, Jimmy had to sit inside and watch the rest of his family enjoy the beach.  He was like a fork in the microwave when he was on the beach.

Jimmy was a malignant melanoma survivor.  Not long out of surgery, his family knew they needed to support him — so they took him, a man with the most fatal form of skin cancer, to the beach.

Jimmy told them if they really wanted to kill him that a gun would be cheaper than a condo.

His primary melanoma was on his back, leaving a seven inch scar where the mole and surrounding skin was removed.  He also had eight other moles removed and had a sentinel node biopsy to make sure that the cancer had not spread.  Jimmy was covered in scars. He looked like he had run naked though a briar patch.  “I fought pirates,” he told his son.

“All your scars are on your back. Were you running away?” his son answered.

Truthfully, Jimmy had been running away. He was running from the absolute fear his brush with morality had brought. The physical pain from the surgery paled (the irony of that word) in comparison to the anxiety brought on by melanoma.  It was a disease that liked to come back.  And Jimmy had gone into a tail spin fearing that it would.

That was why he was inside the condo. His parents and brother and sister were out playing the sand all day. He was watching Dr. Phil.

But now it was his time. After 4 p.m., the sun’s rays were less intense. He knew he could go swim safely.  His feet skipped across the boards across then dune and then into the sugary sand.  Cherishing the moment, he felt every grain slipping through his toes.

As Jimmy approached the water’s edge, he took off his shirt. He threw it down onto the sand and started running into the surf.  Six feet away, a mother and two little girls were playing.  All three swiveled their heads and stared directly at Jimmy’s bright-red grotesque scars.  Jimmy stopped for a moment and paused. The mother knew she had been busted and started to turn her head away.

Jimmy’s eyes began to water.

He paused for a moment and then put his hand on his main scar. The mother nodded and said meekly, “I’m sorry.”

“You mean this?” Jimmy said sadly.

The lady nodded again.

Jimmy looked her right in the eye and said, “It’s OK. It was a shark attack and it happened right where your daughters are swimming.”

Color drained from the lady’s face as she scooped her girls out the water and ran back onto the beach.  Jimmy smiled a slight, impish smile.

He knew he had two choices.  He could be offended or he could make a joke.  He went with a joke — one that he has been telling for nearly ten years now.

Jimmy learned that day if you can laugh at what scares you, you’ll be a lot better off.  He watched the lady and her daughters head back to the condo complex. And then he dove into the surf and felt the salt burn his skin.

Jimmy, the melanoma survivor, had never felt more alive in his life.

While sitting in an anonymous hotel room, the candidate rubbed his feet.  They hurt from hours of standing in dress shoes. Still dressed in his suit, he took another sip of his drink.  Tonight was a vodka night. Last night was a bourbon night.  It had been another 14-hour campaigning day. Two speeches and a fundraiser.  He had been running for President since November 2012.  Now, four years later, it was down to the last two weeks.  He sipped his Vodka again but was careful not to gulp.  He had a breakfast fundraiser in the morning.  A smile broke across his tanned face. He was the Fundraiser in Chief.

He thought of crazy Tom Cruise jumping up and down in Jerry McGuire.  “SHOW ME THE MONEY! SHOW ME THE MONEY!”

Money = power. And politics was all about power.

One more sip on the Vodka and he looked at his empty glass.  As the election went on, the stronger his drinks had become.  This had been a four-year marathon.  Now he was poised to cross the finish line.

All the baby-kissing. All the chicken speeches. All the promises made. He was about to win.

He knew it. The polls were in his favor.  He had won the debates and even had the media saying what a strong performance he had given.  Those acting classes in college had paid off. He resisted turning on the Tonight Show. His competitor was on tonight.  “Desperate,” the candidate thought. “Purely the move of a desperate man.”

The candidate smiled.  He managed to say nothing for four straight years.  It was a mental rope-a-dope. Be a blank canvas and allow the voters to attach whatever they wanted to him.  The primaries had been brutal.  But he crawled out the pile of bloodied candidates and crossed the finish line first.  First. Winning. #1. That was him.

“I’m going to have to hire an aide to keep up with who I promised what.”

The candidate reached for the Vodka bottle to pour another drink.  He looked around the room at the hotel decor. A hotel painting. A hotel TV. A hotel desk and hotel chair.  If he hadn’t known he was in Ohio, he wouldn’t have known where he was. A hotel room in Boise looked like a hotel room in Pittsburg looked like a hotel room in Atlanta.  He was the political version of his hotel room. He could be anything to anyone anytime.

America was a country that when a crisis came along, a leader came along who was worthy of Mt. Rushmore. Not now. Not this campaign. Not in 2016.  You couldn’t tell the truth and get elected. At least that’s what experts said. Tell them what they want to hear. And then do what your donors want.

“Dang,” he thought. “This Vodka is making me cynical.”

The candidate pulled out his wallet and removed his lucky five-dollar bill.  He felt the paper as he crinkled it in his fingers. He loved how money felt.  And then he looked at Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln. Now there was a leader.

A jet took off at the nearby airport, rattling the glass and bottle on the nightstand. The candidate took one more drink and flipped off the television.  Sleep stalked him like a paparazzi.  The candidate laid back on his bed and passed out in his suit.

It was a dark, fitful sleep.  The candidate’s head spun (from the alcohol) as the past four years of campaigning replayed in his head.  He watched as the American economy recovered briefly and then slipped back into recession. He saw unemployed Americans as they lost their hope.  Empathy washed over his sleeping conscience. He saw how divided the nation was. Like a ship without a rudder, America was adrift.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

The Candidate turned around and a man appeared out of a bright light and fog. His stovepipe hat was distinctive, giving his identity away.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Abraham Lincoln walked up to the candidate and placed his hands on his shoulders and began to speak. His voice was much higher than the candidate imagined. “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

The candidate tried to argue back but was speechless. His mouth moved but nothing came out.

Lincoln looked at the candidate in the eye and said “and remember, A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

The former president turned around slowly and faded quietly into the mist.  The candidate stood there realizing how he had failed himself. And how he was on the cusp of failing America.

The passed-out candidate rolled over while clutching his lucky five-dollar bill.

The next morning, the candidate was in a new suit and in a new room of donors. He picked at his runny scrambled eggs and ate half a muffin. And then when the moment came, he rose and walked to the podium.  He thought of the words of the former president.  As he looked out at the crowd, he took a deep breath.

And then he said, “The campaign is over. Now it is time for you to hear the truth.”

As forks dropped, one of his advisors passed out in the back of the room.

For the first time in years, the candidate spoke his mind. His advisors said he was crazy. His donors recoiled in horror. And the voters voted him in in a landslide.

Thanks to a visit from a dead president in an anonymous Ohio hotel room, the candidate experienced the ultimate October surprise.