The note was written in a scrawl

Chapter 5) Churchail
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Maggie looked forward to days when River Boy was at school so she could ignore him. He saw it.
She hadn’t decided what to do yet.
She wrote his name in her notebook, then tore it out, daydreamed about his hand on her thigh and imagined kissing him. At night the excitement kept returning to her room. She tried to purge him from her memory, afraid she was going crazy.

Tad lost his luster.
They went to the Junior-Senior dance and he didn't even try to kiss her.
She kept comparing him to the excitement of River Boy, and Tad was falling short.

Summer came. Her senior year loomed ahead, but none of the boys approached because of Tad.

Her girlfriends told her they were planning a trip to Abbeyville to attend Churchail's annual party at his plantation home, stocked with maids and butlers and an endless line of visitors seeking favor.
The girls were laughing. It was a good place to meet men instead of boys, and it sounded exciting.

Thomas Churchail, the powerhouse glad-hander, was full mid-life desperate and running for County Commissioner again. Backed by the party machine, he had his finger in everybody’s wallet that moved through the area.
The general rumor was that nary a bean could be planted without his consent.

He owned the best of everything and his annual gala was going to be the kick off for his re-election in the fall. Except this time, it posed a problem. Apparently people were getting tired of the same face and same speeches.
Small farmers were getting squeezed out by consolidators. Statewide Bank was raising rates and there was only money if you could plant big acres.
Sharecroppers, mules and farm workers were getting replaced by machines.
Large national interests wanted to end the small regional guys that soaked up the money now.

Politics is about the times in which you live, and the face of the land was changing with wide roads, gas stations, motels, fast cars and rock and roll.
Sears and Roebuck was attracting people away from downtown businesses.
Woolworth's was pushing back, but town squares were dying out.
People asked, was it reasonable to skew apart the normal, what they used to call sane and just?

The Democratic machine was worried about backing Churchail since it looked like he was going to lose. Work was needed to get the vote fixed, and it might not be enough.

At the same time, Statewide Bank had a problem with greedy hands in their pockets.
The Upstate Boys controlled Churchail, and most the other commissioners around the state.
Those Boys were taking a big cut.
Churchail for his part, was trying to block Statewide, not because he gave a crap suit about farmers and small towns. He just wanted a bigger payoff.
He worked for the coin, as you might say.

Statewide Bank was part of the national interests, and Churchail qualified as one of those local ass flies that was stopping progress.

The election became the firing point. Statewide put out a hard-punch investigation of Churchail’s bank records ... and decided to back Lever ‘Lanky’ Johnson II for County Commissioner.
The New Reform Party nominated Lever ‘Lanky.’ They came up with the slogan “Vote for Clever Lever,” and paid an army of workers to hang his posters on every telephone pole.
Not just that, but young Mr Lanky was good looking and a college math professor. Apparently he had a long slide rule, which of late was getting administered to Mrs Churchail every fourth Wednesday of the month, following the New Christian School Board meeting.

Mrs Churchail was fed up with Thomas Churchail’s love-lolling for money and young girls. She had taken up with Mr Lanky and craved his rhythmic upshot of duty between her breaths. She was a bit older and quite familiar with her husband’s business and personal affairs, thinking it would be nice to see him in jail stripes so she could enjoy her own proclivities.

The Upstate Boys and the machine politicians had gotten themselves into a brawl across the state over control of the counties.
They decided that Churchail was important and they needed to throw extra weight behind him, and then somebody came up with the slogan 'Yankee Lanky.'

The reason for calling Lanky a Yankee was dubious, since supposedly his mother came from Illinois, the despised home of Lincoln the dictator who whipped the South, when actually it was his sister who moved there.
No matter the facts, another army of volunteers followed behind Reform Party volunteers and pasted the 'Yankee Lanky' slogan over 'Clever Lever' posters.
That prompted Statewide to put up money to re-paste slogans over the Yankee slogan, saying Hail No.

It was quite good for local entertainment, and more so after Mrs Churchail's involvements with Lanky were disclosed at the School Board meeting.
Mrs Churchail, hardly accustomed to public embarrassment, had her numerous and important friends make wild accusations of slander followed by all of them getting up and walking out of the meeting. It was an impressive show of allegiance made stronger by the knowledge that most of the women were vulnerably exposed over their own dilly dally enjoinments that had been confided to Mrs Churchail over the years, all in good friendship no doubt.

The effort backfired against the Christians, and handsome Mr Lanky was more popular than ever with the women.
However, more importantly to the election, Mrs Churchail ended up back with her doting husband whose own carryings on were not an issue.

It had been years since Churchail ran against opposition, but the fire was still there. He wanted to win, and needed his wife's help, which was unlikely since she would benefit nicely if he went to prison. But as it happened, the unexpected turn of events played to his favor.

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