Killing Iowa

By j.r. creech

Danny Day is a young man on a mission.  He wants to kill the Iowa Caucus.  He doesn’t look like an anarchist.  He looks like a farmer.  There is no red bandanna over his face, no gasmask, no garbage can lid for a shield.  But the revolution he sparks is pure chaos.  His weapon is a silly sign on a broomstick.  His sign is two words, STOP VOTING!   killing iowa is a political thriller. The setting is an American presidential campaign.  The place is the Iowa Caucus.  first in the nation..  The story follows a dozen characters through seven days in Iowa, a week of corruption, blackmail, Big Corn, night flying Monsanto drones, CNN, the kidnapping of the U.S. Congressman, a small town sheriff, Iraqi war veterans, the FBI, crooked journalists, and just to complicate things, a snow hurricane, the Blizzard of the Century.  For the next two years we will be hearing about Iowa.   Hillary in Iowa, Jeb Bush in Iowa, Joe Biden in Iowa.. the buzz from Iowa.  CNN, MSNBC, FOX, TBS, even TMZ, all will be camped in Iowa.  Caucus, an Algonquian word that once meant “a gathering of tribes”, now represents a media swarm over frozen Iowa corn fields in the most archaic system of electing a President imaginable.  And Danny Day wants to kill it.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: j.r. creech
• Release date: Feb 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507068069

j.r. creech

j.r. creech lives in New York.  His previous novel, Music and Crime, was published by G.P.Putnam's Sons.  

Book preview

He hadn’t asked permission to stand in front of Purina Farms; he had just picked a spot by the turnoff.  In the distance he looked like a hitchhiker.  Except for the sign.  The sign he had made from cardboard, painted it red, white and blue.  Danny had never done anything like this before, and it was harder than it looked when you’re all alone. 

But Iowa was the logical place to start; by New Hampshire it was already too late.  Iowa was the first and the most ridiculous of these things.  The primaries.  The way they selected our leaders.  It wasn’t even a real primary, just a caucus.  He knew caucus came from an Algonquin word because he had looked it up, a word that used to mean, gathering of tribal chiefs.  But these people in their road grimed Ford 150’s and Chevy Suburbans weren’t tribal chiefs.  They were farmers.

A pickup slowed.  It had amber fog lights, an eight-foot snowplow blade.  Danny knew it was going to stop and give him some shit, and sure enough, he was right.  The window rolled down, cigarette smoke rolled out.

What are you, a fuckin’ Communist?

There was no bandanna over his face.  No gasmask. No rocks in his hands. He didn’t have a garbage can lid for a shield.  Danny didn’t look like an anarchist.  There was nothing hostile about him at all.  Just a silly sign.  It was stapled to a broomstick.  Two words,  STOP VOTING .

No sir, Ah’mm not.

It was two men, sort of grinning at him.  "What the hell does that sign mean, Stop Voting? The passenger said, It’s my goddamn right to vote.  You tryin’ to take my rights away?"

He didn’t mean to steal anybody’s rights.  He stood alone in fourteen inches of crusty January snow, double socks, long johns, down parka, cap and gloves.  He had dressed for the Iowa winter.  And he would be lying if he said he didn’t feel foolish when the headlights swept over him. 

Danny answered, You can’t fix a lawnmower while the blades’re still whirrin’.

Fix a lawnmower? 

First, you gotta’ turn it off.

Now that broke ‘em up for a second or two. 

Voting’s the way we do it in this country, son.  You don’t like it, move to fuckin’ China.  See how you like that.  That was from the driver.  He had leaned across the seat to get a look.

The passenger spit out the window, not really at him, but close enough to make the point. Fuckin’ hippie. 

Seemed a little harsh.  One look at him and you could see plain enough he wasn’t a hippie.  He was one of them.  He even dressed just like them.  The American people.  Well, he wasn’t completely naive, he knew the American people was only a phrase politicians used when they wanted something.  He understood it had no meaning.  But still, he was an American, and he was average, ordinary, a common man, just like them. 

And these were the Democrats calling him a fuckin’ hippie.  Wait ‘til he picketed the Republicans.

Thankfully, those boys had nothing more.  They’d got their laugh.  They turned the truck up the driveway, straight on under the long gauntlet of pale winter elms.  There was a big white farmhouse sitting atop the hill, maybe fifteen vehicles parked in the circle.  Purina Farms was a Democratic caucus site, a corporate farm, one of the richest in the precinct.  And that was the point wasn’t it?  Everybody knew it was all about money.

2)

The weather was going to complicate things.  They’d blocked the storefront with both police cruisers.  They’d positioned volunteers’ pickups around the rear; evacuated everyone east of Grant as a precaution.  They had sealed Monroe at the roundabout, detoured traffic away from town.  Eagle Tree had never seen a hostage situation before.  And even though the school was judged a safe distance, over a mile, they closed it, took the kids out early.  He wasn’t getting away.  This was already over.  He just didn’t know it yet. 

But the snow.  Damnit.. that was going to complicate things.

Day!  Day, this doesn’t have to end tragic.

The chief crouched behind his cruiser, stared across at Two-Day Repair, a two-story, slanted roof, storefront below, white wood frame above.  It was a teardown, one of the old red brick freestanding buildings, like a postcard from the past.  Four street windows boarded up with plywood from the inside.  Nothing moving.

D, pick up the phone.  I just want to talk, damnit. Pick it up. 

And the chief knew this place; he had a good picture of it in his head, the counter up front, the workshop in the back.  How ironic, a year ago they’d fixed the trigger on the bullhorn he held to his mouth. 

But he was reaching for his words and not very good at it either.  We all end up tragic.. that’s exactly how it ends.

C’mon, Danny.. The chief sounded like it was just too damn cold to be standing out in the street. Let’s get this over with. 

I’m not Danny. The gunman whispered to the front door.  He glanced over at the body on the floor.  That was Danny.

What is that?  Al, can you read it?  The chief nodded across to a cockeyed sign in the window.  The snow was blowing sideways, but the sign looked like it was red, white and blue. 

3)

The Iowa caucuses came to national attention in 1972 when a Democratic operative named Norma Matthews, the Iowa state co-chair of the George McGovern campaign, awoke in the middle of the night with a heart pounding big idea.  "..first in the nation.. she muttered to herself.  Before 1972 the caucuses were held in March or early April and were, at best, minor local events in the middle of an already busy two-party national primary schedule.  In truth the early caucuses had very little to do with presidential politics.  They were mostly neighbors getting together around beer and snacks to kibitz over farm subsidies and school board elections and how to kill corn beetles without giving everybody cancer.  But Norma Matthews was about to change all that.  She was what her generation called a go-getter.  She was able to convince the state Democrats in Des Moines to move their caucus, the electoral event" as she began to re-label it, from March to January, to the first month of the new election year.  People thought Norma was nuts, caucuses in January?  It’ll be twelve degrees and blowing snow.  But no matter, she had a vision, first in the nation, and it had a nice ring to it.  In 1972, her candidate, George McGovern, finished second to Edmund Muskie, but momentum was the new buzz word heading into the New Hampshire primary.  Muskie was vulnerable.  The national press was suddenly involved in Iowa. Why?  Because it was the first, it was the middle of January, and because it was the only game in town. 

In 1976 an unknown Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter with 28% came in a distant second to nobody.  The caucus winner was an Uncommitted slate with 38% .  But since Carter had more votes than any actual candidate, he was able to use the publicity from his Iowa win to roll into New Hampshire as the Democratic front-runner and eventually win the Presidency.  Since then, the money and the press had begun to flow into Iowa by the truckload.  First in the nation. 

It was twenty-two degrees.  And then the wind began to blow.  There was nothing to stop it.  Behind Danny Route 6 was snowbound, but clear to the horizon.  Cornflake bits swirled in the air, either shaking out of the trees, or lifting the dry stuff off the ground.  It was the wind that cut him, the wind that turned everything so bleak.  He wore duck hunting clothes, mossy oak camouflage, an insulated snow bib, a down parka, max heat hand warmers in his pockets.  And still he shivered like a chihuahua.  He shuffled his feet, tucked his chin.  When the headlights came he squared up, tried to look resolute.  They slowed for the turn, stared through icy windows.  He fought the urge to wave because that was his true nature; he was a waver, a smiler, a head nodder, as affable as a yellow lab.  But waving just didn’t seem appropriate.  He wanted them to know he was serious about this. 

Gee-sus, he was freezing his ass off.  The voice in his head worked overtime, come back tomorrow, it’s better in the daylight, nobody cares.. He was ready to pack it in when the news finally showed up.  It was about time.  There were thousands of them scouring Iowa back roads tonight. One of them was bound to stumble across him and his homemade sign.  At least that was the plan.  Get on the news.

This was a local crew, probably out of Iowa City.  They rolled up in a black and gold Jeep Wagoner with monster snow tires and a winch on the front.  The license plate shouted Go Hawkeyes!  There was a PRESS sign taped to the windshield and four college kids inside. 

A girl jumped out.  She had a thick scarf mummy-wrapped around her face and a purple pom on her ski cap.  She wore glasses.  She lowered the scarf to speak.  What is this?  She asked. 

He shivered and tried to pull his lips apart.  Before he could answer, she said, Aren’t you frickin’ freezing?

He nodded.  His face was numb.

"You really want people to stop voting?"

He stuttered.  Ya-ya-yes. 

Ice had formed under his nose.  He was frozen stiff.  She chuckled, Like Neozoic Man.. 

He nodded.

Y’know, the Ice Age, Snowball Earth?

He had no idea what she was talking about.

Would you like to get in the car?  Warm up alittle?

oh god yeah..  But his feet didn’t move.  He had a young boy’s face, dreamy brown eyes.  He smiled at her.  She smiled back.

"You really think people should stop voting?" 

The system’s entirely dysfunctional.  Voting keeps it ga-ga-going.. 

Dude, your teeth’re chattering. 

..keeps it ga-goin’ like nothin’s wrong. 

Hypothermia?  Ever hear’ve it?  She pried the sign from his hands and dropped it in the snow.

He squeezed into the backseat between two college girls.  The second girl had a row of gold studs around the rim of her ear.  She gave him a quick-eyed glance, pulled her coat free and scooted over closer to the door. 

Sorry, he said.

She glared at him.

In the front seat were two college guys.  The driver watched him in the rearview mirror.  The other, the clean-cut one in the passenger seat didn’t waste any time, he turned, threw an arm over and engaged, So, stop voting, huh?  How does that work? 

He tugged off his gloves, flexed his fingers.  They were a weird color, blue underneath the skin and red on the surface.  He blinked at the students, two guys in the front, two girls in the back.  He nodded at them.  He opened his mouth several times just to unfreeze his jaw.

My name is Emily.  She held out her hand, We’re from the Daily Iowan.  U of I.  What’s your name?

I’d.. I’d rather not say.

"You’d rather not say?" 

He blew into his hands.  They exchanged chuckles.

Why?

I dunno.. I just don’t..

Dude, said the driver, it’s just your name, man. It’s not like identity theft or anything.

Well, okay.. I’m Danny. Danny Day. Everybody calls me D.

Everybody calls me M.  Said Emily.

He thought she was goofing on him.

How long’ve you been standing out there?  Emily asked.  As before, she didn’t give him time to answer, Do we have anything to drink, this guy’s freezing.

The boy in the front seat rummaged along the floorboard.  He came up a brown paper sack.  We’ve got a couple’ve beers left.

Beer’s good.  Danny said. 

Emily watched his blue fingers and brown eyes.  He struggled to pop the top, caught her looking at him.  He offered her the first drink.

No, no thanks. 

But he didn’t drink either; he wanted to answer the question.  It was a question he knew, one that he had asked himself a million times: how does that work?

I think you hafta’ go after the seniors, he said.  I tried to get AARP on board, but they wouldn’t listen.

Voting is the cornerstone of the system. interrupted the driver.  He had long curly hair and wire rim glasses.  Voting is a privilege and a responsibility.

That’s what they said.

You go after the seniors?

He nodded.

I get it, because they vote as a block.  Their numbers’re high, because they always turn out.  Kids don’t.

Danny glanced at Emily.  He nodded again, Well, that too, he said, But mainly because they’ve seen elections their whole lives.  They’ve voted ten, twelve times.  An’ nothing’s changed. They’re old, they’re dissatisfied in general, kind’ve pissed off at the world.  They’ve seen it all get worse and worse.  Old people are not so idealistic.  They can be convinced.  Seniors are the key.

The students were quiet for a moment.  The driver turned to face him.  You want a national boycott against voting?  All elections, or just for president?

Iowa first, said Danny Day. The Iowa Caucus.  Now he took a swig of beer.  Thanks. He smiled.

How old are you?

I’d rather not say.  He laughed, and it made them chuckle too.

Now the twitchy girl beside him spoke up, "Do you have any idea how much money the caucuses bring to the state of Iowa?"

Estimates from eighty to a hundred million dollars.  He answered.

They’ll never give that up.

Well, yeah, he shrugged, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  It’s no longer about electing leaders.  It’s just about raising money. Danny grinned, "It’s funny, they don’t even call it earning money, or even making money, it’s raising money, like it’s turnips."

Emily liked that.

It’s always been about money. snapped the driver.

It has.

Money is the mother’s milk of politics.

It is.  They spent a billion dollars on the last president.  What’s the next one gonna’ cost?  Two billion?

Of course he was right, but how do you stop that?  Emily cocked her head, she motioned to the guy in the passenger seat, he was their camera man, and she said, Mind if we video you? 

Is my nose running? 

I was gonna mention that.

Danny wiped his nose and put down the beer and had his first on-camera interview right there in the backseat. 

4)

Officer Alberts fetched a pair of field glasses from his truck.  Since he’d run and got them, he looked first.  It says, Stop Voting 

No shit it does.  The chief took a look for himself.  Through all the damn snow it was hard to make out a white sign in a white window, but there it was, Stop Voting. 

That’s what this is all ‘bout? 

Seemed it got a little crazier every year.  Kooks and nazis and meth heads.  The heartland ain’t what it used to be.

They got back in the chief’s cruiser.  He tried the cell phone again, let it ring and ring. 

Think he’s in there?

He’s in there.

Think he’s all tweaked up?

There was a plague descending on Eagle Tree.  The entire town had just twelve hundred people in it.  By nightfall there would be more media than citizens, the sheriff of Lyon County in all his glory, a brigade of State Troopers and FBI.

Doan know how they’re gonna’ get here.  Said the chief. 

Snow shoes.  Said Alberts.

The northwest corner of Iowa was remote on a good day.  This wasn’t a good day.  75 was already shut down fifty miles out of Sioux City.  There was a flood of fresh four-foot drifts across County Rd. 9 at Larchwood.  Nobody was coming down from Sioux Falls either.  Same with 182. 

Rock Rapids?

They can’t fly in this. Y’kiddin’?  Four o’clock now, by six, another eighteen inches. The perfect storm.

What?

A whiteout, Al.  We got a goddamn whiteout. 

Alberts nodded.

The Eagle Tree Police Dept. had five men.  the chief, Alberts, Mack, and two volunteers.  Chief Hannsen gazed out through the snow. The weather might actually help us a bit.  Most people’ll have sense enuff to stay home.  Some won’t.

We’ll get the looky-loos off the street.

What I mean is we’re bound to have other emergencies.

Alberts nodded.

What about the caucus sites?  The elections were tomorrow.  That was a fun day all by itself.  Huh, Al? I’m listenin..

Undermanned an’ outgunned,  said Al.

The chief ran the wipers, watching the front of Two-Day Repair.  He was a religiously practical man, a list-maker.  His first priority was to ascertain the condition of the congressman.  It would help if they answered the goddamn phone.

5)

Danny’s first run at the senior citizens ended in failure.  It came in Oskaloosa, Iowa, at a Republican caucus site called The Barn.  There were three hundred elderly people warehoused here, permanent residents of The Barn.  That’s what they called it.  The official name on the wall plaque was the Charles L. Barnhouse Assisted Living Center.  When you considered that Oskaloosa’s total population was roughly ten thousand men, women and children, three hundred old people was a pretty good concentration.  A good place to start recruiting. 

The Barn was a passive death row.  Five stories of concrete pre-fab and casement windows, three hundred rooms behind those windows, three hundred beds with three hundred bodies.  The Barn was booked to capacity.  It had a wheelchair-friendly glass encased entrance, and like a Roach Motel, the old folks went in and they didn’t come out.  The hallways were all the same creamy coffee color.  They had handrails and the unique sour smell of diapers that mixed with the smell of Lysol.  The whole place smelled like a pine-scented Depends. They said you got used to it.

The building faced Haymarket Street with icicles hanging off the windows and a string of Christmas lights still up over the doors.  Danny rubbed a spot in the frosty front windows.  He could see them milling about inside, walkers scraping by, wheelchairs parked in front of the fake fireplace in the lobby.  His new flyers were pure scare tactics: DEATH PANELS FOR GREEDY GEEZERS.  SOCIAL SECURITY IS BANKRUPT.  FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW, CONGRESS DENIES COLAS.  Seniors knew what COLAS were, cost of living adjustments.  Seniors were what the pollsters called issue voters and their issues were Social Security and Medicare and prescription drugs.  Period.  Danny thought he knew how to get their attention. 

Hey! Hey, hey!  Get away from there!  It was the Security Guard.  He wore a gray long-sleeved uniform, a down vest and striped pants; he looked about seventy himself.  No soliciting.  Can’t you read the damn sign? 

Yes, sir, I just thought with the election..

You thought wrong.

But..

Move it. Get.  He made a vague gesture to the plastic Taser on his hip.  He pointed to Danny’s handful of flyers, Not ‘round here, bud, he said.

Emily Ames downloaded the crew’s road trip onto her laptop.  She was the assistant editor of the Daily Iowan and she had so much shit to do the only shot was to pop some Adderall and just stay up all night throwing it together.  But before reaching for the beans, for the moment at least, she sunk back on her dorm bed with a box of Captain Crunch, watching Danny Day.  They had saved eleven interviews from the street canvass, ten of them neatly divided into five Republicans, five Democrats, five males, five females, three blacks, three whites, two Latinos, two Asians.  Demographically adjusted, politically correct.  All the standard bipartisan boring blah, blah, blah, tax cuts, unemployment, Afghan, Iraq, health care, gay marriage.  But Danny’s five-minute video was different.  He didn’t give two shits about God, guns and gays.  He said it wasn’t mainstream, he called it downstream.  He was going for the source, the groundwater of all this mess.  He wanted to shut down the Iowa caucus. 

If anyone in America thought the caucuses were democracy at work, they were wrong.  The process could not be farther from the Constitutional idea of one man, one vote.  The Democratic Party caucus looked like a kindergarten class with adults standing at their little desks.  The voters supported their candidate by literally moving to one side of the room, while people supporting another candidate moved to the other side of the room.  Undecideds stood in the middle.  Everybody for Hillary Clinton stand by the fireplace.  Everybody for Joe Biden stand over there by the dining room table.  Anybody for Michael Bloomberg stand by the tv set, and the rest of you go out into the kitchen.  At this point the caucus officials determined which candidates were viable.  Depending on the number of county delegates to be elected, the viability threshold was 15 percent of the attendees.  Then, for roughly an hour, the Iowa voters tried to cajole their neighbors to drop their first-choice candidate and come over to their side.  They literally tried to pull bodies to the other side of the room.  It’s an insane system; without a secret ballot, everybody in town knows who voted for whom.  They voted by counting heads so everyone was subjected to peer group pressure from family, friends, employers, unions and clergy.  Ties were solved picking a name out of the hat.  Absentee voting was barred.  Soldiers from Iowa lose their vote, as does anyone who has to work nights like cops or nurses, since the caucuses were held at seven P.M.  But the most egregious affront to democracy was the turnout.  Because the caucuses were held in the middle of January and usually ran for two to three hours with all the haranguing going on, the total vote could at times be as low as 80,000 people.  Less than one percent of the nation’s delegates were chosen at the Iowa caucuses.  So why was so much value placed on the outcome?  The Democrats didn’t even give true vote totals; they gave percentages to the press who covered the state by the thousands.  Reporters rushed on air with Breaking News from Iowa to create a manufactured media-driven revenue stream of self-importance, to validate a system that was insane.

He was right.  This was no way to elect the president. 

Emily liked his face.  She paused the video.  She liked that when he had opened the can of beer, he’d offered her the first sip.  She really liked that. Who does that shit?  she laughed.  She lay back on the bed.  So fucking weird.. the guy just gave himself away.