The Rumble: A Novel

By Peyton Hooper Hodge

When a drunken party guest lunges at Pete Hodge's wife, Pete does what any devoted husband would do. As he steps forward to defend Emma, he inadvertently trips her assailant, who falls on a tree root and separates his shoulder. Who would guess that this simple act would lead to a lawsuit that challenges the cheerful equanimity Pete tries so desperately to maintain?

But it's 2004, and with the presidential election only three days away, even small towns such as Deer Path have become battlegrounds. Pete suspects a neighbor is placing nails in his tires; someone else keeps putting Bush/Cheney signs in front of his office. Emma's antagonist alleges that Pete's behavior was politically motivated and engages the state's premier personal injury firm to pursue his claim.

What follows is Pete's commentary on a frenzied world he has done his best to avoid. The novel's cast ranges from Henry Aaron to Warren Zevon; key roles are played by a lawyer named Weevil and a man dressed as a winged monkey. Meanwhile an unnecessary war drags on, eventually creating an even harsher reality for Pete and his friends.

The Rumble speaks for those who have Peace Is Patriotic stickers on their bumpers. It shares the concerns of parents who are increasingly anxious about their ability to provide hope for their children. Humorous, acerbic and occasionally profound, The Rumble presents a snapshot of a country struggling to regain its courage and recover its soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463443436

Peyton Hooper Hodge

Peyton Hooper Hodge is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of its public schools. He maintains a modest legal practice near Charlotte. Coin of the Realm is his second novel, continuing a saga that began with The Rumble.

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Contents

Off Kilter

In Costume

Take A Moment

Here’s Johnny

Hobart’s Code

We Gather

The Injury Lawyers

Under Oath

A Voice Crying

The Condition of Life

To my wife and children.

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Off Kilter

Let’s start on the day I first suspected that our neighbor was putting nails in my tires. It was the Friday before Election Day in the season of golden weather, and morning had broken fair beyond the gentle hills that cradle our small town. I had two appointments scheduled—a refinance in the morning, a purchase in the afternoon—and I left the house shortly after seven to put all the documents in order. The Forester seemed slightly off kilter as I approached, favoring the right rear tire. Closer inspection revealed that the tire was unmistakably down since the previous week when I’d had the left rear tire replaced and the other three inspected. Either I was picking up more than my share of nails on the road or somebody was making sure I was running over them; and in the crisp, crimson dawn of that glorious gift of a day, I began to suspect that somebody was Mister Wiffles.

He could have managed it easily enough. He worked an early shift as a security guard at an office complex south of Charlotte, leaving his house before sunrise and returning mid-afternoon. I’d awaken to the sound of his Dodge Ram truck growling to life in his driveway and then grumbling for a minute before moving on—plenty of time for him to cross the street and place a nail in one of my tires. Or not literally in the tire, but angled underneath, cleverly positioned so it would poke through as I backed out. That type of puncture produces a slow leak that might take a day or two to notice—cooler weather can affect tire pressure, too—but eventually you’d have to face facts and take your car in for a patch or a new tire, which could easily cost over a hundred dollars, parts and labor, unless you were on a road hazards plan like the one Harold’s offered, which a wiser or simply more jaded man would have signed up for when he had the chance eight days ago. But even though Harold’s was within walking distance of my office, and even though I had the pleasure of walking to my office in the golden weather, I still lost thirty minutes off the top of the day and was forced to scramble instead of slowly easing into my routine. Meanwhile Mister Wiffles had the satisfaction of knowing he’d nudged me slightly off course. He just had to make sure he wasn’t caught by the gal who threw the morning paper.

His motivation? He supported George W. Bush for reelection, and we very clearly did not. He’d placed a Bush/Cheney ’04 sticker on the right rear bumper of his Dodge Ram truck and a Veterans Against Kerry/Edwards sticker on the left. When he looked across the street he saw a Veterans For Kerry/Edwards sticker on my Forester and a God Is Not A Republican sticker on Emma’s C.R.V. There were other Bush/Cheney supporters in the neighborhood—Superdad had one of their signs in his yard, and The Duke of Edinburgh was probably a major donor—but neither had the daily opportunity for mischief enjoyed by the Wiffler. He might not have earned enough to send a check to the R.N.C., but with the nails, he was doing what he could.

Mister Wiffles’ father had been in charge of Zephyr College’s physical plant for many years, but he’d retired a decade before we arrived. We’d see the Senior Wiffler emerge from his house to fetch his mail every now and then, but he kept to himself and we told the kids to give him a pass on Halloween. Two years ago we noticed a No Smoking/Pure Oxygen sign posted on the front door, and his son started making regular appearances on the weekends. After the old man passed away, the house sat vacant for a while—hearty weeds sprouting throughout the front yard, new phone books lying by the mailbox soaking up rain. The location was superb, only four blocks from the College, and the heirs could have sold the house in less than a month if they’d wanted to; but for whatever reason—probably some squabbling between Mister Wiffles and his sister as to how much they should ask for it—they didn’t put it on the market right away. Then last July when we returned from a family trip to Santa Fe, the Dodge Ram truck was parked in the driveway and a chubby, wispy-bearded man was sitting under the eave of the front porch. I recognized him immediately even though I’d never formally introduced myself, nor met his burly wife or his yappy terrier. Now he seemed to have moved in minus the wife and terrier, and this would have been the perfect time to cross the street, shake his hand and say what a Fine Man his father had been. But we were tired from the flight and the drive back from Douglas, and the cats were going nuts after being kenneled for a week, and I figured another opportunity would surely present itself soon enough at the mailbox or the gas station or the toddy shop.

As the season of beastly heat gave way to the season of golden weather, I’d see Mister Wiffles in his lawn chair under the shade of that eave, talking on his cell phone and watching other neighbors pass by. Given his occupation, he may have felt a need to keep an eye on the rest of us, much as my dear wife will correct bag boys at the grocery store when they say lay instead of the grammatically appropriate lie. But after a while I wouldn’t venture out to retrieve the mail without checking to make sure The Wiffler wasn’t there. A few times I forgot, or maybe he was obscured by some unruly foliage, and suddenly I’d realize he was gazing in my direction, no doubt wondering what kind of man would put a Veterans For Kerry/Edwards sticker on his bumper; and instead of walking to the mailbox, I’d pause in the driveway, open the car, and pretend I was after something in the glove compartment. Yes, there was my registration, right where I’d left it. I’d be prepared if Homeland Security came by to check up on me.

More recently I’d fallen in line behind Mister Wiffles at the grocery store. He’d stopped off after work to buy a fried chicken dinner and assorted breakfast items—smokehouse-cured sausage, cinnamon-flavored waffles and an e-z pour half-gallon jug of maple syrup. He was still wearing his security guard outfit with the dark blue pants and cap, the white shirt with dark blue trim. His thinning blond hair was turning gray at the temples and he looked almost cherubic when viewed up close, with an even more striking resemblance to the child’s toy hippo for whom he was named. He couldn’t have been more than forty, which is to say, ten years younger than us, which is further to say, young enough to have his political views formed and calcified during the Reagan Revolution. Here was an even better opportunity to introduce myself and welcome him to the neighborhood, and I tried to think of something neighborly to say about his choice of sausage; but then it occurred to me that he might suspect I was mocking him, a plump man buying foods that would only make him plumper; and before I could think of something any normal person might say—Hi, I’m Pete Hodge, your neighbor across the street, been meaning to introduce myself, etc., etc.—he’d gathered his purchases and rushed out into the parking lot. I’ll note for the record that he never once glanced back at me, but kept his dark blue cap pulled down just above his eyes throughout the transaction. Maybe it had been a stressful day at work—mouse caught in a trap in the ladies’ room, popcorn catching fire in the microwave—and all he wanted to do was sit in front of the tube with his fried chicken dinner and fall asleep watching reruns of the Gadabout Gaddis fishing show. Or maybe he’d already begun his campaign of putting nails beneath my tires and was worried I’d confront him about it. But it was just as likely he was still pissed because we’d had some people over the weekend before, and some of our guests had parked in his front yard. We’d been singing Irish drinking songs in honor of Senator Kerry’s heritage, which evolved into a boisterous round of farewells that assuredly disturbed our neighbor’s slumber. We’re not especially political, but sometimes you have to take a stand, as perhaps Mister Wiffles had done with the nails.

So on that splendid October morning, I slowly drove the Forester over to Harold’s, surrendered the keys to Mickey and walked six blocks to the office. In those days I shared the first floor of an old brick office building with a certified financial planner who conducted most of her business in Charlotte and another lawyer who served in the General Assembly. Sometimes Blevins’ clients would stop by to find out how their cases were going; he did a lot of wreck cases, a practice that seems to consist exclusively of tiresome negotiations with insurance adjusters over cell phones at high decibel levels. There must have been good money in it—he and the current Missus Blevins lived on the lake at Tega Cay—and it’s generally acknowledged that insurance companies have become so difficult to deal with that the common man needs a lawyer to extract the first dime from them. On the other hand, this is a personal service business and you have to take care of your people. When his clients wandered into my office and said they haven’t heard from Blevins in months, I encouraged them to write a note and slip it under his door. Blevins occasionally came by on weekends to check his mail; what he did with the notes, I couldn’t say. The wife filed all the paperwork from her office at their lakefront home. It was a cozy set-up—she also had the care and feeding of their three year-old twins—but I wished one of them was on hand every once in a while to respond directly to their clients. Sometimes the clients would grow angry with me because all I could tell them was, so far as I knew, their lawyer wasn’t dead. The statute of limitations on their cases might have long since expired, but they could take that up with him.

Blevins planned to run for State Senate in 2006, and even though I was already paying him a thousand a month to rent eight hundred square feet of office space with serious heating and air conditioning issues, he was already hinting around for a contribution. Just so you know, a license to practice law isn’t necessarily a license to print money; and even in boom times, nobody’s ever going to make a fortune operating a real estate practice in Deer Path. So although it never hurts to have contacts within the government of a state as old-boy-networked as South Carolina, Blevins’ campaign war chest was going to have to wait in line behind the mortgage and the groceries and the tuition bills. My dear wife has occasionally suggested that I could ease our financial burden by charging higher fees, pointing out that people would have a greater appreciation for my services if they were required to pay more; but despite what my fee structure might have revealed about my self-esteem, I was at a point in my career where I was getting mostly repeat business, refinances from former clients who’d had me close their purchases years ago and needed new fixed rate mortgages before their adjustable rates adjusted. You really can’t charge as much for a refinance as you can for a purchase—I mean, how hard is it to update a title and make sure your clients sign on the signature lines? Add to this the standard discounts for Emma’s fellow faculty members, along with the parents of kids who’d been in Scouts with our son or had played soccer with our daughter, along with members of the Wisenheimers softball team and the Deer Path Presbyterian Church and the William Bartram Chapter of the Sierra Club, along with the proprietors of our local coffee bar and toddy shop and everyone at Harold’s who’d ever patched one of our tires, and there were few souls in Deer Path who didn’t qualify for one discount or another, if not two or three. I have no problem charging higher fees to folks who are refinancing second homes at the lake or have some other sniff of privilege, but as I said, you have to take care of your people.

My first appointment that day provided a perfect example. Olive taught twentieth-century fiction at the College and Boz was an anthropologist; they played right field and third base, respectively, on the Wisenheimers softball team; and not only were they active members of the local Sierra Club chapter, they also happened to be our best friends in the world. They were coming in to refinance the mortgage they’d taken on six years ago, when both of their children had been in college and they’d needed a low rate adjustable with interest-only payments. Now that Jenny was teaching kindergarten in Fort Mill and Mark was out of school pursuing his rock-and-roll dream, Boz and Olive needed a fixed rate loan that would gently bear them into their golden years. I’d already resolved to waive their attorney fee, maintaining only the standard fifty dollar charge for express mail and copies; but as I reflected upon how much sangria I’d enjoyed at their tapas party the previous weekend, I resolved to eliminate those expenses from their settlement statement as well.

But upon arriving at the office, I was faced with another delay. Some hoodlum had visited under cover of night and planted another Bush/Cheney sign in the landscaped area in front of our building. Two months ago this was happening every week; now it was occurring every other day. There’s something to be said for persistence, of course—although not so much when it’s tied to the relentless pursuit of questionable policies derived from a black-and-white view of the world—but in this case there were professional considerations as well. One of the reasons I’m not especially political is because it’s bad for business. I know this for a fact because I stopped buying chocolate bars from the pharmacy down the street after the proprietor plastered Bush/Cheney signs all over his front windows. A pharmacist might be able to get away with that kind of rabid partisanship, but a lawyer’s stock-in-trade is sober, rational judgment; and it never helps to have a client question your probity, to say nothing of your sanity. There were other considerations, too—a Bush/Cheney sign might inspire a peacenik to throw a rock through the window, while a Kerry/Edwards sign might inspire a nimrod to set the building on fire. So I pulled the sign up and took it around back to join its fellows in the dumpster. Five minutes later I had the settlement statement revised, leaving just enough time to walk down to Java Goose and buy three cups of coffee before Boz and Olive arrived.

All mortgage refinances bear a certain similarity—here’s your new rate, here’s your new payment, here’s the paragraph that allows your lender to take your home away if you stop making those payments. What distinguishes them is the back-and-forth with the clients, especially people like Boz and Olive. Over the years their appointments had become social occasions rather than business transactions, opportunities to carry on conversations started when we were having a cookout at their house or celebrating someone’s birthday at ours. When they came in to execute new wills the previous year, we’d scheduled their appointment for late Friday afternoon and invited Emma over to serve as second witness and share a bottle of shiraz. But Olive was meeting with the Provost later that morning, so they’d asked for an early appointment.

We hadn’t even gotten to the truth-in-lending disclosure when Boz announced that their son had recently accepted a job teaching English in Spain.

I’d known Mark had been thinking about this for some time—he’d mentioned it when they were over at our house on Labor Day—but his plan was further along that I’d realized. No kidding! I said. What part of Spain?

Catalonia? Boz guessed. Olive, you tell him.

In the countryside, out from Barcelona.

So when did this happen?

Well, he applied two months ago, received an offer last week, mulled it over and sent his acceptance back on Wednesday, Boz explained.

Spain! I said. Well, I’ll be damned!

And he wants us to start calling him Don Marco, Boz added.

Don Marco, I smiled. I’ll try to remember.

It’s about time, said Olive briskly. His life is too comfortable here. Plus Ben and Jerry were cutting his hours back.

What about the band? I asked. Ever since they’d graduated from pre-school, Don Marco and our son Sam had been playing music together, and were currently collaborating with two high school classmates in an alt/rock/folk band called Local Okra.

Not sure, said Boz. "Maybe he’ll lay down a few tracks before he leaves and mail them in like The Beatles did on Let It Be."

Or maybe we could get Mark and Sam some studio time for Christmas, I suggested. Some of their stuff is classic. The killer riffs of ‘You Angsted Me.

The streetwise edginess of ‘Yo, Suckah,’ said Boz.

The heroic pathos of ‘The Fearful Child,’ I added.

I have a meeting at ten, Olive reminded us.

Oh, right, I said; and we quickly reviewed the other loan documents, pausing for a moment to read the mortgage’s foreclosure language carefully. They signed their notices of right to cancel and the post-closing compliance agreement, and I began looking through to make sure all the other documents had been signed.

So they gave it a year, and the record companies never called, said Boz. At least they gave it a shot.

I call that good parenting, I said.

"Superb parenting," Boz corrected me.

I have to see the Provost in fifteen minutes, said Olive, rising from her chair.

Yeah, I better get on it, too, said Boz, and we followed Olive to the door.

I can bring your copies over to your office this afternoon, I suggested.

Oh, just bring them tomorrow night. You’re going to Carmen’s party, right?

Emma hasn’t said. Is it this weekend?

Olive?

Yes, tomorrow night. I really have to go.

See you at lunch, then, said Boz, and he kissed the air.

Mmm-wah, Olive kissed back as she walked out the door.

So do you know who you’re going as this year? Boz asked.

Emma hasn’t revealed that, either.

We were thinking Monty Burns and Smithers, but that might be too hard. Maybe something equally hideous—they have Dubya masks at Toys ‘R’ Us. Which reminds me—I have a new favorite term of opprobrium. The term is ‘ass-clown’, as in, ‘The President—what an ass-clown!’

I smiled. So tell me again—exactly why do you hate America?

Probably the same reasons you do.

Well, if you have a change of heart, let me know—I’ve got yard signs in the dumpster.

No thanks.

This time next week…

Four days, Pete. In four days we’ll learn something profound about the soul of our country. We might even find out whether God exists.

I thought that was established when Bush beat Gore.

That was their God. This is about ours.

I nodded. Can’t wait for the whole thing to be over—the lack of civility, all the anger out there. I ran into a client at the store the other day, and she said she didn’t know how anybody who called himself a Christian could even consider voting for Kerry. Said he faked his wounds. Implied Edwards had ties to the mob. Luckily she didn’t see my bumper sticker.

Four days, Pete. You can do this.

And another thing—I think my neighbor is putting nails in my tires.

Don’t give in, Pete. Paranoia is their greatest weapon.

No, seriously. I had to leave my car off at Harold’s this morning…

His cell phone rang; he gazed at the number and answered immediately—it was Don Marco with a question about their health insurance. Boz pulled a card from his wallet and read off the policy number. Love you, too, he said, then snapped the phone shut and returned it to his pocket. So where were we? Tell me again why we were here.

Fixed rate mortgage at five and three-quarters, plus you’re getting rid of a keyed-to-prime, interest-only home equity line of credit. Best financial decision you ever made.

Sounds good to me. Thanks, counselor. He shook my hand.

So Don Marco’s going to Spain, I said.

"Evidently. And I agree with Olive—he needs