The Damned Highway by Nick Mamatas Page B

little tête-à-tête, and then plunging ahead as if he doesn’t care, “that this election is going to be different. No more ward bosses, no more precinct-by-precinct street fighting, not even a single busload of old fogies being driven back into the inner cities where they were last registered. It’s going to be about the young people, about issues, about the Movement !” He bellows with laughter at his own claim, slaps the Formica with a pancake hand. I notice that there are six fingers on his hand. “More like bowel movement, if you ask me, which I know you didn’t.”
    â€œListen, Mac,” I say. “Get a grip on yourself. What’s this all about?” Mentally, I weigh the saltshaker, the napkin dispenser, and the big glass silo of what is surely a solid hunk of sugar. My own coffee is only tepid—it would barely blind him if I flung it in his face. Unarmed and defenseless, I am a naked babe before this lunatic. I think about reaching into my kit bag for a weapon, but don’t want to make any sudden moves. The silo comforts me; I pick it up and try to shake some sugar into my cup, but only a few wayward grains fall from the container. Mac doesn’t notice.
    â€œWhat they don’t know,” he continues, “what fancy dancers like you don’t realize, is how deep the grassroots grow for the right. Muskie knows, but we took care of him already, eh?”
    â€œWe? You don’t mean . . . Canadians, do you? Those rat bastards.”
    â€œClose, close, oh so close. You know the letter—of course you do. People like you feed on tears, but people like me, I’m the very father of tears.”
    â€œWell, you did just say eh —I know a . . . Canuck . . . when one’s right in front of me.” I grasp the silo of sugar for dear life. There is nothing more disconcerting than being trapped in a rest stop with a crazed Canadian. Especially a French one.
    â€œNot Canuck ,” he says, still giggly. Everything is funny to this man. Perhaps he isn’t Canadian after all. “ Can-knock ,” he says. Then he knocks on the Formica counter, and even answers, “Who is it?” in a creepy falsetto. Then laughs again. But in a flash I know what he means: that infamous letter by Paul Morrison of Deerfield Beach, Florida, which claimed that Muskie had laughed when Mr. Morrison asked him about the plight of the American Negro. Hailing from distant Maine, where there are few blacks, how could Muskie understand the needs of the Afro-American? Well, some nameless aide said, “Not blacks, but we have Cannocks.” Every copy desk in America helpfully corrected the seeming misspelling to Canucks . Another blasphemous lie. The epistolary machinations of the Cannocks, hitherto a secret race of humanoid known only to the most discerning travelers of the New England backwoods, had simultaneously revealed their existence to the public at large and derailed the Muskie campaign, leaving the candidate a gasping, salt-spattered wreck and the Democratic machine a pile of steaming slag and the Cannocks themselves ready to launch a new offensive.
    I put my sugar down. I notice that Mac has managed to crack the countertop with his most casual slap—the impression of his six-fingered hand left behind like the footprint of some long-forgotten specimen of megafauna. I’ll have to talk my way out of this one.
    â€œYou know Morrison? I’d love to talk to him. Get an exclusive; maybe measure the lead content in his blood. I hear his penmanship is utterly awful.”
    Mac laughs and makes as if to pat me on the back, but he sees me cringe and at the last moment just points at me instead. “Aaah!” he says. “Aaa-ha!” He sounds like an attic door. “Looking for a scoop, are you? Undercover, indeed! But you can’t get one from me, not about me, anyway.” He points to himself with his meaty thumb. God, his mutant