"My name is Eleanor Richmond. I am the Denver health and human services liaison for Senator Caleb Roosevelt Marshall. I have held that position for one month.
"When I began working for the senator I was convinced, based on his past records and statements, that he was a racist. I am now convinced that he does not have a racist bone in his body. I have never met a man more willing to judge people on their individual merits, or lack thereof.
"However even the most perceptive judge of human nature can occasionally be fooled by ambitious persons who practice to deceive. It is my unpleasant duty to report to you that several such people have risen to positions of influence on the Senators' staff and, unbeknownst to Senator Marshall, have abused the power of his office for private gain.
"Going direct to the media is not the best way to handle this situation. I should have met with the Senator first. I have made repeated efforts to try and reach him but he has been unavailable. Unfortunately I cannot wait any longer to release this information, because it has a bearing on the matter of Bianca Ramirez, and if, by inaction, I were to cause damage to her family, I could never forgive myself. So I am releasing the information now and I am also offering my resignation to Senator Marshall at the same time."
"Eleanor!" shouted all of the journalists at once, raising their hands.
"Excuse me, excuse me, but I think that I should be given an opportunity to speak," someone said, coming up behind Eleanor.
She turned around and looked directly into the face of Shad Harper.
And then she hesitated. She had her back to the lights and cameras now; he was facing them, every pore in his face exposed to their pitiless illumination. She felt like an interrogator as she stood there staring into his face, weighing the situation, trying to make up her mind.
He didn't look good. Shad was just a boy, after all, not very well seasoned, and although he had a few on-camera skills, he was hardly a master of the game. And right now, he was really, really upset.
She knew that if she let Shad talk, he'd cut his own throat. He'd do it because he was a man and he had been conditioned. All his life, to deny his fear, to act before thinking, to get in over his head. A women, or an older man, would have backed off, thought it over, chosen the right time. Not Shad; Shad had to confront her right now, he couldn't let her win even a single skirmish.
"Be my guest," she said, and stepped away from the microphone.
"I'm Shad Harper," he said, his voice cracking. "BLM liaison for Senator Marshall. And since I'm still on his staff, unlike Eleanor here, who has apparently resigned - and if she hasn't resigned -which I can't say for sure either way, since I have not seen and do not have any independent knowledge of any letter by which she might have resigned - if she hasn't resigned then she will probably be fired, and in any case no longer speaks for Senator Marshall, if indeed she ever did - I do speak for Senator Marshall and so, since it appears that very damnable allegations are being made about him that I should step up and say something."
"She's not making allegations about the Senator," one of the journalists shouted, glancing through the handout. "She's making allegations about you personally, Mr Harper."
Harper's mouth fell open. "Well, I haven't seen these alleged allegations yet, but-"
"Is this your handwriting?" said another journalist, a woman from the L.A. Times, holding up one page of the handout.
It was a photocopy of a sheet of stationary printed, at the top, with the words FROM THE DESK OF SHAD HARPER. It was covered with handwritten notes.
"I'd have to take a better look-
"Let me just read you some of this and maybe you can explain why you were writing some of these things down," the woman said. "'State of Washington versus Garcia 1990.' That sounds like a court case."
"I don't remember," Shad said.
"I looked it up," Eleanor said. "It was a case in which some children died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the back of a pickup truck and the state of Washington successfully took custody of the surviving children on the grounds that their parents had neglected them."
"Why were you looking up that case, Shad?" the woman from the L.A. Times said. "How does that relate to your job as BLM liaison for the Senator?"
"First and foremost, I am a servant of the people," Shad said. The protestors gathered off to one side hooted derisively. The sound threw Shad off balance and he stumbled for a moment. "Uh, I'm entitled to look up court cases in the privacy of my own office."
"You were trying to assemble material with which to blackmail Anna and Carlos Ramirez," Eleanor said. "By threatening them with the loss of their only remaining child, you could coerce them into silence, and reduce the intensity of the spotlight on the cozy arrangement between you and Sam Wyatt - which never drew any attention in public until a freak accident exposed it to public view."
"This is just, just - a terrible thing you are saying."
"What is terrible is to live in a time when saying things is considered worse than doing them," Eleanor said.
"You seem to be forgetting here that people in this state, and in this country are damn tired of these unemployed welfare mother illegal aliens coming into this country and stirring things up!"
"Why don't you call them spies and wetbacks, the way you do when you're speaking on the telephone to Sam Wyatt?"
"That is a totally unprovable allegation!" Shad yelped. He looked shocked, horrified, to hear these words spoken in public, as if he and Sam Wyatt had invented the words for their personal use. "Listen. I am not a person with any kind of ethnic bias or bigotry. I limit my concern to those people, of whatever ethnic group, who take advantage of the system. Who are like parasites on the prosperous economic system that has been built up over the years by the hard work of productive citizens the likes of Sam Wyatt."
"Sam Wyatt," Eleanor said. "Sam Wyatt, who grazes his cattle on Government-owned land. Land that was occupied by Native Americans until the Government paid soldiers to come out here and kill them. Sam Wyatt, who irrigates his ranch with water from a Government-built dam. And you think that Anna Ramirez is a welfare queen? I've got news for you, cowboy. Everyone in the state of Colorado is a welfare queen. We all live and feed off the largesse of taxpayers in other parts of the country. It's just that some of us, like Sam Wyatt, have been here longer than others, and have had time to pile up more government welfare checks in their bank accounts and funnel more of that money into big campaign contributions. So don't stand here in Denver, a metropolis built on a creek, the capital of Colorado, a state that would dry up and turn back into a prairie without the continuing help of the government, and bray about the bad moral qualities of welfare queens. Because these people who come north across the border may not have gel in their hair and may not have ostrich-hide cowboy boots, but unlike you, they have something a lot more important. They have values."
The hospital doors slid open and Bianca Ramirez rolled out in a wheelchair, pushed along by a smiling nurse, escorted by her entire medical team.
A disturbance moved through protesters and suddenly Carlos and Anna Ramirez emerged from the crowd, smiles on their faces, tears streaming down their cheeks. They moved across the horseshoe drive, unhindered by journalists or INS agents or Shad Harper or anyone else, and engulfed their daughter in their arms. And they were engulfed, in turn, by hundreds of their supporters.
The whole thing was a lot warmer and calmer than anyone had expected. The only real disturbance was off to the side, where an INS van, a paddywagon with steel grilles over all the windows, had begun rocking from side to side. The driver jumped out, leaving the van empty, and a broad open space suddenly appeared in the crowd. Then a dozen men, their arms and backs burly from stooping in Arkansas Valley truck farms, rolled it all the way over on to its roof and left it there like a turtle upended on a highway.