Fields of Gold
2006 Santos Campaign
It's a long straight road of Midwest campaign stops and if he'd realized that a candidate from Texas meant country music on the radio for 24/7 Josh might have reconsidered his options. If he hears "I Can't Unlove You" or really anything by Kenny Rogers or even Dolly Parton one more time he's going to puncture his own eardrums with a Bic finepoint.
Not that campaigning doesn't still give him an adrenalin rush; it's just that he's feeling a bit too much like an elder statesman these days, instead of a bright young political punk. Lou Thornton aside, this campaign staff, with the collective focus of a class of preschoolers, makes him wonder if he and Sam and CJ were ever this green. The polling numbers in front of him are blurring and sliding off the page a little, and he idly considers whether he needs glasses, a good night's sleep, or just someone who can read them out loud to him without suffering the nausea that always hovers around him on long road trips.
"Anybody know what that is?" says Otto, kneeling up against the window in the Winnebago."What's that stuff growing in the fields around here?"
"What are you, the host for 'What's That Crop'?" Lou taps her pen against the report she's skimming. "It's something yellow."
"Dandelions?" suggests Otto.
"I don't think so. Probably mustard," offers Bram.
Josh looks back at them. "It's canola," he says flatly.
There's something in his reply that grabs Lou's attention. "What are you? The urban farm boy?" she sneers. She's tired too, but the prospect of a round or two with Josh Lyman is always good for a little energy pump.
"I know things." He tries to quell her with a stare, but this is Lou, not some blonde twenty something from the first campaign, and she really couldn't give a rat's ass what kind of mood he's in.
"Lot of canola fields around Westport, Josh?"
"You can tell by the smell. It smells sweet." He looks back at the numbers from Illinois that he's been going over, rubs his hands over his eyes and sighs tiredly. The flannel of silence that he wraps around himself forces the others to change the subject. Even Lou feels just a little guilty for poking at him. He feels spun out. Stretched too tight, and yet at loose ends. The memory of other campaigns seems like a toothache; low grade pain that he can't help but explore.
1998 Bartlet Campaign
They're on yet another interminable bus trip through what he thinks is North Dakota, or maybe they've already crossed the state line into Minnesota... it doesn't really matter, because his eyes feel gritty and he's had way too much bad coffee to listen to the Governor go on and on about cereal crops or oil seed crop expansion, or whatever particular facet of American agriculture has tickled Bartlet's imagination on this particular dusty afternoon.
"Now, can any of you tell me the name of that brilliant yellow crop we're seeing out the window?"
Josh knows better than to venture a response, but Sam, ever eager to play the game, offers himself up as the sacrifice. "Mustard, sir?"
"Well you might think so, given the colour, young grasshopper, but, no…"
"It's canola," supplies Donna from the seat beside Josh, "but my granddad still calls it rapeseed"
"Who said that?" asks Bartlet.
Donna half puts up her hand in a timid way.
"Oh, that's Donna, isn't it?"
"How is it he manages to remember her name?" mutters C.J. under her breath to Toby, who shrugs and slouches a little lower, hoping her rangy awkward body will screen him from the Governor's eye.
"Head of the class, Donna. Canola it is."
She flushes pinkly, both pleased and embarrassed about being singled out.
"This is the heartland of America, people! These are the kind of things it behooves us all to know." Bartlet continues on about the importance of the farm to the economy while CJ attempts to feign interest, Sam hangs on every word, and Leo closes his eyes and frankly succumbs to sleep.
Josh glances at Donna sideways. "What are you some kind of farm girl phenomenon?" he says in that flirty teasing way that she hasn't quite learned to combat. Her blush deepens and she uses her hair as a screen the way she used to in high school. "No, I'm serious," he pokes her with a finger, "how do you know? They all look the same to me."
She flips her hair back and pins him with her open, serious stare.
"Do you really want to know?"
She's still not used to someone who might value her input. Someone who actually might think she has something to offer.
He gives her a boyish twinkling grin. "Of course I do. I'm dyin' here of curiosity."
She smiles back. "It smells sweet," she says, "Like fresh flowers and hay." She wrinkles her nose. "Mustard smells like dirty socks."
"And you know this because?"
"Because my grand-dad still farms… because it's where I spent every summer of my life until I was sixteen…"
"When you worked at MacDonald's…..right around the time you and your pimply faced teenaged boyfriend used to steal people's boats and row across to the campus to watch movies and make out." He's piecing her history together like quilt pattern; blocks of grade school and family car trips lined up beside band camp and Irish dancing class, but he's still not sure why he's so intrigued. He hasn't quite figured her out; one moment she's like a frightened doe, all big eyes and awkward inexperience and the next moment she slaps him down like he's a poorly behaved retriever. She's been back for three months and he's finally stopped worrying whether she's going to ditch the campaign again. Now he's totally reliant on her organizational skills and what must be some kind of auto didactic memory that seems to pull facts and figures out of thin air.
She still startles when he bellows her name across the hastily created offices in dismal towns across the Midwest, but she's starting to recover some of her own self worth. Two weeks ago she told him to stop whining and get his own damn coffee and he's still grinning about it. He wonders idly if CJ's been holding consciousness raising sessions in the back of the bus, then swivels in his seat to look back at her. She's stopped even pretending to listen to the Governor and instead is reading the latest polling data, idly tapping a pencil against her teeth. Toby's glowering at her, and Josh suspects it's only a couple of minutes before Toby's going to yank the offending pencil out of CJ's grip and toss it out the window, or stuff it down along the seat cushion where she won't be able to reach it.
"Josh, have you got an opinion?" The Governor's voice jolts him back into focus. He looks wildly at Donna.
"Ethanol" she whispers to him at the same level she perfected in high school to prompt David Amundsen through AP American History.
"It's a lose, lose situation sir, but ethanol is what holds most of the Corn Belt together these days." He glances down where Donna is scribbling something in her large untidy handwriting. "There is some consideration about using white straw, I think sir…" She elbows him, and hastily prints W H E A T in block letters. "Aaah.. I meant wheat straw, sir," Josh amends quickly.
Governor Bartlet grins, "Thanks, Donna."
Josh gets pulled into a gubernatorial exercise in the economics of biodiesel fuel, and she only half listens as she watches the fields slide past the window. She feels herself growing more confident. Feels like she's rebuilding, reshaping herself into something more resilient. Feels like she has climbed back out of the pit of her dysfunctional relationship into a world where she's appreciated and valued. She breathes in the warm sweet scented air, and relaxes a little against the warmth of Josh's shoulder.
2002 Bartlet Campaign
"You'd think we'd at least have a better bus than last time," he whines, stretching his back and shoulders against the upholstery.
"It is a better bus Josh, God don't you remember how that thing used to break down?"
He wriggles in his seat like a child with sand in his swimsuit. "When's our next stop?"
"About an hour, so settle down."
"Where the hell are we anyways?"
"About an hour away from Bismark, which, coincidentally is where we are stopping for a town hall style meeting at Bismark State, on canola subsidies."
"Right the yellow stuff."
She rolls her eyes, and starts digging into her bag for the colored note cards he asked her to work on yesterday. He waves her off.
"I know all about canola, Donna."
She shakes the cards at him. "So this was just an exercise in keeping Donna busy?"
He tries to suppress a smile. "You mocked me, and my outdoor abilities," he says self-righteously.
"It was a piece of jumper cable Josh!"
"It could have been a snake," he insists, "It had definite snake-like tendencies."
She looks at him coldly, and then raises the cards in the air. "Anyone want my research cards on canola subsidies?"
C.J. wordlessly leans over from two rows backs and grabs them from her hand, to the accompaniment of "Yeah, me!", "Ooooh yes please!", and "Hey C.J., no fair!"
Donna's eyes never leave Josh's.
There's a small scuffle from the seats behind them as CJ successfully fends off her opponents.
"Don't mess with me, Josh."
He has the decency to look slightly chagrinned.
There's a delicate balance here between insubordination and bringing up baby, but Donna's not a neophyte on this round. One campaign, three years in the Whitehouse and a lifetime as a middle child have shaped her for battles like this. She settles back against the seat cushions, and closes her eyes.
"What? You're just going to have a nap?"
"Possibly."
He sighs. "Alright….. It's yellow…..it smells sweet…..your grandfather grows it…. I'll buy you a mochachinno-frappe-whatever as soon as we see a Starbucks…."
"Hmmm," she considers, then offers, "Canola seeds are forty four percent oil, which makes it a valuable contributor for the bio diesel initiative."
He waits a moment, then his eyes widen, "That's it?"
She snuggles a little deeper into the cushions.
He huffs, just a little, mostly for show. "Okay. I'll share my fries at dinner." He figures this one is a no brainer; she's going to help herself anyways. It's a little trick he likes to use when negotiating… give them something they're going to get anyways, but make it seem like a concession.
She smiles, her eyes still closed. "Key legislative issues for the U.S. Canola Association include crop insurance, bioenergy and crop protection."
He leans back against headrest, content that he's managed yet again to get what he wants without really giving anything away. "Okay… what else?"
"I want the window seat all day tomorrow."
He sits back up and looks over at her, but she doesn't even open her eyes. And because really, he has learned something in the last four years, he swallows the protest already forming in his mind, takes a deep breath, and says, "Yeah, okay."
2006 Russell Campaign
She gazes out the window of the plane at the quilt squares of farmland below; yellow, green, brown, then sighs heavily. She's remaking herself again, into someone less needy, more self sufficient, harder. Someone who is a survivor of tragic events, of unrequited love, of idealistic campaigns for the real thing. Someone who doesn't wear their ardent heart in plain view. A colder, more brittle version of the girl who drove her rust-bucket Chevette from Madison, Wisconsin to Manchester, New Hampshire and talked a disorganized political wunderkind into taking her along for the ride.
"Donna? Everything okay?" Will's eyes are earnest behind his glasses. "Is there something wrong with the press release?"
She looks down at the forgotten folder.
"No… no it's fine… I guess I'm just feeling a little homesick."
"For D.C.? "he says, unbelieving.
"No… no..." she waves her hand in the air. "I was just thinking about other campaigns…other times…nothing really."
His eyes flatten to a shade of grey. "Oh," he says regretfully, as he goes back to working through the next day's schedule.
She feels tired, and much as she likes Will she never really notices what he orders at dinner, and he always offers her the window seat.
She shivers a little, which she blames on the air conditioning of the plane, then turns back to the window, looks down at the distant farms, at the tiny patches of gold, and imagines she can smell the sweetness of the crops.
End
"I Can't Unlove You" was recorded by Kenny Rogers written by Wade Allen Kirby and Will Robinson (for anyone who cares it was in the Country top 20 in 2006)