Influence

Pt 2

Wallace’s day at work was nothing special.  He’d actually spent most of the day away from the office, having been asked to attend a political rally and report on the happenings there.  The sad thing was, this was actually the biggest story in Pennington at the time.  It was a small town, and it didn’t see a lot of action.

But Wallace had gotten more than he had bargained for when he arrived at Pennington’s Town Hall, where he found out the rally was for a local Republican candidate.  He sat in the audience, in the allotted chairs for the journalists and reporters, and listened to two white men talk about how gay marriage was wrong, and how the Democrats were trying to take God out of everything, because they were the  loyal acolytes of the Devil.  It was all nonsense.  Completely ridiculous.

It was his job though, and he studiously took notes of the entire affair.  Even after it ended, he interviewed the primary candidate and recorded the information exactly how he was expected to.  It was hard for Wallace to keep his composure as the idiot before him put his ignorance on full display, but he was able to refrain from insulting him.  He smiled and shook hands with the man when the interview was over, thanking him for his time.

He made his way back to the Green County Herald then, to a cubicle that served as his office.  He sat down on his computer and turned his notes into a story.  With a few changes, of course.

 Instead of using words like “idiot,” “nonsensical” and “disrespectful” he used words like “intelligent,” “meaningful” and “having strong views” when describing the candidate and his issues.  Wallace knew that Pennington was a very Republican town, and that it was in his best interest to please the majority of his readers without offending them.  If he had known how extreme some of the Republicans were before he’d moved to Pennington to take the job at the Herald, he might have thought otherwise.  He had a paycheck every week of course, but it wasn’t great.  Not great enough to justify living in the town, anyway. 

But he completed the article, and even made it come across as pretty unbiased, possibly even a little in favor of the Republican candidate.  The citizens would eat that up, no doubt.

At 5PM, Wallace was freed from his prison and allowed to go home.  He climbed the steps to the second floor of the apartment building, before undoing all three locks that stood in his way.  You couldn’t be too careful about these kinds of things, really.  His emphasis on security was something he'd picked up at an early age.  In the ghetto, an unlocked door was the equivalent of a big neon sign that read "ROB ME." pointing to a person's house.  It was a habit that he had refused to break, even as an adult.

Once inside, he took another shower  and switched into nicer clothes, a blue Polo shirt and pants that were surprisingly not blue jeans.  Wallace had agreed to meet Trevor at a nearby bar at 6:30, and he always tried to dress to impress.  To be frank, Wallace was kind of ashamed of how he lived.  He didn’t have a lot of money, and his apartment was kind of a piece of shit.  So much so, that he’d yet to invite Trevor over to it.  Wearing nice, semi-formal clothing made Wallace feel like a higher class of citizen than he actually was, and that was important to him.  Trevor would no doubt be dressed in nice clothes, and to Wallace it was all a competition.  Wallace was jealous of him, a fact he wasn’t afraid  nor ashamed to admit to himself.  Trevor had accomplished a lot, having started with so little.

At around 6:15, Wallace hopped in his small car and drove the four minute drive over to the bar.  It, too, was pretty close to his apartment, but he didn’t want to risk getting sweaty and nasty by walking to it.   A short car ride suited him just fine.

The bar itself was a typical small-town bar, and had signs of typical small town life inside of it.  There was a jukebox.  A lone bartender stood behind the bar, wiping a glass with an off-white rag.  Across from him, three middle-aged rednecks sat on stools, with at least one empty stool between each of them.  One of them was actually out cold.  The other two were engaged in a heated conversation.