A campaign bus isn't the best place to get a good night's sleep, but if you've been on the trail as long as I have, you learn to adapt. Conversations tend to be more spaced out and hushed when the world outside is composed of specks of quickly passing light. Masses of lights that represent all the good voters who are going to put your candidate into office.

There's always a quiet corner to curl up in on a bus, and with a blanket or a jacket covering you, you're bound to get at least four or five hours of shut-eye.

I'm tucked into one of the back seats, my head resting on a thin pillow that's conducting the vibration of the bus' tires directly onto the side of my face like a gentle massage. I'm almost to that point where I can sense the cotton candy of sleep wrapping around me, erasing my limbs and tugging me into oblivion, when a presence shifts into the next seat over.

And stays there.

From the cologne, I know who it is, but I play possum. It's been a long day and I need my beauty rest. And so does he. We've got a full schedule tomorrow and every second of respite both of us can steal could make the difference between winning hundreds more votes, or losing them.

"You still awake, Bird?" he whispers.

Now I have to make a decision. Continue the possum act, or open my eyes and solve whatever it is that's come up while bags form under my eyes and the bus puts another eighty miles behind us.

The money wins out. It always does. Kenneth Jespers is paying me a handsome chunk of change to be where I am and do what I do. To leave him to his own devices would not just be unprofessional, it might also lead to him unwittingly sabotaging his entire campaign.

"Jusss barely," I answer, mumbling the words to give him a guilty conscience. "Whass up?"

"Tell me everything's going to go well."

Call off the dogs, he just needs some hand-holding.

"Everything's going to go well. You're doing fine in the polls. You've practiced your speeches. You know your platform backwards and forwards, and you've just had an expensive haircut. Everything's peachy."

"The TV debate. They're going to throw me some wild curveballs. Curveballs I can't handle."

"We've been through every curveball imaginable, remember? And besides, that's still a week off. It's nothing to wring your hands over tonight. Leave that to the day of the debate."

I'd grilled Kenneth for days at the start of the campaign. I threw every oddball question I could think of at him, ranging from if he thought radical day-glo Leftists should be allowed to run around loose, to if he used facial moisturiser for men and wore boxers or briefs. He'd got fairly good at it, but he always believed there was going to be some question he'd not banked on, some answer he'd not practiced. Kenneth lived in constant fear of the question that was going to catch him with his trousers down and make him into a state-wide laughing stock.

It's a rare bonus to know your candidate's greatest fear, and Kenneth Jespers' was of looking stupid. Not exactly the most convenient brain-rat for a politician hoping to be sworn in as the next state governor to have, but also not the worst.

Kenneth didn't say anything and I drifted back towards cotton candy land. The contours of a dream were just starting to form when Kenneth spoke.

"Marilyn had a bad dream."

My eyes jerked open.

"Marilyn always has bad dreams. It's related to her medication," I mumble. "No need to panic."

Marilyn is Kenneth's wife and the most neurotic person it's ever been my displeasure to sit next to during a five-hour political dinner. I used to think she was Kenneth's biggest liability, until I learned that Marilyn only trots out the weirdo when she thinks she's safe from judgement.

If she were more of a science geek, Marilyn would be the type to wear a tin foil hat around everywhere and gush non-stop about how she's decoded the messages in crop circles. But as it is, she's merely convinced anything made out of terra cotta will give you cancer; vegetarianism is a Communist Chinese plot to discredit the All-American hamburger; Jews were the source of the '08 financial crisis and the Covid-19 world lockdown; and that the laying-on of gemstones during a full moon can heal any disease known to man. Which is maybe why she sparkles like a department store jewellery counter.

She'd never mention any of that to a normal person, thank Larry. A normal person might think she's a kook.

"Yeah, sure, some of her dreams are medicine induced. At least the ones about the killer hula hoops are. But this one. . . she thinks this one means something."

Marilyn's dreams have meanings? Okay, I'm game. "And what does she think it means?"

"Well. . ."

Kenneth doesn't go on. I know this trick. He's testing if I really want to hear it. If I'm interested enough to hang on his every word and suck in all the details with the correct amount of hushed respect.

I'm not, but if I don't let him get it out, he's going to fret like a little old lady terrified she'll not have enough yarn to knit her grandkids the Christmas socks they secretly hate.

I sit up and arrange the blanket over my legs. "Tell me all about it."

He takes a deep breath. "She dreamed about a hail storm. A really bad one. Like, golf-ball sized stones. Lightning, thunder, the whole show."

"A hail storm. Okay. Go on."

"She was inside, in our house. But I was outside in the storm, getting pummelled. She tried to get the door open, but it wouldn't budge. Then a huge hail stone brained me. I was standing on the back veranda. Blood everywhere and I wouldn't get up no matter how hard she screamed and pounded on the glass. Because I was dead."

"Sounds traumatic."

Kenneth nods. From somewhere, there's a muffled laugh and a clicking sound, then more muffled conversation and laughter. It sounds to me like the PR crew are taking stupid or vaguely lewd photos of each other to post on their social media profiles. I let them do that and sometimes even encourage it. It shows that candidate Jespers has a sense of humor. That his campaign help are laid back, hip individuals, so he must appeal to laid-back, hip voters.

There are no silly candid photos of Kenneth online, of course. Go on, look for some. You won't find any.

"She thinks it means, the hail, that someone's going to throw me a curveball I can't handle, and it'll kill me. Symbolically speaking. Not for real," he quickly adds, just in case I start worrying about the immanent assassination of a gubernatorial candidate in a pip-squeak state. "It'll tank my bid for governor. And because she was watching through glass means it'll happen on TV, and the first televised debate is only in a few days. Tell me everything's going to be okay."

I suppress a sigh and pick at lint on the blanket over my knees.

This is just typical.

Alone, Kenneth's okay and he'll make an okay governor. He's not a brain box, or the most charismatic, but you could have a beer with him without wanting to smash the bottle over his head. The second a little bit of Agent Marilyn is added, though, watch him collapse into a quivering mass of doubt that has to be scraped up with a spatula and tapped back into human form before it can speak again.

"A hail storm could indicate other things, you know."

Kenneth throws me a glance. "Like what?"

"Like being governor, for one. The lightning and thunder is the public and the hail is all of the responsibility raining down on you. You know as well as I do that public office is challenging. Marilyn might be feeling that you, well, might get too involved with that, and not have enough time for her. That's why she couldn't get the house door open."

I'm riffing here. The dream sounds like a typical fear-of-exposure one to me, but Kenneth nods. "And the blood?"

"The hard work of being governor. The blood and sweat and tears of public service."

Kenneth ponders that, nodding every so often. "Thanks, Bird," he says, and gets up. "You get some sleep."

What did he think I was doing?

"You, too," I say.

Before I find my way back to cotton candy land, I make a mental note to hide Kenneth's phone from him tomorrow. The last thing I need is Marilyn calling every half hour to see if it's started hailing yet, and flustering Kenneth into doing a headless chicken impersonation.

We roll into the city just after midnight. I throw my bag down on the champagne-colored carpet of the hotel suite, and collapse backwards on the bed. My back aches a bit from having slept on the bus, but that'll be gone by morning. After a few minutes, I get up to draw the curtains and undress. I'm too beat to fish out my toothbrush, so I let all thoughts of oral hygiene slide and crawl under the covers.

I'm out almost immediately.

The phone rings. Not my phone, the hotel phone. I don't pick up, and it stops after a while. Then starts again. Then stops. After the third stop and start, I sit up cursing, slam on the light and reach for the handset.

"Kenneth, I'm asleep and you should be, too, now-"

"Bird? It's Dave Mead. Sorry to wake you, but I don't have your private number."

Dave Mead? It takes me a few seconds until I realise the campaign advisor for our rival, the current state governor, is on the line. We went to the same university and I know him vaguely, but we're not exactly friends.

I look at my watch. Five thirty-eight am. "Bit early for a friendly chat, Dave."

"That's not what I'd call this. Are you awake enough to remember a conversation in a few hours? What I've got to tell you is important."

I shake my head to clear it, and rub my eyes. "Yeah, I think so. Shoot."

"We've been anonymously tipped off to some dirt on Jespers. I'm going to use it. Frankly, I'd be insane not to. I'm telling you in advance so you don't accuse me later of sucker punching you with an evil left hook. Honor among thieves and political advisors."

It takes me a few seconds to digest that. With the exception of his wacky wife, Kenneth is about as Jimmy Stewart as they come. So what's this? Did he compliment a busty secretary a little too intensely? Curse while in a fishing boat* ?

"What's the dirt?"

"You'll find out soon enough. Sorry, but I can't give away my advantage. You'd do the same if you had this."

"Wait, hold on. Are you telling me you're starting a smear campaign? Didn't think that was your style."

"I'm not and it isn't. That's another reason we're talking right now. This is the only thing I'm going to use. Lord knows the governor is smearable enough and you haven't touched him. It's this one thing and nothing more. I swear on our common Alma Mater."

In plain English: Dave thinks he's got a golden bullet. Now I'm wide awake. "I'm not liking the sound of this, Dave, I'm really not," I say.

"I wouldn't either if I were in your shoes."

After I hang up, I stare at the long ribbon of light on the ceiling near the windows. A million things are running through my mind, none of them good.

When I took the job of campaign advisor, I asked Kenneth where his rotten spots were. Where someone could attack and really gouge deep. It was all penny ante stuff. Smoked a little grass at college. Accidentally attended a few services at a church that handled snakes before he realised it and split. His private social media account is registered to a Bunny Hopkins. Stuff only the elderly and holy rollers could get bent out of shape over.

But Dave said he'd been given a tip on some genuine dirt that, after careful research, had turned out to be true.

Kenneth had dirt and he'd kept it from me.

Marilyn's paranoid hail storm dream floats to the surface of my thoughts, shoving everything aside like a huge icy blob of terror. I shake my head in refusal. I don't want to consider for even one moment that Marilyn is right about anything. Nothing. Not even about what month it is. That's how much I don't want that to be true.

By the time I finally get up, I've reached one real conclusion: Kenneth is about to get that curveball he's always feared was coming for him. I know it's coming, but can't tell him if I don't want him to crumble like some heavily-eroded beach cliff and tumble into the ocean beforehand.

The prize question of the day: How can you deflect a blow you know is coming, but not from where or when?

Answer: you can't. And that's more nerve rattling than if you never knew it was coming in the first place. Damn you, Dave. That's pretty clever. Both me and Ken in one blow.

I go down and have my breakfast like it's any other morning on the campaign trail. Because it is.

Or near enough.

At the afternoon press conference, Kenneth is in top form.

He's smiling, relaxed, radiating confidence and the teeth-whitening treatment I suggested to him looks splendid in the viewfinders of the cameras. He blew 'em away at the Lion's Club, at a reception at the local Rotary Club this morning, and the current gaggle of media people packed into the hotel conference room he's wrangling like he's already governor.

It's me who's sweaty and fidgeting in the corner.

I have no idea when Dave is going to light the fuse on his bomb, but I'm guessing sooner rather than later.

Most of journalists are from hometown rags. They raise their hands and stand up like school kids to ask uninspired questions Kenneth's answered hundreds of time before, or long-winded ones about things of great local importance, that nobody in the capitol gives two hoots about.

Kenneth handles them all with bravado. He tilts his head to the side like he's giving them his full attention and gives answers in plain, straightforward English. No dollar-fifty words. No abstract concepts. Just like I made him stand in front of the mirror and practice. He's the picture of success and they like him.

It's going very well, but I don't trust very well and continue to scan the crowd.

Almost towards the end of the conference, right when I'm starting to relax and think Dave might get us in the next city, I notice a few of the journalists pulling out their mobile devices and frowning. When the fifth one does the same thing, my stomach goes sour like I've swallowed a bucket of floor cleaner. Here it comes. Here it comes. . .

Kenneth's in the middle of some hooey about how he aims to radically improve rural route mail delivery, when a forest of hands shoot up all at once, waving for his attention. I can see how his forehead creases in slight irritation, and his smile slips just a fraction. He knows something's not quite right and there's nothing I can do.

I desperately want to fling myself forward and end the conference, but I can't. That would be a clear show of having something to hide. Kenneth apparently does have something to hide, but it's paramount nobody in this room catch on to that.

He's finished with the mail, and calls on the journalist closest to him.

The journalist, a young man with a crooked brown tie, looks back and forth between Kenneth and his phone, making sure he's got the information correct.

"What do you have to say to your rival's claims of juvenile sex offences?"

Juvenile sex offences? Kenneth?

Ken looks surprised. He blinks a few times. "Whose, his? I have no knowledge of that," he says, an apologetic smile spreading across his face, showing off the pearly whites. I feel ill.

"No, yours."

"Mine?"

"Yes, what do you have to say to your rival's claims that you committed sexual offences in your youth that, and I quote, 'would shame and disgust any right-thinking person'?"

Kenneth stares at the guy. "I have no idea what he's talking about."

I know that stare. Ken, you lying bastard.

More hands go up, but they all want to ask him the same thing just with different wording. "Look, people." Ken waves his hands. "I have no idea what my esteemed rival is getting at or where he came up with such a claim. This is clearly a bid to torpedo my reputation. Sorry, but I won't be answering any more questions about this topic. Does anyone have a question concerning something else?"

They don't. And that's when I leap forward and thank them for coming.

I stage whisper to our team to go get packed or something-- we ride in an hour -- and hustle Kenneth upstairs to his room.

"Alright, talk."

"I have no idea-"

"You do so. Look, Kenneth, if I don't know where you're vulnerable, I can't provide a strategy to deflect it. What do they have on you and where did they get it from?"

Ken shakes his head like a monkey in a rain storm. "That's impossible. There's no way anybody could know about. . . the. . .file doesn't exist anymore." A redness is rising on his cheeks with alarming rate and he's breathing like he's three seconds from hyperventilating.

I let up and just sit there across from him at the table near the window. I'm so angry, I could rip the phone out of the wall and strangle him right here and now with the curly cord. I could open up the balcony door and throw him over the balustrade and claim I was temporarily insane and the ghost of George Washington told me to do it.

"Marilyn's dream. The hail," he moans. "It's coming true."

"What do they have on you, Ken? Tell me!"

But he won't tell me. Maybe he can't tell me. He keeps moaning and finally buries his head his hands. His shoulders shake. I let him cry his fear out, get up and go out on the balcony. Not to throw myself over, but to get ahold of Dave Mead. After calling around a bit, I leave an emergency message for him at his party headquarters.

He calls back within ten minutes.

"Juvenile sex offences? What kind of vague defamation is that?" I bark.

"I didn't think he told you."

"And he's not telling me now. All he says is, the file doesn't exist anymore."

"That's true. It doesn't. But old newspaper articles do."

That stops me for a second. "And he's named, specifically?"

"Yep. Shall I email you a copy?"

Shit. Fuck. Damn.

"What did he do? Come on, Dave, you started this. How bad is it?" I look in through the window. Kenneth's shoulders are still shaking.

Dave laughs. "It's more funny than anything."

"What. Did. He.--"

"Your candidate was caught fucking livestock."

For a second, I'm tempted to laugh, too, but more out of disbelief than finding it funny. "He was screwing sheep?"

"Cows, I think. Or maybe pigs. I'm not sure. There were two other boys with him and they were all brought up on charges of bestiality by the farmer. Imagine, walking into your barn one day to find a couple of horny fourteen-year olds banging away on Bessy. Due to their age, the charges had no consequences, but they were filed." Dave's still laughing. "I had to use this, Bird. Really, I did."

I hang up on him.

Kenneth wants to back out of the race. I tell him to shut his trap and act like the politician he is before I haul him by his shirt collar downstairs and onto the bus.

Due to the magic of the internet, the rest of the crew already knows. Some look scared, others disgusted. All of them are silent. No more funny pics for their social media profiles now.

I herd them away from Kenneth and give them the skinny. We're dealing with a boyhood prank and I paint them the porn scene in the barn as comically as I can. A few of the guys and one or two of the women are already smirking when I leave them to their work.

By the next morning, I've worked out a concept to save our nuts, but Kenneth still doesn't want to hear anything about it. Somehow he's found his phone and called Marilyn, and now he's freaked out of his mind.

"It's the hail, Bird. It's coming to kill me. Marilyn wants me to come home where I'm safe from the ketchup."

"The ketchup?"

"Yeah, they put mind controlling substances in ketchup and now they're reprogramming it to make people vote for him."

"No, they're. . .Kenneth, listen to me. You're going to have to treat this like it's no big deal. Own the scandal. Here, read this." I push the statement I've written up across the table at him, but he doesn't want to look at it, so I post it on the website without his okay.

But that's the least of our worries. Who cares about an official statement when the memes on social media are coming fast and furious? The team searches for new ones popping up every hour. Some of the ones they show me are pretty funny, but I make sure nobody cackles too loudly.

I'm working on our strategy for the televised debate when of the assistants taps me on the shoulder and shows me her phone screen. On it is a photoshopped pic of Ken hugging the muscular neck of a Texas Longhorn, hearts swarming up over his head like little pink bees. Kenny the Cowpoke the caption reads.

"That's what they're calling him now. The Cowpoke."

I have to almost literally put a gun to Kenneth's head to get him to his next engagements. He looks like a man about to be hung when he takes the stage at a Veteran's Administration meeting to speak about what he plans to do about ex-military integration. "Sounds good, Cowpoke!" somebody calls and the whole place goes up in hoots and chuckles. Ken turns red and tries to laugh along, but fails.

A retirement center politely cancels his visit, as does a hospital. I catch Kenneth mumbling to himself about hailstones and ketchup, and tell him to put a sock it. I'm there to get him into state government and he'd damn well better play along and not give in to his -- or Marilyn's -- paranoia. I tell him I know being made fun of is about the worst thing he can imagine, but trust me, the race isn't over yet.

He shrinks into his seat and doesn't answer.

"Get a grip. You've got to make jokes about it. Laugh along. Own it. Show it doesn't bother you. You want to be governor, don't you? Don't you?"

Kenneth nods his head, not convinced anymore what he wants other than for people to stop laughing at him.

Within the next several days, the scandal's gone viral and the whole country is tittering. Campaign HQ is flooded with email, some people are outraged, but more find it just as amusing as Dave does.

I can bank on that.

"You're going to wear this during the TV debate." I hand him the T-shirt I had printed up and he stares at me, his eyes wide as satellite dishes. "And this is how you're going to act when anybody asks you about it."

"No way."

"Yes way."

I force him to practice with me for hours, and at the end, I say, "If this doesn't work and you plummet in the ratings, then you can fire me and do what you want. But not now. We can turn this ship around."

Marilyn's been constantly texting him with doomsday predictions. I have to hide Kenneth's phone from him again to make sure he doesn't start making baboon noises and ruin everything.

It's finally debate night and Kenneth's still in one piece, but I have the sinking feeling my career is on the line. The strategy is sound, but I can't predict how he'll hold up.

At the studio, I see Dave and wave to him. He waves back.

The two podiums have been set up on the soundstage, and a long desk out of the sight of the camera for the reporters who will be asking the questions.

"Ready?" I ask Kenneth in the dressing room after he's had his make-up and hair done.

"No," he says, but then nods. We go over the strategy one more time, but I don't think he's really listening. We go out and wait.

The lights go on full blast and the cameras point their shiny eye at the moderator, a thin woman in her forties, a seasoned statewide-know journalist, who welcomes the audience to this first live TV debate.

Dave's candidate, the current governor, goes on first, all Gucci suit and golden wristwatch. He smiles into the camera and nods.

Then Kenneth is introduced and I lose all feeling in my legs.

He walks to his podium, unbuttons his jacket and slips it off as if he's just coming home. He lays it on the stool behind him, and turns around so that the TV audience can see his bright red "Kenny the Cowpoke for Guv" T-shirt.

The moderator is speechless for a moment, her mouth hanging open like a mailbox. But then catches herself, and the debate begins.

The questions are tough, but all the comments aimed at making Ken into even more of a laughing stock fall flat. When the governor attempts to bring Kenneth's moral character into question, Kenneth grabs the T-shirt and pulls it out taut as a billboard, as if that's his answer. Just like we practiced.

And it works. After a bit, the jokes and questions taper off and he's able to get his policies out and defend them. He's back on solid ground and talking serious politics like he's good at.

When it's over, the governor looks like he'd had a bucket of ice water poured over him. Dave catches my eye and pantomimes applause. I give him a bow in return.

The next day is a rest day. Well, it's supposed to be, but we're all nervously awaiting the ratings. When they come out, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Kenneth's popularity is up 12%. 3% higher than our rival.

The Cowpoke is still very much in the running for governor.

I let him have his phone back.

We've got two more months to get through before election night. I have no idea what shape we'll be in by then, but at least we've been through his hail storm and come out the other side still standing.

And I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure it stays that way.