White Trash in the Snow - Chapter Two (In which we meet Tad Saplin, Buck Heat and some other fictional characters)

In chapter one, readers were intimately introduced to Cristol Saplin and her boyfriend Wrangler Strauss, and met her mother, the governor. 

In today's chapter, readers begin to learn more about Cristol's parents, Tad Saplin and Rachael Heat Saplin, through glimpses into  how they were raised, and their life together. 

I hope you will enjoy getting to know all the characters in "White Trash in the Snow" as the story unfolds. Check back on Friday June 1st  to meet Wrangler's mom in Chapter 3. 

Disclaimer for new readers: These characters are not real and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.  

Bonne lecture! 

White Trash in the Snow

by Allison




CHAPTER TWO

Tad and Rachael Saplin had been Azzolla High School sweethearts. Kevin and Jeraldine “Jerrie” Strauss had been AHS sweethearts, too.  The latter couple won the title of "cutest couple" the year they were all seniors. Rachael wasn't even nominated, and she was extremely jealous.  To this day, she claims that a passion for clean campaigns and ethics in politics started when she witnessed "a rigged voting process" for an "important election" when she was in high school. 

 Azzolla had less than 4,000 residents when those four graduated. Soon, their friends paired up and began to produce the next generation of Azzles. It didn't take long for young parents to begin to recognize the surnames of former classmates among the list of pre-schoolers who were tasting the paste side by side with their own little rug rats. By elementary school, Wrangler was one of the boys Field knew from midget hockey and midget football and one of the kids in Cristol's  grade in school. Rachael was more aware of him than Tad.  It was when the kids hit high school and Tad heard  the name "Wrangler Strauss" announced with the starting lineup of the Azzolla High Red Devils hockey team that Cristol's dad took notice. The kid was only a freshman! Something wasn't right. 

“It fries my pistons to see that kid get a starting position,” Tad told Rachael when he got home after the third game of the school year. “He’s younger than Field. He should have to wait his turn. And you should have seen how he hogs the puck. He’s making the most points! Who does he think he is? Somebody ought to teach him a thing or two.”

Rachael’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “Shoot, Tad. It don’t matter who he thinks he is, what matters is who Field is and Field is my son and that means he’s a Saplin.”

“If you say so, Rachael.”

His wife didn't even blink at the double entendre.  “Right," she said, "and what does it mean to be a Saplin? It means he isn’t going to let himself be shown up by anybody. We raised him better than that. He’ll do whatever he has to do to get what he wants, you’ll see.”

“Well I hope he remembers what I told him,” Tad said. “He can’t be breaking any more hands during games. Or breaking heads, either. Those stunts cost him too much time in the penalty box. He’s got to be on the ice to be seen by the talent scouts.”

The week that followed that conversation, the Red Devils had back-to-back games out of town. During the long bus ride out, someone put laxatives in another player’s candy stash and the boy became very ill. A group of seniors led by Field Saplin swore they’d seen Wrangler messing with the other kid’s bags and he was called out by the coach. He protested his innocence, but it did no good. Wrangler Strauss wasn’t allowed to suit up that weekend or for the next four home games. 

Buck Heat, Field Saplin’s grandfather and the Azzolla High track coach followed all the Red Devil’s teams closely. When he heard about the incident, he smiled so broadly his dentures almost fell out. Before the team was back in town, Buck had dropped off a a case of premium beer at the hockey coach’s house, telling the man’s wife that it was “just  a little something to show appreciation – from one coach to another.” Afterwards he went  to Rachael’s house to pick up the girls, they were going to their grandparent’s for supper because the rest of the family was out of town. Pride, the youngest, ran out to meet him with complaints about her sisters. Pouting, she opened the passenger side door of the truck the minute it came to a halt. Whining, "Maple is mean! And Cristol is crazy," she didn’t notice the empty box that fell out at her feet.  Later, the wind picked it up and carried it into the woods where, in the spring, pieces of light cardboard with “ex-lax“ and “chewables” and “24 pieces” printed on them added some color to the nest of a pregnant rat.

Cristol’s parents' critical view of Wrangler and other local kids was a learned behavior. Buck and Betty Heat were employed by the school system while raising their foursome and through that semi-opaque looking glass they had inspected and cast judgment on all the other families with school age children. Buck favored the athletic kids who excelled in organized sports and the boys and girls whose fathers took them hunting and fishing. Betty approved of those whose mothers took them to Wednesday night prayer meetings. Buck didn’t give points for mothers who hunted but Betty gave extra credit for fathers who went to church. Tallied scores determined which little Azzles got invites to play with Buck Jr., Helen, Rachael, and Sally.  Social status was a tie-breaker – a tie-breaker that eliminated a girl named Jerrie and a boy named Kevin.

Tad Saplin’s childhood years were not spent in Azzolla. He came from a rugged northern community of proud multi-generational native families, most of whom made a living fishing. The Saplin family held fishing rights under a government protected program that allowed for the coveted privileges to be passed along from generation to generation. Every summer hired laborers did a majority of the work while fishing profits put money in the bank for the license holders.

Tad’s paternal grandparents were entrepreneurs who had become wealthy running the only general store for hundreds of miles around. Tom Saplin, Tad’s father, was a success in business, too, but a failure in marriage until a promotion to upper management with the electric company brought him into daily contact with another manager, a woman named Stella, who became his third wife.

Tad grew up with half-brothers, half-sisters, step-brothers, and step-sisters. When he was seventeen, Tom and Stella pulled up roots, literally and figuratively, and transplanted the family six hundred miles away, to the Azzolla Valley. The promotions they had been offered were too good to pass up, and they spent no time thinking what it might do to any of the children.

Tad missed his cousins, friends, and elder family members. Native traditions, integral to his upbringing, were foreign and funny to his new classmates. He wrestled with identity, trust and bonding issues. In his hurt and immaturity, he rejected the friendship offered by a few local teens. People decided he was shy, odd, or rude. In any case, he was a loner. Busy with their new jobs and their own new acquaintances, Thomas and Stella Saplin did not notice.

Like his parents and grandparents, Tad focused early on “making good money.” It had been easy money when he was young- he worked for his grandparents. He was paid three times what they would have paid a non-family member for fishing or working in the store. Tad developed a skewed sense of his own worth and an ego to go with it.  It did not serve him well. When he moved to Azzolla, he was the only kid in town who owned three motor vehicles - a truck and two snow mobiles. They were his only friends. During the long winter of his senior year, he spent weekends exploring the vast, snow covered world that isolated Azzolla, or tinkering with the mechanical parts of one of the vehicles. As the months went by, he became comfortable with being alone.

Eventually, basketball provided a means by which he could experience teamwork even as he eschewed friendships. Alone in the school gym after all the others had gone home for supper, Tad worked on his jump shot. Liking what he saw during tryouts, Coach Heat, Rachael’s father, gave Tad a place on the team and added him to the list of acceptable friends for his children. Within a week, he began to date Rachael Heat (he thought it would guarantee him a place in the starting line up, she wanted a boyfriend).

Betty wasn’t sure about the new boy. As far as she knew, his family hadn’t joined a church, and that bothered her greatly. It was okay for him to be on the basketball team, but not dating her daughter. Not unless he had Jesus in his life. 

Rachael wasn’t about to break up with a guy who had a truck, and a couple of snow mobiles, so she lied. “Tad’s a Christian, Mom. He prays with the team before the games. And he likes that song you like – You Light Up My Life."


Betty perked up. "He likes Debbie Boone? Really?"


"Yup, you betcha! So you see, Mom? He's got to be a Christian if he likes Debbie Boone. Only saved guys like her, or that song."


Betty nodded. She was buying it. 


Rachael gave it one last push.  "So, don’t worry. Tad’s saved. I can tell.” 

Betty had already forgotten her doubts about Tad. “I always loved Pat Boone," she said. "So clean cut. Such a nice boy." Her eyes got dreamy. "Handsome, too."

"Yeah, Mom. Tad's handsome, too."

“Well, let's thank Jesus, for sending you such a nice young man." She took her daughter's hands and together they bowed their heads right there in the kitchen. While her mother prayed, Rachael mentally rehearsed her plan to sneak out of the house after everyone went to sleep. She was giving Tad a series of private lessons in remedial abstinence, and they weren't going well. He was a slow learner.

Rachael and Tad dated the rest of the school year. After high school Tad tried to convince a couple of colleges that they, too, needed his basketball skills. He wasn’t that convincing. After he did poorly in a couple of courses that he’d paid for with his own money, he dropped out. Living with his dad and Stella, he kept busy with heavy labor-type jobs that covered his snow mobile expenses. When Rachael was in town they continued to see each other. When she wasn’t around, he found other girls to keep company, in the Azzolla Valley and back in his old hometown. Those fishing town girls grow up early. And in Azzolla, the young women learned Tad Saplin wasn’t really so shy after all.

Rachael Heat left town after graduating from Azzolla High in pursuit of good times and higher education – in that order. Dropping out, transferring, changing majors, she spent five years sampling colleges like Goldilocks trying out the porridge, the chairs, and the beds. Too hot (Hawaii), too hard (another school in Hawaii), too cold (Minnesota), too soft (the unaccredited community college back home); her mother declared it a miracle when her daughter finally cobbled together enough credits to graduate from a school in Iowa. What no one ever knew, not even her parents, was that Rachael was three credits short of finishing when she donned the cap and gown and crossed that stage with real graduates of the Class of 1987. She had earned enough credits to walk with the class, and she intended to take that one missing course during the summer session, but it didn’t happen. Perhaps it was because she heard that an old high school flame would be back in Azzolla for the summer. Perhaps it was the opportunity to interview for a substitute sports reporter’s job. Perhaps it was a compulsion to annoy her father the teacher by quitting schools before completing an academic program. Today, Rachael can’t recall why she didn’t finish. In fact, she’s forgotten about those three credits. The Kodak moments Buck and Betty keep in a family album give the appearance that Rachael received a degree, and no one ever required that she show any other proof, not even when she ran for governor. If a capital city reporter ever investigated, they would learn that Rachael Saplin’s claim to a BA is Rachael Saplin B.S.

Rachael has used next to none of her formal education since leaving college. She isn’t a journalist, she doesn’t seek facts or truths. Her public speaking is folksy and unpolished, she uses words incorrectly and other words are made up. She runs words and sentences together with no regard for the rules of English grammar. 

That does not mean she didn’t learn anything in that game of hopscotch through the halls of academia. No, she learned plenty. Rachael Heat Saplin uses lessons from those years every day. First, Rachael discovered that a pretty smile and a flirtatious wink are a powerful combination.  Then, she found that when she used them while wearing a push-up bra, men thought she was brilliant. To be honest with herself, she knew they didn’t really think she was brilliant, but they paid attention as if she was, which was good enough for Rachael.  If the professor for her final three-credits had been a man, Rachael Saplin’s college degree would be framed and hanging in the Office of the Governor.

Tad Saplin and Rachael Louise Heat eloped six years after they left high school. It was destiny – they were destined to become parents in seven and one half months. Tad’s experiences and traits and Rachael’s needs and beliefs bonded like gold and mercury. The young Saplins wanted things, lots of things, and while other young couples in their situation might be focused on making a home, Tad and Rachael focused on making money. In the sixth month of their marriage, with Rachael’s pregnancy so advanced that  she’d have made Rush Limbaugh look svelte, Tad took a job that took him away from home and left her alone two weeks at a time. The newlyweds were together less than half the days of any twelve month cycle, a schedule they happily accommodated for him to “make some real money in a good paying union job,” a job that flew him and hundreds of others to work on company jets for work cycles of two weeks on and two weeks off. In a community where most employment involved retail or bartending, Tad had landed a very desirable job, and he kept it.

When first married, Rachael tried to guilt Tad into using his fishing money for family things. But Tad’s fishing license was an inheritance. It was a perk acquired at birth. He wasn’t inclined to share his birthright with a wife born in Iowa, even if her parents relocated before she had her first tooth. Later, when he began to win tens of thousands of dollars racing snow mobiles, she became his loudest cheerleader and promoter. (As Governor, Rachael Saplin came within a walrus whisker of exercising improper influence when she got Tad and his teammate a lucrative endorsement from a big oil company. But she smiled, and winked, and wore her push-up bra to the meeting with the Investigator General…)

She got involved in the Parent Teacher Association when she enrolled Field in pre-kindergarten, but the PTA interest waned quickly. Through a friend, she learned there was a vacant seat on the Azzolla town council and she padded her bra and approached one of the long term councilmen about running. Sure enough, he saw twin commodities that he believed would make Rachael Saplin an asset to the town council. Then, he engaged his brain and saw yet another pair of standout traits that convinced him to back her candidacy: her lack of intellectual curiosity and the inability to see her own shortcomings. This was the early 1990s, he was her father’s age, and naturally assumed that the young woman, a former candidate for the title of Miss Azzolla, was a narcissist who would love the title but wouldn’t want to work very hard. He expected that she would take his direction on how to vote. He was wrong about that last part.

By the time she and Tad talked, she’d made up her mind to run and had already filed with the town. “Tad, God’s calling me to be in public office,” she said.

“God’s calling you? That shows up on caller ID? I’ll hang up so you can take that call.”

Rachael ignored the sarcasm.“I heard it very clearly while I was praying last night. ‘Rachael, run for town council.’ That’s what I heard.”

“I’m sure you heard those exact words.”

“Stop that. I’m serious.”

“So am I. I meant that.” And Tad did mean it. He was sure she’d heard those words -  not from God, from her ego. But, if it made his wife happy, he’d go along. He thought of his grandfather’s saying:“If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. If papa ain’t happy, ain’t nobody cares.” For Tad, those words were as good as gospel.

With the backing of the councilman and members of his party, Rachael Saplin won a seat on the Azzolla Town Council. Four years later, tired of approving parade floats and regulating garbage collection schedules, she wanted more power. With three children - Field and Cristol in school, and their little sister Maple a toddler – Rachael announced her candidacy for mayor saying “Ya want somethin’ done, give it to a busy person. And there’s no one busier than a mom.”

Rachael Saplin took some votes for granted – those of women who had children at home and the votes of good citizens who cared passionately about things like banning library books and restricting the sale of falafels by street vendors. Still, those wouldn’t be enough to win, and Tad helped Rachael fashion a campaign to bring more Azzles out to vote for her. It was clever yet down to earth. The Saplin campaign promised to change town ordinances so that bars could stay open until 5am.

Election Day results proved that Rachael Saplin was a savvy politician. She had found a new voting faction, unemployed alcoholics. In Azzolla, there were enough of them to make a difference and she won by fifteen votes. No matter who ran and who won, the real winner was apathy. Apathy’s landslide came from those who simply stayed home, leaving the town which had reached a population of 5,000 to be run by someone voted in by 365 Azzles.

When she took office, Rachael was surprised to find she had to scramble to get up to speed in the job. First, she asked everyone on the staff to resign. Then, she didn’t know how to get the work done with the inexperienced lot she brought in. The fire chief whose resignation she accepted, had no problem telling everyone “She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.” After a scathing commentary in the paper, she was ready to quit. Then Tad suggested she do what they did in big business, add another layer to the management team.

“That’s the answer! Tad, you’ve got an amazing grasp of government!” Once the city manager was hired, she was able to schedule hair, tanning and nail appointments on weekdays, and left early enough each day to tune in to Oprah at 4 pm. She loved being set free from the drudgery of actually working. The new manager was competent, and she didn’t have to be. Life was good.

When the paper ran another critical editorial, questioning the cost of having two people on the payroll to perform a job only one was elected to do, she fired off a response saying she believed in “Surrounding yourself with good people.” Who could argue with that? Promises to find “good people” and to surround herself with them became standard in all Saplin speeches from then on, especially as she ran for higher levels of state government.

The Azzolla Valley was a visual contradiction. Its geography was responsible for long, dark winters and short summers; Mother Nature provided the majestic natural beauty of the surrounding mountains; and three generations of Azzles were responsible for the town’s aesthetic ugliness. Entering on either of two approaches, visitors were greeted by a shabby hodgepodge of poorly built structures and strip malls with numerous bars, gun shops, diners, tattoo parlors, tanning salons and Laundromats. The juxtaposition of structural detritus against scenic splendor earned Azzolla the title of “The Other Appalachia.” During the Saplin years, the town became even uglier; a feat few would have thought possible.

With a blind spot as big as Alaska, Rachael Saplin thought everything she touched was made beautiful. Mayor Saplin was proud of her record. At the close of her second term, Azzolla was called “the meth capital of the state;” it had one meth house per 650 adults. That same year, a national report labeled Azzolla High School  a "dropout factory." Did these facts embarrass Mayor Saplin? Not one bit. If anyone mentioned them, she changed the subject, “Oh, golly. There will always be things to work on. What’s important right now is that sports complex…

The new sports complex had been her “baby.” Fiscal prudence had been thrown to the wind, the building built on land the town didn’t own, and construction costs far exceeded foreseeable income. The town’s surplus when she took office had become a twenty million dollar debt because of that building, yet she had an answer for that, too. “What good’s a surplus? Money is for spending.”

While Rachael was making friends and enemies in the valley, Tad Saplin put in year after year on his job. He worked fewer days than a schoolteacher, but was away from home like a long-distance trucker. Some couples in this situation found it hurt their relationship. Not the Saplins - they liked to pursue separate interests and they did well apart. In the summer, Tad returned to his birthplace to run a fishing operation and to catch up with old friends. In a good year, the business kept him away the month of July; in a poor season he was gone six to eight weeks. Deep-water fishing provided money for him to spend on the love of his life – snow mobile racing. Racing was expensive. Equipment, maintenance, clothing, entry fees, and other racing necessities sucked up thousands of dollars annually.

Rachael was jealous of the money, time and affection Tad showered on his hobby and often called it “Tad’s mistress.” Tad didn’t mind, he thought it was funny. Many times he’d take his machine out at midnight and would stick his head into the bedroom before he left to say, “Going out with my mistress. Don’t wait up. Gonna ride her all night.”

Though they weren't sharing a bed, Mr. and Mrs. Saplin marketed themselves to the public as a couple devoted to family. It was part of the game of politics and necessary for Rachael Saplin’s next foray  -  a run for State Comptroller. 

One of the men running against her was certain her fiscal missteps as mayor would cause her to be eliminated early. He had prepared for the candidate’s debate by memorizing facts. That was his first mistake. Trusting that she would answer questions put to her was his second. Skillfully, with a down-home folksiness and innocent smile, she changed topics and dodged questions, managing to avoid giving any factual responses. Tad, behind the stage and out of sight, was amused. Good luck, buddy... Tad thought, I've been trying to get the truth out of her ever since she told me she was only a couple weeks pregnant that summer...  

Frustrated, he prepared to directly challenge her in the next debate. When she again said nothing but platitudes he shook his head and said, “Mrs. Saplin, if you aren’t going to answer the questions, why don’t you just say so?”

Simultaneously she blinked, pulled back her head, and paused, looking shocked. Then, relaxing the tension in her neck, she spoke as if talking with a child, “I may not answer the questions you want answered but I am going to talk directly to the people.” Smirking, she looked out at the audience and into the camera. “I’m going to tell them what I want them to hear.” Proceeding to babble semi-coherently, making no real point, and ending with a nod and a wink, she was the epitome of patronizing over-confidence and ignorance. Her supporters found her “spunky,” “refreshing,” and “candid” - all the key measures of the shallow end of the voting pool. 


Rachael Saplin was in her glory; she lived on praise and attention. She loved being unpredictable and breaking the pattern followed by all the other candidates (she called them "the good ol' boys"). 


She was convinced God had a plan for her life. She knew she was following His plan. She wasn't meant to be president of the PTA or president of a Fortune 500 company (not that she knew what a Fortune 500 company was) - she was called by God to be the first female President of the United States of America.  And she was determined that nothing  - not motherhood, Tad,  nor apple pie - could take her off that course.