The Last American Martyr by Tom Winton Page A

early. Though it had grown increasingly difficult over the past ten years, this time she couldn’t afford to stay until April first. I thought about giving her the site fee, but I knew this proud, old survivor would never have taken it. For all the years she’d been coming she had only stayed in our treed section of the campground because it was cheaper than the others. That’s why she and I were the only ones on our side of the huge circular dirt road. Everybody wanted to stay where it’s sunny. You see, where we were the sky was always green, with leaves. We received virtually no sunlight. And as cool, and sometimes downright cold, as South Carolina gets in winter, nobody wanted to be in those trees. Well, almost nobody.
    Standing in the road, waving goodbye as she pulled away that morning, I was not a happy camper. But bad as I felt losing my only human contact, things were about to get worse. In a mere few hours my spirits would plummet to even lower depths.
    It was early afternoon. I was inside the camper reading an email from my editor, Denise Solchow. She said, despite being dropped by the two mega-booksellers, sales of Enough is Enough still had been “robust.” I was no longer following the rankings, but Denise said it was still ninth on the New York Times Best Seller List. It had been number one for fifty-something weeks but had fallen because of the boycott. She asked me what to do with the most recent royalty check, and I’d just finished telling her to hold on to it when Solace started raising all kinds of hell.
    She was up front on the passenger seat woofing, growling, carrying on like she always did when she smelled, saw, or heard something. I quickly finished my response to Denise then got up and peeked out the windshield. Just as I did, the biggest motor home I’d ever seen stopped dead in the road, right smack in front of my Winnebago.
    “Shhh, shhh, OK!” I said to Solace, pulling her back, trying to keep her from clawing ruts into the dashboard. I put her on the carpeted floor, but that did nothing to stave off her fitful barking.
    The luxury RV before me was the size of a Greyhound tour bus. It was just like the ones the big-name bands and all their groupies trip across the country in, and just as elegant. This was the type of diesel motor home that sells for half a million dollars.
    Looking directly into a side window, maybe twenty feet in front of me, I could see what must have been the dining area. A huge crystal chandelier swayed heavily and beyond that, I saw ornate gilded mirrors on what appeared to be mahogany wall cabinets. The custom black paint-job on the outside, with all its gold swooshes and slashes, shone brighter than a cadet’s shoes on graduation day. This so-called “camper,” with Michigan plates, was more like a presidential suite on wheels.
    Oh shit! I’ll bet he’s going to back right in there. What the hell’s he doing on this side of the park? Ohhh, I know…I’ll bet the sunny side’s all filled up.
    Sure enough, he did back in—directly across the road. But first he unhooked the glistening new Hummer he’d been towing. All decked out in designer shorts; a golf shirt with some kind of logo over his heart; sockless loafers; and a cell phone holster at the ready, the chubby little man shouted orders to his equally chubby little wife. He had the poor woman jumping back and forth all over that campsite. I had to feel bad for her. She would be right in the middle of doing what she’d been told, and the red-faced dictator would start shouting out new orders, which she’d promptly respond to. After ten minutes of watching all this I got a little tired of it. Solace was still raising hell so I put her in the bedroom and closed the door. I grabbed a smoke, popped open a beer, and sat outside under the awning.
    “Whew,” I said to myself, “at least they can’t see me out here, with all these bushes.” But I was not happy.
    A short time later, after all the