Dewey Defeats Truman (28 page)

Walt Carroll and two other guys from the office were bringing up the rear. Walt told him to take his time coming back, but Jack insisted he’d be in on Wednesday. He still felt bad about having won the toss for the Labor Day train.

People had begun to walk toward their cars. The body, by prior agreement, would be lowered outside everybody’s presence. Anne came forward and threaded her arm through Jack’s, pointing to a couple he at first didn’t recognize. From the back they appeared to be making hesitant
conversation, maybe one of them offering the other a lift; as they set off together, he realized that the two thin figures were Frank Sherwood and Jane Herrick.

“Now what is that about?” Anne whispered.

He looked at her and didn’t answer. He was seeing only her
interest
in it, the way she was adding it up, figuring it out, not for gossip’s sake, but to understand some piece of the world she hadn’t understood before. And while she watched Frank and Mrs. Herrick, she didn’t worry about anyone watching her. He’d never met a girl who cared less about being looked at—or not looked at. Or who could take a compliment with less fuss.

“Will you marry me?” he asked. “I know this isn’t the place, I know it’s ridiculous, but—”

She looked away for a second, back toward all the rows of headstones, newly carved or weatherbeaten: the men and women mated for life and now eternity; the babies of another time, dead the year they were born; long-lived maiden aunts buried with their parents, the dates so strangely aligned it took a visitor a few seconds to sort out the blood ties; the boys who’d gone down into the ground, for a second time, as Jane Herrick listened to “Taps”; the dozens of men who, right in this town, had built the caskets they lay in.

“There’s nothing wrong with this place, Jack. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

H
E FELT AS IF HE
’
D DRIVEN OVER FROM
N
EW
H
AVEN ON A
date, and the desk clerk at this dude ranch outside Reno were a dormitory matron at Vassar. He hadn’t been allowed what she called “up,” though all the rooms were spread out
in two big one-story buildings, like giant versions of Al Jackson’s house.

His mother had come into the lounge looking wonderful, a new jangle of turquoise on her wrist, her hair freshly silvered by the sun. They each had a martini resting on the wagon-wheel table, and she was leafing through three issues of the
Argus
that Mrs. Bruce had airmailed him.

“Oh, there’s your name, dear.” She’d found the small item about a debate he’d been in before a government club at the Corunna high school. “Right next to this article about the Dewey boardwalk, or whatever it is.
COUNCIL TO VOTE OCT
.
7
. You mentioned that to me up on Mackinac. You’re for it, if I recall.”

“Yes.”

“It must be good politics.”

“Yeah,” said Peter, impatiently.

Lucy Cox continued reading aloud, delighted by the project’s comical controversies, like the question of whether space should be left on the east bank, south of, say, the high school, so that depictions of the Dewey administration’s achievements could be added to representations of the candidate’s rise. She finished an inch of her drink before putting the paper down.

“Peter,” she finally said. “Exactly why are you here? I could scarcely believe it when I got your call from town.”

“Well, Mother, I could scarcely believe it when I got your letter from ‘town.’ That Reno postmark was something of a shock.”

“My letter was perfectly straightforward.”

“Exactly, Mother. As if this were all routine.
Why?
”

“Why not?”

“No, Mother. That may have been the question for the last fifteen years. The question now is
why
.”

“Peter, this litigious style doesn’t suit us.”

“It’s appropriate. I don’t want to play word games. I’m sick of playing them with girls, let alone my own mother.”

“A special girl?”

“Answer my question.”

She lifted her purse from its place between two spokes of the wagon wheel, and extracted a snapshot. “I found this a couple of months ago. Not long before I last saw you.”

“Father,” he said. “From about—”

“Nineteen-thirty-three. September.”

“So?”

“Look at the expression.”

“Happiness.”

“
Perfect
happiness. It was taken a few weeks after he met her.”

“Met whom?”

“The
girlfriend
. Oh, please, Peter.”

He spun the wagon wheel about forty degrees. “I suppose I’ve always guessed that.” He paused before raising his voice. “So you’re here because fifteen years later you’re angry all over again.”

“No, I’m here because fifteen years later I’ve stopped being angry. When I saw that picture I stopped being angry
for the first time
. All I could see and remember was his perfect happiness, which I destroyed. Believe me, when I got through with the two of them, there was nothing left. Of course, I didn’t figure on there being nothing left of me, either.”

“That’s not true, Mother.”

“Of course it is. Now stop interrupting me. I’m giving you your money’s worth. When I saw that picture, I was enthralled. I wanted that happiness restored.”

“Father’s long since forgiven you, I’m sure.”

“Why should he? I haven’t forgiven him. Peter, I’m not talking about
his
happiness. I’m talking about
mine
. I want to be happy. I’ve spent fifteen years being victorious. A headless, winged victory. It is September twenty-eighth, 1948, Peter. I am fifty-nine years old, and I want to be happy.”

The possibility that his mother might cry, or that her eyes might at least, however briefly, glisten, seemed to him as shocking as the idea of the Winged Victory itself flying down the steps of the Louvre.

In her more familiar, theatrical voice, Lucy Cox came to his rescue. “Do you know who’s enchanting?”

“Who?” asked Peter. Yes, he wanted to talk about Anne. How impressive Mother had found her on Mackinac. What an unusual beauty she had. How he must have her at all costs—even some gesture as bold as Mrs. Cox’s own Reno venture.

“Senator Barkley.”

“Christ, Mother, if you tell me
you’re
for Truman—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to need a sound economy in which to shelter my alimony. But I
like
the man. He keeps up this cheerful front when all the while he’s desperately lonely. You can see it in every photograph. He’d rather have a new wife than this ridiculous job he’s running for.”

Peter said nothing.

“I’m looking for a husband, Peter. Someone about fifteen years younger than Senator Barkley.”

Peter gave the wagon wheel another spin. His mother
reached over and stopped it. “I’m looking for someone who, maybe for one minute, maybe for only as long as it took to click the shutter, will make me feel the way your father felt in that picture.”

He rode back to Reno, trying to stay angry. Mother was like a hypnotist who had emerged from her own spell; she was leaving the theatre, not terribly concerned that her audience—himself, his father—was still “under.” He wanted to find a card game, or just a slot machine, to keep from pondering what she’d said. He drove down Virginia Street toward his motel, the neon reminding him of Mrs. Sinclair’s silver tea service, so well polished it had managed, the other week, to reflect the single sliver of light allowed through the colonel’s curtains. His mother sounded as if she were looking for ecstasy, as if she might suddenly decamp to California like Aldous Huxley; Mrs. Sinclair, to hear the colonel tell it, had never shown anything but serenity. The old man had shimmered like the tea set when extolling her. Did he want the town to stay as it had always been so that he could continue picturing her there? Was it as simple as that?

At the desk in the lobby he put down change for the paper. Too bad he would be going home before October 7. Richard Nixon would be out here that day to give a speech on “Cold War Treason.” Peter Cox would be watching the Owosso City Council vote on the Dewey Walk.

“Can you get me some ice?”

“Of course. You’ve got a message. A Mrs. Bruce called from Michigan. She asked that you call her back and not worry about the hour or the time difference.”

Had the office flooded? Had the colonel thrashed Al
Jackson with that fifty-year-old walking stick he’d brought home from the Cuban jungle?

Back in his room Peter waited for the operator to make a connection.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Mrs. Bruce. Can you hear me all right?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Cox!”

“What’s the trouble?”

“
Trouble?
Anything
but
trouble, Mr. Cox. He’s
coming!
”

Peter hesitated as her words ran through the wires.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Cox? Governor Dewey is coming to Owosso!”

O
N
O
CTOBER 4
,
THE DAY
P
ETER
C
OX ARRIVED HOME FROM
Nevada, Dewey’s men in New York had still not picked an exact date for the governor’s visit. At the Great Lakes and the Hotel Owosso’s coffee shop, some argued that
after
the election was better, since greeting a President-elect would be even more momentous than greeting a presidential candidate. To which others rejoined: In that case, you might as well wait until next spring, when he can come back as the actual President. They wanted the visit
now
, just as they didn’t like having to wait until after November 2 to see themselves in the
March of Time
.

This second group got its wish on Thursday, October 7, the day of the city council meeting, when the candidate’s men finally made up their minds and the
Argus
could announce:
MONSTER RECEPTION TO BE TENDERED DEWEY HERE
;
EXPECTED OCTOBER 23
. The council meeting, at which a few sparks had still been expected to fly, wound up being poorly attended, while over at the Elks temple, where the Dewey for
President Club was reorganizing itself as a reception committee, you couldn’t find a seat. The sudden change in by-laws was a bit confusing: the club itself continued in existence, even though the new committee, in an all-for-one spirit of civic pride and hospitality, had taken on a Democrat. Bruce Wilson, the young biology teacher at Owosso High, satisfied a couple of objections by explaining what Luther Burbank had done with hybrids, and after that the group felt free to move on to the latest flurries of incoming news. Each hour seemed to bring the name of another state politician who promised to join the governor during his only Michigan appearance of the whole campaign. A stack of decisions had to be taken, from the very basic (should the parade end at City Hall or Willman Field?) to the more subtle (how should the city and its merchants split the cost of decorating the downtown?).

At 9:15, Al Jackson came running in, out of breath with a sheaf of oaktag under his arm, to announce that the council had just approved the Dewey Walk by a vote of six to one. The single dissenter was Chester Burnham, who they all knew was an old friend of Horace Sinclair’s.

Someone asked if Horace had even shown up tonight.

“Didn’t see him,” said Al. “But that’s all in the past. We built the future tonight! That’s what’s important!”

A couple of people who never would warm up to Al, at least not all the way, turned their attention back to the club/committee’s mimeographed agenda. They’d been doing just fine without Al, and now that he’d gotten his way about the Walk—which for all its permanence seemed less important than the parade two Saturdays from now—couldn’t he leave them alone?

He couldn’t. Within ten minutes he was revved up by the can-do wartime speed of the proceedings—racing from one colloquy to another, interrupting the organizers, answering questions he hadn’t been asked. The vice president of the club, who either was or was not the co-chairman of the reception committee, felt ready to tell him to pipe down, when the question arose of what the parade floats would actually depict and whether they could be built in two weeks.