Interface (69 page)

Consequently
 
she
 
had
 
no
 
idea
 
what
 
was
 
going
 
on when,
suddenly, the entire crowd - bleachers, podium, everywhere -
suddenly jumped to its feet and burst forth in wild exaltation. Ten thousand helium balloons launched themselves from the end zone
and headed for Mars. Tremendous barrages of firecrackers went off
all over the place, releasing skeins of acrid smoke into the air. Boat
horns screeched all over the place as if all the world's seagulls were
dying at once, the podium reverberated with the thumping bass drums of the marching band, and from somewhere - a helicopter,
maybe? - a thunderhead of confetti descended upon the scene, so
dense that for a few moments you could hardly see your own hand.
Mary Catherine instinctively looked to her father, who was just
visible through the confetti as a glowing outline, limned by the
television lights, blurred by the red-white-and-blue blizzard.

It seemed like he was a thousand miles away from her. Not a
human being, but an electronic figment conjured up from the
computers of a media laboratory. Ronald Reagan had been an
actor. At times, William A. Cozzano had begun to seem like a
special effect.

Then the blizzard of confetti cleared and he was just standing
there, letting the waves of sound roll over him, and he turned
towards her, his eye searching through the faces, the smoke, the
streamers and balloons, and he found her, caught her eye, and
smiled a smile that was for her and for her alone.

She smiled back. She knew that both of them were thinking
about Mom.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She didn't even
know what was going on, really. But she wanted to be with Dad,
and so she walked across the podium and climbed the steps to the
raised lectern. He caught her up with one arm around her waist as
she reached the top step and crushed her to his side. The noise level
went up by another few decibels, if that was possible, and she did
what she was supposed to do: she looked not at her father, but out
on to the crowd, into the battery of lenses, and waved. She felt terrified and forlorn, but with Dad holding her up she knew she'd
get through it. It was so good to have him back.

A huge banner had unfurled from the top of the bleachers and it
said, COZZANO FOR PRESIDENT. This was not the first time
that Mary Catherine had seen those words, but when she saw them
up there, ten feet high, on the Tuscola High School bleachers, she
knew it was for real. And she finally realized what had touched off
all of this tumult: Dad had done it. He had announced. He was running for president.

The rest of the day was completely out of control. It was like
being stuck in the middle of a riot in which no one got hurt. It was
like the biggest, rowdiest, most drunken wedding of all time, to the
tenth power; and instead of a single photographer telling everyone
what to do, there was an army of photographers. So many flashes went off in Mary Catherine's eyes that she began to see things that
weren't there, as if the electronic flash was a gateway to a hidden dimension. The rally developed into an open-air hugging, kissing,
handshaking, and sweating festival and, assisted by shuttle buses,
gradually migrated across town to the Tuscola City Park, where
half of the pigs in the Midwest were revolving on spits inside giant,
rusted, smoking, portable barbecue pits. Green fiberglass portable
toilets were lined up in ranks at one end of the park, like ceremonial
guards at a coronation. A linear mile of picnic tables had been set
up with red-white-and-blue tablecloths and loaded up with
lemonade, iced tea, punch, water, coffee, and beer.

Mary Catherine made her way through all of this one step at a
time, stooping every yard or so to greet someone new. After the first thousand or so people, she completely lost her ability to remember faces. A nice lady came up and shook her hand and
chatted with her for a while; Mary Catherine had her pegged as her
old Sunday School teacher until she realized that this woman was,
in fact, the wife of a Supreme Court justice. She said hello to Althea
Coover, DeWayne Coover's granddaughter and an old college
mate of hers. As the hours went on, she saw a great many people
whom she recognized, but oddly enough they were people she had
never met before. They were movie stars, professional athletes, senators, and musicians. She knew their faces as well as she knew the faces of her own aunts and uncles, and so it didn't seem strange
at all to see them wandering around Tuscola, to see the Senator
from Wyoming swapping jokes with the coach of the Bulls.

At one point she even ran into Cy Ogle and had the presence of
mind to tell him that she wanted to talk to him when he got a
chance. He couldn't talk to her right away because he was
addressing the two squads of cheerleaders, Tuscola and Rantoul,
who had all gotten a chance to take showers and get pretty. He was
confessing his total inability to choose which squad had done
better, and promising to buy new uniforms for both squads.
Consequently he didn't talk to Mary Catherine until about an hour later, when he finally tracked her down on the edge of the festival.

She was standing at home plate on the softball diamond. She had
hung her blazer up on a nail sticking out of the wooden backstop. She had an aluminium bat in her hands and she was knocking fly
balls and grounders to half a dozen preadolescent boys, arrayed
throughout the infield and outfield, playing a game called five
hundred. In honor of her high birth, superior muscles, and pinpoint
place-hitting ability, they had named her All-Time Batter. She
punched the balls out. They caught them, keeping track of their
own scores, and threw them back. By hitting the balls in the right
places, she was able to keep their scores pretty closely bunched
together. After a while, a Japanese TV crew showed up and began
to film her. She didn't mind.

"I detect some bias here," someone drawled, just after she hit an
easy grounder to a small boy who had just entered the game.

She turned around. It was Ogle, watching her through the
backstop. "How long have you been watching?" she said.

"Couple minutes. I was going to come out and catch for you.
But that'd spoil the visual," he said, nodding toward the Japanese video crew. She could not tell, from the way he said this, whether
he was serious or making fun of himself.

"They've got their visual," she said. "Why don't you come out
and catch before I break a nail and spoil that visual."

"Okay, kids!" Ogle shouted, emerging from behind the back
stop, "Now y'all got an all-time catcher too! First one who bops
me in the head gets two hundred points!"

A ball came sailing from left field, directly toward Ogle's head.

He pretended not to notice until it was nearly there, then suddenly
held up his hands and grabbed it inches away from his face.
"Wow!" he said, looking frightened and shaking his head in
astonishment. The kids went nuts.

Ogle underhanded the ball gently to Mary Catherine. She one-handed it, then turned to survey the field. All the kids jumped up and down and punched their gloves. Little Peter Domenici was
currently trailing the field, so she tossed the ball lightly up in the air
and punched a pop fly to him. He didn't even have to move in
order to catch it, but he dropped it anyway.

"We need to talk about a couple of things," she said.

"I'm all ears," Ogle said, pulling on his ears ridiculously. They
were prominent ears at the best of times. A hard pitch from Peter
Domenici was sailing directly toward his right temple and at the last
minute he let go of his ear and clawed the ball out of the air. A
moan of disappointment went up from the fielders.

"This whole thing is so vast that I don't know where to begin," she said. "I have so many questions."

"There's no way you can understand everything," Ogle said,
tossing the ball to her. "That's my job. Why don't you just tell me
your main concerns."

Mary Catherine knocked a difficult grounder out to one of her
Tuscola cousins. "Whose idea was it to have Dad jog from the
helicopter to the podium?"

Ogle squinted into the sun, thinking that one over. "I'd be hard put to remember who came up with that one first. But your dad
enjoyed doing it. And I didn't try to discourage him."

"Do you think it's advisable, given his medical problems?"

"Well, he's been jogging three miles a day."

"Yeah, but wearing a suit, under all that stress, and in front of all
those cameras - what if he had some kind of a problem? Even
healthy people like Bush and Carter have had problems while
jogging."

"Exactly," Ogle said "that's exactly why it works."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know and I know, and your dad knows, that it's perfectly
okay for him to run that short distance. My god, the man is like a
human steam locomotive. But most people don't know that. All they know is that Cozzano is supposed to have been sick. They
have developed this image of him as a frail, faltering invalid. When
they see him jog across that football field, they see vivid evidence
that this is a wrong impression, and they watch very carefully, because there's an element of danger."

"Could you run that last part by me again?" Mary Catherine said.
She and Ogle had gotten into a smooth rhythm now, knocking hit after hit out to the little kids with their baseball gloves.

"The skydivers," he said. "We had three skydivers come in low
over the podium and land on the grass. Now, why on earth did we do that?" Ogle sounded mystified.

"I don't know. Why did you?"

"Because everyone knows that sometimes skydivers break legs.
They can't help watching. Same deal with those idiots who were
setting off firecrackers."

"They worked for you?"

"Sure they did. Oh, those were just tiny little ladyfingers. You
could set one off in the palm of your hand and you'd be fine. But
it sure looked dangerous. So people watched. And that's why it was
a great visual when your dad ran across the field."

Mary Catherine sighed. "I don't know how I feel about that."

Ogle shrugged. "Everyone's entitled to feelings."

"Speaking of that whole safety issue," she said, "when did the Secret Service start following Dad around? I didn't know he had a Secret Service detail."

"He doesn't," Ogle said. "Those were just actors."

She dropped the tip of the bat down on to home plate and stared
at him. "What did you say?"

"They were actors dressed up like Secret Service."

"Hired by you."

"Of course."

She shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

"For the same reason we built extra bleachers, and put extra
microphones on the lectern."

"And what reason is that?"

"Being a third-party candidate has big, big advantages," Ogle
said. "But it has some disadvantages too. One of the disadvantages,
as Perot found out, is that people may not take you seriously. That is the single most dangerous thing we have to worry about. So at
every step along the way, we need to surround your father with the
visible trappings of presidentiality. Chief among those is the Secret
Service detail."

Mary Catherine just shook her head. "I can't believe you," she
said.

"Sometimes I can hardly believe myself," he said, turning to face her. A soft, arcing throw was headed toward Ogle from a five-year-
old stationed on the pitcher's mound. Ogle deliberately took it in
the back of the head and went into a staggering pantomime of a silly
man with a mild concussion, wobbling around home plate, rolling his eyes, bouncing drunkenly off the backstop. The kids went completely out of their gourds and a couple of them actually fell
down on the grass, tossing their gloves up in the air, screaming with uncontrollable laughter. Mary Catherine shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. She looked at the kids who were still strong enough
to remain on their feet and twirled her finger around her ear.