Ten North Frederick (51 page)

“What?”

“Don't you worry, I'll handle the whole thing. My highest regards to Edith.”

“Thank you, Mike.”

“A pleasure, sir.”

A few weeks later Fran Rafferty told Tommy Willis a man wanted to see him in the parlor.

“What man?” said Tommy Willis.

“Well, I never can remember his name, but he's something in the sheriff's office,” said Mrs. Rafferty. “I know him by sight only.”

“Tell him I'll be down in a minute,” said Tommy Willis. He closed the door of his room and heard fat Mrs. Rafferty slowly descending the stairs. He thereupon opened the window, dropped to the roof of the coal shed and left by the back gate, thereby becoming a fugitive from the justice of the Domestic Relations Court, County of Lantenengo, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Gibbsville saw him no more.

He had unwittingly been instrumental in repairing the still somewhat damaged friendship between Joe Chapin and Mike Slattery. Joe Chapin was properly appreciative of Mike Slattery's machinations, and Mike was enjoying that moment, especially enviable for a politician, of having done a favor for someone who could be kept endlessly in the position of never being able fully to repay it. Politics is trades, trades are the exchange of favors, and if a man owes you a favor so great that he will always want to repay it, but a favor of such unique character that it cannot be repaid in kind, the man who granted the favor assumes the status of dictator as well as benefactor.

Whatever Joe had been doing in his trips around the state, for whatever purpose, Mike was satisfied to let him go, for Joe must have learned his lesson with the Washington experience, and if the trips were adding to Joe's potential political value, they were going to be valuable to Mike. Mike therefore planted the thought, just the grain of a thought, among his own men in the various counties, that Joe not only was making his appearances with Mike's knowledge, but with his consent and even at his suggestion. A man in a distant county would say to Mike: “We had another visit from Joseph B. Chapin the other night. Here for a testimonial dinner for one of our old judges.” The man would study Mike for Mike's reaction.

“
I
know,” Mike would say, managing to imply that he knew a lot more that he wasn't saying.

“What the hell's a Lantenengo County lawyer doing this far from home?”

“A lot of people would like to know the answer to that, but I have a whole pocketful of answers for that kind of a question. Only I don't always give away the answers. Sometimes it's better to give away a cigar. Here, have a cigar.”

By pretending to know what Joe was up to, and yet being noncommittal, Mike was subtly taking over Joe's private campaign in the event it might be useful, but not assuming any responsibility in the event Joe was getting nowhere. He had some of his politician friends sharply guessing that he, Mike Slattery, had actually sent Joe Chapin on the trips.

Mike was responsible, wholly responsible, for Joe's designation as an alternate delegate to the convention in Kansas City. It was the kind of recognition that keeps a loyal party man happy. Mike was not himself a delegate but he was in attendance at the closed-door conferences, as befitted his standing in a reliably Republican state. Moreover, he was known, wherever he was known at all, to be a devout Roman Catholic, and it did no harm to the Republican party to have a man like Slattery to urge voters to ignore Alfred E. Smith, the inevitable Democratic nominee. As a Republican Catholic, Mike Slattery was worth more to the party than a run-of-the-mill Republican Protestant. The Protestant Republicans could be taken for granted, but the Catholic Republicans were going to be hard to hold as election day got nearer. The convention was a worthwhile excursion for Mike, and he was careful to see that his familiarity with some of the great names of the party was not lost on Joe. He saw to it that Joe met them all, and he saw to it that the important men realized that the good-looking fellow in the white linen suit was a Slattery man. There were so many potbellied men with their pants hanging below their waistlines and their shirts creeping out and their collars soaked with perspiration—that Mike was delighted to make a claim on Joe, who at least looked cool.

Coming back on the train Joe sat up most of the night with Mike.

“It's been a great experience, Mike. And do you know what to me was one of the most interesting things about it?”

“What's that, Joe?”

“Well, it may sound foolish, but I was always under the impression Mr. Hoover was a Democrat.”

“You're not the only one had that impression. But my explanation for that was that Woodrow Wilson wanted people to think Mr. Hoover was a Democrat.”

“Still, it's interesting, because only eight or ten years ago I'd have all but
sworn
he was a Democrat. The reason it's interesting is how comparatively short a time it takes for a man to become nationally known. I've always been a Republican, as you know, but yesterday we gave the nomination to a man I thought belonged to the opposite side.”

“Well, Mr. Hoover was so busy feeding the people in Europe—he kept out of politics.”

“It's quite fascinating,” said Joe. “This big honor, the biggest in the world, can happen to a man almost overnight. What was Coolidge when he was nominated for the vice-presidency? He'd been governor of Massachusetts and settled the police strike. What was Harding? Well, Harding isn't a good example, because he'd not only been governor of his state but United States senator as well. But look at the other side, the Democrats. Wilson, a governor and a college president. Cox? Nobody. Franklin Roosevelt, the fellow that ran for vice-president, I used to know him slightly. At least I met him at dances when I was in college. A typical New York snob, I always thought.”

“And a Democrat. A Roosevelt a Democrat, it's like seeing Abe Cohen the clothier at High Mass.”

“What was Roosevelt? Assistant Secretary of the Navy and that was as high as he ever got, but if he'd been elected, God forbid, and What's His Name Cox died, the fellow I used to know could have been President of the United States. It isn't Senator Borah, or Senator Lodge that gets to be President. It's often a fellow that the general public hardly knows at all.”

“Some men get elected to the Senate and they have such a good organization that they never have to go home. They can spend half their lifetime in the Senate. I'm not speaking of myself, but the United States Senate, naturally. But it's one thing to get re-elected and re-elected to the United States Senate, and something else again to get the nomination for the presidency. In some ways it's easier to be elected President. You take Dawes. I like Charley personally, but I couldn't see him as presidential timber. He'd make a good President, but not a good candidate, not against Al Smith. Al Smith is an expert at the kind of a campaign Dawes would conduct, and it wouldn't have surprised me if Smith could have beaten Dawes. But Smith won't beat our man. The country's prosperous, and the so-called independent voter, the little difference he makes is going to be even smaller in this election, because the independent voter isn't going to vote for a Catholic. If people have to vote for a Catholic to get a glass of beer, they're going to do without the beer. I look for Hoover to beat Smith so badly that Smith will never recover from it. And speaking as a Catholic, I wish he wouldn't run. I'd vote against him even if I weren't a staunch Republican. Injecting the religious issue isn't going to do any good, and it can do a lot of harm.”

“I agree with you,” said Joe.

They were tired, but they could not sleep in the hot, dirty train. Every once in a while a half-drunken delegate would stumble into the smoking room. The porter was nowhere to be seen. Joe and Mike were in their shirt-sleeves, and Mike could not remember ever having seen Joe without a jacket except on the golf course.

“I wonder what goes on in the mind of a man like Herbert Hoover.”

“Tonight?” said Mike. “He's probably sound asleep.”

“Do you think so? Knowing that for all practical purposes he's just been elected President of the United States?”

Mike smiled. “He'd be glad to hear that, and so would the National Committee. Yes, I think he's most likely asleep. Don't forget he's a man that's done a lot of traveling. Civil engineer. Lived abroad a great deal, and not always in the lap of luxury.”

“I know, but tonight. I know this much, I wouldn't be able to sleep. Here we are going sixty or seventy miles an hour. We can't see out the window in the darkness, but it's easy for me to imagine being in his position, looking out the window and saying to myself, ‘I can travel for five days and nights, from coast to coast at a high rate of speed and still be in the country that I'm President of.' Just one man, out of a hundred and twenty million people.”

“Would you like to be President, Joe?”

“
What?
”

Mike saw that his question, and perhaps the tone of it, had taken Joe by surprise.

“Me, President? No thank you.”

But Mike had seen what he had seen in similar circumstances, when he had asked other men, possum-players, about their political ambitions. If you caught them unprepared, you got your answer. He wanted to ask Joe a great many more questions, but now that he had given the answer to one, Joe would be cautious in his answers to the others.

“Well, I guess we're not going to get much sleep, but I'm going to get off my feet for a few hours,” said Mike.

“Take the lower. I'm going to sit up.”

“No, I had it coming out, you keep it, thanks.”

“Well, if you change your mind,” said Joe.

“Good night, or good morning.”

Home once more, Mike gave Peg a complete report of his activities at the convention, a report full of the names of men she never had met but on whom she had detailed dossiers. They were not just pictures in the paper to Peg Slattery. “What did Reed have to say? . . . How long were you with Bill Mellon? . . . Did you talk to Mills? . . . Who else besides Fisher? . . .” Her questions helped Mike to re-create whole scenes, and in the re-creating of them he had a second and better look.

“Did you get along all right with Joe? That was a long time to be with a man, so constantly.”

Mike looked at his wife.

“Do you know what that fellow wants?” he said.

Mike and Peg were two people who were often more nearly one person.

“
Do
I know what that fellow wants?” she said.

“I have trouble saying it, the words have a hard time getting out of my mouth.”

“Now it
isn't
what I'm
thinking
,” said Peg.

“I'll bet it is, though,” said Mike.

“The same thing Al Smith wants?”

Mike smiled. “You can't say it either,” he said. “Can you imagine? How do you convince yourself you can be, or ought to be?”

“You marry Edith Stokes.”

“Do you think that's why it is?” said Mike. “No, I think he convinced himself. Maybe Edith encouraged him, but you should have heard the way he talked about it. Putting himself in Hoover's place.”

“You're sure, eh?”

“Well, sure of what? I'm sure he wants it, but I don't know if he knows he wants it. But now I have the explanation for all these dinners and getting-to-know-the-boys and so forth. Do you remember a fellow ran for vice-president with Cox?”

“I have to think a minute. In
1920
? Yes, a cousin of Teddy Roosevelt's. Franklin K. Roosevelt.”

“You're thinking of Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior under Wilson. But that's the fellow. Well, Joe Chapin used to know him. I gather they went to society parties together. Joe didn't like him, but that's neither here nor there. In fact, the fact that he didn't like him—well, Joe didn't think much of him, but all the more reason why he could convince himself he could do as well or better. This particular Roosevelt got to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Appointive, of course. Well, you remember when Joe went to Washington that time, to get some appointment. The time he went behind my back.”

“Oh, I remember, and I'll bet he does too.”

“Can you see it the way I do?” said Mike.

“He thought he could get an appointment without getting tied up with the organization.”

“Sure. On his own. No political tie-up. Then get a reputation and maybe run for governor, or United States senator. It all works out.”

“Joe is what? Forty-five?”

“Forty-six. We were born the same year, '
82
.”

“Then he still has plenty of time,” said Peg.

“He'll need it,” said Mike.

Peg laughed heartily.

 • • • 

Joe Chapin was now reaching the point in his life and the position in his activities where it could be said, and was being said, that he was
a
first citizen and, more and more,
the
first citizen of Gibbsville. There would be conversations in which Citizen A would say: “The biggest man in this town is Joe Chapin.”

“Joe Chapin?” Citizen B might say.

“Who's bigger? If you mean richer, yes. There's a half a dozen guys that have more dough, but who does more with their dough? Who does more for this town, and doesn't ask anything in return?”

“I wouldn't put Joe Chapin at the top.”

“Then who would you put at the top? The Mayor? Some politician? Joe's for good government, but he kept his hands out of politics. Listen, whenever anything's good for the town, not just for Number One, who's the first guy they get to serve on the committees and all that? When you see Joe Chapin connected with something, it's good for Gibbsville, or Lantenengo County, not just for Joe Chapin. That's the way I look at it. And who would you rather have representing Gibbsville? One of those loud-mouths at the Rotary Club? Mike Slattery? Doc English? Henry Laubach?”