Waking the Dead (33 page)

“You mean do the whole thing over?” asked Dayton, as if he were Michelangelo and I’d just told him I wanted track lighting for the Sistine Chapel.

“No, no, of course not. Not the whole thing.”

“You mean just a word here or there?”

“Look,” I said, suddenly irate, “it’s my credo. I think I ought to write it myself.”

Well, it was ridiculous, it was a time waster, it was miles beside the point, but Dayton could only relinquish. He left at nine in the morning, saying he’d meet me at the synagogue at ten forty-five. “Don’t be late,” he said. “You know how punctual the Jews are.”

“That’s a new one on me,” I said, seeing him to the door. He was zippered back up in his down jacket. He’d slipped rubbers on over his tasseled loafers. He looked like a very lonely man.

After he was gone, I sat at my desk with the leaflet.Then I got out a legal pad and a nice Mont Blanc fountain pen Danny had given me a couple of Christmases before. I wrote at the top My Credo and then immediately began drawing crazy little faces, the same ugly, long-nosed, beetle-browed profiles I’d been drawing since I was in second grade and which had, for a few weeks, seemed the harbinger of artistic talent but which quickly atrophied into an annoying compulsive doodle.

I dashed off a dozen of these profiles and for a moment they looked like an arc of devils floating over the sappy headline. I started to write.
Democracy is a fight that is never fully won. The enemies of democracy thrive on complacency
. Big fucking deal. All right.
Is America fated to become the pitiful, helpless giant?
No, no, no. That’s what you say when you’re in SDS and you’re bellowing through a bullhorn at a bunch of your middle-class pals on the steps of the Humanities Building.
America is a dream that each dreamer must dream anew
. Yes, well that ought to bring out the boys in the white jackets and butterfly nets. How about a few specifics, jazzbo? OK, no more pitiful giants, no more democratic dreamers. I’m not doing an evening with Walt Whitman; I’m supposed to be running for what we call political
power
. So let’s strut our stuff, yes?
A critical choice faces the people of the 28th Congressional District
. No. It’s the other way around.
The people of the 28th Congressional District face a critical choice
. OK. A fresh piece of paper. Forget the heading: too intimidating. No more ghouls in profile. Let’s just get it down in blue and yellow. One.
I believe
… but what?That for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows? Yes. Exactly. Another sheet of paper.
After years of abuse by people in office, in which government has seemed for sale to the highest bidder, the American people have now become disengaged not only from their so-called leaders but from the very idea of politics
. Hey, wait a minute. I actually believe this. OK, let’s keep it going.
Robert F. Kennedy, in his last campaign, said that he wanted to make politics an honorable profession again. For my generation in particular, the idea of politics and political office has fallen into disfavor. It is considered dishonest, futile, and even passé. Yet there is a growing awareness that if we do not serve, if we do not struggle for progress and fairness in the political arena, then the most critical decisions of our time will be left for others—the then and women, who truly are self-seeking and cynical and who fill the void left by decent people’s retreat from politics
. I read this over and then read it over again. The rhetoric was goddamned irresistible. Then suddenly, the phone chimed, like a sane voice, and I grabbed for it immediately. It was Caroline, calling from headquarters.

“Hey, guess what,” she said, “we just got ten thousand buttons. Blue and white buttons with your name on them. Isn’t it weird?”

“Let’s at least try to feel professional about this, Caroline,” I said. “Anyway, listen to this. I just wrote it and I want to get it over to Tony Dayton. Got the time right now?”

“I’m working for you, sweetie.”

I read her my credo and after I was through she was quiet enough for me to hear someone open the door on her side of the line.

“I’ll tell you something, Fielding,” Caroline finally said. “I’ve gotten to know Tony in the past few days, and he is not going to go for it.”

“Caroline,” I said, standing up so quickly I almost pulled the phone off my desk, “when you tell me you’ve gotten to know Dayton pretty well you are deliberately creating the impression that you’ve fucked him.”

“I’m going to write that last remark off to high stress, Fielding. I like the credo but I don’t think it’s what you need for your campaign right now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked in a very thin voice—one I could slip like a note beneath the great slamming door of my rage.

“I think it’s very nice. And it really does remind me of you. I mean, I can really hear you saying it. And I think that’s important.”

“But.”

“But what’s it got to do with the price of potatoes? You’re the one who first told me about this district. You’ve got old people eating dog-food and fifth graders copping skag and little blue-haired widows afraid to go outside and I don’t know if they want to hear about whether politics is an honorable profession or not.”

“I know what they want,” I said. “They want someone to promise he can make it all better—but I can’t. I can’t do it and I can’t promise it.”

“You can promise to try, though. This credo sounds more like an argument you’d have with Danny. Or with …” She let her voice trail off—nothing strategic about it. She just realized what she was about to say and she kicked the plug out of the wall.

“Or with who?” I asked, but knowing.

“With Sarah.”

“OK,” I said quickly. “I’ll forget it. Wait’ll you read what your boyfriend’s hacked out for me. It’ll make mine sound like Kennedy in Berlin.”

“If you refer to Tony Dayton like that again, I will have to comb your face with my fingernails.”

“Caroline, can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I’m awfully glad you’re here. I knew I needed you but I didn’t know how much.”

“That’s nice of you, sweetie.”

“I mean it. I really do love you. And I’m … I’m just glad you’re here.” Oh my God, I thought, what am I doing? I felt emotion welling up.

I dressed and made my way to the Hyde Park Synagogue, where I was introduced by Rabbi Einhorn, a tall, stocky man in a luxurious Italian suit. Einhorn had rich silver hair, blue eyes, and an adulterer’s smooth voice. “Our old people are most anxious to hear your views, Mr. Pierce,” he said, right in front of them. We were in a rather small room; there were perhaps twenty retired congregation members, part of the temple’s Senior Citizen program. I hadn’t developed a standard speech yet. I figured retired people would be upset about inflation so I talked about inflation. I figured they’d be worried about crime in the street and so I was very tough on crime in the street. In no way was I conscious of creating feelings within myself so as to make myself more attractive to others. It was merely a matter of what to highlight—or so I told myself.

Dayton was in fairly high spirits; he was pleased with my performance. We stopped for lunch at a businessmen’s joint on Stony Island called Flickers, where Tony played King Pleasure singing “Moody’s Mood for Love” several times on the jukebox. From there, we made an impromptu stop at a CYO neighborhood playground, where I ran that old liberal ploy of playing basketball with a couple of black kids. They had shoveled and swept the asphalt court but a light dusting of snow had fallen over it and as I dribbled the big butterscotch ball it made grainy indentations in the new snow. (I thought of Father Mileski playing one-on-one with that kid for the wager of his immortal soul and I remembered Sarah’s immemorial fingers linked through the cyclone fence, as she watched the game.) I passed out campaign buttons and Dayton and I moved on, driving his white Cutlass over to the University of Chicago bookstore to ask the manager personally to hang my campaign poster in the window. The manager refused and then changed his mind when I told him my brother was the publisher of Willow Books. (There was a display of
Shamanism and Science
near the cash register.) The manager said he’d do it as a professional courtesy and on the way out of the store Dayton laid his hand out for me to slap, as if we’d just pulled off an incredible coup.

From the bookstore, Tony brought me to a small shopping center called Harper Court where we just strolled around in the blowing, stinging snow and Dayton mindlessly collared passersby and brought them over to meet me. It was awfully half-assed, but it still took its toll. Figuring the average handshake exerts forty pounds of pressure, then I pressed flesh to the tune of eight thousand pounds.

At the end of the day Tony was to deliver me to Kathy Courtney, my press aide. Although she worked on the South Side she lived north and we took the Outer Drive up toward her apartment. We passed a playground next to the lake. Cadmium lamps lit the empty space; the wind blew the swings back and forth. I closed my eyes and drifted off and I wouldn’t even bother to say I dreamed of Sarah except that as I jolted awake again, for the first time I realized I hadn’t had a night’s sleep in two weeks during which she hadn’t come to me in a dream. And that, oddly enough, with Tony beside me and a night of more campaigning before me, was when I finally became certain that she was alive. I felt the truth of it as firmly as an embrace. And it was real, at least as real as that red light throbbing somewhere out there over the lake, out toward Indiana, at least as real as the shadow Dayton’s car cast of itself on the roadway, that shadow that kept pace with us but never quite caught up.

We turned off the Outer Drive and headed toward Michigan Avenue, where Kathy lived in one of the posh new high rises. A freezing rain pebbled against the roof and you could hear the tire treads running their pattern, turning around and around like the drum of a mimeograph machine. Tony lit a Salem and savored the first drag as if it was to be enjoyed like the finest wine.

“You did good today, Fielding,” he said.

“We’re going to have to talk about scheduling,” I said. “There was too much time between things and too much of it seemed aimless.”

“We had cancellations. These things can’t be helped.”

I didn’t bother to answer.

“I think we’ll get sixty percent,” he said.

“Well, good.”

He took another voluptuous drag of his Salem. And then: “How do you find working with me?”

“I like it fine, Tony. I always know you’ll be there, at least.”

“Good,” he said. “Will you do me a favor then? Don’t keep it a secret.”

“But I just told you.”

“Come on. You know what I mean. I’d like you to tell your boss.”

“You mean the American people?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Who do you mean, Tony? Isaac Green? He’s not what I’d call my
boss
.”

“Then why’d you say his name?” Dayton pretended to gun me down with his fire finger.

“I’m psychic. Anyhow. Isaac’s just a well-meaning lawyer. What do you care what he thinks of you?”

“I can see the way he looks at me he thinks I’m a lightweight. And we were involved in an aldermanic race three years ago and maybe I made a couple of mistakes and our boy went down for the count. Guys like Isaac hold a grudge.”

“Well, if I win, he’ll love you all over again,” I said.

“Just do me the favor, OK? That guy’s got more juice than an orange grove.”

“You think so?”

“Are you kidding me? Why do you figure the governor’s doing your man favors—because maybe Isaac once got him tickets to
Porgy and Bess?
”

“I think he likes Isaac because Isaac’s got class.”

“Kinosis cares as much about class as he cares who plays bass for Oscar Peterson. The governor’s a mule, God bless him, and he only moves when you hit him with a stick.”

“All right. I’ll bite. What’s the stick?”

We were stopped at a traffic light. Off to the side, a couple of women were in the front window of a dress store, stripping down the mannequins.

“I don’t know. But it’s something big. How many people in this state feel the governor owes them a favor? But he picks
you
to take Carmichael’s office, a guy with little experience and a couple of fast strikes against him.” He glanced at me to see how I was taking it. The car behind us sounded its horn as soon as the light turned green. Tony put the car in gear and said, “I’m referring now to the crazy family stuff and the old girl friend involved in all that protest business.”

“No one’s mentioned it,” I said.

“No one’s had to. That doesn’t mean it won’t come up. But the point is, Kinosis must know all this and still he nominates you.”

“Because I’m the best. And I’m going to win.”

“He doesn’t
care
who’s the best—whatever the hell best is supposed to mean.” He gave me a confidential look and added, “The governor has very relativistic morals.”

I closed my eyes. A feeling of exhaustion came over me with the power of a trance.

“All I’m saying,” Dayton went on, “is some guy like Isaac who’s owed so much—I’d just like him thinking very groovy thoughts about me.”

We pulled in front of Kathy Courtney’s apartment building. It was seven thirty and we were right on time. I was going to meet her in the lobby and we’d take her car over to the restaurant. I turned the heater in Tony’s car on high and put my hands in front of the blower. I always felt it made you seem like a loser to come in with cold hands.

“I’ll tell you what, Tony,” I said. “Let’s win this election. Then I’ll talk to Isaac about you. Right now, I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“I want you to say something
good
,” said Tony, with a grin that seemed to suggest a certain complicity on our parts and which annoyed me so much I felt for a moment I might hit him.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, right now it’s a mixed bag.”

“But—”

“Yeah, and one other thing. It would only make matters worse if you ask Caroline to talk to me about this. I’d find that very irritating.” I had my hand on the door, ready to leave. I could see Kathy in the brightly lit lobby of her building, dressed in a bronze down parka, black lace-up boots. When I looked back at Tony I realized I’d pushed too hard. I didn’t want to lose him and so I reached over and patted his arm.