America America (42 page)

The applause went on for a long time. I remember being struck by the length of it—and even heartened for a moment, when I looked around the tent and saw that it was being sustained not just by the union rank and file, who filled the better part of a quarter of the seats, but also by the crowds of townspeople from Saline and Steppan, who filled probably another quarter, and who were massed outside on the lawns, as well. The sound hadn’t even died out by the time an aide appeared to usher Mrs. Bonwiller off the stage, and then the Senator moved to the podium and had to quiet it with his hand. He proceeded to deliver the speech that Liam Metarey had warned me about.

Judging from the reaction of the several dozen members of the press that I could see, it must have come as a rather steep surprise. Before he was five minutes into it, reporters were already moving toward the teletypes in the garage. I made my way over to the entrance turnaround myself, and by the time he’d finished, raised his arm to the back rows, and strode powerfully to the main door of the tent, I was standing a few steps away from Carlton Sample and the Cadillac. Flashbulbs followed him up the drive. When he reached me, he stopped and turned to the cameras to shake my hand, as though I were a newly convinced voter from the local precinct.

“Underestimated,” he whispered.

“Sir?”

“Had to be twenty-five hundred, if there was a person.”

“At least, Senator. Maybe three.” I lowered my voice. “Sir, Mr. Metarey’s—”

“Oh, I like that!” He was smiling broadly while the cameras clicked away. He whispered again, “Three thousand people in a town half the size of a pair of flea’s balls!”

He turned to where Carlton Sample had opened the door for him, and I saw then that Mrs. Bonwiller and their two sons were already in the back. “Can’t stop the voters,” he said. “Can you?” Then he pulled off his suit jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and while the flashbulbs burst in a dizzying crescendo behind him, climbed into the passenger seat and raised his hand one more time to the crowd.

It was only after Carlton Sample had driven away with them that I found the sheet of paper. It had been run over on the gravel.

Later on, of course, I heard that he’d paid a good many of those people to come, thousands of campaign dollars, as it turned out; but lest we forget all the parts of him—lest we recall only the recklessness and the almost metallic vanity, lest we overlook the great, democratic urges and the commanding idealism—lest we lose sight of what kind of man he was in his entirety, here is what that piece of paper said.

Remember his splendid voice:

Ladies and Gentlemen. Members of the press.

Today we find ourselves
mortally
engaged in one of the
DEFINING struggles
of our time. Do not miss the import of these days. We are
mortally
engaged.

Not only in the jungles of southeast Asia, but here at home.

Across our
towns
. Across our
cities
.

(POINT) Across our countryside.

We struggle to
rekindle
the
fire
of American
democracy
.

To
build anew
on the genius of
Thomas Jefferson
and
James Madison
.

To
revive
again the
compassion
of
Abraham Lincoln
.

(QUIET) And the hard-minded
decency
of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
.

To
rediscover
the courage of our
frontiersmen
,

Like the
courage
of my friend and mentor, John F.
Kennedy
.

To make our own vision as
grand
, and
courageous
, and
egalitarian
, as the vision of
Lyndon Johnson
, and The Great Society.

I repeat: The Great Society.

(SLOW) Even as we struggle to end our
tragic war
in Vietnam.

Yet as I speak, there are some in power who endeavor to change forever

—Forever—

The
terms
of
decency
that have always marked our way forward.

To negate the
struggles
and
abidances
that have been the
touchstones
of our past.

(WAIT)

And will be the
touchstones
again, of our future,

As we make our way to
peace
.

My
friends
. A young woman has died
tragically
. YOU ARE ALL aware of the news. An
intelligent
and
virtuous
young woman who I knew from my campaign. A woman who worked
tirelessly
for the causes she
believed
in. For the causes we
all
believe in.

Fairness. Peace. Justice.

I stand before you, my fellow citizens,

And I ask that we take a moment to remember her.

(WAIT)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been accused of having played a role in this tragedy.
But I had no role in it
.

I am accused by rumor and whisper. I am linked by hearsay and innuendo to a tragedy that, if I had
any
part in, I would have resigned immediately from my office, and from this race.

That is what the people of this country have a right to expect.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am aware every day of the trust you place in me, I am aware of my obligation to sanctify that trust and make it the stalwart

That’s all I have.

I suppose that most people now would take the entire speech as nothing more than self-serving oratory. But with what I know of Henry Bonwiller, finally, I suspect it was more than that, even if it was delivered at such a desperate juncture and filled, as I believe it was, with lies. I think it was in fact the expression of a certain fundamental conviction that he always did maintain—that deep-held sense of what it was like to be excluded from the bounty of this country—which was as essential to his character as to Liam Metarey’s own, even if neither by rights deserved to feel it, and even if in the Senator’s case it was draped in such perverse and churning narcissism. His speech went on to appeal to the voters to look past his difficulties, and then it turned to a litany of accusations against the president of the United States. He went on almost twice the length Liam Metarey had planned, accusing Nixon of scandalous manipulations of the political process. I saw several reporters shake their heads skeptically—no one had heard yet of Watergate—then down the ends of their drinks. And I realized at that moment that they were not going to spare him.

But on from there he went, extolling his proposals for ending the war, for building a system of nationalized medical care, for offering college tuition grants in return for national service in parks and cities. And at the end, in a steady, quiet voice, came his affirmations that he would never bow to the manipulations of his political enemies, that he would never end his work for the causes of justice and equality and peace, and that he would never drop out of the race.

A few minutes after Carlton Sample had driven away with the four of them, the boom of the campaign jet spread over the land, and in a moment the shining fuselage climbed steeply past. Then it leveled off and banked to the south, toward Chattanooga. If things went well in the press, I knew, he would head to Raleigh-Durham the next day; and if that went well, to Charleston, West Virginia; and then on to Omaha, Nebraska, and Lincoln. Ray White had just taken the stage with his saxophone, and as the plane slanted off into the late afternoon sky he watched it through a flap at the back of the tent, shading his eyes in something like a salute. Then he dropped his hand and blew the first, quiet notes of “Overcome,” which in a moment were filled out by a drummer and a bassist and then by a rhythm guitarist, and at last by a piano player, each taking the stage in turn and adding a part until by the end of the song, when the rhythm changes to flat-out bayou R&B, a good part of the crowd literally could not hold itself back from stomping.

It was a bracing moment. Even the reporters, who were lined up for the teletypes and the radio booths and the camera setups, couldn’t help turning back and listening as the great man played his tribute. It’s important to remember that at that point the Senator had probably done more for the causes of civil rights and labor than anyone in congressional history. But then the song was over, and Ray White went into a slow ballad version of “Evelyn Brown,” and the reporters continued to leave. Surprisingly, the townspeople began to depart, too, perhaps because they were taking their cues from the press or the political operatives, many of whom would be getting on buses now for the overnight ride to Tennessee. And when that song was over, Ray White looked out at the steadily exiting crowd, raised a hand to still his band, switched his alto instrument for a tenor, and went into his own mournful rendition of “America, the Beautiful.”

That’s when Clara and her mother moved to the side of the stage. They were conferring about something, and then, as Ray White was still winding up the last, chilling high notes of the final verse, Clara climbed the steps, crossed confidently to the middle of the platform, and whispered in his ear. He nodded, and as soon as she’d stepped back he launched immediately into a foot-pounding rendition of “Curly Dog Eats.” I assume she had told him to pick up the tempo, but even as Ray White bent double over his saxophone and his drummer sent a spray of sweat arcing around his set, the crowd continued to make its way out. They filed up the sides of the tent, then into the drive and down the two-track to the waiting cars and buses, and as I watched them I could feel the dwindling of my very last hopes. Dozens of cases of liquor remained in the barn and three more pigs were roasting on the spits. The band played another up-tempo tune. Then another foot-stomper. Then another. At last, sensing perhaps what it all meant, they segued into their great, sad elegy, “Goodbye, Goodman Joe.” He was a proud man, Ray White.

The forgotten of this country have a consistent history of turning on their champions, and I suppose the way working men and women have forsaken the very politicians who could help them most speaks of the primacy of emotion in politics. Perhaps the great decline of FDR’s party, which was beginning in Henry Bonwiller’s time, didn’t come about because Democrats favored a logical argument over a moral one, but simply because they clung to the idea that either one mattered at all. Onstage now, as Ray White blew the last slow notes of “Goodbye, Goodman Joe,” which die merely to breath, I watched the drummer lay down his sticks; then he set them in their case, looking out dolefully at the shrinking audience. A moment later, Ray White set down his own instrument, nodded his head in farewell, and walked off the stage.

If I learned one thing over my time with Henry Bonwiller, it’s that mass politics is an emotional struggle above all, a primal battle that is more charismatic and animalistic than either ethical or reasoned, and as I watched Ray White climb slowly down the steps in front of all those emptying rows of chairs, I had an inkling, well beyond my years or understanding, that I was watching the fall of more than just a single politician. No more than three hundred people remained now, scattered through the tent and lawn.

And by the time the hired boys began cleaning up, perhaps a half hour later, the grounds were nearly empty. Soon the tent workers arrived for the poles and the canopy, and as they waited in their flatbed truck for the chairs to be cleared, Carlton Sample pulled around them and parked the Senator’s Cadillac in front of the house; then he emerged in his green chauffeur’s jacket and to my surprise set to work with the cleaning crew. He picked up a plastic garbage bag and started walking among the tables, collecting empty cups and dirty napkins. I’d never seen him take part in such a task before. The sack swung from his shoulder and knocked open the flaps of his coat, and he kept glancing back at the house. At one point he even walked over to the car again, let the bag down from his shoulder, and used his cap to shine the door handles. But then he returned to collecting trash. I felt ashamed, somehow, watching him. I suppose he knew the future.

I suppose I knew it, too. And I began to clean up as well. All the seats had to go back to the barn, and I started breaking them down and stacking them on the rolling pallets. By now the weather had evolved into a hot and unpleasantly damp stillness, and for the first time in my life, as I tried to move methodically through the rear of the tent, kicking in the back legs of the chairs so that they fell flat onto the ground in rows, I felt that I didn’t have the energy to do my job. I was daunted. I filled two pallets but left the other chairs lying on the grass and set off with a single load toward the house.

I have to admit, I think I was looking for Mr. Metarey. He’d never spoken to me as intimately as he had that morning, and even with what I’d heard later in the library, I think I hoped, with a child’s foolishness, that I could re-create that earlier moment with him—even if I knew now he’d been drinking. I was hoping he might confide in me again somehow, or at least treat me in the familiar way he had—not necessarily about the episode in the library but about what had happened in its entirety. About Henry Bonwiller’s fabulous rise and then his fiery defense. And now his probable fall. About everything that was happening so openly, and yet so mysteriously, in front of me. But it was Mrs. Metarey I found instead, coming around the corner of the house.

“Oh, Corey,” she said, stumbling to a stop. “You surprised me. I see our guests have other parties to get to.”

“We’re all cleaning up.”

“Oh, don’t,” she said. She let out a peal of laughter. “For God’s sake, just go enjoy yourself. That’s what
I’m
going to do now. God only knows I did what I could. There’s nothing else left to do.”