The Porkchoppers (21 page)

Donald Cubbin spoke for fifteen minutes and was interrupted by applause twenty-one times. He sat down to a standing ovation that came from an audience that not only liked his speech, but that also wanted to thank him for not speaking too long. The audience was in such a good mood that nobody seriously objected when the $6,499 Chris-Craft was won by the brother-in-law of the local union's secretary-treasurer.

20

In Washington's Cleveland Park on September 10, a Sunday, Samuel Morse Hanks was seated in his kitchen, drinking coffee, and reading the comics to his daughter Marylin who had turned six the day before.

Sammy Hanks was reading the comics to his daughter because his father had never read them to him. When his father had died ten years before Hanks had not gone to the funeral. He sometimes thought that he probably would have gone if his father had taken the time to read the comics to him. But his father always had been too concerned with his own private misery to pay much attention to the needs of his son.

Samuel Morse Hanks, Senior, had spent his life teaching European and American history to the sons and daughters of the men who worked in the plants and factories of Schenectady when those plants and factories were open. Shortly after he had arrived in the town he met a girl who was almost as ugly as he and to whom he quickly proposed marriage, mostly because she had a job in a library. Samuel Morse Hanks, Jr., was born in 1933, inheriting his pickle nose and Punch chin from his father and his bad skin from his mother.

His mother had lost her library job as soon as she had married because the library had a policy of not employing married women. She had pretended to be surprised when she had been dismissed, although she had known she would be, but she had also known that nobody other than Samuel Morse Hanks, Senior, would ever ask her to marry.

The earliest emotion that Samuel Morse Hanks, Jr., could remember was anger. He had been an angry child because his parents were poor, ugly, and seldom spoke to him, or for that matter, to each other. The only way that he could draw attention to himself was by throwing tantrums. That sometimes won him a little attention, although not enough, so he increased the number of tantrums, but with diminishing results. The more tantrums he threw, the less attention his parents paid him, until they virtually ignored him just as they ignored each other.

Until he was fifteen years old, Sammy's mother maintained what could be called a nodding acquaintance with reality. She cleaned the house sometimes and occasionally cooked meals, although she had a tendency to serve break fast at 6:30
P.M.
and dinner at seven in the morning. She had become completely oblivious to her son's tantrums, although he still produced them, but mostly from habit.

When Sammy came home from school on his fifteenth birthday his mother was sitting in a chair, motionless, staring without comprehension into what may have been the lower depths of some private hell. She was also completely naked.

“What's wrong with you?” Sammy said and when his mother didn't answer, Sammy threw a tantrum, a real beauty that lasted for nearly five minutes. When she didn't even blink at that he took a blanket from his parents' bed and threw it over her and then found her purse and stole all she had, eighty-seven cents, and went downtown to a movie.

When he came back that evening, his mother was still sitting motionless in the chair with the blanket over her. His father was listening to the radio, which was virtually his sole amusement and had been since 1933.

“What's wrong with her?” Sammy said.

“I don't know,” his father said.

“Maybe you'd better get a doctor.”

“She'll snap out of it.”

Sammy shrugged and went to bed after fixing himself a peanut-butter sandwich. When he got up the next morning he found his mother in the same position except that there was now a large pool of urine on the bare floor under her chair.

“She's pissing all over the floor,” he told his father.

The senior Hanks had shrugged. “Then she can clean it up.”

When Sammy came home that afternoon his mother had gone, but his father was already there. “What happened to her?”

“They took her away.”

“Away where?”

“To the insane asylum. She's catatonic. An interesting case, the doctor said.”

“When's she coming back?”

“I don't know,” his father said. “Perhaps never. Do you mind?”

“No,” Sammy said. “Do you?”

“No,” his father said, “I don't mind.”

Three weeks later Sammy Hanks was awakened shortly after midnight when his father tried to crawl into bed with him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Just lie still, I'm not going to hurt you.”

“What do you mean lie still?”

“Just turn over and lie still; you'll like it.”

Sammy Hanks didn't know what else to do so he threw a tantrum. That didn't prevent his father from finishing what he had started and when it was over he had giggled and told Sammy, “Thank you very much.”

By five-thirty that morning Sammy was packed. At five thirty-five he crept into his parents' bedroom and stole his father's wallet which contained nine dollars. He never saw his father and mother again, but if anyone ever mentioned his father, Sammy promptly threw a tantrum. He couldn't help it.

Twenty-four years and four months later Sammy Hanks was sitting in his kitchen with his slender blond wife and his slender blond daughter, determined to do for them what his father had never done for him and his mother.

Sybil Davis Hanks had married Sammy after Donald Cubbin had made him secretary-treasurer of the union because he seemed to worship her, he had a politically acceptable job that paid well, and because it was time for her to get married and Sammy at least didn't bore her. An additional bonus was the way that his dark ugliness provided a splendid setting for her blond beauty. Sammy had married Sybil because she was everything that his mother had never been.

Sammy Hanks put down the second section of
The Washington Post
's comic strips and tousled his daughter's blond hair. “That's all, honey. Why don't you run out and play in the street?”

“I'm not supposed to play in the street.”

“You're not?”

“No.”

“Where are you supposed to play?”

“In the yard. You know that, Daddy.”

“I guess you're right. Okay, why don't you go out and play in the yard?”

It was an old joke between father and daughter and both of them still liked it. He also liked to watch her play, sometimes with other children in the neighborhood, and sometimes with her imaginary friends. Marylin hadn't minded introducing her father to her imaginary friends because she knew that he would treat them with grave respect.

“We oughta get her a dog, a big one,” he said as his daughter wandered out into the backyard.

“A St. Bernard or a Great Dane?” Sybil said.

“I mean a big one. One of those Irish wolfhounds.”

“Who do you want it for, you or Marylin?”

Sammy Hanks smiled his charming smile at his wife. “For me, I guess.”

“You never had a dog?”

The smile vanished. “No,” he said. “I never had a dog or a cat either.”

Sybil recognized the danger signals and quickly shifted the topic because Sammy's childhood was something they had spoken of only twice and both times he had gone into raging tantrums. The first time she had asked casually about his parents. The second time she had done so purposely, to see what would happen, and when she found out she had never mentioned his parents again. Instead, she mothered Sammy a lot because he seemed to like it.

“When do you have to leave?”

“I have to be out at Dulles by three so I'd better leave here around one forty-five.”

“Who's going with you?”

“Just Mickey Della.”

“Is he as good as you thought he'd be?”

“Uh-huh. He's better than what Cubbin's got.”

“I should call her, you know.”

“Who?”

“Sadie.”

“What the Christ you wanta call her for?”

“Because she's a good friend.”

“She
was
a good friend.”

“Just because you and Don are in a fight is no reason that Sadie and I have to be.”

“What're you going to do, call her up and say isn't it just terrible how the boys are behaving? For Christ's sake, Sybil, I'm going to have to teach you how to hate.”

“I don't hate Sadie.”

“Well, learn.”

“And you don't hate Don.”

“I don't?”

“No.”

“Well, I'm going to take his job away from him so I might as well hate him. It'll make it easier.”

“We used to have some fun together.”

“Who, you and Sadie?”

“The four of us.”

“I don't remember any good times.”

“Well, I do.”

“Cubbin was always sloshed.”

“Not always.”

“Well, I hear he is now.”

“Poor Sadie.”

“Poor Sadie, my ass.”

“What's he going to do?”

“Who?”

“Don.”

“When?”

“When it's over.”

“Get drunk and stay that way probably.”

“I don't know, but it just doesn't seem fair.”

“What doesn't?”

“He's dedicated his whole life to the union and—”

“Jesus, you sound like his campaign stuff. He hasn't dedicated his life to the union, he's worked all his life for the union. There's a big difference. Christ, most of the time it's bored him silly. It still bores him. I don't think he even really cares if he's reelected or not. He's just going through the motions.”

“Then what are you so worried about?”

“Because no matter what else I might say about him, Mr. Donald Cubbin's a damned good actor and if he just goes through the motions of trying to get reelected, he'll put on a campaign that's a hundred percent better than anybody else around.”

“But you can beat him,” Sybil said, making it a statement rather than a question because she knew that her husband would prefer it that way.

“I can beat him because I want it. I want it so bad that—” Hanks broke off. “Hell, I sometimes ache when I think about it.”

Sybil put her hand on his arm. “That's just tension, honey.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

They were silent a moment and then Sybil said, “What if he wanted it as bad as you do?”

“Don?”

“Yes.”

Hanks thought about it for a moment. “If he wanted it even half as much,” he said, “I wouldn't stand a chance in hell.”

21

Sunday was feast day for Mickey Della. It was the day that he rose at seven to devour
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Sunday Star, The Baltimore Sun,
and the New York
Daily News
in approximately that order.

Della lived in the same large one-bedroom apartment on Sixteenth Street N.W. that he had lived in since 1948. It was an apartment from which two wives had departed and whose goings Della had scarcely noticed. Now he lived alone, surrounded by hundreds of books, some mismatched but comfortable enough furniture, and six green, five-drawer filing cabinets that were crammed with articles and features that Della had ripped from newspapers and tucked away for future possible reference.

The apartment was cluttered, but not messy. The ash trays were all clean, except for the one that Della used as he read his twenty-five pounds or so of newspapers. Only one coffee cup was visible. An old wooden desk with an equally old typewriter in its well had no litter on its surface. Della had cooked his own breakfast at seven-fifteen that morning, but there was no evidence of it in the kitchen. His bed was made and his pajamas were hung neatly behind the door of the bathroom whose tub was innocent of a ring. It was the apartment of someone who had lived alone long enough to learn that it was easier to be neat than not.

At noon Della crossed to the phone and dialed the home number of the man he bought his liquor from. “Mickey Della, Sid.… I'm fine. Sorry to bother you on Sunday but I want to place a standing order with you and I'll be out of town for a few days.… Yeah. What I want is a fifth of real cheap bourbon, I don't care what kind, to be delivered personally and gift wrapped to the same guy every day for the next month. And I want the same card to go with it each time. Now he's going to be out of town most of the time so you're going to have to arrange it with American Express or Western Union or whoever you work through.… Yeah, it's kind of a joke. I want it to start today, if possible. He's in Chicago. Okay. Now I want the card to read, ‘Courage, a Friend.' That's all. Hell, I don't remember whether they sell booze in Chicago on Sunday. It's not famous for its blue laws.… Yeah, well, the guy I want you to send it to every day for the next month is Donald Cubbin. Today and tomorrow he'll be at the Sheraton-Blackstone in Chicago. Thanks, Sid.”

Della chuckled as he went back to his newspapers. Later there would be other needling harassments that would be far better and much more vicious. But it was okay for a start and just right to set the tone for another Mickey Della campaign.

At Baltimore's Friendship Airport Truman Goff pulled his Oldsmobile Toronado up to the entrance and turned to his wife. “I'll be back in about a week,” he said.

“Well, have a good time.”

“Yeah, thanks. You need any money?”

“No, you already give me plenty.”

“Well, I guess I'll go on in now.”

“Give your daddy a kiss, honey,” Goff's wife said to their daughter who leaned forward from the back seat and pecked at her father's cheek.

“You want me to pick you up when you come back?”

Goff shook his head. “No, I'll just take an airport bus on in.”