Edwards beamed. He appeared to be reading from a small looseleaf notebook. “Your closest friend and Number One assistant and adviser — the young man who wrote the Senator’s speech here today, ladies and gentlemen — this young man’s father was discharged from a major radio and television network several years ago because of Communist affiliation. This is according to reports of —”
“What …?” He looked at Stanley who was already on his feet. They gaped at each other, and Edwards droned on …
“Your younger brother, John Thomas Christiansen, was frequently in the company of Communists in New York City in 1949 and 1950, once attended a rally in that city protesting the Korean war, consistently voiced heretical and un-American opinions while teaching at the State University until resigning from that institution rather than face the prospect of official investigation that —”
“He’s dead!” Neil yelled. “My brother’s dead!”
“Slain in a left-wing uprising setting up a revolutionary government in South America …”
“Get out! Get the hell out of here!”
“Your wife, Senator, has visited, is known to have visited, in the home of Mexico City Communists while ostensibly attending art classes in the summers of 1952, 1953, 1955, and …”
Neil did not hear the rest. He had managed to shove one of the tables aside and force his way between the table and the lectern. His movements shook the length of the platform and the microphone crashed to the floor. The groan of the public address system — a tortured blue note — pierced everyone’s hearing as Neil headed across the floor. Unaccountably, the memory of a long distance telephone conversation with Andrea, years ago, occurred to him: “Hello, love … I’m in Cuernavaca and I want you to come, you’d love it here … Just everybody’s here … Ernest Hemingway’s ex-wife and Herman Wouk and every kind of Weirdsville character … Will you come, love?”
Then he could hear Stanley’s voice, yelling at him; he could see his friend trying to get through the crowd … “Hey! Neil! No! Don’t, Neil … Hey! wait a minute, dammit …”
“And in addition,” Edwards was saying, still reading from the notes, “you have employed in the bookstore owned jointly by you, your brother and your wife, a young woman of foreign birth, whose visa in this country is about to expire and in whose behalf you have been exerting influence as a United States Senator — this girl is not even welcome — is considered persona non gratis — by her own people, the Governments of Israel and the United Arab Republic …”
He got hold of Edwards in one motion. There did not appear to be a moment’s indecision, but for an instant as he moved across the ballroom Neil had not been certain whether he would swing on the man or wrestle him to the floor. It was such an incredible moment — like some improbable scene from an ancient late-late movie show — the good-good man and the bad-bad … He got hold of Edwards at the back of the collar and the seat of the pants, feeling like a dim, flickering comedian’s image stumbling around in slow motion, scuttling along the ocean floor of the ballroom toward the small lobby at the other end. Edwards neither put up resistance nor spoke out. They skidded round the corner of the lobby — Edwards seemingly content and tractable in his clutch — and bounded off a marble wall. There was not a word spoken between the two of them. Neil let loose his grip and their eyes did not meet again. Edwards walked, erect and stately, into a waiting elevator and vanished behind the automatic doors …
Twelve
STANLEY REACHED NEIL JUST as the doors came together. He had lost sight of the two of them — Neil and Edwards — for a moment just after they had rounded the corner of the penthouse lobby, and he was uncertain as to whether any violence had actually been perpetrated during that short space of time. He assumed not. Neil was breathing a little more heavily than usual, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. His hair wasn’t even mussed.
They came face to face with each other in the lobby, and Neil gave him an idiot’s look of fancy meeting. Stanley did not know what exactly to say. Finally, he began to talk. “That was a very strange speech you made in there … But they seemed to like it … And the reporters were so fascinated I don’t think they really cared about your not staying right with the line of the text …”
Neil appeared to have something on his mind that he was incapable of putting into words. “You think so?” he said. He smiled enigmatically.
“Yes,” Stanley said. He wondered if he should guide Neil back inside or stand there waiting for the next elevator into which the both of them could escape. At that moment, Arthur Fenstemaker appeared. There were some others looking into the lobby, but they seemed hesitant — even the newsmen — about engaging themselves until something or other had been definitely resolved.
The Governor took Neil’s arm and turned to Stanley.
“Get inside and hold on to your reporters for as long as you can … Try to keep them there until I’ve had a chance to talk. The roof’s caved in but we can get out of this alive and possibly even better off than before …”
Andrea’s father broke through the crowd and came to them. “God damn good,” he kept saying, “goddam good stuff, Neil …”
The four of them headed back inside. Stanley moved off toward the press table. It was deserted now, but the reporters would soon be returning if it appeared there would be one final, clarifying revelation. Elsie stood nearby; she came to him and said: “Is he all right? What was all that about, Stanley? Have I got him into trouble? Does this mean my —”
“I think everything’s all right,” Stanley said, although he was not really convinced of this. He stood watching as Neil and the Governor headed up the middle of the ballroom toward the speakers’ table. Fenstemaker looked up sharply at the master of ceremonies, who, after momentary puzzlement, began to applaud wildly: “How ’bout that, ladies and gentlemen, how ’bout that?” Stanley began to applaud, and then Elsie, and fairly soon there was general handclapping and then a roar of approval as the Governor was recognized and the two of them — Neil and the Governor — reached the table.
Neil took his seat, looking down at the empty plates as Fenstemaker babbled into his ear. Then the Governor turned, looked up and smiled: he took the microphone in his hands.
“Here’s a man for you — here’s a Senator for you!” he said, pointing to Neil. There was tentative applause, but the Governor cut it short. “I appointed him … I put him back into office, and I’ve never had a doubt since that time ten months ago when he took the job that here was a young man of exceptional … exceptional ability — and honesty! His speech this afternoon proved that. Here’s a young man of unquestioned integrity and principle — and here today you saw he was a good deal more than that! He’s a fighter. He’s got the courage to stand up on his own two feet and say what he thinks and damn the consequences. That kind of courage stacks up favorably right alongside another kind of bravery demonstrated during the war when …”
The sentence went unfinished, lost in applause. They did not know much about the young man, but Fenstemaker had been bearing down hard on the wartime decorations since the day the appointment was announced. That quality had at least got through to them.
“What you saw today, ladies and gentlemen, yes — and you newsmen over there — what you saw was one of the most moving and dramatic human situations you’ll ever experience. Here was a man standing up for what he believes — ready to fight for his convictions and for his family and friends and for the memory of a splendid young man — his brother — cut down in the prime of life as a member of the working press covering the downfall of this hemisphere’s evilest totalitarian regime …”
There was more applause; this time the Governor let it rise and swell in the big chamber, and when the audience sensed his approval there was another burst overriding the other. Neil was staring at several bright green peas at the bottom of his pastry shell.
“… And what you’ve also seen today, my friends, is an end to the kind of vicious, poisonous, witchburning, ha
te-mongering demagoguery that has always characterized the campaigns conducted by Owen Edwards … His kind of hatefulness reached a new low today — a new low even for the man who just about invented hate — he got so low down in the gutter today he’ll never get out! I’ll tell you folks, and I know you know without my saying, that that old horse don’t run no more … That old dog won’t fetch no bones … A real man stood up here today and called the turn!”
The Governor poured himself a glass of water and emptied it in three great, throat-bulging gulps. Neil did not look up. The newsmen scribbled frantically in their notebooks, and the people in the packed ballroom, with more of them arriving every minute, whooped and applauded and stomped their feet. … Just the way, Stanley thought, the sons of bitches would have scratched and howled and lusted for the seat of Neil’s pants a few years before …
“I’ll tell you frankly,” the Governor said, smiling and touching a handkerchief to his mouth. “I’m glad that fellow came here today — I thank the Good Lord for what happened. It showed you what a real leader, a real fighter you’ve got for a Senator. And another thing — and for this I’m most thankful — it got us a candidate. Our next elected United States Senator! Neil Christiansen wasn’t going to run for office, ladies and gentlemen, I’m convinced of that. I’d begged and pleaded with him, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that he got mad — he’s had enough fighting in the war — mad enough to fight for his friends and the people of the state … I don’t think he would have sought public office, but now he’s in it, and in it all the way, there’s no stopping him. Owen Edwards is going to regret with all his heart every word he’s said, every minute he spent on this floor today attempting to blacken the name of a decent and honorable young man. Neil Christiansen’s in this fight, ladies and gentlemen, and I pity the poor devil who gets in his way now. … Stand up Neil! And let these people look at a real man …”
Now there was a great, animal cry from the crowd. The clapping and stomping and half-moaning reached a pitch of quasi-religious fervor. The roar lasted fully five minutes. Neil stood and looked out at them. Stanley wondered if Neil was sick to his stomach or if the expression on his face was merely the result of a conscious effort to evoke a certain shy, engaging, little-boy quality. He decided Neil was sick. The Governor had not forced him to speak — they could be thankful for that. He hustled his candidate off the platform and out a back exit as the crowd’s roar began to subside. Soon there was only sporadic applause and foot-tapping with the organ music, and the delegates — the crème de la crème, Stanley noted — stood around and grinned at each other; foolishly and a bit self-consciously. They were the best of people; they might have some uneasy second thoughts about what had happened that afternoon, about what they had heard, first from Neil and then from Edwards, but they could not really ever seriously question the simple, primitive grandeur of those moments when the Governor had them screaming until their throats were dry and pain came to their chests. They would go home now and try to describe those moments to their best-people friends, their employees, their kitchen help. Stanley was staggered by the sudden incredible realization that Neil, for the first time really and truly, was a best-people’s candidate. Unless some even better people had serious second thoughts and put up a better-people’s candidate from the far-out right. He rather wished they would.
“It’s good, isn’t it? Hasn’t it worked out all right, like you said?”
He looked at Elsie; she smiled up at him. There was a faint glow of perspiration on her face and he was conscious for the first time of his own dry throat and stinging palms. The Governor, he thought, knew where everybody lived.
“Yes it sure is all right,” he said to the girl. He looked round at the newsmen: some were writing in notebooks; some were grinning and perspiring; some others simply gaped in awe at the crowd filing out into the lobby. A man carrying a camera hurried toward the press table.
“Downstairs …” he said, grinning, showing his poor teeth. “… Downstairs … In the lobby …”
The reporters looked up at him, exhausted, not really wanting to know anything about what was downstairs.
“Old Edwards is holding a news conference … Or trying to … So far he’s just got some photographers and a couple of kids from the college …”
“Oh Jesus,” somebody groaned.
The reporters got slowly to their feet and headed toward the back elevators.
“Will you do something for me?” Stanley asked the girl.
“Yes … What is it?”
“Follow those reporters downstairs and try to get what Edwards says. You have a pencil and paper? Here — just write when you see them writing …”
“I can take shorthand. I’m very good at shorthand.”
“Fine … Take down everything then. I’ll meet you in the lobby as soon as I can.”
“All right.”
Elsie trailed the reporters. He stared after her for a moment, liking the soft shape of her legs, until she had disappeared into the crowd. Then he headed toward the exit into which Neil and the Governor had fled. He had an idea where the Governor had taken them — the hotel management kept a suite reserved for Fenstemaker the year round — and Stanley hurried down the narrow stairs. When he knocked at the entrance, Andrea’s father showed his face for a moment, closed and then opened the door. The Governor lay on a couch, a drink in his hand. Neil had his shirt off and a towel slung round his neck. He was pacing up and down and talking aloud, half to himself, partly to the others.
“… How in the hell … How in the goddam hell could I let that jackpine messiah force me into this … The last thing I wanted to happen — it happened. How come? He picked the time and the place and he made me — he practically owned me in there. Why’d he do it?”
“He’s insane, Neil,” the Governor said. He held his amber glass above his head, staring at the ceiling, until an assistant came to retrieve and refill it. “He’s psychotic — always has been — it’s just that civilization is finally gaining on him …”
“He’s holding a news conference downstairs,” Stanley said.
“Repeating what he said earlier with amplification,” the Governor announced, accepting the fresh drink. He pushed himself higher onto the arm of the sofa so that he could get the glass to his lips, although the maneuver was not entirely successful. Some of the liquid dribbled down the corners of his mouth, and he tucked a pocket handkerchief along his collar to stop the flow. “Edwards is just now climbing down out of the trees,” he said. “He’s way ahead of some of his people, but what he doesn’t know is that most of us came into town one Saturday a few years ago and stayed … We’re urban, by God. All of a sudden the people in the metropolitan areas outnumber the rednecks … They come into town — they buy little houses and color television and Volkswagen cars. Edwards is still pitching to the Church of Christers and the pickup truck crowd …”
“There’s no difference,” Neil said. “There’s really no difference, though. They’ll listen to what he says. Everybody’ll listen and they just might by God believe him.”
“They would, Neil, they would if he were talking about anybody else but you. But dammit, boy, it’s you he’s saying these things about. Not some quivering intellectual — not some big-nosed, frog-voiced, bucktoothed goon who just stepped off a picket line. Hell! Look at yourself. You’re right out of the Coca-Cola ads — the Saturday Evening Post covers. You know how long it took for that committee in Washington to convince itself Chambers was telling the truth and Hiss wasn’t?”
“No.”
“I don’t either. But it was goddam long. They couldn’t believe Chambers — nobody could — because he wasn’t very pretty. And Hiss was gorgeous. A nice Havard type …”
“He’s right, Neil,” Andrea’s father said. “The Governor’s right — I don’t understand half what he says, but he’s sure right about that sonofabitch Edwards. Nobody’s goin’ to believe him.”
The old man put a cigarette into a s
ilver holder, then struck a kitchen match on his thumbnail. He wore a two-hundred-dollar suit and there was an antique diamond stickpin in the middle of his handpainted tie. His freckled hands trembled slightly; his red nose was peeling, and he stood there, scratching himself, pulling at his crotch, looking at the others. He had once got himself elected to the Congress — just for the hell of it — until he decided he could send someone in his place to do the job just as well. For many years he had run an empire, a kind of feudal barony, involving land and cattle and oil wells and sulphur ventures in Mexico, and if he no longer exercised such vast power it was simply because he himself had lost interest. He was the last of them, Neil thought; his contemporaries might resign themselves to bridge playing and martini parties and bargaining with football coaches, but the old man represented a last thumping flourish of individualism among them, a reflex, possibly, isolate and exotic: something for the sociologists’ exhibit boards.
Neil went into the bathroom, soaked the towel with water and rubbed his face and neck and shoulders. The Governor was on the telephone now, on the long distance, talking with editors and publishers.
“… I thought you’d enjoy hearing about it, Jake,” he was saying. “It was really something — I’m telling you that boy grabbed old Edwards by the ass and just trundled him right out of there like a load of garbage. And Neil — he wasn’t mad. He actually was smiling all the time. He had this hilarious grin on his face. I mean after all, look what Edwards has been sayin’ about him. And today it got down to his family … The speech? Well it wasn’t much — it wasn’t supposed to be, of course. The main event was Edwards and Neil finally paired off against each other and Neil’s announcement. He’s in it now … To hell and gone … It was what you might call a pretty speech, a nice sensible speech. It made people think. He talked sense to ’em like old Adalay. You could play hell out of the whole thing — it’s a natural … I know it’s Saturday afternoon. What’ve you done — joined your own damn printers union? Just get your man on the phone and make sure they get the story right, that’s all. Don’t let ’em put those goddam lies of Edwards’ up at the top … You don’t have some quotes I’ll get my man to call you and give you some quotes … Don’t worry, he’s got it all down. We’ve got it on tape …”
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