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by Billy Lee Brammer


  Fat Emma took her time answering. He could hear her coming on, finally, and giving the operator another number. He broke in to ask if he could talk with the little girls but changed his mind when Emma said they were already asleep. There was a pause and then another series of rings and then it was like being forced back into the party underway just beyond the door. There was a great deal of confusion at the other end, and he told the operator he would speak with anyone there.

  “Hey! Hey, Neil! Congratulations man. Great … Great … How ’bout that?”

  He thanked the younger man and asked if Andrea was present.

  “Yeah — hey — just a minute — hey — you know you pulled us all in on your shirttail?”

  “You didn’t need any help,” Neil said.

  “Hell we didn’t. Listen — hey, listen — our majorities were bigger than ever. That’s one thing. And we pulled in a bunch of others — new kids we never expected would win. It was you did it. You talked by-God sense and pulled in the youngsters because you were such an apple-pie type yourself …”

  Apple pie-eyed type, he thought, and then said, “Well that’s fine. You ought to have a good session next year … Andrea around anywhere?”

  “Yeah … Yah … Just second … She was here … second ago. Listen, how about I get her to call you. Hah? What’s number?”

  Neil asked the young man to look around. He tapped his foot to music coming in from the nightstand radio. The music ended and the announcer came on. “Colonaid!” the fellow exulted. “For aging colon … The colon muscles lose tone and strength …”

  “Hey, Neil … Neil?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was here minute ago. Ought to be back. What’s your number, I’ll have her …”

  He gave the number and said Thanks, thanks again, and rang off after the young man invited him to join them at Aspen for the weekend. They were all flying up. Chartered a plane. Big ski trip. “We think we got Andrea talked into it … Why don’t you fly up there, hah? It’s great up there, it’s …”

  He said he just might do that. He would take it under advisement. He set the receiver down and lay on the bed. “Aging colon?” he said aloud, rubbing his eyes. The colon muscles lost what? He stood and slipped on his coat and left by one of the doors that opened onto the hall. They had stopped singing inside and switched to dance music …

  On the fiercely lighted, half-deserted street he began to walk. The white Capitol dome was spectacular, veiled in mist. He walked the several blocks, toward and past the big white dome, pausing finally in front of the Library to stare back and around him. The Library building was lost in shadow, but lights shone softly on the fountain in front. He stood looking at Neptune’s Court, conscious suddenly of the rush of water and the coiled snakes the size of a man’s arm, spewing liquid, dark and glittering, toward the bronze figures. The Great King stared back, moody, contemplative, his tarnished face and beard catching the light. The King sat on rocks, thinking, ignoring the impossibly muscled young men on either side who trumpeted wild-soundless tunes on conch shells. The towering women were at right and left of the young men. They sat astride rampaging seahorses. All of them were washed in greens and blues, and Neil stood in front, thinking he loved the heavy-thighed woman at Neptune’s right most of all. She was majestic — storm-tinted and lonely — her huge blue-green breasts swaying slightly in the rush of water, her face clouded by streaks of dark decay. He stood there peering through the bad light and was suddenly transported toward her, into the water, onto the moss-slick bottom, cold liquid filling his shoes and ballooning the air inside his trouser legs. He staggered, sliding sideways on the green bottom, and gripped a snake’s head for balance. The spray fell all around him and he walked along, squish-squash, shoes sucking feet, moving deeper into the King’s chamber. He staggered once again, brushing the weathered bronze of the seahorse, got a grip (on a hand? a foot?) and hoisted himself up behind the big wonderful woman. She was magnificent! Primal, content, constant, quietly abused. There was no other like her — he was certain of it. He sat astride the gleaming horse hips and held on to his lady, reaching round her swollen ribcase, marveling at the curve of her bare stomach and the way her big legs joined the trunk. He had never felt such love.

  He held on for a moment longer and then began pulling himself around toward the front so that he could get his face up next to the cold blast of her breath and kiss her lovely, barely parted, rain-rusted lips.

  Lights shone at him. He ignored them at first, thinking they might go away. But then the two Capitol policemen got out of their car and stood at the rail separating the sidewalk from the pool of water. They yelled something and he held on tight. One of them got down into the water and came toward him, flashing the light in his eyes.

  “… Senator …? That you Senator …?” He turned back and yelled at his partner: “It’s Senator Christiansen.” He turned round again, keeping the light low. “You all right, sir?”

  “Hello,” Neil said, smiling. He began to climb down. He steadied himself against the younger man. A wad of papers, shaken loose from his hip pocket, floated nearby. He bent down and retrieved them, shaking the water off. “I was up there,” he said, pointing to the stairs that circled above the fountain. “I lost these papers. Very valuable papers. Had to go into the water to get them.”

  “You should’ve given us a call,” the young patrolman said. “We give you a lift, sir? You ought to get home and take off those wet clothes …”

  Neil said that would be fine; it would work out perfectly. The policemen remembered the primaries and asked about the vote, and he told them and they were real happy for him. The three of them climbed into the patrol car. He was borne through the quiet streets, past row houses and ruined balustrades and awful-smelling basement entrances to the apartment he shared with Stanley. He could hear the phone’s ringing halfway up the stairs.

  He slipped off his trousers and wet shoes and socks and talked with newsmen on the phone. Yes, he was quite pleased … He had expected to win, of course, but not … not so overwhelmingly as it now appeared … What was the latest count? That much? Well, now … Well. It was all very something something something.

  He pulled off his clothes and got himself dried and bathrobed, thinking he would have to call Fenstemaker first thing next morning (they would plan some victory dinners for the fall, clear some federal appointments in the home state); thinking that with such a showing in the primary he might very likely get by without an opponent in the general election; thinking he should call Andrea (should he fly home [avoiding Aspen] to stare at his children?), write some letters, thank-you notes to contributors, a good long note to Andrea’s father who’d come through with twenty-five thousand — Thinking he should make a film for television, give old Stanley a raise in pay and a month off (soon as he’s written the script); raise Miss Elsie, too, hoping to get one last breath of her nut-smelling hair. He thought about these things, reminding himself he had six years — a full term — to advance on the committees, secure his position, pursue his blue bronze ladies — tarnished and faithful — in the fountain, saving their storm-violated world. He lay in the bed, watching the great white bulk of the dome grow dim, sorrows and joys oddly approximated by the incredible fact of success.

  Country Pleasures

  I wonder by my troth, what thou and I

  Did, till we lov’d? Were we not wean’d till then?

  But suck’d on country pleasures, childlishly?

  — JOHN DONNE

  Here at the last cold Pharos between Greece

  And all I love, the lights confide

  A deeper darkness to the rubbing tide;

  Doors shut, and we the living are locked inside

  Between the shadows and the thoughts of peace:

  And so in furnished rooms revise

  The index of our lovers and our friends

  From gestures possibly forgotten, but the ends

  Of longings like unconnected nerves,

&n
bsp; And in this quiet rehearsal of their acts

  We dream of them and cherish them as Facts.

  — LAWRENCE DURRELL

  One

  VERY EARLY THAT MORNING the official party had come down out of the mountains and begun to move across the flat, sun-blasted land. The mountains reappeared from time to time on either side — reassuringly close in the beginning so that one could see the winding goat paths and the stubble of mesquite on the lower slopes; then from a distance of a great many miles that turned the ridges into slagheap shapes, purple and rumpled looking in the low, clouded light of the early hours. The limousine came through and out of the passes, and the lesser ranges gave way to sandhills and these into gray dunes. Then there was only the tortured prairie grass, dust-bleached and brittle, and the perfect stretch of highway with the dark folds of the mountains always out front or in back or on either side, shimmering in the new-visited heat, rising off the floor of the ranchland and collapsing again.

  “I keep thinking we’re going back into the mountains,” Sweet Mama Fenstemaker said. She had been sitting quietly in back and studying the bald landscapes for nearly an hour. “I keep thinking we’re going back,” she said, “but we never seem to get there.”

  Jay McGown turned sideways in the jump seat and stretched his legs. He was an exceedingly tall young man with a bland and perpetually happy freckled face that reflected none of the discomfort he experienced during the morning’s drive. He had been up late the night before, drinking with the Governor; he had risen earlier than any of the others that morning, checking travel routes, juggling luggage in the car trunk, loafing in the lobby of the Paisano Hotel and reading historical tracts on Pancho Villa’s border raids. Now he sat in the jump seat, sore-eyed and sleepy, his long legs grown stiff in the cramped space. He was delighted to turn sideways for a few minutes and talk to Mrs. Fenstemaker: “It’s because we’re driving between two parallel ranges. It looks like they come together up ahead, but they don’t really — it’s all an illusion. Like going down the middle of a railroad track and thinking the rails come together on the horizon.”

  “Fascinating,” Mrs. Fenstemaker said. She made clicking sounds in the back of her throat.

  Jay started to elaborate on this thesis. He could make effortless conversation with Sweet Mama for hours at a time; and at this point he welcomed any opportunity to change positions in the jump seat — but the Governor, who had been napping alongside his wife, opened his eyes and said: “All an illusion, all a goddam illusion.” He smiled and pulled on his nose and added: “Let’s have a little drink — little of that Scotch whiskey, Jay. Before our ice becomes an illusion. Let’s all have a little tot.”

  Jay opened a zippered bag at his feet and removed whiskey and soda and plastic tumblers. Another bag contained ice cubes. Sarah Lehman, riding in front with Hoot Gibson Fenstemaker, leaned over the seat to fish out the bottle opener for Jay. Hoot Gibson took his eyes off the highway for a moment to examine Sarah’s behind.

  “Sarah — you pour the whiskey,” the Governor said. “Jay can fill the glasses with ice. Let’s everybody get organized. Hoot Gibson, you just keep your mind on the goddam drivin’.”

  Hoot Gibson laughed and moved his big shoulders around. Sarah was still bent over the seat, her skirt pulled tight round her hips. Hoot Gibson finally shifted his gaze back to the highway. “Jus’ remember old Hoot Gibson,” he said. “On the rocks in that amber glass, Jay. I like that amber glass.”

  “Isn’t it awfully early yet?” Mrs. Fenstemaker said. “Maybe we could stop for coffee or a soft drink …”

  “We’re out in the ranch country, Sweet Mama,” the Governor said. “Day’s half over. Sun’s been up for hours. Hours. Primitive goddam country. Man needs to be fortified.”

  Jay and Sarah filled the glasses and passed them around. Hoot Gibson adjusted the air-conditioning and turned the dial on the radio. There was only static and an occasional fading wisp of rock ’n roll music. He gripped his drink and concentrated on the driving. Sarah switched on the phonograph and played a Morton Gould record. The Governor jiggled his phone receiver.

  “Hell of a country,” the Governor said. “Hell of a goddam country. Can’t even rouse an operator.”

  “Perhaps you can phone when we get there,” Sweet Mama said. “They’ll have phone lines, won’t they?”

  “Half-dozen calls I needed to make …” Fenstemaker mumbled. “We ought to investigate the cost of installing shortwave radio.”

  Jay wrote “shortwave” on a yellow pad and reached over to refill the Governor’s glass. Sarah Lehman asked Sweet Mama if she would like a soft drink.

  “No … No, I think I’ll wait,” Mrs. Fenstemaker said. “Until we get there. It should be soon, shouldn’t it? We’ve been driving nearly three hours.”

  Jay nodded. “Not far now,” he said. “We ought to see them a good distance ahead. They’re supposed to be set up not too far off the highway.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Mrs. Fenstemaker said, “I just can’t imagine it.”

  The big car drummed along the smooth surface of the highway. The Governor leaned back and closed his eyes again, holding his drink with both hands against his chest. Mrs. Fenstemaker read a magazine. Hoot Gibson opened a window vent to dispose of a cigarette, and they all shifted uneasily in the blast of desert air. Sarah turned to Jay and said: “Suppose you’re excited.”

  “More anxious than excited,” Jay said. “They’re bringing Victoria Anne out for a few days. I haven’t seen her in nearly a year.”

  “Oh … You’ve talked to the mother, then?”

  Jay leaned over and rested his arms on the top of the front seat. He shook his head.

  “No. The Governor talked to her. He did all the talking. I got to speak to the girl, though. She told me she was coming out here to visit her mother. She’ll be here a week.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Sarah said. Jay traced a line with his finger along the curve of Sarah’s arm until she shifted in the front seat and stared ahead.

  “She called me Daddy,” Jay said.

  Sarah looked back at him. “That’s an enormous improvement over the last time,” she said.

  “Yes,” Jay said.

  “There it is!” Hoot Gibson said suddenly. “Godalmighty … That must be it up ahead.”

  Everyone strained to catch sight of the prefabricated Victorian mansion towering above the floor of the ranchland. The mansion loomed on the horizon like a great landlocked whale, gingerbread bas-relief against the backdrop of bleached dune and mountain and gunmetal sky. Then as they moved closer the whole fantastic scene came slowly into focus: the Mexican village, simulated adobe huts, plaster on plywood; balsa outbuildings and ersatz oil derricks chained to railroad flatcars; tents and trucks and tractors and trailers, buses and vintage cars and the endless, milling mob of carpenters and technicians and tourists. Off to one side there were perhaps half a dozen handsome beeves huddled together, grazing from a mound of store-bought silage.

  “Destruction upon destruction …” Fenstemaker gasped. “The whole goddam land is spoilt …”

  “It’s incredible,” Sweet Mama said. “What will they do with it when they’re through here?”

  “They already sold the big house to the fella owns the land,” Hoot Gibson said. “Gonna use it for a cow barn.”

  “They even dyed the grass green near the mansion,” Jay cried. “It wouldn’t respond to the water they piped in, so they dyed it green.”

  Hoot Gibson slowed the car, weaving in and out of stalled traffic, moving past the crowds gathered along the highway: ranch hands and motorists and women in slacks and straw hats and bobby-soxers on horseback. The limousine came to a stop at a wire gate. Hoot Gibson lowered the window and smiled at the guard.

  “Guvanah Fenst’makah’s pahty,” he said.

  The crowds moved in closer as the guard lowered the wire gate. Hoot Gibson steered the car through the entrance and down a dirt road toward a huge commissary tent and several
large trailer houses parked nearby. A press agent flagged them down midway, caught hold of the door handle and tried to ride on the lip of the running board; he held on for a few seconds and then stumbled into the dust. Another studio official got astraddle a front fender and proceeded to direct them, with a flourish of arm and hand movements, toward the trailer houses.

  “They’re mad — they’ve all gone mad out here in the heat,” the Governor said. “I’m beginnin’ to think maybe our comin’ here was a mistake.”

  No one said anything. They all stared in wonder. The limousine came to a stop in front of the main trailer.

  “Jay, you get out and see if they’re ready for us,” Fenstemaker said. “Get everything organized. So we can leave soon’s the work’s done.” Jay got out of the car. “Keep that goddam air-conditionin’ on, Hoot Gibson.” The Governor touched his forehead with a pocket handkerchief and blotted at a film of dust on his blue suit.

  Sarah joined Jay outside. The two of them engaged the press agent, attempting to get the visit organized. The press agent assured them everything was arranged.

  “Miss McGown and Mr. Shavers are inside the trailer house,” the man said. “They’re expecting the Governor right now.”

  Jay signaled, and Hoot Gibson switched off the motor. The Governor and Sweet Mama began moving out of the car. The press agent said: “You say your name was McGown?”

  Jay nodded. He introduced Sarah. The press agent nodded.

 

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