Political Timber

by Chris Lynch

  “Correct.”

  We started eating, picking at the English muffins, cheese and apple Danish, toast, and black-currant jam the waiters kept bringing. The food was great, the service thing a treat, but I was uncomfortable.

  “I told you you would come in fourth, didn’t I?” she said brightly.

  “You did. Thank you.”

  This, for some reason, made her laugh. “You’re welcome. I had faith in you all along. You have a great many fine qualities, Gordie. You’re a credit to your family.”

  I found myself floundering in a sea of strange, lightweight compliments and tangling myself in a net of awkward thank-yous.

  “You ran a good race. Didn’t embarrass yourself one bit.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have every right to be proud. Your grandfather should be quite satisfied with all this.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have some more juice, Gordie. Do let them bring you another eggs Benedict.”

  “Is that what that was?”

  “You are refreshing,” she said. “So, everything all right?”

  “Can’t think of anything I need.”

  “Tremendous.” Maureen sat back in her chair, took a long sip of cranberry-orange juice, then lightly dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her stiff white napkin.

  “The reason I invited you, Gordie, is that I like you. I think highly of you, and contrary to rumor, I like Fins very much too.”

  “Glad to hear that. So why’d you whip me so bad?”

  She laughed. “Because that’s the way it’s going to be,” she said, more seriously. “Gordie, enjoy your moment here. You finished fourth yesterday, and in the final, you’re going to finish fourth again.”

  I didn’t pick up right away. I thought she was playing the political angles to get an edge. “Oh, of course you say that. And at lunch you’re probably going to tell the personal-injury billionaire that he’s going to come in fourth. Then at dinner—”

  “No, I’m not, Gordie. Because they’re not coming in fourth, you are. And the only reason you’re going to come in fourth is because there is no fifth place. Or sixth or seventh or seventy-seventh.”

  I put down my silverware, swallowed hard and dry on my last bite, and took it in.

  “Wait a second here, wait a second,” I said, throwing in a laugh mostly to calm myself and get back to the facts. “This is all going to be okay. See, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this, but it seems like the right time. Fins is gonna have a meeting with you. Really, I’m not even interested in the job. Fins just wanted... he’s going to call you. You guys are going to have a talk, you’re going to patch things up, and I’m going to step aside—gracefully.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “No, we’re not, and no, you’re not. I have spoken with your grandfather, many times. But not for the purpose he thinks. Gordie, Fins is out, you see, and he’s not getting back in. He just won’t accept it. There will be no reconciliation. That exists in his head, and nowhere else.”

  There it swept me. I never wanted any part of this to start with, and I wanted it even less now, but I felt something there, something that hurt, and I wanted to beat it down. I saw, as Maureen’s words landed on my head, I saw my da. I saw him as a little sad deluded person. I saw him as a towering figure brought down to the ground. I saw my da as a fool.

  “You’re wrong,” I said, whether I believed it or not. I stood up, making—for this place—a small scene. “You just want the fucking job, and you’re afraid that me and my da are the only ones who can take it away from you.”

  Maureen stood across at the opposite side of the round table. Taller than me, slim, elegant but steely at the same time in her sleek gray suit, she quietly urged me to sit. When I wouldn’t, she sat without me.

  Then there was a hand on my shoulder. I looked up.

  “Why don’t you have a seat and let us explain,” Saltonstall said.

  I slipped back down into my seat under the weight of who he was. Saltonstall, the man with the real authority. The man who held the fund-raiser for me, and who had done it probably a hundred times for my grandfather over their many years as a team.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “I’m doing what I do,” he said sincerely. “I know you’re angry, son, but you’ve got to listen to this. Fins, he’s been one of my best friends in the business. I will always love the man. But his time has passed.”

  “No it hasn’t,” I snapped.

  Saltonstall nodded. “His time had passed last term, but he couldn’t let it go. So we gave him one more. Out of respect. Then he changed his mind again, and we couldn’t wait for him anymore.”

  “This is stupid,” I said. “I won that spot in the final.”

  “A gift,” he said calmly. “The fund-raiser? That was a testimonial to Fins. He truly is a beloved man in our circle. But the people there, they were there to salute and bon-voyage. None of them was voting for you in the final. It was a tribute to Fins. And the primary, that was a tribute to Fins, so he could go out a winner.”

  It started looking truer as I noticed that the prospective mayor, the woman who was such a force only minutes before, had shrunk completely in Saltonstall’s shadow. They both looked so civil, here in this fine room, quietly doing what they were doing.

  But he was my da. Whatever else he was—and I knew he was a lot of things—he was my da. He was always good to me and he was always big and grand and... and now he was like something felled, with all these jackals ripping pieces off of him while I watched.

  “Fins just isn’t dealing in the real world,” she said, without meanness. “And he’s trying to take you with him, Gordie. Why don’t you just quit while you and your grandfather still look good, and it doesn’t get embarrassing for everyone. Our people will help you devise a story that’ll play well in the press.”

  I felt like a boxer who was not quite knocked out, but who couldn’t answer the bell one more time either. I started to go.

  “No, thank you,” I said “With all due respect, folks, you’re not my team. I don’t need to raise any more money, and I have my own campaign that’s running just fine without you.”

  Saltonstall gestured way past me, to somebody across the room, as if he was summoning a waiter. I turned, and watched Bucky approach me, sadness and sorry smeared all across his fat rat face. I turned my back to him.

  “But Da told me,” I nearly pleaded. “He swears that his people still wanted him in. He’s convinced.”

  “If we still wanted him in, Gordie...” Saltonstall said, and sighed. “If we still wanted him, he wouldn’t be in jail.”

  TIME, SIR

  I’M AFRAID I’VE GOT some news you won’t like. Before you say anything, I want you to hear me out. I love you, and I respect you, and nothing would make me happier than to make you happy, but as we both are men of the world, we both know things don’t always work out. As sorry as I am to be bringing this up so soon after our big success in the primary, I think it’s important to get it right out into the open: I’m afraid things are not going to work out quite the way you had hoped.”

  After three hours and a hundred and fifty practice speeches for my mirror, the words were working. I could do it.

  Only, when the time came, I wasn’t the one who spoke them. Da was.

  “I know it isn’t what you had planned, Gordie, but things have changed. She just ain’t coming around, and so I figure, what the hell, right? Let’s you and me make history. You could learn to love this, I swear it, the boy-mayor shtick. And now that I seen you in action, now that I seen ya crashing the party like you done, I know you can do it.” Da turned to look over his shoulder. “Can’t he, Chuckie? Can’t the boy go all the way?”

  Chuckie smiled and nodded, but it was different now. Even Chuckie the guard knew what Fins Foley didn’t.

  Fins didn’t take the occasional puff of his oxygen tank anymore. He wore the mask strapped right onto his face, and towed the tank along
behind him on wheels.

  “And I’ll be there, ta help ya, of course. All the way, boy, you know that.”

  All that practice didn’t have me ready for this. I didn’t have the guts for this, didn’t have the heart, or the lungs, either. I could have used my own oxygen tank about then.

  How do you do that? How do you pull the plug on somebody, when it all means so much?

  “No, Da,” I said softly.

  “Well, sure, I knew you wasn’t going to be crazy for the idea first off, but hang with me, Gordie. I promise you you’re gonna love this in the end. You got great things comin’ our way, a life you couldn’t even a dreamed of.”

  “Da,” I said, a little more emphatically. “No. No, I don’t want the job, and I’m not going to want it tomorrow, and I’m never going to want it, and even if I did... I don’t have a goddamn chance of getting it.”

  Fins looked at me sideways. He looked back at Chuckie and gestured toward me with his thumb silently. Then, back to me. “You’re just scared, that’s completely—”

  “Da!” I felt the whole building shrinking, squeezing on me, flipping, so that I felt like I was the prisoner, like I was never going to get out if I didn’t move fast. “Da, don’t you get it, you’re out. Not temporarily, but permanently, all the way out.”

  He seemed to believe I was merely voicing an opinion.

  “Na, not yet, Gordie. I ain’t quite ready for that yet. I can’t let it go.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to let it go, Da. It’s gone. All those great people you hooked me up with out there? They are the ones who told me. The primary? It was a gift, a retirement present for you. Your people, Da, that you keep telling me about, they did send you a message, but not the message you thought. The real message was Yes, we love you, old man, now get your ass out of the way.”

  My grandfather’s already-cloudy gray eyes went softer as tears welled. With the steam fogging his acrylic oxygen mask, his famous face, his old bright beam, was nearly obscured.

  But as he beat me to the words, I beat him to the crying.

  I never wanted any of this. It started out as just so much stuff I didn’t care about, and here I was coming apart over it.

  After a long few minutes of watching each other melt like a couple of late-March snowmen, he spoke to me.

  “You have no right,” my grandfather told me.

  “I didn’t do anything to you, Da.” I didn’t believe that.

  “You have no right,” he repeated, and it hurt more.

  “I know I don’t,” I said. “But nobody else seems to be able to get the message across, so I think I need to try. Your time is over, Da. You’ve had your share. Your time was great. You got everything you wanted, and that has to be enough.”

  He stared at me coldly now, the glassiness gone, the stern, pondering face replacing it. As if he was considering my words, but I didn’t think so.

  “Well, Da, so what I’ve decided is, it’s my time now. I’m a senior—have I mentioned to you that I’m a senior?—and I want to get what I can out of it while I can. The politics thing was your thing, it isn’t mine. I just want my time, now. It’s my time.”

  I was working hard to get something out of him, but it didn’t seem to be paying. Finally a sly smile came over his wily old leather-face.

  “It was Saltonstall, of course. I never could completely trust him, all these years. There was always that Yankee thing. ... Anyway, it’s too late for old Salty, because we got our money. This late in the game, we don’t need no more. So we can cruise through to the final election, without...” He slapped his hands together hard and went right on strategizing, as if what I’d told him was that a student volunteer, rather than the candidate, had left the campaign. He didn’t slow down until Chuckie stopped him.

  “Time, sir,” Chuckie announced.

  “Huh?” Fins asked.

  “Time, gentlemen. Time’s up. Visit’s over. Kid,” he said to me, firmly but not unkindly, “you have to leave now. Sir,” he said to my da in a businesslike way, “time now.”

  Da smiled hard and gave me two high V-for-victory signs as he was led out, still talking strategy.

  The next morning in homeroom we were sitting there half-conscious when Robert O’Dowd walked in.

  First off, O’Dowd was not a member of this homeroom.

  Second off, he was marching with a purpose, across the front of the class, ninety-degree left turn down the last aisle and all the way to the back, where Mosi and I were. Ignoring the laughter.

  Third off, he had his underwear yanked all the way out of his pants, pulled up his back, over his head, with the remainder of the waistband hooked under his chin. A hall-of-fame wedgie.

  “Wow” was all Mosi could say.

  “Is it my birthday?” I asked.

  O’Dowd clung to whatever dignity he could manage, speaking through his briefs.

  “I was told I couldn’t take it off until I came in here and you saw,” he growled. “I was told to tell you you got nothin’ to worry about from nobody. So now I told you.” Then he left, tearing off the shreds of underwear as he ran.

  What do you know, I thought. Fins does have goons. It’s nice they let him keep his goons.

  That was the day I finally remembered to go downtown and officially extricate myself from the nightmare that was the mayoral race. When I came out of the building, I felt like I was stepping out of the first good hot shower I’d taken in weeks.

  I hadn’t yet told Mad Matt I’d quit.

  He was—on air—simultaneously congratulating me for making the mayoral final and relishing the inevitable drubbing I was going to absorb there. “As political exits go, Gordie, I’d say that at least beats getting shot in the head.”

  I had to laugh. It was the final relief, like being fired from a job you hate. I felt my position as talk-show clay pigeon being taken away as I was returned to the lowly technician-trainee job I’d wanted so badly.

  “It does, Matt, it really does. And that’s why I’ve quit the mayor’s race. I figure nobody’s going to shoot me here at the sound board.”

  “You did wha—?” Matt stopped himself. He did not like getting caught being surprised on his own program. “Whoa! Cat’s outta the bag now, huh? Guess everybody in the city’s going to have to finally start believing in a Foley-free city now. Tell us, folks. Call and let us know just how devastated you are by the news.” He cut to a commercial, swirled around in his chair, and glared at me. He made no attempt at further communication.

  I couldn’t really focus as I heard the beginning snickers when Sol fielded the fifth incoming phone call. When he transferred the call to Matt and the two of them then got happy, that was too much coincidence. I girded for the worst.

  Which was exactly what I got.

  “You don’t have the guts to tell me yourself?” Fins said in a low, sickly, sad whisper. Not whisper enough, however, for any of us to escape the moment.

  “I told you, Da,” I said weakly. “I told you I couldn’t go on, but you weren’t listening to me.”

  “A legacy. A dynasty. I gave you everything I had accumulated, everything that was important to me. I passed it on to you. What you did? You spit on all that, then you go out, go on the radio, and you make a joke of me and everything I stand for.”

  There was a pause, the kind Matt always rushed to fill.

  Nothing doing.

  “You weren’t a joke, Da. I didn’t do that. Anyway, you told me you never listen to radio. Who told you—”

  “You owe me,” he said. “You didn’t just quit on me, Gordie, you killed me.”

  He was being so totally unfair. I never wanted any of it. I told him that. He pushed it on me anyway. He lied to me. He tricked me. He was wrong, and he was totally unfair.

  And I believed him.

  “You killed me... and after all I... you, out of all the people... you killed me.” He hung up.

  I believe the show continued, but I have no recollection of it. I may have participated
, may have not.

  What I was well aware of was Mad Matt catching me on the way out the door.

  “Sorry,” I said, “about all that. About all everything. To tell you the truth, Matt, I’m going to be happy to get off the air, to just get in the background and learn the technician stuff like I came here for in the first place. I wasn’t ever cut out for all that other stuff, you know?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “No? No what?”

  “What good could you possibly do me now? What did you think, Gordie, that I pulled your application out of a pile of a thousand other applications and all this stuff with your grandfather was just a coincidence? That was the shtick. Now the shtick is gone, and so are you.”

  I don’t know why that should have hit me as a shock, but it did. I stood there with my tired jaw hanging open.

  “I never even got to learn the technical stuff I came here to learn, because I was on the air all the time—which I never asked for.”

  He shrugged. “Showbiz is a cruel business, Gord. Good luck in your next endeavor. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be eventful.”

  As he slammed the door behind him, I answered his nameplate.

  “It sure *&@# won’t be.”

  I woke in the morning to the sound of a couple of Fins’s goons repossessing the car.

  The Studebaker Gran Tourismo Hawk.

  Which I loved more than anybody else did, even more than Fins did. Which I loved more than a person probably should love an inanimate object.

  I heard the men downstairs making small talk with my dad. Dad small-talked back, not jolly, but not so strange that you couldn’t tell he was pretty familiar with goondom—being Fins Foley’s son. He didn’t give them an argument, as I wouldn’t have wanted him to. We all knew there were rules.

  But that didn’t make it hurt any less. One guy got into the royal-blue Continental they’d driven up in, while the other wedged his sloppy immensity into the driver’s seat of a car that was not designed for his type. He chewed on a cigar as he eased the Tourismo backward down the driveway, and even though he didn’t light up, he’d soiled it, spoiled it.

  I watched out my upstairs window and nobody watched back, so it was okay. But I felt like I’d lost a lot as I lost that car. My car and my da’s car.