THE REMAINS OF THE PEACH ICE CREAM WERE STARTING TO melt, but nearly a hundred people had gotten scoops as they waited for the Dewey Club’s open meeting to begin at 7:30 P.M. on July 26. Two organizers went out to the hallway of the Matthews Building in search of more folding chairs. “Be glad we didn’t make onion sandwiches,” said one of them, pointing to the ice-cream mess while alluding to another youthful culinary favorite of the candidate. The second club member had spent his day licking three-cent stamps and hanging up a giant blow-up photo (courtesy Jackson Camera and Electronics) of the young Tom Dewey as Uncle Sam, posed next to little Miss Columbia by the Argus’s photographer on the Fourth of July 1909. Billy Grimes now sat beneath it, handing out Citizens for the Future flyers and avoiding the gaze of Mr. and Mrs. Feller, who were in conversation, down front, with Peter Cox.
“You couldn’t get her to come?” Peter asked Carol, sounding less sure of himself than usual.
“I’m afraid not. But I had more luck with the older woman you asked me to soft-soap.” She handed him a small stack of letters. “She’s underlined a few bits, which are the only ones you’re allowed to use. And if you don’t think she means it, just ask Reverend Davis or any of her bridge circle what it feels like to have Annie Dewey bite your head off.”
“Forewarned,” said Peter.
“She’s even taken my head off,” said Harold Feller.
“And you’re a fine, mild fellow, Harold.”
“That’s right, Peter. Up to a point I am.”
Peter knew what was coming, and to escape the question about why he hadn’t bothered coming in to the office today, he pretended to return a wave from Vincent Dent in the third row.
Peter took one of the chairs on the rostrum just as the club secretary test-tapped the microphone and began the meeting: “You know,” he said, waiting for the last of the audience to take their seats, “back in 1940, our first Dewey for President Club had no need for a microphone. I think all of us who were in it could probably have fit into one booth down at the Great Lakes.”
Christ, thought Peter. The guy had actually written this stuff on index cards.
“But we did have a club back in ’40, because some of us already knew that the best man to be President of the United States was a thirty-eight-year-old district attorney whose only mistake was ever leaving Michigan for New York.”
Peter grinned wide and tilted his head back. No one would realize his laughter was pantomime, not even the high-school girls down in front, friends of Margaret Feller’s who, Carol said, were here because Peter was so “dreamy.”
“In 1944 this club sent out a hundred and fifty thousand Dewey for President buttons. I can see a few of you are wearing those tonight, and probably appreciating our foresight in leaving the year off them.”
Focusing on a clock at the back of the room, Peter tuned out the voice of this amiable stiff. The guy couldn’t really be excited about Dewey, could he? Pretending was one thing, but actually buying the whole cardboard package? The elevator shoes; never having missed a day of school; playing the gentleman farmer in upstate New York; having his press secretary announce his candidacy, like it was an afternoon appointment. What they said was probably true: You had to know him really well to dislike him. None of this kept Dewey from being absolutely preferable to that strutting little Missouri jackass, but there was something insidious, an irritating grain of truth, in that rhyme—Keep America Human with Truman. Humanity itself might be overrated, but what if you suspected that the bulk of your life’s acquaintance—all those punctually plastered guests at your parents’ cocktail hours, with their indisputable skill in running the world—fell into that inhuman counterspecies to which Dewey was accused of belonging?
Come on, buddy, come on. He already knew what he himself was going to say, and all he wanted to do was say it and get out of here and get his paddle into the river while there was a last half hour of sunlight. He wouldn’t take more than a jab at foreign policy—not with everyone in such an all-for-one-and-one-for-all mood over Berlin, and with Iron Curtain playing down the street. He’d keep it simple, the way the alcoholics did, and end with the little hometown touch of these letters Carol had gotten him.
“… and further down the ticket, the man it is now my pleasure to present: an outstanding Michigander, an Ivy League scholar, a distinguished veteran, a skilled attorney with Feller, Terry and Nast, and the next senator from the Twenty-third District of this state—Peter Cox!”
He winked at Margaret’s friends and got up from his chair. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Peter Cox” (you couldn’t say it too many times) “and I’m happy to be one candidate who moved to Owosso.” (General applause; wait two suspenseful beats after it subsides; solemnly lower voice.) “Tomorrow morning President Truman will ask the Congress for a tax on profits and the authority to control prices. It’s fitting, I think, that he should make these requests during a ‘Special session’ whose convening demonstrates that he has no more respect for the Constitution than he does for the laws of economics and the rights of the American small businessman.” (Smattering of applause; probably would be more if there’d been an awestruck mention of “the American worker” in the same sentence. It had gotten so you couldn’t give even a Republican speech unless it came out like sounding like “The House I Live In.”) “The President, a failed businessman himself, isn’t happy unless every druggist and grocer and haberdasher is feeling the pinch.” (No need to mention that Truman went bust with Harding in the White House.)
“The Eightieth Congress, whose record is one of exceptional accomplishment, is about to do the country its greatest service yet by defeating every single proposal that comes its way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the next few weeks.” (If Dewey were bolder, he’d get out and lead that Congress, send it his own program and start acting like the President six months before his own inauguration.) “And I daresay the Eightieth Congress will give the President reason to regret the tantrum that’s brought it back into session. The House Un-American Activities Committee, under the leadership of J. Parnell Thomas and sparked by the energy of young Republicans like Congressman Nixon of California, is going to use the opportunity to hold some extra hearings, and a few Washington friends of mine say they’re likely to produce a couple of interesting surprises.” (Impressed glances between members of the audience realizing they would have a state senator with his own connections in the nation’s capital. All right, that little hint was enough about Communism and, by implication, foreign affairs. It was time to balance the cosmopolitan outsider with the humble, happy-to-be-here local boy. Pull letters from pocket. Take a long pause.)
“You know, if my mother doesn’t get a letter from me each week, I hear about it but good.” (Carol Feller whispered “Oh, brother” to Harold. Margaret’s friends were further enchanted.) “I suspect Tom Dewey has it just the same.” (Laughter from all who these days were pretending to know Annie Dewey better than they did.) “I draw that conclusion not just because the governor is the kind of man he is, but also because Mrs. Dewey has allowed me to share with you a couple of lines that her son has found the time to send home to her here in Owosso. Now, the governor is more of a gentleman than I am” (fat chance of anyone believing that, with the two-hundred-dollar summer suit he had on) “and, as you know, his public comments on Mr. Truman’s shanghaiing of the Congress have been more restrained than mine. But lest you think his silence has been dictated by political prudence or secret worry, let me tell you what he tells his mother: ‘The special session is a nuisance, but no more …’ ” (Big, big applause. Thanks, once more, to their next state senator, they were getting some inside dope unknown to even those press boys who’d left a month ago and wouldn’t be back until November.) “The candidate, who as you know has two sons of his own, also writes his mother that there’s ‘no rush’ about planning ‘accommodations at the White House for the family, if I am elected.’ ” (Big laugh at the emphasized “if.”) “Governor Dewey would be
too modest to note it himself” (yeah, right), “but there are polls now showing him ahead even in the state of Florida” (a small gasp from the history teacher), “which means that the solid South is looking about as solid as Mr. Truman’s haberdashery in 1921.” (Applause.)
“I’d like the people in the back rows near the window to turn around and look across the street to the Colvin Home Appliance Shop. I’m sure you all recognize the apartment above it as being not only the current residence of Charlie Bernard (he’d found “Bernard, Charles S.” in the street directory), but the first home, the birthplace, of the thirty-fourth President of the United States.” (Biggest applause of the evening.) “We all know when and where the Dewey story reaches its climax—on January twentieth in a White House that will be renovated in more ways than one. But that little building across the street is where the Dewey story began, right here in Owosso; and it’s along the banks of our own Shiawassee River” (he was beginning to make himself sick) “that it took its first steps, toward Annie Dewey’s big, friendly house on Oliver Street.
“That little stretch of land now belongs to history, and to the country as a whole. It’s our job in Owosso to manage it with the largest and most faithful sense of purpose we can muster. As you know, a week from now our city council will be holding its first discussion of this matter, so I’m going to acknowledge your patience and graciousness in listening to me and” (it was 7:53; he’d be on the water by 8:10) “turn this meeting over to the next speaker, our neighbor Al Jackson, who has asked for and been given the Dewey for President Club’s permission to speak on behalf of Citizens for the Future. Al, won’t you come up here?” (Polite, mixed-feelings applause for Jackson, who was running up the middle aisle.) “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and good night!” (Bigger, much bigger, applause. He was going to take 65 percent of this town.)
Another wink for Margaret’s friends. By the time Jackson unveiled his god-awful six-by-four-foot “artist’s conception” of the new riverbank, no one would realize Peter Cox was gone. He made his way up the side aisle, handing Annie Dewey’s letters to Carol (“Going home to write Mom?” she asked) and clapping the Grimes kid on the shoulder. The boy looked haggard.
“Where’s all that get-up-and-go, Billy?”
“It got up and went.”
“Girl trouble?”
“Yeah.”
“Join the club.”
IN THE EARLY LIGHT OF AUGUST 1, A LEFTOVER PIECE OF RIBBON fluttered on the ground at Idlewild Airport. Yesterday’s joint dedication by the President and Governor Dewey had proceeded peaceably. In fact, Dewey had been astonished to hear Truman, as if caught up in the spirit of modernity, whisper into his ear: “You’ll want to do something about the plumbing after you move in.” Was the little rooster less confident than he pretended? Or was it his idea of mockery, a little psychological warfare from somebody with nothing to lose?
Five hundred miles away, at the Owosso Community Airport, the smells of dew and gasoline mixed on the air with those of frying steak and eggs, as the first hundred or so planes flying in for the Dawn Patrol completed their landings. Before the morning was out, a hundred more were expected, along with another thousand spectators to join the thousand already there. In one of the improvised outdoor hangars, Gus Farnham polished the fuselage of his Curtiss “Jenny.” Next to him the AM radio inside a decommissioned Brewster Fighter pulled in Chicago’s WGN. Jane Powell sang about its being a most unusual day, before giving up the air to an announcer who had the latest from England on seventeen-year-old Bob Mathias’s progress in the Olympic decathlon.
Walking between the rows of planes, Tim Herrick and Margaret Feller looked like a young couple browsing Bob Harrelson’s Chevrolet showroom, but Margaret was so giddy that the field and sky seemed to her like a cartoon: the perfect shapes of the colorful planes swooping down and blowing raspberries of motor noise, the whole effect sort of sweet and silly, like a gaggle of puffing little-engines-that-could. She half expected the wingtips to be wearing white Mickey Mouse gloves that would wipe beads of sweat from chubby faces behind the propellers.
The applicant must be 16 years of age or over. The applicant shall have logged at least 35 hours of solo flight time … Included in the foregoing are at least 5 hours of cross-country flying, of which at least 3 hours shall have been solo, providing for at least one flight over a course of not less than 50 miles with at least two full-stop landings at different points on such a course. In addition, the applicant shall satisfactorily accomplish a written examination covering prevailing weather conditions in the United States … A lot of the boys—whose mothers, if they’d grown up in town, could tell them the cautionary tale of how James Oliver Curwood’s son had died in a flying accident right here in 1930—got to the table with information on private-pilot ratings and scooped up the leaflets. To Margaret’s surprise, Tim put back the one she handed to him, saying, “Nah. I don’t really want a license.”
From behind a table selling V-8, Nestle’s Quik, and orange drink, Billy Grimes, whom Al Jackson had given the weekend off, watched Tim and Margaret as if they were a movie whose sound had died. He would never be able to repair it, never again get close enough to hear either one. Billy stared at the two of them, as if the intensity of his gaze might resolder the wire that had once made them the two main posts in his life’s circuit. There wasn’t the faintest sizzle of renewed connection.
Twenty yards away, Anne Macmurray was avoiding gazes, not pressing them. “It didn’t take him long,” she said to Carol Feller, who had also seen the new blonde sitting on the trunk of Peter’s Ford.
“Second thoughts?” asked Carol.
“No.”
“Well, he’s not having them either.”
Anne wished that Jack would hurry and get back here with the coffee.
“Second thoughts about you, that is. I don’t think you’ve heard the last of him.”
“And the blonde?”
“She’s not really a thought,” said Carol. “More like a daydream. You darling man!” she exclaimed, taking two of the four cardboard cups Jack had in his well-scrubbed hands. “Now all I’ve got to do is find Harold. He drifted over to the Navy pilots’ booth while you were gone, Jack.” It was peculiar having a husband who’d been too young for the First War and too old for the Second. The accident of time had left Harold with funds of curiosity and deference he would never be able to spend. “What is it you two are signed up to do?” Carol asked as she started off.
“Jack is going to spot one of the runways.”
He would be the most perfect of mates, she decided. She told herself their children would fall off the roof and land like laughing angels in his arms. As they drank their coffee and strolled by a row of Beechcraft, Jack kept one arm around her shoulders and pointed with his coffee cup, resuming an earlier explanation of the difference between an aileron and a stabilizer, something he remembered from four months helping to retool the Ford line in ’42, before the draft took him. “The stabilizer is fixed but the aileron lets you roll.” She glanced toward Peter Cox, but he and the blonde had already quit the scene.
“Hi, Frank.” Jack set down his coffee cup on the high-school science department’s table and shook hands with Frank Sherwood, who was out here this morning to talk about the dead-reckoning method of celestial navigation to anyone who cared to listen, even if the technique was unlikely to be useful to fliers of small planes so far from an ocean.
Frank nodded to Anne. “I thought you might be here. I heard you getting up this morning.”
“I’m never as quiet as Frank,” Anne explained to Jack. “He’s a much more considerate neighbor than I am.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean—” said Frank.
“It’s true!” cried Anne. “He’s Mrs. Wagner’s favorite.” She picked up one of his star charts and admired it. Without taking time to think, she said, “I saw your prize astronomy pupil looking at some planes with Margaret Feller.” Anne thanked her lucky stars that, in the course of spinni
ng some comic tales of what went on under Mrs. Wagner’s roof, she hadn’t told Jack what she’d figured out about poor Frank.
Frank straightened the pile of charts. “This celestial navigation is actually pretty earthbound stuff.”
“How so?” asked Jack.
“Well, with real astronomy the earth hardly counts. But when you navigate by the stars you’ve got to see things in relation to where you are.” As he spoke this explanation to Jack Riley’s open, intelligent face, Frank decided Anne Macmurray was a lucky girl. So many faces this morning had seemed twitchy and peculiar, as if they weren’t used to getting up so early. Margaret Feller had given him the oddest, most pained look, and the Grimes kid had gotten positively tongue-tied when he went up to him for a soda.
Jack pointed to the Owosso High banner. “Are they paying you for this, Frank?”
“Nope. This is just a break from that big summer vacation they’re always telling us makes up for everything else.”
“Are you going to get home before summer’s over?” asked Anne, who felt guilty to be thinking how much easier it would be to have Jack spend the night, and slip out undetected the following morning, if Frank weren’t on the other side of the wall.
“No, I’ll be staying around. I don’t really have anybody back in Ohio anymore.” He looked up at the wind sock, which was half-filled but pointing as best it could in the direction of Oak Hill. This was home now; he knew that.
“Welcome!” shouted the retired Air Force major in charge of the Dawn Patrol. He urged people to make for seats behind the ropes so that the competitive drills could get under way. The throng tossed their paper cups and began a dutiful shuffle, while the major read off a list of 1948’s big aviation events, from the first jet carrier landing to the first nonstop Paris-New York commercial flight (“just sixteen hours”) to the death of Orville Wright. But the eyes of the migrating crowd were already on the first two planes, a couple of Hughes racers with open cockpits, their goggled, helmeted pilots facing into the wind and waiting for the sound of the starting gun to pull back on their sticks and take off. A moment after they were up, to everyone’s cheers, the silver planes took 270-degree turns in opposite directions, each describing an arc that suggested a hot-air balloon. Before they were out of sight, another pair were aloft, executing loops that Margaret couldn’t stop pointing to. Her gesture was more than exuberance in the presence of beauty; it was oddly functional, because unless prompted Tim didn’t seem inclined to look at the stunts.
Dewey Defeats Truman Page 13