Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  We walked through the lobby, into the theater itself, and down a side aisle toward the steps to the stage. The red velvet curtains from the old movie days still hung, still somber with dust, still gathered up by gaudy sashes that looked like swatches of Turkish pantaloons. The seats were just about filled. I noticed in the front row Adele sitting with Lucille Jackson. Lucille had Adele’s attention like a moth on a pin; I could just about see the color draining out of Adele’s face as Lucille jabbed her broad ebony finger toward the faint cleft in Adele’s chin. There were three small wooden tables set up on the stage, each with a glass and a pitcher of water on it.

  “Not yet,” Isaac said, tugging at my elbow.

  I stopped, nodded. I didn’t want to be the first one up on the stage any more than Isaac wanted me to. And despite the speed of my devolution from young politician to dog howling at the moon, I felt a spasm of true surprise that I would have even considered taking my seat before Bertelli and the moderator. I had always assumed I had an innate sense of the best light in which to put myself, and any fool knew it would make me look eager and ineffectual to be sitting at my desk like a schoolboy waiting for the others. Isaac held on to my elbow and was saying something to me and I was standing there with one foot up on the stairs leading to the stage, and it must have seemed we were engaged in one of those quick, canny chats, one of those instant Yaltas, in which the powerful divide the spoils of the world.

  A few moments later, Dr. Paul Brewer, who taught political science at the University and who had been named moderator for the evening, came down the center aisle. He was a small, stooped man, with shaggy brown hair and heavy spectacles. He wore a three-piece tweed suit and a spotted bow tie, and as he came toward the stage his large head bobbed up and down as if one of his legs were six inches shorter than the other. He bounced up to the stage and took his place at the middle table, setting his briefcase down next to his chair with a thud that was somehow as commanding as a judge’s rap of the gavel.

  Moments after that, Bertelli appeared on the opposite side of me theater. He was with a towering, slender black man with a small pointy goatee, à la Eric McDonald. The aide was holding a legal pad and was speaking with obvious animation. Bertelli walked with his small hands folded over his enormous taut belly. His eyes were hooded. He wore a voluminous brown corduroy jacket and a white turtleneck sweater.

  Bertelli took the stage. He strolled over to Brewer and the two men shook hands. Then Bertelli shaded his eyes against the white footlights and looked out into the audience. When he found whoever he was looking for he smiled and made one of those annoying peppy pointing gestures, like a has-been in a Las Vegas floorshow. There was no need to give him the stage by himself and so I made it up the steps and walked over to Brewer.

  “Hello, Dr. Brewer,” I said, stepping around Bertelli, ignoring him, “I don’t know if you remember, but I audited your class on constitutional crises six years ago, when I was in law school.”

  “Of course I remember you, Mr. Pierce,” he said. His eyes were vague; he glanced down as if embarrassed.

  “Well, Fielding,” said Bertelli, clapping his hand on my shoulder. The velvet glove of fat-boy conviviality barely covered the iron fist of his animosity toward me. Since Bertelli had no record to attack I hadn’t really spent much time on him during the campaign. When the audience was right for it, I attacked the Republicans, but Bertelli couldn’t have taken that very hard. He wasn’t much of a Republican— on his third marriage, with all those years squeezing out espresso to Sunday morning bohemians. He had bumbled into this race with some idea of himself as a token candidate whose main function was to keep the hinges of democracy oiled by making it a two-man race. But he had had luck and talent and, despite its seeming at first that my nomination was tantamount to an official appointment to the office, I had run a shitty enough campaign to make my defeat very possible. Now with just hours to go I could tell by the weight of Bertelli’s hand on me that he wanted to win at least as much as I did. Perhaps more.

  I took my seat, Bertelli took his. He poured water into his glass and drank it. The lights in the auditorium dimmed; the audience, the voters, the world, sank back into the shadows.

  “Good evening, voters,” said Dr. Brewer, folding his hands, “and welcome to this special, oh, I suppose … town meeting organized by the Greater Hyde Park Citizens’ Forum. We have with us tonight the Democratic and Republican candidates for tomorrow’s special congressional election. Both candidates have generously agreed to make this a freewheeling evening and to give us all an opportunity to ask whatever questions we wish to and to discover for ourselves what the real differences are behind the various slogans and speeches …” Dr. Brewer went on and the sound of his voice brought me back to law school, when I was all appetite with little on my plate and what was placed before me I could devour in two bites. I had spoken to Sarah about Brewer’s class in constitutional crises; his name had passed between us and now he was here and this commonplace thought made me want to cover my face with my trembling hands. I was drifting— no, I was launched and I was sailing away, I was far off at sea, just about to dip over the hump on the horizon. I heard Brewer’s voice but it was distant and empty and it was all I could do to keep my seat. The part of me that had kept me going was suddenly missing and in the inner space it had once occupied now rushed a torrent of sorrow.

  And then the introductions were over and Bertelli slowly rose from his chair to the sound of what seemed to me alarmingly generous applause. He smiled, acknowledging the audience, and leaned forward, supporting his weight with his hands on the table. The wooden legs began to tremble and he stepped back—just in time.

  “Thank you very much, Dr. Brewer, ladies and gentlemen. And the Greater Hyde Park Citizens’ Forum. As you can all see, I lost the flip of the coin over who speaks first.” He smiled, shrugged, showed his empty, guileless hands. Amazingly, there was quite a bit of generous laughter. “But with that loss out of the way, let me come right out and say that tomorrow evening, when all the votes have been counted, that I and all the people who’ve been working to make my campaign happen will be drinking champagne and making toasts. Because I know this district and I know the people in it. And I know that we are going to win this election tomorrow.” What seemed like a spontaneous wave of applause washed up toward the stage and Bertelli took a deep breath, as if he were on the shore inhaling the renewing scent of the sea. “You see, Hyde Parkers they are a funny race. We don’t like our elections to be foregone conclusions. We don’t like the governor appointing our representatives. We have a habit around here. A habit that hacks down in Springfield and over Back of the Yards would like us to break. It’s a habit called Thinking for Ourselves. When I first decided to … well”—he touched his mane of thick silver hair—“throw my beret in the ring, I believed what the so-called experts said. Enrico, you don’t have a chance. Enrico, the fix is in. Enrico, the machine’s got it all sewn up. But I love this neighborhood and the people in it. And I wanted them to have—you know the old saying: a choice not an echo. I thought, and, yes, think, the people of this district deserved something different than a freeze-dried, shrink-wrapped candidate sent to us by the fixers. And you know who the fixers are—the same snake-oil salesmen who gave us the crime rate, the war in Afghanistan, the shame of Iran, record interest rates, record inflation, and an economy that is slowing down to the tune of five percent every three months. The people of this district know me. Many of you have been friends and customers for years.This is my home. I’m not a newcomer. I’m not some fellow from New York City passing through and deciding to pluck himself a little seat in the House like it was some flower growing at the side of the road. I’ve made my whole life here and I think I understand what this district is all about. But what is more important—I’m willing to listen. I’m not part of some deal. I’m part of you and when I ask you to send me to Washington, what I’m really saying is, Let’s all go there together. And get the job done. Thank you.” Bertelli fl
ipped the back of his jacket up as he sat, as if he were wearing a morning coat. The applause was fast and loud; it formed a bright undulating wall.

  Then Brewer announced me. I didn’t want to torpedo my confidence completely by noticing how much applause I got, but as I stood it did seem that just as much noise was being made for me as for Bertelli. My table had been placed unluckily. I was directly in line with one of the footlights and now that I was standing its intense beam was shining right into my eyes. I felt a wave of panic, as if it were a naked bulb in a police interrogation room. I forgot my control for a moment and put my hand in front of my face, but then I regained my wits and moved slightly to the left. The light rushed past me, over my shoulder, like a spray of bullets I’d managed to elude. And for a moment I could make out faces in the audience—but they were the faces of strangers. Middle-aged faces, a tapestry of furrowed brows. What kind of people trudged out into the bitterness of a winter night to listen to a debate like this?

  “As an attorney,” I began, and to my immense relief my voice sounded smooth, level, “whose job it was to make certain those who violated the rights of the people were punished, I often found myself having to confront defense attorneys whose only loyalty was to their fee. Attorneys like these—and I’m sorry to say there were many of them—felt no hesitation at shading facts so they became untrue, of manipulating the emotions. And I developed the habit of keeping a note pad at my table and writing down all the points made by the other side that needed refutation if I was to make my case. And then I would take those points and do my best to knock them down, one at a time. Well, I am not an experienced debater, so tonight I thought I would try to use that same method and as I listened to Enrico Bertelli’s remarks, I kept a pad and pen with me so I could write down whatever he said that needed some reply from me.” I paused and took a deep breath. The auditorium was silent and suddenly this silence seemed a wildly hopeful sign. I reached down and took my pad off the table and turned it toward the audience. “Blank,” I said. “I could find nothing in his remarks that needed to be refuted. Nothing I care to argue. If he thinks ‘a choice not an echo’ is an old saying, when all of us know it is a slogan of the new radical right, then—well, it doesn’t really matter. And if he thinks that his having lived in this district for more years than I have gives him some special claim—well, I don’t think he would want that dangerous kind of thinking really to apply because then people might end up saying that candidates whose family’s origins are strictly American are better qualified than those of us who find our roots overseas. Perhaps all those years selling coffee have led my opponent to believe the whole world operates like advertising. New ideas. Let’s all go to Congress. Rah rah rah. But through it all there is an awful consistency. Not tonight, nor at any time during this campaign, has my opponent bothered to tell us what these new ideas are or what he would like us to do when we all troop off to Washington together. Either he has no ideas or he holds the people of this district in such utter contempt that he feels we don’t really care.”

  I glanced down because I could feel my eyes were much too intense right now and in the wrong light they could look like the eyes of a madman. When you drive the nail in too hard, you excite sympathy for your opponent. I knew this. It was something I believed. But it was somehow relaxing to stop presenting myself as a reasonable person, as a gentleman; it felt good to—well, I wasn’t really breaking the rules, but I wasn’t sticking to them all that closely, either. It’s awfully hard to speak honestly when there is a hope of somehow winning in the back of your mind. Winning calls for tactics, for a certain subtle and instinctual dissembling. But suddenly it didn’t matter very much to me whether or not I won tomorrow. And that thought was like the tap of a little silver mallet triggering my keenest, most characteristic reflex: as soon as I let go of the idea that it mattered much if I won or lost, I felt a jolt of sheer, avid certainty that it was precisely this kind of attitude that would make victory more likely.

  “I don’t know how you run a campaign based on vague slogans and meaningless hints about having new ideas. I’ve tried to make my own positions clear. Human rights at home and abroad. A concerted effort to rebuild our cities. Massive job retraining for workers who are being displaced by technology and shifting world centers of supply and demand. Stiffer corporate taxes. A three-tiered simplified tax code, with a radical reduction of write-offs and the end of all tax shelters. A thorough reappraisal of the seemingly endless drift toward more and more expenditures for defense. Scrapping the B-l bomber, scrapping the MX missile, the Trident submarine. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me.” I paused and smiled. “At least not right now.” It didn’t get a laugh but I didn’t wait for one. “But I don’t understand how you run for Congress and don’t come forward on these issues—one side or the other.” A lone pair of hands began to clap—three or four leathery bursts of applause and then silence. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, “but I’m not quite finished.” And now there really was laughter. I furrowed my brow in a way that indicated I had meant to cause this reaction. “I very much welcome this opportunity to answer any questions anyone has.”

  And so the questions began. The whole thing was chaotic and annoying. The Forum wasn’t used to meetings of this size and no provisions had been made for microphones, or any other orderly way of posing the questions to us. In the beginning, the lights were kept dimmed in the auditorium and we on the stage had no way of knowing who if anyone was raising a hand, asking for the floor. A few self-actualized souls stood up and asked their questions (or made their remarks) without our calling on them and then it was like responding to an articulate but anonymous phone call—though, in fact, some of the questions were the political equivalents to heavy breathing: How about a Bill of Rights for the Unborn? Do you believe it should be against the law for homos to work for the government?

  Finally, I demonstrated my leadership abilities by suggesting we kill the footlights and bring up the houselights. “I think the audience has seen enough of us. I’d like to take a look at you.” There was a round of applause at this—it was probably the most winning thing I’d said all evening. After a small delay in which someone from the Forum looked for a maintenance man and Bertelli punctured the hull of his own ship by crudely implying that the maintenance man was not worth his salary, the lights came on—thirty or forty flame-shaped bulbs along the east and west walls—and the faces of the audience came into view like an image swimming up from the surface of photographic paper.

  Tony Dayton had his legs tightly crossed and he was leaning over, whispering something into my sister’s ear, the same ear into which I had for years hotly confessed to what I then took as secrets but which I now, knew were merely dreams—preening, impossible dreams which, to my immense misfortune, I had now brought within my grasp. Caroline nodded and shifted slightly in her seat—away from him. I knew this pattern well: she felt him starting to fall in love with her and she was wisely back-pedaling.

  Isaac was a few seats in, near the center of the row. His eyes were closed and he was the very picture of despair. I had failed him; I had cracked beneath the pressure. He thought, I suppose, about the futility of turning a workhorse into a racehorse, an oaf into a true officer. He took this campaign as a rather easy test of character and it broke his heart to see how wildly I had failed that test, and it broke his heart even more irreparably to witness how the heat of these past couple of weeks had served to reveal an ugliness and, well, I suppose, craziness in me that he had not allowed himself to see before. He was, I felt, as angry with himself as with me, and what was more he was embarrassed.

  Sitting next to Isaac was Henry Shamansky and next to him was Sonny Marchi and one seat over sat my father, right on the edge of his seat, his eyes fixed on me in a huge and undisguised stare. He felt my gaze touch his and he slowly shook his head and gave me a smile of such sly pleasure and such wonderful complicity that I felt at once elated and destroyed. I was pleasing him in some way but for the life of me I didn
’t know how. Was I winning? Or was I somehow exposing the emptiness of the game? It seemed all my life I had been dropping bones at my father’s feet and now here I was doing more of the same, somehow able to concoct a magic that brought back spoils even from an unsuccessful hunt. I was sinking, sinking, and he was nodding and pursing his lips as if I were knocking the world on its ass and he and I were sharing a marvelous, ineffable secret: the secret of my destiny; the secret of his destiny made manifest by me. This wasn’t love. This wasn’t even something as wholesome as ambition.This was fatherhood as fever dream, relationship as hallucination.

  Bertelli was speaking now, something about how I had failed to address the central issue, which was that my candidacy was a part of a deal. I could barely hear him. My eyes went up one row and down the other, first east to west and then north to south. I had decided that if Sarah was out there I would simply step off the stage and go to her. I continued to look, deeper and deeper into the auditorium now, and the faces were smaller, less distinct, undulating behind a haze of human heat.

  Dr. Brewer interrupted Bertelli, saying, “I think as a way of keeping some order here and, one hopes, encouraging a dialogue, it would be best if we gave Mr. Pierce a chance to respond to these questions now, Mr. Bertelli.”