Of all those Presidents, Reagan was the best storyteller. He saw America as a fabulous land, a small town of sixty million Christian families who work hard, play ball, and handle their own problems. He truly believed in his story and was disinterested in other, gloomier visions. He was a Midwesterner who had long since left home to escape the Law of the Provinces (Don’t think you’re somebody. If you were, you wouldn’t be here, you’d be on the Coast) but who remained true to the Midwest’s distrust of intellect, its virtuousness and sweet sense of isolation, its nostalgia, and he retained a cozy philosophy common to successful men his age in small towns all along the Mississippi. He himself was a huge success, the most outrageously successful authentic high-flying Irish politician of his day, with a honey voice and a twinkle and a wave and a duck of the head, the most boyish seventy-five-year-old man in America, hard to lay a glove on, as light as a kite. Nothing he said ever came back to haunt him. His mastery of the air baffled and dazed his enemies, who couldn’t take seriously a man who refused to face up to the facts of the American decline. They were serious men, who trusted scholarship and experience and competence, but he revealed their crucial flaw: they had no story, and a man who has no story is a man with no truth to offer. They thought him shallow, which was irrelevant, like accusing Will Rogers of not writing a novel: so what? His talent was to be a hearty, graceful public man, a royal President. A genial uncle, the first one you’d want at your wedding to make a toast and charm the in-laws, the last one you would choose to trouble with the information that you are pregnant and feel lousy. He himself went out of his way to avoid upsetting people. He told no bad news. He never uttered a sentence that didn’t have at least a ninety-percent chance of public approval.
When Reagan retired from the field, he left his opponents covered with dust, discouraged. Few had the heart to argue that he was a dishonest and disastrous President because the ones he was most dishonest to (Christian fundamentalists) and most disastrous for (people under thirty) supported him in droves, and when the people speak so clearly, the minority ought to shut up and listen. In 1984 when I went in the booth and voted for Mondale-Ferraro, the lever felt cold and dry, as if untouched by human hands. I went home and before supper was over Mondale had lost forty-nine states, carrying only Minnesota. If you could win only one state out of the Union, I suppose Minnesota would be your first choice, but it made for a short evening. Tom Arndt and I zipped over to Democratic headquarters at a hockey rink in St. Paul to cheer for our man and found a small crowd thinly milling around, people looking for people who weren’t there, like a fortieth annual reunion of something. Wan liberal faces from civil-rights and antiwar days, snooty feminists, old union guys, hairy leftists: My Old Gang. We had been so right for so long about so many things that the American people refused to vote for us out of pure resentment. The sheer mass of Reagan’s victory loomed above us like Mount McKinley.
In Lake Wobegon, we grew up with bad news. Since I was a little kid I heard it wafting up through the heat duct from the kitchen below. Our relatives came to visit on Saturday evenings and after we kids were packed off to bed, the grownups sat up late until ten-thirty or eleven and talked about sickness, unhappiness, divorce, violence, and all the sorrows they felt obliged to shelter children from, and I lay on the bedroom floor and listened in, soaking up information. Two high-school boys and a girl, killed when the car slammed into a tree at ninety miles an hour, at 2:00 A.M. the night before graduation, only the driver survived, the one who was drunk. A cousin was sick, whose husband had run away and whose son had drowned at age eighteen, doctors didn’t give her long. The son’s girlfriend had never recovered from the shock. That sweet black-haired girl had tried to kill herself twice. The drunk driver was the husband’s nephew. The voices were soft and low. “I donno. He’s like a different person entirely. He doesn’t look good at all but he won’t hear about seeing a doctor. I think it’s his heart. His mother died of heart trouble and she was heavy like him. I think he drinks too.” A chair creaked shnkknk and someone shuffled over stiplstoplstiplstople and poured a cup of coffee, bliblibliblibliblibliblib. An edgy silence. Throat clearing. “She tried to kill herself by dropping an electric fan in the bathtub. Then she tried to row out on the lake but the waves were too high. I don’t know. She never got over him, that’s for sure. You want more banana bread? It’s fresh, I just baked it. Here.”
They are still down there in the kitchen, my beloved aunts and dear uncles, drinking coffee, murmuring, discussing the sorrows of the world, protecting me from bad news, and I’m still in the bedroom, listening at the grate.
Farewell, Mr. President.
Long live American humor.
We are getting old, a terrible mistake, and that’s no joke.
What’s really funny is that we are still married.
1
PIECES
END OF THE TRAIL
THE LAST CIGARETTE SMOKERS in America were located in a box canyon south of Donner Pass in the High Sierra by two federal tobacco agents in a helicopter who spotted the little smoke puffs just before noon. One of them, Ames, the district chief, called in the ground team by air-to-ground radio. Six men in camouflage outfits, members of a crack anti-smoking joggers unit, moved quickly across the rugged terrain, surrounded the bunch in their hideout, subdued them with tear gas, and made them lie face down on the gravel in the hot August sun. There were three females and two males, all in their mid-forties. They had been on the run since the adoption of the Twenty-eighth Amendment.
Ames, a trim, muscular man in neatly pressed khakis who carried a riding crop, paced back and forth along the row of prisoners, their shoe soles motionless. “What are you people using for brains? Can’t you read?” he snapped, flicking the crop at their ankles. He bent down and snatched up an empty Marlboro pack and thrust it in the face of a pale, sweaty man whose breath came in short, terrified gasps. “Look at this! This warning has been there for decades! Want me to read it to you? Want me to give you the statistics? What does it take to make you understand? Look at me! Speak up! I can’t hear you!”
In fact, the smokers had been very subdued since long, long before the acrid tear-gas fumes drifted into their hideout, a narrow cave near the canyon mouth. They knew the end was near. Days before, they had lost radio contact with the only other band of smokers they knew of: five writers holed up in an Oakland apartment. It had been three weeks since the Donner group’s last supply drop from the air, forty pounds of barbecued ribs, ten Picnic Tubs of Jimbo deep-fried chicken, and six cartons of smokes, all mentholated. Agents who searched the cave found exactly two cigarettes. There was not a single shred of tobacco found in any of the thousands of discarded butts. The two cigarettes were hidden in the lining of a sleeping bag, and the general disorder in the cave—clothing and personal effects strewn from hell to breakfast—indicated that some smokers had searched frantically for a smoke that very morning. Blackened remnants of what appeared to be cabbage leaves lay in the smoldering campfire.
“Move ’em out of here!” Ames said. “They disgust me.”
Among the personal effects were four empty packs, carefully slit open, the blank insides covered with handwriting. An agent picked them up and put them in a plastic bag, for evidence. They read:Dear Lindsay & Matt—
This is to let y. know I’m OK & w. friends tho how this w. reach you I dont know. 5 of us are in the mts (dont know where). I never thot it wld come to this. All those yrs as ashtrays vanishd fr parties & old pals made sarc remarks & FAA crackd down & smoke sect. became closet, I thot if I just was discreet & smokd in prv & took mints I’d get by but then yr dad quit & I had to go undergrnd. Bsmnt, gar., wet twls, A/C, etc. Felt guilty but contd, couldnt stop. Or didnt. Too late for that now. Gotta go on midnt watch. More soon.
Love,
Mother.
My Dear Children—
Down to 1 cart. PIMls. Not my fav. Down to 1 cg/day. After supper. Hate to say it but it tastes fant. So rich, so mild. I know you never ap
provd. Sorry. In 50s it was diffrnt, we all smokd like movie stars. So gracefl, tak’g cg from pk, the mtch, the lite, one smooth move. Food, sex, then smoke. Lng drags. Lrnd Fr. exh. Then sudd. it was 82 and signs apprd (Thanx for Not S). In my home! Kids naggng like fishwives & yr dad sudd. went out for track. I felt ambushed. Bob Dylan smokd, Carson, Beatles. I mean WE’RE NOT CRIMINALS. Sorry. Too late now. More soon.
Love,
Mother.
Dear Kids—
This may be last letter, theyre closing in. Planes o’head every day now. Dogs in dist. Men w. ldspkrs. Flares. Oakland chapt got busted last pm. Was w. them on radio when feds came. Reminded me of when yr dad turnd me in. After supper. Knew he was a nut but didnt know he was a creep. Cops surr. hse, I snk away thru bushes. No time to say g-b to y. Sorry. Wld you believe I quit twice yrs ago, once fr 8 mo. I’m not a terrible wom. y’know. Sorry. Know this is hard on y. Me too. We’re down to 2 pks & everybody’s tense. Got to go chk perimtr. Goodbye.
Love,
Mother.
Dear L & M—
This is it. They saw us. I have one left and am smokng it now. Gd it tastes gd. My last cg. Then its all over. I’m OK. I’m ready. Its a better thng I do now than I hv ever done. I love you both....
The five smokers were handcuffed and transported to a federal detention camp in Oregon, where they were held in pup tents for months. They were charged with conspiracy to obtain, and willful possession of, tobacco, and were convicted in minutes, and were sentenced to write twenty thousand words apiece on the topic “Personal Integrity” by a judge who had quit cigarettes when the price went to thirty-five cents and he could not justify the expense.
The author of the letters was soon reunited with her children, and one night, while crossing a busy intersection near their home in Chicago, she saved them from sure death by pulling them back from the path of a speeding car. Her husband, who had just been telling her she could stand to lose some weight, was killed instantly, however.
THREE NEW TWINS JOIN CLUB IN SPRING
MY TEAM WON the World Series. You thought we couldn’t but we knew we would and we did, and what did your team do? Not much. Now we’re heading down to spring training looking even better than before, and your team that looked pitiful then looks even less hot now. Your hometown paper doesn’t say so, but your lead-off guy had a bad ear infection in January and now he gets dizzy at the first sign of stress and falls down in a heap. Sad. Your cleanup guy spent the winter cleaning his plate. He had to buy new clothes in a size they don’t sell at regular stores. Your great relief guy, his life has been changed by the Rama Lama Ding Dong, and he is now serenely throwing the ball from a place deep within himself, near his gallbladder. What a shame. Your rookie outfielder set a world record for throwing a frozen chicken, at a promotional appearance for Grandma Fanny’s Farm Foods. Something snapped in his armpit and now he can’t even throw a pair of dice. Tough beans. Your big lefthander tried hypnosis to stop smoking and while in a trancelike state discovered he hated his mother for tying his tiny right hand behind his back and making him eat and draw and tinkle with his left. So he’s right-handed now, a little awkward but gradually learning to point with it and wave goodbye. That’s what your whole team’ll be doing by early May.
Meanwhile, my team, the world-champion Minnesota Twins, are top dogs who look like a lead-pipe cinch to take all the marbles in a slow walk. My guys had a good winter doing youth work. Last October they pooled their Series pay to purchase a farm, Twin Acres, north of Willmar, where they could stay in shape doing chores in the off-season, and they loved it so much they stayed through Thanksgiving and Christmas (celebrating them the good old-fashioned Midwestern way), and raised a new barn, bought a powerful new seed drill to plant winter wheat with, built up the flock of purebred Leghorns, chopped wood, carried water, etc., along with their guests—delinquent boys and girls from St. Louis and Detroit who needed to get out of those sick destructive environments and learn personal values such as honesty and personal cleanliness. Meanwhile, back in Minneapolis, the Twins front office wasn’t asleep on its laurels but through shrewd deals made mostly before 8:15 A.M. added to what they had while giving up nothing in return. They did so great, it seems unfair.
OTHER TEAMS GNASH TEETH OR SULK
It’s considered impossible to obtain three top premium players without paying a red cent, but the Twins:
¶Traded away some useless air rights and obtained Chuck Johnson (23, 187 lbs., 6’1”, bats left, throws left), a native of Little Falls, Minnesota. Maybe that’s why the scouts who work the Finger Lakes League ignored his phenomenal season with the Seneca Falls Susans. They figured, “Minnesota? Forget it!” But how can you forget thirty-eight doubles, twenty-two triples, and twenty-nine round-trippers—and in spacious Elizabeth Cady Stanton Stadium! That’s a lot of power for a lifelong liberal like Chuck. And what’s more, he never struck out. Not once. Plays all positions cheerfully.
¶Sent a couple in their mid-forties to the San Diego Padres in exchange for Duane (Madman) Mueller (29, 280 lbs., 6’2”, right/ right, a.k.a. Mule, Hired Hand, The Barber). Duane is a big secret because after he was suspended by the Texas League for throwing too hard he played Nicaraguan winter ball for three years and then spent two more doing humanitarian stuff, so scouts forgot how, back when he was with the Amarillo Compadres, nobody wanted to be behind the plate, Duane threw so hard. His own team kept yelling, “Not so hard, man!” If that sounds dumb, then you never saw him throw: he threw hard. A devoted Lutheran, he never ever hit a batter, but in one game a pitch of his nicked the bill of an opponent’s batting helmet and spun it so hard it burned off the man’s eyebrows. No serious injury, but big Duane took himself out of organized ball until he could learn an off-speed pitch. He’s from Brainerd, Minnesota, where he lives across the street from his folks. His mom played kittenball in the fifties and had a good arm but not like her son’s. She thinks he got it from delivering papers and whipping cake mix. “I’d sure hate to have to bat against him,” she says.
¶Gave up a dingy two-bedroom house in St. Paul (it needs more than just a paint job and a new roof, and it’s near a rendering plant) to acquire and activate Bob Berg (24, 112 lbs., 5’3”, right/left), the fastest man on the basepaths today (we think), but he sat out last year and the year before last and the year before that because he didn’t have shoes. Reason: he’s so fast he runs the shoes right off his feet. Now athletic foot specialists have studied his film clips (sad to see: three lightning strides, a look of dismay on Bob’s face, and down he goes with his loose laces like a lasso round his ankles) and come up with a new pair of pigskin shoes with barbed cleats that stick in the turf and slow him down. Born and raised in Eveleth, Minnesota, he is probably the nicest fast man in baseball. Nicknamed The Hulk (“berg” means “mountain” in Norwegian). He used those three years on the bench to earn a B.A. in history, by the way.
THAT’S NOT ALL
¶Joining the team later will be Wally Gunderson (17, 191 lbs., 6’4”, left/right), who dons a Twins uniform June 8, the day after he graduates from West High in Minneapolis. The Twins have saved him a number, 18, and assigned him a locker and paid him a bonus, twelve hundred dollars, which was all he would accept. He’s thrilled just to be on the team. A big lanky loose-jointed kid with long wavy blond hair and a goofy grin, he throws a screwball that comes in and up, a slider that suddenly jumps, a curve that drops off the table, and a stinkball that hangs in the air so long some batters swing twice. You don’t expect so much junk from an Eagle Scout, but Wally’s got one more: a fastball that decelerates rapidly halfway to the plate—a braking pitch. Some he learned from his dad and the rest he invented for a Science Fair project. “Pitching is physics, that’s all,” he says, looking down at his size-13 shoes, uneasy at all the acclaim.
Detroit and St. Louis offered the lad millions in cash, land, jewelry, servants, tax abatements, but he wasn’t listening. “I want to play my ball where my roots are,” he says quietly.
Twinsville wasn’t one bit surprised. Personal character and loyalty and dedication are what got us where we are right now, and that’s on top. We’re No. 1. We knew it first and now you know it, too. You thought we were quiet and modest in the Midwest but that’s because you’re dumb, as dumb as a stump, dumber than dirt.
You’re so dumb you don’t know that we’re on top and you’re below. Our team wins and your team loses; we need your team to amuse us. Minnesota soybeans, corn, and barley; we’re the best, so beat it, Charley, or we’ll shell ya like a pea pod, dunk ya like a doughnut—sure be nice when the game’s over, won’t it—take ya to the cleaners for a brand-new hairdo. We can beat ya anytime we care to. Shave and a haircut, two bits.
YOUR BOOK SAVED MY LIFE, MISTER
ALL OF MY BOOKS, including Wagons Westward!!! Hiiiii-YAW and Ck-ck Giddup Beauty! C’mon Big Girl, Awaaaaayy! and Pa! Look Out! It’s—Aiiiiieee!, have been difficult for my readers, I guess, judging from their reactions when they see me shopping at Val-Mar or sitting in the Quad County Library & Media Center. After a rough morning at the keyboard, I sort of like to slip into my black leather vest, big white hat, and red kerchief, same as in the book-jacket photos, and saunter up and down the aisle by the fruit and other perishable items and let my fans have the thrill of running into me, and if nobody does I park myself at a table dead smack in front of the Western-adventure shelf in Quad County’s fiction department, lean back, plant my big boots on the table, and prepare to endure the terrible price of celebrity, but it’s not uncommon for a reader to come by, glance down, and say, “Aren’t you Dusty Pages, the author of Ck-ck Giddup Beauty! C’mon Big Girl, Awaaaaayy!” and when I look down and blush and say, “Well, yes, ma’am, I reckon I am him,” she says, “I thought so. You look just like him.” Then an awful silence while she studies the shelf and selects Ray A. James, Jr., or Chuck Young or another of my rivals. It’s a painful moment for an author, the reader two feet away and moments passing during which she does not say, “Your books have meant so much to me,” or “I can’t tell you how much I admire your work.” She just reaches past the author like he was a sack of potatoes and chooses a book by somebody else. Same thing happens with men. They say, “You’re an author, aren’tcha? I read a book of yours once, what was the name of it?”
We Are Still Married Page 2