America America (41 page)

“It’s impressive, sir.”

“It is, isn’t it? He tried his damnedest to be American.”

“I’d say he succeeded.”

“Their obligation was paid when he was thirteen, Corey, and inside of a year he and Granddad had opened the hardware. Sold farm equipment to the other Scots and Irish who were coming into the country around then. I mean mechanized farm equipment. New-world stuff. Geared run-behind threshers and steam plows. You could still use some of it today.” He looked up at the pulley on the hayloft gable. “I guess I still do,” he said, “don’t I?”

“No one’s come up with anything better, Mr. Metarey.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” He laughed. “And that same year they sent for my grandmother and my uncles. In less than a decade they had an oil well, up in Saskatchewan. And the anthracite mine down in Cape Breton. Did it all in Canada. Soon Rockefeller was taking them out on Long Island Sound on his boat. John D. Rockefeller, I mean. A five-masted schooner, I’ve seen the pictures. In 1901, I think that was. And in 1921, my father was the one who convinced a young state senator to run for governor of New York. He was always a Democrat, my father. Never forgot his past. Doesn’t always work that way, does it?” He looked up the driveway again. “You know who the state senator was?”

“No sir.”

“Franklin Roosevelt.”

At that moment, as if on cue, Henry Bonwiller’s dark Cadillac appeared. It emerged from between the sycamores and made its way slowly up the center of the entry lane. The top was closed, but as the car passed a group of workers winching tight the guy wires of the main tent, the Senator leaned out from the back window and waved, keeping his hand up as though there were a crowd there even after he had rounded the long curve and the men had turned back to their task. Carlton Sample was driving. He kept a stately pace, but as soon as he pulled over in front of the house he hopped out, went briskly around to the far side of the car, and opened the door. Next to me, Mr. Metarey stiffened. I’d only seen Mrs. Bonwiller one other time, on the day the Senator announced his candidacy, and now I only saw her dark coat and the back of her pushed-up hairdo as she moved quickly to the steps with Carlton Sample and disappeared into the house.

Then Henry Bonwiller emerged, stretching his arms and waving again before he turned and strode up the stairs himself, as convincingly as if this were the day he’d been elected president. I was watching Mr. Metarey’s face now. If I had to put a word to it, I’d say he looked afraid.

“And he walketh about,” he said softly, “seeking whom he may devour.”

“I’ll finish getting the chairs out.”

He turned back to me. “I know all this,” he said, “because I’ve read about it. You know what it’s like to read about your father in a history book?”

“I imagine it’d be nice, sir.”

He glanced over at me and laughed again. A short, surprised chuckle like the knot coming untied on a balloon. Then he tousled my hair. “You’re right. It should be nice. Let’s get those chairs out.”

I leaned down to slide the pallet away from the hay pulley, and it was then, when he reached to help me, that I smelled the liquor.

It was the first time ever. I might have paused for a moment.

“They’re all coming,” he said, “because they think Henry Bonwiller’s going to drop out of the race today.”

I took a chance. “He’s not going to?”

“No, he’s not, Corey. He’s been up all night writing a battle speech. I know because I’ve been on the phone with him since three o’clock this morning. Thought I could convince him this time, but no. Thinks he can tough it out. We’re going with the original plan.”

Another whiff of liquor reached me.

“They’re all here for the hanging, Corey.”

“Sir?”

“Our guests. Henry’s right about one thing, at least. If I know anything about human nature, we’re going to get a rather capacious crowd.”

“I can bring out the chairs from the north storage.”

“And he’s gone again and hired Ray White, too, just like he said. Lord, it should have been just a goddamn press briefing. A short speech and a typed statement and then he should have been with his lawyers. But now we’re roasting pigs. Bought out every bottle at Grant’s and McBride’s, and Gil’s gone into Islington for more.” His expression slackened for a moment, but then he brought it firm. “Well, I guess we could use it, right? Either Henry’s on the money about the nature of late-twentieth-century man or we’re going to have the largest bill in history for a press corps lynching set to rhythm and blues.”

“Ray White knows what’s going on, too?”

“Everybody in the country knows what’s going on, Corey. It’s all wrong—wrong as can be. Henry doesn’t understand what’s about to happen. He thinks a good ol’ time for a bunch of reporters is all it’s going to take.”

“Maybe it will turn out all right.”

“Of course it will, in the end. That’s about the only comfort I can take.”

Just then, two campaign aides came hurrying across the lawn to speak to him, and this ended up being the last thing Mr. Metarey said to me. I went back to the pallets of chairs, and within a few minutes, the buses had begun to arrive. And after that they continued to appear out of the trees all morning, dropping off their riders at the parking circle and then rolling down the long driveway to park in the lowland behind the berms. The AFL-CIO sent in a load of rank and file from Rochester, and the Teamsters arrived in their own caravan of big rigs, blowing their air horns as they made their way down the turnaround. The Mine Workers and the UAW sent good-sized contingents, too; and even Council 82, the policeman’s union, showed up in uniform to help direct traffic. Shortly after that, the journalists began arriving in buses that had been sent up to Buffalo Airport by the campaign. That’s how many of them made the trip. And their support trucks followed soon after, idling their engines while the television crews rolled camera carts onto the western lawn and the on-air reporters began rehearsing, turning their made-up faces away from the sun. And even as the hundreds of ordinary guests were streaming from the parking lots into the tent, the local hires were still carting cases of drinks from the back of the maintenance station wagon onto blocks of ice behind the garages; a man I’d never seen before was driving Gil McKinstrey’s car, and he would wait only as long as it took to unload one batch of supplies before he headed up the drive for another.

By eleven in the morning, Gil and his crew from town had set up half a dozen bars under the main tent. The common citizens and the union rank and file gathered in clumps around them, while on the other side of the great lawn, under a smaller canopy where waiters moved about with trays, the politicians and the organizers and the union leaders mingled with the reporters. Liam Metarey walked among this crowd. So did Milton Shapp, the governor of Pennsylvania, and Roy Wilkins from the NAACP—later, I heard that Jimmy Hoffa had been there, too—and several of the judges and out-of-state advisors that I’d been seeing around the house. It was an impressive group, but certainly not the most impressive I’d ever seen there.

By noon, the whole tent was full and the crowd had spilled out onto the slope behind the stage. A good part of it was press, maybe three hundred in all, and maybe that number again were political operatives and campaign workers; but the rest were either supporters, or union members, or just townspeople from Saline and Steppan, whom the Senator had invited to swell out his support, and they were pressing in around the spits of roast pig and still clumping around the bars.

I had to agree with Liam Metarey: it was all wrong.

At one point, when I went into the house, I found a man in the living room, picking up the carved turtle ashtrays and examining them, and another man standing in front of the great stone hearth, trying to gauge its height with his arm. Two women were in the downstairs hall, eyeing the rows of photographs on the wall and the long Persian runner on the floor. I doubted that anybody from Saline or Steppan would have been so forward, or even anybody from Islington, but there was another group loitering in the entrance hall under the grand portrait of Eoghan Metarey, and I think it was only his stare that kept them from coming the rest of the way into the house. An unspoken point of decorum seemed to have broken down.

After the pig roast, the plan was for a few local politicians to warm up the crowd—waiters would be circulating with drinks—and after that for the Senator to take the stage. He would talk for twenty minutes, addressing the allegations but then turning quickly to the war, and during his talk the staff would distribute a statement. There would be no questions. This, I understood, was the Senator’s own decision: as soon as the speech was over, he would depart for Chattanooga, to give the impression of a normally functioning campaign. And the next day, he hoped, he would wake to find that
The New York Times
and the Nashville
Tennessean
and the Hearst newspapers and the Ridder newspapers and the three evening news shows had all softened their stances against him. Once he’d left, Ray White was going to play, and the crowd would be invited to stay into the night.

To this day I’m a student of politics, and it never fails to surprise me that journalists, and politicians, and all the people whom my profession now calls
opinion makers
, can still be swayed with just a few of the right gifts and the right trips, with just a few of the right drinks and the right singers and the right last names, and that the citizenry, in turn, by the millions and millions, can still be brought in line behind them. And it’s only grown worse. Henry Bonwiller has disappeared now from the public eye, and I know, for example, that not many young people the age of my daughters even know who he was anymore. Or that he was instrumental in getting our troops home from Southeast Asia. Or that he funded the environmental protections that cleaned up Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. And the health laws that still allow a pregnant woman in our state, even if she doesn’t have any money, to get some of the best medical care in the world for herself and her child. And I suppose nobody rises to a position of power without cunning. But it still surprises me to see, as I have now time and again over the years, the mixture in a single person of such public idealism and such personal ruthlessness.

As lunch was ending, one of the Senator’s aides asked me to dolly a split case of vodka and bourbon and a box of mixers upstairs to the south library. This meant that a meeting was planned for later. I wondered what that implied, since the Senator himself would be on his way to Tennessee. Would some of his staff be throwing their support elsewhere? Was a betrayal being contemplated? At this point in the party plenty of liquor still remained, and I put together a case of mixers and a tray of appetizers from the pantry. As another of the state political speakers took the stage, I carried them inside on a kitchen dolly. As I entered the library with it I let the door swing shut, and when I turned to set down the liquor I saw Mr. and Mrs. Metarey on the couch across from a man I didn’t recognize. He was sitting in a chair with a small pad open on his lap.

“Hello, Corey,” said Mrs. Metarey.

“Excuse me, I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Corey,” said Mrs. Metarey, “this is our friend Joe Campbell. From the Federal Bureau of Assassination.”

“June—” said Mr. Metarey.

The man looked at me briefly, then back at Mr. Metarey.

“He’s just having a lovely time at the party. Aren’t you, Mr. Campbell?”

“June.”

I opened the door and wheeled the dolly back out. As I pulled the knob closed behind me, I heard the man say, “We’re offering you the choice, sir.”

Outside now, there was a raucous edge to the conversations that spun around me as I wedged and pushed my way through the knots of bodies toward the bar. I had to tell someone. I thought of Christian and even Clara, and for a moment when I glimpsed Governor Shapp in a nearby crowd, I even considered telling
him
; but it was Gil McKinstrey I finally stumbled on, spinning a blender of ice.

“Something’s going on,” I blurted.

“What is it?” he answered with annoyance, flicking the blender switch to clear the blades.

“Mr. Metarey’s upstairs in the south library.” I lowered my voice. “I think he’s with the FBI.”

He turned the blender on and left it running. Then he leaned over.

“Two things,” he said. “One is that Mr. Metarey can handle anything that comes his way. And two is keep your mouth shut.” He nodded toward the thicket of reporters on the other side of the bar.

People pushed past, pressing their way closer to the drinks. What choice was Liam Metarey being given? Was he being asked to force the Senator out of the race? Was that the equation? Was he being coerced to turn against him? To speak as a witness in exchange for immunity? And if he chose not to, was he going to lose that immunity himself?

At that moment something changed in the sound of the crowd, and when I turned I saw Governor Shapp making his way to the front of the tent. Milton Shapp was popular with the unions in those days, and in four years he would run for president himself, so there were a multitude of hands for him to shake as he moved down the aisle toward the stage. Mrs. Metarey and the girls had taken seats in the front row now, and I could see Christian’s rose-colored dress and the top of Clara’s dark hat. Next to them were two teenage boys, and I recognized Senator Bonwiller’s sons. Governor Shapp stopped to shake their hands, too, and Christian looked beautiful when she stood; but as soon as he turned she sat down again. I think she was embarrassed. Flashbulbs were going off around them. I suppose I would have been, too.

Governor Shapp then climbed the stairs to the podium; but when he got there he didn’t make any kind of speech. He merely gripped the microphone, introduced Henry Bonwiller with a couple of sentences, and stepped aside before the Senator could shake his hand in front of any cameras.

This, I suppose, was as grave an omen as we would ever receive.

The Senator in the meantime had entered through a flap at the back of the stage, his wife beside him, and now the two of them crossed to the front, holding hands, while Milton Shapp climbed quickly down the stairs; when the Bonwillers reached the podium they raised their arms to the crowd, squinting into the commotion of flashbulbs. Mrs. Bonwiller was a tall, thin-boned woman a few years younger than the Senator. She came from an old southern political family—her father had been an ambassador in the Johnson administration—and I could see the game attempt she was making at composure; but what I remember most from that moment was not her stymied grace or the faint flinching of her jaw but the fact that I saw, as they held their clasped hands up between them, that she looked a little like JoEllen Charney. It was the eyes and mouth.