Primary Colors (24 page)

"Stable," he said. "Finally. Harris's movin' a little. Up near Undecided. We're half that. I'm a little worried about Charlie Martin. They may be ready to give him a second look. Reason they haven't so far is there's been so much bad news 'bout us. Crowded him out."

"Oh, here's another thing," Richard said. "You want to hear the best fucking thing yet? Ozio's back. At least, he's within a hundred miles. He's giving a speech at Harvard tomorrow night. Says he isn't encouraging a write-in campaign, but there's, get this, no way he can, morally-morally!-stand between a voter and his or her conscience if she or he wants to write in his name or names."

"Great," I said.

"Forget Ozio," Daisy said. "Actually, it may not be bad-say he takes two or three percent. We weren't getting that anyway-right, Leon? It just takes from Harris. Anything that takes from Harris we are just in fucking love with."

"Look," Lucille said, "we gotta decide." She was standing over the dining room table, holding a Magic Marker. Seven large pieces of poster paper in front of her. Seven days. "We've got a rally set for
Concord Saturday night. Do we kill it or what? What are the logistics? Where's Lieberman?"

Daisy called him at the Manchester headquarters. "Durham? .. . Yeah, but we want real people, not just college kids. In fact, if we do this, I want someone independent-get some fucking newspaper people, not the Union Leader, someone real-to pick the audience. The other thing is, if we do Durham, can we still do Concord? Push it back how much? . . . You think that's late? Okay. We'll talk about it. And we have until when for the buy? . . . Okay."

She looked around the room: "We can do it out of the public station at the university. We have until noon to decide. Someone want to call the governor?"

He came in for an hour in the afternoon and napped. I saw hint just after he awakened, bleary-eyed, feverish, coughing, eating-polishing off some of the dreadful, reheated Campbell's minestrone the hotel peddled through room service. "Okay, Henry, we gotta call Willie," he said. "You make sure no one comes in here while that's happening. Where's Susan?"

"Nashua," I said. "Nursing homes."

"Good." He dialed it himself. "Willie? Hey, man-got your mojo workin'? . . . Yeah, well, it'll pick up when the weather turns. Look, I know this must be just awful for you, just the worst. And I'm gonna help you through this every way I can, just like always. But you gotta know: I didn't have anything to do with this. You understand?" He really sounded convincing. "God, Willie. You know, with all the talk around about, ah . . . me, I'm sure she was thinkin'-well, you know, how kids are, teenagers. . . . Yeah, I know. I know. You and Amalee worked real hard at raisin' her right. I can't imagine what this would be like. But you have to know, Willie, I'll be standin' right by you in this. I will help every way I can. . . . She's gettin' care, right? That's important now. You don't want her thinkin"bout doing anything crazy now. . . . Now, look, I've got to get through the next week up here. It's gonna be a rough pull, all this stuff they're throwin' at me. But I'll be back for a few hours next week and we'll sit down and work this out. . . . Be cool now You have to give me this chance, yo
u h
ave to believe me. . . . It's gonna work out. I know it seems dark right now, but you still gonna' get the chance to open that branch up in the nation's capital, just like I said you would. I'd just die without your magic sauce-and without your friendship, Willie. . . . I'll stand with you now. . . . Anything you need, my man."

He hung up and stared into space.

Danny Scanlon was waiting for us in the lobby with snore apple fritters. The governor didn't wait for the van; he grabbed two right there-not good. There was a lot of action in the lobby: camera crews from Japan and somewhere in the north of Europe-Sweden, maybe-were getting ready to move out; campaign workers; scorps. Cal Allerad, an enormously successful snail-order businessman who was running a vanity campaign against the president in the Republican primary and had put something like six hundred thousand dollars on the air was trying to chat up scorps, who weren't buying. Over in a corner, Geraldo, who was taping a week's worth of shows in two days-sex and politics, stress and politics, media gurus, etc., etc.-was giving instructions to his staff, which seemed to consist only of astonishingly good-looking women. He spotted Stanton and abruptly tried to plow through the crowd. "He's gonna want you as a guest," I said. "The answer is no."

"Governor, Governor," he said.

"Hey, buddy," Stanton said, looking just incredibly pleased to see him. "What brings you up to the frozen north?"

"You! All America wants to know how you're gettin' through this. There's a lot of sympathy out there, Governor. Folks think you're get-tin' a bum deal."

"No kiddin'." Stanton wasn't buying. He was eyeing the door, beginning to move.

Geraldo moved with him. "Look, you need to get your side of the story out. I can help you. We can do it any way you want, you set the ground rules."

Stanton stopped, stared at him: "Okay. Here are the ground rules: I'm the host and I pick the audience. How 'bout that?"

"Well," Geraldo said. "What about me?"

"Take the day off." Stanton laughed. "Go skiing. Look, I'm sorry. We've got a very tight schedule, and a very tough race." And we pushed on past him, toward the doors.

Jerry Rosen was moving out the door just as we were, although I didn't recognize him at first, all bundled up with a knit cap pulled down over his eyebrows. He looked ridiculous, as if his mother had just dressed him for school. "Hey, Jer, you look like Nanook of the North," the governor said.

"Cold out there, Governor," he said. "How you doin'?" "Pluggin' away. You comin' to Portsmouth with us?" "Naww--goin' down to Boston to see Ozio." He seemed almos
t a
pologetic. "Gotta stick with the local story." He shrugged.

Stanton put a conciliatory arm over his shoulders. "That's okay, Jerry. You gotta do what you gotta do. So, what'ya think?"

"Not good," he said. "I hear the Globe tracking has you down to the high teens. They say Martin's beginning to hot up."

It was old news--but interesting. We'd known the bottom had fallen out since Sunday; the scorps were just beginning to catch on. Rosen figured we were dead. You could see it in his body language, you could hear it in his voice.

"Jerry," Stanton said, fixing him with the old, entirely compelling Stanton intensity. "Listen to me. This is not over yet. It's not--" and he began to cough. We moved toward the van. Stanton ducked in, then looked back toward Rosen and smiled. "I'm gonna surprise you, Jerry."

"I hope so, Governor," Rosen said, opening up a little--then shutting down again abruptly, looking quickly around to see if any of his colleagues had caught his moment of weakness.

"Asshole," Stanton said, as we rolled off. "I'm last week and he's lookin' for next week. If he thinks next week is gonna be Ozio, he's nuts. But it's interesting, none of them think next week is going to be Harris. That fucker is going to win this thing, and everyone's already discounting it. They are looking for another storyline. If we're close, if we do better than expected, we're their story."

"You think so?" I asked.

"Who knows?" he said. "Danny, where are those fritters?"

"Here, G-governor," Danny offered them up front. "Y-y'know, y-you're gettin' too f-fat to be a corpse."

"Fatten' me up for the kill," Stanton said. "Least I won't die hungry."

The funeral would be well attended. The crowd in Portsmouth that night was astonishing. They were jammed into a small, bare, cinder-block union hall-it was an obscure local of a dying craft, a nineteenth-century vestige: the steamfitters, pipe welders or iron benders-something like that: a fraternal organization for people left behind, shipyard folks. They were sallow, defiantly overweight, both men and women wearing union or tavern windbreakers, sock hats, the men with facial hair, some of the women in curlers and smoking long cigarettes. There was a table in the back with coffee, cookies, tuna sandwiches on small, soft dinner rolls; another table with Stanton literature, which seemed as stale and discolored as the tuna. We were reaching the end of this thing.

We came in through the rear, through a rush of noise-Terry O'Leary, an ancient, gray man dressed entirely in polyester (burgundy jacket, yellowish shirt, stained striped gray tie, gray slacks) was playing jigs on the accordion, smiling wide through scattered teeth. He stopped when the governor came-played the first, famous bars of "Hail to the Chief," which would have seemed a cheesy sort of mockery if the old man hadn't assembled himself upright, in some distant shadow of martial dignity, chin tilted up, shoulders square. The music silenced the hall. Jerry Delmonico, the local president-an aging Elvis, his pompadour gone gray and thinning in the back-welcomed the governor, and said, "Now, Terry, howsabout let's play the national anthem." Which Terry did, and they all sang along, and then recited the Pledge of Allegiance. I could see jack Stanton was moved: this was the other end of the earth from the crowd in Los Angeles. It seemed, I thought, as if they hadn't been following the news the past few weeks, as if they had suddenly materialized from some pre-tabloid, pre-skeptical past-but that was wishful thinking on my part. Mickey Flanagan, the young-but ancient in the Boston way-advance gu
y w
ho'd worked this stop, found me off to the side of the hall, grimaced and shrugged. " 'Smatter?" I asked. "This is good. You did great." "I did nothin'," Mickey said. "He's a celebrity now. He's in the Flash and he's real-it makes all the other things in the Flash seem real too. Space aliens. Miracle diets. He's given credibility to all the world's garbage. He's a touchstone of the tabloid faith. You can light candles to him."

I wondered if Stanton had picked that up. But of course he had, and it didn't matter. He would use whatever tools available. He was locked in now.

"I want to thank you for coming out tonight," the governor began. "I know you work hard, and don't have much time to relax." "Some of us have more'n we'd like," a younger, angry sort interrupted.

"Right, right. I understand that. In fact, let me see a show of hands, if you don't mind. How many of you have work now?" About half raised their hands. "How many of you are looking for work?" About a third. "Those of you who are working-let me ask you a question. As you look around the room at your brothers and neighbors and cousins who aren't as lucky as you-what do you see? Y'see people who wouldn't work if we gave 'ens a chance? Y'see people who'd rather stay home and watch the soaps?"

"I'd rather stay home and watch the soaps," a big, blowsy woman in curlers said, and they all laughed. "I'd rather do anything than punch in at Rizzuto's Dry Clean-"

"I'll bet," Stanton said, laughing along with them. He was with them all the way now. "My momma worked jobs like that when I was comin' up. And you know what? Before I was born, my mania was a sales clerk at Harry Truman's haberdashery in Kansas City-that's how Democrat we Stantons are."

There was a pleasant buzz, an intimacy in the room. (1 had never heard the Truman line before.) The governor was reaching out for them. "But after my daddy died and I was born, I remember seeing Momma come home from work, just bone-weary-y'know what I mean?" Heads were nodding. "I know she wanted to talk to me, and play with me, and ask me what I learned in school that day-but sometimes, you know how it is, you're just too tired to do anything

but pop a dinner in the microwave-though we didn't have microwaves back then, of course-and blob out in front of the tube." "You've got that one right," the blowsy woman said.

"So I know it isn't easy for the folks who do have work, either. The moms who have to work and have to worry 'bout what their kids are out doin' after school. And I'll bet there are more than a few dads who lost these shipyard jobs and have had to catch on doin' .. . whatever."

"Doing shit," someone shouted.

"Hey, you know what?" Jack Stanton said abruptly. "I am going to do something really outrageous here. Hell, everybody thinks I've bought the farm in this race anyway, so I got nothin' to lose. I'm going to do something really outrageous: I'm gonna tell you the truth." Cheers and laughter. "Yeah, I know what you're thinking: He must really be desperate to wanta do that." More laughter. "But okay. You've had to swallow enough sh- ah, garbage."

"You can say 'shit,' Governor," said the blowsy woman. "We're X-rated."

"Me too, if you believe what you read in the paper," he said, and the place exploded. "Now look, now look. Let me get serious a little. Let me tell you something. Truth Number One. There are two kinds of politicians in this world. Those who tell you what you want to hear-and those who never come around." There were cheers and laughter. "The second kind, the ones who don't come 'round here, they're the ones who tell the uptown folks what they want to hear. Those boys don't deliver much either."

"'Ceps at tax time," the blowsy woman said.

"Fair enough. They do deliver then. But what's anyone done for you lately? Right?" Applause. They were curious now They wanted to know what was coming. (So did 1.) "Well, I'm here now, and I'm lookin' at you, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you what you wanted to hear in any case, right?" Nods and applause. "So let me tell you this: No politician can bring these shipyard jobs back. Or make your union strong again. No politician can make it be the way it used to be. Because we're living in a new world now, a world without borders-economically, that is. Guy can push a button in New York and move a billion dollars to Tokyo before you blink an eye. We've got
a w
orld market now. And that's good for some. In the end, you've gotta believe it's good for America. We come from everywhere in the world, so we're gonna have a leg up selling to everywhere in the world. Makes sense, right? But muscle jobs are gonna go where muscle labor is cheap--and that's not here. So if you all want to compete and do better, you're gonna have to exercise a different set of muscles, the ones between your ears."