The Rake (11 page)

South Bend, Indiana, February 1989

The spring term of freshman year at Notre Dame was full for Justin Durban, Class of 1992. He was enrolled in the requisite five academic courses. He was competing to join the staff of the student newspaper,
The Observer
. And for ten hours every week, he waited on tables. The system at Notre Dame was straightforward: bursary students would work for ten hours a week (in freshman year this always meant work in the dining hall) in exchange for their meals—twenty-one meals a week.

A fair enough bargain, Justin thought, but add to it the three or four hours required every day at
The Observer
, and this meant an hour or two chopped away from sleep time.

But it was exciting to Justin, and he thrived on devising stories about campus news, interviewing visiting celebrities, conspiring in fun and fancies, and learning to type without looking down at the keyboard. The accepted attitude toward the senior editors was a balance between servility and independence. Some competitors, he thought, traded openly on their affability, but Justin was naturally forthright. On one occasion he told the managing editor that he did not wish to follow a certain visiting politician around when he came to campus. “I've read
up on Senator Castle in the morgue, and I heard him speak a couple of years ago in Boulder. No thanks.”

It was not unheard of for a competitor to ask for a substitute assignment, and the managing editor, Mark Howard, gave the Castle story to another freshman. But at ten that night, as copy was making its way to the editors' desks, Mark looked up at Justin, who was at hand with the story he had taken on. “What's this about Senator Castle? He's a very hot number on the political scene. You got a personal problem there?”

“Yes,” Justin said. “At least I think so.”

Mark said nothing more. He took Justin's story and put it on the pile of copy he had to read, correct, and send down to the printer before the one
A.M.
deadline. “Okay, Justin. Just curious.”

Late in the afternoon on election day at
The Observer
, the student candidates were lined up in the production room. Justin's election as an assistant editor was announced, along with that of ten other competitors, six of them girls. Their rankings were made public on the bulletin board, and Justin had come in first. “That means,” said Janet Rudo, who ranked second, “that you'd have to buy the beer tonight. If we could get beer. And if we were allowed to drink it.”

Although he prided himself on his skills as a reporter, Justin would not have been able to report what exactly had happened in the three hours after dinner. What emphatically happened after that was that he woke at six with a hangover, and the breakfast platters of sausages he had to serve out in the dining
hall made him swear that he would never again willingly look at a sausage. But at eight-fifty, just before the hour on classical civilization with Professor Pfansteil, he made it to a public telephone and rang his mother's number, collect.

She said she was very very proud of him.

Urbana, Illinois, February 1973

Reuben attended class at law school irregularly. As always, he was able to cope. Here, doing so required a combination of tactical reading before the exams, carefully tuned collaboration with fellow students when papers were due, and a certain reliance on his continuing power to make friends. There was the exception of the starchy dean, who called him in twice to complain about his poor class attendance. “You have a place in our law school, Mr. Castle, coveted by a great many applicants. We gave you special consideration because you are a veteran—”

“Yes, I appreciate that, Dean. And I am very eager to do well at the University of Illinois Law School. I will certainly pay greater attention to class attendance—”

“Yes. I trust you will. No doubt you have heard it said that while it is difficult to get into our law school, it is also difficult to fail once admitted. But you are a man”—the dean looked down at a document headed, “CASTLE, Reuben Hardwick”—“who appears to have broken many records in the past, as a student at the University of North Dakota, and as an unharmed officer in Vietnam.”

That was the first session with Dean Blankenship. The second was more perfunctory, and more threatening.

“If you don't do better in the exams in May, you should not count on entering second-year studies in September.”

Reuben nodded. Yes, sir, he understood. Yes, sir, he would do something about those late papers and poor exams.

But he didn't, and in May he was given a probationary grade. He would be entitled to register for his second year, but only after submitting to examinations to make up for work not completed in his first year. He would be entitled to take these examinations twice if necessary, on dates arranged with the dean.

There was also the problem of money. The GI Bill looked after tuition and most of the cost of room and board, but it left Reuben with nothing for casual expenses, and he did not relish living with the intrusions of financial concerns. Restless, he answered a summons from Henry Walford, chairman of the Illinois State Democratic Party. Word had gotten through to Walford, from the party head in Bismarck, North Dakota, that young Castle had been, sure, something of a hell-raiser as an undergraduate at UND—“one of those continuous rebels. But he swept the opposition away in everything he got into, and he is a fine speaker. I've invited him to speak at this year's state Democratic convention in Fargo. We're nursing our wounds since the McGovern collapse last fall, and we need a little spirit from young people. I'll let you know how it goes.”

It went very well. Reuben was cautious in his references to the Vietnam War. He made certain that the state chairman knew to introduce him as a veteran of the war, with twenty months of active duty. It was not yet time, he sensed, to speak routinely of the “disastrous war,” or of the “Republican war.” Too many citizens of different ages had invested in the war, directly and indirectly. “There was a lot that some good people
were fighting for—some South Vietnamese are still fighting for, ladies and gentlemen. The president of South Vietnam couldn't pass a political hygiene test in the state of North Dakota, but he wants something better than the South Vietnamese would get from the Vietcong.”

He spoke of the need for American Democrats to press “the war against corruption in our own government” and predicted, no less, that President Nixon would be impeached.

“He got an uproarious cheer,” the North Dakota Democratic leader reported to his Illinois counterpart. “That Watergate business is moving very fast, Henry.”

“I'm not sure we want this young man going around at Democratic meetings in Illinois calling for the impeachment of the president,” Walford replied. “But I'll get in touch with him.”

It proved to be an immediately productive association. Reuben's appearance at the Democratic Labor Day rally was cheered a full four minutes before the speaker was let go. Henry Walford's desk was deluged with invitations from organizations wanting young Castle to speak. They were mostly political at first but, after a few months, not confined to Democratic Party events.

It was after the speech to the Young Presidents Club in Chicago that Reuben thought to approach his situation with strategic attention. He told Walford that he hadn't yet decided whether he was going back to law school in September 1974. Meanwhile, he would be willing to work formally with the Democratic Party organization, or informally with Walford and his law associates in Urbana and Chicago, and see what came of it.

In six months, Reuben had emerged as the voice of young
progressive America in the northern part of the state: a voice unconstricted by Republican cynicism, unburdened by responsibility for the dissolution of democracy in Vietnam, eager to foster opportunities for young Americans and “long comfortable lives for older Americans.” A few weeks after opening his own office in Springfield, he traveled to Denver as a speaker for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He was escorted to the head table by Priscilla Avery, a local girl who one year earlier had been crowned Miss America.

His speech, centering on the great mission of the United States in the latter part of the century, was warmly received, and when he returned to his seat at the table, Miss America gave him a kiss, which he returned ardently, bringing on cheers from many of the 300 diners.

Boulder/South Bend, September 1989

Justin had to be ready for Gunnar, the senior at Notre Dame who had twice offered him a ride, Boulder–South Bend, in return for twenty-five dollars toward expenses and shared duty at the wheel. There had been a delay in Justin's getting his driver's license, but Henri was satisfied finally by what the ophthalmologist said: the astigmatism had leveled off. Justin would continue to need glasses to read, and could try contact lenses if he wanted to. But in any case, he had vision good enough to drive.

Gunnar was on time, at the distressing hour of nine
P.M.
He liked to drive all night, and Henri had not devised a means of slowing down this track star who treated twenty hours of driving, starting after dark, as simply one more 100-meter dash. She helped Justin pile his bags into Gunnar's hearty Oldsmobile, and kissed both young men good-bye.

They arrived at South Bend late on Thursday afternoon. Gunnar stopped the car outside Dillon Hall and helped Justin get his bags out of the car and onto the grass alongside. Justin would manage on his own to get them up to his room.

Back in May,
The Observer
had reported that the Student Council was protesting Notre Dame's arbitrary procedures for
roommate assignments. But reforms at Notre Dame took a long time, and Justin had known nothing more, when he left South Bend in June, than that he would have a different roommate in the fall. The young man he had been sharing quarters with was quitting school. “I'll probably regret it beginning in October,” Jesse Baker had said, “but I just can't turn down this offer in Silicon Valley. If I make out, I'll build a wing at Notre Dame just for you, Justin, and you won't have any more roommates to worry about.”

Checking in now with the dormitory office, Justin learned that his new roommate would be someone called Allard de Minveille, the son of the Canadian ambassador to the United States. Allard was new at Notre Dame. His first year of college studies had been done at Cambridge, his father then serving in London as deputy high commissioner.

Justin would miss Jesse, but Allard, born and raised in Quebec, gave promise of being not without interest.

Justin arrived breathless at the second floor, lugging his two heavy bags. He found the spacious room he would share with Allard all but filled with bags and books and sporting equipment, including a set of golf clubs. Allard was not there, but his belongings were everywhere. Justin made his way across the room and started stuffing his own gear into the shelves on the right side of the closet. (“One of us has to get the right side; why not me?”) He put books and shoes on the lower bed—let M. Allard occupy the upper bunk. After all, Justin had some seniority, having been at Notre Dame for a full year.

“Espèce de con!” Justin heard the thud and then the voice. He turned around and saw a young man, dressed in polo shirt and chinos, struggling to lift himself up from the floor. Books
tucked under both arms, he had fallen over one of Justin's emptied suitcases.

His hands on the floor, he looked up. His smile made its way through the tousled hair.

Justin, also speaking in French, said, “You must be Allard. Welcome to Notre Dame. But watch your language, or they won't let you on the golf course. This is a religious school!”

Allard broke into a smile. Continuing in French he said, “I'm Allard de Minveille. Please take me to where I can get something decent to eat.”

“I know a nice place. It's about a thousand miles from here.”

They had dinner at McDonald's and made friends.

Washington/Urbana, April 1990

The defeat of candidate Michael Dukakis in November 1988 had rattled the Democratic establishment, but the defeat itself wasn't entirely surprising. The party elders had hoped that the popularity of Ronald Reagan would fall finally into the abyss of unreality and confusion and resentment which, informed Americans agreed, was there, waiting to swallow up the memory of Reaganomics and the evil empire.

But in fact President Reagan and Reaganism were not run out of Washington in disgrace. He was an old man, as the wise man Walter Lippmann would have pointed out—let him just go home. Then too, Governor Dukakis was not a commanding figure and did not succeed in mobilizing the sleepy masses of the oppressed and forgotten. Finally, Vice President George H. W. Bush was a politician of striking decency, and his weltanschauung was manifestly free of Reaganite voodoo accretions. So? It would take a little while before the political restitution could be effected.
Next time out.

By the spring of 1990 Reuben Castle could see, however in-distinctly, little sparklers in his own solar system. He was hardly ready for a Secret Service detail. Yet it was an observable fact that when he traveled, when he went to colleges and assemblies
to speak, his hosts felt an imperative to look after details of the engagement that reflected an unspoken sense of entitlement. Senator Castle had become a national political figure. Granted, the leadership of the Democratic Party was in the hands, if by no means securely, of a political community in which Reuben Castle, sometime youthful activist, was alien. There were plenty of reasons, in the great political derby of 1992 coming up, to skip over Senator Castle. He was young, relatively inexperienced, and the representative of a state the mention of which brought on such comments as, “Isn't that where Senator McGovern came from?” The answer to that was no—Castle was from the other Dakota,
North
Dakota. But the mere mention of the remote plains state hemmed in by Minnesota and Montana had slightly derisive overtones.

There were ever so many challenges lying ahead, but every now and then Reuben felt the guidance of his mysterious angel, Kaltenbach. Sometimes the directives were forthright. These would come to him through Susan.

“Senator”—she always addressed him so if there was anyone else within hearing—“you'll be getting a request to take part in a symposium with General Westmoreland. The University of Illinois, in October. The subject is ‘Vietnam—Was It Worth It?'”

Bill Rode picked up his mail and withdrew to his own office, leaving Susan alone with Reuben in the main office.

“Harold wants to know what you think about it. He's not wild for you to do it. He said to tell you it's tough to share a platform with a general arguing on the other side, especially if the general is a national hero. But he says that if you feel you want
to put something on the record about Vietnam, your consolidated view on the war, this would be a good forum.”

“Sit down, Susan. Let's think together about this one. Everybody knows I was a protester.”

“But everybody also knows you went on to service in Vietnam.”

“Yes. And General Westmoreland isn't going to say anything about my not being assigned to combat duty in Vietnam—I was under his direct command, after all.”

“The University of Illinois is also where you didn't finish law school.”

“Yeah. But they—the anti-Castle types—wouldn't be looking for 1973 law-school grades, and wouldn't be able to find them if they tried. There'd be a wisecrack maybe, by the guy who introduces me, nothing more.

“No, it's the Vietnam thing. My position would be: (1) It was the wrong war. (2) The way we got into it challenges the constitutional separation of powers. (3) We can't ever forget the sacrifices or the patriotism of those who answered a call to duty.

“Sound good?”

“You have a way of making things sound good, Senator. That's why you're—why we're here.”

“OK. Let's go with it.”

He decided to make a full day of it, as he often did at important ports of call. He arrived in Urbana at nine o'clock the night before, and was met at the airport by the vice president of the Student Forum, Jane Sander. She drove him to his hotel and got
out of the car with him. “Just thought I'd check tomorrow's schedule with you, Senator.”

His day began with a seven
A.M.
interview on the student radio station. It was scheduled to last fifteen minutes, but at the end of the quarter hour Senator Castle said he would be happy to continue for another fifteen minutes—“since you're so well prepared and so well informed.” The student interviewer gratefully kept him on the air.

Breakfast was with Forum committee members. He answered questions for a half hour.

A car met him and shuttled him to an old Romanesque-style brick structure, outnumbered, on this campus, by buildings of puckered gray concrete. He was led down a dark hallway, his shoes clopping on red tiles, past bulletin boards bursting with notices on colored paper—
Earn $1,000 from home…Spring break in Cancún…MCAT prep service
. He was handed over to an old professor dressed in tweed who shook his hand loosely and introduced him to the history seminar as a special guest. For today, the class had been turned into a question-and-answer session with “the widely respected junior senator from North Dakota.”

At eleven he held a press conference at the student union. General Westmoreland, waiting in the wings, would come in at eleven-thirty to conduct his own press conference. Both were asked if they would consent to a joint press conference at the end of the hour. Senator Castle smiled at General Westmoreland and said, “I'll do whatever my hosts and hostesses want me to do.”

The general said it would be preferable to postpone a joint
appearance until the time of their scheduled engagement at seven o'clock.

Lunch was in the student dining hall, at a table reserved for twenty students majoring in political science. The hall hadn't changed much since Reuben's time in Urbana, his single year in law school, for which his grades were now expunged from the record. He had passed through this linoleum-and-concrete palace dozens of times, but never, to his recollection, had he been aware of the special parking lot nearby, made available to visiting VIPs, and certainly he had never been greeted by such a gaggle of fresh-faced nascent politicians. They were hunched forward, the boys' ties dangling precariously close to their bowls of Jell-O, nodding and smiling before he even spoke a word.

In the afternoon, Reuben attended an ROTC class. He declined to answer questions on whether such courses as the one he was participating in should be formally affiliated with a college or figure in its curriculum. “But as a veteran, I'd be glad to attend your drill, and proud to salute the flag.” He did both, and gave an impromptu speech about the need to take diplomatic initiatives in dealing with the Soviet Union.

A tea was given by the university president, and Reuben listened with manifest concern to talk about the increasing costs of higher education. He agreed that the federal government would need to extend a more abundant hand.

General Westmoreland had greeted Senator Castle with the deference habitually paid by the military to money-disbursing members of Congress. But he said nothing more than was needed, remarking only that an uncle of his had attended the University of Illinois just after the First World War, and had left
a part of his tiny estate to the university. Reuben Castle nodded, along with the others, his appreciation of that deed. “I wish Uncle Sam was as generous as your uncle, General.”

The general nodded, and one could discern a smile, at half mast. The president said how glad the university always was to receive in Urbana such important guests, who had so much to say about common concerns.

After the tea, time had been put aside to permit the visitors to rest or shower before dinner. Returned to his room, Reuben went to the telephone. “Anything happening, Susan?”

“Yes. The president's going on the air tonight. Apparently to stick it to Saddam Hussein and call on him to honor the UN resolution.”

“Remind me, which one is that?”

“It's 667. Condemns Iraq's violation of Kuwait's borders.”

“I'll blame it all on Westy.”

“How's it going otherwise?”

“Okay. Nice kids. They keep you busy.”

“And they all vote.”

Assembly Hall was full. There were placards, but not like the old days, Reuben remarked to Jane Sander, who had stayed with him all day, escorting him to his engagements. “Well, that's an improvement, I guess, Senator.”

“I don't know, Jane. Remember, I did my share of protesting. I was one of
them
!”

Jane blushed for giving the impression that she was unaware of this important biographical detail. She made up for it quickly and easily: “You made for a better world, Senator.”

The two principals had individual waiting rooms backstage. The vibrancy of the audience reached them through the stage curtain. A student technician adjusted the loudspeakers. “
Testing one two three.
” Silence followed. Finally a voice from the rear of the hall rang out: “
Try four five six.
” There was a ripple of laughter, and another student onstage tested the mikes at the lecterns, left and right, by ticking them with a ballpoint pen.

Seated in his waiting room, Reuben was idling over a notepad on his lap when consternation struck. General Westmoreland was not well.

Alex Wholley, the Forum president, came in, wide-eyed. “
He's sick
, Senator. Oh, my God!” He wheeled around. “Be right back.”

He was gone five minutes, then reappeared with Jane Sander. “Senator, I don't know what we're going to do. We've sent for an ambulance to take the general to the infirmary. We haven't made any announcements out there. Oh, gee. Oh,
shit
!”

“Listen.” Reuben rose from his chair and addressed the two students.

“Here's what we'll do. I'll play the role of the general, affirming Vietnam. And then I'll play my role, critical of the whole thing. There isn't a word General Westmoreland has spoken or written in the last twenty years that I haven't heard, studied, and thought about.

“Alex, you go out center stage. Tell them that there's been a little emergency, but that the views of General Westmoreland will be fully and persuasively presented. I'll come in from backstage, I'll go to his lectern, the general's lectern, and I'll speak
for ten minutes. Then you get up and say, ‘Now let's hear a different point of view, from our other guest, Senator Reuben Castle.' I'll go to the other lectern and speak for ten minutes. Then I'll ask a couple of questions. And answer them, as he would have answered them. Then he will ask
me
a couple of questions and I'll answer. Then you can take the show to the audience.”

It was a striking success. Nobody, in the excited discussions later in the evening, could fault the pleading done on behalf of Westmoreland's position that the war had been just, and justified, a failure at last only because support for it declined.

Senator Castle, bobbing over to the other side of the stage, concluded by saying that the decline in support for the war was a historic demonstration of the viability of the democratic process.

At this the crowd went wild. There was a standing ovation. The chairman reminded the audience that the evening was not over, there would be questions from the floor. The questioner should announce whether his question was intended for Senator Castle or for…“his opponent.”

The students all but carried Senator Castle away on their shoulders. The student paper's coverage of the event was widely quoted.

Back in Washington, the senator's whole staff assembled to greet him. He smiled his appreciation. “When I run for reelection, I intend to save my honorable opponent the nuisance of appearing at any of our debates.”