An eternity passed, a whole day. The rest of us talked; we kept in touch. We talked about buying more airtime; we talked about what we had on the air. We talked about restructuring the campaign, stripping away the deadwood after New Hampshire, if there was an after--New Hampshire. We talked about replacing Arlen with Daisy; we needed a change of pace.

Late Saturday, Susan called: "Call everyone. We'll meet at five P. M. tomorrow at the Mansion."

"How's the governor?"

"Better. Not great. Henry, we've got to figure out a way to get back on top of this thing."

And so, the following evening, we moved all the fruitless, frustrating conversations we'd been having to the governor's mansion. He sat in a wing chair in the study, in striped pajamas and a light blue terrycloth robe. He was still coughing; his eyes were glassy and red-

rimmed; his skin was blotchy. He had some of his voice back, though. "We just have to work," he said, pounding his fist on a wing. "We have to work, work, work."

"Thing is," Richard said. "We gotta figure out how to seem less . . . political. I'm worried that the folks parked with Harris are gonna stay there, and some others gonna join 'em. Thing is, all this shitstorm has made people even more sick of politics than they were--and that works to that asshole's benefit. Sick of politics? 01' Natural Forces just as sick as you are."

"Turns out to be more than a fart, huh, Richard?" Lucille said. "I told you we should nuke him."

"Too late for that now," Richard said.

"Why?"

"Because the folks are beginning to associate us with politics as usual," Daisy said. "We go negative on their native son, and they'll run us out of town on a rail. We need to find some way to reestablish all the positives we were building."

A phone rang. Brad Lieberman said, "Richard, it's Leon. For you." "Numbers," Richard said. "I smell numbers."

He walked out to the pantry hall, which led from the study to the kitchen. He stood there, twirling the cord, twirling it, saying, "Uhhuh, uh-huh, uh-hah. . . . And it ain't done yet? . . . Okay, champ. Seeyalater."

Richard walked back into the room. He shrugged. "We're cratering," he said. "Down fourteen, last two nights. Leon says he's not sure we're done dropping yet."

I was frozen, shocked. It was unimaginable. It was over.

"Who's ahead?" the governor asked--calmly, it seemed. "Undecided's killin' everyone, almost as strong as we used to be, Governor--'bout thirty-three. Harris got twenty-five. You're hanging in with fifteen. The other two got 'bout ten apiece. Cats n' dogs got the rest."

"So they're not going to Harris," Stanton said. "They're hanging back. We can win them back."

"Gov'nor," Richard said, "we've all been in a lot of situations like this an', y'know, it's hard--and we haven't much more than a week, and you may not be done dropping yet."

"So you recorrunend we quit?" Susan asked.

"Naww, I-"

"All right, I want you all to listen carefully," she said. "Is there anyone here who doubts we have the best candidate? Is there anyone here who thinks these attacks on us haven't been orchestrated, part of a plan to wipe out the strongest Democrat before he took off? We are not just going to fold up our tents and go home, and give them what they want. We are going to fight these next ten days. We are going to work our tails off. We won't go negative-on the air. But we will go right into Mr. Former Senator Lawrence Harris's face in debate. We may not win, but we're gonna let them know that we've been there-and that we'll be back."

Then it was the governor's turn. "I've been thinking about Danny Scanlon," he said. Richard suppressed a groan. "You look at Harris's program and it's all about sacrifice-gas taxes, less money for this and for that. He says it's all for his grandchildren, and he has a point. We do have to provide for them. But there's nothing, not a goddamn thing in there for Danny-and all the other folks like him, and the folks that are better off than hint, who may not be crippled but who work their butts off every day and just don't see anything comin' back from their government. Those are our folks. That's why we're doing this. Someone's gotta look out for them. . . . They're undecided right now. Can't say as I blame 'em. Can you? After all the crap they heard about us, the last few weeks? It's a rational decision, an it decision on their part. They were our voters and they're gone, and we have to make them come back. Now, how do we do that? We gotta get out there and see as many of them as we possibly can, and let them know we'll be working for them night and day. If we can convince them that we're for them, that we'll fight like hell for them, then they won't care about all the garbage that's been dumped on us. They will see the light and come our way."

I wasn't so sure about that. None of us were. But Stanton was, and no one had the heart to tell hint otherwise. We hugged him (even Richard did), clapped him on the back and walked out of there like kamikazes.

The next morning I went to the office to straighten some things out. Daisy, Richard and I had been up most of the night, thinking through ad strategies, ways to reinforce the governor's Danny Scanlon point, ways to get at Harris without going nuclear. Now I wanted to call around to some of our local people in New Hampshire, let them know we were about to raise $850,000 in one night in Los Angeles and we'd be coming back strong. We'd be leaving for Los Angeles in early afternoon.

At about eleven there was a commotion in the outer office. Terry Hickman, the guitar-playing muffin, came back and said, "Henry, there's a rather large black gentleman, a Mr. McCollister, who says he's got to speak to you."

"What's he want?"

"Won't say. Says he's been calling. Says he came by last week." "Ask him to come back next week."

"Says he'll bust down your door if you don't see him right now." He came in. He was wearing a dark church suit and held a dark church hat in his hand. I thought he might be a minister. "Ain't you rememberin' me, Mr. Burton?" he asked. "I figure mos' the other folks 'round here don' know me from a spent shell, but you--" Right, a brother. He was . . .

William McCollister. Fat Willie, the Barbecue Man. And as soon as I knew who he was, I didn't want to hear what came next. After the meeting at the Mansion, I had persuaded myself to go down in flames for the Stantons with honor. William McCollister was about to remove the only tolerable part of the bargain. I could feel it.

"You don' answer yo' phone messages?" he asked.

"I try," I said. "I get a lot." He seemed reluctant to get on with it, so I nudged him: "What can I do for you, Mr. McCollister?"

"I came 'round last week," he said.

I didn't say anything, so he had to continue--and I could see it wasn't something he wanted to do. "My daughter, Loretta . . ."

I nodded.

"She . . . with child," he said. "And she say Governor Jack Stan-ton's the daddy."

Chapter V

We flew a Gulfstream to California and couldn't talk. The plane had been made available by a prominent music-industry homosexual several weeks earlier, when our prospects seemed more plausible. (The "rental" rate was giveaway cheap, the policy implications troubling.) It was, however, a lovely thing-all walnut and leather and crystal. It didn't rattle down the runway, as our usual crate did, but seemed to squirt, then lift effortlessly. I stared out the window; the wing tips were folded abruptly upward, like a paper airplane. Was there an aerodynamic purpose for that or just whimsy, a rich man's toy? The opulence was nervous-making, inappropriate, especially that day. We were tanking in New Hampshire; we had a potential paternity suit in Mammoth Falls.

There were six of us in the plane, matched pairs: the governor and Susan, Lucille and me, Uncle Charlie and Momma-Stanton had thought Momma would get a kick out of the Los Angeles starpower; she would go on from there to Las Vegas for a day, then meet us in New Hampshire for the grand finale. The others were playing hearts while Susan read and I moped. The governor was up and talky, slapping down cards, telling everybody what everybody else had, taking wild, meaningless risks-and singing. He sang "Red River Valley." He sang "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." He had a determination, a fierceness to him now. The campaign was no longer about winning but about personal survival. It was about the possibility of humiliation. He could not imagine such an outcome--it couldn't be true; his national career couldn't be over before it began--and this conviction gave him a giddy, febrile power.

I was annoyed, frustrated--too many crosscurrents, too many confusing personal entanglements. I had just left William McCollister, somber and embarrassed; my mother and Arnie would be waiting for us when we landed at Santa Monica. I'd been stunned by Willie's dignified befuddlement. He could not imagine his friend, the governor, betraying him in that way. He was confused; he wanted me to help him figure things out. He had not come to make a demand. His utter decency was unbearable, searing--the pain of it all, the promise of pain to come, was overpowering. It was real, unslick, unspinnable. It was not Cashmere. It couldn't be taken to Libby for Dustbusting. It had to go directly to the governor. But we hadn't had an opportunity to talk. I tried to imagine how I'd tell him about this one. I tried to rehearse it. I couldn't; my mind was blank.

Somewhere above the desert, Willie's sense of loss and bemusement propelled me into my own: Mother, waiting at the other end of the arc. Our relationship was affectionate, if placid--a mutual decision had been made, somewhere along the way, that we would let it go at that. She was a great believer in calm love. Even Father's departure had been oddly untempestuous. There were no scenes; he just left. He went to the American University in Beirut, as a Visiting Something-or-Other. He had never told Mother about the application; it must have been in the works for months. He never told her he was leaving, that their marriage was over; he just packed a bag and left. I was ten. They corresponded: "What does this mean?" she wrote him. "Whatever you want it to mean," he replied. Later, in a letter to me--it came out of the blue, unbidden, when I was in college--he wrote: "You may wonder what happened between your mother and me. It became untenable, through no fault of hers. I could not accept her unwillingness to see our differences. She did not care to acknowledge the issue there. In her mind, it was simply two people finding each other, and I needed to know why--or perhaps how: how she could make a leap so effortlessly, across territory normally so dangerous and melodramatic; how she could pretend that territory did not even exist. Her placidity unnerved me. Her inability to see my color--a quality that at first seemed so fetching in her, so exhilarating and optimistic--ultimately became a statement I could not accept: that my color wasn't important. It seemed she did not know me. It was unbearable."

Mother's composure was unnerving. She mourned him. She hoped the phase would pass, that he would return. Then he went on from Beirut to Kuala Lumpur, and finally to Cairo. After three or four years--the process was seamless, unobtrusive, distressingly rational--she determined that it was not a phase, he was not coming back, and so she moved on. I was sent away to school. She made herself available, but discreetly so. She did not inflict any trials or errors on me; ultimately, though, there was Arnie, who was unexceptionable. He was Armenian, which I perceived as not quite white--to have gone all the way back to Missouri or its equivalent would have been an implicit recognition that her marriage to Father had been a bridge too far. But Arnie was a step toward safety, at least I had seen it that way. No doubt, she hadn't. Her lapidary humanity was unassailable. Suddenly, riding that Gulfstream, I experienced a wave of anger and nausea: my father's confused, resentful blood pumping in my heart. We swirled down, into Los Angeles, through filthy air.

The governor and Susan were immediately snatched up by the music hotshot, who was small and neat, wearing a silver silk shirt--open at the neck--and jeans and running shoes. He got to Stanton first, before staff, before we even left the plane--he bounded aboard. "Greetings, Fritz," he said to the pilot. "You didn't shake up the governor, did you?" Then he crouched next to Stanton and whispered, "Welcome to LA, Governor. We've put together a small group for you, back at the house," he said. "Warren is there. Barry thinks he'll be able to come. Tim and Susan. Then we'll go on to the event." He followed the Stantons out of the plane, wrapping a consoling arm around Susan. His attentions weren't fawning or respectful, I realized; they were an act of charity. And so it didn't surprise me at all when John Conroy, our tall, amiable California coordinator, draped an arm over my shoulder as we walked to the terminal and said, "How're you?" I nodded. Then: "Henry, you are about to attend the most lavish Secretary's Night Out in the history of Los Angeles. Everyone assumes we're dead. They think it's the better part of valor not to stare at the corpse, so they're giving their tickets to the steno pool. We are feeding the mailroom tonight. Should we tell the governor?" "No," I said. What difference would it make? He'd sense it soon enough, if he hadn't already, from his benefactor's mortician act. I could predict his reaction: anger, at first. He'd be pissed at the big shots. But then he'd look out at the audience and think, Hey, all these other people are here--I can still sell them. Then, a growing confidence and renewed sense of power when he did sell them. And, ultimately, a bouyant optimism: I ain't dead yet.

I didn't want to deny him that process. It would be good preparation for New Hampshire. Lost in my mental staff work, I almost walked past Mother.

"Henry!" she said. She looked lovely, tanned. Arnie, who looked very LA--double-breasted blue blazer and light gray slacks, dark blue shirt with a white collar open at the neck, gold chain at the neck--stood just behind her, a hand on her shoulder, at the door of the general aviation terminal. I kissed her hair; she hugged me; Arnie patted ine on the back.

"Governor!" I said, a bit too sharply. Susan turned abruptly, looking for bad news. Then smiles. The governor and Susan doubled back. I saw him check out Mother--it was reflexive when he wasn't care-fill, if the woman was particularly good-looking--then he overcompensated by giving Arnie a deeply meaningful handshake, a two-stager: two-handed, then an arm-drape over Arnie's shoulder. "We're in the same boat, huh, Arnie?" He said, glancing at me. "Surrogate fathers to someone older than we are."

Arnie laughed. "I used to feel, when we'd visit Henry in school and we'd all go out, that he was chaperoning," he said.

"He's the best," Stanton said. "Master of the universe."

"Cut the crap," I said, too jovially, distracted by all my roles and responsibilities, by the soft, west side breeze and the glare--how easy it would be to just stay in LA and be comfortable--and the jet fumes.

We began to move through the small terminal, all plate glass, potted palms and aviation sorts. The governor looked about, sported the men's room-and I had a decision to make. I followed him in. It was a rwo-holer. I had to go but didn't. I stood by the sink as he went. "Governor," I said.

"They're great," he said. "Your folks. Just great-wish we could just stay out here and-"

"Governor."

Now he got it. He looked at me hard.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Fat Willie, the Barbecue Man, came by headquarters this morning," I said, reaching for calm but quavering a little. "His daughter is pregnant. She says you're the father."

He betrayed nothing. "Who else knows?"

I shrugged.

"What does he want?"

"just to tell you. He was embarrassed, I think."

The governor wheeled and slammed the wall, open-handed on the tile. The sound was something between a slam and a splat. "I just can't catch a break, can I?" he said. He moved past me to the sink, leaned on it, stared in the mirror, ran water. "1 want you to call him- No. I better do it. I need him to understand this is some kind of mistake," he said, with an earnest intensity that was pretty convincing. "I need to have some- How pregnant is she?"

"Didn't say," I said. "I don't think he knows."

"Can't be more than a few months, can it? Four, five months tops. And the girl?"

I didn't know what he was looking for.

"Yeah," he said. "How could we know? But he'll give us a week, right?"

"I suppose," I said.

He was calm now, emotionless; I had never seen him so cold. There was something weird here. "This stays with us, okay? Don't tell Daisy." So he knew about Daisy. It was amazing what was known, and not known. Everyone knew everything, except for the most basic things. "Do you want Libby?"

"No!"

He turned away from the mirror, leaned against the sink. "They all think I'm dead," he said. "They're gonna look at me and not look me straight in the eye. It's gonna be sickening. The worst will be the ones who try to commiserate, the shitbuckets who had troubles of their own, who got caught smoking crack or feeling up a teenager. The ones who got bombed and strafed by the press. They think I'm one of them now. Soon, Henry--someday, I predict, there will be a fraternal order of those who've been raped by the media. We'll have our own old-age home, like the Will Rogers Institute, or whatever they do for bad actors out here. Ours'll be: The Mike Milken Home for the Fatally Flawed." He stopped, folded his arms over his chest, stared down. I was ready to move him along, but he wasn't ready to go. "A lot of thesis aren't going to show tonight. I don't care. I won't give them the satisfaction. Henry--" He stared at me very hard, his blue eyes rheumy and rimmed with pink, but riveting. "Henry. You will never be ashamed that you did this. Do you understand? You will never have to swallow it, or duck it, or apologize for it. I am not going to let that happen."

The door swung open. Conroy. "Guys?" He said.

I went with Mother and Arnie for an early dinner at an airy place on Melrose, with brick walls, a high ceiling and billowy fabrics suspended in air--sharp, breathtaking swatches of color: royal blue, wine red, chartreuse. We would have this time, then go on, have dessert and listen to the governor speak at the Beverly Hilton. It was almost a shock to be among normal people, people who didn't know everything, people who couldn't read your mind. It was annoying. That was, I realized, the other thing about Mother's composure--it was uncomprehending. She couldn't sense my confusion and utter discomfort, much less the aggravating impact the sultry ease of Los Angeles had on it. She was pleased to see me. She was proud of me. She was concerned the campaign wasn't going so well. "He seems a wonderful man," she said.

"And she's a looker," Arnie added. "I wonder what it is. . . . So what are you going to do next, Henry?"

"Go back to New Hampshire," I said, purposely avoiding Arnie's real question: what was I going to do after the campaign folded. I realized, suddenly, that Mother and Arnie were living through this embarrassment too. But they were okay; they were living through it in an LA sort of way. It didn't matter that I was associated with a campaign that had become something of a national joke. It was a credential. It made me a marketable commodity. Arnie would be able to say, "Henry used to work for Jack Stanton," and in Los Angeles, in show business, they would know what that meant. I would be considered a veteran, a gladiator, someone who understands how bright the spotlight could be, who had worked at media riot control, and that experience would make me valuable-to other candidates for The Milken Home. I realized that Arnie was about to offer site a job, and that it wouldn't be charity. "It's all right," I said. "It's a tough time. Look: Under normal circumstances, we'd be dead. And yeah, I know it looks like we are-and we might be-but, then, you think: Who's gonna beat us? I just can't imagine any of those guys doing it. I mean, who can? Y'knowhattamean?" I said, racing, sounding like Richard, sounding insane. "So we play it out. We go day to day. We got a week. A lot can happen in a week. Even if Harris beats us there, where else is he gonna win? So, I'm not- But you know, it's not an easy business."

"Henry," Arnie said. "When it's over. Your mother and I have been talking. When it's over, I can make a place for you-I mean, I could really use someone like you. It's nice out here, you know? You should enjoy life a little before you kill yourself working like this." "Thank you, Arnie," I said. "But at this point I don't know that I'd be alive doing anything other than this. It's the strangest thing-like being a mine worker. New Hampshire is like working in a mine. You get this great, tactile pleasure from chipping away at it. At least I did, when we were working retail, coffee to coffee, winning the activists one at a time, before he became a household name. I sound nuts, right? Well, being here, in Los Angeles, is just so completely strange. It's like coming out of the mine, being blinded by the light. It's like almost painful being exposed to all this light."

Mother was discomforted by my discomfort. She had no idea what I was getting at and probably never would. So I did the next best thing: tried to reassure her that it was only temporary. "There are people-

Richard Jemmons, Arlen Sporken--who do this over and over, who can't live without it," I said. "I'm not like that. I'm doing this once. I made a commitment to Jack Stanton and I'll see it through. But I don't think I'd have the stomach for this business, the desperation and intensity of it, if I didn't have a real rooting interest."

"Well, if that's the case," Arnie said, laughing a little, "maybe we'll see you out here next Wednesday."

"Yeah, it may not last much longer than that," I agreed. "But if it doesn't, I'll be real upset. He's got some problems, some weaknesses--that's for sure--but I think Jack Stanton's capable of doing some really great things for this country."

His speech that night was awful, but not desperate--a plus. He stayed in control. He saw immediately what he was up against, a replacement audience and an unreachable one at that; the ballroom at the Beverly Hilton seemed distended and over-air-conditioned, the audience chilled and seated way at the other end of the hall from the podium. But that, I realized, was only my sense of room. These were people quietly, furiously engaged in one another, desperately checking out how the competition looked and dressed, performing intricate physiognomic calculations: whose cheekbones or breasts or fanny might lift them up from the mailroom or out from behind the reception desk; who had come up with the slightest hint of a new look; who had locked into the ephemeral Hollywood calculus of sensuality and sophistication. They were geniuses at such evaluations; it was their basic grammar. They did it the way Leon read a poll or Daisy cut a spot. And so they paid Jack Stanton no attention at all. And he did something I'd rarely seen him do: he mailed it in. He didn't even try to distract them. It was an unlikely act of discipline, the conservation of energy--a sign of very intense seriousness on his part.

Mother, of course, thought he was very inspiring. Arnie mumbled some encouragement but clearly figured that Stanton had given up, that he was dead. I felt a reflexive twinge of elation: he was focused. He was ready to return to New Hampshire.

night--perhaps it was the Gulfitream--I was deeply, comfortably asleep when we hit the runway in Manchester. We seemed to land hard. I was up with a start. You could feel the cold even before we got off the plane; you could feel it through the plane. It was still dark, but there was a sense of impending grayness. Several people, bundled in goosedown, determinedly waving our familiar red, white and blue STANTON FOR AMERICA signs, stood next to three vans. We had come all this way--and gone nowhere. We were still in the same place: it was like Chutes and Ladders. We climbed ladders; we slid down chutes. We always arrived at the same airport, the same time of day, the same caravan waiting to take us to the same places, all of which we'd hit several times by now The cold was painful after Los Angeles. We moved into it reluctantly. The governor looked at me--and this was the first time I'd ever seen him anything less than totally enthusiastic about entering the arena--and shrugged: Here we go again. Mitch was there to take suitcases, help Susan down the slippery stairway. And then, as we came off the plane, people emerged from the vans--and began to applaud, a deep, solid gloved affection. Stanton walked down the line of them, hugging them--eyes tearing from the cold, or perhaps just tearing. The last was Danny Scanlon, with a box of apple fritters. "B-brought you somethin', Governor," he said.

Stanton looked around at us, glowing, with a goofy grin. "God, it's good to see you, Danny--why aren't you at work?"

"Took the week off. I'm working for you now."

"Well now, isn't that-- Listen: everyone gather around." And we did, in a tight huddle, arms entwined, warm on top, but with a bitter wind whipping our legs. "I will never, ever forget you coming out like this for us," Stanton said. "We have a tough week ahead. We may not win. But I can promise you this: no candidate will work harder these next seven days than I am going to. And you will never regret this. And I will never forget it. . . . So what do we do first? Mitch?" "We've got the McLaughy Wire Factory plant gate, but that isn't for another hour."

"C'mon, there must be something we can do before that," the governor said. "A diner or-- Danny? Where's your competition this time of morning?"

"Silver Moon'll have some folks," Danny said.

Silver Moon it was. Stanton moving down the counter, then over to the booths, shaking hands. Truckers, factory guys with dark brows, lined faces, knit caps, staring at him, shaking their heads, smiling private smiles: "What you doin' up so early, Governor?" one asked. "You startin' the day or just endin' it?"

"Last week, fellas," he said. "Workin' double shift. What can I do for you? What you want to know?"

They looked at each other, thinking: So what about Cashmere? But no one had the guts, so one of them asked, "So you gonna take our guns?"

"Only if you've got an Uzi or a bazooka."

He moved on, and kept moving. He was up now We all were. At one point, he jumped out of the van at a red light and began knocking on windows, waving, shaking the hands of fellow motorists. As we moved from plant gates to markets, I broke off and went back to the hotel, where Arlen, Daisy, Lucille, Richard and Leon were in the Stanton suite--it was as if they'd never left, as if we'd always be there--arguing over the last week's media buy.

"Who's gonna watch the fucking thing?" Richard was asking. "They're just gonna be pissed off at us for preempting 'America's Most Fucked-Up Home Videos.' "

"You know what we get out of thirty-second spots now?" Daisy said. She was sipping a Diet Coke. "Nothing. Thirty-second spots only reinforce the bad shit--that he's just another politician. You ain't gonna thrill 'ens with bands and flags now, you're not gonna move 'em on health care. We gotta let them listen to him, take him on, hit him with their best shot--y'know? We gotta let them see that there's something there." She looked at Lucille. "Flannel shirts and ax-tossing ain't gonna make it anymore."

"But if we go dark, they'll think we're folding," Arlen said. Interesting: he and Daisy were taking conflicting positions. She was stepping out, away from him; the rift we hid assumed, and subtly encouraged, was now open--she might have to find new work after the campaign. I hadn't had a chance to talk to her about any of this; I couldn't remember the last time we'd had a moment, a nonstressed phone conversation. Saturday night? Aeons ago.

"There's something to that," Daisy said, pulling back-acknowledging that Arlen did have a point. "Maybe we cut the buy, or cut the TV, go more to radio? More bang, less bucks?"

"That's not nothin'-you technocrats figger that one out," Richard said. "The big question is the Jackathon. What do you think, Henri?" Richard asked. "Seems to me we hit a weird fucking place when the advertising guru's goin' responsible on us. 01' Daisy Mae here wants to take us down-no more spots-and blow it all on a telethon Saturday night."

"Saturday night?" I asked. "Who's gonna be watching TV on a Saturday night?"

"All the people who might not trust a candidate who fucks around," Daisy said. "Leon, tell him about Cashmere."

"Site's got higher name recognition than Bart Nilson," Leon said. "So?"

"What good does a thirty-second spot do us at this point?" she said. "We've got to figure out a way not to be a typical politician." "How we doin', Leon?" I asked.

"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, you have 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 almost apologetic. "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 guy who'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 world 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."

"Uh-oh," said the woman.

And Stanton did something really dangerous then: he didn't indulge her humor. "Uh-oh is right," he said. "And anyone who gets up here and says he can do it for you isn't leveling with you. So I'm not gonna insult you by doing that. I'm going to tell you this: This whole country is gonna have to go back to school. We're gonna have to get smarter, learn new skills. And I will work overtime figuring out ways to help you get the skills you need. I'll make you this deal: I will work for you. I'll wake up every morning thinking about you. I'll fight and worry and sweat and bleed to get the money to make education a lifetime thing in this country, to give you the support you need to move on up. But you've got to do the heavy lifting your own selves. I can't do it for you, and I know it's not gonna be easy." He stopped, paused. There were no smartass remarks now.

"Y'know, I've taken some hits in this campaign. It hasn't been easy for me, or my family. It hasn't been fair, but it hasn't been anything compared to the hits a lot of you take every day. Takes a lot more courage to keep your family together, to keep on moving through a tough time, where you don't know what's comin' next, whether the paycheck's gonna be there next week, who's gonna pay the doctor bill, the mortgage--all the worries you have.

"So I've taken a few shots, but I can live with it. I'll get by. Hell, I'm lucky--I got my picture on the cover of a national newspaper. Maybe not the one I would've planned on. . ." There was some laughter, but this had become as intensely serious as I'd ever seen a political gathering. "And you know what? My picture there means that someone--maybe some group of people--thinks I'm worth taking a shot at. And you've got to ask yourselves: Why? Why is Jack Stanton worth the ton of garbage they're dumpin' on his head? It may be because that's the way things are in this country now-if the garbage is there, or can be made to seem like it's there, you dump it.

"Or it may be that there are two kinds of politicians-the ones who tell you what you want to hear and the ones who don't bother tellin' you anything at all. And maybe some folks aren't very interested in there being a third kind. You should think about that when you cast that vote next Tuesday."

And silence. As if they were thinking too hard to applaud.

"Henry?" Daisy said. "Why do I always come to your mom?" "It's neater?"

"No, seriously."

"Seriously? Hey, it's three in the morning."

"No, turn over," she said. "Look at me."

I looked at her. Her hair was tousled, and over her eyes; the tortoiseshell barrettes she used to pin it back were on the night table. She was cute. She was not beautiful. She was, more to the point, right there-in my face. The allure of Daisy was also the difficulty: she caught everything. She let nothing pass. "I know you care," she said. What to say.

"Henry"

I brushed her hair back with my hand; I did it twice.

"What I mean is, I would like to experience you in a noncampaign environment," she said.

"You may get that chance soon enough," I said.

"What I mean is . . . is exactly that. Next week. If we're in a non-campaign environment next week, I would like to experience you in that. Okay? Henry?" She looked at me. She went on. "I've got lots of miles. Miles and miles of miles. We could go to the Caribbean. I've got to many miles on American, we could take the space shuttle. We could lay on a beach. We could lay on a bed. We could really get laid-it'd be lahk pahradahse, we could have a wet bar in our room, room service, y'knowhattamean?" she said. "We could lick our wounds. We could lick each other. We could drink rum drinks-ylnow with little turquoise parachutes."

"Parasols."

"So you're on?" She giggled. "Gotcha. Nailed ya."

I pulled her close, kissed her hair. "What if we're not in a noncampaign environment?" I said. "What if we're still alive?"

"Well," she said. "For us to actually be alive-I mean, alive alive, not just Jack and Susan being stubborn and ridiculous. For us to actually be alive would take a run-and probably a Harris fuckup-that would be so spectacular, such a rush, that it would probably be even better than noncampaign sex with you. So that would be okay too."

"How do you know how noncampaign sex with use would be?" "Extrapolation. But, Henry, surely you-rational, sensible, dark-hearted you-surely you don't think we'll be alive a week from now. I know it was a hundred years ago-yesterday-but remember Newsweek?"

Newsweek had buried us with a derisive piece called "The Anatomy of a Flameout." Someone inside-Sporken was my guess-had given some classic distressed-mood-of-the-staff quotes. We were assumed toast. It was time for the consultants to start peeling off, cutting their losses, feeding the scorps obituary matter in order to fertilize the soil for their next campaigns. I was waiting, and dreading, the first sign that Richard had folded his hand. And here was Daisy, trying to act the classic professional, trying to distance herself, getting ready to go. "You see Nyhan in the Globe today," she went on:" 'A synthetic candidate meets his polyester epiphany?' Jeez."

"The Boston scorps all love Charlie Martin," I said. "He's hip. He's funny. He's almost Irish. Only trouble is, actual human-being folks don't get his act. They don't think running for president is performance art." I went up on one elbow. "Daisy, you should have seen Jack tonight-with the shipyard folks. Totally focused, disciplined, daring, just a great fucking candidate. He absolutely locked in. He bull's-eyed." "It's garbage time-no one's playing defense," she said. "When you ain't got nothin' there ain't nothin' to lose."

"I don't know," I said. "A week is a long time."

"Not when you're dead." She sighed.

"Daisy, do me a favor," I said softer, but harder. "Don't do the hardened professional number, okay? Don't play hired gun. I still care about them-lack and Susan. And I think you do too."

"Not as much as . . . you do," she said. "And: Shit-not as much as I do about you. Look. Henry. Okay. I'll admit it: I'm freaked. I'm pretty sure I fucked up my situation with Arlen these past couple of weeks. He seems cool enough, but he probably thinks-on some level-that I angled my way into the Stantons' hearts. No white boy from Mississippi, even a progressive one, likes to be upstaged by his junior partner. So I don't know what kind of future I have there. I also don't know what's going on with you." She didn't give me a chance to say anything-since she knew, perfectly well, that nothing I could say would meet her expectations. But she wanted the expectations out on the table, figuring that I was a decent enough guy not to slam-dunk her gratuitously, and so she hurried on. "I do suspect I got a commitment from you on the parasol drinks. I believe I tricked you into a quasi-commitment by forcing you, Mr. Pluperfection, to correct me when I said parachute instead of parasol. I believe that if I'm clever enough to do that, I deserve a whirl."

"Daise," I said, feeling-1 don't know. Feeling something. "You deserve more than a whirl. But you gotta believe we may not need to count frequent-flier miles for a couple more weeks. If for no other reason than to humor me."

"Okay, I believe. Sort of "

An interesting thing happened the next day. People began to show up. Patsy McKinney, the blowsy wiseacre from the Portsmouth shipyard meeting was waiting for us in the lobby of the Hampton Inn at 6:00 A. M. "So where do I sign up-where you want me to work?" she asked. We sent her over to Brad Lieberman. By midday, three busloads had arrived after a long two-day trip, from Grace Junction-elementary school classmates of the governor's, the high school principal, half the faculty-and Beauregard Bryant Hastings, the Stanton family doctor, a fabulous-looking fellow, thin almost to the point of consumption, and tilted somehow, sort of like the Tower of Pisa, wearing a cape and a hat and small round glasses, like James Joyce, but with a long, wild mane of white hair: "Johnny," he said to the governor (it sounded like "Jattdmeh," as if a cotton boll had lodged in his throat, or perhaps it was just that his vocal chords had been sanded down by a lifetime of bourbon). "We ahre gon' to educate these Yawhnkehs 'bout the intrahcahcehs of inspahred governahnce, y'heah?"

College classmates drifted in; Susan's law students from the state university, and people we'd met and connected with along the way: Ms. Baum, the lady who ran the library literacy program in Harlem; Russ Delson, the state treasurer of Tennessee; Minnie Houston, a community activist from Cleveland--dozens like that, ready to do anything, lick envelopes, go door to door. The Hampton Inn was full, as was every room in Manchester, so Lieberman bought out whole motels in cities and towns around the state and dispatched groups to Nashua, Portsmouth, Lebanon, Keene. He did this so smoothly it was almost as if he had anticipated the throng. Our whole operation, so totally dispirited just days before, was running effortlessly, in high gear. On Thursday, Bill Johnson, the deputy attorney general of Alabama, was in the lobby of the Hampton Inn, waiting for us as we came in from a lunchtime swing. "Billy, what on earth? You up here for a ski vacation? President's Day weekend or somethin'?" Stanton asked. "I figured you needed another black face up here to sell these skinflint Yankees."

"Billy--"

"Shut up, Jack," Johnson said, hugging him. "Just put me to work." "Billy--I'm probably gonna get my ass kicked."

"That's why I'm here," Billy said. "See: I don't believe that for a second. I figure you're gonna pull this out somehow, and I want to see it personally, for myself, and tell the grandkids. I want to see how you handle this, case I ever find myself runnin' statewide."

"You won't be in a hole this deep."

'Jack, don't go tellin' no nigger about the depth of holes in Alabama. Just put me to work."

"Henry, tell Brad to put the attorney general here in charge of something, somethin' we can monitor, see if he's gotten any better at politickin' over the years."

And so it went, each time we walked into or out of the palm and plastic lobby of the hotel. It seemed a slow-motion version of This Is Your life, and it caused great buggy *effusions from Jack Stanton. We were all, in fact, on the edge of tears, anger--exhaustion. But the candidate seemed to feed on it. He used the exhaustion and emotion to become a still more extravagant version of himself; he campaigned wonderfully. He was running on sheer willpower now; he was not entirely sensate, and the ceremonies of the stump--meeting, greeting, talking, walking--were performed reflexively, relentlessly, but brilliantly. He could not make strategic decisions, he could not deal with staff, but he could lock in on any crowd, answer any question. He was getting sick again; his face was flushed and he was coughing--and he had to be aware of the pounding he was getting from the scorps. It had reached the point of disgust. They didn't understand why he wouldn't just quit. Didn't he know he was history? Everyone had written it. An entire industry existed to analyze such things, a universe of scorps, talking heads, pollsters, consultants, free-range wisemen and gurus--and they had all taken up residence in Manchester now They filled the lobbies and saloons, rented all the cars--there were crowds everywhere, at all hours. It was instinctive, habitual; a quadrennial homing ritual. There was a liturgy; there were myths, patterns and ceremonial offerings. Jack Stanton had now been designated a ceremonial offering. It was a familiar role, reassuring to the tribe--he was George Romney, Ed Muskie, Gary Hart, the favorite who turns out to be Humpty-Dumpty. His fall would be an occasion for portentous false humility among pundits, for ruminations on the hubris of conventional wisdom prematurely arrived at; he would become a cautionary tale, remembered in years to come, and chuckled over. What was her name again? Cashmere McLeod! There would be ritual pleasure in watching him fall; there would be analysis of the quality of the splatter. If only he'd just get on with it.

The late-night saloon chat at the Wayfarer, Richard reported Friday morning, had drifted into the next phase: speculation about who might rejoin the campaign when Stanton dropped out. Ozio, Larkin (yes, there was talk about my old boss, I was amazed and disheartened to learn), some other hero. "It's wounded pride, y'knowhattamean?" Richard said. "They told the world he's dead, they want him to fuckin' die already."

"So what do you tell them?" I asked. We were sitting in the bedroom of Brad Lieberman's suite, waiting to do debate-strategy prep; in the outer room, muffins were husding the phones. It sounded like a real, live campaign.

"I tell 'em we stopped sinkin'. I tell 'em we're still in second. I tell 'em Lawrence Harris is a favorite son. We'll clean his clock down south." Richard eyed me. "Don't worry, Henri. I'm still on board. I'm even about one quarter believin' the motherfucker'll figure some way out of this box. In fact, put me down as believin' that all this door-to-door retail shit he's been doin' might be clickin' on some half-conscious level. Shit, no one else's goin' anywhere. And I have never seen anybody work this hard. Yesterday, you shoulda seen him. He's standing in a mall in Nashua, midafternoon, just standin' there, y'knowhattamean? Standin' there, patient, answering the stupidest fucking questions from civilians that I have ever heard. Answering questions like, How can we get a stop sign over at the corner of Forest Lane? And, Can you help get my tax assessment lowered? Stone selfish, stupid people. And he's just patient as can be, explainin' this and that, the answer man. Hey, we blow this, we can open a string of Friendly Government Centers, servicing mall-rodent idiots. 'For a small fee, Governor Stanton will solve your problem.' "

"Fuck you."

"Yeah, you got that right-fuck me," Richard said. "Tell you one thing, though. He is a horse. Got two busted ankles, someone ought to put him down-but he's gallopin' down the stretch. You can only imagine what he'da been like runnin' whole. He'da been fuckin' Secretariat. We'd be plannin' the convention by now. Instead, we're-Hey, Henri, what are we gonna do next Tuesday night?"

"What are we doing tonight?"

"We are going to gang-rape Lawrence Harris." A distinctive-and surprisingly welcome-voice, boomed. "I am talking ANAL VIOLATION in extremis."

"Oh hi, Libby," Richard said. She stood in the doorway, darkening the sun. "You get a weekend pass? This work release or somethin'?" "SCUMBAG," she said. "You are lucky to be fucking ALIVE, flashing your pathetic, wrinkled wiener at my darlin' Jenny. If it'd been me, you'd be a member of the Vienna Boys Choir by now What the fuck have you brought this campaign anyway? You gonna save Jackie's ass with your brilliance this weekend? Oh," she said, spotting me, and diving an octave: "Hel-lo Hunnn-rah."

"Hello, Big Bopper." I said.

"Excuuuuse me, Henri," she crooned. "Elegance will not CUT it. We're up against it now We are in the shit."

"Okay, Libby," I said. "What would you do tonight?"

"Watch my ass," she said. "Watch that mangy fucker Charlie Martin. Can't do much about Harris, but that mangy fucker wantsa move up on us."

"Not bad for a lunatic," Richard said. "Speaking of which-" Lucille came in, followed by Howard Ferguson and Leon Birnbaum. "Pollster!" Richard saluted. "Whatcha got for us?"

"Bupkis." Leon jiggled. "No movement."

"Bowel movement," Libby said. "We gotta make it move."

"Can't do that by just watchin' our ass," Richard said. "Waitaminute, waitaminute, Olivia Holden-I am discernin' something here: could it be heinie-mania? You walk in, wanting to gang-rape Lawrence Harris. Your debate strategy is watch your ass, you talkin' bowel movements. Is there some sort of message here? You got the gripes? You stricken, or what?"

"Jemmons, stow it," Lucille said. "We've got business. Where's Daisy?"

"Cutting radio spots," I said.

"What?" Lucille asked. "Whatwhat?"

"You know what," Richard said. "What we said, what we agreed on-the veteran guy on Vietnam, that surgeon from Laconia on health care."

"What about the greenie?"

"We said no to the greenie," Richard said.

"We did not," Lucille insisted. "This is a huge enviro state." "The fuck it is."

"In the party it is."

"And Larry Harris got every last fucking one of them with his Natural Forces bullshit." Richard was up, shouting, taking it out on her. "Lucille, you are the stupidest-"

"ALL RIGHT WE KNOW THAT," Libby intervened. "What we need to figure out is what we DON'T know."

"We don't know how to win this thing," Richard said. "You got any ideas, honey?"

A muffin at the door: "Henry! You better come. I got the editor of the Nashua paper. Sounds serious."

It did sound serious, in a ridiculous sort of way. The Nashua paper had an "exclusive." One of our spare drivers, a Lithuanian emigre who'd subbed for Mitch for a couple of days, was trying to make himself famous: he had heard Jack Stanton making racial and sexually charged statements, or so he said. He was intent on going public with this information now--the weekend before the primary--because the governor had promised to make the removal of Russian troops from Lithuania a major foreign policy theme, but he'd never delivered. "Get out of here," I said. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I've spoken to the man myself," the editor said.

"Sounds to me like a disgruntled former employee," I said, putting a finger in my out ear, trying to block the noise in the room, trying to concentrate.

"Sometimes disgruntled former employees tell good stories," the editor said.

"Oh come on," I said. "You're not really gonna go with this, are you? This is horseshit. Totally unprovable. Totally undisprovable. What is it the governor supposedly said?"

"He called Luther Charles an ugly, mean-spirited nigger. And he allegedly called Harriet Everson a stupid woman with great tits. There were some other interesting tidbits, but those are the headlines." It sounded half true, the Harriet Evergreen half. So I said, "That's completely fucking outrageous. Don't you have any standards at all? I mean, did the driver provide you with any supporting evidence? Did he have a tape?"

"Well, no. But he does have a track record."

"The driver?"

"No, your boss."

"Give me a break," I said. I had spent the past few weeks wondering what rock bottom would feel like. This seemed about right. "Let's say for a moment, just for the sake of argument, that everything you've heard about him is true. It isn't, but so be it. Let's say he was involved in a violent protest against the war twenty-five years ago, then used connections to skip out." I began to hesitate because the argument I was intending to make suddenly sounded weak, defensive--stupid. I was halfway along now, and trapped. Oh well. "Let's say he had an affair. What is it about that 'track record' that makes him a racist, or someone who'd make sexist remarks about your leading environmental activist? Is it just that he's fair game now-any accusation against him is presumed true?"

Silence. Maybe my argument wasn't so stupid after all-no, he was taking notes, letting me talk. "This is just bullshit, and you know it, Mr. Breen. We don't know whether this alleged disgruntled former employee even worked for us. He certainly wasn't anyone central to the campaign. You haven't even told nie his name."

"Tibor Lizickis."

"Who?" But I did remember, vaguely. He drove for a few days in January, when Mitch had the flu.

"Tibor Lizickis. Lives in Derry. He's an engineering major at Merrimack."

"Look, you're going to have to give us some time to check this out. Who knows if this guy is actually telling the truth?"

"My reporter says he has confirmation that-"

"You can't give us a day to check him out?"

He gave a day, which took my day. I spent the rest of Friday on this, making calls, locating Tibor Lizickis, having him brought in. It wasn't something I had to do-I could've turned it over to Libby for dustbusting-but I guess, on some level, I couldn't bear to be part of the debate prep or any other aspect of the campaign. There was nothing to plan anymore. There would be no strategic breakthroughs. There was only the candidate, and he was moving on the moment, doing whatever felt right. He had stopped listening to us.

So I spent the day on Tibor Lizickis, and I suppose a good part of it was that someone would have to deal preemptively with the Reverend Luther Charles-and I was best equipped for that particular task. Indeed, there was a morbid fascination to it. I had spent much of my childhood listening to the grown-ups talk about what a pain it was for them to deal with Luther, whom they called the Fallen Angel, the member of Reverend Harvey Burton's Charmed Circle who had fallen from grace. I left a message for him at the People's Empowerment Party (PEP) office in Washington; he called back late afternoon.

"My, my, my," he said. "Is this the Henry Burton? Henry the white man's Burton? 'S'appenin' my brother? Lookin' for work?"

"Not yet, Reverend," I said. "But I do need your help on something."

"You need my help on some thang," Luther Charles's first move, of course, would be to try to race sm. He had done well for himself, playing King of the Negroes-but he knew that his reputation among those who had actually been there would never be what it was among those who'd come later. The old-timers maintained a discreet silence when asked about him, especially when asked by white journalists. "If you need my help," he went on, "must be something awful big, awful big. I can't imagine that you would need my assistance with the community up there. Not many brothers up there in the White mountains. Henry-whatever could it be?"

I told him. "Ahhh," he said. "Foreign affairs. Lithuania." He massaged every word. "Henry, tell me: all them honkies gone plumb crazy? Takin' down your boy for pussy?" He said "pussy" with the same resonant portent as the word "community"-he didn't have a great preaching voice; it was mid-level and sort of scratchy, but he did have all the preacher's tools. "Imagine: them pale scrawny crazy Puckers rulin' the world and us doin' the laundry-it just don't figure. Why ain't they doin' our laundry? It's science, Henry. They do technology. That's their voodoo. And that's about all they got. If you need to invent something, call a European. If you need to lead or love or lift someone, phone a brother. Though I would guess Mr. Stanton is not deficient in the love department. Just like your grandpappy, Henry. In fact, just exactly like your grandpappy. I understand the governor likes his ladies. . . . melanin-enriched."

That stopped me. He couldn't know about the McCollister girl. I had to say something-and fast, before he picked up on my hesitation. "Better full-strength," I said, "than melanin-deprived. My daddy always said that you personally were the reason why blondes had more fun."

"Your daddy said that? He should talk. Your sickly paleness is testimony to his own proclivities. You hear from him, Henry?"

"Sure. He writes."

"I miss the sonofabitch-I could always identify with your pop, prodigal son and all," he said. "I have a weakness for prodigality, boy. If you want to consider a return to the fold, there might be room in my rainbow for a staffer of your shade."

Imprisonment. For an instant, I wondered if the penalty for picking a disgraced contender would be slow time in interest-group hell. I felt sick, and terrified. "Reverend, let's talk about Lithuania."

"He called me a mean-spirited nigger?"

"A disgruntled temporary driver with an ax to grind says the governor called you a mean-spirited nigger."

"You work for a guy goes 'round callin' people mean-spirited niggerm? What's he call you?"

"Reverend, you think I'd work for someone like that?" A set-up line: what an idiot I was.

"Anything to pretend you ain't what you is."

"Oh Jesus, Luther. Get over it. Are you gonna make a fool of yourself yet again, blowin' up this bullshit into a racial incident? There's no leverage for you here. We're losing. You could, just for once, do the right thing. Bank it. Then you'd have this tiny decency deposit to draw on next time you feel the need to be an asshole."

"All right, Henry," he said. Just like that. "I won't bust your chops no more. But this is a debit in your own bank, a withdrawal from your Luther account. Cost you someday, plus interest."

Stanton came in about five, steaming. I told hint I'd taken care of Luther. He grunted. "Where's the shitbird?" He asked.

"In your suite."

We walked down to the end of the hall. People said hello along the way, but the governor didn't respond. All the varnish was off now. "I can't fucking believe, in the midst of all this shit, I gotta massage this fucking creep. Who hired hint anyway? Where'd he come from? I'm gonna kill Lieberman, fucking murder him."

We walked into the suite. Susan was there, talking quietly with Tibor Lizickis. He was pale and jittery, with light brown hair and a wispy mustache; a pathetic specimen. "Jack," Susan said, sensing his mood immediately and knowing what to do, "Tibor was just telling me about how the Russians took his father away. He was a bus driver. He had an accident, and they just--took him . . . away."

Stanton shed his overcoat. I could see that he'd sweated through his shirt. His eyes softened. "And you never saw him again?" He asked. "No, Gowherenaw," he said. "They take him Siberia."

"And how old were you?"

"Six year."

Stanton moved toward him. There was a logistical problem. Lizickis and Susan were sitting on the couch, facing each other. The governor wanted to get in as close as possible--touching range--but he couldn't usurp Susan's position and he couldn't crouch next to Lizickis because there was a flimsy glass coffee table in the way. The coffee table would be hard to push aside; it was surrounded by comfortable chairs and a wall. He measured all this as he moved forward, making rapid geoemotional calculations. It was Jack Stanton's vision of hell: desperately needing to make a connection but locked in a no-touch zone. He came in behind Lizickis and crouched down, propping himself on the arm of the sofa; the Lithuanian, now a Stanton sandwich, half turned toward the governor and away from Susan. "That must have been awful for you," Jack Stanton said. "Just awful. And I can understand why you'd be so intent on wanting to raise this isssue."

"Russians are pee-igs," Lizickis said, reddening. "Pee-igs." Stanton, somehow, reached his right hand around the arm of the sofa and patted Lizickis on the shoulder. "I know, I know and I will do something about this. I just haven't had the chance. You know all hell has broken loose in this campaign."

"Oh, yess, Cashmere--I hear about."

Susan rolled her eyes.

"But I promise you, Tibor," Stanton continued. "And this is a solemn promise--that your father will not be forgotten. If the voters of New Hampshire allow me to continue in this race, and if, in their wisdom, the American people elect me president--I will liberate Lithuania."

"But you no mention now?"

"I will mention now. Tonight. I promise. But if I do, you will tell the newspaper editor that ion were mistaken, that you were angry and were acting out of pique?"

"Out of what? Pee-ig?"

"You were very angry."

"Oh yes, wery angry."

He had Tibor up now, and was shepherding him toward the door, hand on his arm, soothing him. "I know what it's like to lose a father, Tibor, but not the way you did. I can't imagine your loss, your sense of rage. You must understand it's difficult for Americans-we've been so lucky. We have so much to learn from you. I really appreciate your coming. I really appreciate your bringing this to my atten- Henry, see that Mr. Lizickis gets home okay. 'Bye. . . ."

He slammed the door.

The last debate of the New Hampshire primary was held at a Catholic girls school. It would be an auditorium debate, with a live audience-good for us. Stanton always worked better to people than to cameras. There were greenrooms for this one, but no one used them. The candidates gravitated toward the brightly lit cinder-block hallway. This would be their last group appearance. They knew one another now, were fascinated and disgusted by each other; they would look back on this as a period of intensity and absurdity, sort of like a brief, disastrous marriage. There would be a bond. They would always have New Hampshire.

"Well, Jack," Bart Nilson said. "Guess this is it."

Stanton nodded. Charlie Martin came over, wearing a tie with little hot-air balloons on it. "Kinda gettin' used to the folks up here." "They're just great," Stanton agreed. "Even after all the shit, they've been just great. They really listened. They really cared about the issues. I was just out in LA, and it was like a different country. They aren't havin' this election out there."

And now-a first!-Lawrence Harris approached, looking prohibitively academic. He was wearing a brown herringbone jacket, a tattersall shirt and forest-green knit tie; his reading glasses dangled from a lanyard around his neck. "Well, mates," he said. "Our last tango." I could see Stanton's jaw tighten. Reds actually reached up and patted him on the back. "I just vvantecPco tell you fellows what a memorable experience it's been for me."

"Yeah," Charlie Martin said. "It's like we were lost in the Andes or something--the plane went down in this strange tribal culture where the only thing they care about is politics."

"Then again," Stanton said, checking out Martin carefully, "maybe we're the Donner party."

"Well," Harris said, breaking off, his work here done. "I just hope we'll all be able to unite when this is over. I think it will be very important to have a united parry if we're going to win in the fall and set about the difficult work of getting the fiscal situation under control." "Larry, I'm sure whichever of us wins the nomination will be honored to have your support," said Bart Nilson, with a deftness I'd not anticipated. Harris sniffed, grinned uneasily, retreated.

Stanton and Nilson walked together down the cinder-block hall. "Bart," Stanton said, his arm resting gently on the older man's shoulders. "Whichever way this comes out, when it's over--I'm with you. We work as a team, far as I'm concerned."

Nilson stopped, looked at Stanton. "Jack," he said. "I've been a loyal Democrat all my life, always voted the party line--but if that bloodless prick wins the nomination, I'll stay home in November."

"This is a great country, Bart," Jack Stanton said with a smile, "and 'less I miss my guess, if that boy's gonna' win the nomination of this party, he's gonna have to learn a few things about the folks."

"Pay good money to see him get that education," Nilson said. "May be able to see it for free," Stanton said.

The candidates stood at walnut podiums in front of a deep, rich burgundy velvet curtain. It was nicer than the usual banal TV-station blue. That--plus the audience, plus the climactic nature of the event--added a depth and resonance to the proceedings; all four of the candidates seemed larger than usual, almost presidential. Especially Jack Stanton, who was on a mission that night. He took care of Tibor Lizickis in the first ten minutes. The opening question was What are the three main challenges facing the next president? The economy, of course; crime, certainly. But instead of health care, which normally would have come next, he drifted into America's place in the world. "We must provide leadership. The Cold War may be over, but challenges remain. We must encourage Russia to continue its path to partnership in the Western alliance-and we must make sure that the Russians know that partnership will not be complete until they take the final steps to disengage from their former republics, especially the Baltic republics. We must be sure that Russian troops are no longer stationed in Latvia, in Estonia, in Lithuania. And of course, there's other pressing business to take care of back home-health care-" "Hey, Jack," Charlie Martin interrupted. "You gonna hog the whole show?" Titters from the audience.

"jack, jack-focus," Susan whispered. We were sitting in a greenroom, just offstage; the two of us and Danny Scanlon. "Take it bit by bit," Susan said. "You can't do it all in one bite."

He seemed to hear her; he pulled back. He let Charlie Martin get lost in health care, and Ban Nilson do his New Deal Redux number for a sad last time. Bart was aiming it at Larry Harris, digging it at him, talking about the need for compassionate government, a government that would meet the needs of the people. Harris was shifting impatiently, one podium to his left; he was pursing his lips. The smart move was to let the old guy have his valedictory.

"Senator, if I may," Harris interrupted.

Susan grabbed my hand. "Good!" she said.

"Senator," Lawrence Harris intoned, head tilted back, eyes almost closed. "We would all like to do many things. I, for example, would have loved to play shortstop for the Red Sox. But that was not a realistic wish on lily part-I'm left-handed. You can't have a left-handed shortstop." The joke fell flat. Harris didn't seem to notice. He would teach us now, tell us about reality. "The reality is, we can't afford to be as compassionate as we'd like.

"The reality is, we've been spending far too much for far too long. "The reality is, if we're going to leave a better world for our grandchildren, the American people are going to have to live with some pain. Sacrifices will have to be made."

"Larry, you gotta be kidding," said a familiar voice.

"Excuse me, Governor Stanton?"

"I mean, I know you're from up here and you're more popular than a Christmas turkey and all, but I've got to wonder just what state you've been hymn' in. I mean, the state I've been travelin' in-

we've all been practically livin' here these past few months--you go anywhere in this state, and you see folks who've had a great deal of personal experience, recent personal experience, with pain. I don't know if the word's reached you up there at Dartmouth yet, but we've got a recession goin' on here in New Hampshire. Folks are hurtin'. They're losin' their jobs, losin' their homes. Senator, are those the folks you're sayin' gotta learn to sacrifice? Just what else you want them to give up?"

"Governor--"

"Now, Larry, you just let me finish. Then you can go on with Economics 101." Laughter. The crowd--Harris's crowd--was with us now. "I don't mean to make light of what you're saying. We all know you've got a point. Republicans been runnin' deficits like a bunch of drunken sailors for a decade. We've gotta do something about that for sure. But we've got to fix this economy first. You keep on talkin' about our grandchildren--and we're all concerned about them. But what about the parents of our grandchildren? We just gonna cut them loose, let 'em drift? Larry, tell us about your plans for then."

No applause, but a buzzing. "I think they're looking for a leader," Harris said, looking directly at Stanton. "I think they're looking for someone who is decent, honorable, someone they can mist." A scattering of applause, but also a few hisses.

"Cheap," Susan said. But not ineffective. I gave our boy the decision on points, but who could say? Susan was making the same calculations. "We won the hall and the TV audience," she whispered, "but Harris probably took the bite."

Right. Stanton's case against Harris, succinct and deadly as it seemed in real life, was too long, too complicated to communicate in a two-minute spot on the evening news, especially in the standard "sparks flew among the candidates" debate wrap that broadcast scorps inevitably favored. In fact, Stanton might even come off looking petulant, petty: they'd go with the governor's "Economics 101" bite--and with Harris's "decent, honorable" riff. Harris would come off stable, straight, while reinforcing our decency problem.

"Shitty prep," Susan said.

"You think he would've let us prep him?" I said, defensively. "A-any p-punch--" Danny stammered.

"Shoosh!" Susan said, flashing a stern look at him. Danny recoiled, as if he'd been shot, and Susan quickly relented, ashamed. "Danny, I'm sorry . . . go ahead."

"A-any p-punch he th-threw woulda been c-countered," Danny said, seeming to assume Susan Stanton would have the same weakness for late-night sportsblab as the governor. "He w-wins it on my scorec-c-card 'c-cause he th-threw a punch for the p-people. C-can't play rope-a-dope n-now."

Susan inhaled sharply and hugged Danny, burying her head in his neck. "No. You're right, Danny," she said, pulling back, putting her hand, full, flat on his cheek. "You're right, honey. We can't play ropea-dope now."

Meanwhile, onstage, the storm subsided. Everyone said what he always said. The closing statements went about as expected-until Charlie Martin, who was last. "Our parry has a grand tradition," he said, with a stentorian seriousness that did not quite make it. "A tradition of energy, compassion and honor. We need a candidate, a standard-bearer, who is energetic, compassionate and honorable. I ask you, my fellow Americans, to make the following judgment: Which among us has the energy, the compassion and the honor to serve and to lead?"

I could see where this was headed. So could Susan, "Uh-oh," she said.

"Senator Nilson is a distinguished Democrat. I ant proud to call him my friend." Martin paused and for an instant I hoped he wouldn't pull the trigger. No such luck. "He's had a long and distinguished career--but does he have the energy to take this battle to the Republicans? As for Senator Harris, I know he's a neighbor of yours. He and I served together in the Senate. I know the quality of his mind. And, as president, I would want him very close by; I would depend on his advice. But his is an academic intelligence. It needs to be leavened by practicality. And Jack Stanton." He paused again-and again, I had a twinge of hope: he'd only implied Harris's lack of compassion. There was a chance he'd be equally cautious with us. He wouldn't want to get too graphic-and he didn't, which made it all the more brutal. "Now, Governor Stanton, we all know, is energetic and compassionate and intelligent-and he has been the victim of some questionable charges in this campaign, very questionable charges. But even if you believe that he has been unjustly slandered, even if you believe he is an honorable man, we must, as Democrats, make a practical judgment. Is he damaged goods?" I think I gasped: it was so stark. "Would he be able to make the best possible case against the Republicans, or would he be too busy defending himself against an incumbent--and a party--that hasn't been shy about using any and all available weapons in the past."

"Sucker p-punch," Danny said.

Susan shook her head, shrugged, and began to wander out into the hallway to greet Jack when he came off. As it happened, Charlie Martin was off first Jack Stanton was lingering, as always, reaching down into the audience to shake hands--and Susan grabbed the senator by the arm, smiling sweetly. "Hey, Charrr-lie," she said. He stopped, gave her a peck on the cheek. "So that's how you got all those medals in Vietnam," she said. "What do you get for bayoneting someone in the back? The Double-Cross with oakleaf cluster?"

"Susan, it's part of the game."

"Charlie, it's not a fucking game."

Stanton came last. He pushed Susan back into our greenroom and closed the door. He slammed his fist on the top of a chair. "I just can't get a clean shot," he said.

"You did g-good, G-governor," Danny said. "You t-told

"Yeah, but I took some, too." He turned to Susan. "Was it worth the risk?"

"What've you got to lose?" She replied, coolly. But then, sensing his distress, she added, "You couldn't have said it any better than you did. Someone had to. I'm glad it was you."

My turn. "Martin was coming at you, no matter what. It's probably a good thing you took a poke at Harris--shows you can still do some damage. The scorps may have sonic second thoughts about your viability."

If only I believed that. I was exhausted, totally wiped that Saturday. It was a beautiful day, a sudden thaw. There was a Carolina breeze;

everything was dripping, melting. But Charlie Martin had taken it out of me. His argument sounded too plausible for comfort. "Oh for Chrissakes, Henri-you are too fuckin' literal," Richard said as we speed-walked-there was no other way with Richard-from the hotel down to our campaign headquarters on Main Street. It was a good mile or so, but there was the sense now that our work was pretty much done; there was nothing more to do. We were killing time. We walked past a scruffy row of fender and lube shops. "No one gives a shit about closing statements, Henri," Richard said. "By the time that stupid fuckin' hippie kamikaze unloaded, only God was watchin' the show. Folks at home were channel-surfin'. Half the folks in the hall were roustin' around, lookin' for their scarfs and galoshesy'knowhattamean? Anyways, you telling me you never heard that argument before? 'Damaged goods' is so old even the small-city scorps ain't writin' it anymore."

"It's one thing for the scorps to write it and another for Charlie Martin to present the world with the biggest, fattest sound bite imaginable," I said. "Y'know, Richard? Y'knowhauamean?"

"What is this?" Richard asked. We were near downtown now, moving through clusters of volunteers. Some were standing with signs on street corners; others were working sidewalk tables. "You think only ugly girls interested in politics nowadays?" Richard said. "This is like the inverse Miss America contest. You gotta figure the Republicans do better than this, right? They get cheerleaders and prom queens. We get tree huggers and NOW ninnies. We get whole armies of women who look like Lucille." Richard did have fairly mainstream taste, and a fairly constant frustration level.

"Richard, shut the fuck up and look at this," I said. It was, in fact, a remarkable scene. Downtown Manchester was a political street fair. There were clowns and mimes. The Rotary Club was giving away hot dogs. The millionaire vanity candidate was handing out purple balloons with his name on them; there was a Lyndon Larouche sound truck circling, playing Beethoven's Ninth; there were Operation Rescue fanatics waving dead-fetus posters. Harris volunteers were handing out green-and-white pom-poms. A Nilson Dixieland band played in the park facing the Holiday Inn.

"Brigadoon," I said. "By midweek, it'll all be over. Just some techies packing up. By next weekend, half these storefronts'll be empty again."

"I mean," Richard said, oblivious. "Henri--you assessing this talent? Pathetic. 'Lo, Tom."

Tom Brokaw was coming the other way--with Richard Cohen, The Washington Post columnist, and several other scorps. "Hey, Jemmons, you got numbers?" Brokaw asked.

"Steady as she goes," Richard said. "You?"

"Hear the Globe track has you up nudging twenty again. . . ." "And Harris?"

"Thirty-five or so . . ."

"That boy's only gettin' one outta three in his home state with half a ton a trash on our head. Wait till we get him down home."

"You gonna make it down home?" Cohen asked.

"Well, who the fuck else gonna make it?" Richard snapped. "Ozio?"

"In the South, in the South?" Richard shrieked. "You talk about Orlando down home, they think you talkin"bout Disney World. You got any other hot ideas?"

Cohen shrugged and smiled, palms up. We moved on. "Jeez," Richard said. "Heavy fucking lifting. It's like goin' through life carryin' Libby Holden on your back. And they think we don't earn our money."

"The Globe number--Leon's showing more than that," I said. Leon was, in fact, showing us moving again after the debate.

"A bump, a bumplet, a sta-tis-tical hiccup: we're still fucked, Henri." "What do we need?" I asked as we passed Martin headquarters, which was overflowing with student volunteers. Several dozen college kids were milling on the sidewalk around a very attractive blonde who had a street map and a megaphone. She was giving out assignments. Richard gawked at the blonde. She smiled back at him. "Listen, honey, you wanta learn about the intricacies a' politics?" he asked. She shook her head slowly, sexily, and blew Richard a kiss.

"What do we need?" I asked again.

"I'm smitten," he said. "Fuckin' hippie has the best-lookin' talent--wouldn't ya know it? I'd take that girl door-to-door in a hot-flash, we'd push every doorbell in town."

"Richard, for Chrissake." We were stopped at a red light; a Harris station wagon sped past, slushing us pretty bad.

"Fuck you, asshole!" Richard shouted, then, to me he said, "We need one outta four, long as Natural Forces stays under forty and no one comes up behind us. We can limp our sorry asses outta here with twenty-five--and we're nowhere near that."

"Leon has us twenty-one on a three-day track," I said, assaying an argument I didn't quite believe, "which means last night and this morning had to be near twenty-five."

"And sample size?" Richard said. "You call four people. One of them giggles like a heathen and says, 'Well, that redneck sonofabitch sure tucked it to of Professor Perfect las' night. Mebbe I'm for him.' You think that means something? Call my broker. He'll sell you all sorts of shit."

Our headquarters, halfway down the next block, wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. It was alive, every bit as alive as Martin's had been. And a better sort of crowd: student vols in plaid flannel and jeans mixed with older folks in union and tavern windbreakers. "Cross between a Nirvana concert and Tuesday-night bowling league," Richard said. "Not bad. Not fucking bad at all, for a cripple."

Brad Lieberman sat at a desk in the front, working a phone, handing out piles of literature and xeroxed neighborhood maps to a line of coordinators. He waved to us, gave a thumbs-up. We squeezed past the pegboard partitions behind Brad to the larger back room, which had three long rows of tables with telephones and thirty people working them. Off to the side was another table with two large coffee urns and dozens of boxes of doughnuts, cascading, half open, half eaten. Interesting people were working the phones. Bill Johnson was back there, as well as several of the Gang of Five. And Momma, puffing Slims and radiating cheap perfume from the middle of a row, her raven beehive sucking up like a textile-factory bobbin-all of them working down lists of people who'd been called at least once in the past month. I went over to Johnson when he put down the receiver. "How's it goin'?"

"Twos and threes," he shrugged. "We ain't lightin' it up." "No fours?"

"Shitload of fours. But you gotta expect that. Count every hangup a four. Where's the candidate?"

"At the mall," I said. "He's just gonna stand there and work the mall all day, if you can believe it."

"No touring?"

"He said every minute in the van is a minute wasted. He figures he'll get a steady flow all day this way-"

"He's a fucking horse," Johnson said. "Always was."

Richard came over. "Henri, you ain't lived till you heard Momma work a phone. 'This is Mary-Pat Stanton, the candidate's momma. Now you gonna vote for mak boy or not?' Hot shit!"

"Richard," I said, getting sort of excited now, "let's get Ken Spiegelman off the phone and see if he can give us something for the candidate to say on the telethon tonight about health care." Spiegel-man was a Gang of Five member from the University of Chicago. He was young, slick, accessible-too young for treasury secretary but building his portfolio.

"Why, that's just brilliant, Henri," Richard said, diving into the middle of Momma's row and retrieving her. "We say the exact right twenty-five words 'bout health care tonight, and we'll just . . . walk away with this thing. Right? I got a better idea."

He wrapped an arm around Momma, cupped his hands: "HEY EVER'body, listen UP! Best-loolcin' woman in the room got somethin' to say. Go 'head now, Momma. Gwon stand up on this here chair." Momma didn't need much prodding. She was wearing a flagrant orange-and-white State U. tracksuit. "Y'all havin'fin?" she croaked, and she smiled, her big, broad lipstick-and-mascara face bursting into utter glee. "Wal, listen. Ah know you workin' hard foh mah Jackie, an' he's the best a momma could have, and y'alls the best friends our family could have, an' ah ain't got no highfalutin' talk like Mr. Senator Lawrence Harris." There were hoots and whistles. "But in mah book, y'alls are just EX-CEPTIONAL. With a gang lahk this, we could do serious damage in a roadhouse-y'get me, Jemmons? We could jus' rip up a joint."

"Momma, I was thirty years older, I'd be lickin' your ear!" Richard said, playing to the crowd-which roared.

"And ah'd be squealin' like a pig," Momma said, doubling over, hands on her knees. I had to admit: I'd never fully appreciated Momma until that moment. I'd considered her something of an embarrassment, a joke. But she had everyone in that room up now, and feeling good. Every face was beaming. She was her son's mother.

"Now listen up y'all. Ah'm a-gonna set down now, 'fore ah fall down. But ah love ya, and ah'll never forget ya. Win or lose, come rain or come shine, ain't this just GRAND!" She started down, to whoops and applause, then went up again: "Now, jus' a second, jus' a second. Ah'm a-listenin' to what ah just said--and ah would like to amend it a little--okay, Jemmons?"

"Have at it, Momma," he said.

"The lose part," she said. "Ah didn't mean to say that--win or lose. Mah boy ain't gonna lose. You folks ain't gonna lose. Ah don't see a loser in this here room. And ah've seen more than a few losers in mah sorry ol' life." The place was rocking, hoots and whistles. "But mah Jackie ain't no loser, and y'alls his friends and you ain't losers neither. So listen up: We are going to win this thing. We are gonna steal this thing right out from under Mr. Senator Lawrence Harris's nose. Then we gonna go on down home and whip his sorry butt. And that's all ah'm a-gonna say."

Chapter VI

Wlost New Hampshire, but not badly. It rained Election Day, and that was good for us. Stanton voters proved to be as devoted to the candidate as he had been to them-in fact, according to the exit polls, an implausible number said the deciding factor was that they'd actually met the governor. And so we did somewhat better than Richard's one in four; our 29 percent was more than Nilson and Martin combined. Harris won, of course; but he could manage no more than 38 percent in his home state, which gave us hope. Election Day itself was strange, empty. We slept in. We packed our bags. We went to the movies. We saw Wayne's World. Daisy and I held hands; Richard jiggled; Lucille-an unexpected delight-had a rowdy and infectious laugh. Halfway through the movie, I went out into the lobby and called Brad Lieberman. The first wave of exit polling was coming in. "We're alive," he said.

I went back in, whispered the results to Daisy on my left and Richard on my right. Daisy squeezed my hand and stuck her nose in my ear. "No Caribbean this week," she whispered.

"Disappointed?"

"Yes-and no."

We shared an umbrella walking back across the asphalt expanse to the Hampton Inn. We walked with our arms around each other, very close and comfortable. Richard and Lucille went ahead, separately, their black umbrellas bobbing in the wind. Mountains of snow were stacked around the light poles; everything was gray and white. "I'm beginning to feel nostalgic," I said. "We've lived our lives around this parking lot. I can't count the number of times I looked out over at the multiplex and wished I was at the movies."

"And I can't remember them ever having a Werner Herzog," Daisy teased.

"And all the nights I had to slog across over there and retrieve the candidate from Danny's Dunkin' Donuts. You wonder what Danny's going to do with himself now."

"I wonder what the candidate's going to do with himself now," she said, "without Danny's Dunkin' Donuts."

We stopped just outside the lobby door, under the marquee, but still under the umbrella and turned to each other, and kissed. It was a serious kiss, our first public display of affection.

"Henry?" she said, meaning: Did that mean what I think it meant? "Yes," I said. It did.

She looked at me, her eyes widened; she put her hand on my cheek. "What are we going to have him say tonight?" she asked.

"That it was a moral victory."

"Henry?"

I looked at her.

"Do you think the telethon helped us any?"

"No," I said. "He did it by sheer force of will. He did it on Saturday, standing at the mall all day. He did it on Sunday and Monday. I mean, have you ever seen anybody do one-on-one like that? But the telethon wasn't a bad idea," I added quickly, remembering that it had been hers. "Henry?" she said. "Is this . . ."

"I think so."

.. or are we just relieved that we won?"

"We didn't win."

"We didn't die," she said. "So we won."

"We better go inside."

She kissed me again, quickly, open-mouthed, on the lips.

Jack and Susan were both up in the suite working the phones, thanking local supporters. "I will never forget this," Jack said, over and over. "I will always remember what you did for us here."

Susan hugged me. It was a big day for hugs.

Jack was off the phone now He came over and shook my hand. He was wearing a white shirt, suit pants, no shoes. "Henry, I'll admit it: last night, I thought we were dead."

"Well, Leon's last track didn't help much," I said.

"He couldn't measure intensity," he said. "Our folks just felt more strongly about this election."

"That's because of you, sir."

The governor ambled over to the table. There was a fruit platter and some sandwiches. "Don't!" Susan said. "You fell off the wall, you didn't crack-but you're still looking like Humpty-Dumpty."

She said this lightly, but with an edge. He narrowed his eyes, and took some grapes. "Henry, how early can we get on and off, and go home?" he asked.

"Polls close at eight," I said. "You've got to stay and do the nets. You want to do Nightline?"

"No!" Susan said. "And no press conference. Those jerks had us buried, all of them. Let 'em stew in it."

"Well, we aren't gonna be able to make 'em disappear," Stanton said. "They weren't able to make you disappear either," she said. "And so they'll have to come to terms with that. We're going to tighten this up now, Henry. We've got a new set of priorities. We'll do local TVs first, networks second, local pencils third, national pencils last." "And pundits never?" Stanton laughed. "C'mon, they're there. We can pick and choose. Henry, get Richard and Daisy and all-get 'ens here 'bout six. We'll thrash this out. Also, have Laurene schedule the nets. We'll do 'ern all tonight. We'll do the morning shows from Mammoth Falls tomorrow, from the Mansion-okay?" He looked over at Susan; she nodded. "And okay, Mrs. Stanton-no press conference. Henry, y'all come on the plane with us. Tell Richard and Arlen and Leon, and whoever else we got here to stick around and work spin. Then get their selves down to Mammoth Falls by tomorrow night. Y'know, I'm gonna miss this place."

"So many wonderful things happened to your reputation here," she said.

"No, really," he said. "It was okay. It was a rite of passage. You realize how amazing these folks are, voting for me after all this shit? There was a time, last night, it was getting on toward ten o'clock, and I was working-what?-my eighth restaurant, table to table? And I knew most of these damn people wouldn't be voting for me-hell, half of them wouldn't be voting, period. And I come to this table, two couples 'bout our age-teachers, lawyers, something like that-havin' dessert, getting ready to split the bill. Back home, the kind of folks that would've been friends of ours. Up here, they're gonna be voting Harris without even thinkin' about it. One of the women teaches preschool. She asks about Head Start. And y'know, we just start talkin' about it. I forgot we were in a campaign, damn near sat down and had a cup of coffee with 'ens. She was smart. You could tell she was good at what she did. And I told her about some of the things we'd been messin' with down home."

"Tish Miller's thing," Susan said.

"Yeah," Stanton said, moving over to the wing chair where Susan was sitting, leaning down, putting his hands on her shoulders, staring her in the eye. "Tish Miller's one of wine-inspirational model, right, sweetheart?"

"Okay, okay."

"Anyhow, this woman says to me, 'Governor, from all I've heard and read during this campaign, I'da never guessed you knew or cared about this stuff.' "

"I wonder why," Susan said.

"No, it's not just them-not just the scorps," he said. "It's us. It's me. We gotta figure out how to communicate what we love about what we do. We've gotta show them we're doin' this not for ambition or glory."

"Not just," Susan said, but softer. She was with bins now.

"Not just, not only-but because we love doin' for the folks, finding things that work. We gotta think about how we can do that-right, Henry? Because, you know what? I would be willing to bet you anything, I got that woman's vote today."

"Now all you have to do," Susan said, "is personally meet and greet the other two hundred fifty million Americans."

"Fine with me," Jack Stanton said. "But first, I want to go home."

Home. We landed in deep night. There was no moon. There was, however, a soft breeze coming up from the Gulf, carrying with it a moist hint of spring. I stood by the river for a moment before going up to my apartment. The river seemed familiar, an old acquaintance; it flowed quickly, silently, as if it were a well-oiled piece of machinery, doing its job. My apartment was less familiar. I hadn't slept there in a week, but it seemed much longer. The place felt dusty, moldy. Several of the plants along the river window had died. I turned on the television. CNN was telling it our way. We were alive, and Lawrence Harris was breathing more life in us yet: his sound bite was pompous, trite. "The people of New Hampshire have sent the message that they are ready for fiscally responsible governance," he said, without a hint of a smile. "I expect the rest of the American people will respond favorably to this message as we move along." Then the clincher: "I think we are growing up as a nation."

Lovely. I opened the refrigerator and winced; something had gone bad. This presented me with several decisions. Clean the fridge or let it fester? A Perrier or that lone bottle of Heineken? Fester. Heineken. My own personal victory party. I lay down on the bed, watched CNN some more. It was pundit time. Several Washington scorps were talking about the "weak" Democratic field and who would save it. Ozio's non-write-in campaign had fizzled in New Hampshire. They showed a clip of the governor of New York rushing into or out of a building. He seemed perturbed. "I never asked for it, I never encouraged it," he said, "so why should I comment on it?" And so, the anchor wondered, If not Ozio, who? Larkin? Someone was saying very definitively that Larkin would soon jump in. "You don't know anything," I told the television and shut it off.

I noticed the collection of Alice Munro stories I'd bought a month earlier splayed open on the coffee table across the room. Had I left it like that? Cruel and unusual punishment for a book (I hated broken spines; I was willing to endure personal discomfort to maintain the integrity of a spine). It seemed a long way to go, but I got up and walked across the room. The book had been left open to a story called "Bardon Bus." I began to read the first paragraph in the half-light; it was bold and yet wistful-perfect. I snapped on the reading light, lay down lengthwise on the couch facing the river and read myself to sleep there.

Jack Stanton woke me in the morning, banging on the door. "Henry! Henry! Rise and shine!" He was wearing a yellow knit shirt, leather jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. It was eight o'clock. "Jeez, you look a sight," he said. "Fell asleep in your clothes, huh? Didn't watch me, all fresh and confident, on the morning shows? Well, get on up. We're going for a drive, goin' down to Grace Junction. Hey, look-1 even brought you breakfast: a banana, an apple, black coffee-all your favorites."

"Why Grace Junction?"

"Dunno. Take a drive. See some country. See Momma. C'mon, Henry. Get yourself showered and shaved. I'll just sit here, read the paper, make some calls."

The Bronco was downstairs, Uncle Charlie lounging in the back. I rode shotgun; the governor drove-and sang. He had the radio turned way up. He sang tentatively on the new songs, more confidently on the oldies. He turned the radio down when "Achy Breaky Heart" (which was just gathering steam about then) came on. "I hate that goddamn song," he said. "I have always hated gimmick songs, even when I was a kid-Purple People Eater,' How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,' the Singing Nun. People should have more respect for music than that. You know, it's like politics. You should always have respect for what you're doing, respect the ceremonies and rituals, respect the audience."

He was certainly feeling chipper. He drove south on the interstate about thirty miles, sticking right on the speed limit, then turned west on a two-lane state road toward Grace Junction. It was an uncomfortable sort of day. The sun was warm, but the air was cold-the wind had shifted around north and carried with it memories of New Hampshire. The governor couldn't find the right mix. He lowered the windows, and it got cold. He raised the windows and it got stuffy. When he lowered the window just a little, the whistling made it hard to hear the music. "Henry," he said, snapping off the radio and lowering the windows about ten miles out from Grace Junction. "I'm gonna go over Doc Hastings', get some blood pulled. I think it's about time we dealt with the McCollister situation."

I'd been dreading this moment. Fat Willie had been there in New Hampshire, in the back of soy mind. He would blindside me whenever I began to feel optimistic (when there was no cause for optimism, the McCollister situation seemed moot-a pragmatic callousness I did not admire in myself). But I never really thought it through. It was too awful. I never seemed able to fix on it, to analyze it, to make a judgment. Sitting there, beginning to freeze a little in the Bronco, I suddenly realized why: I could not allow myself to believe that Jack Stanton would take advantage of Fat Willie's teenage daughter; and yet I couldn't believe he hadn't.

"Deal with it?" I asked.

"Tomorrow, I want you and Howard to go over there, to Fat Willie's, and lean on him a little," the governor said. "Not really lean on him-but tell him we have to resolve this thing, establish paternity. Tell him we want the girl to have an amniocentesis. Explain what that means, in detail. Tell him it's a long needle through the belly button. Tell him to explain that to Loretta. Henry, these aren't sophisticated people. They're good people, but not sophisticated. I think you present this to them, tell them that I am insisting on it, that I had my blood pulled already. Chances are, the girl will back off her claim." "Why me?" I said, shivering. "Is it because I'm-"

"It's because Willie chose you," he said. "I didn't. I can't help it if he can't see past skin color."

"Maybe he just thought I'd be sympathetic," I said, knowing that was only part of the truth.

"Look, you don't have to say anything. Howard knows what to say. But you should be there, since he came to you."

I turned toward the open window. The air was sharp but fresh; it smelled of newly turned soil. We were riding through raw red-clay farmland. It was exotic country; the roadsides were the color of a squeezed fingertip. I remember thinking it must be tough to farm such land. "Governor," I said. "If I'm going to do this, there's something I need to know."

"I am not the father of that child," he said.

Grace Junction was Onawachee County's seat. It had the requisite domed, two-story county-court building on the town square and a gray granite Confederate War Memorial that was particularly grisly: "These, Our Sons, Gave All in Glorious Struggle." There was a tablet for Civil War dead, two more for World War I and II, and a fourth for Vietnam, which was practically empty-leaving plenty of space for the next war. The governor's father, William H. Stanton, was listed among the World War II dead, though he had never lived in Grace Junction. The square around the court building was half populated now-lass offices and the Willows Funeral Home on the north side; Presley Drugs and the Florida (the most popular, and political, cafe' in town) on the west. The south had several thrift shops and a gaping hole where Zucker's furniture had once been; the east side had Meyer's Stride-Rite Shoes, the Modest Values dress shop and more vacant storefronts. Despite the strong sense that time had passed it by, this was a fairly pleasant square, as such places go: the sidewalks were red brick, set in a herringbone pattern; the courthouse was framed by live oaks. Daffodils were blooming now; spring was coming. The town seemed green, lived-in-not stark or defeated, as so many rural towns were. We entered town from the east, through Black Town, which was mostly shotgun shacks and cinder-block convenience stores, set in a web of train tracks, dilapidated garages and auto repair shops. The sawmills-mostly closed now-were on the south side of town. White folks lived on the north and west; rich folks north, rednecks west. Momma lived on the west side, in a tan clapboard house on a double lot. The governor had offered her a new house in Mammoth Falls, a brick house on the north side of Grace Junction-anything she wanted-but she was a creature of her place and wanted to stay put. "The gals wouldn't know where to come for our Wednesday poker party if I picked up and moved," she said.

Momma was sitting out on the front porch, bundled up in a heavy sweater over her usual State U. tracksuit, when we pulled up. "Hooray, hoo-rah, yeeee-hah!" she said, tugging him down by the neck and planting about an ounce of lipstick on his cheek. "You did it, honey." "Well, I survived," the governor said. "By the way, what on earth happened to you? You just took off, never said 'bye. When'd you get home, Momma?"

"I left there on Monday. I shoulda stayed, I know. But I was just too nervous, bifin' my fingernails, pacin' the floor, practically drippin' in my britches. I was intendin' to stick around, but then I heard a whole bunch of Grace Junction folks was takin' out on Monday, so I went with 'em-Doc Hastings and all."

"Goin' over see Doc now," the governor said. "Henry, Charlie-you guys keep Momma company. We can all meet up at the Florida for lunch."

"I'll come with you," Charlie said. "Got some business with Jerry Conway over at the County Barn. Owes me some money off New Hampshire."

"You take odds?" Momma asked.

"Naw, just straight-fifty bucks on twenty-five percent."

"I did better'n that," Momma said. "Jackie, you makin' your Momma a rich ol' lady."

"I get a cut?" the governor asked.

"I'll give you ten percent on my take in November," she said. "Now, get outtahere. Henry, what's your pleasure? Cup a coffee?" It was an old-fashioned house, a sane person's house. It probably hadn't changed much since the governor was a boy. The living room was on the left, dining mom on the right, with the kitchen behind. The dining room had a solid old mahogany table and chairs, with matching sideboard-good stuff: Momma had come from gentry. There was a dark green horsehair Chesterfield sofa with antimacassars along the wall in the living room, flanked by a La-Z-Boy and a maple rocker with a crocheted seat cushion-all facing an enormous console television, which seemed the only new piece in the house. There were several oak lamp tables with doilies, a magazine rack next to the La-Z-Boy (Momma subscribed to Time, Good Housekeeping, Sports Illustrated and the Smithsonian), shaggy chocolate wall-to-wall carpeting. There was a mirror on the wall behind the sofa, portraits of her parents on the back wall and a large campaign poster of her son, looking very seventies and glamorous running for attorney general, over the television. We moved on back to the kitchen, which was light and large, and had more photos-Jack as a boy, Jack as a teenager, Uncle Charlie, other folks I didn't recognize.

"You have any pictures of Jack's father?" I asked.

"Over here," she said. "Here's the two of us in Kansas City." It was a studio shot. They were holding hands, their heads together-lovebirds. She wore a lot of makep back then, too; he had a sort of Ronald Colman look-dark slicked-back hair, pencil mustache. He was in uniform, a private first-class. The governor, it was clear, looked a lot like his mother; he had her nose and mouth. "So: you did say coffee?" she asked, already pouring some from a Mister Coffee. "'Bout losin' my mind. Take anything?"

"No thanks, just black," I said. "What was he like?"

"Oh, he was just glorious," she said, sitting down at the gray Formica table with chronic legs. "You know the story, right?"

I'd heard the story, but I wanted to hear it from her. "You met at the USO?" I asked.

"Yes sirree," she said. "He was a friend of Charlie's. I was up, visiting Charlie-he was about to ship out. Kansas City was the place back then, don't ask me why. But it was just swarmin' with fellas. And so there I was, and Charlie introduced me to Will Stanton-and he asked me to dance. It was a Glen Miller, "Gettin' Sentimental Over You"-or was that Dorsey? Anyway, it just clicked, and I mean clicked, like a lock tumblin'. You only get a few moments of magic in a life, I suspect, and that was mine. He knew it. I knew it. We didn't wait for the formalities, if you know what I mean. But we did get ourselves hitched before he went. Charlie was best man. We had a couple of weeks, long enough for Jackie to get planted."

She paused. "Was that when you worked at Harry Truman's haberdashery?" I asked.

"Oh shit, who told you that? Jackie? Gawd, Henry-let me tell you somethin': kids'll believe anything. Truman's was well bankrupt by the time this girl hit town. I mean, he was vice president of the United States by then, fixin' to move on up. People'd point out where his store had been, but it was long gone. I guess I told that to Jackie just to tell him something. He always wanted to know everything there was to know 'bout his daddy, but there wasn't all that much to know. I had hint for two weeks, and I can't remember two better weeks in my entire life-and then he left, and he died at Iwo. And he's buried somewhere out there. And his son is going to be president of the United States someday."

"And Uncle Charlie, did he win the Congressional Medal of Honor?"

"He won some sort of thing, came home a mess. He lay on that damn couch in the living room, shakin' like a leaf and screamin' in the night. But I think it was Jackie pulled him out-he was devoted to Jackie, like he was his own." She paused. "Y'know, Uncle Charlie isn't really Uncle Charlie. He's not my brother-not by blood, least-ways. Montilla and Pops inherited him from Daddy's best friend, Junior Treadwell-tree fell on Junior, he was a lumberjack, back when they were lumberin' these woods; then Junior's wife, Johnetta, got womb cancer and died. My folks took hint in-I was a little girl. So Charlie's real name is Treadwell, not Malone. But we was raised brother and sister, and my folks did adopt him."

"Tough life," I said.

"Yeah, it was real," Momma said. "Not like now Up in New Hampshire, I saw all those folks goin' around in goose-down jackets-and I was thinkin' to myself, we didn't have nothin' like that at all. We didn't have any insulation, y'know? It was just us and life. 'Accentuate the positive, e-liminate the negative, and don't mess with Mr. In-between.' People seem to do more things but take less chances nowadays. You mind if I light up?"

"Not at all. You were fabulous up there, in New Hampshire," I said. "You really lifted everyone's spirits-and, believe me, that was some heavy lifting."

"Awww, I was just runnin' my mouth. You know, Henry," she said, lowering her voice, "we used to have separate drinking fountains here in Grace Junction. A lot of us weren't too proud of that, but we didn't say nothin'-till Jackie started eatin' over at the Florida."

"The Florida?"

"Yeah, no kidding. That was Mabel Brockett's place, over in Black Town, before she got big and moved it downtown. That was Jackie's doing, if you want to know the truth. He started eatin' there when he was in high school. Y'know, they were havin' the sit-ins 'bout that time over in Nashville, and Jackie wanted to do something, so he sat in at Mabel's, though no one noticed it or gave two shits, a white boy sitting-in in Black Town. Can you imagine? But he knew what he was doing. Mabel was the best damn cook in the piney woods, and Jackie began talkin' her up-in school, you know. He started doin' takeout, takin' orders from his classmates, 'cause none of them had the guts to go on over to Black Town. Anyways, Jackie got this notion: he wants Mabel to cater the Senior Prom. And it became this big deal. They had an election over it-and that election came to be how Grace Junction argued it out over integration."

The phone rang. "Yeah, yeah, we're comin," Momma said. "Henry's been talkin' my ear off." She hung up the phone. "C'mon, son, you ever ride shotgun with a blind ol' lady behind the wheel?"

We took the scenic route into town. She showed me all her friends' houses, the Baptist church where they used to go, the Methodist church where she had her AA meetings, the Assembly of God she went to now "I'm a Christian, sort of," she said. "I don't drink no more, smoke only a little-when I'm nervous, or I feel like I'm gonna be nervous. But I asked the Lord to forgive my gambling, and my Lord is a forgivin' fellah. He'll let me cheat on everythin' but the drinkin'." We parked in front of Presley's Drugs, down the block from the Florida. "You hear of Sherman Presley?" Momma said. "That was his daddy's pharmacy. Al Presley was the leading seg in town."

"He still run it?" I asked.

"No, he took a heart attack and died," Momma said. "Sherm was long gone, too damn smart to get stuck down here-like Jackie, only mean. So Ruth Ann, Al's daughter, inherited the store. Her husband, Ralph Winter, runs it."

"And how did the Florida move downtown?"

"Well, this wasn't exactly prime real estate after Wal-Mart's come in, and Mabel had this built-in clientele, all the kids who'd started in on her chicken and ribs in high school-so she took the leap. If you can believe it, it was the one time Jackie and Sherman Presley ever worked together on somethin'. They both backed her-Sherm, I think, 'cause he wanted to step away from his daddy's seg ways in people's minds. Jackie, 'cause he's Jackie."

It wasn't quite noon, but the Florida was nearly full-and the governor was holding court at a round table in the front corner, next to the window. There was a sign on the wall above the table: JACK STAN-TON'S TABLE. There was a big, strange hand-painted photo of the governor on the wall, which made him look like a corpse, and smaller photos-of Jack and Susan eating there, of Jack and Momma and Uncle Charlie, of Jack and a wraithlike black woman who had to be Mabel Brockett.

"Is Mabel still around?" I asked Momma as we walked in.

"Naw, her daughter Peetsy-Mae, runnin' it now. HEY, honey, howya doin' sweetie-pie, what'sup, killer?" Momma was working her way down toward Jack's table, shaking hands and blowing kisses to all comers. The crowd was a mix of courthouse and feed-store types. She knew everyone, of course. "Lunch's ON THE HOUSE!" she shouted. "Jack's buyin'. Only kiddin'! Only kiddin'! Y'alls oughta buy Jack his meal, given the tourist business gonna be comin' through here when he's president of the United States."

"Sit down, Momma," Jack said, standing up. "Half these folks ain't even gonna vote for me."

"I'll swallow my pride and vote for ya," said a middle-aged man who had the looks of an insurance or farm-equipment salesman-he wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a pocket protector-"if it means more business."

"C'mon, Joe Bob," Jack said. "You ain't voted Democrat since Roosevelt. And it's always meant more business, 'spite what the Republicans say."

There was laughter and applause, and we sat down. Doc Hastings was there, but not Charlie. "Where's your uncle?" Momma asked. "Losin' his fifty dollars back to Jerry and the boys," the governor said. "We'll pick him up on the way out. Doc and me just talkin' 'bout what comes next. Doc thinks we breeze. I'm not so sure." "You're the class of the field, son," Doc Hastings said. "Name the man that can beat you."

"I dunno," the governor said. "They don't know me. They don't know who I am, and I don't know how to get it across."

Doc Hastings shook his white mane, put his hand on the governor's forearm. "You always figger out a way to get it across, son." Suddenly, he had tears in his eyes. He stuck a long, slim finger behind his small, round glasses, digging out the moisture. The governor wrapped an arm around the old man's shoulders. " 'Scuse me," Doc Hastings said, to me. "I've known this boy too long."

Momma was looking away. "Hey, Peetsy," she shouted. "Cain's we get any service over here, or we second-class customers?"

The Mansion was smelling of popcorn that night when I arrived for the meeting. I went to the kitchen, where Susan and young Jackie were emptying one bag and sticking another in the microwave. Susan was wearing a Yale sweatshirt and jeans; she had her Coke-bottle glasses on. She looked sort of rabbity and tired but not bad, considering all she'd been through. "No inure doughnuts," she said, carrying a bowl of bleached white popcorn over to the counter. "This is now the official snack food of this campaign. Henry, you eat this stuff-you lose weight. It has negative calories." She put her hand on my forearm, kissed my cheek. "Have a taste." *

It smelled like popcorn but tasted like chewed-over paper. "You think he'll go for this?" I asked.

"He'll go for anything," she said, "if you provide it in sufficient quantity."

We met in the study. The last time I'd been in that room-and it seemed several years earlier-had been the Sunday night before we went to Los Angeles, the night we found out we were cratering in New Hampshire. The mood was different this time, and so was the room-the furniture had been arranged in a circle, with the governor's armchair in front of the fireplace. This room, like the rest of the Mansion, had an unlived-in, Ethan Allen showroom feel to it-quiet but undis- tinguished furniture and colors, very pale yellow walls and baby blue carpeting, dark wood breakfront and end tables, a square, lime-green sofa, leather chairs, bran lamps with dark green shades. Richard was already there, Lucille and Howard Ferguson came in together, Dwayne Forrest-the governor's agribusiness pal-was there, Brad Lieberman, Arlen Sporken, Leon Birnbaum, Laurene Robinson, Ken Spiegelman. "Okay," said the governor, still wearing the yellow shirt and jeans he'd worn to Grace Junction. "Let's do it. I have a few announcements, and then I'll turn this thing over to Howard. Actually, that's the first announcement-Howard's now, officially, our campaign manager; Henry Burton will be his deputy." That was news to me. "We're in a new phase of this thing now. We need to rethink and retool and reorganize a little bit. Dwayne Forrest will be our campaign chairman, which means he'll watch out for the money. And Ken Spiegelman-you all know Ken, right?-has somehow convinced the neocons up at University of Chicago to give him a leave of absence to run issues for us. Okay, Howard."

"All right," Howard said. "First things first. How we hangin', Dwayne?"

Dwayne Forrest was a tall, thin man except for an explosively large stomach. He had a graying crew cut, sharp blue eyes and a beard. He was wearing a tweed jacket, aquamarine chamois shirt (no tie), khakis and Timberland boots. He had the look of a man who dressed, and did, as he pleased. "Well, we're bone-dry now-but we got some stuff cookin'. Now that the campaign's come down home, we'll be doin' a series of twenty-five-dollar cocktail parties and fifty-dollar-a-platers: you'll be eatin' chicken and peas most nights the next month, Governor. We got somethin' set for every state capital in the region. A fivehundred-dollar-a-plater in Atlanta, another in Houston, another here in Mammoth Falls. We're workin' on several big hits in New York, for when that comes around. Meantime, we got some interim cash-flow problems-but nothin' we can't handle. Our friends at Briggs County Bank'll smooth out the bumps."

"Okay," Howard said. "Brad?"

"Dorsey Maxwell's got us a deal on a plane, a seven-twentyseven-old Southern Airways thing, configured for first class, front and rear," Brad Lieberman said. "Big logistical question now is, you want the Service?"

My mind wandered as they discussed pros and cons of adding Secret Service protection. That stuff, the schedule and the money-I couldn't care less about. In fact, that night it was an effort for me to concentrate on the things I liked thinking about-what came next tactically and strategically, the mad out from New Hampshire. I was wiped; played out. As I looked around the circle, the people who'd been most involved in New Hampshire all seemed in similar shape-lying back, staring at the ceiling, doodling, yawning. Except for Howard Ferguson, who seemed cool, untired, unreadable, immutable. I wondered if he dreaded the next day's business-the visit to Fat Willie's-as much as I did. I wondered how he'd handle it. I'd known him for six months and didn't know him at all. I found myself wishing I could talk to Daisy about it, ask her advice. I knew she'd be appalled. / was appalled. I found myself wishing-for the first time since I'd signed on with Jack Stanton-that I could be someplace else: off in the Caribbean somewhere, with Daisy.

Then, finally, the governor cut off the techie talk. "Richard, we learn anything useful today?"

"Hotline says ol' Natural Forces is shoppin' for a guru. May go with Strunk and Wilson, may go with David Adler. In any case, I guess this ain't no 'classroom exercise' anymore."

"David Adler, huh?" the governor said. "He still in the business?" "He'll work one or two a cycle-no straight party stuff, just guys he likes, moderates. This might be his sort of gig, high-profile and quirky. But look, either way, this ain't New Hampshire. We are now free to batter the shit out of Harris, hang him with his own words-Arlen and Daisy're already workin' on some spots."

"Governor, this is not rocket science," Arlen Sporken said. "The man has proposed some crazy stuff."

"Basic rule of politics," Richard said. "There are some issues that are so complicated, you never talk about 'em-'cause your opponents can distort your position too easy. I suspect Lawrence Harris has raised nearly every last one of those issues. His head is on a platter."

"Say Adler took Harris on, how would he play it?" the governor asked. He was intrigued by this turn.

"High road-inspirational shit," Richard said. "A nation in crisis, looking for a different kind of politician. David's made his money. He wants to go out a saint. Anyways, he doesn't need to go low road-not so long as he's runnin' against, ah, you. Right, Leon?"

Leon shrugged, embarrassed. "Leon?" Susan asked.

"You don't want to know," Leon said. "Okay-two numbers, nationally. Among Democrats. Is Jack Stanton trustworthy enough to be president: thirty-eight percent say no."

"Well, that's not so bad," Lucille said.

"Thirteen percent say yes," Leon continued. "The rest don't know."

i 0

The governor, color rising, tried to snag a bowl of popcorn on the floor with his cowboy boot but knocked it over. He looked down, debating whether to squat down and get it. "Amazing those damn things don't just float up in the air, so little to 'em." He looked up, "Okay, Leon, don't keep us in suspense-what's the other number?" "It's on a series of personal qualities, head-to-head against Harris. `More thoughtful on the issues,' two thirds haven't got a clue, but the other third, he clobbers you-twenty-four to eight."

"Only eight percent of the American public think I'm thoughtful on the issues?" Stanton asked, a deep red now.

"Only eight percent of Democrats," Leon said. "But your comeback in New Hampshire hasn't really registered yet, and Harris has got problems, too: he's nowhere down here. He's at three percent in Georgia, six in North Carolina, thirteen in Florida-approval, that is. Name rec, he's not much more than a third."

"So, Richard, you're him-what do you do?" Susan asked.

"Play regional. He's probably got Maine this weekend. Win Massachusetts, try and establish myself out west-Colorado may not be a bad state for him. Hope to survive Super Tuesday by pulling a Dukakis-picking off enough in south Florida to seem plausible, then pray for a split in Illinois and Michigan. And nail us in the big states back east-New York and Pennsylvania."

"He's not gonna play in Illinois or Michigan," Brad Lieberman said. "You imagine him sellin' auto workers on a gas tax? You think he's ever met a black person?"

"We've got to stop him before that, down here," Richard said. "It's not a question of stopping him," the governor said. "It's a question of starting us. I mean, if this is a fair fight, a normal campaign, we can take him out easy. Arlen and Daisy probably got the silver bullet in the can already-am I right?" Arlen nodded, started to speak, but Stanton put up a hand. "But that's not our problem. Our problem is, the American people think I'm an airhead. Now, Arlen, you tell me how we correct that in thirty seconds?"

"Issues spots?"

"Spots are spots," the governor said. "They're like this shitty cardboard popcorn. They don't fill you up. We need to figure out some more basic way to connect."

"You could try some speeches," said Ken Spiegelman, his first foray on our turf "You could give a series of speeches, real thoughtful speeches, lay out the differences with Harris on taxes, foreign policy . ."

"No one would cover them," I said, maybe a little too abruptly. "Actually, it'd be worse than that. The scorps would ignore the substance and use the fact of the speeches against us, as a failed ploy, part of the horse race-Stanton trying to compete with the intellectual Professor Harris."

"Anyway, you're not gonna win that cohort, the MacNeil-Lehrer tribe," Leon said, so matter-of-factly that it almost seemed cruel. jack and Susan glanced at each other quickly, then both, simultaneously, stared down at their hands. "You've got some promising grazing land farther down the ed and income scales-and those folks aren't going to respond to elegant policy formulations."

"So tell me," the governor asked. "How do we move this thing from retail to wholesale? How do we do the stuff we did in the malls and the union halls the last few weeks, how do we do that if we're hopping from tarmac to tarmac in a big plane, shut off from the folks by Secret Service? Except, of course, for the folks we touch up at fund-raisers? How do we reach the folks 'down the ed and income scales,' half of whom think I'm just that bozo in the National Flash? . . . How do you do politics in a country that hates politicians? How do we show 'em who I really am?"

No one had a clue.

"So, am I a pumpkin?" Daisy asked. It was one in the morning. I was asleep. "Are you asleep?"

"Unh."

"Sorry."

" 'Sokay . . ."

"I can't believe you're back down there-and I'm up here," she said. "It's like what happened to Lloyd Bridges when he surfaced too fast on Sea Hunt. My stomach hurts, like someone's wringing it out. My arms and legs hurt-and you're asleep, and pissed at me now, because, I mean, after all: don't you have a right to get some sleep?"

"Don't worry about it. How're you? What's new?"

"You tell me. Am I a pumpkin?"

"Huh?"

"Well, they have the first big post--New Hampshire meeting down at the Mansion. Half the known world is there. Arlen is there. Lucille is there. I'm not invited. What gives, Henry?"

"Nothing. It probably doesn't mean anything." But I had wondered about that. "Everyone's still a little foggy. Nothing happened at the meeting, except Howard's campaign manager now--"

"Howard the Furtive Cipher? That should straighten things right out. What else happened?"

"Richard said Harris's probably gonna hire David Adler."

"That's old news--Hotline this morning. I heard it was gonna be Paul Shaplen."

"Who?"

"Old labor guy--used to work for the Mine Workers, ran a couple of the reform campaigns. I think maybe the one where the guy got killed. Works out of Louisville. Guess Harris figured this guy could help with two colors--blue-collars and rednecks. Not a bad move, if he's any good. But this isn't an easy game."

"Tell me about it," I yawned.

"I'm sorry, Henry," she said. "For waking you, and for being paranoid after hours."

"No, it's okay. Wish you were here."

"I'm thinking about it, thinking what it's like there right about now--the silence of that place, the river, your orderly refrigerator, your warm little body."

"Could be warmer," I said.

"This is even more pathetic than campaign sex," she said. "Phone sex."

"Are you doing something I should know about?"

"No, but I may after I hang up," she said. "Night, sweetie."

I met Howard the Furtive Cipher at campaign headquarters in mid-

morning. He was in his usual costume--rumpled gray pin-striped suit, flower tie. He offered a thin, ironic half-smile. "You're not really my deputy," he said immediately. "And I'm not really the campaign manager. We do what we always did."

"React calmly in the face of utter turmoil?"

Another thin smile. "Whatever they want us to do," he said. "Let's go. You know the way. You drive."

We took his rented white Taurus. I thought about engaging him along the way, but I was too nervous. Howard was as ever-calm, pale, ultra-energy-absorbent. He stowed a battered brown-leather briefcase in the backseat. He sat next to me, staring straight ahead. He was a Irian who never seemed curious, who never fidgeted.

It was a fine, sunny day, and Fat Willie was outside, taking down the heavy plastic windbreak, preparing his place for spring. He was wearing a fresh white shirt and pants, and a red "M. E Boosters" baseball cap. He started a smile when he saw me, but stopped when he saw that the white man getting out of the car was not Governor Stanton. "'Mornin'," he said, tentatively.

Howard did not introduce himself. He just stood there. "Willie," I said, "this is Howard Ferguson. He works with the governor too." Willie eyed Howard. Howard nodded, offered a hand, said hello. "Well," Willie said finally. "What can I do for you?"

Howard said nothing. This was going to be awful. "Willie, could we sit down and talk a minute?" I asked.

"Sure 'nuf," he said. "Can I get y'anything? Coffee?"

"No thanks," I said. Howard said nothing, but shook his head-no. Willie led us to the picnic tables just to the side of his kitchen trailer shack, an area still protected by the plastic windbreak. He sat down facing us. Howard put his attache case flat on the table in front of him, clicked it open, took out a yellow legal pad and what looked like court papers, then clicked the case shut and stowed it. Willie watched all this very carefully-which, of course, had been Howard's intention: intimidation. Willie glanced at me; I gave him nothing back.

"Mr. McCollister, the governor is very concerned about this situation with your daughter and the possible damage it might cause to his reputation," Howard Ferguson began, his voice as small and hard as a bullet. Willie glanced at me; I gave him nothing back, God forgive me. "He wants to see it resolved. He wants paternity to be established, definitively, as soon as possible."

Willie was confined. Was this inan saying the governor wanted to admit paternity? "The governor's a-"

"He wants your daughter to have an amniocentesis performed so that paternity can be established," Howard continued, barging through whatever it was Willie was going to say. There were no wasted words, no wasted movements. This was the way black folks figured white folks did business-no grease, no grace, no emotions. Howard, who came from midwestern hard-sod stock, was the quintessential, lipless white man.

"A what?" Willie said. He wiped his brow. He looked at me. I stared at the table.

"It is a procedure, performed at the hospital. Amniotic fluid is drawn from your daughter's womb. Genetic material is analyzed. It can be compared with the governor's blood to determine whether or not he is the father."

"I don't-" Willie said.

"It's a common enough procedure," Howard said, more casually. He was talking down to Willie now. "It is used to determine the health of the fetus-and that is why you will say you want it performed, to make sure the baby is healthy."

"How do you . . . get the fluid?"

"A needle is inserted through the abdomen," Howard said. Willie didn't quite wince; he wiped his eye. "Don't worry, Mr. McCollister-this is a common procedure, and the governor insists that it will be performed by the very best people available. Your daughter will be treated at Mercy Hospital, which will also ensure confidentiality."

"Mercy, huh?" Willie said. Mercy was considered the white folks' hospital. "And the governor wants-"

"The governor insists," Howard said. "There are people, Mr. McCollister, who would like to destroy Governor Stanton. He doesn't believe you are one of them. He believes you are his friend. But he can't allow this. You can't allow this. I am sure your daughter is a fine young person, but she is a child, and children are impressionable-and there has been a lot of news about the governor in recent weeks. She hasn't said a word about this to anyone?"

Willie shook his head. "I tol' her," he said. "She's a good girl."

"Well, I certainly hope so," Howard said. "You wouldn't want to jeopardize your relationship with the governor and Mrs. Stanton. The governor wants to do everything possible to help you through this time. The Stantons are prepared to be very generous. This procedure will cost you nothing. The governor is prepared to cover all pre- and postnatal expenses. He will do this because he believes you are his friend. But you must cooperate. We must determine-to everyone's satisfaction-that he is not the father of that child. I'm sure you understand his position."

Without waiting for a response, Howard pulled up his attache case, put his phony papers back in it. He stood up, offered William McCollister his card. "Please call me at this number, and we will make all the necessary arrangements."

Willie nodded. He shook Howard's hand. He didn't shake mine; this time, he didn't even look at me.

We pulled away and I felt dizzy. Howard sighed. "What do you think?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"I can't believe she won't tell someone, tell a friend, and then we're fucked," Howard said. "Well, maybe not. Say she tells some friends, say it begins to get around-we can just say it's a copycat, a copycat Cashmere." He laughed-a thin, throaty heh-heh, the bloodless fuck. "There might even be a blowback from it, a sympathy reaction, work in our favor."

"They're good people," I said. "And if she doesn't tell anyone, doesn't that indicate she's probably making this thing up?"

"That she's pregnant?"

"No, about the governor."

"You believe that?" Howard asked.

I missed a red light and was nearly hit by a truck coming the other way. I pulled over to the side of the mad, sick to my stomach. I leaned out the door and vomited.

Howard just shook his head.

Our political family was splintered. Richard, Arlen and Daisy were back in Washington. Brad, Howard, Lucille and I were in Mammoth Falls. Susan worked her own schedule. And the candidate flew about, doing foolish, mechanical things. He did a lot of satellite interviews. These would happen around midday, in a television studio-inevitably a flat, nondescript building with satellite dishes, located in an industrial park. He would sit in a room alone, backlit in mentholated blue. He would have an earpiece and a glass of water. He would have a list of stations and anchor names:

WHR. C-Charlotte, NC-Richard and Cheryl. WGUL-Charleston, SC-Brody and Kelly. WANB-Anniston, AL-Kelly and Chuck.

And so on.

He would do ten, twelve, seventeen at a shot. Five minutes each. Always the same. Always the same first question-and the same evasion: "Awww, Kelly-I don't think folks really care about that. They're concerned about the economy. About what's gonna happen down there in Charleston when the base closes." They were also concerned about what the government was going to do about crime, about education, about . . . It was awful. He would rip out the earpiece when it was over and stomp around. "Tell me, Laurene," he said one day, "what was it about America twenty years ago that caused every third woman, white and black, to name her daughter Kelly?" "I dunno," Laurene said. "Charlie's Angels?"

The governor was suffering from severe human-contact withdrawal. He would devour every employee in every television station, lingering over their personal stories and their problems, hungry for the sort of campaigning he'd done in New Hampshire. But there was very little of that now. He did three states a day, unless it was Florida or Texas, where he did three markets a day. The weather was better-it was spring-but he didn't experience it much. He experienced airports and hotel ballrooms and hotel rooms, and the plane.

The plane was as hermetic an experience as the rest of the campaign, only more intense. He could feel the presence of the traveling scorps in the rear; there was the appearance of interaction-he'd go back once a day, just before takeoff, chat in the aisle, say nothing. Laurene and her people tried to keep the scorps occupied-a losing battle, since nothing was happening most days, at least nothing they could see or report. It was all fund-raising and local organizing, and five-minute noninterviews with local anchors. I was happy, for once, not to be too much a part of this. I traveled with the candidate several days a week, mostly weekends, when the bigger public events-debates, rallies-happened; the rest of the time I spent back in Mammoth Falls, working the phones, doing stuff.

I didn't hear anything more from Howard, or anyone else, about the McCollister situation, and I never asked. I let it slip into the black hole that was Howard Ferguson's portfolio: it was the campaign manager's job to worry about the unspeakable. But I was obsessed by it, pained by it. I'm pretty sure I dreamed about it-horrible dreams that lingered just beyond the edge of my consciousness. I was disgusted by what I had done. I was ashamed. I didn't want to think about what came next. I started running again. Daisy and I agreed to go see Terminator 2 simultaneously, in our respective cities-she, for the third time-and then talk about it. I was beginning to like action movies.

The campaign unfolded much as we expected. We lost Maine. We lost South Dakota-Bart Nilson won that, even though he'd already dropped out. The next day he endorsed us, and we put him on the plane with Stanton, hoping his prairie integrity would give us a boost in Colorado. We certainly needed one. Harris was all over the air, running a spot we called "Rocky Mountain Hiya," in which he stood in a mountain meadow wearing a plaid shirt and said, "Hello to you, Colorado. My name is Lawrence Harris and I'm running for president. I'm a college teacher, a former United States senator from New Hampshire, which is a state very much like yours-a beautiful state, a place where people really care about the environment, but a place that's suffering some tough economic times, just like Colorado. I think our government should do something about that. We can invest in the future, invest in environmental technology, create new jobs while building a cleaner future for our children." And again, as in New Hampshire, there was a rush of children into his arms. "And our . . ."-he was laughing now-"grandchildren."

"Shit, he's a pol," Richard said on the phone, after seeing a dub of the "Hiya" spot. "All of a sudden he wants to start spending fuckin' money on the fuckin' environment! Is pork a natural force?"

"Well, he never said he didn't want to spend money," I said. "He just said he wanted to raise taxes."

"Henri, coupla things about that spot got me worried," Richard said. "Notice how they have him saying college teacher instead of professor? And the way spending money on the environment flows naturally from his 'Natural Forces' bullshit. This guy Shaplen ain't bad." "But he's still stuck peddling Lawrence Harris."

"No one knows who or what Lawrence Harris is," Richard said. "And no one's gonna know. He's gonna be in and out of this state by next Tuesday. All they gonna know is what they see on the tube. He could get up there and say, 'I'm Lawrence Harris and I used to play professional football,' and no one'd know any different, specially since we ain't telling them any different. You can't convince Jack to fire off one of our silver bullets?"

"No. He's positive negative'll boomerang," I said.

"How about comparative?" Richard said. "Hi, I'm Jack Stanton and I'm a human being. My opponent is Lawrence Harris, and he has a cork up his ass."

"Forget about it."

"So we're just sittin' out there doin' Fast Times at Bronx Science?" Which was what Richard called our main Colorado spot, which featured Jack Stanton speaking to high school kids-and giving a much less convincing version of the speech I'd seen him deliver at the union hall in Portsmouth: "No politician can promise you a secure future," he said, sitting on a school desk in a dark suit, a demographically correct display of acne-free teenagers in front of him. "We're going to have to compete hard against the rest of the world for the best jobs-I want you to have a leg up in that competition, and so I'll work overtime to make sure our schools and colleges are second to none. But we're all going to have to work harder."

"It's a fucking reversal of fortune is what it is," Richard said. "Harris is promising pork. We're promising hard times. And you know what? People still think we're the airhead. This ain't makin' it, Henri."

I knew that. I knew it even better after Harris clobbered us in the Colorado debate, the Saturday night before the primary in Denver. It was a strange evening. Susan wasn't there. I flew in last minute. There had been no real debate prep, just Stanton and Bart Nilson putting their heads together with the plane people-Ken Spiegelman, who was flying around with the candidate, keeping the governor's mind occupied, talking issues, and Laurene. None of the political folks were around. I caught up with the candidate just as the debate prep was breaking up, just as he was about to walk through the labyrinthine postmodern series of overhead walkways from the hotel, through some other building, into a generic concrete and cinder-block convention center. The debate would be held in a stark, overlit corner of a large, echoey warehouse of a room, empty except for two thin rows of spectators.

It didn't feel good. And it was strange to see Charlie Martin still there, waiting, when we arrived. I'd almost forgotten about him. He was out of money and out of the news but still hanging around in the race and onstage. It must have been painful for him: he was extraneous, the story had passed him by. He tried to attack both Harris and us, but no one paid him any attention, especially not after Harris lowered the boom on us.

Actually, Stanton walked right into it. He went after Harris playfully, as if he didn't quite take him seriously. "You say you want to improve the economy and the environment, and invest in the future-and yet you are proposing the stiffest gasoline tax increase in history," the governor said, with a not-very-convincing chuckle. "How you gonna improve the economy by taking money out of people's pockets?"

"Well, that's a difference between you and me, Governor Stanton," Harris said-insufferable, obnoxious. And lethal. "I tell the people how I'm going to pay for the things I want to do. You don't." "That's not true, Larry, and you know it," Stanton shouted-suddenly, stupidly, out of control. "I've proposed a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans."

"Which won't raise a quarter of what you'll need to keep all the extravagant promises you've made, Jack," Harris said. "You see, folks: this is politics as usual."

"Larry, for God's sake."

"This is what the American people are sick and tired of. This man will say just about anything to get elected."

The governor maintained his discipline admirably after it was over. He even chatted with scorps. He did not trash his room. He trashed mine. "Fuck all, Henry!" he said, barging in about midnight, as I was commiserating with Daisy on the phone. (The debate had looked as awful in Washington as in Colorado.) "Fuck all. We can't get it together to do even a half-assed prep?" He pounded his fist on my desk. "I-can't-fucking-believe it!" He swept the lamp off the desk, knocking it into the television cabinet, smashing the bulb. "So what the fuck was I supposed to say, 'No, Larry, I won't say just about anything to get elected-just a couple of things I don't quite believe'? What was I supposed to fucking say?"

"I don't know," I said.

He picked up the desk chair and smashed it down, cracking a leg. "Henry, this sucks." He sat down on my bed. "What do we do now?" "Stick with the plan," I said. "We'll win down home."

"The scorps have already discounted that," he said. "It won't mean anything, except in delegate count, especially not after tonight. You know half of Washington was watching this damn thing. That's all they do up there, watch C-SPAN. They break up dinner parties, they hold the dessert. The hostess says, 'We'll have baked Alaska in an hour, but first let's watch Stanton and Harris mess each other up.' And then they congratulate themselves on how much better they would've done. What did Daisy say?"

"A bunch of nasty things about Lawrence Harris."

"Great. Just fucking fabulous." He was calmer now "Henry, I think this is the worst it's been. New Hampshire was bad there, for a few weeks, but I always felt I could do something about it. I could work, go to a mall, stand out on a street corner, whatever. But, you know what? This is one big empty country. You stand on a street corner and the cars whizz by. I don't know how you do politics if you can't see the folks. Dunno if I want to do politics if you can't see the folks. I was born too late. I would've loved torchlight parades, whistle-stop tours. You know?"

He stood up. Thought a moment. Sat down again. "You think we're gonna get a Washington candidate? Larkin?"

"I don't think so," I said.

"He'd be good," Stanton said. "He'd come out, work hard, stay on message. He's clean."

"He's sterile."

"Henry, my man," he said, standing again. "Sterile is what's happening. Larry's the next thing to sterile-he's smart, he smells of chalk and erasers. You can trust a fella like that. Not so sure you want to vote for him: he might assign homework. But you can trust him. Good thing he doesn't understand Stanton's Third Rule: You don't want to go around campaigning for office and acting too smart. Certainly not book-smart. The only kind of smart that folks in this country'll tolerate is country-smart. See, if it's just me and Lawrence, I may have a shot-if I can make him look prideful and preachy and cold and pointy-headed. But I can't attack him frontally. I know Richard and all of them are itchy to drop the big one. But it's too damn dangerous, given how people think of me." *

"But can you just let him keep on hammering you, the may he did tonight?"

He shook his head, as if to say no. "Damnedest thing," he said. "I watch elections all the time, study 'ens, love 'em. Usually I can figure out what each guy should do, doesn't make a difference if they're Democrat or Republican-there's always something. But I can't crack this one. I can't figure it out. Probably just too close to it-that's why you hire hired guns, I guess." He moved toward the door, opened it, then turned: "It's also why, I gotta tell you, Henry, if I'm a God-fearing Democrat sitting in Washington tonight, or maybe even someplace else, and I've ever had an itch to be president of the United States, I may be scratching just a little."

Two things happened the next Monday that changed Jack Stanton's mind about going negative, and set us on the strange path that led to the third candidate he was dreading. The first was a scary Leon poll from Florida. We were ahead, but not convincingly-35 to 21, with a lot undecided and Stanton's negatives at 45, and 62 percent saying they'd like to see another candidate in the race. "You know what it looks like?" the governor said. "It looks like New Hampshire in reverse. If we can't do better in Florida than he did in New Hampshire, we may be mortally fucked."

The other thing was that Lawrence Harris-or, more likely, Paul Shaplen-made a mistake. They went negative on us in Colorado. It was a strange ad. It started with drums and deep horns and pictures of the war in Vietnam, the flag waving, and then scruffy protesters marching in the streets. "When our country was at war, Jack Stanton didn't just opt out-he used pull to get himself out." A jail door slid open with a rusty squeak. "Now our country is facing another crisis." And there was Lawrence Harris, back in the damn meadow: "It's a silent crisis. A fiscal crisis. An economic crisis. I'll face that crisis. I won't run away."

"Have you seen it?" I asked Richard by phone. Stanton had asked me to stay with him after the debate. We were trying to make sure we held our base in Georgia, which would be voting the same day as Colorado. We were in Macon, at one of those rare events the governor actually enjoyed-a town meeting at a local high school. It was probably a waste of time, but I'd argued for it with Lucille, who was now doing scheduling: "It's like vitamins," I said. "It keeps him pumped the rest of the day"