Dewey Defeats Truman (37 page)

WHAT DEWEY WILL DO
, announced the cover of
Changing Times
, the top magazine on the stack by Peter’s feet. He’d spent part of the day listlessly reading them, instead of plotting what moves he should make as soon as the returns showed him elected. He’d remembered to set up the out-of-town papers and radio guys, but there was another score of local follow-up actions he should be getting ready to perform, phone calls and thank-you notes and the rest of it, to put a little early-as-possible oomph into his springboard for ’50 or ’52; and he couldn’t interest himself to the point of even making a list. He’d do his interviews, take Harvey Angell’s painfully gracious phone call—and then what?

The ice that was falling off his mother seemed to be repacking itself around him. Take that co-ed in the outer office: he’d made sure to hire the best-looking of the three that had responded to the notice on the door, but since this
morning he’d offered her barely more than a hello. Even a few weeks ago he’d have been all over the young lady, probably inviting her to their own private election-night party. As it was, he couldn’t bring himself to go near her; this luscious sweater girl seemed coated with the thumbsucking repellent his mother used to make the maid apply to him.

He tried to interest himself in the Chicago papers. The
Tribune
’s editorial was ordering Republican readers to the polls, warning against overconfidence. The editors so despised Dewey, this white-glove candidate incapable of flinging red meat, that, like Rev. Davis, they couldn’t bring themselves to speak his name. Still, he was all that would deliver them from Roosevelt’s ghost.

A knock on the door. Oh,
not
Mrs. Bruce telling him one more thing the sweater girl had done wrong or the name of another biddy needing a chauffeur to the voting booth. “Come in,” he sighed.

“For luck,” said Anne, taking a small package from the oversized pocket of her coat.

“You shouldn’t have,” said Peter.

“I shouldn’t have,” she replied, while he unwrapped a copy of Dewey’s 1944 campaign biography.

“These still aren’t moving,” she said. “Leo let me have it at cost.”

“Inscribed, to boot.”

“Inscribed.”

“ ‘To Peter, on the eve of his first election victory. With a reminder that he now has until 1964 to reach the White House without being older than Thomas E. Dewey. Fondly, Anne.’ ”

“You don’t know what to say,” she said.

“I don’t know what to say. Want one of these in exchange?” He handed her a copy of Sunday’s church program. “I didn’t see you there.”

“No, I never made it. After Saturday night I figured there was a limit to how much Dewey I could foist on Jack.”

“Ah, yes. We all know he has his Dewey limits.”

“Do-we ever. Have you got any plans for your, what do they call it? Pre-incumbency? The time between now and January.”

“Not many. Making up to Harold some of the time I’ve cheated him out of. Maybe looking for a little apartment in Lansing. I won’t want to make the drive every day. And you?”

“Oh, the usual.”

“Have you set the date?”

“More or less. March sixth, or maybe the thirteenth.”

“I’ve got one, too.”

“A date?”

“A date. With Harvey P. Angell’s wife’s cousin. A fix-up.”

She gave him a weak smile. “I’d better get going. I’ve got to stop off at the Abners’. Leo’s wife is sick, and—yes, Peter—I want to get home in time for Truman’s speech.”

“Say good night, Harry.”

“Good night, Harry.”

As she buttoned her coat, he leaned across the space between them and kissed her, if only on the cheek, for the first time since Mackinac in July. “Good-bye, Gracie.”

O
UTSIDE THE
M
ATTHEWS
B
UILDING
,
BY THE LIGHT OF A
streetlamp, she opened the church program, determined not to regret the perfectly sensible gesture she had just performed.
The three of them were going to be living in the same town, after all. She’d heard about Dewey’s name never being mentioned by the minister, a classy, very American touch, she thought, but they’d certainly made up for it in this handout, which went on about “a native son who by his ability and integrity has won the admiration of the American people.” The Reverend Davis referred contentedly to how the pollsters’ “prophecy” of Dewey’s election awaited fulfillment, though, as she slipped the program back into her coat pocket, his last line—“We earnestly pray that God will guide, protect and bless him in any vocation to which he may be called”—seemed to the writer in her just a little off-kilter, as if the diction of modesty had gotten tinged with the tones of religious mystery.

She would never make it back to Jack by the time she’d promised. Before she went to the Abners’ on Washington Street, she had to stop at her apartment, where—oh, let it not be true—Mrs. Wagner seemed to be lying in wait. But no, the blue coat coming toward her was not Mrs. Wagner’s. The cut and fabric were too fashionable, and the kerchief was protecting hair that had just come from the beauty parlor.

“There you are!” called a deep, confident voice, as if Anne were late for an appointment. The voice belonged, she could now see, to Lucy Cox, whose skin was two shades darker than it had been on Mackinac back in July.

“For goodness’ sake,” said Anne. “Hello.” (Had she ever sent that thank-you note?) “You must be in town for Peter’s big day.” She
could not
tell her she had just been up to see him. She would get the wrong idea completely.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Cox. “I’m at the hotel. Look, I got a new
Dewey button in the coffee shop. I’d left my old one on my light jacket, which I was wearing up until a week ago.”

What did one say? That one was “sorry”? She settled for “Yes, I heard that you’d been out West.”

“That’s right. He took it rather hard, unfortunately.”

Anne fumbled. “I’m afraid I don’t know Mr. Cox, but I’m sure he’ll feel better as time goes—”

“Not Mr. Cox. Peter. Peter took it hard.”

“Oh.”

“I arrived in town this morning, and was coming to invite you to a lunch party I’m giving at the hotel on Wednesday, to celebrate. I had your address on that lovely note of yours that got forwarded. It’s pretty short notice, I know, so I thought I’d walk over and ask you in person.”

“Mrs. Cox, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to—”

“That’s all right, dear. He says he won’t be able to make it either.”

“He?”

“The guest of honor. Peter.”

“Why is that?”

“I honestly don’t know. And that’s the
real
reason I came by. I thought you might. All I did was mention this little lunch, while he was checking me into the hotel, and he said, no, not possible, he expected to have some business to take care of on Wednesday. What business? I asked. And all I got was this look. So I thought you might know. What business?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Cox. Perhaps he’s just trying not to tempt the gods. You know, by agreeing to a victory lunch in advance.”

“My dear, has Peter ever struck you as lacking in confidence?”

“Well, no.”

“There’s something on his mind, and I can’t figure out what it is. I haven’t been paying him much attention these last ten or fifteen years.”

J
ACK SAT ON THE COUCH
,
LISTENING TO
T
RUMAN AND WAITING
for Anne to come home. Years from now, he thought, whenever the two of them happened to hear that voice, in an old newsreel or on some radio program, they’d recall it the way other couples did “our song.” Listening to it now made him want to get a record of it.

He was keeping her dinner warm in the oven, though he didn’t expect her to stay the night. He was still registered to vote in Flint, and would have to be up at five-thirty to help Walt dispatch the fleet of union drivers ferrying widows and crippled veterans to and from the polls. It was going to be a long day’s work for a short evening of disappointment, but he’d promised Anne he’d start back for Owosso as soon as voting stopped at 8
P.M.

He had never voted at home. In ’44 he’d filled out his ballot in Europe, and four years before that had been under twenty-one, though he could remember Gene going around the block that time to vote for Roosevelt, complaining about the idea of a third term but saying the worst thing about Willkie was he came from some town in Indiana “a little too goddamned like this one.”

Next time he and Anne would both be standing in line at the big Emerson elementary school. The business of the house had been settled: they would keep this one and start fixing it up between now and the wedding. Before they got
around to anything that could be called remodeling, they’d be busy with simple repairs, all the stuff Gene had had to let slide.

Tomorrow night they’d be saying good-bye to Truman from the City Club, where Anne would be with the Fellers. They had told him to make sure he came by as soon as he returned from Flint, which was fine with him: it would be more practice for Christmas in Connecticut. Anne had already bought their train tickets, and he was less nervous about the whole thing than he might have been. He’d decided their engagement was hardly the most surprising thing you could think of. Asked to name that, he’d have to say it was John L. Lewis (that secret symbol of all his own shortcomings) practically endorsing Dewey! A temper tantrum left over from last year’s dispute with Truman, and pretty idiotic, but it did show you that anything could happen.

He wouldn’t say it to Walt, but Jack knew that good times were ahead, whoever got in. Along with all its new power, the whole country was bound to get richer. This small house, which had once brought deliverance to the Rileys, would now be only what the real-estate agents called a “starter” for him and Anne. It would do them for Junior and maybe Junior’s little brother, but when the third one came along they’d trade up to something bigger.

“I know,” said Anne, a second after Jack heard the door. “I’m late. Leo’s wife is sick, and when I brought them over some things from the drugstore, the three of us got to talking.” She looked at the clock: it was twenty to ten.

“You haven’t missed much,” said Jack, turning off the oven and taking out her plate.

“I will miss
him
,” she said, pointing to the radio.
“Tonight
I am at my home here in Independence—Independence, Missouri—with Mrs. Truman and Margaret. We are here to vote tomorrow as citizens of this Republic. I hope that all of you who are entitled to vote will exercise that great privilege
.” For a moment the two of them listened in silence, as if she were thinking what he had a minute ago, and they were an old man and wife hearing “Alice Blue Gown.”

“The high school’s going to be mobbed,” Anne said. Maybe she’d walk there to vote with Frank Sherwood, if Mrs. Wagner didn’t nab her first.

“Walt wants all his voters up early. He’s told the drivers to pick them up before lunch. He figures as the day draws on, even before any returns come in, they’re going to see less and less point to it.” He set down her plate and she kissed him.

“I believe that the Democratic party is the party of the people. I believe that through the Democratic party all classes of our citizens will receive fairer treatment and more security.”

“At least,” said Jack, “he admits that classes exist. Remember Dewey talking at Willman? He said there was no such thing.”

Anne said nothing. Jack and Truman were right, but it was Dewey’s illusion she now needed to believe, the feeling that these differences mattered not at all, that even if they had once complicated life, they had long since been bridged.

“As you mark your ballots tomorrow, I want every housewife to ask herself: Will this protect my home and my children for the future? I want every husband to ask himself: Is this best for my wife and family?”

Jack looked across the table at the future Mrs. Riley, who
was looking at the radio as if actually trying to answer Truman’s questions.

“Do you want ketchup?” he asked her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, seeing his look of disappointment at her still-full plate. “I guess I’m not that hungry.” She took a couple of bites before saying, “Can we go to bed?” knowing that they couldn’t, not just yet, not until she helped him put up the storm window in Gene’s old room, where the sill was rotting from all the rain getting in. She knew that Jack had to be up at five-thirty, and that even if she stayed, she’d have to sneak out extra early, since Mrs. Wagner was bound to tap on her door while making an early run to the polls. She knew he wouldn’t be able to do what she most needed him to tonight, which was make love to her.

“Go to the polls tomorrow, and vote your convictions, your hopes, and your faith—”

The President spoke, she thought, as if those three things were always the same. She held her empty fork and envied him, before saying, with she hoped no trace of a quaver in her voice: “Jack, honey, let’s find that storm window.”

B
Y THE TIME
H
ARRY
T
RUMAN ROSE AT
5
A.M. ON
E
LECTION
day, Thomas E. Dewey had already beaten him, 11 to 1, in Hart’s Location, New Hampshire, though the big story was that Hart’s Location had defeated Dixville Notch in the race to have a first-in-the-nation count go out over wire services and radio. Most of the country, including Owosso, had awakened to fairly mild fall weather. The Shiawassee County clerk, Sherman Welch, husband of Dewey’s first cousin and father of fourteen-year-old Phil on the bobsled
float, had arranged for 20 percent more ballots to be printed than ever before. Owosso did its voting by machine, but Dewey’s presence at the head of the ticket was expected to swell the turnout in the outlying towns as well. Welch’s office was urging people to show up at the polls as early as possible.

This warning was quite unnecessary to Horace Sinclair, who was in line at 7:00
A.M.
, as he had been every first-Tuesday-after-the-first-Monday-in-November since picking McKinley over Bryan. At the Emerson School only three people stood ahead of him, one of them being Peter Cox, who hoped to flash his smile to the line of voters when he came out of the booth.