Dewey Defeats Truman (38 page)

Upon emerging, he had time for just a brief exchange with Horace.

“I tried, Colonel. You saw what he said to my
Sun-Times
buddy.”

“Well,” said Horace, looking straight ahead, “we don’t always get what we hope for.”

“I know,” said Peter. “I didn’t either.”

Figuring he meant the Macmurray girl, Horace replied, “I’m sorry about that,” though he wasn’t. “You’ll have your other victory later today.”

“Sixty-five percent, Colonel. See if I’m not right. And remember, there’s nothing wrong with splitting your ticket.”

Horace no more required Peter’s advice than he had Sherman Welch’s. He was in and out of the booth in the space of ten seconds, voting for Truman and nobody else. He hurried home as fast as his ever more wobbly legs would carry him. Once there, he bolted the door and did not raise the blinds. He opened up
The Lady of the Lake
, hoping she
would put him to sleep before lunchtime. She succeeded, keeping him there into the early evening, except for two quick interruptions: the thump of the
Argus
(thrown through the passenger window of Billy Grimes’ new 1941 Ford) and Mrs. Goldstone’s delivery of half a turkey with three tiny American flags flying from toothpicks.

Horace ate two slices off it and waited until eight o’clock before turning on the radio. He would not listen to WOAP tonight, for the same reason he had left the
Argus
outside his locked door: to avoid a lot of mush about the hometown prodigy. He would go with the ABC station from Flint, even though it was promising Dr. Gallup and Walter Winchell, neither of whom he could stand. Gallup, of course, was merely the messenger bearing bad news, though he’d been bearing it, to Horace’s discomfort, for months now. But Winchell, whose rat-a-tat-tat reminded him of Truman’s, was a teller of other people’s secrets, the most infernal, automated busybody the world had ever seen. Horace could imagine him declaiming to Mr. and Mrs. North America and all the ships at sea the story of Jonathan Adams Darrell, whose bones, unbeknownst to everyone, were lying inside a little castle in Owosso, Michigan. Before Winchell was through, the tale would probably involve drugged starlets and Nazi spies, instead of just the original, sad fifty-year-old facts and the pathetic postscript of a weary old man and missing local boy.

It was too late to undo things. It was too late for everything. The polls had just closed, according to the Flint announcer, who told his listeners that the day’s good weather assured a big farm vote across the whole region and, as a result of that if nothing else, the election of Thomas E. Dewey.

“F
IFTY
,
RIGHT
?”
ASKED
B
ILLY
G
RIMES
.

“Fifty,” he was assured by the Campbell brothers’ sales manager. The
Argus
was planning to put out an Extra shortly after midnight, and Billy was reserving a full bale of what were sure to be highly saleable collectors’ items. He was also carrying the best camera and night lens he could borrow from Mr. Jackson’s shop. Photographers from
Time and Life
and the newsreels had already fanned out through town to shoot the local-color celebrations, but if they spent as much time drinking as his father said these journalists did, they might be grateful for the chance to buy some extra pictures from a kid who really knew the neighborhood.

It was past ten now, and the crowd outside the Argus was stretching down Park toward Christian’s and the Capitol. A special late showing of
The Big Sleep
was in progress there, but Billy had just heard from one of the
Time
stringers that hardly anybody was in the audience. By a week from tomorrow, when
So Evil My Love
started playing, things would be back to normal and the place packed with the usual Wednesday first-night crowd.

But what was he thinking? Things were never going to be the same here. Along with the tourists coming to see the Walk, these reporters would be back any time Dewey did something big in the next eight years, the way they used to descend on Hyde Park and Warm Springs to see if the President’s own neighbors liked what he was up to.

Billy went through the lobby and looked at the tote board set up with a chalk-rimmed box for each county in Michigan and state in the country. Truman was ahead in
both counts, but as the loudspeakers kept assuring the crowd on the street, that was only to be expected: the big cities, where the bulk of the President’s voters lived, always reported first. Billy knew that in an hour or two Harry’s percentages would take a sickening plunge, the way, whenever you got to the point in a movie where the stock market crashed, ticker tape slipped like sand through the broker’s hands. The only thing missing would be those fast, squeaky violin notes changing into groans from a bass fiddle.

“Miss Macmurray! Mr. and Mrs. Feller!” He waved to them on the other side of Exchange, figuring they had detoured by the Argus on their way to the City Club. He knew from Margaret that Anne was having dinner with them, and that afterwards they were going to celebrate the results downtown. Jack Riley, who was being treated these days like he was practically a member, planned to join them when he got back from Flint.

Margaret might make it there herself, if rehearsals at school for
Dear Ruth
finished up early enough. When she’d told him this, he’d reacted with an anxious look, as if she might expect him to show up, too. But then she’d remembered the killing he’d told her he could make off the pictures and the Extra, and she’d responded with a tired smile, as if they were already married and he was calling to say he’d be working late at the office.

T
HE
C
ITY
C
LUB WAS JAMMED WITH MEMBERS AND THEIR
guests, three times as many as the night before the parade. Extra waiters had been hired for the occasion, but there was no hope of finding a seat in the main dining room. Harold
and Anne and Carol squeezed onto a spot of the dance floor as close to the bar as they could get. The radio was tuned to WGN, but the voices of the crowd kept drowning it out.

“Jack!” cried Carol Feller. She’d spotted him over by the entrance to the Long Room, looking bewildered but somehow pleased. “Over here!” she shouted, glad that at least this part of her arrangements had worked out. A moment ago she’d been disappointed to learn from Mrs. Osmond’s daughter that Margaret had decided to head straight home after the rehearsal. “Was she feeling all right?” Carol had asked. “Oh, she’s fine, Mrs. Feller. She said she was just a little tired.” There were times these days when Carol wished her daughter were again feeling angry or even sullen—just not quite so in need of a multivitamin. But there was no time to think about that now, and she felt lifted by Jack Riley’s cheerful approach. He gave her, after Anne, a big kiss.

“How was the day?” his fiancée asked.

“Not bad for just going through the motions.” He laughed and raised his voice over the radio, which was now being turned up.

“Half the cars were overloaded,” he explained. “We had four ladies instead of three in some of the back seats, and they joked all the way to the polling place about who was the fattest. Mostly I’m happy for Walt. Walt’s the guy I work with,” he explained to the Fellers. “He did a great job turning them out, and they’ll notice that in Detroit. It shows we can get well enough organized for something like this that, another time, when we’ve actually got a shot, we’ll make the most of it.” His last few words were louder than necessary, because the room was quieting down. Ed Royers was standing on the bar, waving his arms up and down in an effort to hush everybody. The
crowd understood why as soon as it heard the announcer, two hundred miles away in the Chicago Tribune tower on Michigan Avenue: “… and yes, I’ve just been handed the first edition of the world’s greatest newspaper for November third, 1948, and the headline, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief three words that say it all:
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
.”

The rest of what he said died in the roar. The extra barmen, like a Busby Berkeley chorus line, succeeded in a simultaneous popping of three champagne corks. The crowd chanted Dewey’s name, and Harold and Carol kissed each other hard, both of them surprised to be so moved that this had actually happened in the town where they had lived all their lives. Anne planted her lips on Jack’s right cheek and brushed the left one tenderly with her hand. He returned her glistening it’s-not-so-bad smile with a kind of amused relief, before turning to shake Harold’s hand. A New Year’s feeling had come over the hall. It seemed like two minutes past midnight, not twenty minutes after ten, and almost peculiar that the little band had struck up “Peg O’ My Heart” instead of “Auld Lang Syne.”

“I just thought of something,” said Carol. “Where is Al Jackson?”

“In Detroit,” said the man behind her. “He wanted to watch on the television. I heard he was going to offer himself to the cameras down there. He’s set up some fireworks behind his billboard, and he’s left instructions with someone here to shoot them off at the moment it’s ‘absolutely official.’ ”

“Poor Al,” said Carol, miming his herky-jerky gestures, “how will he describe the Walk without his paintings and props?”

“What makes you think he didn’t bring them?” said Harold. “Harris!” he called out. “Make your way here.”

Harris Terry struggled to reach his partner’s little group, bringing with him a different mood altogether.

“What’s the matter?” asked Harold.

“I’m not sure,” replied Harris, who valued his reputation for caution. “And I don’t want to be the wet blanket at this party, but I was just looking over some teletype at the Argus and there’s some peculiar stuff going on. An awful lot of House and Senate seats in the East seem to be going back to the Democrats, and so far Sigler’s not doing well at all.”

“Really?” asked Harold, whose interest in the governor’s fortunes, after the Dewey news, was less than burning.

“As I say, I don’t want to make too much out of it, but come January, Dewey may be having a tougher time with Congress than anyone expected.”

“I’m beginning to enjoy this,” said Jack. He gave Anne’s shoulder a squeeze and wondered why she didn’t seem in higher spirits herself. Her adopted town was now famous, and it looked as if her new party had still done better in the voting booth than anyone expected. Shouldn’t she be at least half as pleased as she’d been Labor Day afternoon? An image of her in that white sleeveless blouse, waving the pennant to catch his eye, came to him now, a memory of perfection. “Is anything wrong, honey?”

“I guess I’m just a little worried about Frank Sherwood,” she answered. “No one’s seen him since yesterday morning.” Though this was news to Jack, it had been Topic B at the Fellers’ dinner table.

“Anne, stop worrying,” said Harold, who didn’t relish another missing-person drama, not after what Tim Herrick’s
disappearance had put them through this summer. “He’s a grown man. When he’s over whatever is eating him, he’ll come to his senses and get back to school.”

“What do you say,” suggested Harris Terry, “we all walk over to the Matthews Building and drop in on Peter? The figures show
him
elected for sure, and I’ll bet even Jersey Jack here can find it in his heart to shake his hand.”

“Gentleman Jack would be an absolute sport about it, Mr. Terry, but I’m going to spare him that,” said Anne. “He’s already been enough of a sport tonight. I think we’re going to check with my landlady to see if Frank’s come back or left a message. And then we’ll cry over the farm vote in front of Jack’s radio.”

“I’ll walk her safely home after that,” said Jack. Carol Feller smiled at his obvious concern that Harris Terry, whose son had been born five months after he and Jeannie got married thirty years ago, might be getting the wrong, which was to say the right, idea. But Harris still seemed preoccupied by the teletype he’d seen at the Argus. He’d not made the slightest movement toward the bar and was really fidgeting to get out of here and over to Peter’s headquarters.

The Fellers joined him on the two-block walk to the Matthews Building. Before turning west, Carol looked the other way down Exchange and saw that the crowd outside the newspaper office, instead of burgeoning, was actually smaller and less noisy than the one they’d passed on their way to the club. Whatever the people down there were listening to, it wasn’t WGN. The bar that the three of them now passed on their way to Main and Water was certainly full, but as far as she could tell from looking through its window, the patrons weren’t celebrating, just concentrating on their
drinks. City Hall, across from Peter’s office, looked deserted; she’d expected to see Mayor Crawford out on the steps with a dozen flashbulbs going off in his face.

But euphoria was still in business on the second floor of the Matthews Building. The radio there was tuned not to WOAP or any of the network stations, but to a dance band in Flint. A little crowd milled about in front of a blackboard sliced by a giant chalked check mark, whose front tip touched the
x
in Cox. At just after eleven o’clock nearly all the returns in the state senate race had been counted, and Peter stood elected by a vote of 8,508 to 6,213.