The American: A Middle Western Legend (26 page)

“Of course, we're for him! For Christ's sake, Pete, stop harping on that.”

“Then if you're for him, put it down in black and white. Put it down specific, where he can read it.”

“Generally—”

“Oh, my aunt! I am so goddam sick of that!”

“What are you asking for, Pete? Come out with it? Do you want socialism?”

“Socialism! Now what in hell is socialism? Suppose you tell me! If we're against government by injunction, is that socialism? If we're for arbitration of labor disputes, is that socialism? If we're for a square deal for labor, is that socialism? Would it be socialism if a workingman could come into a court and know that the damfool on the bench wasn't a hired hand of Pullman or John D. Rockefeller? If that's socialism, then you're a monkey's uncle!”

“Now wait a minute, Pete. Now just take it easy. We've all agreed that we're for a general plank on the rights of labor. Nobody's disputing that with you.”

“Sure. You're aware that you've kicked over the bucket and the milk's out. You can't put it back, you can't lick Grover's ass any more, and you either get the farm and labor vote, or this is the biggest defeat the party ever suffered.”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“And I tell you you're not going to get labor's vote without putting down in black and white just why a workingman should vote for us. We got good intentions and a little gravy to splash around, and the Republicans got twenty million dollars to spend. That's what a general plank needs—it needs twenty million dollars to make the lies stick.”

“Governor, be reasonable!”

Be reasonable, be reasonable—it was a refrain that they threw at him, hour after hour and day after day; and day after day, he fought back, snarling sometimes, spitting, wheedling, pleading, and then snarling again. And sometimes it would appear to him, with a clearness and lucidity he had never experienced before, that all of this was hopeless, that though he had fought Grover Cleveland and the trusts he represented, and defeated Cleveland—through some amazing process the trusts had won, and these too were the trusts' men; and even his own actions were checked and frustrated on every hand, so that he was as little a master of himself as these men with him, and their evasions, for which he despised them, were not too different from his own evasions.

And when they brought him to bay and demanded, “Then what are you against, capitalism?”

He laughed that away. “Go look at the Unity Building,” he told them, and that too was an evasion.

“Yes or no?”

“I'm for democracy,” he said. “I'm for justice, that's plain enough.” But inside, the question lingered, and the answer he gave them was as meaningless as his silver formulations sometimes seemed, and there was less and less sense and reason in the world. But he fought because only by the equation of justice and democracy could he draw strength from his failing body to go on, and the incredible strength of him, the rasping voice out of the huddled body, the sparkling, intense blue eyes, the fury of his attack forced them back, and point by point they yielded.

One by one, they wrote in his demands, specifically, “… we especially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression … we denounce interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States … labor creates the wealth of the country … we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights … we demand a Federal income tax, to be graduated …” They argued about form, but Altgeld said, “Put it down. Put it down in black and white, and we'll shape the form later.”

They put it down. The platform became his platform. But an undercurrent of rebellion was kindling. When he had finished and won and lay back in his chair in a state of semi-exhaustion, a condition so common of late, Judge McConnell said to him, “Don't drive them too far, Pete.”

“I have to.”

“We lose this chance—”

“Then we lose all,” Altgeld said flatly.

XIV

Altgeld was glad to see Joe Martin. He had been in and out with others, but Emma had begged him into one of the very few quiet dinners she was able to manage. “Joe, make him get hold of himself,” she had said. Martin asked, “Is he bad?” “I don't know. He lives on nerve. I don't know, Joe. It would be terrifying if one man thought he could remake a country, a man whom they spat on and ground underfoot and thought they had destroyed—but he's doing it, do you see, Joe!” “I know he's doing it.” “But he's afraid—if one little prop is pulled out. Do you know how shaky it is?” “I know, Emma. I think I know how shaky it is, if I don't know anything else. I think I know that.” “Well, he can't get hold of himself—”

So Joe Martin came, and they talked of old times. Martin drew him into memories bucolic and slow, the corn growing for the harvest, sleepy brown rivers, like the Wabash, how it was for so many of them who had come out of the bottom lands when the first growth of giant timber still stood in some places. And then Martin told his own tales, the way only he could:

“I never told you that time, Pete, going out to the coast on the old Union, and they had the card tables in the parlor car. There I was comfortable with a newspaper and a cigar, and perfectly willing to let it go that way, but three Texas badmen, real frontier tinhorn gamblers, they couldn't let it rest, oh no. They had to make their Chicago bunco pay off, and then I had no peace until I got up and sat in their game. Just quiet five-card draw, you understand. Just a simple city game for a simple city boy like myself. Oh, my goodness, Emma, I do not like tinhorn frontier gamblers who like to act like badmen, but very polite after they saw me take out a roll of bills like my fist to pay the waiter. Jack-high at a dollar to open and a dollar to raise, and they were dealing the deck, but polite-like, and just taking ten or fifteen dollars from me now and then. So by the time I was losing a hundred, they knew all about me, that my name was Steve Hennessy, that I was married, two kids, that I just played a little cards, now and then, that I had sold all my Chicago property, my wife's inheritance, six thousand dollars, and was off to the coast to buy a little piece of land and see if we could go it again. Well, I'm small and I look the part, gentle and quiet, and I figured if they had some decency about a character like I described myself to be, I'd leave them alone and call it quits and figure an evening at the price of a hundred. But no sooner do I open up than they graciously give me the opportunity to recoup and push it to five to open, five to raise, all the time dealing the deck in a way to make a South Side amateur blush with shame. So I drop another hundred and tell myself, like in the Bible, I'll give them another chance. So I tell them that a loss like this—well I never lost so much before, my wife will never forgive me, how can I explain?”

By now, the Governor was leaning back, chuckling to himself. He had heard the story before, many years ago, but like all good tales, it grew better and more mellow with time. It was right for him now, as right as anything could be. Emma protested, “Joe, how could you—like the Bible? That's blasphemous. You mean Lot?”

“Maybe I do, Emma. I'm not a church-going man, but I think even a bad man should be tried “three times, don't you, Pete?”

“I do,” the Governor grinned.

“But to lie that way—wife, children.”

“My dear Emma, I was creating a character for their sympathy. They were bad men. They had no sympathy, no love for their own kind. I don't like men like that. I don't like men who take from children, and the way I played poker I was like a child. So when they refused to let a little man escape, but assured me that they would double the stakes again, I agreed. Tears in my eyes, but what could I do? Anyway, I had nothing but contempt for them now. I played a half hour more and lost two hundred more, and then I let them suggest a double. I sighed. I remember how I sighed. I said, this is my last chance, gentlemen. Why not a hundred to open, a hundred to raise? Emma, don't you think that if they had one little bit of conscience, one bit of human kindness, they would have let me be? No. I win the first hand on two pair, six hundred dollars. I have almost all my losings, but I am greedy; what little man wouldn't be greedy? I lose three hundred in the next hand, then win it all back. I've lost my head now, and they deal to fit. Tinhorn dealing. They deal me four kings pat, the oldest, cheapest dodge known. You see, the feller on my left, he has two aces. First card on the deck is nothing, second and third are aces. Suppose I stand pat, well, this tinhorn draws three with two aces. If I draw one, well he still draws aces on three to four of a kind. And see how safe it is—suppose I lose my head and draw two. Well, he still draws three aces to beat three kings. Well, I play the part, and before the draw I push that pot to where it holds twelve thousand dollars. Twelve thousand dollars, and I'm running sweat and trembling the way a little man should. Everyone in the car is watching now, and that suits me, because even cheap tinhorns can be bad men. But still no sympathy on their part. All right, I say to myself—up. And there's three thousand more in the pot. And then I ask, not for one, not for two cards—but for three. Three.”

At that point, Altgeld said, half-choking, “Joe, you're lying.” Six years ago, when he first heard the story, he had said the same thing.

“So help me! You see, Emma—now I'm due to draw the aces, both of them. I have aces high. Gent on my left, he just has aces. Well, you could have heard a pin drop when I ask for three cards. Three cards, gentlemen, I say. And very happy that we're surrounded with rubbernecks. No one moves. Three cards, gentlemen, I repeat.”

“That was wicked, Joe,” Emma said.

“Was it wicked? They were bad men, Emma. They had no mercy and no sympathy; like coyotes, they were wild and mean and on their own. If you don't fight that kind their own way, they destroy you, Emma. Ask the Judge.”

He, like others from long back still called him Judge now and then. Judge Altgeld, it had a nice sound. “Joe's right,” he said.

“Only that kind”—Joe Martin mused—“that kind doesn't think twice about force. That kind pulls a gun and knows he's going to kill. We don't think that way. That's why they always have the advantage.”

“Not always,” Altgeld said. “You took the pot, didn't you, Joe? Well, not always. That's all I say. Not always.”

XV

The convention had opened when Buck Hinrichsen came to him and said, “Governor, I think you're making a mistake.”

“I've made a lot of them, Buck. I wish I had a dollar for every one.”

“I'm talking about Richard Bland. Maybe he's the man for the job. Maybe if he was up here, he could convince everyone that he is. But he won't come to Chicago, and I think that's a hell of a note.”

“Do you, Buck?” the Governor said, coolly.

“Don't blow up at me,” Hinrichsen said. “Why won't Bland come here?”

“Because he has some queer notions about democracy. I don't say he's right, Buck, and I don't say he's wrong, but he thinks that the people, through their delegates, should choose the man they want to run for president. It's just as simple or complicated as that.”

Hinrichsen grinned.

“Yes? It sounds like a lot of hogwash, doesn't it?”

“It does,” Hinrichsen said.

“Buck, did you ever read the Constitution of the United States?”

“I read it.”

“It's hogwash, isn't it?”

“In some ways it is. You want me to talk straight, don't you? Well, presidents are made; they're made from little men. Sometimes, they're made from dirty little men who aren't fit to wipe your shoes. I don't have to tell you that. My God, Governor, you made this convention, you took the party away from Cleveland, you rigged it and engineered every move, all the way through. Do we have to have wool over our own eyes?”

“You believe that, don't you, Buck?”

“Sure I believe it. I know it.”

“You're just crazy as hell, Buck, that's all. If you had eyes in your tail, you couldn't see less. I didn't do it. Get it into your head that I didn't do it. Just so long as you think I did it, alone, you're going to be a cheap, two-bit politician, like the rest of them. Just a cheap ward-heeler, like the rest of them.”

“That's nice. That's nice as hell, Governor.”

“Wait a minute,” Altgeld said. “We don't want to fight, Buck. I got to fight enough of them without having to fight you. Boy, don't you understand—there are currents. You feel them, you sense them, you listen to them, and then if you ride on the current you can move this way or that way. But you can't hold the current back, and no man is strong enough to make a current all by himself.”

Hinrichsen was half satisfied, no more than half satisfied. Altgeld told Emma, “Talk to him, won't you. He'll listen to you.” “Why must it be Bland?” Emma argued. He said, “Because at this point, if it's not Bland, it'll be Bryan. Oh, my god, Emma, we're making a revolution—we're taking up the country the way Tom Jefferson took it up, only now it's a hundred times bigger and stronger than then, and what in hell were his enemies compared to a Rockefeller or a McCormick? And for that Bryan!—do you know what he is, Emma, a fool, you understand, a god-damned fool!”

The next day, Illinois caucused in Altgeld's suite. The delegation had come to a deadlock on Bland, and Altgeld himself had called for the caucus. The Governor was a few minutes late; when he arrived, most of the delegation was present, and looming among them, grinning, back-slapping, pressing moist palms between his two large hands, was young William Jennings Bryan, shaking his great head of black hair, sounding off with his bell-like voice, passing cigars, and talking, talking. Altgeld stood at the door, his blue eyes burning with anger. Like a file being drawn over metal, his voice cut across Bryan's.