Capable of Honor (53 page)

“Don’t feel so badly,” she said softly. “You know Mary Baffelburg. She’s one of the characters of these conventions. It’s a special type you see in politics: Mary Buttner Baffleburg, Lizzie Hanson McWharter, Ann Hooper Bigelow, and—God help us here in California—Esmé Harbellow Stryke. The old biddies—or in our case, the young ones—who have the time and the money to make politics their hobby and finally reach the National Committee, there to appear at convention after convention, four years older and four times more irascible each time you see them. I wouldn’t worry about her too much.”

Bob Leffingwell sighed with a grateful but unconvinced smile.

“You’re very kind, Ceil—genuinely so, which is one of the things that makes you a great lady—in case you don’t know it,” he said to her husband, who replied, “But I do, I do!” with an elaborate bow that was quite genuine beneath its mocking air. “But,” Bob Leffingwell said, and his smile faded and his voice became somber, “it isn’t just Mary Baffleburg, of course. She isn’t alone.…I don’t think I’m good for this campaign, Ted. I think I ought to get out right now. This would give me an excuse. I could issue a statement that I don’t want the slightest hint of scandal to detract from the great campaign of a great—you know the routine when somebody has to be sacrificed. I think I should be. I’m too much of a handicap to you. I’m not worth it.”

“And you’re heart isn’t in it,” Patsy said with a sudden note of genuine anger that brought them up short. “It never has been. I remember talking to you three months ago before anybody had done anything about this campaign, including the President, and you weren’t sure then that you wanted to back Ted. You aren’t sure now. You want OUT, and this is your excuse. That’s what comes,” she said, turning upon her brother, “of trying to work with a weakling.”

“Patsy,” Ted said in a level voice. “I think you had better leave us, now. Go back and talk to Val and the others, or go get a drink, or something. You’re not contributing much here.”

“It’s true,” she said, beginning to cry but not yielding an inch. “I’m not retracting one word of it. He’s the President’s stooge in this campaign and he always has been. He thinks the President’s policies are right. He doesn’t really know what he wants, but it isn’t you. You mark my words, he’s going to wind up backing Orrin Knox. You wait and see!”

“That,” the Governor said softly, “will be enough. Do you hear me, Pat? Enough.”

“Well—” she said, and then cried, “OH!” and hurried from the room in a flurry of defiantly swinging hips and agitated garish colors.

“My goodness,” Ceil remarked gently. “Let me add Patsy Labaiya-Sofra to the list of characters at conventions.”

“She’s tired and upset,” Ted said, “and it’s been a long strain for her, about Felix, and about trying to get me to run. That’s what comes,” he echoed with a strange little ironic pain about his mouth, “of working with a weakling. We’re in the same boat. Bob. I still don’t know what’s best, either. But”—and his voice became increasingly stronger—“here I am. And here you are. And although some people have fancied a convention as the best setting in which to admire themselves playing Hamlet, I’ve about decided against it, myself. So I think we should both snap out of it and get ready to win.” He gestured wryly at the glaring, helpful, eager, encouraging, partisan headlines. “We’ve got plenty of help, haven’t we? If they ask me about you at my press conference I shall simply shrug and point and say, ‘He’s here, isn’t he?’…Now,” he said, suddenly brisk, and for the moment there was no mistaking who was Doña Valuela’s descendant, “have you spoken to Stanley Danta so that Orrin and I won’t have a conflict with our press conference times?”

“Yes, I have,” Bob Leffingwell said, throwing off his depression with an obvious effort. “But it’s Orrin’s idea that you should conflict. What he means is that if yours comes first then he can attack what you say, and if his comes first you can attack what he says—so the fairest thing probably is to have them at the same hour. Which will annoy the press,” he said with the shadow of a smile, “no doubt. But I guess they can stand it.”

“So typical of Orrin,” Ceil said gently. “Worrying about fairness! Will the man
never
learn?”

“It seems eminently fair to me, too, Ceil,” her husband said mildly. “O.K., Bob, send out the word. Ten A.M. it is for both of us, and let them howl. I hope we will have some specifics to report by that time.”

“Oh, yes. We have some very good men with the delegations. I would say you have somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred right about now. We’ll pin it down tighter by tonight.”

“Somewhere,” the Governor said dreamily, “in some column, news story, headline, program, broadcast, hint, rumor, marijuana jag, or pipe dream, I have seen the figure of six hundred for my distinguished opponent, too. Don’t tell me we go to the wire even.”

“You won’t go to the wire until Thursday. You won’t be even then.”

“I hope not,” the Governor said. “Now what?” he added in some annoyance as the sound of voices raised in bitter altercation sifted through the door. “Don’t they have orders not to let any—oh, yes,” he said, as they recognized the pompous, familiar tones. “I might have known. Come in, Walter!” he called loudly. “Let him in, out there! It’s all right.”

“Thank you,” Walter Dobius said, breathing hard and straightening a coat which had obviously been tugged at by somebody. “I must say,” he added, adjusting the red-ribboned PRESS badge which had also been knocked awry in the sort of tussle no philosopher-statesman should ever have to go through, “you have some ignorant and officious people out there. They didn’t even know who I am.”

“They were chosen for brawn, Walter,” Ceil said soothingly. “Obviously not for brains.
Obviously.
Have you been having a pleasant time covering the convention?”

“Conventions aren’t pleasant,” Walter said with a rudeness so obvious as to bring a sudden smile to her lips. “They are serious matters, involving the fate of a great nation.”

“I shall go to the foot of the class,” she said gravely. “With my little balloons and my little badges and my little banners.”

“What do you want, Walter?” Ted asked shortly. “Do you want to watch the opening session with us? We’re about to turn it on.”

“Certain people have come to me with offers of help for you,” Walter said calmly. “I want to discuss them with—you.”

“You are in the presence of my wife and my campaign manager. Discuss them.”

“Very well,” Walter said, sitting down and leaning forward, legs spread, hands on knees, in his characteristic posture. “You know that at a convention anybody can become a go-between at a moment’s notice. I seem to have been selected by a rather odd combination whose spokesmen first came to me two months ago on the day of the President’s decision.”

“Yes, I know, you told me. COMFORT, DEFY, and KEEP.”

“Yes. After that I thought the flurry had died down, as they didn’t approach me again. Did they you?”

“I had a letter from LeGage Shelby about two weeks ago promising the support of DEFY,” Ted said, “and of course Fred Van Ackerman has been on the horn several times. ‘Look, buddy’”—and his voice dropped into a savage imitation of the hypocrite-heartiness of the junior Senator from Wyoming—“‘we’ve really got to go all-out to elect the greatest Vice President this country’s ever had.’” He laughed with genuine delight. “Imagine launching a campaign to elect the greatest
Vice
President this country’s ever had! How esoteric can you get? As for Rufus Kleinfert,” he added, still laughing, “I haven’t heard from KEEP.”

“Last night,” Walter said, “all three of them called on me at my suite at the Hilton. It seems they want to take over the demonstrations for you. They’ll do all the organizing, furnish all the supplies, all the financing, all the people—all they ask is that Bob, here, coordinate things with them so that everybody will work together.”

“And so their plans will become our plans,” Bob Leffingwell said. “Not on your tintype. Isn’t that right, Ted?”

“Are they operating alone?” the Governor asked. “I got the impression from LeGage’s letter that most of the more active Negro groups are working with him.”

Walter nodded.

“They seem to have selected DEFY to spearhead it for them. I think what they do will pretty well decide where the bulk of the Negro vote goes, both now and—if they get the man they want, herein the future.”

“Not on your tintype, Ted,” Ceil remarked, to no one in particular. “Isn’t that right?”

“And what about COMFORT and KEEP?” the Governor pursued, his eyes intent.

“The Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce?” Walter said thoughtfully, as though the others were not in the room, which for all the practical purposes of this discussion they were not. “It was never stronger now that the President is getting us mired deeper and deeper in Gorotoland and Panama. Fred Van Ackerman tells me they’re planning a series of full-page ads in the
New York Times
and twenty other major papers across the country, together with a program of TV spots, between now and Election Day. He says they’ll be largely devoted to supporting you, providing you can establish a position close enough to Harley’s to get by, but independent enough so that they can hold the hope that you may throw your weight against him once you’re in the Administration—and take a different course if you should become President.”

“A nice trick if you can do it,” Ceil observed brightly to Bob Leffingwell, who was staring at Walter with a disturbed expression. “And, I should say, an open invitation to somebody to assassinate the President right after Election Day.”

“How many members has COMFORT got right now?” the Governor asked.

“Fred tells me at least three hundred thousand, a lot of them in communications, the unions, the schools, and the churches. It’s become very respectable since Gorotoland. I’ll wager you every time another American boy dies, COMFORT picks up another thousand members.”

“Good for the boy,” Ceil said. “Good for him!”

“As for KEEP,” Walter said thoughtfully, “they’re still afraid of your domestic record, which Rufus Kleinfert still considers Communist-tinted if not outright Communist-controlled.”

“Then how—?” Ted asked in a puzzled voice.

“It’s that boy,” Ceil explained to Bob Leffingwell.

“Rufus told me last night,” Walter said, “that any candidate who would stop what he called ‘this insane plunge into overseas war and endless international involvement at the behest of Communist tricksters’ would have their support.”

“There you are,” Ceil said triumphantly to Bob Leffingwell, who gave a hopeless little shrug.

There was a silence in which a band far below, stripped by distance of its melodies, sent up a solid, thumping beat.

“You can tell them,” the Governor said slowly at last, “that any assistance they deem me worthy to receive will be welcome.”

Walter stared at him blankly for a moment.

“That isn’t as specific an answer as they are expecting, I believe.”

“I’m afraid it’s as specific as they’re going to get,” Ted said pleasantly. “Where else can they go if they don’t support me—anywhere? Why, hell, Walter, my friend, try to look at this for a second objectively. The responsible Negro vote—yes, I want that. The genuine idealists who join COMFORT and oppose the Administration, as distinct from the Communists and the fatheaded far-out fools who join it for their own egomanic purposes—yes, I want them. The genuinely troubled conservatives in KEEP, as distinct from the insane reactionary weirdos like Rufus Kleinfert—yes, I want them. But to let them control my campaign? To sell myself to them in return for their support? I won’t do it.”

“But you won’t repudiate them, either, will you?” Ceil asked softly, and finally her husband looked at her and replied with an almost defiant impatience.

“No, I won’t, because this is politics and it’s a practical business and I need their help. But I’m going to get it on my terms, because I’m in a position to do it that way. They need me more than I need them. There isn’t any alternative to Ted Jason: there are plenty of alternatives to them. They can be split. A lot of them will go for me, anyway. Now, Bob,” he said, abruptly all business, “I want you to sit down with that unholy three sometime later this afternoon and coordinate plans with them. And get in the College Kids for Jason, the Volunteers for Jason, the Former Knoxmen for Jason, and the rest of them, and all of you sit down and get it organized. I think we should have virtually around-the-clock demonstrations from now on. Somebody should be whooping it up for Jason in a definite, organized fashion somewhere in this city every minute of every day and every night. The first thing is a big show at the Palace of Fine Arts before, during, and after Dolly Munson’s party tonight. Have a few people crash it, if they can, but keep it under control. I don’t want any rough stuff, and you can impress that on Fred and his friends. O.K.?”

“I believe,” Walter Dobius said, “that they would like to talk to you personally about it.”

“I’m not ready to talk to them yet. Starting tomorrow morning I’m going to have to be talking to fifty delegations as well as a lot of other people, and somewhere along the line I’ll talk to them. Right now, I’m going to stay aloof and get a little rest. I didn’t sleep very well last night and I intend to get a nap before Dolly’s party.…You’re welcome to stay, however,” he added politely to a Walter becoming increasingly watchful and still, “to see the opening with us. Bob, turn it on, it must be almost time.”

And time it was, as in his office and in his opponent’s, all over the city, all over the country, all over the world, suddenly on the screen the convention took form. First came the shots of the outside of the Cow Palace, the banners flying, the flags snapping, the delegates and spectators hurrying and pushing in. There was a small Knox parade, a small Jason parade. There were placards, not terribly inspired, but willing: CONSCIENCE MUST DECIDE THE ISSUE: END WAR WITH JASON … HAS GOVERNMENT GOT YOU BILIOUS? TAKE EX-KNOX—TRY JASON! … KNOX EQUALS HONOR—THEY GO TOGETHER … WE’LL STAY FREE WITH KNOX FOR V.P.! There were souvenir stands and barkers and long, sleek limousines driving up. There was fog beginning to come over the hills from the ocean. There was excitement.