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"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, thinkin
g t
hrough 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 f
ierceness 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; ho
w s
he 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'r
e y
ou?" 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.