Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  “Machiavellian, Mike.”

  “Hmm. Where have I heard that word before?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you worry, I’ll handle the whole thing. My highest regards to Edith.”

  “Thank you, Mike.”

  “A pleasure, sir.”

  A few weeks later Fran Rafferty told Tommy Willis a man wanted to see him in the parlor.

  “What man?” said Tommy Willis.

  “Well, I never can remember his name, but he’s something in the sheriff’s office,” said Mrs. Rafferty. “I know him by sight only.”

  “Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” said Tommy Willis. He closed the door of his room and heard fat Mrs. Rafferty slowly descending the stairs. He thereupon opened the window, dropped to the roof of the coal shed and left by the back gate, thereby becoming a fugitive from the justice of the Domestic Relations Court, County of Lantenengo, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Gibbsville saw him no more.

  He had unwittingly been instrumental in repairing the still somewhat damaged friendship between Joe Chapin and Mike Slattery. Joe Chapin was properly appreciative of Mike Slattery’s machinations, and Mike was enjoying that moment, especially enviable for a politician, of having done a favor for someone who could be kept endlessly in the position of never being able fully to repay it. Politics is trades, trades are the exchange of favors, and if a man owes you a favor so great that he will always want to repay it, but a favor of such unique character that it cannot be repaid in kind, the man who granted the favor assumes the status of dictator as well as benefactor.

  Whatever Joe had been doing in his trips around the state, for whatever purpose, Mike was satisfied to let him go, for Joe must have learned his lesson with the Washington experience, and if the trips were adding to Joe’s potential political value, they were going to be valuable to Mike. Mike therefore planted the thought, just the grain of a thought, among his own men in the various counties, that Joe not only was making his appearances with Mike’s knowledge, but with his consent and even at his suggestion. A man in a distant county would say to Mike: “We had another visit from Joseph B. Chapin the other night. Here for a testimonial dinner for one of our old judges.” The man would study Mike for Mike’s reaction.

  “I know,” Mike would say, managing to imply that he knew a lot more that he wasn’t saying.

  “What the hell’s a Lantenengo County lawyer doing this far from home?”

  “A lot of people would like to know the answer to that, but I have a whole pocketful of answers for that kind of a question. Only I don’t always give away the answers. Sometimes it’s better to give away a cigar. Here, have a cigar.”

  By pretending to know what Joe was up to, and yet being noncommittal, Mike was subtly taking over Joe’s private campaign in the event it might be useful, but not assuming any responsibility in the event Joe was getting nowhere. He had some of his politician friends sharply guessing that he, Mike Slattery, had actually sent Joe Chapin on the trips.

  Mike was responsible, wholly responsible, for Joe’s designation as an alternate delegate to the convention in Kansas City. It was the kind of recognition that keeps a loyal party man happy. Mike was not himself a delegate but he was in attendance at the closed-door conferences, as befitted his standing in a reliably Republican state. Moreover, he was known, wherever he was known at all, to be a devout Roman Catholic, and it did no harm to the Republican party to have a man like Slattery to urge voters to ignore Alfred E. Smith, the inevitable Democratic nominee. As a Republican Catholic, Mike Slattery was worth more to the party than a run-of-the-mill Republican Protestant. The Protestant Republicans could be taken for granted, but the Catholic Republicans were going to be hard to hold as election day got nearer. The convention was a worthwhile excursion for Mike, and he was careful to see that his familiarity with some of the great names of the party was not lost on Joe. He saw to it that Joe met them all, and he saw to it that the important men realized that the good-looking fellow in the white linen suit was a Slattery man. There were so many potbellied men with their pants hanging below their waistlines and their shirts creeping out and their collars soaked with perspiration—that Mike was delighted to make a claim on Joe, who at least looked cool.

  Coming back on the train Joe sat up most of the night with Mike.

  “It’s been a great experience, Mike. And do you know what to me was one of the most interesting things about it?”

  “What’s that, Joe?”

  “Well, it may sound foolish, but I was always under the impression Mr. Hoover was a Democrat.”

  “You’re not the only one had that impression. But my explanation for that was that Woodrow Wilson wanted people to think Mr. Hoover was a Democrat.”

  “Still, it’s interesting, because only eight or ten years ago I’d have all but sworn he was a Democrat. The reason it’s interesting is how comparatively short a time it takes for a man to become nationally known. I’ve always been a Republican, as you know, but yesterday we gave the nomination to a man I thought belonged to the opposite side.”

  “Well, Mr. Hoover was so busy feeding the people in Europe—he kept out of politics.”

  “It’s quite fascinating,” said Joe. “This big honor, the biggest in the world, can happen to a man almost overnight. What was Coolidge when he was nominated for the vice-presidency? He’d been governor of Massachusetts and settled the police strike. What was Harding? Well, Harding isn’t a good example, because he’d not only been governor of his state but United States senator as well. But look at the other side, the Democrats. Wilson, a governor and a college president. Cox? Nobody. Franklin Roosevelt, the fellow that ran for vice-president, I used to know him slightly. At least I met him at dances when I was in college. A typical New York snob, I always thought.”

  “And a Democrat. A Roosevelt a Democrat, it’s like seeing Abe Cohen the clothier at High Mass.”

  “What was Roosevelt? Assistant Secretary of the Navy and that was as high as he ever got, but if he’d been elected, God forbid, and What’s His Name Cox died, the fellow I used to know could have been President of the United States. It isn’t Senator Borah, or Senator Lodge that gets to be President. It’s often a fellow that the general public hardly knows at all.”

  “Some men get elected to the Senate and they have such a good organization that they never have to go home. They can spend half their lifetime in the Senate. I’m not speaking of myself, but the United States Senate, naturally. But it’s one thing to get re-elected and re-elected to the United States Senate, and something else again to get the nomination for the presidency. In some ways it’s easier to be elected President. You take Dawes. I like Charley personally, but I couldn’t see him as presidential timber. He’d make a good President, but not a good candidate, not against Al Smith. Al Smith is an expert at the kind of a campaign Dawes would conduct, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if Smith could have beaten Dawes. But Smith won’t beat our man. The country’s prosperous, and the so-called independent voter, the little difference he makes is going to be even smaller in this election, because the independent voter isn’t going to vote for a Catholic. If people have to vote for a Catholic to get a glass of beer, they’re going to do without the beer. I look for Hoover to beat Smith so badly that Smith will never recover from it. And speaking as a Catholic, I wish he wouldn’t run. I’d vote against him even if I weren’t a staunch Republican. Injecting the religious issue isn’t going to do any good, and it can do a lot of harm.”

  “I agree with you,” said Joe.

  They were tired, but they could not sleep in the hot, dirty train. Every once in a while a half-drunken delegate would stumble into the smoking room. The porter was nowhere to be seen. Joe and Mike were in their shirt-sleeves, and Mike could not remember ever having seen Joe without a jacket except on the golf course.

  “I wonder what goes on in the mind of a man like Herbe
rt Hoover.”

  “Tonight?” said Mike. “He’s probably sound asleep.”

  “Do you think so? Knowing that for all practical purposes he’s just been elected President of the United States?”

  Mike smiled. “He’d be glad to hear that, and so would the National Committee. Yes, I think he’s most likely asleep. Don’t forget he’s a man that’s done a lot of traveling. Civil engineer. Lived abroad a great deal, and not always in the lap of luxury.”

  “I know, but tonight. I know this much, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Here we are going sixty or seventy miles an hour. We can’t see out the window in the darkness, but it’s easy for me to imagine being in his position, looking out the window and saying to myself, ‘I can travel for five days and nights, from coast to coast at a high rate of speed and still be in the country that I’m President of.’ Just one man, out of a hundred and twenty million people.”

  “Would you like to be President, Joe?”

  “What?”

  Mike saw that his question, and perhaps the tone of it, had taken Joe by surprise.

  “Me, President? No thank you.”

  But Mike had seen what he had seen in similar circumstances, when he had asked other men, possum-players, about their political ambitions. If you caught them unprepared, you got your answer. He wanted to ask Joe a great many more questions, but now that he had given the answer to one, Joe would be cautious in his answers to the others.

  “Well, I guess we’re not going to get much sleep, but I’m going to get off my feet for a few hours,” said Mike.

  “Take the lower. I’m going to sit up.”

  “No, I had it coming out, you keep it, thanks.”

  “Well, if you change your mind,” said Joe.

  “Good night, or good morning.”

  Home once more, Mike gave Peg a complete report of his activities at the convention, a report full of the names of men she never had met but on whom she had detailed dossiers. They were not just pictures in the paper to Peg Slattery. “What did Reed have to say? . . . How long were you with Bill Mellon? . . . Did you talk to Mills? . . . Who else besides Fisher? . . .” Her questions helped Mike to re-create whole scenes, and in the re-creating of them he had a second and better look.

  “Did you get along all right with Joe? That was a long time to be with a man, so constantly.”

  Mike looked at his wife.

  “Do you know what that fellow wants?” he said.

  Mike and Peg were two people who were often more nearly one person.

  “Do I know what that fellow wants?” she said.

  “I have trouble saying it, the words have a hard time getting out of my mouth.”

  “Now it isn’t what I’m thinking,” said Peg.

  “I’ll bet it is, though,” said Mike.

  “The same thing Al Smith wants?”

  Mike smiled. “You can’t say it either,” he said. “Can you imagine? How do you convince yourself you can be, or ought to be?”

  “You marry Edith Stokes.”

  “Do you think that’s why it is?” said Mike. “No, I think he convinced himself. Maybe Edith encouraged him, but you should have heard the way he talked about it. Putting himself in Hoover’s place.”

  “You’re sure, eh?”

  “Well, sure of what? I’m sure he wants it, but I don’t know if he knows he wants it. But now I have the explanation for all these dinners and getting-to-know-the-boys and so forth. Do you remember a fellow ran for vice-president with Cox?”

  “I have to think a minute. In 1920? Yes, a cousin of Teddy Roosevelt’s. Franklin K. Roosevelt.”

  “You’re thinking of Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior under Wilson. But that’s the fellow. Well, Joe Chapin used to know him. I gather they went to society parties together. Joe didn’t like him, but that’s neither here nor there. In fact, the fact that he didn’t like him—well, Joe didn’t think much of him, but all the more reason why he could convince himself he could do as well or better. This particular Roosevelt got to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Appointive, of course. Well, you remember when Joe went to Washington that time, to get some appointment. The time he went behind my back.”

  “Oh, I remember, and I’ll bet he does too.”

  “Can you see it the way I do?” said Mike.

  “He thought he could get an appointment without getting tied up with the organization.”

  “Sure. On his own. No political tie-up. Then get a reputation and maybe run for governor, or United States senator. It all works out.”

  “Joe is what? Forty-five?”

  “Forty-six. We were born the same year, ’82.”

  “Then he still has plenty of time,” said Peg.

  “He’ll need it,” said Mike.

  Peg laughed heartily.

  • • •

  Joe Chapin was now reaching the point in his life and the position in his activities where it could be said, and was being said, that he was a first citizen and, more and more, the first citizen of Gibbsville. There would be conversations in which Citizen A would say: “The biggest man in this town is Joe Chapin.”

  “Joe Chapin?” Citizen B might say.

  “Who’s bigger? If you mean richer, yes. There’s a half a dozen guys that have more dough, but who does more with their dough? Who does more for this town, and doesn’t ask anything in return?”

  “I wouldn’t put Joe Chapin at the top.”

  “Then who would you put at the top? The Mayor? Some politician? Joe’s for good government, but he kept his hands out of politics. Listen, whenever anything’s good for the town, not just for Number One, who’s the first guy they get to serve on the committees and all that? When you see Joe Chapin connected with something, it’s good for Gibbsville, or Lantenengo County, not just for Joe Chapin. That’s the way I look at it. And who would you rather have representing Gibbsville? One of those loud-mouths at the Rotary Club? Mike Slattery? Doc English? Henry Laubach?”

  “How do you mean represent?” Citizen B might say.

  “Represent? By represent I mean I don’t mean in politics. I mean if say they had another Sesqui, who would you want to be there representing Gibbsville? You’d want a guy that was honest and did something for the community, and looked the part. Listen, there isn’t a thing that’s for the good of this town that Joe Chapin is left out of.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right.”

  “He isn’t a crook, he isn’t a hypocrite—Joe’ll take a drink. Friendly, kind. Does a lot of things for people. I say you’d have a hard time getting anybody to say anything against Joe Chapin and prove it. You take a guy like Lloyd Williams, and he’s a whoremaster. Then you take a guy on the order of Henry Laubach, and that son of a bitch, all he cares about is making more money. Henry isn’t a real son of a bitch, but he’s cold. One of those cold fellows. Doc English, he does a lot of good, but don’t forget he gets paid for it, and if it came down to that I’d rather have Doc Malloy operate on me. No sir, the biggest all-around man in this town is Joseph B. Chapin.”

  In the course of an average two-block walk from his office to the bank Joe Chapin would bid the time of day to at least ten persons and usually many more. There would be many Good morning, Mr. Chapin’s that he would answer with a Good morning and a smile but without a name. People liked to speak to him, and when they could engage him in a few minutes’ conversation they wanted to be seen talking to him. Merchants liked to have him seen in their stores; the cops liked to wave to him; people would call to him from their cars. He had his suits made in New York, but he patronized Main Street for socks and underwear, which gave him the opportunity to appear in the store, and gave the merchant the benefit of his patronage above the actual money spent. Joe’s suits, shoes and hats came from out of town, but almost everything else he bought was bought in town or ordered through town merchants.
If he wanted a Lee Dreadnaught-Driver he had it sent through the hardware store; if he was buying a 410 gun for Joby, it was ordered on Main Street; if Edith wanted a black caracul, it was a Main Street transaction.

  The feeling generally was that Joe Chapin, except for his set taste in clothes, was the best of Gibbsville. He had achieved his status first by living to the age of forty-seven, having been born in Gibbsville of Gibbsville parents. He had returned to Gibbsville after getting his education. He had married a Gibbsville girl, the daughter of Gibbsville parents and with many Gibbsville relatives. Joe had then gone into partnership with a lifelong Gibbsville friend and native. He made his money in Gibbsville, he spent most of it in Gibbsville. Whenever he went away he “reflected credit” on his home town—and he always came back to it. He had avoided messes, and he had given the people confidence in their town and in themselves: Joe Chapin was not a New Yorker or a Philadelphian or a Chicagoan or a Bostonian, but wherever he went, he would be on equal terms with the best—and he was one hundred per cent Gibbsville. They did not quite love Joe Chapin, but they were proud of him and grateful, and if he had died in 1929 they might have found out that they did love him. But he did not die in 1929.

  Joe Chapin was almost the last of the upper-middle-class Gibbsvillians who had not been abroad. He had never been to Europe because in the days preceding the World War he had not been attracted to the Eastern Hemisphere by culture or by sin. Young men in his circumstances sometimes took their brides to Europe on their wedding trip, but during their engagement period Edith had told Joe that the very thought of a great ocean liner gave her mal de mer, and in accordance with her wishes, that ended the discussion. After the World War there was a longish period during which Joe mentioned Europe, and especially France, as seldom as possible. France, in the American language, was a word that had a quick association with the word army, and both words stayed out of Joe’s conversation. But ten years after the Armistice the embarrassment had lessened to the point where Joe could make plans to take his family on a six weeks’ trip to England, France, and Italy, and the plans, once postponed on account of the Kansas City convention, reached the passport and sailing-date stage. They would go in a French Line ship, which was “wet,” and you could begin to try out your bilingual ability as soon as you went abroad. The Chapins were given the names of the little restaurants that were known all over the United States as truly French and off the tourist-beaten path. Warning letters were written to the three or four Gibbsville expatriates. Morgan, Harjes were alerted through the good offices of Dave Harrison (“We have a man there that can do absolutely anything for you, whether it’s good for you or very bad for you,” he wrote). The names of reputable physicians were obtained, and Joe and Edith even had serious discussions over the advisability of having the children’s appendices excised in advance. They were reassured by the existence of the hospital at Neuilly. They promised themselves to drink no water but Evian and to drink no milk whatever. They would use their oldest, most decrepit luggage until they got to Paris and the establishment of Louis Vuitton. Ann was never to be let out of their sight, particularly in Italy, and most particularly in Firenze. The right kind of letter was being sent to our ambassadors in London, Paris, and Rome; to the purser of the Ile de France; to Bob Hooker’s not very close friend Larry Hills, of the Herald Tribune; and to the managers of White’s Club in London and the Travelers in Paris. Monsignor Creedon was arranging for a private audience with His Holiness Pius XI, and for months Joe and Edith took down the names and addresses of Rosa Lewis, Bricktop, Joe Zelli, George of the Ritz, Italian tailors, shoemakers more expensive than Peal, certain clerks at Asprey’s, dons at Oxford, car-hire people who were cheaper than Daimler, Louis Bromfield’s secretary George Watkins, and Nita Naldi, Erskine Gwynne, Sparrow Robertson, Jimmy Sheean, and Ben Finney. The mention of each name was introduced by the urgent Be sure and see . . .