I waited for him to finish and handed him a bottle I’d iced. He took a sip, frowned. “Not Gatorade?”
“Gatorade is poison. This is far better.” Which was true. It was HEED, one of the special endurance drinks I’d learned to love in bike racing.
He looked at me, sweating, enjoying the coolness of the new drink. “You a grad student? Checking the place out?”
I shook my head and smiled. “Eddie, have you thought about running for Congress?”
As it turned out, Eddie Temple had thought about running for Congress but didn’t really know how to begin. But to me it looked easy: he had been the first black student body president at Ole Miss, he was a football star and wounded vet, and, most importantly, people liked him. To meet him was to be drawn to him. He had that “thing.” Life and politics imitate high school, and Eddie Temple was the guy you wanted to hang out with in high school. When he ran for Ole Miss student body president, a nerdy undergrad named Eddie Basha had run his campaign. It was the “Two-Eddies Campaign,” everybody joked. When I asked Eddie Temple if he would run for Congress, he had one condition: Eddie Basha had to be involved. And that’s how I met Eddie Basha. We won that race with the first black Republican congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction, and we’d be dining off that for years. I loved the guy.
“Someday,” Kim said flatly, “someone is going to explain to me how a squeaky-clean ex-governor of Vermont and vice president ended up with the good ol’ boy southern mafia running her presidential campaign.”
Eddie raised his hand and looked at me. “I’ll volunteer to answer, chief.”
I nodded.
“Because we win.”
Dick Shenkoph’s applause and hoots of approval didn’t drown out Kim’s loud “Fuck you.”
—
He was waiting for me when I stepped off the elevator in the lobby of the Windsor Court.
“Brother, dearly beloved, let us gather together!” he shouted.
The lobby was jammed with delegates, alternates, political groupies, reporters, and security. I quickly counted a dozen cops in uniform and what looked like more than twenty additional Secret Service agents.
And in the middle, there was my brother Paul Callahan standing there with his handsome head cocked, that Irish half-mad glint in his eye that made him look so much like our father.
“Hey,” he boomed, “nice try with that bomb.”
For an instant, I closed my eyes and tried to will him away. It didn’t work.
“Kind of a dud, huh? Keep going, you’ll get it right next time.”
Everybody in the hotel stared at us, and the volume level of conversation plummeted. These were all out-of-town delegates and visitors and none of them recognized my brother, a small grace for which I was thankful. The Secret Service agents looked at me, and I pointed to my hard pin security badge—the little gizmo the Service used to identify those who were pre-cleared for any event or space—and nodded, trying to come up with a smile.
“Jesus Christ.” I grabbed my brother’s arm and steered him toward an exit.
When we stepped outside on Canal Street, he threw a thick arm around my shoulder. “Come on, show you my office.” The mad glint was gone, replaced with a flat seriousness that I couldn’t remember seeing before, but it had been just over three years since I had laid eyes on him. The last time had been for our father’s funeral, and we had both been glad to flee from that little horror of regret and sadness.
At six four, he was almost half a foot taller than I was, and even though he limped a little now, I had to admit he still had a certain natural grace, like a big cat loping slowly down the street. At LSU they had called him “Two Speed,” because he always seemed to be hardly moving or blasting through the line with shocking quickness. He only ran the forty-yard dash in 4.7 seconds, respectable, not spectacular, but he was quick for a big man, very quick. “He got there before you did” had been written about him scores of times by adoring sportswriters.
“You look different,” I told him as we were sliding into a booth at McGuire’s bar around the corner. “Different but the same.” At McGuire’s there wasn’t a single delegate and there probably wouldn’t be for the entire convention. There was no air conditioning, never had been. No bar or restaurant without air conditioning would ever see a single delegate. Instead there were the usual half-dozen regulars spread around the bar looking like they were waiting for Edward Hopper to show up and finish the painting.
“Yeah?” Paul asked. “Different from my campaign posters? We airbrushed ’em,” he snorted.
“No, tired,” I said. “You look tired and you even have some gray hair.” I reached out toward a streak of gray speckles in his dark brown hair.
“Fuckin’ A,” Paul said, swatting away my hand. “You bet I’m tired. I’m working my goddamn ass off out there.” Paul pushed a folded copy of The Times-Picayune across the scarred table. “I work my ass off and you still get better ink.”
“What the hell?” I muttered. Being with my older brother made me feel like I was sixteen again, and I hated being sixteen.
“Your old girlfriend,” Paul said, thumping the page with a big finger.
The newspaper was folded to reveal a column called “Window on the World,” by Jessie Fenestra.
“Girlfriend?”
Paul read from the column. “ ‘He was a sophomore when I was a senior, but I remember J. D. Callahan well. He was tall and skinny and interested in two things: guitars and bikes. As in bicycles, not the much cooler motorcycles. My girlfriends all thought he was cute but shy.’ ”
“I know this woman?” I grabbed the paper from my brother, staring at the small photo next to her column. It was a pleasing face, pretty but not gorgeous, with a lift to one eye that struck me as ironic, somehow bemused. She looked familiar in the vaguest sort of way.
“You remember her from high school,” Paul said.
“Ahh.” An image from high school floated through my head. “Jessie Fenestra and her girlfriends thought I was cute? Why’d they keep it to themselves?”
I was remembering her now. She was older, a world apart, a hipster. Pretty.
“I think she went for jocks,” Paul said with a little edge. “She married a guy I played with. Cajun. Wayne Thibodeaux.”
“What happened?”
Paul shrugged. “Life. You know. Same thing that happened to all of us. The cheering stopped.” He said it with a mocking, self-aware tone that surprised me. When he saw my questioning look, he said, “I heard that Wayne took to drinking a lot, and then when he quit, he wanted Jessie to quit too. That didn’t seem to work out too well.” Paul read the column: “ ‘You may have heard of him as the poor schmuck who was dumped by the so-very-glam-and-famous Sandra Juarez. The boy threw a tantrum on Meet the Press, which is not the sort of fate this shy, guitar- and bike-loving boy deserved. But life isn’t fair. What a shock.’ ”
I groaned. “Why is she writing this?”
“You’re lucky,” Paul said. “She’s normally the biggest bitch in the city. For some reason she seems to like you.”
“You want to tell me what the hell this is about?” I held up the envelope that Ginny had given me and tilted it so that a grainy black-and-white photograph fell out onto the Formica table. It was a photo of our father with a young teenage girl and three boys. It was taken in front of the big Cadillac that he always drove. I felt sick just looking at the photo.
“I thought that’d work,” Paul said, and chuckled. “Can’t believe this is what it took to get your attention. How long have I been trying to get in touch with you?” he asked, a big crooked grin on his face, the same likable, aw-shucks grin he used to give when reporters asked him if he was the best there ever was at LSU. It said, “Who, me?”
“I’m running a presidential race, for Christ’s sake.” But I felt a pang of guilt that annoyed me. I had ignored him and he was my brother.
“Heard that. Saw it on the news. Read about it in Jessie’s c
olumn. How about you, you hear I’m running for public service commissioner?”
“Paul, look—”
“You’re a star, little bruth. Everybody writes about you. I got reporters calling me all the time about you. More interested in you lately than me running for public service commissioner. But the thing is, me running for public service commissioner is a big deal. To me.”
For the last eight months I’d listened to people who wanted something from me. Congressmen who wanted Vice President Hilda Smith to raise money for them, governors who wanted Hilda Smith to drop out of the presidential race, big-time party fundraisers who wanted Hilda Smith to run as Armstrong George’s running mate—as if that was ever going to happen—endless delegates who needed a picture of Hilda, a cousin on the Battlefield Commission, a job in the campaign. It seemed at one time or another everybody in America wanted something from me, and I had developed a highly accurate sensor as to when the bullshit was ending and the pitch was coming. Now I knew it was time for Paul’s pitch. It would be nice to think he really wanted to see me because we were brothers or, yes, nice to think I wanted to see him. But this was transactional. He wanted something. Like they all did.
The waiter brought breakfast. I’d ordered Raisin Bran, Paul a full plate of two eggs over easy, ham, grits, and a side of pancakes. “Jesus Christ,” Paul said, “you’re eating like a goddamn girl. That like a bike-racing thing?”
“ ‘That bike-racing’ thing almost got me into the Olympics.” Which was a gross exaggeration. I was a really good bicycle racer for New Orleans, which meant I was a moderately good racer for the region and a not-so-great one by national standards. But I knew that Paul followed, and cared about, bike racing as much as he was into Indian cricket leagues, and I could get away with a fair amount of BS.
“Yeah, like we almost beat Notre Dame.” Paul paused for a moment, toying with a memory, then moved ahead. “The thing is, all these reporters, they seem to have this funny idea about our family.”
“Our family is a funny idea.”
“They got it like some kind of goddamn Disney movie: Pops, the big civil rights journalist; me, the big dumb football player who screwed up but is coming back; you, the hot-shit genius, kind of eccentric. Christ, they even think you’re some kind of athlete!”
“What is it about the bikes that really bothers you?”
“Bothers me? It’s ridiculous. Bunch of skinny gay guys in tight shorts riding fucking bicycles! Gimme a break.”
“Don’t forget the jerseys. Wearing jerseys with all these gay colors.”
“Rest my damn case! You win in this sport and you get to wear yellow? What the hell kind of sport is that? You get your ass kicked, they make you wear yellow, that’s more like it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I looked up at the television over the bar. It was tuned to ESPN. “Hey,” I called to the ancient waiter, “you mind changing channels to CNN and turning up the sound?”
“Why?” The voice from the old man was surprisingly deep, an Irish Channel rumble.
“The president may give a speech.”
“So?”
Paul laughed. “I think you are confusing him with somebody who gives a damn about your president.” Paul chuckled and then said to the waiter, “Hey, Jimmy, he’s my kid brother. Humor the boy.”
“For you, Paulie,” he answered, and shuffled over to the television.
“So I was thinking, you in the spotlight and all, this little family fantasy must be kind of important. I mean, you got your own little comeback working.”
“Oh Christ, Paul, what do you want? Just come out with it. I’ll try to help any way I can.” I thought he’d appreciate my being direct, but there was just a quick flash of anger.
“This is about protecting both of us, goddamn it. I’m a willing and happy extra in this little movie, but you got to remember these journalists are calling me because I am your brother.”
“Whether we like it or not.”
“And when I was beating the crap out of anybody who fucked with you when you were a skinny shit, and I was the big stud fullback, you mind admitting I was your big brother then?”
He was right. I had wanted to be Paul Callahan for the first eighteen years of my life, now I was hoping we’d just pretend we didn’t know each other. Maybe it was politics that had made me a self-centered, shallow shit. Or maybe I was good at politics because I came to it as a shallow, self-centered shit. Maybe there was just too much history between us.
“I gotta win this election, J.D.,” he blurted, with a suddenly desperate look.
“Why in God’s name do you want to be on the public service commission anyway?” I asked. To my surprise, he had an answer. A good one.
“Because I’m going to be the meanest rate-cutting, rabble-rousing populist bastard you ever saw. And I can pull votes from Metairie and pull ’em from up north where they still remember how I used to make ’em hoot on Saturdays. Then I’m gonna run my ass for governor and I’m gonna win.”
“Governor?”
“Don’t sound so goddamn skeptical. Look at the assholes we’ve elected governor. We’re grading on the curve here, brother.”
“That’s a slogan: ‘Not the Biggest Asshole We’ve Ever Elected.’ ”
“I like it. A little long for a bumper sticker, but we could work with it.”
“You don’t think people will be bothered by the fact”—for a second I thought about trying to sugarcoat the question but then gave up—“that you’re a convicted felon?”
“Pardoned by the governor himself, fuck you very much. That makes me an ex-felon, white, forty-one, and free to do whatever the hell I want as long as my knees hold out.”
“But—”
“Look me in the eye and tell me this state could give a rat’s ass from Sunday if they elect a convicted but pardoned felon governor. For a minor indiscretion like gambling? In Louisiana? Not if they like the son of a bitch.”
“Okay,” I said, and laughed. “Okay.”
“Fuckin’ A, okay. And I’m the kind of son of a bitch they like. But first I got to win this public service commissioner’s race and I got a problem because this asshole McGreevy I’m running against happens to have picked his parents better than you and me and he’s spending a fucking fortune of his daddy’s money.”
“Ah, yes, but you have the legacy of our father’s heroic civil rights stance to propel you to victory.”
“Yeah, right. You take a look lately at what kind of vote David Duke used to get in this state? And all these troubles, from the fuckin’ A-rabs to the illegals taking all the jobs, they haven’t exactly made people feel like they need a dose of peace and love. I don’t want to upset your day, little bruth, but Armstrong George would kick Hilda Smith’s ass in this state. It’s simple. And that stuff about sending all those brown people back over the border, they like that around here.”
“You trying to tell me you plan on endorsing Armstrong George?” I cracked, annoyed to be hearing anything from my brother that I knew was true. “I guess I can tell Hilda this thing is over, huh?”
“You still condescend to my ass. Just like always.” He shook his head. “No, what I’m trying to tell you is that I need money.”
“A candidate who needs money, what a shock. Look, I’ll be glad to contribute to the cause.”
“I’m touched. But I need a little more help, kiddo, than one person can give me under these new do-good laws. I need some heavy support from the party. And I need some soft money.”
“What are the limits you can give?”
“Goddamn thousand dollars per person. These new limits are killin’ us.”
“How much have you raised?”
“Four hundred and twenty-eight thousand,” Paul said.
“Not bad. Cash on hand?”
“Three hundred and ten grand, give or take.”
“Give or take what?” I asked. I knew from years of campaigns that no figure was as fungible as cash on hand. Everybody wanted it
to be higher than it was. Nothing in a campaign was lied about as much as cash on hand.
“Give or take how much you eat for breakfast, if I’m buying. Look, I’m not a fucking idiot. You think I’m a fucking idiot, but I’m not. Some might say that’s one of our fundamental problems. Little Bruth thinks Big Bruth is a moron.”
I held up my palms. “I surrender.”
It was well over one hundred degrees in McGuire’s and my brother started to sweat. Veins in his thick neck surged. “All these fucking years you had me down for a stone-cold dunce, you ever stop to think there might be a little more to it than that?”
“More than you being a stone-cold dunce?”
“Screw you. You think blowing off your family makes you a tough guy?” Paul’s voice was loud, carrying across the bar; a few of the regulars at the bar turned around. “Maybe I’m thinking you got me pegged for a dumbski because that way, you don’t have to feel bad about never coming home and, when you do, trying to show up your big brother in the brains department. Jesus Christ, you got no other way to compete with me, J.D. You never got out there and knocked heads like the rest of us, but you like to compete. You took up that silly bike because you knew you could never get out there and do what I did, but maybe you could pedal that bike pretty fast. You know what I think? I think the big joke between us is that everybody thinks I’m the guy who would run into a freight train not to lose, big-time stud athlete and all that, but I ain’t got nothing on you, little brother. You would do anything to win, anything to protect your precious reputation, which, believe you me, is a compliment in my book under the circumstances. Which is why…”
The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear Page 7
