Dewey Defeats Truman

by Thomas Mallon

  “We can heat up what Mrs. Goldstone made last night and turn on the radio and listen to The Night Watchman. What do you say? You don’t want to hear a bunch of local politicians going at each other all night.”

  “Haven’t you fed your dad already?”

  “He wasn’t hungry. I’m practically force-feeding him now.”

  “I know.”

  “Look, you want to go. That’s okay. I’ll skip it. I’ll walk you over to City Hall and see what’s going on in Rice’s office, see if that CAA guy from Lansing has left any more search ideas.” For the past two nights Jack had been part of the effort to find Tim Herrick, crisscrossing cornfields twenty miles away for as long as the light held out.

  “No, don’t. There won’t be anything more you can do tonight. Let’s split the difference. Come to part of the meeting with me. We’ll leave early and go home and see if your dad has any more of an appetite.”

  “Deal.” The word “home,” she realized, was making him smile. It was as if she’d put “our” before it. She looked at her watch and put away the scissors and string. Mrs. Hamel’s parcel could wait until tomorrow. Without even peeking at the graphs, Jack replaced Kinsey in the empty space on the shelf.

  “Jack, I think I know where Tim is. I’ll bet you he’s safe and sound with Margaret’s brother, on the upper peninsula, where Jim and his friends have been camping all summer. I think Tim somehow made it there after Margaret, without meaning to, put the idea into his head. That’s what she realizes now, and that’s why she’s so upset. I tried this idea out on Carol last night and—”

  He shook his head as he held the door for her. “Margaret may have been thinking that, but she was wrong. Jim Feller called home today for the first time in three weeks. He and his buddies are in Montana. They’ve been on the road with all their camping gear since July eighteenth, thumbing rides from trucks. Carol called me in Flint while you were out on your lunch hour. She didn’t want to leave a long, complicated message with Mr. Abner.”

  Anne looked at him, surprised.

  “I didn’t want to call and upset you for the whole afternoon.” He stroked her pretty head.

  “NOW THESE ARE JUST SAMPLES,” SAID AL JACKSON, HOLDING up two tempera-painted panels. Laughter, and then applause, for the first.

  “We all remember Otto, of course.”

  Of course, Al did not remember Otto Sprague, the Washington Street druggist who at the time of the cyclone had served as mayor, and fifteen years after that as postmaster. Otto had died before Al came to Owosso. But, as Peter Cox could see, nobody seemed to care that Al was lying. They were too occupied with enjoying Otto’s likeness. The painting showed him looking out from behind some old apothecary jars, as the pre-mustachioed Tom Dewey swept the shop floor. In his youth, Dewey had worked more jobs than Billy Grimes, and Al, or the retired teacher he’d hired to paint the scale-model panels, had decided this one was the most picturesque.

  The other piece of oaktag Al was holding would come to life much further down the Dewey Walk. It depicted the candidate just four years ago in Oklahoma City, on the night he’d finally taken off the gloves against FDR (a baleful background figure done in somber hues). The speech, as no one but Peter seemed to recall, had been a disaster; the newspapers criticized Dewey for an unseemly attack upon the commander-in-chief who’d brought them to the edge of victory. In fact, the stumble was still echoing in Dewey’s reluctance to speak ill of the current incumbent: he’d yet to say a word against the special session. But painted twenty feet high, even Oklahoma City would seem a triumph.

  “I’m surprised you came,” Anne whispered to Carol Feller, who had saved her and Jack a pair of seats.

  “If we’d stayed home, Margaret would think we were waiting to catch her getting a phone call from him.”

  “How bad would that be?” asked Harold Feller, as he had obviously asked at least once before that evening. “We’d at least know the boy was alive.” The strain was showing on his face.

  Peter looked away from the four of them, preferring that they watch him instead and take note of the little clutch of people who during any burst of laughter or applause were asking him questions about the HUAC hearings and Mr. Chambers. Did his Washington friends know what might happen next? He tried to give the impression that he wasn’t at liberty to say, even though this past week he hadn’t talked on the telephone to anyone but a secretary from Lansing—his principal diversion since he’d dropped Vincent Dent’s incorporation forms, a month late, on her desk at the state department of finance. He now realized he hadn’t even, despite a promise to himself and Anne, called up Horace Sinclair, who was in the fourth row looking loaded for bear.

  Al Jackson had jumped the gun by holding up the paintings. First they had to read the resolution, Councilman Royers reminded him. It was actually a whole set of resolves, eighteen in all, involving everything from competitive bidding to funds for insurance and crossing guards to the installation of traffic meters on Water, Exchange and Main streets. The audience clapped at the end of the list, less for its substance than for Royers’ heroic recitation. Councilman Morgan, reminding them that he was doing this only so the proposal could stay on the floor for discussion, seconded the resolution. Now, his nod indicated, Al could begin his pitch.

  And pitch he did, without notes or interruption, explaining how the visitor would march up the west side of the riverbank past such simple sights as the law-library chair (Dewey’s transfer from Ann Arbor to Columbia would go undepicted) as well as the more sensational ones, among them a towering, glowering Waxey Gordon, the bootlegger being led off to a papier-mâché prison (five days before Repeal) by the young prosecutor. Directly across the water would be a one-to-twenty replica of the Albany, New York, governor’s mansion, in front of which, after having covered the DA years and crossed the as-yet-to-be-built footbridge, the visitor could buy a glass of Frankenmuth or Geyer’s lager. The bridge itself would be strung with authentic banners from each Dewey campaign.

  Al anticipated every objection he could think of, vacuuming them up like dustballs. “The whole exhibit will be small enough so’s everybody coming to see it can leave the same day they get here. It’s not as if we’re going to need a whole lot of new hotel space. The Hotel Owosso will do nicely.”

  “You mean they’ll make out nicely,” said Myron Warren, a shoe repairer in the second row, who laughed at his own joke.

  “And for those of you worrying about traffic, you’ve got to remember that M-21 isn’t going to stay a two-lane road forever. Before long it’s going to be the chief highway crossing the lower peninsula.”

  A murmur from the front row.

  “People are going to be bothering Mrs. Dewey in any case,” said Al, directly addressing the murmurer. “Now let me say something about the added business and revenue we can expect …”

  Peter watched their Rotarian eyes glisten over all the geegaws and lunches and gas they’d be selling. Only a few of them remained unmoved. What direct gain, after all, would accrue to Dr. Starns, the optometrist, or Bill Gordon, the roofer over on Chipman? No day-tripper was going to need new glasses or shingles to complete his visit to this funhouse. Peter could see the left-out stealing peeved looks at the ones who stood to cash in: the proprietors of White’s Bakery and Knapp’s Super Service and the Top Hat Tap Room (who hoped that no one came around asking if Gus Farnham ever shared the beer he bought there with any minors).

  Another group seemed hopefully uncertain: might a few of the tourists be so taken with Owosso that they’d stay to buy houses from Thane Neal’s realty office? Would any of them, in a burst of patriotic decorum, stop in to Reisner’s barbershop before hitting the Walk? The key to Jackson’s success, Peter decided, lay with those who had no hope of realizing any added business but were smiling anyway, like Mike Hodges, an upholsterer on East Main who was either impressed by Al Jackson’s budgetary statistics or just tickled by the prospect of visitors walking past those looming dioramas.

  “Do
you think they could get Roosevelt’s cigarette to puff out smoke?” one old lady asked her husband. “Like Times Square?”

  “That’s a wonderful idea!” he responded.

  A retired stenography teacher stood up and waited for quiet before declaring: “I think James Oliver Curwood would be appalled by this defacement of the river. The castle he built upon it was something beautiful, made out of nature’s own stones. He would hate these papier-mâché monstrosities being constructed from partisanship and greed.”

  Councilman Royers calmed the waters. “Nobody can speak for the dead, ma’am.”

  Peter was surprised—almost as surprised as Anne—to see Jack Riley’s hand go up.

  “Is it democratic to do this before the election?” he asked. “Is a town supposed to bet its money on one candidate over another, even if the candidate is a favorite son?”

  A smattering of applause; a vigorous, grateful nod from Horace Sinclair. The crowd, hushed by the contention, listened to Al: “Everybody knows those Republican delegates in Philadelphia were picking a President. Everybody knows how this election is going to turn out. We’ve got a responsibility to get started. The sooner we do, the sooner we’ll turn a profit. A profit that, under President Dewey, won’t all go to taxes.” Hear, hear, from a few businessmen.

  “Does anyone here remember Amos Gould?” Horace Sinclair, without being recognized, was on his feet, the boom in his voice overriding its scratchy touch of hay fever. “Well, even I’m too young to remember him.” The old man, winning Peter’s admiration, waited for his laugh before going on. “But I know who he was. He was the first mayor of this city and he built the old house at 100 West Oliver in 1843. It’s been chopped up for apartments now and—no disrespect to anyone living there—the history of the place is being plastered over and subdivided out of all recognition. There are a dozen buildings like it in Owosso, ones that don’t have any plaques on them, even though they represent the real history of the town that produced Thomas E. Dewey. If you want to get a sense of his life, you should learn to recognize them instead of staring goggle-eyed at this carnival Mr. Jackson is proposing to throw up along the river.” As if he were Robert Stripling reaching a dramatic moment with Whittaker Chambers, he turned around and faced Al. “Mr. Jackson, may I be so bold as to inquire if anyone has asked Governor Dewey about this big idea of yours?”

  “He’s in the middle of a presidential campaign, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Do you mean the future of Owosso itself isn’t important enough to bother him with?” Horace wheeled around and faced the crowd. “How many of you know where to find the Paymaster Building, or the Comstock cabin? Or even know what they are? Here, let me show you.” He took to the aisle and began passing out his stenciled descriptions of the two fragile piles, along with a suggested appropriation for fixing them up. It was a dramatic enough maneuver, thought Peter, but it quickly lost steam: Horace hadn’t brought nearly enough copies, and the councilmen weren’t going to wait for him to finish his distribution before resuming the meeting.

  Passing among the bakers and gas-station owners and just ordinary excited citizens, Horace felt ridiculous and frail, like that cabin that had been built over without a second thought. What had made him think this counterproposal would move them more than Jackson’s gaudy little Lido? What made him think he could believe in it himself? It was only a cover-up, and he was disgusted by his own arguments. (As if he cared what Thomas E. Dewey thought of anything, Owosso included!) He ran out of handbills halfway up the aisle and kept moving toward the door. He departed just as he heard Jackson, looking ahead to the groundbreaking, say something about “driving piles into the riverbank.”

  Damn it, thought Peter. He had hoped he might fulfill his promise to Anne by catching the old man even tonight, flattering him about his point of view before talking him out of it. Well, Anne and Riley would have to comfort him instead. They also were making for the exit.

  After another half hour, the discussion was hardly exhausted, but Councilman Morgan called for a show of hands by his colleagues. By five to two, and to substantial cheers, the plan was carried forward to a second meeting and a final vote in October.

  The crowd, uninterested in sewage treatment and new fire helmets, tonight’s other items of business, were already on their feet. Peter could hear one librarian ask another if she didn’t think their friend Trudy would be perfect playing Cokey Flo Brown, the Dewey witness who’d put away Lucky Luciano, on those Saturdays when real people in costumes, the way they’d started doing it in Williamsburg, Virginia, would take their parts in front of the murals.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen!” cried Councilman Royers, who finally got those departing to turn around. “May I remind you that over the next few days, extensive on-foot searches for Tim Herrick and Gus Farnham’s plane will be conducted in Clinton and Livingston counties? Please see the bulletin board outside Chief Rice’s office for details, and please give of your time as generously as possible.”

  HORACE FLICKED THE UAW’S TRUMAN BUTTON ONTO THE late Mrs. Sinclair’s lemon-slice dish before dissolving, exhausted, onto the sofa. If Gene Riley’s son hadn’t given him a ride from City Hall, he would never have made it home. What a fiasco the evening had been! What a feeble attempt to avoid what was coming! He had hoped to arrive home tonight and, after fifty-one years, throw away the contents of the buckram box. Instead, if he’d had any left, he would be flinging his silly historical handbills into the wicker wastebasket by his reading chair.

  He looked at the box on the dining-room table. It seemed to be clicking in the moonlight, waiting to spring to life, the way dead bacteria, scientists claimed, could wiggle back into existence if they were freed from the amber that had held them for millions of years. Whenever he was in Christ Episcopal, he thought about how the contents of the cornerstone, buried in 1859, were similarly seething with suppressed vitality, awaiting the church’s centennial and their planned release. Christ’s was where they had all met back in the eighties, in the boys’ choir led by the rector’s daughter: himself and Wright George and Boyd Fowler and Jon, poor Jon, who even then had lived from one enthusiasm to another, swept along on his own good nature, every loving or unkind word striking him five times harder than it would anyone else. “God should have brought him into the world as a dog,” Wright had said when it was all over, and the others took the remark for what it was, a compliment, and elaborated upon it, until they decided on the particular breed of retriever whose guilelessness and feelings shone brightest on its eyes. That was Jon.

  He switched on the dining-room lamp. Its fringed shade shook, raking the table with shadows. He opened the box, not to destroy its contents, but to surrender to them, to let them hurt him all over again. The letter had never had an envelope, just an engraving of the Ament Hotel in an oval-shaped cloud, at the top of the stationery:

  Dear Horace,

  Forgive me this, but I am wandering alone in a blizzard, looking for the one single light that could be in any of a hundred directions on the compass. I am too tired to go on. Please take care of my mother.

  J.A.D.

  The fold was still in the paper, with the last three words Jon ever wrote, “To Horace Sinclair,” on the back. Jon had hoped the clerk would find it in the middle of the night, when he walked the second-floor corridor and heard a faint hiss and smelled something sweet and saw no light at the threshhold. And that’s just what had happened. Once inside, the clerk pinched off the gas, but it was too late. The blue skin and strangely red lips sent him, in a panic, to the Sinclair house five blocks north on Ball Street. There, still in a shed, stood a half dozen bicycles from his father’s failed shop, so Horace gave one to the young man and the two of them rode as fast as they could back to the hotel. Up in room 214, the clerk swore the face was bluer now, an even bolder contrast to the sepia tones of Alice Banks, the girl from Lennon whose photograph had been set out on the dresser.

  Only eight months had passed since the Saturday after
noon Alice came into Owosso and bought fabric from Jonathan Adams Darrell, the boutonniered new clerk on the second floor of D. M. Christian’s. Before long she was coming in each Saturday, to meet him at the counter of Otto Sprague’s first drugstore or to hold hands at the Salisbury Opera House before Jon drove her back to Lennon in his carriage, both of them dreading the sight of George F. Behan’s grain elevator, which signaled their arrival at Thomas Banks’s small house, which he’d built as close to the elevator as one safely could, the elevator being where he worked and, despite another man’s owning it, the pride of his life. By early June Alice, as feckless as Jon, was expecting a child, and Thomas Banks decided it would be more effective to banish his daughter than her detested suitor. For the two weeks before Jon cut into the gas pipe, Alice had been someplace so tightly guarded that no letter from her could reach him. Jon’s haggard pleadings had fallen on the equally deaf ears of Thomas Banks and his wife.

  “Bring me the register,” Horace whispered to the clerk, who ran and got it so that Horace might rip out its last used page, the one he was now pulling out of the buckram box. “Jonathan Adams Darrell” was written beneath the name of a salesman from Chicago, who had slept through the night’s furtive commotion three rooms down the hall.