Dewey Defeats Truman

by Thomas Mallon

  Oh, why had he never learned to drive a car? This stupid piece of imagined fealty to the past would now prevent him from keeping his pact with it. He had not dared go back to the castle, not even in the hours before dawn, though down along the river night was hardly night now, not with the floodlight Jackson had started shining upon the billboard announcing the Dewey Walk. For the past week Horace had confined his time outdoors to brief morning walks, awaiting discovery at every turn. “The thief doth fear each bush an officer,” he whispered, dreading the look of everyone he knew, most of all Peter Cox. The cessation of those unexpected, knowing visits of his now seemed more ominous than the visits themselves. Whatever happened, whenever it did, Horace felt sure it would be even worse than the consequences of leaving the body where it had been.

  LATE ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, THE THIRTIETH, FRANK went into Abner’s, knowing that Anne Macmurray was off for the day and couldn’t bother him with all her fond, well-meaning questions, worse in their way than Mrs. Wagner’s. He scanned the shelves for something he could bring to Jane’s, passing up Lloyd C. Douglas and Doctor Faustus and anything about the war in favor of some man named Robinson’s history of the British post office, a paradise of numbers and linkages that Leo Abner, probably unable to resist some sales rep with the tale of a new baby at home, had agreed to stock.

  A few hours later he arrived for dinner and gave the book to Jane, just before blurting out his confession: “I can’t go back to school next week. I won’t. I was staring at my grade book all morning, and at two o’clock this afternoon I threw it away.”

  “Quit,” she said, without a pause. “Get your money when the bank opens Monday morning and leave without delay.” The emergency enlivened her, made her seem just a normal person in the heat of an important moment. Clasping his arms, she literally pushed on him, moving his body two inches to the right, as if helping him dodge a bullet. “Just go. Don’t even give them notice.”

  Frank laughed, letting himself enjoy the impossibility.

  “I’ll drop you off at the Grand Trunk depot. You can take the train from Durand to Chicago and then leave on the Broadway Limited for New York. It pulls out at 4:30.”

  How did she know these things? Had she studied the regular commercial timetables while memorizing troop trains and doing the ratio of those who boarded to those who survived?

  “I’ll give you the Durand-to-Chicago fare,” she said. “A going-away present.”

  From the moment a week ago when she’d leaned over to touch and thank him, it had become Jane Herrick’s mission in life to rectify a miscount of the dead that had consigned Frank Sherwood’s spirit six feet under. Her duty, as she somehow saw it, was to repatriate him among the living, to get him back to some corner of a vital foreign field. Mixed in with the more fantastic ingredients of her motive was a simple, sensible desire to convince Frank that Owosso was no place for him. Somewhere else, like New York, he could find what he should be looking for—something unspoken but presumably other than a girl, of which Owosso afforded many.

  He tried changing the subject. “Do you want to go up on the roof later?” He meant the roof of his place, where they’d gone this week after dinners at the Hotel Owosso and a nice restaurant in Lansing. He was teaching her the rudiments of astronomy, whose distances and brightness factors were a natural for her statistical mind; she took his own awareness of them as further evidence of his displacement, his being worlds away from where he belonged. He’d been showing her Jupiter, not stopping the telescope along its arc above Oak Hill.

  Jane didn’t answer. She led him to the table and made him sit down. “Arnie never liked corn,” she said, pointing to the plates, as if baffled by the vegetable’s reappearance. Frank thrilled to hear this fact, because it was one he remembered. As the week passed, he’d had the feeling she saw him as a living substitute whose own attractiveness, like that of nylon stockings, established itself unexpectedly.

  “Picture yourself in the Pullman,” she urged.

  “I’ve never been in a sleeper.”

  “That means for a while you’ll sit up, with your tie still fastened. You’ll be a little too nervous to loosen it. It’s nine o’clock and you’re two hundred miles out of Chicago, still twelve hours away from New York. You’re fingering the quarter you have left over from the fifty-cent haircut you had right on the train. You used the third quarter to tip the barber, who never once nicked you as the train sped along the rails.”

  All the cosmic arrangements he was used to calculating had never really allowed him to project himself anywhere; the dry dates and numbers she gathered in grief were, he now understood, kindling for an imagination that let her go backwards and forwards to live and relive life, as it might be, as it had been, with more detail than most people noticed while it happened in real time, right before them.

  “Will you get into bed or go to the club car? Maybe try and find the library they say exists on that train?”

  He pushed some corn away with his fork. There was a wild, sickening intimacy to what she was doing. It was as if she’d loosened a button on his shirt, or was saying the words he could remember from long ago—you know you want to—as she drew him into a game that, yes, he did want to play. You’re a nice-looking man, Frank.

  “What’s above you?” she asked. “On the rack.”

  “Two suitcases,” he said. “And the telescope. In the aluminum packing tube.”

  She nodded encouragement. “When you wake up in the Pullman it’ll be Tuesday morning.”

  “Just when they’re really beginning to miss me at school. The first day they’ll figure I felt too sick to call in, but on the second, even with the voting lines in the gym to distract them, they’ll know something’s really wrong. An investigation will ‘ensue,’ as the Argus would put it, and that will lead to the discovery that on Monday morning Mr. Sherwood withdrew every last cent—$706.48—from his account at the State Savings Bank.”

  She smiled at him. Now you’re getting it.

  On Sunday night, through the wall, he heard Anne and Jack Riley laughing over Jack Benny. He packed the two suitcases and left whatever wouldn’t fit. He went up to the roof to dismantle the telescope, humming “This Can’t Be Love” as he cleaned it off with the chamois cloth. Monday morning, as soon as he was through waiting on the longer of two lines at the bank, the one that led to Arnie’s old window, he called Jane to tell her what he had done and to ask if she would actually give him the ride to Durand. He almost asked her to come for him in the old Chevrolet, which he was sure still sat in her garage, but he didn’t want to risk revelation for the sake of a talisman. As it was, when they got to the depot, he handed her an envelope with the instruction not to open it until she heard from him again. She nodded, uncompelled to ask whether that would be in ten days or ten years or some exponential measure of astronomers’ time. She just took the envelope and said good-bye.

  MRS. BRUCE WAS ALREADY CLOSING THE BOOKS. HAVING JUST paid Billy Grimes’ two friends twelve dollars to adorn a hundred telephone poles with new likenesses of Peter Cox, and having already bought champagne for tomorrow night’s victory party, the campaign had made its final expenditures. All of tomorrow’s drivers were strictly volunteers, and when a half hour ago they became overbooked, Mr. Cox, like an angel, had offered to ride the last old lady on the list. What a thrill she would have when he showed up to take her from Mason Street to the high school.

  Everything was running smooth as silk, though Mrs. Bruce could have done without this co-ed on the telephone across the room. Her job was setting up election-night interviews with out-of-state reporters here to cover the hometown angle. Mr. Cox might make jokes about his “duty” to represent the wave of young Republican officeholders who would be coming in with Dewey, but Mrs. Bruce knew it was precisely because he thought of such things that he was going places. There was no reason she couldn’t be making these calls herself, but he’d told her the account books and drivers were too important to have her diverted from them.
She couldn’t help letting her imagination get ahead of itself, picturing what she might be doing on this very night four or six years from now, when Peter Cox ran for the U.S. Senate or the governor’s mansion.

  In the office’s other room, the candidate sat with his feet up on the desk, looking at the wall clock. It was getting on toward 8 P.M., and he had run out of things to do. He’d talked to the Kiwanis Club in Perry, shaken hands in front of Christian’s and checked his mother into the Hotel Owosso. He’d told her there was plenty of room with him on Park Street, but she’d insisted. It wasn’t that she expected some sock-strewn bachelor’s lair; she wanted to be part of the out-of-town crowd in order to meet that younger version of Senator Barkley. Late tomorrow night she’d join the locals celebrating here in the Matthews Building and over at the City Club.

  WHAT DEWEY WILL DO, announced the cover of Changing Times, the top magazine on the stack by Peter’s feet. He’d spent part of the day listlessly reading them, instead of plotting what moves he should make as soon as the returns showed him elected. He’d remembered to set up the out-of-town papers and radio guys, but there was another score of local follow-up actions he should be getting ready to perform, phone calls and thank-you notes and the rest of it, to put a little early-as-possible oomph into his springboard for ’50 or ’52; and he couldn’t interest himself to the point of even making a list. He’d do his interviews, take Harvey Angell’s painfully gracious phone call—and then what?

  The ice that was falling off his mother seemed to be repacking itself around him. Take that co-ed in the outer office: he’d made sure to hire the best-looking of the three that had responded to the notice on the door, but since this morning he’d offered her barely more than a hello. Even a few weeks ago he’d have been all over the young lady, probably inviting her to their own private election-night party. As it was, he couldn’t bring himself to go near her; this luscious sweater girl seemed coated with the thumbsucking repellent his mother used to make the maid apply to him.

  He tried to interest himself in the Chicago papers. The Tribune’s editorial was ordering Republican readers to the polls, warning against overconfidence. The editors so despised Dewey, this white-glove candidate incapable of flinging red meat, that, like Rev. Davis, they couldn’t bring themselves to speak his name. Still, he was all that would deliver them from Roosevelt’s ghost.

  A knock on the door. Oh, not Mrs. Bruce telling him one more thing the sweater girl had done wrong or the name of another biddy needing a chauffeur to the voting booth. “Come in,” he sighed.

  “For luck,” said Anne, taking a small package from the oversized pocket of her coat.

  “You shouldn’t have,” said Peter.

  “I shouldn’t have,” she replied, while he unwrapped a copy of Dewey’s 1944 campaign biography.

  “These still aren’t moving,” she said. “Leo let me have it at cost.”

  “Inscribed, to boot.”

  “Inscribed.”

  “ ‘To Peter, on the eve of his first election victory. With a reminder that he now has until 1964 to reach the White House without being older than Thomas E. Dewey. Fondly, Anne.’ ”

  “You don’t know what to say,” she said.

  “I don’t know what to say. Want one of these in exchange?” He handed her a copy of Sunday’s church program. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “No, I never made it. After Saturday night I figured there was a limit to how much Dewey I could foist on Jack.”

  “Ah, yes. We all know he has his Dewey limits.”

  “Do-we ever. Have you got any plans for your, what do they call it? Pre-incumbency? The time between now and January.”

  “Not many. Making up to Harold some of the time I’ve cheated him out of. Maybe looking for a little apartment in Lansing. I won’t want to make the drive every day. And you?”

  “Oh, the usual.”

  “Have you set the date?”

  “More or less. March sixth, or maybe the thirteenth.”

  “I’ve got one, too.”

  “A date?”

  “A date. With Harvey P. Angell’s wife’s cousin. A fix-up.”

  She gave him a weak smile. “I’d better get going. I’ve got to stop off at the Abners’. Leo’s wife is sick, and—yes, Peter—I want to get home in time for Truman’s speech.”

  “Say good night, Harry.”

  “Good night, Harry.”

  As she buttoned her coat, he leaned across the space between them and kissed her, if only on the cheek, for the first time since Mackinac in July. “Good-bye, Gracie.”

  OUTSIDE THE MATTHEWS BUILDING, BY THE LIGHT OF A streetlamp, she opened the church program, determined not to regret the perfectly sensible gesture she had just performed. The three of them were going to be living in the same town, after all. She’d heard about Dewey’s name never being mentioned by the minister, a classy, very American touch, she thought, but they’d certainly made up for it in this handout, which went on about “a native son who by his ability and integrity has won the admiration of the American people.” The Reverend Davis referred contentedly to how the pollsters’ “prophecy” of Dewey’s election awaited fulfillment, though, as she slipped the program back into her coat pocket, his last line—“We earnestly pray that God will guide, protect and bless him in any vocation to which he may be called”—seemed to the writer in her just a little off-kilter, as if the diction of modesty had gotten tinged with the tones of religious mystery.

  She would never make it back to Jack by the time she’d promised. Before she went to the Abners’ on Washington Street, she had to stop at her apartment, where—oh, let it not be true—Mrs. Wagner seemed to be lying in wait. But no, the blue coat coming toward her was not Mrs. Wagner’s. The cut and fabric were too fashionable, and the kerchief was protecting hair that had just come from the beauty parlor.

  “There you are!” called a deep, confident voice, as if Anne were late for an appointment. The voice belonged, she could now see, to Lucy Cox, whose skin was two shades darker than it had been on Mackinac back in July.

  “For goodness’ sake,” said Anne. “Hello.” (Had she ever sent that thank-you note?) “You must be in town for Peter’s big day.” She could not tell her she had just been up to see him. She would get the wrong idea completely.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Cox. “I’m at the hotel. Look, I got a new Dewey button in the coffee shop. I’d left my old one on my light jacket, which I was wearing up until a week ago.”

  What did one say? That one was “sorry”? She settled for “Yes, I heard that you’d been out West.”

  “That’s right. He took it rather hard, unfortunately.”

  Anne fumbled. “I’m afraid I don’t know Mr. Cox, but I’m sure he’ll feel better as time goes—”

  “Not Mr. Cox. Peter. Peter took it hard.”

  “Oh.”

  “I arrived in town this morning, and was coming to invite you to a lunch party I’m giving at the hotel on Wednesday, to celebrate. I had your address on that lovely note of yours that got forwarded. It’s pretty short notice, I know, so I thought I’d walk over and ask you in person.”

  “Mrs. Cox, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to—”

  “That’s all right, dear. He says he won’t be able to make it either.”

  “He?”

  “The guest of honor. Peter.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I honestly don’t know. And that’s the real reason I came by. I thought you might. All I did was mention this little lunch, while he was checking me into the hotel, and he said, no, not possible, he expected to have some business to take care of on Wednesday. What business? I asked. And all I got was this look. So I thought you might know. What business?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Cox. Perhaps he’s just trying not to tempt the gods. You know, by agreeing to a victory lunch in advance.”

  “My dear, has Peter ever struck you as lacking in confidence?”

  “Well, no.”

&nbs
p; “There’s something on his mind, and I can’t figure out what it is. I haven’t been paying him much attention these last ten or fifteen years.”

  JACK SAT ON THE COUCH, LISTENING TO TRUMAN AND WAITING for Anne to come home. Years from now, he thought, whenever the two of them happened to hear that voice, in an old newsreel or on some radio program, they’d recall it the way other couples did “our song.” Listening to it now made him want to get a record of it.

  He was keeping her dinner warm in the oven, though he didn’t expect her to stay the night. He was still registered to vote in Flint, and would have to be up at five-thirty to help Walt dispatch the fleet of union drivers ferrying widows and crippled veterans to and from the polls. It was going to be a long day’s work for a short evening of disappointment, but he’d promised Anne he’d start back for Owosso as soon as voting stopped at 8 P.M.

  He had never voted at home. In ’44 he’d filled out his ballot in Europe, and four years before that had been under twenty-one, though he could remember Gene going around the block that time to vote for Roosevelt, complaining about the idea of a third term but saying the worst thing about Willkie was he came from some town in Indiana “a little too goddamned like this one.”

  Next time he and Anne would both be standing in line at the big Emerson elementary school. The business of the house had been settled: they would keep this one and start fixing it up between now and the wedding. Before they got around to anything that could be called remodeling, they’d be busy with simple repairs, all the stuff Gene had had to let slide.

  Tomorrow night they’d be saying good-bye to Truman from the City Club, where Anne would be with the Fellers. They had told him to make sure he came by as soon as he returned from Flint, which was fine with him: it would be more practice for Christmas in Connecticut. Anne had already bought their train tickets, and he was less nervous about the whole thing than he might have been. He’d decided their engagement was hardly the most surprising thing you could think of. Asked to name that, he’d have to say it was John L. Lewis (that secret symbol of all his own shortcomings) practically endorsing Dewey! A temper tantrum left over from last year’s dispute with Truman, and pretty idiotic, but it did show you that anything could happen.