America America (8 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“It starts at eight. If you could come by six-thirty, I’ll pay you till eleven.” He looked down his glasses at me. “But you can leave at ten.” He gathered another handful of pebbles and tossed them into the bushes. “Because it’s a school night.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mr. Metarey.”

He laughed. “What would your dad say if he heard you asking for a lower wage?”

“It’s my mom who wouldn’t like it.”

“That’s right. And you should heed your mom. And on top of that,” he said, “you can tell her I’m paying you double.” He smiled. “For the short notice.”

He looked out at the far end of the fly pool, where in the distance the casting targets bobbed in the wind. “Tell you what—if I hit one first try, that’s what I’ll pay.” He picked up a stone from the drive and weighed it in his hand. “If it takes me two tries, I’ll pay triple.”

“You’ll break it if you hit it, Mr. Metarey.” A set of the targets hung in the work shed where I parked the Ferguson. They were the diameter of basketball rims and carved from thin flats of cork with an aluminum cup that held the flag.

“Three tries, quadruple,” he said.

“Daddy was a star pitcher in high school,” said Christian.

“I didn’t know that, sir.”

“I wasn’t a star pitcher,” he said. “I wasn’t even a very good one.” He shook out his shoulder. “Not much of a curve.”

The targets were twenty yards away. Three of them, like floating golf holes with their short flags. He was left-handed. “This is for double,” he said. He brought the stone behind his ear and took a short step. A splash jumped in one of the rings.

“Looks like that’s what it’ll be,” he said, “Double. Sorry about that.”

“Nice shot, Mr. Metarey. That’s more than generous. And I won’t tell my mom.”

“I appreciate that. We need her on our good side.”

After he’d left, Christian said, “He really was a star pitcher, you know. He’s always modest like that. His team went to the league championship.”

“I like your dad,” I said. “He’s never asked me to work in the house before.”

She looked at me. A drift of wind touched us. She leaned forward. This was another of those moments: I thought she might have wanted me to kiss her. Above us a door slammed, and she leaned back again. “Join the club,” she said. She looked toward the house. “I mean, about liking my father.”

Later, as we were walking back toward the patio, she said, “You want to know who the party’s for, Corey?”

“Sure.”

She stopped and looked at me. “Morlin Chase.”

I looked back at her.

“I guess you’re the wrong person to try to impress with that, aren’t you?” She laughed. “He was most of the brains behind Kennedy,” she said. “A lot of people thought
he
was the one who should have run for president, Daddy included. And now he’s thinking of running for governor. That’s why Mother wants to have the party for him. He’s been other things, too, like ambassador to Russia. He’s very well connected in the Democratic Party. Oh,” she said, looking at my face. “Don’t be nervous—he’s friendly. I’ve met him.”

“I
am
nervous,” I said.

“Don’t be. Mostly, Mother thinks he can help with Henry Bonwiller.”

“With Senator Bonwiller?” I knew his name, of course—everyone did—but that was the first time I’d heard it spoken at the Metareys’.

She smiled at me, reached up, and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “Oh, Corey,” she said. “You’re going to have an interesting summer.”

T
HAT
S
UNDAY MORNING,
as I was washing the Massey-Ferguson in the big garage, a rusty yellow Corvair pulled in behind me and a man began to struggle out. He had to shove his cigarette into his mouth and lean both hands on the door to get his legs free from the driver’s seat, but then without turning to look at me he tossed his keys backwards over the roof into my hands. I noticed they were on a Buffalo Bisons ring.

“Hear you’re an Indians man,” he said in a short-of-breath voice. When he finally stood, I saw how fat he was.

“Yes, sir.”

He stopped and looked behind himself theatrically, as though I’d been speaking to someone else.

“Bisons fan myself, kid.” He slapped his huge belly. “If that’s not too ironic.” Then he limped around to my side of the car, tugging at his sweaty shirt. “Born and bred Buffalo.” He bent forward to draw on his cigarette. “You watch, though. Bisons’ll be an Indians farm club before too long.”

I set my sponge down on the Ferguson’s muddy engine case. “Not for a while, anyway.”

“Johnny Bench was a Bison originally. Before the team went Canuck.”

“I know that, sir.”

Again he looked around theatrically.

“You know who I am?”

“No, sir.”

“Then
that’s
why you’re calling me that.”

“Excuse me?”

He leaned forward and peered at me. “You don’t even realize it, do you? Remarkable.” He stood again. “I’m the bottom of the fish tank, kid.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and held out his hand. “Glenn Burrant.
Buffalo Courier-Express
. Politics beat.”

“Corey Sifter. I help out at Aberdeen West.”

“Washing tractors?”

“And grounds work, sir.”

“You ever hear of the
Courier-Express
, Corey?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Mark Twain’s old paper.”

“I wouldn’t know, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” He looked at me closely again. “I hear we’re going to have some news out of here any day now,” he said. He raised his dark eyebrows and jiggled the cigarette with his jaw.

“I wouldn’t know that, either.”

“I guess you wouldn’t then, would you? Say,” he went on, “you read my roundup yesterday on the possible Dem contenders?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Oh, I see. So you’re just like every other kid in this town.” He ran his hand along the door of the yellow Corvair and a smudge of black came up on his fingers. “Don’t read no
news
paper, I guess.”

“Not much, sir, I guess. I’m sorry. I can wash your car for you if you want.”

He laughed. “Not enough water in the well.”

“I can do my best.”

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed,” he said then. He leaned down to the side mirror, wiped it clean, and ran a comb through his hair. “By menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins.” He set the comb in his pocket. “All of them imaginary.”

I looked at him.

He stood and tugged at his shirt again, then snorted. “Mencken.”

“Yes, sir.”

He peered at me. “God damn,” he said. “You don’t know who Mencken is.”

“I guess I don’t, sir.”

“H. L. Mencken. Henry Louis. Most famous man ever to pick up a pen in my business. Too bad, kid. I suppose, anyway. But guess I can’t blame you. You ever hear of Ed Muskie?”

“I think so.”

“Humphrey?”

“Yes.”

“How about George Wallace or Gene McCarthy?”

“Who?”

“Maybe you ought to find out, then.” He sniffed. “Before you end up in a jungle somewhere.”

He turned away gruffly. But just before he disappeared out the door, still tugging at his shirt, he turned. “Listen, comrade,” he said. “Go ahead and wash it. But not
too
clean.” He winked. “And if you find a ham and provolone sandwich under the right front seat, send Jeeves inside to fetch me.”

I watched him limp across the driveway to the house, where he slowly climbed the stairs, gathered himself at the door, and, to my surprise, went in without knocking.

And it was that morning, while Glenn Burrant was inside the Metareys’ house, that for the first time in my life I picked up the front section of a newspaper. It was the
Courier-Express
, and it was under the front passenger’s seat, just where he’d said the sandwich might be. His article was right there at the top of page one, below the headline “Early Field Takes Shape,” and I remember the feeling that came over me as I read it. Under the headline, in good-sized type, was his name—Glenn Burrant—and seeing it there gave me a sudden and unfamiliar thrill almost as deep, I have to say, as if it had been my own.

“P
UT ON A TIE
, C
OREY!”
my mother called from upstairs. It was Tuesday evening, and I was checking my clothes in the front hall mirror before I went back to the Metareys’ for the party.

“Nah,” said my father from the couch. “Don’t waste one.”

He was reading the baseball scores in the living room with our neighbor from next door, Mr. McGowar, who was listening to his portable radio. Mr. McGowar spent his days digging up the never-ending supply of rocks that poked up in the gardens along Dumfries Street—a service that was much appreciated by the gardeners, who were also the housewives—and his evenings in our half of the duplex, listening to baseball on his radio while my father read the sports pages. Neither of these activities involved speaking, which is why Mr. McGowar liked them. He’d long ago lost his voice from half a century at the stone saw in Metarey Granite Mine #2.

“Mr. Rockefeller’s been governor since Corey was in diapers,” my father said. “Isn’t that right, Eugene?”

Mr. McGowar looked up quizzically.

“Just saying,” my father said in a louder voice, “MR. ROCKEFELLER’S BEEN IN THERE FOR AS LONG AS ANYONE CAN REMEMBER. Isn’t that right, Eugene?”

Mr. McGowar pulled the flesh-colored radio cord from his ear. “Since,” he rasped, taking a deep breath. “Fifty.” He coughed. “Eight.” He cleared his throat, and I could see him concentrating. He was as tall as the doorway and as vigorous a man as I’ve ever seen, but it was painful to watch him speak. “Yan-kees. Braves.”

“I don’t see why they’re even bothering with this other what’s-his-name,” my father went on. “And who starts a campaign this early, anyway?”

“Morlin Chase is his name,” I said. “He’s very well connected in the Democratic Party.”

My father looked up. “Well, Cor, don’t be too impressed by any of it.”

“Christian Metarey said Governor Rockefeller’s vulnerable because he spends so much time thinking about being president. So Morlin Chase could beat him. He’s supposed to be very smart, too. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not impressed, Dad, I’m only telling you.”

“Nelson Rockefeller wouldn’t get out the front door against Nixon,” my father answered. He laughed. “I’ll give you five bucks on that one. Right, Eugene?” He looked over at Mr. McGowar. Then he put down the ball scores and picked up
Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees
, which he’d been working on for as long as I could remember.

Mr. McGowar raised his finger in the air. “Nixon’s got—” He tried to stifle another cough, but couldn’t. When he was finished he raised his finger again. “—Rock-e-feller’s. Balls.” He thumped himself on the chest. “In his. Sock drawer.”

At that one, Mr. McGowar himself let out a laugh, which sounded like a tire deflating. His laugh continued until my mother appeared on the stairs.

“You just never know,” she said. She was holding my father’s blue tie in her hand. “You just never know who’s going to be there at the Metareys’.” Then she added, “And you never know what’s going to happen.”

“Who could be there that’s going to matter to Corey?” said my father. “Rockefeller’s going to be governor till the day we all die.”

“That’s what
your
father used to say about FDR,” she answered. “And look at you, Corey. Just like your father. You look like a cabbage. Do you two think your shirts iron themselves?”

As I unbuttoned my shirt, I could see Mr. McGowar’s long rib cage still bouncing from his laugh. When my mother had disappeared back up the stairs, he held up his finger again. “He was,” he said, “almost—”

He coughed.

“Almost what, Eugene?”

“—almost—” he rasped.

He took a whistling breath.

“—almost. Right.”

My father looked at him over his glasses.

“—Your father,” he managed to get out, “—about FDR.”

He coughed for a good while then, before he put the earpiece back in.

By then, my mother had reappeared at the bottom of the stairs with my ironed shirt and my father’s tie over her arm.