What It Takes (12 page)

And now, almost two years into his term, they all came to deal with him, came to him in the morning, while he held court in his armchair in the cloakroom. “Bob, I’d really like to move this, if you could. It’s been checked off, both sides of the committee—if you don’t see any problem ...”

On the floor, they called him “the Leader,” or “the Distinguished Majority Leader.”

“Would the Distinguished Leader yield for a moment?”

“I’d be happy to yield to my friend from Massachusetts.”

And they were friends, or as close as he had. If knowing about them was a mark of friendship, then Dole was a friend. Bob Dole probably never swung a golf club in his life, even back when he had two hands to do it. In Doran Dole’s house, in Russell, Kansas, golf was a sport for rich loafers. But if Quayle from Indiana slipped away for an afternoon at Burning Tree, it was Dole who’d know who made up the foursome. “Agh, s’pretty good, I guess,” Dole mentioned once, to a stunned staff guy. “Handicap’s ’bout seven.” How the hell did he know that? How’d he know what a handicap was?

There didn’t seem to be any limit to the facts he stored for instant access, the elaborate filigree of his neural connections.

Tuck the scenic river bill on the calendar for Friday?

“Agh, better not.”

Dole might offer no explanation, but there were things he knew. ... There’s a Senator, border state, got a tough reelection—Dole was out there for him twice already—and his Democrat opponent’s hammering him on environment: he backed a wood pulp mill, three or four years ago. Saved some jobs. But caught heat from the state’s biggest paper. So he might want to be on the bill, that bit that sets aside six miles of the Wammahoochie as a wild scenic preserve. Might want to get on TV. Maybe announce it. Anyway, he’s got a daughter getting married Saturday. Wife’s sort of the nervous kind ...

“Better make it next Tuesday.”

Dole never had just a single source of information. That’s one reason he was scary to work for. Dole would set a staffer onto an issue, something massive, like telephone deregulation, and the guy would work for weeks, bust his tail on the memo. Then one nervous, hopeful night, he’d give it to Dole, or set it on Dole’s desk. The next thing the poor guy would see was Dole, wanting to know: What about the access charge? The pass-along from the local companies? What about proprietary networks?

“Gaghhh! ... Is this the best you could do?”

See, Dole was working on it in the cloakroom. He knew who the smart guys were on every issue, whose staff was rolling on the bill, what the local companies in Kansas worried about, what GTE’s guy was pushing. Then maybe he’d set another staffer in the other office, the Kansas Senate office, to finding out how much AT&T was going to drop its rates. If he didn’t get the answer, he’d tell another staffer (whoever his favorite was that week, or whoever happened to be in the room) to get the chairman of AT&T on the phone—ask him to come in. ... Of course, the guy comes. Dole is the Leader,
Majority
Leader.

The point was that everything, all fruit of this furious gathering, wound up in Dole’s head. And furthermore, the complete set of facts was
nowhere else.
That’s why the desk was clean, why Dole had no briefcase, and Dean carried only a slim leather folder. Sure, there was a blizzard of paper around Dole, but somehow, the written version always caught up with him after the fact. The schedule: they’d still be typing it Saturday morning, an hour before the car went for Dole at the Watergate; he kept adjusting it, fine-tuning, up to Friday night. And he’d keep changing it on the plane, if he wanted. There was no bible, except in Dole’s head. Most of the speeches were still being typed as Dole made his way to the head table. Then there was the furious dash to the Xerox, for press copies; anyway, it didn’t matter: Dole would keep his own copy in his pocket and say what he wanted, any way he chose. There wasn’t any speech, except in Bob Dole’s head. This was an article of pride with Dole. He didn’t have to read from a card in his pocket to have a talk about politics, the budget, or the tax law, dairy prices, the Russians, or anything else. It was in his head.

And that suited Dole fine. It didn’t matter how many Washington smart guys told him he’d have to learn to delegate. It didn’t matter how many Respected Analysts wrote columns, saying the key to his success would be to let himself be managed. If someone wanted to manage Bob Dole, they’d have to know more than Dole did. And he made sure that wasn’t going to happen. There wasn’t any one person who was going to know everything in his head. Sometimes, for the profile writers, a staff guy would whisper The Official Secret Explanation:

It went back to the war wound ... when he got shot up and his arm wouldn’t work. Dole had to go through law school, and he couldn’t write ... couldn’t take notes ...

He had to keep it in his head!

And that was true, in a way. But Dole had able notetakers now. The fact was, knowledge was power. If Dole had three people working on an issue, and each talked directly to Dole, then he knew more than any of them, more than anyone else. Better yet, four people digging, or six, and a colleague in the cloakroom, and some smart guys on the phone. The only place they met was in Dole’s head. And there wasn’t a single one of them he had to depend on.

“Agh, s’pretty good. Said he wanted to help,” Dole was saying, as he got back to the Lincoln, after the Guam event. “Lotta moneyyy! ...” He had a business card from a Washington smart guy, a lobbyist. But he didn’t give it to Dean for follow-up. This was important. Dole stuck the card into his own shirt pocket.

The pocket was the ultimate action file—just the most important matters. Sometimes, the only thing Dole had in there was his prayer. He always carried the prayer, on a laminated card. It meant a lot to Dole. So, no one knew about the prayer.

Now the door of the Town Car was closed, the windows were up. It was after nine-thirty. The streets were getting quiet. In the car, silence: Wilbert and Dean waited for Dole to call it a day. In the dark, Dole’s eyes shifted to the glowing green of the quartz clock. Not even 10:00
P.M.

Dole said to the windshield: “Agh, better stop at the office.”

At 10:00
P.M.
, old Dutch Dawson would look up at the clock from the back booth of the drugstore, where he was doing his crossword, with his glasses on top of his head. He’d lift his squat frame out of the booth and walk to the front door. He’d look up Main Street, then down the other way. “Wait a minute. Don’t turn the lights out,” he’d say. “There’s a guy comin’ out of the theater. ... Okay, turn ’em out. He went the other way.” Then, he’d check the two registers at the front, the sundries and the fountain, turn the key, and check the ring-up. Then, he’d get into his car, and head home.

The boys and Bob Dole stayed behind, cleaning up. Bob had to make syrup for the next day, empty the ice-cream bins, wash out the soda spigots ... those things had to be clean. It was always closer to eleven when he ran back to Maple Street. Bina would have his supper waiting. And not just a plate of something on the stove, but his place set at the dining room table, homemade bread, soup, a full dinner. There was fresh cake or pie for dessert. Bina’s girls, Bob’s two sisters, had to bake a fresh dessert when they got home from school. There was no halfway, or good-enough, with Bina Dole.

People used to say there was nothing Bina couldn’t get done. But it had to be done just so. It didn’t matter how much effort it took, or how many hours. When Bob’s older sister, Gloria, started to iron, and a shirt wasn’t just so, Bina’d throw that shirt right back on the pile. “Sista! ...” (That was Gloria’s nickname.) “You have to learn to do things right!” She’d have Gloria, or her youngest child, Norma Jean, standing for hours on a dining room chair, while she got the hem of a skirt just right. “Stand
still
! ...” When Bina set to cleaning floors, all four kids had to get up on those chairs, and woe to the child who jumped the gun and put a foot down on the damp floor. “You can go out back and cut your switch, right now!” (Bina’s voice could take paint off a wall: even her name rasped with hard prairie vowels; it rhymed with Carolina, or, as she’d likely say, Salina.)

Around Eleventh and Maple, the neighbors would hear her make those kids hop: “Bob, you sweep off that porch! Kenny! You get that trash together!” Or she’d call down to the grain elevator, light into Doran so hard that the farmers having coffee could hear her on Doley’s end of the line.
This was wrong and that was wrong, and if Doran didn’t care, well, that was just too bad!
Then she’d slam down the phone without saying goodbye. Doran would just put down the phone and go about his business; he was used to Bina; he toed the mark, best he could. One time, they had a family reunion, and what with all the Talbotts (Bina came from a family of twelve kids), they had to use the second floor of the community hall. Well, it was Doran’s job to set up the tables, and Doran being the way he was, he went the extra mile, got some paper tablecloths, and set all the places—plates and silverware, too. So Bina walked in, and she hit the roof! “Well, my GOD, Doran! Get those papers off the tables! I’ve got tablecloths and we’re SURE not gonna eat on those papers!” Doran just went back and took it all apart. “Well,” he said, quietly, shaking his head, stripping tables, “I knew there’d be somethin’ wrong. I was just wonderin’ what it would be.”

She didn’t demand anything from them that she wouldn’t do herself. She was surely the only woman in Russell who’d scrub down her wooden front porch, and then wax it. She’d wax and shine the garbage cans! She had the five rooms on Maple Street done up like a dollhouse, with organdy curtains she made herself. The girls had party dresses she made, with ruffles, all perfectly turned and ironed. And snappy pleated jumpers for their Legion Auxiliary uniforms: Bina made them, too. She’d cut down her old coats to make their coats. Each of the boys had only one set of school clothes, but they were immaculate every day, trousers creased, shirts pressed. Every day, there was a clean white shirt and white cotton pants, ironed just so, for work at the drugstore. Doran got a fresh white shirt every day, and fresh overalls, ironed smooth. Everything, even sheets and dish towels, had to be ironed, and just so. On wash day, Monday, there were four or five lines in the yard.

That’s the way Bina learned when she was a girl on the Talbott farm. Joseph and Elva Talbott were reckoned the handsomest couple in the county, and at their place, a dozen miles south of Russell, everything had to be just so. Joseph used to mow the verge of the road, county land, so the weeds wouldn’t spoil the look of his farm. He was so particular about his horses, he’d wash their hooves. There were eight daughters and four sons, and as Joseph was a member of the district school board, they generally had the schoolmistress boarding with them, too. The Talbotts did their own milking, they raised their own chickens, cleaned ’em and picked ’em for Sunday dinner. There were seven ponies for the kids to ride, Sunday afternoons. Monday was for washing, Tuesday for ironing, Wednesday was mending and altering, Thursday was housecleaning, Friday and Saturday they baked. When they’d get up, two boys and three girls would milk four cows apiece. After school, some of the kids would gather eggs. Some of the girls had to wash the dishes. There was a pump in the kitchen and they’d fill the kettle, boil the water for scalding. The stove had a reservoir: hot water for cleaning. They all had to pick up their rooms and make their beds before they could come down to breakfast. The evening meal was the big event. Tablecloth and silver every night. Elva’s kids didn’t have to be told to be cleaned up and ready in their chairs.

When Bina married Doran and got her own house, that was the way she ran it, too. In the years before Bobby Joe went to work at the drugstore (and Kenny after him, a couple of years later), everybody had to be home and cleaned up for dinner. Before suppertime, the boys would go downstairs to light the water heater. (“Your dad’s comin’ home. He’ll want to clean up.”) Then, to the dining room: tablecloth, every night. The Dole kids would climb into their seats, hands washed, faces washed, hair combed. Doran would fix the children’s plates. And every night, he’d say: “Dessert’s under your plate.” That meant no pie till they ate all he gave them. After dinner and the dishes, all the kids did their homework at the dining room table.
The Salina Journal
came by train every evening, and Doran read it at night, in his chair in the front room, next to the round-top Philco. Saturdays, Doran had his radio shows: Fibber McGee and Mollie, Amos ’n’ Andy. The kids could go out after supper Saturdays, but they got themselves home on time. Last thing they wanted was to make Dad leave the Philco, go out hunting kids, in the middle of Amos ’n’ Andy. Sunday nights, after the dishes, they’d make a plate of fudge. One of the girls got to make it, the other kids would sit and watch, so nobody got to lick more. They had their fudge, and their baths. Bina would hand out the soap. “No one’s so poor they can’t buy soap ...” Then it was all kids to bed, all in the back bedroom. There was a bed for the boys and one for the girls. (Later, when the kids were teenagers, Doran fixed up a boys’ room in the concrete basement.) Bina or Doran would turn out the light, and that was that: time to sleep.

Even when Bob was coming home late, Bina would still be working: ironing in the kitchen, or sewing in the dining room, at her place near the south window. Sometimes, she’d sew till four in the morning, finishing something for the girls, or something special for a customer. Bina was a working mother, a rare breed in those days: she sold Singer sewing machines in the Russell district. She’d drive the country roads, sometimes fifty miles out of town, hauling her big machine in the back of her old Chevy, where Doran took out the rumble seat. Then with two trips back and forth from the car, she’d lug the machine into a farmhouse (first the heavy steel head, then the base and the treadle), and set it up to demonstrate. She’d grab whatever fabric they had—anything, a feed sack—and turn out a dress right there. Or she’d show the machine, and then, at home, stay up into the night, making a dress, or pleated curtains, for the lady of that house, where she’d show up again, next day: