Keep Waterloo Weird
(Page 3 of 4)
Hardaway had already started. Nick’s entire experience of politics was recapitulated in the progression from theme song to speech: He was excited by the fanfare but turned off by the rhetoric. “I am proud to stand before you today,” the man was saying. “I have a record of leadership and the experience to handle the challenges of the future. I have a positive vision.” His delivery was mediocre. Mostly he stared down at the podium, reading from a script, but every so often, so as to look into the cameras, he would abruptly jerk his head upward.
“. . . I come to you today with the experience, the enthusiasm, and the vision to lead our great state into the twenty-first century…”
Nick took his notebook out of his pocket but did not uncap his pen.
“. . . Some want to turn back the clock, raising taxes, undermining accountability, ignoring personal responsibility. I will work hard to defend our state against the forces of mediocrity that would take us backward instead of forward, and I will make no concessions to them . . .
“I believe the promise of America is yours to inherit if you have the capacity to dream and are willing to pursue those dreams!”
Nick watched Sonny Muñiz, ahead of him, taking notes. The driest man in the Capitol press corps, a widower, furrowed and whiskered, Muñiz explained the same things week after week to an audience who would never remember what a conference committee was or how the state had voted in the last presidential election, yet he never seemed to grow jaded, at least not in print, never seemed to tire of the long parade of Hardaways with their visions and dreams, the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow of state elections. He had secured his place in the middle of it all, taking his notes, writing his columns, fixed like a boulder in that river of platitudes and pledges. Nick envied him that.
“A positive vision,” he heard Hardaway read again from his notes. “With the blessings provided us by our Creator, we are harvesting the seeds of a better tomorrow! The best is yet to come!”
The thing was, it didn’t seem to Nick that the best was yet to come. At one time he’d seen all this sort of political talk as a facade and imagined himself capable of puncturing it, of writing about what really went on behind all the posturing. But gradually he’d concluded that the people doing the posturing believed in their own postures. There was no simple underlying truth behind or beyond.
“I believe we must curb frivolous lawsuits. We must eliminate government waste. When we lower taxes on our working families, we create opportunities. We are one nation under God! Together we will forge a brighter future for our children!
“The test of leadership is not whether you are the loudest critic or the biggest cynic. The test of leadership is standing for something. As your governor, I will stand for something, and I will not yield!” An obligatory volley of cheering drowned out the next few words.
Behind Hardaway, Ms. Official Photograph smiled absently. She was thin and fastidious-looking, a conservative in appearance and presumably in philosophy as well, and no doubt she spoke in platitudes just like all the rest, but right now she didn’t look so sure of herself. Nick felt, if not quite sorry for her, glad at least that he didn’t have to sit up there behind Mark Hardaway. A name rose up out of the nowhere of his brain: Beverly Flintic. That was who she was, a state assemblywoman, newly elected to represent Waterloo’s northern suburbs.
The doors beckoned. He had a way of taking off early from these things, after convincing himself he’d done all he really needed to do. Next to the exit, the same woman who’d dispatched him to his present location was setting a cardboard box on a table. Transcripts of the speech, Nick guessed. If he picked one up…It had become so hot in the room, but there was no leaving. It was too crowded. Sweat trickled down his back while he stood there in the press corral, warm and drowsy, catching himself as he swayed involuntarily forward toward Muñiz. When the speech ended, the audience cheered on and on, and Hardaway held up his arm as though he had just stepped off an airplane and might wave, only he wasn’t waving. He was holding his arm straight up in a creepy führer way and letting the still photographers take their pictures.
All at once the corral began to move. Hardaway had stepped off the stage, and the reporters were migrating toward him. Nick bumbled along, conjoined bodily to the overweight editor of a politics newsletter. As they neared the candidate, the reporters thrust their tape recorders out, encircling Hardaway with a ring of outstretched arms, like a team huddling before the game. At the end of each arm was a small silver or black recorder that would capture the candidate’s additional words, his tidings of positivity but not the ruby tear of a shaving cut on his cheek, not the strange, early-eighties television hue of his tan, not the shadow of alarm in his eyes. Nick thought he should ask a question. He wanted to ask a question—he wanted to ask a smart question. Only he didn’t have a smart question for gubernatorial candidate Mark Hardaway. What he had was a dumb question, a basic, dumb question that baffled him whenever he went to one of these things. Why would anyone subject himself to this? To the cameras, the scrutiny, the press conferences, the thousands of handshakes, the permanent smiling—why? Why? Why?
Why?
A silence had fallen around the reporters’ circle. Hardaway was looking right at him. Nick hadn’t meant to ask his question out loud, but he’d done just that. The word had risen up through his throat and leaped out of his mouth.
The entire circle waited for him to finish the question. Hardaway looked at him, confused.
“Beg pardon?”
“Why…are you doing this?”
“Why am I doing what?”
“All of it.”
The candidate’s face grew somehow longer. He mashed his lips and glanced down. There was a pause. Then he ventured: “Why did I decide to run for governor?” Nick didn’t know how else to put it. He nodded. Hardaway repeated some lines he’d delivered earlier about leadership and the rewards of public service.
As soon as he was able, Nick slipped out of the pack, his cheeks still hot, swiped a speech transcript from one of the stacks near the door, and left. He jogged down half a flight of stairs and examined the transcript.
“My fellow taxpayers,” it began.
He folded the speech in half, then in half again, then once more, and dropped it in an ashtray.
He followed an exit sign to a rear door and shoved his right side up against it and tumbled out into an alley. A woman was standing a few feet away. It was Beverly Flintic, no longer looking so official with her jacket off and draped over her arm. She was smoking a cigarette. Alone, half in the shadow of the building, one pump heel planted slightly in front of the other, taking a modest puff and then considering the cigarette between her fingers as if it had been a while since her last one, she might have been a deer or a hare, some furtive animal, who, when startled by the opening door, quickly brought her hand down by her side and then stood motionless. Her stance was pigeon-toed. Unstable. She stared at him, caught, while smoke trailed off her thigh. Her lips parted, as though she wanted to smile or speak but could not.
“Did you drop that?”
“Excuse me?”
He pointed at the ground next to her foot, to what looked to him like a book of matches.
“Oh!” she said.
“Here, let me.”
“No, no, no,” she said rapidly, dropping to a half squat before he could reach for the matches. “I got it.” She held her left arm high in the air to keep the jacket from touching the ground and grabbed the matchbook with thumb and finger of the other hand, which she was also using to hold the cigarette. She was off balance, and for a second or two Nick thought she would tip over sideways. Then she stood back up, awkwardly.
“Sorry,” she said. Her hair had fallen out of its place and down over her forehead.
