“Hello, Harry,” Bill said, stepping forward and grasping the hand and shaking it warmly.
“What brings you into these parts?” Harry asked, sitting down again, waving Bill into a chair.
“I was traveling north of here and I remembered that I knew a guy in Phillipsburg,” Bill said.
“Traveling?”
“Selling. Traveling salesman,” Bill said. “No bad jokes, please. But you’re looking well, and,” Bill added, looking around appreciatively, “doing well, I’m glad to see.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “Trying to get on. Getting the practice built up.”
“It’s been a long time, Harry,” Bill said.
“It does move by, doesn’t it? So, are you planning to stay long?”
“Just a few days,” Bill said. “According to my reckoning, the company owes me a few days of leisure.”
“Married?”
“No,” Bill said. “You?”
“No. There just hasn’t been time,” Harry said. “Look, old man, I’m going to be tied up shortly. Why don’t we get together for dinner tonight and talk about old times, as they say? Where are you staying?”
“I just walked off the train. I haven’t found a place yet.”
“Stay in the Excelsior, it’s the best in town. Tell them you’re my friend.”
“What will that get me?” Bill asked chidingly.
“The best,” Harry said, seriously.
There was an embarrassing pause. Bill felt rather uncomfortable. He got up and they shook hands again.
“Good,” Harry said. “I’ll come by about seven. Good seeing you again.”
As Harry walked him to the door Bill noticed a slight limp in his friend’s gait.
“Is that from—?”
“Yes,” Harry said curtly. “The wound. Well, see you tonight,” he said, opening the door and showing Bill out.
Outside, the receptionist smiled at him.
“That was quick,” she said. “Yes. A busy man,” Bill said as if trying to make apologies for the brevity of his visit. He picked up his bag, glanced at the dead-faced man with the felt hat on his knee who was staring mutely at him, and left.
Bill was sitting in his room at the hotel at seven o’clock when the telephone rang. It was Harry’s receptionist. Apologetically, she had a message. Harry would be unable to keep his appointment this evening.
“Then you come,” Bill said impulsively. After a moment’s demurring pause she said all right.
Her name was Lynn McGrath. She had been Harry’s secretary for almost a year. Talking idly over dinner, Bill learned that Harry had indeed not changed during the years, that he often worked so late in the office that she would find him sleeping on his office couch in the morning.
“I’ve never seen a man so driven,” she said, “so very ambitious.”
“He was always like that,” Bill said.
“Were you good friends?”
“Well, yes and no,” Bill said hesitantly, knowing that they had not been. “He’s a tough man to get close to. In the army you’re sort of thrown together. The most unlikely people become friends.”
“You don’t seem so unlikely,” Lynn said.
“Thanks.”
“But Harry was genuinely sorry that you couldn’t get together. He’d completely forgotten about the rally and said he might drop over later tonight.”
“What rally?” Bill asked.
“In the school auditorium. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That he’s running for Congress.”
“No,” Bill said shaking his head. “He didn’t say a word about it.”
“That’s odd,” Lynn said.
“I wonder why. It doesn’t sound like him, to keep that a secret.”
“It’s hardly a secret.”
“I mean, from me,” Bill said. “Of course we only spoke for a few minutes.”
“Maybe he was being modest,” Lynn said.
“Harry?” Bill asked with light, humorous skepticism. They both laughed.
Bill suggested they attend the rally. So after dinner they walked through the cool, pleasant night to the school auditorium. Outside, the place was ablaze with lights, flags and placards swung through the air, and a small band of high school musicians were assembled on the lawn playing martial airs. This was more like it, Bill thought; this was as he imagined Harry Lawrence, and not the man in the quiet office in the small town. This was the grandiose background that Harry had always depicted for himself.
All immovable objects were covered with campaign posters. Bill paused to stare at one. There was Harry’s face, handsome, serious, almost grim with resolution, perhaps a little too resolute and humorless. Beneath, it said: VOTE FOR HARRY LAWRENCE/ATTORNEY, FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM/DISABLED VETERAN.
“Disabled veteran,” Bill said aloud, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Lynn said. “But you knew that, of course.”
“No, I didn’t,” Bill said. “The last time I saw Harry was when he got wounded.”
“Were you there when it happened?” Lynn, asked as they crossed the street to the school.
“Sort of,” Bill said.
They took seats in the last row of the auditorium. In a little while the speeches began. Harry had drawn quite a large crowd and it was keyed up. The man who introduced him (Lynn identified him for Bill as the publisher of one of the town’s two newspapers — the other was violently opposed to Harry’s candidacy) made an impassioned speech, dwelling grandiloquently upon Harry’s service record and the fact that “this man has felt the heat and the steel of our nation’s enemies and shed his blood in its cause.” It got a rousing cheer. Bill watched Harry; the latter seemed almost hypnotically engrossed in what the speaker was saying. He believes in it all, Bill thought, he actually believes in it. Then Harry, having finally been introduced, walked, limping perceptibly (and, Bill thought, exaggeratedly) to the lectern and made his speech.
Bored by the speech, Bill’s eyes wandered and, to his surprise, caught sight of the dead-faced man he had seen in the office that morning. The man was on the stage, leaning against a far wall, invisible to all except the people — Bill and Lynn were two of these — who were sitting facing the stage from a sharp angle. When the speech was over and everyone stood up to cheer, and the high school band to play the National Anthem, the man disappeared through the offstage exit.
Bill and Lynn did not wait for Harry. At the conclusion of the speech they left the noisy auditorium and went to a nearby cabaret for a drink.
“Quite a spectacle,” Bill said as they sat at a quiet back table.
“I hear the sound of disapproval,” Lynn said.
“Maybe,” Bill said. “What are his chances?”
“Quite good. He won the nomination and started the campaign as an underdog but has come a long way. Now he’s expected to win. The incumbent is an old man who has voted unpopularly on some local issues...”
“And is not a disabled veteran.”
“No,” Lynn said. “You don’t seem to approve of Harry’s using that as a point. Well, it seems to be a legitimate campaign device to me. Men have campaigned on much less. But since you were over there with him perhaps you have your own viewpoint on that. Perhaps you think he’s taking advantage of something...”
“Perhaps,” Bill said quietly. “And by the way, who was that friendly-looking fellow I saw in the office this morning? I saw him again on the stage just now, hovering in the background.”
“Oh, him,” Lynn said. “His name is Fancy. I disapprove of him; not that I have anything to say about anything. He worships Harry, and I guess this is all you have to do to be a friend of Harry’s.”
“This fellow adds a distinctly disreputable note to things, if you ask me.”
“I quite agree,” Lynn said. “I think he’s somewhat of an unsavory character. He had an older brother who was killed in Korea, and when Harry came back — a sort of hero — Fancy attached himself to him. The man never talks. I don’t think I’ve heard him utter ten words all the time he’s been around.”