"What do you mean? I won't be anything else."
"They gave women the vote! Look, darling, a candidate can be unbossed, but not independent. Independence is an adolescent notion. To merit support you have to commit yourself - and there goes your independence.
"But I - Oh, politics is a rotten business!"
"You make me tired! Politics is just as clean - or as dirty - as the people who practice it. The people who say it's dirty are too lazy to do their part in it." She dropped her face into her hands. I took her by the shoulders, and shook her. "Now you listen to me. I'm going over our program, point by point. If you agree with it and commit yourself, you're our candidate. Right?"
"Yes, Jack." It was just a whisper.
We ran through it. There was no trouble, it was sane and sensible, likely to appeal to anyone with no ax to grind. The points she did not understand we let lay over. She liked especially my housing bills and began to perk up and sound like a candidate.
"Okay," I said finally. "Here's the gimmick. I'll get my name off the ballot so that the race will be over in the primary. It's too late to do it myself, but they've played into my hands. It'll be a court order, for ineligibility through non - residence."
Dr. Potter looked up sharply. "Come again, son? I thought you said your legal position was secure."
I grinned. "It is - if I fight. But I won't. Here's the gag - we bring a citizen's suit through a couple of dummies. The court orders me to show cause. I default. Court has no option but to order my name stricken from the ballot. One, two, three."
Tom cheered. I bowed. "Now Dr. Potter is your new campaign chairman. You go on as before, going where you are sent and speaking your piece. Oh, yes - I'm going to give you some homework on other issues than housing. As for Tom and me - we're the special effects department. Just forget us."
Three days later I was off the ballot. Tom handled it so that it looked like McNye and Tully. Mrs. Holmes had the delicate job of convincing our precinct workers that Frances was our new white hope. Dr. Potter and Dick Blair got Frances endorsed by the Civic League - the League would endorse a giant panda against a Tully man. And Dick Blair worked up a veterans' division.
Leaving Tom and me free for fun and games.
First we got a glamour pic of Frances, one that made her look like Liberty Enlightening the World, with great sorrowful eyes and a noble forehead, and had it blown up for billboards - 6 - sheets; 24 - sheets look like too much dough.
We got a "good" picture of McNye, too - good for us. Like this - you send two photographers to a meeting where your man is to speak. One hits him with a flash bulb; the second does also, right away, before the victim can recover from his reflex. Then you throw the first pic away. We got a picture which showed McNye as pop - eyed, open - mouthed, and idiotic - a Kallikak studying to be a Jukes. It was so good we had to tone it down. Then I went up state and got some printing done, very privately.
We waited until the last few days, then got busy. First we put snipe sheets on our own billboards, right across Frances' beautiful puss so that those eyes looked appealingly at you over the paster. "VOTE FOR McNYE" they read. Two nights later it was quarter cards, this time with his lovely picture: VOTE
FOR McNYE - A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOME. We stuck them up on private property, too.
Tom and I drove around the next day admiring our handiwork. "It's beautiful," Tom said dreamily. "Jack, do you suppose there is any way we could get the Communist Party to endorse McNye?"
"I don't see how," I admitted, "but if it doesn't cost too much I've still got a couple of war bonds."
He shook his head. "It can't work, but it's a lovely thought."
We saved our double - whammie for the day before election. It was expensive - but wait. We hired some skid - row characters on Saturday, through connections Tom has, and specified that they must show up with two - day beards on Monday. We fed each one a sandwich loaded with garlic, gave him literature and instructions - ring the doorbell, blow his breath in the victim's face, and hand her a handbill, saying abruptly, "Here's how you vote, lady!" The handbill said, "VOTE FOR McNYE" and had his special picture. It had the rest of Tully's slate too, and some choice quotes of McNye's best double talk. Around the edge it said "100% American - lOO% American."
We pushed the stumblebums through an average of four precincts apiece, concentrating on the better neighborhoods.
That night there was an old - fashioned torchlight parade - Mrs. Holmes' show, and the wind - up of the proper campaign. It started off with an elephant and donkey (Heaven knows where she borrowed the elephant!) The elephant carried signs: I'M FOR FRANCES; the donkey, SO AM I. There was a kid's band, flambeaux carried by our weary volunteers, and a platoon of WAC and WAVE veterans marching ahead of the car that carried Frances. She looked scared and lovely.
Tom and I watched it, then got to work. No sleep that night - More pasters. Windshield size this time, 3"xlO", with glue on the printed side. I suppose half the cars in town have no garages, housing being what it is. We covered every block in the district before dawn, Tom driving and me on the right with a pail of water, a sponge, and stickers. He would pull alongside a car; I would slap a sticker on the windshield where it would stare the driver in the face - and have to be scraped off. They read: VOTE FOR McNYE - KEEP AMERICA PURE.
We figured it would help to remind people to vote. I voted myself when the polls opened, then fell into bed.
I pulled myself together in time to get to the party at the headquarters - an empty building we had borrowed for the last month of the campaign. I hadn't given a thought to poll watchers or an honest count - that was Mrs. Holmes' baby - but I didn't want to miss the returns.
One election party is like another - the same friendly drunks, the same silent huddle around the radio, the same taut feeling. I helped myself to some beer and potato chips and joined the huddle.
"Anything yet," I asked Mrs. Holmes. "Where's Frances?"
"Not yet. I made her lie down."
"Better get her out here. The candidate has to be seen. When people work for a pat on the back, you've got to give 'em the pat."
But Frances showed up about then, and went through the candidate routine - friendly, gracious, thanking people, etc. I began to think about running her for Congress.
Tom showed up, bleary - eyed, as the first returns came in. All McNye. Frances heard them and her smile slipped. Dr. Potter went over to her and said, "It's not important - the machine's precincts are usually first to report." She plastered her smile back on.
McNye piled up a big lead. Then our efforts began to show - Nelson was pulling up. By 10:30 it was neck and neck. After a while it began to look as if we had elected a councilman.
Around midnight McNye got on the air and conceded.
So I'm a councilman's field secretary now. I sit outside the rail when the council meets; when I scratch my right ear, Councilman Nelson votes "yes"; if I scratch my left ear, she votes "no" - usually.
Marry her? Me? Tom married her. They're building a house, one bedroom and two bathrooms. When they can get the fixtures, that is.
FOREWORD
When the USSR refused our proposals for controlling the A - bomb, I swore off "World - Saving." No more preaching. No more attempts to explain the mortal peril we were in. No, sir!
A year and a half later, late '47, I backslid. If it could not be done by straightforward exposition, perhaps it could be dramatized as fiction.
Again I fell flat on my face.
Fifteen years later there was a tremendous flap over Soviet medium - range missiles in Cuba. Then they were removed - or so we were told - and the flap died out. Why? Why both ways? For years we have had Soviet submarines on both coasts; are they armed with slingshots? Or powder puffs?