“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re very busy right now, a lot going on, and I... didn’t meant to be rude.”
“No problem.”
“Thank you. Shall we start over?”
“Why don’t we skip the pleasantries and go right to where you sit at your desk and I sit in that empty chair alongside it, and you ask me all about myself?”
So we did that.
I told her my name was John Blake and that I’d been stateside for about two years following three tours in Vietnam, where I’d won the Bronze Star. That I’d joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and participated in lots of demonstrations, everything from small protests to Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal).
“I was never a paid staffer,” I told her. “Just another grunt. I inherited my folks’ farm in Idaho and sold it, so I’m still fairly flush. I can afford to indulge my conscience for a while.”
She was nodding, listening intently, really buying in. “Why did you leave VVAW?”
I shrugged. “Membership is shrinking. With the Paris Peace Talks and all, a lot of guys figured they’d made their point, and booked it. Felt we’d won the peace in a war that didn’t give us many victories.”
“And what brought you to us?”
“I’m an admirer of Reverend Lloyd. And when I heard he was out drumming up votes for George McGovern, well, hell... I figured, I’m in.”
“Staunch McGovern man?”
The only reason I would have voted for McGovern, if I bothered voting (which I never did), was that any asshole off the street would be better than Tricky Dick.
“Oh yes,” I said. “He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, you know. He’s no pacifist. He understands military men, and knows how badly we were used.”
She’d been taking some notes with a pencil on a yellow pad, but now she was tapping the eraser end on the desktop, studying me like a menu item that sounded too good to be true. But she was hungry enough to take a chance.
“Mr. Blake,” she said, starting to rise, “could you wait here a moment?”
“Sure. And it’s Jack.”
She smiled. My God, she was lovely. Like a Swedish girl dipped in milk chocolate. Down boy.
“And I’m Ruth. Ruth Wright.”
“Hi Ruth.”
“Hello, Jack.”
She went off and I made a point of not checking out her ass, wanting to make a good impression. Just the same, I felt eyes come up for momentary appraisals, the suspicion in here like the heat up a notch too high. Funny thing, none of those skeptical glances came from the black staffers, only the white ones. Scratch a hippie and find a selfish spoiled brat, I always say. Well, not out loud.
One black staffer was a little older, mid-thirties anyway. He was tall, skinny, pockmarked. He was drifting around the room, either loafing or supervising. It’s hard to tell the difference.
Then Ruth was walking briskly toward me down the central aisle between desks — which otherwise were arranged in a scattered way, since being uptight was a sin — and she was beaming.
“Would you walk this way?” she asked.
I’ll skip the talcum powder joke because she didn’t have a hip-swaying stride, just a confident one.
I followed her back to the glassed-in offices. We stopped outside the one at left, but didn’t go right in. In the short time it had taken her to collect me, the man behind the desk — gray metal and new-looking — had taken a phone call. He was sturdy-looking, ebony-skinned and cueball bald, head shaved maybe, Isaac Hayes-style. His oval face was home to heavy eyebrows over wide-set eyes, a flat-bridged nose bulging at the tip, and a rather small mouth dominated by a thick mustache. His off-the-rack suit was black and so was his tie.
While we waited, I glanced at the office at right, and there he was, at his own new gray-metal desk, hunkered over reading a typewritten page from a stack of them. He was one handsome son of a bitch, with a very short Afro and mahogany skin that suited the strong, carved features of his face. His suit and tie were black too, but his was a tailored number, and the neckwear was silk.
Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd.
Meanwhile back where I was cooling my heels, the bald bigwig (that doesn’t sound right, somehow) behind glass was hanging up the phone with one hand and motioning us to come in with the other.
I held the door open for my attractive escort, shut the door behind us, and the almost burly man behind the desk rose and grinned as big as his little mouth would allow, stretching a hand across the desk for me to shake. I did. He had a no-nonsense grip, fleshy but strong.
“Mr. Blake,” he said, in a resonant bass, sitting back down, “a pleasure. I’m Harold Jackson. The Reverend’s chief administrative assistant.”
That translated to “secretary,” but I didn’t point it out.
“Mr. Jackson,” I said with a nod.
We sat, too.
“Ruth has filled me in,” he said. “And I have to say you bring impressive credentials.”
“I do?” The only physical credentials I brought were my fake driver’s license and a phony V.A. hospital card.
He nodded, still smiling, his manner very pleasant. “You fill a specific need in this campaign... and that’s what it is, a campaign to put an anti-war candidate in the White House.”
“Mr. Jackson,” I said, “do you really think that’s possible? Or are we tilting at windmills? Don’t the polls have Nixon way ahead?”
He was already nodding. “They do. But the college crowd, and others in that freshly enfranchised voting bloc of under-twenty-one-year-olds, can defy every prediction, every statistician. We could be looking at the biggest upset since Truman beat Dewey.”
I nodded knowingly. Well, I’d seen the picture of Truman holding up a newspaper saying the other guy won, hadn’t I?
“What can I do?” I asked. “Understand I’m not asking for any responsibility, walking in off the street like this. Make a gofer out of me. I can run errands as well as the next schlub.”
But again he was shaking his head before I’d finished, the fluorescent lighting above him reflecting off the top of his skull, damn near making me wince.
He said, “Mr. Blake, you’re too valuable a resource for that kind of thing. Man, you’re a war hero. A Bronze Star! That’s really something.”
“I didn’t think war was very popular around here.”
“Not real popular, no. But war heroes who come back and take a stand against that Asian debacle, they are in short supply.”
“Oh. That’s the specific need that I fill.”
Ruth, who was sitting forward and staring at me through all this, very admiringly, said, “Have you done any public speaking?”
“No,” I said. “Not my strong suit.”
That was the last thing I needed — making a speech at a Lloyd rally and getting my picture taken. In the papers, maybe!
She was saying, “I can help you. We can develop the speech together, something very short and to the point. Nice and punchy.”
“Now, Ruth,” Jackson said, frowning, “let’s not scare our young friend off on his first day.”
She shrugged, glancing from me to him and back again. “Well, even if we just introduce him to the crowd, from the front row of the audience... or perhaps he could be up on the dais with the Reverend.”
“No,” I said, “that kind of thing freaks me out.”
Again, a photo opportunity I did not need.
“But, Jack,” she said, “it would have such great impact if—”
“You’re going to college campuses,” I said. “All they’ll hear is Vietnam vet and Bronze Star and the boos and ‘baby killer’s will start. It’ll backfire. Trust me.”
This time Jackson was nodding before I finished, coming in with, “I agree with Mr. Blake.”