Shadowbahn(36)

The younger brother nodded. “Yes.”

“. . . three times—?” It was pretty hard to believe. With gathering ferocity Bobby raged, biting off the words. “Every one of them is . . . going . . . to . . . pay,” but Jack just shook his head as his brother went on. “Every one of them, because like . . . like . . . William Jennings Bryan,” he sputtered, “Adlai isn’t going to make it this time any more than the last two. Especially if the other side winds up going with Rocky . . . but even if they don’t . . . and then our time shall come, next time, and when it does—”

? ? ?

The candidate kept shaking his head. “This was our time.”

“—every one of . . .”

“Or, it would have been, if it weren’t for, you know . . .” He nodded at the balcony.

“If it weren’t for . . . ?”

“. . . you know . . . like I was saying. The sky.”

“Are you singing?” Bobby had never heard his brother sing in his life. Everyone thought Jack told Bobby everything, when the truth was that Jack didn’t tell anyone everything. “Just something I heard out there,” Jack nodded at the balcony again, where the sky rained a song. Everyone thought they were close, the brothers, and in these electoral crucibles they were closer than they had been, and closer to each other than to anyone else; but it was a new thing, what fraternal closeness there was, born of recent years and the common appetite for power, most of all any power won competitively. “He’s bound to offer you veep,” said Bobby. “Whether he wants to or not—”

“No.”

“. . . well, I doubt he wants to. But he’s bound to. Two mornings ago you were sixty votes away from the nomination, so he’s—”

“No,” more emphatically.

“That’s what I say too.”

“We tell him to go to hell,” said Jack, “like he told us last winter when we offered him State for his support.”

“Adlai doesn’t say, ‘Go to hell,’ it’s beneath him. He’s too elegant for it. Adlai says, ‘Please kindly recuse yourself to the nether regions.’ Quotes Dante while he’s at it.”

“The party will never forgive me for it, when I say no.” Jack looked his brother level in the eye. “The party will say I need to take it, for the party.”

“He could have put you on the ticket four years ago. Of course that would have meant actually making a decision. Making decisions is beneath him as well.”

“He doesn’t want to offer it and we don’t want it, and neither of us has a choice. Except I’m saying no anyway.”

“Good. Next time.”

“I’m telling you, there isn’t a next time. It was now or never.”





fade


Bobby said, “You are singing.”

Jack laughed. William Jennings Bryan! “I heard it outside.”

“I thought we got over the Catholic thing in West Virginia.”

“Coming from a hole in the sky. What is that, anyway?”

“What is what?”

“That song. It’s now or never.”

“I like show tunes.”

“I don’t think I could have just made it up.”

“I’ve never regarded you as musical.”

“You know, I think I did just make it up. Just now. Well,” he said as his little brother glared at him, “the sky made it up.” Jack added, “It wasn’t the Catholic thing.”

“The girls?”

“What about the girls?”

“Do they know about them?” Bobby had never approved of his brother’s girls.

“They?”

“Anybody. Any of them. Do any of them know about the—?”

Jack said, “Everyone knows about the girls.”





hidden track


Everyone knew, he admitted to himself for the first time, after always having convinced himself that no one knew. After always having convinced himself that, by implicating everyone around him, including his brother, in his deep dark secrets, those deep dark secrets became theirs to keep as well, secrets for them to keep from themselves like he pretended to keep them from everyone else. “It’s not the girls,” he said.

“Someone leaked the medical records,” said his brother.

Jack shook his head. “It’s not the girls, it’s not the medical records. Lyndon already knew about the medical records. It’s not the Catholic thing. I keep telling you”—he pointed at the balcony—“go look for yourself.”

“I don’t want to look for myself,” said the younger one.

“The . . . zeitgeist is missing a piece.”

“The what?” Bobby never had heard his brother use a word like this, any more than he had heard him sing. “You hate people who use words like that.”

“There’s no sense to me.”

Bobby said, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

The older brother stretched in his chair, pain now wearily crawling up his already disintegrating back. “Do you have a cigar?” he asked.

“You know I don’t.”