Roger Chatsworth was due back later in the evening, and tomorrow Johnny would have the distinct pleasure of telling him that his son was beginning to make real progress.
Johnny had been up to see his own father every two weeks or so. He was pleased with Johnny’s new job and listened with keen interest as Johnny told him about the Chatsworths, the house in the pleasant college town of Durham, and Chuck’s problems. Johnny, in turn, listened as his father told him about the gratis work he was doing at Charlene MacKenzie’s house in neighboring New Gloucester.
“Her husband was a helluva doctor but not much of a handyman,” Herb said. Charlene and Vera had been friends before Vera’s deepening involvement in the stranger offshoots of fundamentalism. That had separated them. Her husband, a GP, had died of a heart attack in 1973. “Place was practically falling down around that woman’s ears,” Herb said. “Least I could do. I go up on Saturdays and she gives me a dinner before I come back home. I have to tell the truth, Johnny, she cooks better than you do.”
“Looks better, too,” Johnny said blandly.
“Sure, she’s a fine-looking woman, but it’s nothing like that, Johnny. Your mother not even in her grave a year ...”
But Johnny suspected that maybe it was something like that, and secretly couldn’t have been more pleased. He didn’t fancy the idea of his father growing old alone.
On the television, Walter Cronkite was serving up the evening’s political news. Now, with the primary season over and the conventions only weeks away, it appeared that Jimmy Carter had the Democratic nomination sewed up. It was Ford who was in a scrap for his political life with Ronald Reagan, the ex-governor of California and ex-host of “GE Theater.” It was close enough to have the reporters counting individual delegates, and in one of her infrequent letters Sarah Hazlett had written: “Walt’s got his fingers (and toes!) crossed that Ford gets it. As a candidate for state senate up here, he’s already thinking about coattails. And he says that, in Maine at least, Reagan hasn’t any.”
While he was short-order cooking in Kittery, Johnny had gotten into the habit of going down to Dover or Portsmouth or any number of smaller surrounding towns in New Hampshire a couple of times a week. All of the candidates for president were in and out, and it was a unique opportunity to see those who were running closeup and without the nearly regal trappings of authority that might later surround any one of them. It became something of a hobby, although of necessity a short-lived one; when New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary was over, the candidates would move on to Florida without a glance back. And of course a few of their number would bury their political ambitions somewhere between Portsmouth and Keene. Never a political creature before—except during the Vietnam era—Johnny became an avid politician-watcher in the healing aftermath of the Castle Rock business—and his own particular talent, affliction, whatever it was, played a part in that, too.
He shook hands with Morris Udall and Henry Jackson. Fred Harris clapped him on the back. Ronald Reagan gave him a quick and practiced politico’s double-pump and said, “Get out to the polls and help us if you can.” Johnny had nodded agreeably enough,.seeing no point in disabusing Mr. Reagan of his notion that he was a bona fide New Hampshire voter.
He had chatted with Sarge Shriver just inside the main entrance to the monstrous Newington Mall for nearly fifteen minutes. Shriver, his hair freshly cut and smelling of after-shave and perhaps desperation, was accompanied by a single aide with his pockets stuffed full of leaflets, and a Secret Service man who kept scratching furtively at his acne. Shriver had seemed inordinately pleased to be recognized. A minute or two before Johnny said good-bye, a candidate in search of some local office had approached Shriver and asked him to sign his nominating papers. Shriver had smiled gently.
Johnny had sensed things about all of them, but little of a specific nature. It was as if they had made the act of touching such a ritual thing that their true selves were buried beneath a layer of tough, clear lucite. Although he saw most of them—with the exception of President Ford—Johnny had felt only once that sudden, electrifying snap of knowledge that he associated with Eileen Magown—and, in an entirely different way, with Frank Dodd.