who were standing to give them a round of applause. Each of them wore a pair of political buttons. One of them showed a construction worker’s yellow hard hat with a green ecology sticker on the front. The other bore the motto STILLSON’S GOT ’EM IN A FULL-NELSON.
And sticking out of every right hip pocket was a sawed-off pool cue.
Johnny turned to the man next to him, who was with his wife and small child. “Are those things legal?” he asked.
“Who the hell cares,” the young guy responded, laughing. “They’re just for show, anyway.” He was still applauding. “Go-get-em-Greg!” he yelled.
The motorcycle honor guard deployed themselves around the bandstand in a circle and stood at parade rest.
The applause tapered off, but conversation went on at a louder level. The crowd’s mass mouth had received the meal’s appetizer and had found it good.
Brownshirts, Johnny thought, sitting down. Brownshirts is all they are.
Well, so what? Maybe that was even good. Americans had a rather low tolerance for the fascist approach—even rock-ribbed righties like Reagan didn’t go for that stuff; nothing but a pure fact no matter how many tantrums the New Left might want to throw or how many songs Joan Baez wrote. Eight years before, the fascist tactics of the Chicago police had helped lose the election for Hubert Humphrey. Johnny didn’t care how clean-cut these fellows were; if they were in the employ of a man running for the House of Representatives, then Stillson couldn’t be more than a few paces from overstepping himself. If it wasn’t quite so weird, it really would be funny.
All the same, he wished he hadn’t come.
4
Just before three o’clock, the thud of a big brass drum impressed itself on the air, felt through the feet before actually heard by the ears. Other instruments gradually began to surround it, and all of them resolved into a marching band playing a Sousa tune. Small-town election hoopla, all of a summer’s day.
The crowd came to its feet again and craned in the direction of the music. Soon the band came in sight—first a batontwirler in a short skirt, high-stepping in white kidskin boots with pompons on them, then two majorettes, then two pimply boys with grimly set faces carrying a banner that proclaimed this was THE TRIMBULL HIGH SCHOOL MARCHING BAND and you had by-God better not forget it. Then the band itself, resplendent and sweaty in blinding white uniforms and brass buttons.
The crowd cleared a path for them, and then broke into a wave of applause as they began to march in place. Behind them was a white Ford van, and standing spread-legged on the roof, face sunburned and split into a mammoth grin under his cocked-back construction hat, was the candidate himself. He raised a battery-powered bullhorn and shouted into it with leather-lunged enthusiasm: “HI, Y’ALL!”
“Hi, Greg!” The crowd gave it right back.
Greg, Johnny thought a little hysterically. We’re on first-name terms with the guy.
Stillson leaped down from the roof of the van, managing to make it look easy. He was dressed as Johnny had seen him on the news, jeans and a khaki shirt. He began to work the crowd on his way to the bandstand, shaking hands, touching other hands outstretched over the heads of those in the first ranks. The crowd lurched and swayed deliriously toward him, and Johnny felt an answering lurch in his own guts.
I’m not going to touch him. No way.
But in front of him the crowd suddenly parted a little and he stepped into the gap and suddenly found himself in the front row. He was close enough to the tuba player in the Trimbull High School Marching Band to have reached out and rapped his knuckles on the bell of his horn, had he wanted to.
Stillson moved quickly through the ranks of the band to shake hands on the other side, and Johnny lost complete sight of him except for the bobbing yellow helmet. He felt relief. That was all right, then. No harm, no foul. Like the pharisee in that famous story, he was going to pass by on the other side. Good. Wonderful. And when he made the podium, Johnny was going to gather up his stuff and steal away into the afternoon. Enough was enough.
The bikies had moved up on both sides of the path through the crowd to keep it from collapsing in on the candidate and drowning him in people. All the chunks of pool cue were still in the back pockets,