him. Rather, it was because he understood. His family, while a major part of the town’s history, no longer carried the weight held by the myriad other customs and totems handed down over the last two hundred years. The principal selling point of these other things was that none of them found their gravity in something as fragile as flesh and blood, but in the malleability of the intangible.
This town and its history, as well as all the trappings that went with it—unsophisticated though it all might be—was in Graham’s blood, and it had been an important element of his long campaign, even as it had also been a weight on it. Small-town folksiness only punched his ticket so far up the political track.
He flicked the cigarette butt toward the tree line and shook his head. One thing at a time. He had to get to the senate first, and this small town was good for a great many votes from the similar small towns that comprised his strongest voting bloc.
He saw the light come on at Kaddy’s, and knew that Artie must have seen the cars in the driveway—how it would look to the hardware store owner, and the rest of the people down there who would be waiting for word to come when it finally happened. As he turned to head toward the house, he thought to wonder if Artie was in the pool.
The five steps up to the wood porch were solid beneath his shoes, the third step having lost its telltale creak after last weekend’ s repair work. With the end of the senate race less than two months away, his new campaign manager had poured time and money into making certain that the family home was ready for television. Graham had to admit the place looked better than he could remember ever having seen it. The louvered shutters were all hanging for the first time in two decades, the roof had been repaired, and the copper gutters added. Even the privet had been pulled up, replaced with boxwood. On some level it bothered him that the house’s return to something of its former glory was a result of mostly cosmetic work planned and executed by someone from out of state. The restoration—the upkeep, really—of the property was something that should have remained in the family, a duty discharged over succeeding generations.
Edward was the first to greet him as he stepped inside, as the warmth from the massive fireplace in the living room hit him in the face. Graham had the impression that his uncle had been waiting in the foyer, watching his nephew through the small window cut into the cherrywood door. Almost before Graham could shut the door, Edward’s strong hand—the one not shredded by ordnance in Korea—was on his shoulder.
“It’ll happen this morning,” Edward said. “Probably within the hour.”
Graham nodded. “Is he awake?”
Edward looked back down the hall as if he could see Sal’s room, the old man sucking oxygen through a hose, as he had been for more than a month. “He’s on a morphine drip. He won’t wake up again.”
Edward led Graham down the short hall, past pictures hanging along both walls that marked the family line for the last 160 years, the older generations nearest the door, and the newest, Graham among them, trailing toward the great room. Even before he could walk, Graham had begun to learn the stories behind the photos, while carried along in the arms of his parents. There were more than two hundred pictures covering the walls, not just in this hall but throughout the house, many of them posed portraits of the great men and women who had carried the Baxter name, while others were scenes captured in their unfolding. Like all the Baxter children born in the house, Graham had been told again and again the stories behind the pictures—the reasons they inhabited the walls of the home, and the things occurring in each of the candid shots that made them suitable to join the photographic pantheon. He’d learned them because it had been expected, and now that he was older, he was glad for the force-feeding of his family history. There was something to be said about having a sufficient knowledge of one’s lineage to gauge one’s own contributions to it. Of course, Graham’s adult appreciation of the tutelage was dwarfed by the interest CJ had exhibited even as a child. Often, Graham would find his brother standing alone in the hall,