Jasper Murray spent two years in the army, one year of training in the USA and one of combat in Vietnam. He was discharged in January 1968 without ever having been wounded. He felt lucky.
Daisy Williams paid for him to fly to London to see his family. His sister, Anna, was now editorial director of Rowley Publishing. She had at last married Hank Remington, who was proving to be more enduring than most pop stars. The house in Great Peter Street was strangely quiet: the youngsters had all moved out, leaving only Lloyd and Daisy in residence. Lloyd was now a minister in the Labour government and therefore rarely home. Ethel died that January, and her funeral was held a few hours before Jasper was due to fly to New York.
The service was at the Calvary Gospel Hall in Aldgate, a small wooden shack where she had married Bernie Leckwith fifty years earlier, when her brother, Billy, and countless boys like him were fighting in the frozen mud trenches of the First World War.
The little chapel could seat a hundred or so worshippers, with another twenty or thirty standing at the back; but more than a thousand people turned up to say good-bye to Eth Leckwith.
The pastor moved the service outside and the police closed the street to cars. The speakers got up on chairs to address the crowd. Ethel’s two children, Lloyd Williams and Millie Avery, both in their fifties, stood at the front with most of her grandchildren and a handful of great-grandchildren.
Evie Williams read the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke. Dave and Walli brought guitars and sang “I Miss Ya, Alicia.” Half the cabinet were there. So was Earl Fitzherbert. Two buses from Aberowen brought a hundred Welsh voices to swell the hymn singing.
But most of the mourners were ordinary Londoners whose lives had been touched by Ethel. They stood in the January cold, the men holding their caps in their hands, the women shushing their children, the old people shivering in their cheap coats; and when the pastor prayed for Ethel to rest in peace, they all said amen.
• • •
George Jakes had a simple plan for 1968: Bobby Kennedy would become president and stop the war.
Not all of Bobby’s aides were in favor. Dennis Wilson was happy for Bobby to remain simply the senator from New York. “People will say that we already have a Democratic president and Bobby should support Lyndon Johnson, not run against him,” he said. “It’s unheard-of.”
They were at the National Press Club in Washington on January 30, 1968, waiting for Bobby, who was about to have breakfast with fifteen reporters.
“That’s not true,” George said. “Truman was opposed by Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace.”
“That was twenty years ago. Anyway, Bobby can’t win the Democratic nomination.”
“I think he’ll be more popular than Johnson.”
“Popularity has nothing to do with it,” Wilson said. “Most of the convention delegates are controlled by the party’s power brokers: labor leaders, state governors, and city mayors. Men like Daley.” The mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, was the worst kind of old-fashioned politician, ruthless and corrupt. “And the one thing Johnson is good at is infighting.”
George shook his head in disgust. He was in politics to defy those old power structures, not give in to them. So was Bobby, in his heart. “Bobby will get such a bandwagon rolling in the country that the power brokers won’t be able to ignore him.”
“Haven’t you talked to him about this?” Wilson was pretending to be incredulous. “Haven’t you heard him say that people will see him as selfish and ambitious if he runs against a Democratic incumbent?”
“More people think he’s the natural heir to his brother.”
“When he spoke at Brooklyn College, the students had a placard that said: HAWK, DOVE—OR CHICKEN?”
This jibe had stung Bobby and dismayed George. But now George tried to put it in an optimistic light. “That means they want him to run!” he said. “They know that he’s the only contender who can unite old and young, black and white, and rich and poor, and can get everyone working together to end the war and give blacks the justice they deserve.”
Wilson’s mouth twisted in a sneer but, before he could pour scorn on George’s idealism, Bobby walked in, and everyone sat down to breakfast.
George’s feelings about Lyndon Johnson had undergone a reverse. Johnson had started so well, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and planning the War on Poverty. But Johnson failed to understand foreign policy, as George’s father, Greg, had forecast. All Johnson knew was that he did not want to be the president who lost Vietnam to the Communists. Consequently he was now hopelessly enmired in a dirty war and dishonestly telling the American people he was winning it.
The words had also changed. When George was young, black was a vulgar term, colored was more dainty, and Negro was the polite word, used by the liberal New York Times, always with a capital letter, like Jew. Now Negro was considered condescending and colored evasive, and everyone talked about black people, the black community, black pride, and even black power. Black is beautiful, they said. George was not sure how much difference the words made.
He did not eat much breakfast: he was too busy making notes of the questions and Bobby’s answers in preparation for a press release.
One of the journalists asked: “How do you feel about the pressure on you to run for president?”
George looked up from his notes and saw Bobby give a brief, humorless grin, then say: “Badly. Badly.”
George tensed. Bobby was too damn honest sometimes.
The journalist said: “What do you think about Senator McCarthy’s campaign?”
He was talking not about the notorious Senator Joe McCarthy, who had hunted down Communists in the fifties, but a completely opposite character, Senator Eugene McCarthy, a liberal who was a poet as well as a politician. Two months ago Gene McCarthy had declared his intention of seeking the Democratic nomination, running as the antiwar candidate against Johnson. He had already been dismissed as a no-hoper by the press.
Now Bobby replied: “I think McCarthy’s campaign is going to help Johnson.” Bobby still would not call Lyndon the president. George’s friend Skip Dickerson, who worked for Johnson, was scornful about this.
“Well, will you run?”
Bobby had lots of ways of not answering this question, a whole repertoire of evasive responses; but today he did not use any of them. “No,” he said.
George dropped his pencil. Where the hell had that come from?
Bobby added: “In no conceivable circumstances would I run.”
George wanted to say: In that case, what the fuck are we all doing here?
He noticed Dennis Wilson smirking.
He was tempted to walk out there and then. But he was too polite. He stayed in his seat and carried on making notes until the breakfast ended.
Back in Bobby’s office on Capitol Hill, he wrote the press release, working like an automaton. He changed Bobby’s quote to: “In no foreseeable circumstances would I run,” but it made little difference.
Three staffers resigned from Bobby’s team that afternoon. They had not come to Washington to work for a loser.
George was angry enough to quit, but he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to think. And he wanted to talk to Verena.
She was in town, and staying at his apartment as always. She now had her own closet in his bedroom, where she kept cold-weather clothes she never needed in Atlanta.
She was so upset she was near tears that evening. “He’s all we have!” she said. “Do you know how many casualties we suffered in Vietnam last year?”
“Of course I do,” said George. “Eighty thousand. I put it in one of Bobby’s speeches, but he didn’t use that part.”
“Eighty thousand men killed or wounded or missing,” Verena said. “It’s awful—and now it will go on.”
“Casualties will certainly be higher this year.”
“Bobby has missed his shot at greatness. But why? Why did he do it?”
“I’m too angry to talk to him about it, but I believe he genuinely suspects his own motives. He’s asking himself whether he wants this for the sake of his country, or his ego. He’s tormented by such questions.”
“Martin is too,” Verena said. “He asks himself whether inner-city riots are his fault.”
“But Dr. King keeps those doubts to himself. You have to, as a leader.”
“Do you think Bobby planned this announcement?”
“No, he did it on impulse, I’m sure. That’s one of the things that make him difficult to work for.”
“What will you do?”
“Quit, probably. I’m still thinking about it.”
They were getting changed to go out for a quiet dinner, and at the same time waiting for the news to come on TV. Tying a wide tie with bold stripes, George watched Verena in the mirror as she put on her underwear. Her body had changed in the five years since he had first seen her naked. She would be twenty-nine this year, and she no longer had the leggy charm of a foal. Instead she had gained poise and grace. George thought her mature look was even more beautiful. She had grown her hair in the bushy style called a “natural,” which somehow emphasized the allure of her green eyes.
Now she sat in front of his shaving mirror to do her eye makeup. “If you quit, you could come to Atlanta and work for Martin,” she said.
“No,” said George. “Dr. King is a single-issue campaigner. Protesters protest, but politicians change the world.”
“So what would you do?”
“Run for Congress, probably.”
Verena put down her mascara brush and turned to look directly at him. “Wow,” she said. “That came out of left field.”
“I came to Washington to fight for civil rights, but the injustice suffered by blacks isn’t just a matter of rights,” George said. He had been thinking about this a long time. “It’s about housing and unemployment and the Vietnam War, where young black men are being killed every day. Black people’s lives are affected even by events in Moscow and Peking, in the long term. A man like Dr. King inspires people, but you have to be an all-around politician in order to do any real good.”
“I guess we need both,” Verena said, and went back to doing her eyes.
George put on his best suit, which always made him feel better. He would have a martini later, maybe two. For seven years his life had been bound up inextricably with Robert Kennedy’s. Maybe it was time to move on.
He said: “Does it ever occur to you that our relationship is peculiar?”
She laughed. “Of course! We live apart and meet every month or two for mad passionate sex. And we’ve being doing this for years!”
“A man might do what you do, and meet his mistress on business trips,” George said. “Especially if he were married. That would be normal.”
“I kind of like that idea,” she said. “Meat and potatoes at home, and a little caviar when away.”
“I’m glad to be the caviar, anyway.”
She licked her lips. “Mm, salty.”
George smiled. He would not think about Bobby anymore this evening, he decided.
The news came on TV, and George turned up the volume. He expected Bobby’s announcement to be the first report, but there was a bigger story. During the New Year holiday that the Vietnamese called Tet, the Vietcong had launched a massive offensive. They had attacked five of the six largest cities, thirty-six provincial capitals, and sixty small towns. The assault had astounded the U.S. military by its size: no one had imagined the guerrillas capable of such a large-scale operation.
The Pentagon said the Vietcong forces had been repelled, but George did not believe it.
The newscaster said further major attacks were expected tomorrow.
George said to Verena: “I wonder what this will do for Gene McCarthy’s campaign?”
Beep Dewar persuaded Walli Franck to make a political speech.
At first he refused. He was a guitar player, and he feared he would make a fool of himself, like a senator singing pop songs in public. But he came from a political family, and his upbringing would not allow him to be apathetic. He remembered his parents’ scorn for those West Germans who failed to protest about the Berlin Wall and the repressive East German government. They were as guilty as the Communists, his mother said. Now Walli realized that if he turned down a chance to speak a few words in favor of peace, he was as bad as Lyndon Johnson.
Plus he found Beep pretty much irresistible.
So he said yes.
She picked him up in Dave’s red Dodge Charger and drove him to Gene McCarthy’s San Francisco campaign headquarters, where he talked to a small army of young enthusiasts who had spent the day knocking on doors.
He felt nervous when he stood up in front of the audience. He had prepared his opening line. He spoke slowly, but informally. “Some people told me I should stay out of politics because I’m not American,” he said in a conversational tone. Then he gave a little shrug and said: “But those people think it’s okay if Americans go to Vietnam and kill people, so I guess it’s not so bad for a German to come to San Francisco and just talk . . .”
To his surprise there was a howl of laughter and a round of applause. Maybe this would be all right.
Young people had been flocking to support McCarthy’s campaign since the Tet Offensive. They were all neatly dressed. The boys were clean shaven and had midlength hair. The girls wore twinsets and saddle shoes. They had changed their appearance to persuade voters that McCarthy was the right president not just for hippies but for middle Americans too. Their slogan was: “Neat and clean for Gene.”
Walli paused, making them wait, then he touched his shoulder-length blond locks and said: “Sorry about my hair.”
They laughed and clapped again. This was just like show business, Walli realized. If you were a star, they would love you just for being more or less normal. At a Plum Nellie concert, the audience would cheer wildly at literally anything Walli or Dave said into the microphone. And a joke became ten times as funny when told by a celebrity.
“I’m not a politician, I can’t make a political speech . . . but I guess you guys hear as many of those as you want.”
“Right on!” shouted one of the boys, and they laughed again.
“But I have some experience, you know? I used to live in a Communist country. One day the police caught me singing a Chuck Berry song called ‘Back in the USA.’ So they smashed up my guitar.”
The audience went quiet.
“It was my first guitar. In those days I had only one. Broke my guitar, broke my heart. So, you see, I know about Communism. I probably know more about it than Lyndon Johnson. I hate Communism.” He raised his voice a little. “And I’m still against the war.”
They broke out into cheers again.
“You know some people believe Jesus is coming back to earth one day. I don’t know if that’s true.” They were uneasy with this, not sure how to take it. Then Walli said: “If he comes to America he’ll probably be called a Communist.”
He glanced sideways at Beep, who was laughing along with the rest. She was wearing a sweater and a short but respectable skirt. Her hair was cut in a neat bob. She was still sexy, though: she could not hide that.
“Jesus will probably be arrested by the FBI for un-American activities,” Walli went on. “But he won’t be surprised: it’s pretty similar to what happened to him the first time he came to earth.”
Walli had hardly planned beyond his first sentence, and now he was making it up as he went along, but they were delighted. However, he decided to quit while he was ahead.
He had prepared his ending. “I just came here to say one thing to you, and that’s: Thank you. Thank you on behalf of millions of people all over the world who want to end this evil war. We appreciate the hard work you’re doing here. Keep it up, and I hope to God you win. Good night.”
He stepped back from the microphone. Beep came up to him and took his arm, and together they left by the back door, with cheers and applause still ringing out. As soon as they were in Dave’s car, Beep said: “My God—you were brilliant! You should run for president!”
He smiled and shrugged. “People are always pleased to find that a pop star is a human being. That’s really all it is.”
“But you spoke sincerely—and you were so witty!”
“Thanks.”
“Maybe you get it from your mother. Didn’t you tell me she was in politics?”
“Not really. There’s no normal politics in East Germany. She was a city councilor, before the Communists cracked down. By the way, did you notice my accent?”
“Just a little bit.”
“I was afraid of that.” He was sensitive about his accent. People associated it with Nazis in war movies. He tried to speak like an American, but it was difficult.
“Actually it’s charming,” Beep said. “I wish Dave could have heard you.”
“Where is he, anyway?”
“London, I think. I imagined you would know.”
Walli shrugged. “I know he’s taking care of business somewhere. He’ll show up as soon as we need to write some songs, or make a film, or go on the road again. I thought you two were going to get married.”
“We are. We just haven’t gotten around to it yet, he’s been so busy. And, you know, my parents are cool about us sharing a bedroom when he’s here, so it’s not like we’re desperate to get away from them.”
“Nice.” They reached Haight-Ashbury and Beep stopped the car outside Walli’s house. “You want a cup of coffee or something?” Walli did not know why he said that: it just came out.
“Sure.” Beep turned off the throaty engine.
The house was empty. Tammy and Lisa had helped Walli deal with his grief about Karolin’s engagement, and he would always be grateful to them, but they had been living a fantasy life that had lasted only as long as the vacation. When summer turned to fall they had left San Francisco and gone home to attend college, like most of the hippies of 1967.
While it lasted, it had been an idyllic time.
Walli put on the new Beatles album, Magical Mystery Tour, then made coffee and rolled a joint. They sat on a giant cushion, Walli cross-legged, Beep with her feet tucked under her, and passed the roach. Soon Walli drifted into the mellow mood he liked so much. “I hate the Beatles,” he said after a while. “They are so fucking good.”
Beep giggled.
Walli said: “Weird lyrics.”
“I know!”
“What does that line mean? ‘Four of fish and finger pies.’ It sounds like, you know, cannibalism.”
“Dave explained that to me,” Beep said. “In England they have seafood restaurants that sell fish in batter with French fries to go. They call it ‘fish and chips.’ And ‘four of fish’ means four pennies’ worth.”
“What about ‘finger pie’?”
“Okay, that’s when a boy puts his finger up a girl’s, you know, vagina.”
“And the connection?”
“It means that if you bought fish and chips for a girl she would let you finger her.”
“Remember the days when that was daring?” Walli said nostalgically.
“Everything’s different now, thank God,” said Beep. “The old rules don’t apply anymore. Love is free.”
“Now it’s oral sex on the first date.”
“What do you like best?” Beep mused. “Giving oral sex, or receiving?”
“What a difficult question!” Walli was not sure he ought to be talking about this with his best friend’s fiancée. “But I think I like receiving.” He could not resist the temptation to add: “What about you?”
“I prefer giving,” she said.
“Why?”
She hesitated. For a moment she looked guilty: perhaps she, too, was not sure they should be discussing this, despite her hippie talk about free love. She took a long draw on the joint and blew out smoke. Her face cleared, and she said: “Most boys are so bad at oral sex that receiving is never as exciting as it should be.”
Walli took the joint from her. “If you could tell the boys of America what they need to know about giving oral sex, what would you say?”
She laughed. “Well, first of all, don’t start licking right away.”
“No?” Walli was surprised. “I thought it was all about licking.”
“Not at all. You should be gentle at first. Just kiss it!”
Walli knew, then, that he was lost.
He looked down at Beep’s legs. Her knees were pressed close together. Was that defensive? Or a sign of excitement?
Or both?
“No girl ever told me that,” he said. He gave her back the joint.
He was feeling an irresistible rush of sexual excitement. Was she feeling it, too, or just playing a game with him?
She sucked the last of the smoke from the roach and dropped it in the ashtray. “Most girls are too shy to talk about what they like,” she said. “The truth is that even a kiss can be too much, right at the start. In fact . . .” She gave him a direct look, and at that moment he knew that she, too, was lost. She said in a lower voice: “In fact, you can give her a thrill just by breathing on it.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Even better,” she said, “is to breathe on it through the cotton of her underwear.”
She moved slightly, parting her knees at last, and he saw that under her short skirt she was wearing white panties.
“That’s amazing,” he said hoarsely.
“Do you want to try it?” she said.
“Yes,” said Walli. “Please.”
• • •
When Jasper Murray returned to New York he went to see Mrs. Salzman. She got him an interview with Herb Gould, for a job as a researcher on the television news show This Day.
He was now a different proposition. Two years ago he had been a supplicant, a student journalist desperate for a job, someone to whom nobody owed anything. Now he was a veteran who had risked his life for the USA. He was older and wiser, and he was owed a debt, especially by men who had not fought. He got the job.
It was strange. He had forgotten what cold weather felt like. His clothes bothered him: a suit and a white shirt with a button-down collar and a tie. His regular business oxford shoes were so light in weight he kept thinking he was barefoot. Walking from his apartment to the office he found himself scanning the sidewalk for concealed mines.
On the other hand, he was busy. The civilian world had few of the long, infuriating periods of inactivity that characterized army life: waiting for orders, waiting for transport, waiting for the enemy. From his first day back Jasper was making phone calls, checking files, looking up information in libraries, and conducting preinterviews.
In the office of This Day a mild shock awaited Jasper. Sam Cakebread, his old rival on the student newspaper, was now working for the program. He was a fully fledged reporter, not having had to take time out to fight a war. Irksomely, Jasper often had to do preparatory research for stories that Sam would then report on camera.
Jasper worked on fashion, crime, music, literature, and business. He researched a story about his sister’s bestseller, Frostbite, and its pseudonymous author, speculating about which of the known Soviet dissidents might have written it, based on writing style and prison camp experiences; concluding it was probably someone nobody had heard of.
Then they decided to do a show about the astonishing Vietcong operation that had been dubbed the Tet Offensive.
Jasper was still angry about Vietnam. His rage burned low in his guts like a damped furnace, but he had forgotten nothing, least of all his vow to expose men who lied to the American people.
When the fighting began to die down, during the second week of February, Herb Gould told Sam Cakebread to plan a summing-up report, assessing how the offensive had changed the course of the war. Sam presented his preliminary conclusions to an editorial meeting attended by the whole team, including researchers.
Sam said the Tet Offensive had been a failure for the North Vietnamese in three ways. “First, Communist forces were given the general order: ‘Move forward to achieve final victory.’ We know this from documents found on captured enemy troops. Second: although fighting is still going on in Hue and Khe Sanh, the Vietcong have proved unable to hold a single city. And third, they have lost more than twenty thousand men, all for nothing.”
Herb Gould looked around for comment.
Jasper was very junior in this group, but he was unable to keep quiet. “I have one question for Sam,” he said.
“Go ahead, Jasper,” said Herb.
“What fucking planet are you living on?”
There was a moment of shocked silence at his rudeness. Then Herb said mildly: “A lot of people are skeptical about this, Jasper, but explain why—maybe without the profanity?”
“Sam has just given us President Johnson’s line on Tet. Since when did this program become a propaganda agency for the White House? Shouldn’t we be challenging the government’s view?”
Herb did not disagree. “How would you challenge it?”
“First, documents found on captured troops cannot be taken at face value. The written orders given to soldiers are not a reliable guide to the enemy’s strategic objectives. I have a translation here: ‘Display to the utmost your revolutionary heroism by surmounting all hardships and difficulties.’ This is not strategy, it’s a pep talk.”
Herb said: “So what was their objective?”
“To demonstrate their power and reach, and thereby to demoralize the South Vietnam regime, our troops, and the American people. And they have succeeded.”
Sam said: “They still didn’t take any cities.”
“They don’t need to hold cities—they’re already there. How do you think they got to the American embassy in Saigon? They didn’t parachute in, they walked around the corner! They were probably living on the next block. They don’t take cities because they already have them.”
Herb said: “What about Sam’s third point—their casualties?”
“No Pentagon figures on enemy casualties are trustworthy,” Jasper said.
“It would be a big step, for our show to tell the American people that the government lies to us about this.”
“Everyone from Lyndon Johnson to the grunt on patrol in the jungle is lying about this, because they all need high kill figures to justify what they’re doing. But I know the truth because I was there. In Vietnam, any dead person counts as an enemy casualty. Throw a grenade into a bomb shelter, kill everyone inside—two young men, four women, an old man, and a baby—that’s eight Vietcong dead, in the official report.”
Herb was dubious. “How can we be sure this is true?”
“Ask any veteran,” said Jasper.
“It’s hard to credit.”
Jasper was right and Herb knew it, but Herb was anxious about taking such a strong line. However, Jasper judged he was ready to be talked round. “Look,” said Jasper. “It’s now four years since we sent the first ground combat troops to South Vietnam. Throughout that period, the Pentagon has been reporting one victory after another, and This Day has been repeating their statements to the American people. If we’ve had four years of victory, how come the enemy can penetrate to the heart of the capital city and surround the U.S. embassy? Open your eyes, will you?”
Herb was thoughtful. “So, Jasper, if you’re right, and Sam’s wrong, what’s our story?”
“That’s easy,” said Jasper. “The story is the administration’s credibility after the Tet Offensive. Last November Vice President Humphrey told us we’re winning. In December General Palmer said the Vietcong had been defeated. In January Secretary of Defense McNamara told us the North Vietnamese were losing their will to fight. General Westmoreland himself told reporters the Communists were unable to mount a major offensive. Then one morning the Vietcong attacked almost every major city and town in South Vietnam.”
Sam said: “We’ve never questioned the president’s honesty. No television show ever has.”
Jasper said: “Now’s the time. Is the president lying? Half America is asking that.”
Everyone looked at Herb. It was his decision. He was silent for a long moment. Then he said: “All right. That’s the title of our report. ‘Is the President Lying?’ Let’s do it.”
• • •
Dave Williams got an early flight from New York to San Francisco and ate an American breakfast of pancakes with bacon in first class.
Life was good. Plum Nellie was successful and he would never have to take another exam for the rest of his life. He loved Beep and he was going to marry her as soon as he could find the time.
He was the only member of the group who had not yet bought a house, but he hoped to do so today. It would be more than a house, though. His idea was to buy a place in the country, with some land, and build a recording studio. The whole group could live there while they were making an album, which took several months nowadays. Dave often recalled with a smile how they had recorded their first album in one day.
Dave was excited: he had never bought a house before. He was looking forward eagerly to seeing Beep, but he had decided to take care of business first, so that his time with her would be uninterrupted. He was met at the airport by his business manager, Mortimer Schulman. Dave had hired Morty to take care of his personal finances separately from those of the group. Morty was a middle-aged man in relaxed California clothes, a navy blazer with a blue shirt open at the neck. Because Dave was only twenty he often found that lawyers and accountants condescended to him and tried to give him instructions rather than information. Morty treated him as the boss, which he was, and laid out options, knowing that it was up to Dave himself to make the decisions.
They got into Morty’s Cadillac, drove across the Bay Bridge, and headed north, passing the university town of Berkeley, where Beep was a student. As he drove, Mort said: “I received a proposition for you. It’s not really my role, but I guess they thought I was the nearest thing to your personal agent.”
“What proposition?”
“A television producer called Charlie Lacklow wants to talk to you about doing your own TV show.”
Dave was surprised: he had not seen that one coming. “What kind of show?”
“You know, like The Danny Kaye Show or The Dean Martin Show.”
“No kidding?” This was big news. Sometimes it seemed to Dave that success was falling on him like rain: hit songs, platinum albums, sellout tours, successful movies—and now this.
There were a dozen or more variety shows on American television every week, most of them headlined by a movie star or a comic. The host would introduce a guest and chat for a minute, then the guest would sing his or her latest hit, or do a comedy routine. The group had appeared as guests on many such programs, but Dave did not see how they could fit into that format as hosts. “So it would be The Plum Nellie Show?”
“No. Dave Williams and Friends. They don’t want the group, just you.”
Dave was dubious. “That’s flattering, but . . .”
“It’s a major opportunity, if you ask me. Pop groups generally have a short life, but this is your chance to become an all-around family entertainer—which is a role you can play until you’re seventy.”
That struck a chord. Dave had thought about what he might do when Plum Nellie were no longer popular. It happened to most pop acts, though there were exceptions—Elvis was still big. Dave was planning to marry Beep and have children, a prospect he found daunting. The time might come when he needed another way to earn a living. He had thought about becoming a record producer and artist manager: he had done well in both roles for Plum Nellie.
But this was too soon. The group was hugely popular and now, at last, making real money. “I can’t do it,” he said to Morty. “It might break up the group, and I can’t risk that while we’re doing so well.”
“Should I tell Charlie Lacklow you’re not interested?”
“Yeah. With regrets.”
They crossed another long bridge and entered hilly country with orchards on the lower slopes, the plum and almond trees frothing pink and white blossoms. “We’re in the valley of the Napa River,” said Morty. He turned onto a dusty side road that wound upward. After a mile he drove through an open gate and pulled up outside a big ranch house.
“This is the first one on my list, and the nearest to San Francisco,” Morty said. “I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing you had in mind.”
They got out of the car. The place was a rambling timber-framed building that went on forever. It looked as if two or three outbuildings had been joined to the main residence at different times. Walking around to the far side, they came upon a spectacular view across the valley. “Wow,” said Dave. “Beep is going to love this.”
Cultivated fields fell away from the grounds of the house. “What do they grow here?” said Dave.
“Grapes.”
“I don’t want to be a farmer.”
“You’d be a landlord. Thirty acres are rented out.”
They went inside. The place was barely furnished with ill-assorted tables and chairs. There were no beds. “Does anyone live here?” Dave asked.
“No. For a few weeks every fall the grape pickers use it as a dormitory.”
“And if I move in . . .”
“The farmer will find other accommodation for his seasonal workers.”
Dave looked around. The place was ramshackle and derelict, but beautiful. The woodwork seemed solid. The main house had high ceilings and an elegant staircase. “I can’t wait for Beep to see it,” he said.
The main bedroom had the same spectacular view over the valley. He pictured himself and Beep getting up in the morning and looking out together, making coffee, and having breakfast with two or three barefoot children. It was perfect.
There was space for half a dozen guest rooms. The large detached barn, currently full of agricultural machinery, was the right size for a recording studio.
Dave wanted to buy it immediately. He told himself not to get enthusiastic too soon. He said: “What’s the asking price?”
“Sixty thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Two thousand dollars an acre is about the market price for a producing vineyard,” Morty said. “They’ll throw in the house for free.”
“Plus it wants a lot of work.”
“You said it. Central heating, electrical rewiring, insulation, new bathrooms . . . You could spend almost as much again fixing it up.”
“Say a hundred thousand dollars, not including recording equipment.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
Dave grinned. “Fortunately, I can afford it.”
“You certainly can.”
When they went outside, a pickup truck was parking. The man who got out had broad shoulders and a weathered face. He looked Mexican but he spoke without an accent. “I’m Danny Medina, the farmer here,” he said. He wiped his hands on his dungarees before shaking.
“I’m thinking of buying the place,” Dave said.
“Good. It will be nice to have a neighbor.”
“Where do you live, Mr. Medina?”
“I have a cottage at the other end of the vineyard, just out of sight over the lip of the ridge. Are you European?”
“Yes, British.”
“Europeans usually like wine.”
“Do you make wine here?”
“A little. We sell most of the grapes. Americans don’t like wine, except for Italian Americans, and they import it. Most people prefer cocktails or beer. But our wine is good.”
“White or red?”
“Red. Would you like a couple of bottles to try?”
“Sure.”
Danny reached into the cab of the pickup, pulled out two bottles, and handed them to Dave.
Dave looked at the label. “Daisy Farm Red?” he said.
Morty said: “That’s the name of the place, didn’t I tell you? Daisy Farm.”
“Daisy is my mother’s name.”
Danny said: “Maybe it’s an omen.” He climbed back into the vehicle. “Good luck!”
As Danny drove away, Dave said: “I like this place. Let’s buy it.”
Morty protested: “I have five more to show you!”
“I’m in a hurry to see my fiancée.”
“You might like one of the other places even more than this.”
Dave gestured over the vine fields. “Do any of them have this view?”
“No.”
“Let’s go back to San Francisco.”
“You’re the boss.”
On the way back, Dave began to feel daunted by the project he had embarked on. “I guess I need to find a builder,” he said.
“Or an architect,” said Morty.
“Really? Just to fix a place up?”
“An architect would talk to you about what you want, draw up plans, then get bids from a number of builders. He would also supervise the work, in theory—though in my experience they tend to lose interest.”
“Okay,” said Dave. “Do you know anyone?”
“Do you want an old established firm, or someone young and hip?”
Dave considered. “How about someone young and hip who works for an old established firm?”
Morty laughed. “I’ll ask around.”
They drove back to San Francisco and, shortly after midday, Morty dropped Dave off at the Dewar family house on Nob Hill.
Beep’s mother let Dave in. “Welcome!” she said. “You’re early—which is great, except that Beep’s not here.”
Dave was disappointed, but not surprised. He had anticipated spending the whole day looking at properties with Morty, and had told Beep to expect him at the end of the afternoon. “I guess she’s gone to school,” Dave said. She was a sophomore at Berkeley. Dave knew—though her parents did not—that she studied very little, and was in danger of failing her exams and getting expelled.
He went to the bedroom they shared and put down his suitcase. Beep’s contraceptive pills were on the bedside table. She was careless, and sometimes forgot to take the tablet, but Dave did not mind. If she got pregnant, they would just get married in a hurry.
He returned downstairs and sat in the kitchen with Bella, telling her all about Daisy Farm. She was infected by his enthusiasm and eager to view the place.
“Would you like some lunch?” she offered. “I was about to make soup and a sandwich.”
“No, thanks, I had a huge breakfast on the plane.” Dave was hyped up. “I’ll go and tell Walli about Daisy Farm.”
“Your car’s in the garage.”
Dave got in his red Dodge Charger and zigzagged across San Francisco from its wealthiest neighborhood to its poorest.
Walli was going to love the idea of a farmhouse where they could all live and make music, Dave thought. They would have all the time they wanted to perfect their recordings. Walli was itching to work with one of the new eight-track tape recorders—and people were already talking about even bigger sixteen-track machines—but today’s more complex music took longer to make. Studio time was costly, and musicians sometimes felt rushed. Dave believed he had found the solution.
As Dave drove, a fragment of a tune came into his head, and he sang: “We’re all going to Daisy Farm.” He smiled. Perhaps it would be a song. “Daisy Farm Red” would be a good title. It could be a girl or a color or a type of marijuana. He sang: “We’re all going to see Daisy Farm Red, where the fruit hangs on the vine.”
He parked outside Walli’s house in Haight-Ashbury. The front door was unlocked, as always. The living room on the ground floor was empty, but littered with the debris of the previous night: pizza boxes, dirty coffee cups, full ashtrays, and empty beer bottles.
Dave was disappointed not to find Walli up. He was itching to discuss Daisy Farm. He decided to wake Walli.
He went upstairs. The house was quiet. It was possible Walli had got up earlier and gone out without cleaning up.
The bedroom door was closed. Dave knocked and opened it. Walking in, he sang: “We’re all going to Daisy Farm,” then he stopped dead.
Walli was in bed, half sitting up, clearly startled.
Next to him on the mattress was Beep.
For a moment Dave was too shocked to speak.
Walli said: “Hey, man . . .”
Dave’s stomach lurched, as if he were in an elevator that had dropped too fast. He suffered a feeling of panicky weightlessness. Beep was in bed with Walli, and there was no ground beneath Dave’s feet. Stupidly, he said: “What the fuck is this?”
“It’s nothing, man . . .”
Shock turned to anger. “What are you talking about? You’re in bed with my fiancée! How can it be nothing?”
Beep sat upright. Her hair was tousled. The sheet fell away from her breasts. “Dave, let us explain,” she said.
“Okay, explain,” said Dave, folding his arms.
She got up. She was naked, and the perfect beauty of her body brought home to Dave, with the force and shock of a punch in the face, that he had lost her. He wanted to weep.
Beep said: “Let’s all have coffee and—”
“No coffee,” Dave said, speaking harshly to save himself from the humiliation of tears. “Just explain.”
“I don’t have any clothes on!”
“That’s because you’ve been fucking your fiancé’s best friend.” Dave found that angry words masked his pain. “You said you were going to explain that to me. I’m still waiting.”
Beep pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Look, jealousy is out of date, okay?”
“And what does that mean?”
“I love you and I want to marry you, but I like Walli too, and I like going to bed with him, and love is free, isn’t it? So why lie about it?”
“That’s it?” said Dave incredulously. “That’s your explanation?”
Walli said: “Take it easy, man, I think I’m still tripping a little.”
“You two took acid last night—is that how this happened?” Dave felt a glimmer of hope. If they had only done it once . . .
“She loves you, man. She just passes the time with me, while you’re away, you know?”
Dave’s hope was dashed. This was not the only time. It was a regular thing.
Walli stood up and pulled on a pair of jeans. “My feet grew bigger in the night,” he said. “Weird.”
Dave ignored the druggy talk. “You haven’t even said you’re sorry—either of you!”
“We’re not sorry,” said Walli. “We felt like screwing, so we did. It doesn’t change anything. No one is faithful anymore. All you need is love—didn’t you understand that song?” He stared at Dave intently. “Did you know you have an aura? Kind of like a halo. I never noticed that before. It’s blue, I think.”
Dave had taken LSD himself, and he knew there was little prospect of getting any sense out of Walli in this state. He turned to Beep, who seemed to be coming down from the high. “Are you sorry?”
“I don’t believe that what we did was wrong. I’ve grown past that mentality.”
“So you’d do it again?”
“Dave, don’t break up with me.”
“What’s to break up?” Dave said wildly. “We don’t have a relationship. You screw anyone you fancy. Live that way if you want, but it’s not marriage.”
“You have to leave those old ideas behind.”
“I have to get out of this house.” Dave’s rage was turning to grief. He realized he had lost Beep: lost her to drugs and free love, lost her to the hippie culture his music had helped to create. “I have to get away from you.” He turned away.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Please.”
Dave went out.
He ran down the stairs and out of the house. He jumped into his car and roared away. He almost ran over a long-haired boy staggering across Ashbury Street, smiling vacantly, stoned out of his mind in the afternoon. To hell with all hippies, Dave thought; especially Walli and Beep. He did not want to see either of them again.
Plum Nellie was finished, he realized. He and Walli were the essence of the group, and now that they had quarreled there was no group. Well, so be it, Dave thought. He would start his solo career today.
He saw a phone booth and pulled up. He opened the glove box and took out the roll of quarters he kept there. He dialed Morty’s office.
Morty said: “Hey, Dave, I talked to the Realtor already. I offered fifty grand and we settled on fifty-five, how’s that?”
“Great news, Morty,” said Dave. He would need the recording studio for his solo work. “Listen, what was the name of that TV producer?”
“Charlie Lacklow. But I thought you were worried about breaking up the group.”
“Suddenly I’m not so worried about it,” Dave said. “Set up a meeting.”
• • •
By March the future was looking bleak for George and for America.
George was in New York with Bobby Kennedy on Tuesday, March 12, the day of the New Hampshire primary, the first major clash between rival Democratic hopefuls. Bobby had a late supper with old friends at the fashionable “21” restaurant on Fifty-second Street. While Bobby was upstairs, George and the other aides ate downstairs.
George had not resigned. Bobby seemed liberated by announcing that he would not run for president. After the Tet Offensive, George wrote a speech that openly attacked President Johnson, and for the first time Bobby did not censor himself, but used every coruscating phrase. “Half a million American soldiers with seven hundred thousand Vietnamese allies, backed by huge resources and the most modern weapons, are unable to secure even a single city from the attacks of an enemy whose strength is about two hundred and fifty thousand!”
Just as Bobby seemed to be getting his fire back, George’s disillusionment with President Johnson had been completed by the president’s reaction to the Kerner Commission, appointed to examine the causes of racial unrest during the long, hot summer of 1967. Their report pulled no punches: the cause of the rioting was white racism, it said. It was sharply critical of government, the media, and the police, and it called for radical action on housing, jobs, and segregation. It was published as a paperback and sold two million copies. But Johnson simply rejected the report. The man who had heroically championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the keystones of Negro advancement—had given up the fight.
Bobby, having made the decision not to run, continued to torment himself with worry about whether he had done the right thing—as was his characteristic way. He talked about it to his oldest friends and his most casual acquaintances, his closest advisers—including George—and newspaper reporters. Rumors began to circulate that he had changed his mind. George would not believe it unless he heard it from Bobby’s own lips.
Primaries were local races between people from the same party who wanted to be that party’s presidential candidate. The first Democratic primary was held in New Hampshire. Gene McCarthy was the hope of the young, but he was doing badly in opinion polls, trailing a long way behind President Johnson, who wanted to run for reelection. McCarthy had little money. Ten thousand enthusiastic young volunteers had arrived in New Hampshire to campaign for him, but George and the other aides around the table at “21” confidently expected tonight’s result to be a victory for Johnson by a huge margin.
George looked forward to the presidential election in November with trepidation. On the Republican side the leading moderate, George Romney, had dropped out of the race, leaving the field clear for the flaky conservative Richard Nixon. So the presidential election would almost certainly be fought between Johnson and Nixon, both pro-war.
Toward the end of the gloomy meal George was summoned to the phone by a staffer who had the New Hampshire result.
Everyone had been wrong. The result was completely unexpected. McCarthy had gained 42 percent of the vote, astonishingly close to Johnson’s 49.
George realized that Johnson could be beaten after all.
He rushed upstairs and gave Bobby the news.
Bobby’s reaction was downbeat. “It’s too much!” he said. “Now how am I going to get McCarthy to drop out?”
That was when George understood that, after all, Bobby was going to run.
• • •
Walli and Beep went to Bobby Kennedy’s rally to disrupt it.
Both were angry at Bobby. For months he had refused to declare himself a presidential candidate. He did not think he could win, and—they believed—he had not had the guts to try. So Gene McCarthy had stuck his neck out, and had done so well that he now had a real chance of beating President Johnson.
Until now. For Bobby Kennedy had declared his candidacy and stepped in to exploit all the work McCarthy’s supporters had done and snatch the victory for himself. They thought he was a cynical opportunist.
Walli was contemptuous, Beep was incandescent. Walli’s response was more moderate because he saw the political reality behind the personal morality. McCarthy’s base consisted mostly of students and intellectuals. His masterstroke had been to conscript his young followers into a volunteer army of election campaigners, and that had given him a burst of success no one had expected. But would those volunteers be enough to take him all the way to the White House? All through his youth Walli had heard his parents making judgments like this, talking about elections—not those in East Germany, which were a sham, but in West Germany and France and the United States.
Bobby’s support was broader. He pulled in the Negroes, who believed he was on their side, and the vast Catholic working class—Irish, Polish, Italian, and Hispanic. Walli hated Bobby’s moral shallowness, but he had to admit—though it made Beep angry—that Bobby had a better chance than Gene of beating President Johnson.
All the same, they agreed that the right thing to do was to boo Bobby Kennedy tonight.
The audience included a lot of people like themselves: young men with long hair and beards, hippie girls with bare feet. Walli wondered how many of them had come to jeer. There were also blacks of all ages, the young ones with their hair in the style now called an Afro, their parents in the colorful dresses and smart suits they wore to church. The breadth of Bobby’s appeal was shown by a substantial minority of middle-class, middle-aged white people, dressed in chinos and sweaters in the chill of a San Francisco spring.
Walli himself had his hair tucked up inside a denim cap, and wore sunglasses to hide his identity.
The stage was surprisingly bare. Walli had been expecting flags, streamers, posters, and giant photographs of the candidate, such as he had seen on television for other campaign rallies. Bobby just had a bare stage with a lectern and a microphone. In another candidate that would have been a sign that he had run out of money, but everyone knew Bobby had unlimited access to the Kennedy fortune. So what did it mean? To Walli it said: “No bullshit, this is the real me.” Interesting, he thought.
Right now the lectern was occupied by a local Democrat who was warming up the crowd for the big star. It was a lot like show business, Walli reflected. The audience was getting used to laughing and clapping, and at the same time becoming more eager for the appearance of the act they had come to see. For the same reason, Plum Nellie concerts featured a lesser group as support.
But Plum Nellie no longer existed. The group should by now have been working on a new album for Christmas, and Walli had a few songs that had reached the stage where he wanted to play them for Dave, so that Dave could write a bridge or change a chord or say: “Great, let’s call it ‘Soul Kiss.’” But Dave had dropped out of sight.
He had sent a coldly polite note to Beep’s mother, thanking her for letting him stay at the house and asking her to pack his clothes ready to be picked up by an assistant. Walli knew, from a phone call to Daisy in London, that Dave was renovating a farmhouse in Napa Valley and planning a recording studio there. And Jasper Murray had phoned Walli, trying to check a rumor that Dave was making a television special without the group.
Dave was suffering from old-fashioned jealousy, quite out of date now according to hippie thinking. He needed to realize that people could not be tied down, they should make love to anyone they wanted. Strongly as Walli believed this he could not help feeling guilty. He and Dave had been close, they liked and trusted one another, they had stuck together all the way from the Reeperbahn. Walli was unhappy about having wounded his friend.
It was not as if Beep was the love of Walli’s life. He liked her a lot—she was beautiful and fun and great in the sack, and they were a much-admired couple—but she was not the only girl in the world. Walli probably would not have screwed her if he had known it would destroy the group. But he had not been thinking about consequences; he had instead been living for the moment, the way people should. It was especially easy to give in to such careless impulses when you were stoned.
She was still shaken from having been dumped by Dave. Perhaps that was why she and Walli were comfortable together: she had lost Dave and he had lost Karolin.
Walli’s mind was wandering, but he was jerked back to the present moment when Bobby Kennedy was announced.
Bobby was smaller than Walli had imagined, and less confident. He walked up to the lectern with a half smile and a wave that was almost shy. He put his hand in the pocket of his suit jacket, and Walli recalled President Kennedy doing exactly the same.
Several people in the audience immediately held up signs. Walli saw KISS ME, BOBBY! and BOBBY IS GROOVY. Beep now drew a rolled-up sheet of paper from her pants leg, and she and Walli held it up. It read simply: TRAITOR.
Bobby began to speak, referring to a small pack of file cards he took from his inside pocket. “Let me begin with an apology,” he said. “I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions which set us on our present path.”
Beep yelled out: “Too damn right!” and the people around her laughed.
Bobby went on in his flat Boston accent. “I am willing to bear my share of the responsibility. But past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom. ‘All men make mistakes,’ said the ancient Greek Sophocles. ‘But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.’”
The audience liked that, and applauded. As they did so, Bobby looked down at his notes, and Walli saw that he was making a theatrical mistake. This should be a two-way exchange. The crowd wanted their star to look at them and acknowledge their praise. Bobby seemed embarrassed by them. This kind of political rally did not come easily to him, Walli realized.
Bobby continued on the subject of Vietnam but, despite the initial success of his opening confession, he did not do well. He was tentative, he stammered, and he repeated himself. He stood still, looking wooden, seeming reluctant to move his body or gesture with his hands.
A few opponents in the hall heckled him, but Walli and Beep did not join in. There was no need. Bobby was killing himself without assistance.
During a quiet moment, a baby cried. Out of the corner of his eye, Walli saw a woman get up and move toward the exit. Bobby stopped in midsentence and said: “Please don’t leave, ma’am!”
The audience tittered. The woman turned in the aisle and looked at Bobby up on the stage.
He said: “I’m used to the sound of babies crying.”
They laughed at that: everyone knew he had ten children.
“Besides,” he added, “if you go the newspapers will say that I ruthlessly threw a mother and baby out of the hall.”
They cheered at that: many young people hated the press for its biased coverage of demonstrations.
The woman smiled and returned to her seat.
Bobby looked down at his notes. For a moment he had come across as a warm human being. At that point he might have turned the crowd. But he would lose them again by returning to his prepared speech. Walli thought he had missed his opportunity.
Then Bobby seemed to realize the same thing. He looked up again and said: “I’m cold in here. Are you cold?”
They roared their agreement.
“Clap,” he said. “Come on, that’ll warm us up.” He began to clap his hands, and the audience did the same, laughing.
After a minute he stopped and said: “I feel better now. Do you?” And they shouted their assent again.
“I want to talk about decency,” he said. He was back to his speech, but now he was not referring to his notes. “Some people think that long hair is indecent, and bare feet, and smooching in the park. I’ll tell you what I think.” He raised his voice. “Poverty is indecent!” The crowd shouted approval. “Illiteracy is indecent!” They applauded again. “And I say, right here in California, that it is indecent for a man to work in the fields with his back and his hands without ever having hope of sending his son to college.”
No one in the room could doubt that Bobby believed what he was saying. He had put away his file cards. He became passionate, waving his arms, pointing, banging the lectern with a fist; and the listeners responded to the strength of his emotion, acclaiming every fervent phrase. Walli looked at their faces and recognized the expressions he saw when he himself was up onstage: young men and women staring in rapture, eyes wide, mouths open, faces shining with adoration.
No one ever looked at Gene McCarthy that way.
At some point, Walli realized, he and Beep had quietly dropped their TRAITOR banner to the floor.
Bobby was speaking about poverty. “In the Mississippi Delta I have seen children with distended stomachs and facial sores from starvation.” He raised his voice. “I don’t think that’s acceptable!
“Indians living on their bare and meager reservations have so little hope for the future that the greatest cause of death among teenagers is suicide. I believe we can do better!
“The people of the black ghettoes listen to ever greater promises of equality and justice as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddle in the same filthy rooms warding off the rats. I am convinced that America can do better than that!”
He was building up to the climax, Walli saw. “I come here today to ask for your help over the next few months,” Bobby said. “If you, too, believe that poverty is indecent, give me your support.”
They yelled that they would.
“If you, too, think it is unacceptable that children starve in our country, work for my campaign.”
“Do you believe, as I do, that America can do better?”
They roared their agreement.
“Then join me—and America will do better!”
He stepped back from the lectern, and the crowd went wild.
Walli looked at Beep. He could tell that she felt the way he did. “He’s going to win, isn’t he?” said Walli.
“Yes,” said Beep. “He’s going all the way to the White House.”
• • •
Bobby’s ten-day tour took him to thirteen states. At the end of the last day, he and his entourage boarded a plane in Phoenix to fly to New York. By then George Jakes was sure Bobby was going to be president.
The public response had been overwhelming. Thousands mobbed Bobby at airports. They crowded the streets to watch his motorcade go by, Bobby always standing on the backseat of a convertible, with George and others sitting on the floor holding his legs so that the people could not pull him out of the car. Gangs of children ran alongside shouting: “Bobby!” Whenever the car stopped, people flung themselves at him. They ripped off his cuff links and his tie pins and the buttons on his suits.
On the plane, Bobby sat down and emptied his pockets. Out came a snowstorm of paper like confetti. George picked up some of the scraps from the carpet. They were notes, dozens of them, neatly written and carefully folded small and thrust into Bobby’s pockets. They begged him to attend college graduations or visit sick children in city hospitals, and they told him that prayers were being said for him in suburban homes, and candles lit in country churches.
Bobby took off his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves, as was his habit. That was when George noticed his arms. Bobby had hairy forearms, but that was not what struck George. His hands were swollen and his skin was webbed with angry red scratches. It happened when the crowds were touching him, George realized. They did not want to injure him, but they adored him so much that they drew blood.
The people had found the hero they needed—but Bobby, too, had found himself. That was why George and the other aides called it the Free at Last tour. Bobby had struck a style that was all his own. He had a new version of the Kennedy charisma. His brother had been charming but contained, self-possessed, private—the right manner for 1963. Bobby was more open. At his best, he gave the audience the feeling that he was laying bare his own soul, confessing himself to be a flawed human being who wanted to do the right thing but was not always certain what it was. The catchphrase of 1968 was: “Let it all hang out.” Bobby felt comfortable doing that, and they loved him for it.
Half the people on the plane flying back to New York were newsmen. For ten days they had been photographing and filming the ecstatic crowds, and filing reports on how the new, reborn Bobby Kennedy was winning voters’ hearts. The power brokers of the Democratic Party might not like Bobby’s youthful liberalism, but they would not be able to ignore the phenomenon of his popularity. How could they blandly select Lyndon Johnson to run a second time when the American people were clamoring for Bobby? And if they ran an alternative pro-war candidate—Vice President Hubert Humphrey, say, or Senator Muskie—he would take votes from Johnson without denting Bobby’s support. George did not see how Bobby could fail to get the nomination.
And Bobby would beat the Republican. It would almost certainly be “Tricky” Dick Nixon, a has-been who had been beaten by a Kennedy once already.
The road to the White House seemed clear of obstacles.
As the plane approached John F. Kennedy airport in New York, George wondered what Bobby’s opponents would do to try to stop him. President Johnson had been scheduled to make a national television broadcast this evening while the plane was in the air. George looked forward to finding out what Johnson had said. He could not think of anything that would make a difference.
“It must be quite something,” one of the journalists said to Bobby, “to land at an airport named for your brother.”
It was an unkind, intrusive question from a reporter hoping to spark an intemperate response that would make a story. But Bobby was used to this. All he said was: “I wish it was still called Idlewild.”
The plane taxied to the gate. Before the seat belt sign was switched off, a familiar figure came on board and ran down the aisle to Bobby. It was the New York State chairman of the Democratic Party. Before he reached Bobby he shouted: “The president is not going to run! The president is not going to run!”
Bobby said: “Say that again.”
“The president is not going to run!”
“You must be kidding.”
George was stunned. Lyndon Johnson, who hated the Kennedys, had realized that he could not win the Democratic nomination, doubtless for all the reasons that had occurred to George. But he hoped that another pro-war Democrat could beat Bobby. Johnson had figured, then, that the only way he could sabotage Bobby’s run for the presidency was to withdraw from the race himself.
And now all bets were off.