Hawk moves past horse-and-buggy men smoking spliff and scowling salesladies in neon doorways and veterans in wheelchairs shaking cups and business people in creased shirts and daily haircuts. Skyscrapers rocket up. There are lacy moon-tinged clouds between the buildings. A sign saying Equitable blinks over the city. Vendors he traded with that morning roll by, all out of product with that one-fisherman-recognizes-another-from-a-long-way-off look, yelling, “yo red buttons, reach me some skin,” “hey button man, catch you ma-nya-na,” and suddenly feet scuffle around him, voices zero in and someone says, “Why don’t we ask street vendors for their impressions of the convention?”
“Buy a button or no comment,” Hawk says.
“Hey, now. Excuse me. Can’t you give the viewers back home a few words on how it feels to be here in Atlanta in the middle of the American political process?”
“The American what?” Hawk says.
And then the streets buzz and he turns and sees camera beams lock onto a dapper man who’s coming toward him.
“Jennings … that sexy newsguy from ABC,” a voice coos.
Yeah, Peter Jennings, Hawk thinks. I sting his ass for fifty maybe they make me Vendor of the Week.
“How are you tonight?” Jennings asks, motioning Hawk to display his wares under a yellow street lamp.
“I’m fairly well off, sir,” Hawk says, looking at the creased cash in his hand and angling his board.
“How much are the pins?” Jennings asks.
“The small ones are a deuce. The oversize three-color start at three dollars.”
“Now that’s inflation,” Jennings says, “I’d like two of these.”
And he points to the quadrilateral button with a color photo of Jesse and Dukakis, each giving the uplifted V sign with his free hand while clasping hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.
“You have a good evening,” Jennings says, smiling confidentially as he forks over six bucks. The breeze doesn’t ruffle his hair.
“Seems like a good man,” says a guy with the words Hello, I’m Patrick scripted on his work shirt. “Not like all them scum politicians. Someone you could vote for and trust.”
“He’s Canadian,” Hawk says, thinking, Good for fucking what? Newsfuckingcasters. Years ago, street grimed and exhausted from spieling and dealing, lights of Broadway coloring faces, and up sails Walter Cronkite in yacht wear. This shaggy-faced, “most trusted man in America,” who nightly gives reality to a hundred million viewers with his eyebrows. He studies the Watergate buttons all over Hawk’s jacket and hat and board without expression. Then he looks Hawk straight in the face, like Hawk’s some slimy, marine life, eyebrows working, and says: “Kid, you’re not going to make it.”
Hawk grits his teeth, hustles toward the convention center, where Jesse will be chanting to the Republic about partnership and the People, red-white-blue balloons releasing, huge state markers capped by star-spangled donkeys bobbing, Jesse’s body swaying and dialoguing about how the white man (say it) brought the black man (that’s right) and the yellow man (YES, YES!) to work the land that he had stolen (Stole is right) from the red man (ain’t that something). Chanting about how the only reason you have to look down on anyone is because you’re about to pick them up. The place will be hopping, canary-yellow limousines emptying out the nation’s richest African Americans in minks and glinting diamonds and matching Mercedes.
Hawk squats to arrange buttons with Jesse’s signature and face and the words PRESIDENT or RUN JESSE RUN. NO place for anyone else on the board. He pins row after row of Jesse’s face, round like it was born to be on a balloon rising over a sea of votes. High overhead stars have come out, a thousand points of light.
Last time they sold Jesse buttons was at the Jobs, Peace, and Freedom March. Washington, DC, 1983. Twenty-year anniversary of the original march. Tribes fresh from the hills in freedom-rider overalls, leather vests, and bell-bottoms streamed through the groove of the street. Mario wore a red, green, and black knit cap and power-fisted the customers. The rest of the gang wore thrift-shop ties and carried plastic CONTRIBUTION cartons in the candlelit night outside of the packed cathedral while inside Jesse rapped on in gospel rhythms about economic violence and justice like a drunk making too much sense about what rising inflation meant to the ordinary person, to the laboring man, to the farmer who wanted to grow his corn, to the factory worker who wanted to send his children to college, to the veteran who risked his life for his country, to the working mother who wanted to go to night school to learn a trade, to the elderly and the handicapped, to the people outside of the realm of the census.
Just before eleven, Jesse’s “Keep Hope Alive” speech begins, and ovation after ovation swells from the hall. Later, in the condo, Hawk will watch the speech with the gang while they’re counting out. Dukakis’s foreparents came to America on immigrant ships, Jackson says. My foreparents came to America on slave ships. But whatever the original ships, we’re in the same boat tonight. And finally, Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender.
In the morning on Peachtree, Hawk will see vendors hawking tapes of Jesse’s speech at ten bucks a pop.
At 8:00 A.M., a few hours later than all week, Harold goes to the kitchen and puts on a pot of gourmet Mocha Java from Zabar’s.
“Hate to wake the old man,” Harold says to Hawk, Jep, and Mikey, who are eating a breakfast of Pop-Tarts and Diet Coke.
Sammy lies face up, pillow on his chest like an umpire’s shield. Harold reaches for his shoulder, but hesitates, watching the old man breathe. There’s a faint wheeze and humpf, a gentle scowl on his face like those who sleep the sleep of the just.
“Hey Sammy, smell the fresh coffee.”
“What day is it?” Sammy asks.
“Friday, Sammy.”
“Already,” Sammy says.
Which is just what Hawk’s thinking. If only this peachy show could go on and on. Another week of it and he could kiss Armand good-bye. Blue skies all week, legit licenses. It’s the last day and there’s hardly any stock for the fire sale, but first thing up and Sammy’s acting like he’s worried about breaking even. The old fox just has to give off that he’s hard money, and you never exactly know how he’s making out, what the overhead is for all his dealings, what his apartments cost. He gets this look—forehead a washboard, a pained smile—like he’s lost everything in a stock-market crash and can be led anywhere through the broken world.
Jep pulls his smudged God Bless America T-shirt over his gut.
“Professor,” Sammy says. “Change your shirt. Five days. How you look matters. You’re not shaking a cup. You’re a salesman!”
“Yeah, Professor. You’re kinda ripe,” Mario says. “If you put on Odor-Eaters you’d disappear.”
“I got a fresh T-shirt,” Harold says. “I bought a box of ’em in Chinatown last week for a buck a piece.”
“Charge him a deuce,” says Hawk.
Harold drops the gang on Peachtree, where they lay their scuffed boards on the sidewalk. A moderate pre-lunch-hour pickup has begun, business women passing in expensive, ugly dresses. There’s no use saving their voices and the gang blasts, “FIRE SALE, FIRE SALE, buck a button. Dollar, dollar, dollar. Get down on your hands and knees with your money ready.”
At about the same time the homeless, having been housed in tents during the convention, start making their way back into downtown Atlanta, many shoeless and scabbed.
“The last limo leaves and the city buses ’em back onto the streets,” Sammy says, and frowns like he’s at a convention of schmucks. Hawk can just hear him thinking, “Look at schmuck-du-jour over there without a shirt. He’s got all his limbs and can’t put a roof over his head and eats out of the garbage can like an animal. You don’t have to be blind to buy Bic pens three for ten cents and get a quarter a pop. Or tube sox. People always need ’em. You go to a wholesale outlet and you get a couple of boxes and take ’em out on the street.”
For Sammy, being broke is a failure of imagination. It’s a character flaw.
The homeless move morosely, scoping trash cans. A bum finds a shoe with flex and grins. Another finds a paper plate and licks it, a can and he drains it. He scoops pizza crusts into his bearded mouth. As the bums pass they see the cash and suits scrambling over the button-covered boards, and they stop in bunches to watch.
“Hey crackers,” a guy says to Hawk. “I’s homeless but harmless. Helpless ’til you help. Lemme sell some of them buttons.”
Hawk gives the guy two bucks and says, “Send me your résumé.”
“Go ten minutes at a half,” Sammy yells, and mounts an overturned crate and yells: “FIRE SALE! CLOSEOUT PRICES, FINAL TEN MINUTES, LAST TEN MINUTES ALL BUTTONS TWO FOR A DOLLAR.”
Harold pulls up the loaded van and watches the gang in the closeout dance. Suits jostling, gang grabbing their money fast as it’s forked. When it’s over Harold hands out cold beers and leftover food from the condo. Jep sees a chair left for trash and sits in it.
The procession of the homeless continues. Hawk, Jep, and Mikey hand out about twenty singles each. Mario pours out popcorn, Cracker Jack, and blueberries.
“Professor, that chair will eat you alive,” Hawk says.
“Blueberries, God bless you,” says an old woman with a tilted wig, hands cupped. A cough rips out of her and continues for half a minute. Her shredded stocking reveals a shin-length festering sore.
“May God make his face to shine upon you and give you peace, Amen,” she repeats, wiping spit off her face. And with that benediction the button gang, leaving the box of food behind for the people, boards the van.