No one in this city, no matter where they live or how they live, is free from the fairness of my administration. We’ll find you and be fair to you wherever you are.
—HAROLD WASHINGTON, 51ST MAYOR OF CHICAGO
Of Harold Washington, people used to say that as long as he had political combat on his hands he’d never be lonely, and that was all well and good while he was alive, but it caused problems for the mayor in paradise. After a few years of paying his dues in heaven’s trenches, he challenged Gabriel for archangel and nearly pulled it off with 47.6 percent of the vote. Disgruntled and jealous cherubs supported him in droves. Finally, God’s chief of staff, just to get rid of him for a while, let Harold Washington come home for a small, unannounced visit.
It was Martha who spotted him by the baggage claim, long after the last flight had come and gone. She was sweeping up, the last hour of her shift. She said his face had the haggard look of someone who has been crying for years, one way or another.
“Do you know what I mean?” she asked her friend Lucy, the only person she told this to, the only person who would believe her. The two of them were having lunch in the employee cafeteria. Lucy said she knew what she meant. She understood that a man’s dry face could have the look of weeping. She mentioned her uncle Jomo. “He had the look, too. Uncle Jomo’s wife died while he was still in his thirties. He put his grief on with his clothes every morning. When did you see the mayor?”
“Last Thursday,” Martha said.
“Did he say anything?”
“Not at first. I went up and told him that the Orlando flight came in an hour ago. There’s no more bags, sir. You can contact the luggage office in the morning. Everybody from Delta’s gone home. Then he turned to me with a finger on his lips and I knew.”
“How’d he look?” Lucy asked.
“Thinner.”
“No! When that man was done eating chicken, he’d start in on the table legs.”
“All of it gone. And his shoulders were stooped—bony, really,” Martha said. “His trench coat looked like it was hanging off two doorknobs.”
Lucy watched her friend. She had that good way of listening—with her elbows on the table and her hands propping up her face like two bookends. Neither of them was eating anymore.
“Our burdens,” Lucy said.
“Yes,” Martha said.
“My God, remember,” Lucy said. “They wouldn’t let the man do a thing. The mayor would want to take a leak and Eddy Vrdolyak would vote against it.”
“I remember, I remember,” Martha said. “How could anybody not remember?”
“You forget how people forget.”
“Mmmmm.”
“What about his eyes?”
“Still beautiful.”
“So what’d he say?”
“He said Midway looks like a real airport now. Richie Daley, I said, and he looked at me with those eyes. I said, I hate to break it to you, Mr. Mayor, but Richie is king now, and he shouted, Richie Daley, that unworthy dauphin? The father was one thing, a cretin but a man with innate political talent, even brains, a man who somehow—somehow—kept his own nostrils clean while the putrescence of corruption oozed around him. No, the father was one thing. But if Richie Daley is the second coming, I’m Annette Funicello.”
Martha gasping, laughing. “The Mouseketeer?”
“That’s what he said. Even made those ears behind his head with his fingers.”
“And he laughed? He laughed?”
“Half laughed, half didn’t.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Then he cleared his throat, all mayoral, and asked if the pay was any better now that this is a real airport. I said, ‘Sir, there haven’t been any other miracles besides you.’ And then he did laugh, Luce. He laughed until what was left of his poor body wasn’t there anymore.”