“Good girl!”
“That’s not all. I’m going to give you the fight of your life, whip the pants off you, and wipe that know-it-all look off your face!”
“Bravo! That’s the spirit, kid. We’ll have fun.”
“Thanks. Well, goodnight.”
“Just a second.” I put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned away from me warily. “Tell me, darling: who writes your speeches?”
I got kicked in the shins, then the screen door was between us. “Goodnight, Mr. Ross!”
“One more thing-your middle name, it can’t be ‘Xavier.’ What does the X stand for?”
“Xanthippe-want to make something of it?” The door slammed.
I was too busy the following month to worry about Frances Nelson. Ever been a candidate? It is like getting married and having your appendix out, while going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. One or more meetings every evening, breakfast clubs on Saturdays and Sundays, a Kiwanis, Rotary, or Lions, or Chamber of Commerce lunch to hit at noon, an occasional appearance in court, endless correspondence, phone calls, conferences, and, to top it off, as many hours of doorbell pushing as I could force into each day.
It was a grass-roots campaign, the best sort, but strenuous. Mrs. Holmes, by scraping the barrel, rounded up volunteers to cover three-quarters of the precincts; the rest were my problem. I couldn’t cover them all, but I could durn well try.
And every day there was the problem of money. Even with a volunteer, unpaid organization, politics costs money-printing, postage, hall rental, telephone bills, and there is gasoline and lunch money for people who can’t carry their own expenses. A dollar here and a dollar there and soon sr.~i are three thousand bucks in the red.
It is hard to tell how a campaign is going; you tend to kid each other. We made a mid-stream spot check — phone calls, a reply post-card poll, ayid a doorbell sampling. And Tom and I and Mrs. Holmes got out and sniffed the air. All one day I bought gasoline here, a cola there, and a pack of cigarettes somewhere else, talking politics as I did so, and never offering my name. By the time I met Tom and Mrs. Holmes at her home I felt that I knew my chances.
We got our estimates together and looked them over. Mine read: “Ross 45%; Nelson 55%; McNye a trace.” Tom’s was: “fifty-fifty, against us.” Mrs. Holmes had written, “A dull campaign, a light vote, and a trend against us.” The computed results of the formal polls read; Ross 43%, Nelson 52%, McNye 5% — probable error plus-or-minus 9%.
I looked around. “Shall we cut our losses, or go on gallantly to defeat?”
“We aren’t licked yet,” Tom pointed out.
“No, but we’re going to be. All we offer is the assumption that I’m better qualified than the little girl with the big eyes-a notion in which Joe Public is colossally uninterested. How about it, Mrs. Holmes? Can you make it up in the precincts?”
She faced me. “Jack, to be frank, it’s all uphill. I’m working the old faithfuls too hard and I can’t seem to stir out any new blood.”
“We need excitement,” Tom complained. “Let’s throw some mud.”
“At what?” I asked. “Want to accuse her of passing notes in school, or shall we say she sneaked out after taps when she was a WAC? She’s got no record.”
“Well, tackle her on housing. You’ve let her hog the best issue.”
I shook my head. “If I knew the answers, I wouldn’t be living in a trailer. I won’t make phony promises. I’ve drawn up three bills, one to support the Federal Act, one to revise the building code, and one for a bond election for housing projects-that last one is a hot potato. None of them are much good. This housing shortage will be with us for years.”
Tom said, “Jack, you shouldn’t run for office. You don’t have the fine, free optimism that makes a good public figure.”
I grunted. “That’s what I told you birds. I’m the manager type. A candidate who manages himself gets a split personality.”
Mrs. Holmes knit her brows. “Jack-you know more about housing than she does. Let’s hold a rally and debate it.”