Richard Dellinger was not about to point out how the U.S. government worked at a time like this. He merely said, “I don’t know, sir.”
“We are not going to lose our Middle-Eastern policy because some bottom-fish bean counter can’t keep her mouth shut. Tell the pilot to get the plane ready. We’re going back ahead of schedule.”
Chapter Three
A Strip mall south of Wapsipinicon was home to the real-estate offices of Buck and Grace Chandler, who had acted as Clyde’s brokers on his recent purchase of an apartment building in Nishnabotna. On his visits to that office he had frequently passed the door of an even smaller and less expensive office that had been leased by Dr. Jerry Tompkins, late of the Eastern Iowa University Political Science Department (he had been denied tenure), and currently the principal of Tompkins and Associates Pollsters and Consultants.
The “Associates” were his wife and his mother. The latter, a plump woman in a Sunday dress, perched like a flagpole sitter on a small armless swivel chair in the front room, gazing fixedly at the silent telephone with its intimidating row of buttons. The former, an angular creature in a lavender jogging suit, was folded into a corner of the room with her sharp nose bent so close to the screen of a Macintosh that her waxy flesh was suffused with its cadaverous glow. The screen was covered with a grid of boxes with numbers in them. Mrs. Tompkins was pawing fretfully at the tabletop with her right hand, which, as Clyde realized, concealed one of those computer mouses. She was talking to herself quietly.
Dr. Tompkins came out from the back as if he had been quite busy and had forgotten all about Clyde’s free appointment. He was a rangy fellow with a sparse beard, dressed in a limp three-piece suit and rimless glasses with large, panoramic lenses. The one free nostrings-attached consultation lasted fifteen minutes and mostly consisted of Dr. Tompkins telling Clyde that he didn’t have a persona, and that, if he was going to be a public figure, he needed to get started on building one as soon as possible—a daunting task that would be infinitely easier if Dr. Jerry Tompkins was on hand to manage it. There was no small talk, fetching of coffee, or other preparatory formalities. It struck Clyde as a chilly way of doing business, at least by Nishnabotna standards; but perhaps here in Wapsipinicon people did not have so much time to burn on such unproductive activities as shooting the breeze—especially people with Ph.D.’s and computers. Clyde came away from his free consultation with nothing but a feeling of personal inadequacy and a perverse desire to return to Tompkins and Associates as a paying customer.
He had gone in there only because Terry Stonefield, chairman of the Forks County Republican party, had intimated to him that there would be a campaign budget. But a few days later Terry Stonefield convened, on short notice, the County GOP Strategy Session ’90, wherein Clyde, the other Republican candidates, Terry Stonefield, and a few other important Forks Republicans sat around a conference table at one of Terry’s offices for a few hours drinking coffee and mostly agreeing with whatever Terry said. Clyde, who was not accustomed to meetings, was slow to get the gist of the proceedings, but eventually he divined that, in the view of Terry and the other Republicans, the County Commissioner’s race was where the smart money was. They built the roads and bridges, assessed tax rates, and were, in general, where the governmental rubber hit the road.
Once this decision was made, an awkward silence ensued in which Clyde Banks and Barnabas Klopf, M.D., the incumbent candidate for county coroner, were the focus of much awkward, furtive scrutiny.
“You see, Clyde and Barney,” Terry finally said, “politics looks different when you’re on the inside. Politics is like a car. When you’re on the outside, all you see is this big metal boxy thing with windows and tires and lights, windshield wipers and door handles and such—anyway, the point is that it goes and you don’t understand why. But if you’re a mechanic, if you’re on the inside, you see the little… thingies and crank rods…”
“Lifters,” Clyde mumbled.
Terry lunged at the offering like a drowning man going after a rope. “Yes. The lifters. You see my point, Clyde. When you see it on the inside, you know how to soup it up. How to hot-rod the car. And let me tell you that the way to make the car that is the Forks County GOP really get out there and lay a patch is to concentrate on that County Commissioner’s race. Because I think we’d all agree”—Terry paused and looked meaningfully around the table, gathering consensus before he had even made his point—“that those darn Commissioners have coattails a hundred miles long.”
“So it’s coattails, then,” Clyde said after a long silence.