Dewey Defeats Truman by Thomas Mallon

Author:Thomas Mallon [Mallon, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80557-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

HE SUSPECTED BOTH OF THEM; THEY WERE IN IT TOGETHER.

That’s what Billy thought as he walked east on Oliver away from Margaret Feller’s window. Herrick was making a place for her, establishing a beachhead, where she would soon join him, having “overcome” Owosso at last. It was as if his own life were some game of ten little Indians; Billy Grimes, who had more practical ideas for getting out of this town than any of them, would be the one forced to stay behind. He could have made a lot extra helping Mr. Jackson at the city council meeting tonight. Would Herrick ever realize he cared enough about his friend to give that up and work on his latest flyers? He’d dropped them off at Chief Rice’s office (the town would pay the postage), and now he was just walking, watching the lightning bugs go on and off, like substitutes for the forsythia petals of spring. At least, by luck, he was on the north sidewalk; across Oliver, he could make out Jane Herrick coming in the opposite direction, and he didn’t want to have to talk to her. What was she doing out at midnight? It was creepy even to think about, so he’d think about his fifty-to-one shot, his best fantasy for the way this whole thing might turn out, with Tim returning unharmed, and Margaret so furious at his having hotfooted it off without her that she never spoke to him again. He, Billy, would have both of them back to himself.

But all this was too improbable to keep his mind off old lady Herrick. Was she wishing Tim were dead? Shot down by some insane Nazi exile living on the northern peninsula? Which would make him another casualty to bury and remember? Or had she, like some crazy Quaker, you couldn’t tell with her, told him to run off—to avoid August 30, when every Shiawassee County male born between 1923 and 1930, which included Herrick and yours truly, was supposed to register for the draft? “24 YOUTHS VOLUNTEER FOR ARMED SERVICES—LARGEST PEACETIME CONTINGENT”: that’s what the Argus had just bragged about. But anybody who did the numbers could tell you that was pretty small compared to the in-voluntary contingent they’d soon be assembling.

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