Prologue : Part 2

The Running Mate
by Joe Klein

(Page 2 of 3)

"I guess I wasn't expecting the onstage-all-the-time part of it," she tried. "I mean, it's Saturday and we were out there all day - and tomorrow's Sunday, and we have to do it all day then, too.... And my role: comatose devotion, perpetually amazed by your brilliance. Two days of it, and my face hurts from smiling. When do we go to the beach? I'd settle for a lake. I saw a lake today. People were swimming." She smiled and dropped an arm over his shoulder. "Can't we go campaigning in a lake? It looked so nice. We drove right past it, on our way to where? The Fort Ditty-Bop Burrito Festival? Or was it the Firehouse Bazaar in Grove Corners?"

"It was the Fort Dantrobet Burrito Festival," he said, "and if you were having such an awful time, why did I have to wipe the salsa off your chin and drag you away from those women you were yakking with?"

"Well, they were quilt makers," she explained.

"Ohhhh, I see: quilt makers." He debated whether to tell her that it just wasn't politic to get so deeply embedded in a conversation on the hustings: the rest of the crowd might feel slighted. It was a detail of implementation, and he didn't want to force her political education; she'd learn the ropes at her own speed. Or so he hoped. He returned to Topic A. "So, is this a permanent no or just a provisional one?"

"Is it going to be a standing offer, or a one-shot deal?"

"I don't know," he said. "What do you think?"

"I'm guessing it's somewhere in between," she said. "A provisional standing offer. You're too proud to make it permanent and - I'd guess - too reasonable to make it a one-shot deal."

"Can we negotiate? Should I try again? You want a knee?" he offered.

"Seriously?" she asked, chuckling - she had a wonderful, unexpected chuckle; her laughing voice was deeper than her speaking voice. "A knee? As in, down on one knee?"

"Absolutely ... not really. I've given you all the corn I could muster," he said. "I put a lot of thought into this, proposing to you here."

It was sort of fabulous. Looking straight up, she could see a brilliant night sky, with the same sliver of moon the cow jumped over in nursery rhyme books. The rich, damp smell of the soil was intoxicating.

Charlie could see her eyes now, calm and gray-green, and her coarse tangle of blond hair; Nell could see his mouth, but not his eyes, and that was a disadvantage. She had fallen in love with his eyes. He was holding her hand; he kissed the inside of her wrist. She touched his hair, which was thick and black, tending toward gray, rather aesthetically, at the temples. "I'll bet this is where you used to take all the girls," she said, "haying."

He did like a good cornfield. He'd thought about corn all the time in Vietnam, especially when he'd pass through a stand of bamboo - bamboo creaked in the wind; corn swished. Corn was so much more delicate, and benign. The thought of a midsummer cornfield, undulating over the hills, had always made him homesick. In Vietnam, he'd sometimes found himself drifting here, to Uncle Tom and Aunt Leah's place, just outside of Fort Jeffords - the corn backed up to the edge of their yard on all sides. And so he'd brought Nell to Tom and Leah's, to propose to her in the middle of their cornfield, after the last event of the day: a broasted chicken dinner with the Fort Jeffords Future Farmers of America at the Elks Hall.

Nell thought the dinner was indescribably exotic. They had been served white bread and margarine, along with the chicken, mashed potatoes, and way overcooked canned vegetables - and apple pie with slices of processed cheese melted on top. She had also been tickled by the idea that there was such a thing as Future Farmers: she had always imagined farmers to be part of the past, like coopers or blacksmiths. But there they were, these incredibly earnest and soon-to-be-overweight kids, talking about hybrids and genetics, and none of them wearing overalls. Nell hadn't thought about plant genetics since high school biology. She tried to remember the name of the monk who'd done the experiment with fruit flies - was it Gregor Mendel, or was he the Kafka character? She was going to ask Charlie, but he seemed so busy, asking intricate questions about the vagaries of modern agronomy, listening intently to the Future Farmers, joking - flirtatiously. Politics, as far as she could tell, involved an awful lot of flirting.

Charlie's plan was they would spend the night at Tom and Leah's - something he hadn't done since childhood - after he proposed and she'd accepted. He had imagined himself and Nell coming down the stairs Sunday morning, his arm around her waist, newly engaged. There would be Leah's famous cinnamon buns. They would go to church, of course; you have to go to church in the middle of a campaign (usually, you have to go to several churches). But he knew a rowdy apostolic congregation outside of town - great music. It would be more midwestern exotica. He wanted to show her all of it, see how she reacted. He loved watching her see things.

Copyright © 2000 by Joe Klein.

About the Author

Joe Klein, a journalist for nearly three decades, is currently Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. In addition to Primary Colors, his previous books include Payback: Five Marines After Vietnam and Woody Guthrie: A Life.