A change of gravity

SIX

Early in the spring of 1966, the second year of his third term in the House, State Rep. Daniel Hilliard, D." Holyoke, perceived that Merrion was getting restless serving as his chief assistant. Merrion was twenty-five. Hilliard, having turned thirty the year before, realized that Merrion's itchiness was appropriate.

He had logged more than six years in Hilliard's service. During the first two, unpaid, he had tailored his selection of courses and arranged his class schedules at UMass. to fit the demands of Hilliard's successful campaign in 1960 for a seat on the Holyoke Board of Aldermen. In '62, he had given up his part-time job at Valley Ford and the assurance of a full-time position after he graduated; the idea didn't thrill him in order to manage Hilliard's legislative candidacies and help him to deal with the responsibilities his victories imposed.

"The fact is," Hilliard said to his wife, Mercy during childhood her younger sister's approximation of "Marcy' had become her family's name of choice 'he's put his own life on Hold. He's subordinated his interests to mine for a very long time."

"And it's worked like a charm," Mercy said. She tried always to see clearly and be just. Where Merrion was concerned, that took effort.

Some of his ideas and a good deal of his behaviour troubled her. For all his ferocious loyalty to Danny and hard work in his behalf, he was not the kind of decent, sober, principled man she would have chosen to be her husband's highly-influential right-hand man if she'd been consulted about it.

"The reason it has is precisely because we are so close and work so well together," Hilliard said.

"You're telling me," Mercy said. "If it weren't for me and the kids, most people'd assume the two of you're a pair of queers. As it is only some of them do."

"They must not know about Sunny," he said.

"Or if they do," Mercy said, 'they don't know enough. With her clothes on she looks like a respectable woman."

"Meow," Hilliard said.

Mercy smiled demurely. "Just stating the facts," she said.

The Hilliard-Merrion partnership began on a snowy afternoon of the second Friday in January of 1959, at the counter in the parts and service department of Valley Ford at the corner of Lower Westfteld and Holyoke Streets in Holyoke. Hilliard had come to pick up his black '56 two-door Victoria hardtop, having left it that morning to be serviced.

"The two of us already sort of knew each other some," Merrion said later to curious people who'd seen them in action. Hilliard used his car a lot, which brought him often to the counter at the window in the service department where Merrion sat on his four-legged metal stool, the grey steel shelves of boxed small parts behind him. "You couldn't say that we were buddies. We'd never had a beer. But we weren't total strangers when I first went to work for Dan."

Hilliard had bought his car from Merrion's father. Pat Merrion had worked for twelve years as a salesman for John Casey, the last seven as sales manager, until his first stroke killed him as he would have wished but not so early at the age of forty-nine in February of the previous year, his oldest son's first year at UMass. Patrick Merrion's father, Seamus, had died at seventy-three in 1940, suffering his third and fatal stroke two years after his first. Pat, starting a new job at the Springfield Armory with a young wife and a new baby, Ambrose, at home, had also had to help his mother take care of Seamus. From that he had learned something he passed on to Ambrose. "If you're determined to die of a stroke, do your best to die of the first one.

Make it easier on your poor family."

John Casey did what he could to help out Pat's family, and it was a lot. Remembering, Merrion said to Casey's widow at his wake: "It was different in those days. People took care of each other. Their code was different. You looked out for your family and friends. They were all you had in the world. The same way you were all that they had."

The younger boy, Chris, was ten when his father dropped dead. His mother, Polly, hadn't held a job since she stopped being a sales clerk at the Forbes amp;. Wallace department store in Springfield to get married in a hurry in 1939. Casey had doubled the vacation pay Pat had accumulated; that was half of the $1,800 Bill Reed charged Polly for Pat's three-thousand-dollar funeral. "Pat was always a favorite of mine," Reed told her. "If Ford made hearses and flower-cars, mine'd be Fords I bought from Pat." Casey had expedited payment of the five-thousand-dollar group life-insurance policy Valley carried on each of its employees, close to two years' salary for a sales manager in those days. Mindful that base pay had represented less than half of Pat Merrion's average earnings and dead men earn few commissions and that a widow with a child at home could depend on less than $1,000 in Social Security benefits, Casey had also created the job for Amby as assistant service manager: twenty hours a week at $3.50 an hour.

"All I could work and stay in school at the same time, like my mother wanted. And health insurance for the three of us, too — we were very grateful for that," Merrion said to Casey's widow in the fall of 1990.

"Your husband was a good man, Jo, a fine man. Everyone who knew him thought the world of John. He cared about what happened to the people who worked for him. He treated us as friends, not employees, and we've all lost one tonight."

In those days the normal service interval between oil changes and lube jobs was every fifteen hundred miles. Hilliard was a careful owner.

Mernon saw him frequently. "This car's gotta outlive the payments.

Oil's a lot cheaper'n new rings and valves," Hilliard would say, every three weeks or so, writing a check for twenty-eight dollars and change for Marfak chassis lubrication, a new Motorcraft oil filter, and six quarts of crankcase oil as Amby stamped another service order PAID and punched the register.

"They'd love you in Texas," Merrion said that winter day, having seen a Transcript column about the coming election that low-rated Hilliard's chances. "You oughta go down there and run. If they only knew who you are, how much oil we got you buying from them, you wouldn't have to bother with alderman here they'd make you the governor."

"Hey, what can I tell you?" Hilliard said. "The political bug is expensive. You run for office, you're out every night in your car. You gotta be; people expect it. Depend on a car like that, go through two sets of tires a year, you gotta take care of the thing. You better; otherwise some dark night you get stranded. Hafta walk home in the rain."

"How's that thing look, anyway?" Merrion said, ringing up the payment and lifting the change tray out of the register to put the check in the empty drawer underneath it. It had been a quiet day, the weather keeping the customers away.

"Danny came in one day when I was bored out of my mind," Merrion would say to people impressed with the depth of their friendship. "I also was lonesome. No one to play with. The salesmen're all out in the front of the store; mechanics out back in the shop. They had each other to talk to. Also all had their own things to do. I was all by myself, without either. Only people I had to talk to onna job were the customers; that's how I come to know Danny.

"It's snowing: no customers. Everyone headed home early from work. I'm there by myself. Phone isn't ringing. I already finished the papers.

Didn't have any my books with me; normal day, no time to study. No radio. And anyways, Friday afternoon in January: wasn't any game on.

So I got nothing to do. Except now I got Danny. Naturally I don't want him to leave. Knew him well enough to know if I can just get him goin', he may not know it yet but he's gonna entertain me.

"That's an important thing, having someone else around you can talk to.

People take it for granted, don't understand how important it can be until it's gone. My father died, I'd just started at UMass." but I wasn't going there because Harvard turned me down. I was going there because that was all my parents could afford. I was still living at home.

"So now he's dead. My little brother Chris's only ten and anyway, he's in school all day. My mother didn't have a job then. She's at home all by herself, like she always was, but now things're different. In a big way they are different. Nothin' to look forward to all day now anymore. My father comin' home at night: that'd been her big event.

Hadn't been that big a deal for me and Chris. Lots of other people alia around us alia time. School all day; inna summer we're out playin' ball an' so forth. Goin' swimming. All that stuff, onna weekend with our friends. Didn't think about Dad comin' home at night like she did but after he was dead, we did.

"My father loved to talk. "Talk your ear off if you let him," people used to say about him. "On any day I got nothin' to do; I'm just sorta killin' time, you know?" John Casey used to say, "those're the days I'm glad I got Pat. Never a dull day with Pat. Busy days, I'm still glad we got him. He's a large part of what makes our business successful valuable employee. Best salesman we got, which's why he's the manager.

'"But say it's a brutally hot afternoon, July or August; nobody's around. You're open but you know: no one's ever comin' in. They're all at the beach, Mountain Park, on vacation. No one in the world's buyin' cars. We're all fallin' asleep at our desks.

' "That is a day when I'm glad we got Pat on the payroll. All I got do to get through a slow day like that not makin' any money; can at least have a good time is go down in the salesroom. Pull up a chair beside Pat's desk and say: "Well, Pat, whatcha think's goin' on?" Anna next thing I know, my sides ache from laughin'. I mean it: they literally hurt and it's time to close up for the night.

'"I'd rather all the days're busy, naturally I wouldn't think of interrupting him. After all, havin' laughs ain't what we're in business for. Pat was on one of his patented rolls, there, he'd get onto sometimes, he'd have four sold by two the afternoon, when he'd finally break for lunch. And then two hours later, when he finally came back he did not like to hurry his lunch he'd have another prospect he picked up in the bar at Henry's Grist Mill. By five he'd have him sold five inna day.

'"All you hadda do with Pat was leave the guy alone. When he was on a hot run, all you could see was smoke. So, it's more'n his talk that we're gonna miss; we're all sure gonna miss the man too."

"He'd come home," Merrion would say, 'and wed have dinner and he'd tell us what he did. Who came in the dealership. What they had to say about what was going on. Talk and talk and talk. And most of what he talked about I thought about it quite a bit since then, when he died wasn't cars at all. Or baseball; wasn't golf. I don't think he ever played golf; don't think it ever crossed his mind. Basketball or football, anything like that; it was politics. When he picked the subject, as he could, at home, he picked politics.

"He knew about sports. He kept up with the games and the standings and so forth so he could talk about them if that's what his customer had on his mind. He read quite a bit too — Saturday Post. Collier's. Life.

Time 'nd Sports Illustrated. Reader's and Catholic Digest. Belonged the Reader's Digest book club. Every month unless you sent the card back, you got three or four books in one. Said he wished he could sell cars like that, send a card to people sayin' "You don't mail this back to me, two weeks from today, you' ll bought a brand-new car." They were mostly for my mother, but he generally tried to read at least one of them. Few of his customers taught up the road; hadda to talk to them too.

"He considered it part of his job, keeping the customers happy. You asked him how come he was so good at doing what he did, he made no secret of it: "The guy who buys a car from me today for the first time did not become my customer today. He became my customer three years ago, four years ago, whenever I first met him. Outside of church; having a few drinks. Rotary; Kiwanis; communion breakfast; town-committee meeting. Somebody's wake." Dad belonged to all the service clubs, went to all the wakes and breakfasts. But the one he liked the best was Democratic town committee. He always said he was glad he wasn't sellin' Cadillacs, "because then I would have to be on the Republican committee." Always hadda sense of humor.

'"That customer of mine didn't get to know me back then when he first did because he thought he might want to buy a Ford some day and I'be a good man to know. He bought the Ford from me today because he's gotten to know me as a man uses people all right doing business with them. So when he decided he needed a new car last night or the night before, he also decided he might as well come in and see me, and "maybe buy a Ford from Pat. Might as well, the price is right. Never put any pressure on me; always liked the guy for that." Really as simple as that."

"He was always schmoozing people, not that he called it that. Their pal who talked baseball with them or fishing, whatever they liked. But what he almost always talked about at home was politics, and then he died.

"At night after me and Chris and my mother got through having dinner, Chris'd go off to do his homework, watch TV or something 'til he hadda go to bed. And I'd be still sittin' there, at the kitchen table talkin' with her. What I should've been doing was studying. School wasn't easy for me. I was never what you'd've called a scholar, and with my job working for John Casey, and then on Danny's campaigns on top of that, I hadda lot on my mind. I should've been hittin' the books. But instead I am sittin' there, still in the kitchen, the this and the that, talking about what'd happened to us, my father dying like that.

"Not that we ever got anywhere, my mother and I, we had all those talks. Always the same thing, over and over again. What wed done, to get through it; what we could've done instead of that, and whether that might've been better. Then what we thought we were gonna do next. It never changed. It didn't because it didn't have to. What we were doing was hangin' on there to each other, tryin' to get our heads straight. I was really worried about her.

"I remember saying to her one night someone else'd dropped dead, someone else we knew; wed just come from the wake; I've forgotten now who it was. She just seemed so blue, really down. She really had me worried. So I said to her: "He;y, look now, you, just in case you forgot: This dyin' business's a very bad habit. They say once you've got it, it's very hard to get over it. And the fact a lot of people that you really like, admire, and never expect to see them fall into it like Dad did, that doesn't make it any better. So I hope you're not thinkin' you might take it up. Me and Chris wouldn't like that at all."

"None of it was easy. Then I didn't really think about it, but since then I've thought about it very, many times. The reason she was so glad to get her job at Slade's Bakery in the center, where the Video Image Store's now? She'd been pining. The job wasn't anything big; just working at the counter there, saying Hello, asking the people that came in what they had in mind that day. Putting up boxes of whatever they asked for. Brownies; eclairs; date squares; jelly doughnuts; cookies and cup-cakes; custard pies. Putting the bread through the sheer. All of that stuff. Everyone liked Mister Slade's custard pies, and he really made excellent bread. So he had a lot of business. That meant a lot of people coming in for Polly to wait on, pass the time of day with. Help her keep up with what was going on, make her feel like she's back in the world.

"That job did wonders for her. I think about that every time I hear somebody say there's such a thing as "natural adjusted rate inflation-unemployment," or "structural unemployment." That there's always gonna be five or six percent of the work force with no jobs.

Nothin' the government can do about it. It's something can't be helped. Well bullshit; that's what I say. "Find something the poor bastards can do." Government has got to deal with it. That's what the government's for. It's a moral obligation, and I mean that. It's not just havin' no money that drags people down; it's feelin' like they don't matter, don't count any more. They lost the parts they had to play.

"I saw that with my mother. It was having that job that mattered to her. The sixty bucks a week she got: she found a way to use it, sure; it didn't go to waste. But basically the dough was gravy. That job kept her alive.

"After that it got a lot better at home, havin' dinner the nights I was there. The food wasn't as good 'cause she didn't have time to cook like she did when she was home all the time. And also, workin' in the bakery around food all day, she wouldn't be that hungry at night. But she'd bring home different things for dessert every night, and it was a lot better for her. You could see it. She was much happier. She had human contact again.

"You got to have that. We're natural herding animals. We're not supposed to be alone all the time, and when we are for too long, we don't like it. Don't handle it well. I think if you don't have that basic human contact, sooner or later you die.

"Anyway, that day Danny came in to pick up his car, I figured if I heckled him enough, he might hang around and entertain me. You get a guy who wants to be a politician like that, he's at your command. You even hint that you got something you'd like to talk about with him, bang, like that, you own him. His life is making people like him so they'll vote for him. Salesman like my father, only he's selling himself.

"He doesn't say he's doing that when he starts to talk to you. That would make you back away, think: "This guy's got something wrong with him. Don't wanna get too close." No, what he says is that if he gets elected he can do something for you you'll have a better life. If he's good, he convinces you. You and a whole bunch of other people vote for him because he's made you think he can improve your life. All he needs to know is what you need, so he can then make the noises you will think mean that if you vote for him he'll get it for you.

"Of course by the time he gets through he's gonna have to promise a hell of a lot. Which means he's gonna have to be pretty nimble later on, it comes time explain to people in the next campaign how come they didn't get exactly what he said they would when they first elected him.

But that's only if they remember. Most of them don't unless the guy running against you reminds them. But even then, by the time they get to the polls they' ll probably forgotten the reminder. People don't forgive, matter what they say. But they do forget. Their attention span is short.

"That snowy day I figured if I heckled Danny enough I could get a few laughs out of him. My own dear mother, those nights we spent talking: she was always telling me I was a fresh kid; saying if I didn't watch it, some day somebody was gonna get sore, haul off and pop me one. All my friends'd too, same thing. You got a talent, you use it. So I shoved the stick in his cage and started pokin' him around, makin' trouble."

Hilliard shrugged. "It's still awful early," he said. "The only people thinkin' about elections this time of year 're the people runnin' in them. No one else's interested. They wont be 'til a month before. Then they'll all start lookin' at the candidates, decide what they're gonna do."

"Think when they do that, they'll be lookin' at you?" Merrion said.

Hilliard grimaced. "Ahh," he said, 'you saw Dillinger's column. Boy has that guy ever got the right name, fuckin' assassin he is. FBI shot the wrong man, they plugged John too bad they didn't get Fred."

"Yeah, but is he right?" Merrion said. '1 know a lotta people don't like Freddie. My father couldn't stand him. Neither can Casey. My father used to come home nights and tell us something Casey said that day, something in Fred's column. Dad'd be roaring about it. But neither one of them could say it to anybody else; it might get back to Fred. Hadda keep their mouth shut. People read what Freddie writes and pay attention to it. He could wreck your business. And Freddie buys his cars here, too; don't want to lose his trade. People think he knows the stuff he writes about — it's inna paper, right? It must be true. And when he really nails somebody, pretty often he is right.

"So, if he is, today's column, and you're goin' down the toilet, why the hell wear out your car? Wear yourself out, too. What is it, you get your cookies this way? Gettin' your ass whipped in public?"

"Jesus," Hilliard said, "I need shit from you, too? You're as bad's your old man was. He gave me a ration every time I saw him; now he's dead, so I get it from you? You better not take too much for granted.

Everyone loved Pat Merrion. They knew that's just how he was, always stirrin' everyone up. So they took stuff from him. You haven't got that record goin' for you. Your father was a good guy."

"That's what everyone tells me," Merrion said. "But if he was such a good guy and all, then how come he named me "Ambrose"? That's a mean thing to do to a kid."

"How do I know? Hilliard said. "Maybe he was havin' a bad day. You may've been the cause of it, givin' him a lotta shit for no good reason. Decided he'd give you some back."

"You still didn't answer my question," Merrion said.

"I know I didn't," Hilliard said. "And you know why that is, you fresh prick? I don't know the answer myself, why I work my ass off and get nowhere. I did I'd give it to you. Why the hell not?

Dillinger's right, I've sure got nothing to lose. According to him, my second campaign isn't stirring up any more excitement than my first one, when I lost. That'll help me a lot. Even though this time I'm more mature, so people don't see me anymore as an upstart college kid trying to replace Roy Carnes, I'm still not getting anywhere. What if he's right? What the hell can I do?"

"You left out the part about how even though almost everybody now seems to think the guy who beat you the last time's turned out to be a real asshole," Merrion said.

"Thank you very much," Hilliard said. "I'm really glad I decided to bring my car in today, so when I came to get it you'd be here to cheer me up. Instead of on some other day when you're up in Amherst there, taking Sandbox Two and Finger-painting One-oh-one, and old AL. would've been here. No imagination, AL. Never reads the papers."

Merrion was laughing.

"Sure, go ahead, laugh your ass off," Hilliard said. "I now see I was wrong, I said you're as bad as your father, but your father had compassion. Now I not only get the pleasure of reading Dillinger's abuse myself; I get to enjoy it again when you quote it back to me. Not bad enough Fred says I'm already a loser; now I'm a pathetic loser; you're asking me how I like it."

"You aren't yet, are you?" Merrion said. "We haven't had this election. Nobody's beaten you yet."

Hilliard stared at him. "Yeah," he said, 'that's right, they haven't.

I'm just being groomed to lose. You got some idea, I might win?"

"I dunno," Merrion said. "I got this problem. My mind sometimes wanders. I don't always think about things that concern me. I think about whole bunches of other things, none of my business at all. Today I'm reading Dillinger and since I know you and I also know you're comm' in, don't have much on my mind…

"Well: two things. You're obviously getting' nowhere kickin' the shit out of Gilson. As you've mainly been doin'."

"It's like beatin' a pillow," Hilliard said. "You don't hurt your hands but you don't accomplish anything either. People don't even listen to me. It doesn't bother them that he's a dummy.

They're resigned to it. Maybe what this really is is a matter of equal representation: Gilson's the dummies' alderman."

"So what I would do then," Merrion said, 'is quit alienatin' the jerks.

Stop even tryin' to talk to them. He's theirs and they're satisfied with him. Tell 'em you hope they'll be very happy. Leave them have him and go somewhere else."

"Like where, maybe Hadley?" Hilliard said. "This's where I live.

Gilson's got the at-large seat that I'm running for."

"But why is that?" Merrion said. "Why does he have what you want?

He's got that seat because two years ago young Roy Carnes decided he didn't want to be an alderman any more. He wanted to be a state rep, like his uncle Arthur used to be, before he moved up. There wasn't any new Carnes ready to step into his place. Open field. So you stood up and said you want the job, and the voters said: "No, you're too young."

They voted for Gilson instead.

"We now know why they did it. It was not because he's smart. Anyone who voted for him thinking that now has to know he's not. He's proven that he's stupid. So Dillinger's got that part right. They thought you were too young, and he was the alternative and he was older."

"Okay, but how does that help me?" Hilliard said. "He still is, he's still older than I am, and now he's the incumbent."

"He's still older'n you are," Merrion said. "But you are no longer so young. What are you now, twenty-six? Four years out of the Cross, 'stead of only two? You're an experienced teacher. You're familiar with the problems that face our public schools, 'stead of what you were back then: still feeling your way along, only your second year on the job. Not exactly elderly, but still more mature. Dillinger also said that.

"What you don't like's what he put with it, that you're not impressing the voters with it. Not convincing them you're not too young for the job anymore, so they don't need Gilson anymore to keep the seat warm.

Now you're ready. Kick him out."

"I start saying that," Hilliard said, 'how do I avoid pissing off every voter over thirty? That'll make 'em elect him again."

"Well, if I were you," Merrion said, 'the first thing I'd do would be call up old Roy Carnes or Arthur and ask if you could come up to their office and discuss the next city election. Tell 'em young Roy can sit in too."

"Why would the Carneses talk to me?" Hilliard said. "I haven't got anything they want. They're through with the alderman seat, gone on to bigger and better things. I've got nothing to offer them."

"My father started selling Fords here after World War Two because his boss down at the Armory was a nice guy and he liked him and he gave him some good advice. He told him once Japan surrendered the country wasn't going to need quite as many rifles as it did during the war. So there were going to be a lot of layoffs and my father was probably going to lose his job. Guy tells him: "You wont be the only one." Said lots of people were going to be out on the street, looking for work.

Maybe for more work than there'd be for all of them right off. The ones who waited too long might wait a while before they found a new job 'til we got used to having peace again. Smart ones'd be the ones who looked for work before everyone else started looking for it.

"My father decided to be one of the smart ones. That's when he came to work here.

"Arthur Carnes before the war'd always driven a Chevrolet. But then he had two arms. After the war he only had one. He couldn't drive his old car anymore, because now he only had one hand, and in order to move the gear-shift lever he'd 've had to let go of the wheel. He was afraid to do that, so he had someone drive him down to Brel Chevrolet in Springfield in his car. He asked them if there was anything they could do so he could drive himself around again, th out risking killing people.

"When he came in here that same afternoon what he told my father was the people down at Brel didn't really seem interested in his problem, and he wondered if my father was. You bet he was. The first thing he did was see whether there was something Stuart Dean out in back could do to Arthur's Chevy, make it so that he could shift gears without letting go the wheel. Stuart said Yes, there was something. He could make a lever arrangement, like a bicycle hand brake that'd make it so all Arthur had to do to shift the gears was reach his hand between the spokes and squeeze and that'd do it. He wouldn't have complete control but he'd have some, and it wouldn't take him but a second to do it and then grab the wheel again, so it ought to be okay. Stuart said it might be kind of awkward, but it'd work.

"Arthur said if it'd work until his new Ford convertible came in, he'd be more'n satisfied. My father said that was his first inkling he'd sold Arthur Carnes a car. After that when Roy Senior's father's old DeSoto wore out, Herb bought a Ford from Dad. And when they got rich enough so Roy's mother and Arthur's wife could have cars of their own, both of them got Fords. Roy drives a Ford, as you may've noticed, and so does Arthur, still. The one Arthur's driving now's the last car my father sold. Arthur ordered it from him the day before he died. That made eight he'd sold to the family, even though if they wanted to, they could all be driving Cadillacs by now.

"My father said what he admired about the Carneses was that they weren't the kind of people who just grab ahold of what they need or what they want, squeeze all the juice right out of it and throw the pulp away. He said Arthur and his brother acted like they were in it for the long haul. Kind of people who take an interest in what's going on around them today and try to make it better, because they plan to be here tomorrow and the day after that as well.

"That alderman seat was theirs for as long as they wanted it. It's out of their hands now because there's no new Carnes available right now to sit in it. Maybe there will be, eight or ten years from now, when Roy Junior's son's grown up, but right now there isn't. The man who's in it's a fool, and he probably isn't ever going to get any smarter. But he probably wont leave, either. He'll never try for anything higher, because dumb as he is, even he knows he'd probably lose.

"So what happens when Roy's kid is ready? By then Gilson'll've been there too long to throw him out. The Carnes kid'll have a fight on his hands.

"So then, why not save him the trouble? Go to the Carneses now and ask them if they'd like to help you change that. You'll knock Gilson off for them now, and then because you'll want to move on before too long, you'll leave it open again. As long as it keeps changing hands, when Roy Junior's kid's ready he'll have a chance. I bet Roy and Arthur would see your point. I bet they could help you a lot."

"You old enough to have a beer?" Hilliard said.

"Have one, yeah," Merrion said. "Buy one? Not legally."

Hilliard began to see the need for change around the end of March of '66, but he waited until evening of the third Friday in April to see if Merrion would raise the subject. He did not do so. After they parted that evening outside the office, Merrion declining to have a beer on the ground that if he did he'd flunk a quarterly in advanced psychology, Hilliard took inventory on the way home.

Things were unquestionably good. The black '65 Ford Falcon convertible with the red vinyl interior was hocked, but still nearly brand-new.

Mercy's Country Squire wagon was only four years old. The pale-blue three-bedroom half-brick raised-ranch house, two-car garage under, where he lived with his family on the north slope of Ridge Street in Holyoke, was a better one than his parents owned. There was no primary opponent in sight and the few Republicans in the district the southeastern part of Holyoke, Canterbury, Hampton Pond, parts of Cumberland and Hampton Falls as usual were snarling at each other. His grip on the middle rungs of the House leadership ladder was secure enough to permit a swift lunge in the next term for the chairmanship of Ways and Means. "Too good," he thought. "Must be time to fuck something up."

Over dinner of fried filet of sole with Mercy and their three young children, Hilliard tried out his decision to address the subject when he and Merrion had their customary week-ending meeting at the office the next morning. "Do something about it. Get it over with once and for all."

"Suspense getting to you?" she said. Marcia Hackett Hilliard had natural ash-blonde hair and blue eyes spaced wide apart, and she was a cheerful person. Even when she was obviously getting angry she looked like she still might laugh instead. She knew this and regretted it.

She didn't like fights 'unlike my dear husband, who goes around looking for them." She was convinced that she had more of them than she would have had if people believed her when she said she was getting mad.

Timmy Hilliard, who was five, thrust out his lower lip and used his fork to push his fish around his plate. Mercy, not looking at him but at her husband, put her right hand out and took hold of Timmy's wrist.

"But I don't like fish," he said, whining, trying to pull away. "You know I don't like fish."

"Tough darts, kid," his mother said. "I'm talking to your father.

That's what the meal is tonight. Either you eat it or you go hungry."

"Oh, partly the suspense, yeah," Dan Hilliard said. "Not wanting him to stew about it until Labor Day and then decide some crisp cool morning couple months before election he can't stay another year, doing what he's been doing since he was a teenager he's got to do something grown-up. So then he tells me, and what shape am I in? No election fight, no, but I'll still have my hands full, back in session after the summer. All kinds of things I want to do there, but now I am distracted.

"Suddenly I'll now also have to do something for Amby, right off. And it'll really have to be good, owing the guy like I do. While I'm making plans at the same time to find somebody else to put in his place and then get him or her trained while of course the new person trains me. Everybody who's good will've already signed up to run somebody else's operation. I'll have to settle for whoever's left.

"I'll be standing there sucking my thumb, marking time getting acquainted. Before I can even think about actually revving up what Amby and I've been planning to do since last Memorial Day. And anything that Amby'd like will've been filled since July Fourth, or promised anyway, people lining up support for the election. No, the time's come to deal with it; the time to do it is now."

Timmy's sister Emily, nearly seven, ostentatiously used both hands, fork and spoon at the same time, to eat all of her fish, her mixed peas and carrots and her mashed potatoes too. The baby, Donna, eighteen months, sat in her high-chair with a small bowl of dry miniature shredded-wheat biscuits in front of her, staring vacantly at an invisible point midway between her father's left shoulder and the top of her brother's chair. Timmy sat far back in it, his shoulders hunched, and scowled at Emily, angry at himself now for giving her the brown-nosing opportunity she was exploiting. "You're gonna be hungry later on, Tim," Dan Hilliard said.

'1 ate all my fish, daddy," Emily said.

"I know you did, sweetie," he said.

Timmy stuck out his tongue and said: "Poop."

"I mean it, Tim, really," Hilliard said. "You know we both want you to be healthy and strong."

Timmy shook his head. "Don't care," he said. "Don't like fish. Don't care."

"Future office-holder," Mercy said. "Got the hang of it already.

Rather be mad and go hungry 'n eat something he didn't think of to ask for."

Her husband laughed. "Uh uh," he said, 'not quite right. Future office-seeker."

"You're sure that's where Amby is now," Mercy said. "At the point where he has to move on?"

"Reasonably sure, yeah," he said. "And absolutely sure that if he isn't at that point yet, I am. It's what I think he oughta be doing.

Getting started on making a life in the real world for himself. He's a talented lad. He works hard. He should have a good life. He should have a nice family, like I've got. Good wife, like mine; a few kids, even though they don't always eat what their pretty mother works so hard to make for dinner every night so they'll be healthy, grow up to be big and strong."

Timmy reset his scowl and hugged himself. "Don't like fish," he said.

Then he thought about it further and decided to speak louder. "Hate fish. Wanna leave the table."

"Why, Timmy," Mercy said, 'that's an excellent idea. You get out of your chair right this very minute and march yourself straight upstairs to your room. And get undressed and put your pajamas on and get into bed, and you know what you will've done then?"

"No," Timmy said. Emily smirked delightedly. Donna gazed into space.

Now and then she patted her right hand on the tray of her highchair.

"You will've put yourself to bed without any supper," Mercy said.

"You'll've saved me and Daddy all the trouble of punishing you, which we really don't like to do. Only you don't behave.

But this time even though you're making us angry, acting like a perfect little wretch, you're also saving us the worry about what we're going to have to do with you. You've decided what the penalty should be for being a little stinker at the dinner table."

"No," Timmy said. "Not gonna do that." Emily giggled a little.

"In fact," Hilliard said, you' ll punished yourself more, I think, harder, than your mother and I were thinking would probably be enough to teach you a lesson we think you need to learn. What did you have in mind, Mercy, to make Tim see the error of his ways?"

"Well," Mercy said, 'to tell you the truth, I hadn't decided. I was wavering between using the pliers to pull out his toenails and setting his hair on fire."

Emily giggled exuberantly. "You shut up, Emmy," Timmy said.

"You know, Timmy," Hilliard said, 'until you just made things worse by talking like that to your sister, I was about to say I thought what your mother just said sounded a little severe. But now you've made me unsure." He sighed. "I guess I really don't know what to do to you."

Timmy looked apprehensive.

The transition from the stage of Timmy's disobedience to imminence of his actual punishment made Emily uneasy. She became solemn, pursing her lips as she began to pity Timmy. Donna began to shake her head slowly back and forth but her pupils remained fixed on the same point in space.

"How about," Mercy said, 'how about we tell him that he has to do what he said he was going to do, put himself to bed without any supper. I thought that was pretty good. But so he doesn't get the idea he's going to be the one from now on who decides what it's going to cost him to misbehave, we also yank his TV privileges for, oh say, about two weeks?"

Emily looked both absorbed and horrified.

"Too much, I would say, to do both," Hilliard said. "But it wouldn't be enough if we just did one of them. What I would say I'm probably leaning to right now would be either no TV for a full month or else your no-TV-for-two-weeks plus no allowance, either."

"Either of those sounds about right to me," Mercy said. "Why don't you decide?"

Emily had to squirm to deal with the suspense.

"Okay, I will," Hilliard said. "But it's going to be hard and take me awhile. You know how I hate to punish people. At least let me finish my dinner here, 'fore this excellent fish gets all cold."

"Okay," Mercy said, returning to her dinner, "I may even finish my own.

We've both been so busy here Emmy's really the only one who's had time enough to eat and had all her dinner. She's waiting on us for dessert.

Which of course I'm assuming you agree there'll only be three of those at the table tonight."

Timmy sank down still lower in his chair and looked morose. He sneaked glances at his father and looked like he might cry.

"Oh, that goes without saying," Hilliard said.

"Unless, of course," Mercy said, 'when you and I finish up here and I ask Emmy to help me take the dishes to the sink, it should turn out there were four clean plates to pick up, instead of only three and one still with food on it."

"You mean then I might not have to do it?" Hilliard said. "Not punish anybody? Well, that certainly would be better, lots more pleasant, if there were four clean plates. But there'd have to be an apology, too.

I think. Two apologies in fact. One to you, for being naughty, and one to Emmy, for being rude. Then I'd probably go along."

Timmy hesitated. He frowned deeply. Emily's face now displayed immense sympathy and hope. She urged him with her eyes. Timmy looked at her. Then he looked at his father. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Oh, not to me," Hilliard said. "You committed your offenses against your mother and sister. You have to make your apologies to them. And then you have to eat your fish."

Timmy told his mother he was sorry, and obviously meant it. She smiled at him and tousled his hair. He told his sister he was sorry, less sincerely. She showed she felt much better by sticking out her tongue at him. "Emmy," Hilliard said, 'don't think you need to start now."

Emmy looked flustered and cast her eyes down. Timmy picked up his fork and began to eat his dinner. "I still hate fish, though," he said, thoughtfully. At first Mercy tried hard not to laugh, but Hilliard didn't and so she gave in.

"Let it then be spread upon the record of this House," Hilliard said in a deep voice, 'that again-honorable Timothy Hilliard still hates fish."

Timmy laughed a little and Emily giggled too. Donna's eyelids began to droop.

"As I was saying," Hilliard said, "Amby should have a back-breaking mortgage to go with his school loans, just like everyone else. He should have worries. He looks and acts like he goes to bed at night and sleeps like a regular lamb. It's time he took on some adult obligations and responsibilities, keep him tossin' and turnin' all night like the rest of the grown-ups.

"I like the guy. I'd hate to see him just drift into one of those second-banana lives so many bright young guys settle for. Amby's got way too much on the ball. You see it happening around you all the time. They get involved in politics, not running for office, just helping out, but the stuff that they're doing's worthwhile. At first it's all right; it's perfectly fine. They meet some new people a lot like themselves and they have a good time. They get something done that they feel good about, and they manage to keep their perspective.

"But then the first thing you know, it starts to happen to them. You can see it happening, watch it right in front of you. They gradually start sliding into this sort of hip indolence. Get hooked on inside stuff; always in the know about what's going on before the dumb outside world gets a clue.

"They overlook the fact that all they ever are's privileged spectators.

All they've really got's their own personal knothole. The reason that they always know exactly what's going on is they spend all their time at the fence, lookin' through that damn knothole. They begin to think it's a big deal: they can look through the fence and watch this whole game that almost everybody else only hears about on the radio, TV, or read about the next day in the paper. Not too many people have this kind of access; it must be a distinction, something special. They think it must mean they're pretty special. They start to act like jerks, swagger a little, feel good.

"They're partly right. The access, the entry, your own parking place:

It's fun and it does mean something. It just isn't what they think it means. The reason there's the high board-fence around the game they're watching is the opposite of what they think it is. It's there to hide it. It's not there to keep the crowd out; it's there to keep the players in. The people without knotholes don't want 'em. They're the ones who put up the fence. They don't want to see the game. They think it's disgusting. If they had their way, they'd ban it like they do cockfights and bullfights and the dogfights in pits, and bear-baiting. Put in a king and then ignore him; that's what they'd choose to do, if you let 'em.

"Young guys don't seem to understand that. That once they settle for their knothole, that's all they'll ever have and that's all they'll ever be. Up against the fence all day, following a game that only matters to the players, watching a circus you gotta be in for it to count. Always at the carnival, best seats in the house, but all they're ever doin's lots of heavy lookin'-on.

"I delegate enough of my authority, give Amby enough responsibility, so that what his job amounts to is surrogate for me. An alter ego who works here while I'm on Beacon Hill. For a guy who's twenty-five, never ran for anything himself, most likely never will; knows he's better backstage than he could ever be out front: that's not bad at all. Very good, in fact. But it's not a career, or shouldn't be, for him. He's totally dependent on me. I lose, drop dead, or decide to be a judge? Amby's out of a job. But it'll become a career for him, though, by default, if he doesn't make a change pretty soon."

After nine, when she had put the kids to bed and he had read the stories, they picked it up again in the living room. "The years're going by," Hilliard said. "He keeps it up long enough and some morning he wakes up and it's his forty-seventh birthday, and he says to himself "Hey, I'm getting' old here, just like everyone else always does, the ones that didn't die. What the hell've I become?"

"He'll know the answer. He wont like it: Not very much. Just another political hack, gotten as far as he's ever going to, just waitin' the string to run out.

"No, it's time he made plans to become an adult. Maybe about time even that he started giving some thought to getting' married, setting up a home and family."

"With Sunny Keller?" Mercy said. Her tone was not as innocent of judgment as she would have liked if she had to speak at all and could not for once keep her mouth shut. Mercy had never wholly approved of the cottage arrangement at Swift's Beach. It bothered her, and Dan didn't make it any easier.

From the outset of it back in 1962, Dan while willing to concede that his approach to the landlady had been 'a little underhanded' thinking each time he did so that it was a lucky thing for him Mercy didn't know about the deals made, actions taken and understandings acquiesced in during his average week on Beacon Hill had dismissed her objections, saying it wasn't their job to elevate Sunny's or Merrion's morals.

Mercy took a sterner view. She said they were 'deceiving' the woman who owned the house at the beach by encouraging her to think that they were renting it by themselves and the kids for the month, and that Amby and Sunny were merely friends who were guests, or related by blood to one or the other of them.

Nor was that the only thing that bothered her. Regardless of what Dan said about it, Mercy believed that good Catholics did not countenance or condone fornication, 'especially by renting the place we know he's going to be using to shack up. And that's what it is: shacking up."

She did not think she was being too strict; Merrion and Sunny had no intention to get married that she had heard about.

"If she had a ring, it'd be okay, then," Dan had said.

"Not "okay," she said, 'but I wouldn't mind so much."

"Be kind of hard for you to mind at all, wouldn't it?" he said.

"Maybe," she said, 'but since they aren't engaged, it's very easy.

Unpleasant, but easy." As she saw it he was causing her to commit a venial sin by soft-soaping her into silent collusion, making her comp licit in the cottage rental.

As he always did when she slipped up, Hilliard laughed that Friday night and said: "That's my little Emmanuel girl." And she to her helpless irritation blushed and felt embarrassed, as she always did, even though she knew that she was absolutely right and there was no reason why she should.

"Should Amby marry Sunny?" he said. "I'm not sure I'd go that far.

Rather be a lonely bachelor all the solitary days of my life 'n be a worried husband all the time, any time I left the house. Sunny still looks kinda footloose to me.

"But then again, you never know. Maybe Sunny's the way she is right now because this's how she is right now. And when she's gotten it out of her system, maybe she'll be more like us. You can't be so hasty about people, you know, cookie. Just because when we were the same age that the two of them're now, we were already married and that was the right thing for us, with me runnin' for office and all that, that doesn't necessarily mean it's always gonna be the right thing for everybody else.

"But be that as it may, I still think it's time now Amby should get started on becoming an adult, makin' a real life for himself. So I'm gonna start kicking him out of the nest, see if I can shake him up a little. I owe it to him as a friend."