Head Shot

3

He liked the spring; 'the renewal of God's promise' he called it, even though he had never been devoutly Christian. Few things appalled him more, in fact, than his country's religious right, and their active involvement in the electoral process ensured that he was an ever-present at the pol s, voting the straight Democrat ticket whatever the personal failings of its candidates.

Indeed in the previous fal he had been proud to play his part in ensuring that party kept its grip on the New York State senatorial seat, beginning in the process a career which he hoped would lead the new incumbent to the White House in her own right. How the First Gentleman would take that would be something else again, but what the hell, he had had his eight years.

He approved of women in public life. Just as well. Goddammit, he thought, with a smile, with the wife and daughter I've got.

He had been an active politician himself once upon a time, forty-five and more years back, a young man not fresh from law school, but forged thereafter by bloody action in Korea. A short spell in the public defender's office in New York City had been enough to light the spark. He had seen men die in battle and had accepted it as something that came with his birthright. But the sight of one of his clients, a young black boy barely out of his teens, being dragged, screaming, to the electric chair, strapped down and virtual y burned to death, had made him physically sick on the spot.

He was elected to the State Senate and served for a total of six years, through the cold dark years when Elsenhower was president, Nixon was scheming to succeed him, and John Foster Dul es, and his spymaster brother, ruled the country. With the rise of Kennedy, friends of his from Massachusetts persuaded him to put his own political career to one side for a while, to work on the young senator's presidential campaign team. There had been a promise of national office at the first electoral opportunity, but in the immediate aftermath of the narrow triumph, his reward had been a post as second assistant attorney general, in Bobby Kennedy's team.

He and the new president's aggressive, ambitious brother were at odds from the start, and relations between them had worsened when he had discovered that the New York senatorial seat, which he had been told would be his in time, was in fact earmarked for Bobby.

And so, a mere six weeks before the fall of the elected King Arthur, he had accepted an offer to become a senior partner in what was then known as McLean and Whyte, the largest legal firm in Buffalo, in his home state. In the same month, he had made an offer of his own, one of marriage to Susannah, a young teacher he had met in Washington.

Yes, he had seen a few springs since then, he mused, as he gazed out through the trees, across the glassy Great Sacandaga Lake, its waters catching the last rays of the evening sun. There had been thirty-eight of them, to be precise, every one memorable in its own way, every one marked by increasing success, professional y and privately. Where once he had dreamed on a national scale, dreamed without limit for a brief period, so caught up had he been in the seductive atmosphere ofCamelot, now he reflected on the success he had made of his life, materially and spiritually.

Most of all there had been his daughter, a special girl from the outset.

As she had grown, blooming in her intelligence and her beauty, he had looked at her, looked at his wife, and at himself, far more of a golden family than any branch of the doomed Kennedy clan, and he had wondered that he had ever been so weak that he had been seduced by their promises of joy. Why had he ever sought to bask in their glory, when such light had lain within himself, waiting for its moment to shine?

He leaned back in his rocking chair on the wide wooden terrace under the eaves of their log cabin, enjoying the shimmering colours of the lake before him. A brassy piece ofAaron Copland sounded from inside, and he caught the aroma of brewing coffee. 'Couldn't get any more American, could we?' he said aloud, and wondered what his son-in-law would think if he could see him lounging there.

He frowned as he thought of his son-in-law; now there was an individual who would have given them pause for thought, back in the sixties. There was stil time for him to do that, even now. Yes, he had plans for his son-in-law. He had to see him, and soon, for there was something he had to discuss with him, something very serious…

The familiar creaking board sounded behind him; Susannah's footfal as she carried out the supper tray to lay upon their table. He made to rise, 12 stiffly as always these days. And then he felt the cold, sharp thing whipping suddenly round his neck, tightening so fast, with a faint, peculiar twanging sound. He had no time to think, only to feel his tongue swell in his mouth and his eyes bulge in their sockets, to hear the roaring in his ears and to see the evening burst for an instant into sudden flaring light, and then go black.

The man held the strangling wire tight for some time after the old man's still-muscular body had gone limp, after his bladder had given forth its own signal. Finally, he released it, letting him slump down into his chair; and then he turned, and went into the isolated, lonely wooden house.