The Devil's bed

chapter
ten

It was an evening affair, the kind the president loved.

Before dinner, the Texas Panhandlers performed some fancy clogging for Clay Dixon and the guests assembled in the East Room of the White House. Then the president made a brief speech about preserving the heritage of the nation’s folk traditions. The meal itself, served in the State Dining Room, paid homage to American cooking-fried chicken, mesquite barbecued ribs, corn on the cob, collard greens, corn bread, and watermelon. Afterward, the Dixie Maids played some lively bluegrass, and Clay Dixon asked if he could join them. He borrowed a banjo and sat next to a black-haired fiddle player. She worked her bow with a vengeance, and his own fingers danced. The guests of the White House enjoyed an old-fashioned hoedown, and they gave the president an exploding round of applause while the cameras of the press corps flashed like fireworks. D. C. Dixon was in his element and had the world by the balls.

When it was over, he approached the senior senator from Colorado, who sat at the banquet table with the president’s daughter leaning against him. Stephanie’s eyes were closed, and she appeared to be asleep. The senator said, “She’s dead tired. Long past this young lady’s bedtime. Be glad to give a hand, Clay.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the president said.

“After that, I’d like a word with you.”

Dixon nodded. “In my study.” He eased his daughter upright. “Time for bed, kiddo.” He lifted her and she laid her head on his shoulder. He carried her upstairs and helped her shrug off her dress and put on her pajamas. He pulled the covers over her.

“Read,” she murmured, though she could barely keep her eyes open.

Dixon kissed her softly and said, “Tomorrow. Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

He waited until her breathing was regular, then he tiptoed out and went to his study. The senator was waiting for him.

Senator William Dixon walked with a cane, a necessity due to injuries sustained during the Second World War. He’d been a hero. A bona fide hero with an array of medals to prove it. On his next birthday he would be seventy-eight and, God and the electorate willing, into his eighth term in the Senate. He was tall and lean and, with the help of his cane, stood straight. His linen suit, wrinkled from sitting at the banquet, smelled of cigar smoke.

Clay Dixon asked, “Care for a brandy, Dad?”

“Supposed to be on the wagon. Doctor’s orders. Supposed to be off cigars, too.”

“I never knew you to be a man who paid much attention to what someone else said you should do.” The president handed his father a snifter and poured one for himself. “What’s on your mind?”

“Same thing that’s on everybody’s mind. Kate.” Dixon swirled his brandy and eyed his son sternly. “You and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. Especially about that girl.”

“Woman, Dad.”

“Girl, woman. All trouble.” He spoke with a broad accent that hinted at Oklahoma, where he’d been born and raised before he migrated to the cattle country of southern Colorado. His speech was slow and deliberate, a pacing that had nothing to do with his age. He drew a cigar from the inside pocket of his coat. “Mind?”

Clay Dixon handed his father a silver ashtray. The senator slowly unwrapped the cigar, snipped the tip, and lit up with a wooden match from a small box he pulled from the pocket of his pants.

“You’ve done a fine job as president. I’ve been mighty proud of you, son.”

“But.”

“But now you need to make sure you’ve got a bridle on that bride of yours.”

“I can handle Kate.”

“Can you? My impression is that she’s on the verge of doing something drastic. She isn’t considering leaving you, is she?”

“My marriage is my concern.”

“If it stands to affect your election, and I’m beginning to think it may, then it becomes a concern for many of us. You need to handle your wife.”

“Don’t presume to dictate to me regarding my marriage. You of all people.”

The senator pointed his cigar at his son. “As a presidential candidate, Wayne White continues to be very appealing. A war hero. A widower. That old allegation of spousal abuse will be forgotten quickly if your own wife were to abandon you at this juncture. And if she were to speak frankly about why.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“It’s a great deal stronger than a suggestion. I speak for the party, I assure you. Do whatever is necessary to make certain Kate stays at your side. If she asks you to get down on your hands and knees and lick the floor, then, by God, you will lick it. Because if you lose her, you may well lose this election. But frankly, if circumstances were different, it wouldn’t break my heart if she left you.”

“Dad-”

He waved off his son’s objection. “We both know if I dropped dead tomorrow she’d do a little jig in celebration. I’m sure she believes I’m the devil himself, or at best one step away from him.” He laughed, enjoyed a long draw on his cigar, then spoke through the haze he expelled. “Any man or woman who enters politics takes a few steps closer to the devil. Katie’s a bright lady. I would have thought she understood that by now. In fact, considering that sheusedto share your bed, she should understand that occasionally one even has to sleep with the devil.”

Although he tried not to show it, Clay Dixon was angry. Not so much at his father’s barb as at the obvious fact that someone on the White House staff had been talking indiscreetly about the current sleeping arrangements in the Executive Residence. The telephone rang and he grabbed at it. “Yes?” He listened and said, “Send them up.” He put the phone down. “John Llewellyn’s on his way with McGill and Bobby Lee.”

“They’ve got the most recent polls, I’d bet,” William Dixon said. “By the way, how is Tom Jorgenson?”

“I spoke with Kate this afternoon. He’s still unconscious.”

“An unfortunate accident. Still, it will probably work to your advantage. Sympathy vote and all.”

“What the hell kind of thing is that to say?”

“Nothing personal. You take your votes however you can get them.” The elder Dixon rose, put his cigar in his left hand, took up his cane in his right, and walked to the door. He moved stiff as a man made of pipe cleaners. War had done much of that, time the rest. He put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Listen to me and to Llewellyn, Clay, and you’ll be fine. You hear me?”

At the door to the Treaty Room, the senator encountered Llewellyn and the others.

“John,” he said, extending his hand. “Good to see you.”

“Senator.”

“How’s Doris?”

“Good. Waiting for an RSVP about Saturday night.”

“RSVP? You know I’ll be there.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“I can see that you and the president have business. Good night, John. Gentlemen.” He nodded to McGill and Lee, and he caned his way down the center hall toward the elevator.

“Was your father here on business or pleasure?” Llewellyn asked as he entered the study.

“The senator is never all about one thing. Brandy?” Dixon offered the others after they’d come in.

They declined, and the president decided that he’d had enough.

“How’s Kate holding up?” his chief counsel asked.

“Fine, Bobby. I spoke with her this afternoon. She’s hanging in there. Ed, I thought you’d gone home for the day.”

“I was hoping to get an early report on the polls,” McGill said.

“And did you?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Wayne White still has you by a margin that concerns us.” He seemed to have more to say, but was reluctant.

“Go on.”

“We believe it’s because you didn’t accompany the First Lady to Minnesota,” McGill said.

“What?”

“It may have made you appear callous.”

“It might help if you were to join her in Minnesota,” Llewellyn said.

“Jesus Christ, John. This isn’t a national disaster. I can’t simply drop everything and go running to Kate. I leave for the Pan-American summit in less than two weeks. Before that I have a dozen campaign appearances. To say nothing of a government to run.”

“This is different,” Ed McGill argued cautiously. “He’s your father-in-law, a man much in the hearts of Americans these days. Also, maintaining proximity to the First Lady would be helpful.”

“It sounds like everybody’s suggesting I ride into the White House on Kate’s skirt.”

“It will show your compassionate side,” McGill said.

Clay Dixon exploded. “I showed my compassionate side by throwing my support behind the Basic Human Services Bill.”

“This is different,” Bobby Lee said quietly. “This is about family.”

“You agree I should go?”

“I do.”

“Tom Jorgenson doesn’t like me.”

“He’s comatose. He won’t even know you’re there,” Llewellyn said. “It would be very good for your image, sir.”

Lee said, “You could easily join Kate for a day or two as a show of concern, of marital solidarity in this difficult time.”

Dixon breathed out his anger. “When?”

“It will take a couple of days to set up,” his chief of staff replied. “But Ed will have Patricia give a statement at the press briefing tomorrow morning.”

“All right.” Now Dixon felt ready for another brandy. “Is there something else?”

“No, sir,” Llewellyn said. “I’ll bid you good night.”

“Bobby?” Dixon said as Lee turned to leave. “Could I have a word with you?”

The president closed the door behind the others, then walked to the window and stared through his own reflection into the night. “The economy’s healthy. We’re not at war. Crime is on the decline. But what do the American people care about? They care whether I scurry to the side of a man who doesn’t particularly like me and a woman who, at the moment, treats me like a leper.”

“If he dies and you didn’t make a visit, you risk appearing heartless,” Lee pointed out.

The president put out his hand and touched his image in the glass. “Before I married Kate, I asked him for his daughter’s hand, did you know that, Bobby? I thought it was respectful. He said it didn’t matter what he thought. The choice was Kate’s. When I pressed him, he said, ‘It’s a rare man who doesn’t become his father.’ He never did give me his blessing. And when I ran for president, same thing. Because of who my father is, he refused to give me his endorsement.” He turned back to his chief counsel. “I’m not my father.”

“No,” Bobby said. “You’re not. But almost everyone who advises you now speaks for the senator. The truth is he’s casting a huge shadow over the White House, Clay.”

“He’ll get me reelected.”

“Will he? The polls don’t seem to be saying that. You know what I think? The American people want you to step away from your father so they can see clearly again just who you are. They’d love to see you leading the team.”

“Do you have any numbers to back that up?”

“Gut feeling.”

“Thanks, Bobby. I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Are you all right, Clay?”

“Just tired. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Dixon picked up the report Lorna Channing had delivered to him a couple of days earlier. So far, he’d had time only to glance at it. He took the document to his bedroom where he put on his pajamas, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and donned his reading glasses. He lay down on his bed, but found that he couldn’t concentrate.

He was thinking about the things Bobby Lee had said. And he was thinking about Alan Carpathian, the man who’d been more a father to him than the senator had ever been.

When Carpathian died, something significant inside Clay Dixon had died with him. Certainty. That cocky assuredness that Carpathian had teased him about but loved. What replaced it was something very like terror. Without Carpathian’s game plan, Carpathian’s political savvy, Carpathian’s unflagging optimism, Dixon felt paralyzed, absolutely afraid to move. It was like the nightmares he’d had while he was a quarterback, that he was on the field in the middle of an important game and he’d forgotten every play.

The senator had saved him, in a way. But you had to pay the devil sometime, and Dixon was feeling more and more that what was required of him was nothing less than his soul.

He put the report aside, took off his glasses, and thought about something more pleasant. Lorna Channing. Lately, a lot of his thinking eventually worked its way around to Lorna Channing. In the middle of briefings with her, he sometimes found himself amazed at the beautiful green of her eyes, the way she held her lips when she listened. He realized that whenever she walked away, he was already looking forward to the time when she would return. He didn’t fool himself with the idea that it was love. But he knew that in its way, it was a force nearly as compelling.

He glanced at the heavy document that lay on the pillow where Kate’s head used to rest. He’d requested the study to fulfill his promise to his wife and to please her, but she hadn’t even bothered to look at it. The silence of its company was a bitter and lonely statement.

He closed his eyes, and when he fell asleep, it wasn’t the voice of Kate he heard in his dreaming but the soft, chocolate laugh of the woman he’d known so well on the Purgatoire River.