The Americans by John Jakes Page B

drafts or stock certificates. A great many important Americans were constantly in need of favors from Washington, which helped explain why most top-level politicians could afford large wardrobes, lavish homes, and frequent European vacations. Of course there were risks in politics. Look at what had happened to poor Garfield two years earlier. But he could handle the risks, he decided. The conclusion came easily because of the beer. He investigated and found there was plenty left in the armoire. This time Champagne Charlie didn't even raise his head. Carter helped himself, anxious to let the beer ease him into forgetting he'd been unable to control anything or anyone tonight. He lurched back to his chair, his confidence ebbing rapidly. If he couldn't carry off a student prank, how the devil could he ever hope to maneuver his way into political office? He couldn't buy his way, obviously. He stood to inherit only a token sum from the Kent fortune; his mother had already informed him that the bulk of Gideon's estate would go to Eleanor and W. Well, he'd get around those obstacles somehow. He and Willie finished the food and then guzzled more beer, talking non-stop between drinks. The drunker they got, the more fanciful became the careers they spun for themselves. Carter rose from dispenser of political leaflets to big-city machine boss. Willie graduated from circulation manager of a humor magazine to newspaper reporter. In a final step, he became a publisher more influential than Gideon Kent of the Union, and more ambitious than Joe Pulitzer, the St. Louis newspaperman who was in the process of buying Jay Gould's moribund New York World. Willie was, at the end, a publisher whose impact was felt far beyond San Francisco; a publisher who shaped national opinion and influenced national policy-and knowing his friend, Carter believed that was exactly what Willie would be one of these days. Carter lost track of time. He put Eisler, the aborted prank, and the wrecked wagon completely out of his mind. Sometime after midnight a thunderstorm broke. By then he was asleep in the armchair. When he awoke, gray light showed outside the rain-speckled window. He was brutally sober. He sat up and groaned. Willie raised his head. He'd been asleep on the couch, a full-sized coverlet barely reaching from his neck to the mid-point of his calves. He yawned, then scrutinized his friend: "You sick?" "Yes. I just remembered what happened last night." His bones creaked as he pushed against the arms of the chair. "I have to go home." "We could send out for more beer." Carter grew dizzy suddenly. Speech was difficult: "I-need some air. Thanks for the hospitality, Willie. I like your idea about politics. But first I have to get by the old professor." "Use that silver tongue," Willie advised in a sleepy voice. "Talk your way out." "Just the ticket," Carter nodded as he stumbled to the door. "Why didn't I think of that-?" Then he told a lie: "It'll be easy." IV Carter trudged toward the Charles River in a dawn that smelled of the rain that had already moved out to sea. A pebble in his shoe bedeviled him. When he reached the Cambridge Street bridge, he took off the shoe, inverted it and held it out beyond the rail to shake the pebble loose. The shoe slipped from his grasp and fell to the water. He bellowed an obscenity that brought a reproving shake of the finger from the driver of an early horse car just traveling into Cambridge. For a moment Carter watched the shoe go bobbing away downstream. Then he limped on toward Charles Street. What was he going to tell his mother and stepfather? He thought of several unbelievable stories, and rejected them all because they were ludicrous, and because they were lies. He loved his mother, but he also respected her. She was too intelligent to be fooled by invented stories. And as he'd told Willie, he didn't lie to Julia or Gideon. Not often, anyway. That was just about his only remaining point of honor. "Just swallow the