A few days before the election, campaign headquarters started receiving calls that yard signs were vanishing in the night. To retaliate, I showed up at the house that night carrying two “Vote Cassidy” signs that I’d daringly swiped from the lot of one of Cassidy’s own car dealerships. I’d done it as a prank—to lighten the mood, I guess—but Nolan wasn’t amused.
He took me aside. “Elections can be brutal, but there are rules.”
“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough.”
“I want us running a clean campaign, is all.”
“Understood.”
He sighed. “You’ve been a tremendous help to me, Will. I can’t thank you enough.”
Later, after everyone else had left for the night and Nolan’s parents had gone to bed, Nolan and I poured tumblers of Scotch and sat down on the living room sofa. Molly immediately jumped up between us and rested her snout on Nolan’s leg.
“As a kid,” Nolan said, “I remember sitting right here, in this room, watching Ronald Reagan bait the Soviet Union on TV. I’m sure you remember all that ‘Evil Empire,’ ‘Star Wars’ end-of-the-world bullshit.”
I did, vaguely. At the time, I was more interested in Star Wars the movie.
He sipped his drink in thought. “I was ten years old, but I knew trash talking when I heard it. And Reagan was the most reckless trash talker I’d ever heard, because thousands of nuclear warheads were pointed at him. And at me—and my friends and my parents. Though my parents didn’t seem to think much about it one way or the other. I could see it for what it was, though—reckless and stupid. As far as I was concerned, he was going to cause the end of the world.” The dog’s stomach gurgled. “So that’s when I decided to write him a letter.”
“Who? Reagan?”
“Of course. And not some childish, emotional plea, either, but a reasoned argument for using the office of the president to end the risk of nuclear war.”
He was looking at the dog, not me. The story seemed to embarrass him, and I wondered why, until I remembered the fan letter I’d written at about the same age to the actress Carrie Fisher. I’d slid the letter into an envelope I’d made out of aluminum foil so it would stand out. I’m not asking you to marry me, I’d written. But I know we’d be friends.
“So what’d you say in the letter?”
“I said that name-calling only increased the likelihood of a brawl. Basic school-yard diplomacy.” He looked up at me. “People were people, I figured. How different could it possibly be between leaders of nations?” He shook his head.
“I take it you never heard back.”
“Two weeks,” he said. “It came quickly, I’ll give him that. I remember coming home from school and seeing it on the kitchen table. Nobody else was home. It was a thin envelope. But it didn’t need to be thick. All it needed to say—and I was sure that it would—was that Reagan had seen the error of his ways.” He finished his drink in one long swallow, set the tumbler on the coffee table, and looked at me again. “Two sentences. I’ll never forget them.” His eyes widened. “Hold that thought—I still have it.”
He was off the sofa and down the hallway toward his bedroom. While waiting, I gave the dog a good scratching behind the ear, earning a thankful groan.
Nolan returned from his bedroom with the envelope, now faded from time. He opened it and removed the single page, folded in thirds, and handed it to me. I unfolded it. The letter was typed on stationery with the presidential seal.
October 12, 1982
To my friend Nolan Albright,
Your thought-provoking letter leaves me heartened. It is because of young Americans like yourself, concerned with the important issues of the day, that I feel optimistic about our nation’s future.
Sincerely,
Ronald Reagan
I handed it back to Nolan.
“At least it’s personalized,” I said. “And nice enough.”
“Heartened?” He glared at the letter as if he’d received it only minutes before instead of fourteen years ago. “He was heartened by my letter? Hell, he missed the whole fucking point.”
“It probably wasn’t Reagan who wrote it, anyway.”