“Hi there, beauty,” Margaret said, approaching prudently.
The pony snorted and looked down, splashing his forelegs in the marshy shallows. Margaret took another cautious step forward, one hand outstretched, barely able to breathe. Very few people ever got this close to one of these ponies—for all she knew, she was the first human he’d ever encountered. She was desperate to touch him, to pat the soft side of his stocky neck. Again he looked at her and she felt a shudder of connection.
Gwinnett stood behind her, silent, as she slowly moved toward Teardrop, murmuring in low tones she hoped would reassure him, never taking her gaze from his. Her heart was pounding; her mouth was dry. She reached the beast and slowly put her hand on his forehead, then softly patted him down to his muzzle. He leaned into her and closed his eyes. And then, abruptly, Teardrop tossed his head and pawed the water before turning and galloping into the distance.
Margaret stood watching him, trying to understand what had just happened. Gwinnett’s voice broke the spell.
“Wow,” said Gwinnett, coming up to stand next to her. “That was incredible.”
Margaret nodded mutely.
“We should go back to camp and write up our notes. Annabelle will be jealous when she hears how close you got.”
Margaret felt a sharp pang of loneliness. The person she most wanted to tell was Charlie, who was a hundred miles away. She missed him deeply. She looked one last time at the spot where Teardrop had just stood, then turned and followed Gwinnett back to see if she could find her binoculars in the swamp.
Chapter Eight
Saturday, January 23, 1954
Georgetown, Washington, DC
Margaret had been home from Nanticoke Island for only an hour when, still unshowered and exhausted, she answered the town-house doorbell and was greeted by a pretty, college-age woman holding Charlie’s dry-cleaned tuxedo.
“Hello, Mrs. Marder! I’m Sheryl Ann Bernstein, the congressman’s intern. Miss Leopold asked me to deliver this—I hope I’m not intruding.” She handed over the garment and smiled so brightly Margaret almost wanted to shield her eyes. “Thank you!” she said. “I hope you and the congressman have a good weekend.”
The intern was halfway down the town-house steps when she turned around. “Oh! Mrs. Marder!” she cried. “Please tell the congressman I made some progress on my homework assignment!” She smiled yet again and then bounced away, a vision of perky youth that made Margaret feel ancient.
Charlie was tucked away in his first-floor study, surrounded by tall stacks of thick reference books.
“Some Debbie Reynolds look-alike just dropped this off,” she said, hanging the tuxedo on the doorknob.
“Oh, crud,” Charlie said. “I forgot to tell you, I have to go to a dinner this evening. The Alfalfa Club.”
“Alfalfa like from the Little Rascals?”
“No, Alfalfa like the plant,” he said distractedly. “The roots of which will apparently do anything to find a drink. That’s the conceit of the name, at any rate. Har-har.”
“Yes, I get it, Charlie,” Margaret said drily. “You’re spending too much time educating infatuated interns, perhaps. Assigning them homework.”
Preoccupied by the book in his hand, Charlie raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing. Anyway, I’m filthy and I need to shower.” She headed upstairs, and Charlie decided to let her comment dissolve in the ether, returning his attention to the Funk and Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. He’d been looking for more information about Chairman Carlin when he’d stumbled on the entry for the University of Chicago; recalling the odd note he’d found in his desk, he read more in hopes of learning what the school might have had to do with cereal grains or broadleaf crops. Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls offered no help. No matter. Charlie turned instead to entries on Kefauver and others whom he thought he might encounter that evening.
The Alfalfa Club was among the most elite social organizations in Washington, DC, its membership consisting of two hundred business leaders, politicians, sometimes even presidents. Charlie’s invitation was obviously an afterthought, but that didn’t diminish his anticipation. Yesterday he had been having lunch in the private Senate Dining Room with Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Republican of Maine, when Kefauver stopped by their table.
“I see you’ve met the conscience of the Republican Party,” Kefauver said playfully, tilting his head in Smith’s direction. It had been four years since Joe McCarthy saw Margaret Smith on the Senate subway and told her she looked very serious. “Are you going to make a speech?” he asked. “Yes,” she responded, “and you will not like it.” Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience,” delivered on the Senate floor, derided McCarthy’s “Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” She and Kefauver were thus allies against McCarthy, whose demagogic mud-slinging campaign against anyone to the left of Generalissimo Francisco Franco had been roiling the republic for too long. McCarthy’s opponents were beginning to gain ground, but Tail Gunner Joe, as he’d been nicknamed by someone, perhaps McCarthy himself, was winning the war of attrition; his adversaries were exhausted. He remained popular with a strong segment of the public, whose support of him seemed impervious to obvious moments of indecency and prevarication. Those who feared McCarthy might never actually go away and that the fever of McCarthyism might never break were growing despondent.
Kefauver handed Charlie a folded-over New York Times and tapped a finger on a page 9 story: “Rival for Senate Assails Kefauver: Sutton, House Member, Runs in the Tennessee Primary, as ‘Ultra-Conservative.’”
Charlie had read the story about Congressman Pat Sutton, one of his new poker buddies. Sutton was quoted saying he liked Kefauver personally, that they had visited each other’s homes, but he didn’t like the senior senator’s record, that he “has consistently voted as a left winger against the loyalty oath in the Government, and he has voted against wire-tapping to catch the Reds.”
“Do you know this jackanapes, Charlie?” Kefauver asked. “It’s not enough that the Republicans in Knoxville have all but issued a hit on me this year, not enough that the newspapers are all controlled by Boss Crump’s corrupt machine—now this little blunderbuss with whom I’ve broken bread is accusing me of being a Commie symp.”
Charlie shifted in his seat. Sutton was a former navy lieutenant whose many medals included the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star with oak leaf clusters. A demolitions expert, he was a bona fide war hero and a fair poker player whose tell was boasting about his hand; that meant his cards were garbage. Charlie liked him.
“I don’t know him well, sir,” Charlie said. “He’s in my poker group, along with all the other veterans.” He held his tongue and stole a look at Smith, whose lips were pursed and whose eyes were distant; she seemed to be used to other senators talking as if she weren’t there.
“They’ll come at me as a Negro lover, for one, same way Russell did in Florida back in ’52,” Kefauver said. “Sutton is already pursuing the Dixiecrats. And goddamn Earl Warren’s Supreme Court is going to vote to desegregate schools any minute, which the good people of Tennessee are decidedly not prepared for. And as if that weren’t enough, a guy with a chestful of medals is coming into the Democratic primary and is damn sure going to ask why I didn’t fight in the war. Though a businessman I know told me that a guy with that many medals is either reckless or foolish.”