PENNY: Tuesday of next week.
JOHN: And you think you’re going to find some sacrificial lamb ... How much money do you think you can collect to fight the power that Grant would have?
PENNY: Money, nominations, petitions-they all fall into place the minute you say you’ll run. John, I’ve been testing the waters.
JOHN: In Washington, not Fremont.
PENNY: Most of Fremont that counts is in Washington. And they know to a man that Norman Grant is finished. He’s run his course, John. He’s a dodo. He’s a plum ripe for picking.
JOHN: Let’s stop this right now. Under no conceivable way in the world will I make a move against a man who’s [764] been my friend. You learn that in the astronaut program, and you learn it deep.
PENNY: We’ll discuss it tomorrow in Illinois.
It was not until they were leaving Abraham Lincoln’s state that she launched her most persuasive argument. She was driving at the time and they’d had a nine-o’clock breakfast of pancakes and sausage, a murderous meal except when one was driving all day without lunch.
PENNY: You’re a military man, John. I want to talk strategy, not tactics. If you don’t make your move now, some other good Republican will. He’ll get his foot in the door, and by the next election in 1988 he’ll be unbeatable. Your grand opportunity will be gone.
JOHN: I’ve told you before, I will not-
PENNY: Listen to my most important point. By 1988 Norman Grant will be a basket case. Anyone will be able to beat him, if he doesn’t retire before then. The decision has to be made this year, to protect your position in 1988.
JOHN: As long as Grant wants the seat-
PENNY: Let’s suppose you’re right. Let’s suppose that Grant is unbeatable this year. The strategy is to establish yourself as his inevitable successor. You do that by challenging him now. By conducting a high-level campaign. I’m positive that you can win even this year. In 1988 it’ll be a lead-pipe cinch.
JOHN: Let Grant make the decisions. My sense of honor will not allow me to-
PENNY: If the Republican committee came to you?
JOHN: I’d have to tell them no.
PENNY: John, I think you underestimate yourself. You’re an authentic American hero. Everyone in the country knows you.
JOHN: Everyone in America doesn’t vote in Fremont.
PENNY: Everyone in Fremont loves you. You have an enormous capital to draw upon. You’re electable. And you sit here and fritter away-
JOHN: Why are you so concerned about a Senate seat?
PENNY: Because I’m a patient in that dreadful Washington hospital.
JOHN: What do you mean?
PENNY: I’m infected with the incurable disease. Capitalitis.
[765] JOHN: I’ve suspected this for some time. You don’t want to come home?
PENNY: They made a study some years ago. One hundred ex-senators. Some had been defeated in primaries, some in the general, some had withdrawn voluntarily. But of the hundred, ninety-three were still in Washington, one thing or another. One of the men from Phoenix said it best. “Me go back to Arizona? Are you nuts?” When you’re in Washington you see the wheels go round. And sometimes you can give them a nudge.
JOHN: Then why don’t you accept that judgeship they keep talking about?
PENNY: It was the Carter administration that did the talking. Glancey convinced them I was a Democrat.
JOHN: What are you, really?
PENNY: In 1982 I’d be dumb if I wasn’t a Republican.
JOHN: You know, Penny, when NASA got the six families together that first time at Cocoa Beach, I had a strong feeling that you and I had the best marriage of all. I love you very much. More every year as we grow older. You have a lot of pizazz.
PENNY: I’m so proud of you I could burst. You’ve really hewn your log to a very straight line, John. Ain’t many like you, kiddo. That’s why I want to see you senator.
JOHN: Impossible.
Their incessant arguing slowed down their driving, so they slept that night in eastern Missouri, where they had Mexican food, made some phone calls, and went to a movie, but as they drove through the early morning on the last day, Penny returned to her basic theme:
PENNY: John, I’m asking you for the last time. Will you declare for the United States Senate?
JOHN: I cannot.
PENNY: This is dreadfully serious, John. I must repeat. Will you run?
JOHN: No.
She swung the car abruptly off the main highway, sought a gas station, and went inside to make a series of phone calls. When she returned, a handsome, strong-wilted lawyer of fifty-five, well versed in the ways of Washington, she announced calmly as she swung the car back onto the road: “I have asked my people to inform the papers and [766] the television immediately. I’m entering the Republican primary for the Senate.”
Captain John Pope, USN (retired), slumped in the right-hand seat of the Buick as it sped toward the Fremont state line and wondered what he should say. If Penny had authorized her people to release the announcement, she would not be deterred now, and his mind twisted and turned, trying vainly to hit upon the right comment. That he would support her, there could be no doubt; she was his wife and he was extremely proud of her accomplishments. He knew her to be one of the best women in America, forceful but loving, hard as nails where principle was concerned but gentle in her personal relationships, and very bright. Both Glancey and Grant had told him at different times, “Pope, your wife is just as important to our space program as you are. Because she knows where the bodies are buried.”
And yet, as a man of honor he would have to make his apologies to Norman Grant, and if asked, state in public that he knew Grant to be a splendid citizen and a good public servant worthy of reelection. It was going to be a difficult spring in the state of Fremont during the Republican primaries.
His mind then turned to the matter of living arrangements, and he concluded that practically nothing would change-he would remain in Clay and she in Washington, or wherever. They were a Navy family, accustomed to prolonged separations, and he knew they could hack it, as enlisted men said when unpleasant jobs lay ahead, for they always had. And then, smiling quietly as he glanced sideways while Penny roared down the highway, chin forward, he thought of the perfect thing to say: “Penny, when I flew Gemini with Claggett, I sat in the right-hand seat. I can do so again.”
They arrived in Clay at eleven in the morning, and Penny drove directly to the home of the man who had been working quietly in behalf of John Pope for Senator, and there John received a lesson in practical politics, for a committee of nine awaited Penny’s arrival. They had before them some sixteen nominating petitions covering all parts of the state, and all signed on behalf of John Pope, who was refusing to run. The chairman’s wife had carefully typed [767] in a Mrs. before the original candidate’s name, then, hollowing it: (Penny Hardesty).
“That’s illegal as hell,” John exclaimed. “They signed for one person, and you change it to another.”
“Not without permission,” the chairman said. “We spent all last night calling every signer and getting permission to switch.”
When he looked at Penny, standing erect in the doorway, smiling, neat, suit presentable after three days of travel, he had for the first time a fleeting suspicion that she might really carry this thing off, and when he left the meeting, alone, to report to Senator Grant at the big house on the edge of town he received another jolt-two, in fact.
The first concerned Mrs. Grant, who appeared at the door to let him in. She did not recognize him, even though he was probably the best-known man in town and one she saw frequently, and when she led him toward her husband’s study it was as if she were in an unknown house. She asked him if she could count on his support in the referendum regarding evolution, which was a pernicious theory destructive of human dignity, and he did not bother to remind her that the vote had been taken months ago and that her side had won.
The second shock came after Senator Grant had listened courte
ously to the explanation of how Penny had come to file for his seat and why Pope had told her that he could not in decency oppose a man who had done so much for him, who had been, indeed, a kind of father.
Grant laughed almost raucously. “Pope! You miss the whole point. Penny’s not got a chance of beating me this year. But she’ll get her name known. She’ll show the central committee she’s a real contender. I think the world of that girl, and in 1988, when I certainly won’t run again, she’ll be in the front row. The very front row. And unless this nation falls to hell, she’ll be United States Senator from Fremont. You go out there with my blessing, John, and give her every support. Because when I do step down, six years from now, I’ll want somebody good in my place, and she’s the one I’d choose.”
Exactly what Penny told me in Illinois, Pope thought. But I’d better not tell Grant she’d had him figured out so neatly. Also, there was the unsettled question: Did Penny [768] mean it, when she said so vehemently that Grant could be defeated? Was this primary to be the real thing?
There was another election which intruded before the Fremont primary. In the Colorado ski resort of Skycrest, the business promoters, the shopkeepers and the lodge managers wanted a shift in the political governance of the place: “We have special needs which require special solutions. We’re not dryland farmers raising Herefords.” By common consent they settled upon Millard Mott as their level-headed candidate: “He knows business. He knows what it is to pay taxes. And look what he’s done with his own shop.”
In a town that had once been mainly Democratic, the conservative Republicans offered Millard as their candidate, and although there was minor talk about the way his brother had been killed in Florida, it was agreed in the community that this should not be held against him. Also, the fact that he lived with this chap Roger, who had been a draft dodger, was ignored. Nor did the opposition make much headway with the charge that Millard had himself been a Canadian goose: “Didn’t he fly north?”
“He did, but everyone knows the Vietnam war was a shitty affair. Maybe he was just brighter than us stupid sonsabitches who went.”
He was elected by a huge majority, and at his thank-you party, catered by Roger and the college girls at the ski shop, he promised Skycrest: “What everybody wants-more services, more police, more ski patrols, better roads and lower taxes. I hope somebody here will tell me how to do it.”
In June 1982 Professor John Pope heard with pleasure that NASA was thinking of assigning his friend Hickory Lee, last of the Solid Six, to command the fourth flight of the Shuttle. He would carry it to heights not attempted before, where various scientific instruments would be placed in orbit and checked during an extended extravehicular activity. The Shuttle was now a workhorse, and Lee would join that restricted group of astronauts who had flown in three radically different types of craft-in his case, Apollo, Skylab and Shuttle. None had flown in four [769] different types, and as the program was working out, none ever could.
A much more personal surprise came on a bright morning when Senator Norman Grant, in the heat of his campaign for renomination to the Senate, announced that he would hold a press conference at noon sharp, and he telephoned Pope to ask if he would attend. John supposed that the surprising closeness of the primary, with Penny doing much better than predicted, had frightened the senator into a last-minute spurt, and that Grant was going to ask him for an endorsement.
Penny was in the southern part of the state, where she was amassing unexpected support, but he was able to reach her by phone: “Darling, the damned pullets have come back to roost. Senator Grant is pressuring me for an endorsement.”
“We decided long ago you’d give it.”
“I’ll have to. I’ll simply have to. But it’ll be very guarded. And, darling, I’ll fly out to Calhoun this afternoon, Phil will take me in his plane. I’ll appear on the platform with you tonight, and I’ll speak. If you want to win this primary, I want you to win it, too.”
“I do want to win. And I do want your help.” Then she said brightly, “Don’t you see, John? If Grant feels he needs your endorsement, he knows he’s in trouble.”
Satisfied that he had cleared this ticklish problem with his wife, Pope went to his university office, where a tough politico from Webster was awaiting him: “Professor, does your wife really want to win this primary?”
“She sure does!”
“She’s not just goin’ through the motions?”
“Penny never goes through motions.”
“My wife is a trained nurse.”
“What’s that got to do with the primary?”
“Plenty. She works with doctors. She listens.”
“Where’s she work? Sit down, please.”
“She works in Webster General. But one of her doctors, a Dr. Schreiber, is a specialist who flies about the West on heavy missions.” He paused to allow this to take its effect, then said, “Three days ago he flew here to Clay Municipal.” Another pregnant pause. “His patient was Senator Grant’s wife.”
[770] “What about her”?”
“She’s in dreadful shape, according to the doctor. He treated her sickness and wouldn’t say anything about that. But he did talk about her other behavior. The forgery. Signing the senator’s name to a check. She’s pumping money into the Strabismus crusade, the one in Alabama against Darwin and abortions and all that.”
“Forgery? Why would she commit forgery?”
“I don’t know why. All my wife knows is that Senator Grant had to intervene to prevent the police-”
“Why did you come here to tell me this?”
“Because it makes Grant vulnerable. If your wife wants to really puncture that bag of wind ...”
Pope did not lose his temper. This man was suggesting behavior that neither of the Popes would countenance or even remotely consider, but John had learned that politics produced all sorts of aberrations and the honorable man or woman looked at each as it was presented, accepting those that stood within limits, rejecting those that were outside the pale of decent behavior. Rising and placing his arm about the visitor’s shoulder, he said quietly, “My wife and I appreciate your interest, but this isn’t the kind of private information that she would use. Thank your wife, and I hope you both continue to support Mrs. Pope.”
It was now forty-five minutes before the press conference, and Pope needed to clarify his thinking as to what exactly he could say in support of the man he still held to be a notable citizen, and this was difficult, for the campaign had proved that Grant really was doddering, lacking in focus and without any clear vision of the future. There had been a most painful night in the capital city of Benton, where the senator and Penny were to debate major issues; before the session Penny learned that Tim Finnerty was bringing Gawain Butler from his important job in California and Larry Penzoss from Alabama, and she went directly to Finnerty’s hotel to confront him.
“Surely, Tim, you’re not trotting out those miserable uniforms again?”
“They’re the heart of his campaign. Voters love them.”
“Tim, that day is past. Believe me, if you three clowns get up on that stage-”
“The other two are not clowns. They’re considerable heroes. Their stories-”
“Will make people yawn.”
“Why are you protesting”? If it’s a bad idea, as you say, you profit.”
“Nobody profits. Tim, if you do this, I’m going to have to rebut. I’ll have to point out how silly the whole thing is.” Her jaw firmed. “And I will, believe me, Tim, I will.”
The debate had not gone well for the senator, but Penny remembered that he was always best in his closing statements, when he drew upon patriotism, heroism and love of country to make telling points, the only ones that would be remembered when the night was over and the serious discussion forgotten. And sure enough, at the beginning of his peroration he signaled Finnerty, who marched out with Butler and Penzoss in their old uniforms. Unfortunately for Grant, the city of Benton contained thr
ee colleges, and students in the audience began to laugh, one black activist shouted “Uncle Tom,” and suddenly the stage became a place of ridicule, and the heroic memory of those days adrift in October of 1944 seemed as remote as the Battle of Thermopylae.
Grant was confused. He had encountered student opposition during the bad days of Vietnam, when values were contorted, but now these young people were laughing at him and Gawain Butler and the heroic days when all values hung in the balance, and it was shocking. His opponent, Mrs. Pope, seemed to have tears in her eyes, and it was she who spoke:
“Students, stop that laughter. These four men, Senator Grant and his crew, were sensational heroes. The safety of our nation depended upon them, and I for one salute them. But I suspect you are right in believing that the day is past when we can rely only upon old memories ... old ideas ... old ways of doing things. We need fresh spirit, fresh drives. Please try to get these conflicting good things straight in your mind. This nation needs some straight thinking.”
In her hotel room later that night she confided to her husband: “I’m not proud of what I did tonight. What I should have done was machine-gun those little bastards for making fun of a profound idea. But I must say that I warned Finnerty not to carry his broken jugs back to that [772] pathetic pump.” Tears came to her eyes. “I was so sorry for Norman Grant. Did you see the shock on his face? He was facing a new generation, a whole new set of decades, and he hadn’t a clue. John, he hasn’t a clue and it will be God’s mercy if I defeat him.”
Reluctantly, Pope left his office, and walked slowly to the campus building in which the press conference was to be held, still unsure of what he should say in view of the fact that later in Calhoun he was going to neutralize it. But when he entered the building and saw Norman Grant, big and handsome and very American, his heart went out to him: Best man this town ever produced. I’ll help him win one more time. Penny can afford to wait.
But when Grant took the podium and adjusted the microphones, Pope received a shock: “I am sorry that my talented opponent, Penny Pope, could not be here this morning. She’s at work lambasting me in the southern part of the state, but I’m most pleased that her husband, our great hero John Pope, is with us.”