George Higgins - A change of gravity

Okay, let 'em have what they want. Put your tail between your legs and look sheepish; tell 'em you're not gonna run. Cringe like a dog that's been beaten a lot. Try to cower a little I realize you're outta practice, but do the best you can. That'll make 'em all feel superior and virtuous; like they've upheld the sanctity of marriage and the family, driving you out of office. You do some public penance, it wont be as much as you deserve, but it'll be enough. They'll be satisfied, forget about you and go on; find some other poor bastard to make life miserable for.

"They start thinkin' you're getting' away with something, pretendin' to be humble but sneakin' away to something even better this soft job that you invented they're liable say: "Oh no you don't; none of that shit, there. Givin' up the rep seat, pays fifty grand a year, 'cause he's been a naughty boy, and that gets him a better job, he pulls down eighty grand? Uh uh, we're not lettin' him do that."

"They'll find out if I don't announce it," Hilliard said. "Someone will've leaked it, time I make the speech. If they want to raise a stink and try to block it, they will. It'll all amount to the same thing."

"No, it wont," Merrion said. "If someone else tells 'em, that's all it'll be: something that someone else said. But if you announce it, they'll think you're laughing at them, gloating. To them it'll sound like this: "Okay, you hypocrites, I am convinced. If I run again you'll kick my ass. Well, up yours; I'm not giving you the chance. I'm not gonna let you dump me. And, I got something much better cooked up.

Pays even more and you'll never be able to vote me out of it, no matter how much I get laid. Doesn't that frost your balls, folks?"

"You know what they'll do then?" Merrion said. "They will lynch you.

If they decide you're not repenting; that you're giving them the finger, they will hang you by your fuckin' neck. They'll come to your condo and they'll drag you out the cellar where you hid and they'll march you down to Holyoke they'll have a band and everything, put on a torch-light parade. And when they get to Hampden Park they'll tie your hands behind you and rope your feet together and loop a noose around your neck. They'll make you stand on the roof of your Murr-say-deez-Benz and they'll throw the other end of the rope over the branch of a tree and tie it down good and tight to the tree trunk. And then before someone backs the car out from under you, they'll have a butcher climb up on the hood, yank your dick out of your pants and chop it off with his cleaver, and hold it up for all to see, while the bishop gives his blessing and leads the crowd singing "God Bless America."

"So I gather you don't think it would be a good idea for me to say what my plans are," Hilliard said.

"That would be the gist of it," Merrion said.

Reports of the address at the dedication said "Hilliard appeared subdued." An editorial paragraph in the Springfield Union reported that 'to many there, the personable and forceful chairman seemed chastened, no doubt by the strong public reaction to recent disclosures of his untidy personal life, almost certainly the principal reason behind his prudent decision to leave elective office." As Hilliard had predicted, the reports did include informed speculation that he expected to be 'appointed president of the community college in Hampton Pond, scheduled to formally open next year, although at first offering only night courses at the Pioneer Regional School during hours when it would normally be unused," but Merrion had also been right: no public outcry followed.

Freddie Dillinger in his Transcript column seemed a bit subdued himself. He was content to sneer, writing that the scheduled summer '84 completion of construction of the first of three new buildings planned for the HPCC campus 'will make the Hilliard Hilton the most modern shamelessly lavish, many have said — layout in the Commonwealth's entire community college system. The throne room, palmed-off in main-building blueprints as the presidential office suite, will be spacious enough for Dapper Dan to host a full-blown consistory, should the College of Cardinals ever stop by Hampton Pond and need a meeting-place. Assuming the prelates are on speaking terms with him after his pending divorce, seen by many as the catalyst for his career move." But Dillinger also seemed saddened by the prospect of Hilliard's departure from active politics. "I have no trouble saying that I've always liked Dan Hilliard. He's given us a lot of laughs, although not always intentionally, and in this often-gloomy world it's hard not to like a man who's so often brought you laughter."

"Praise from Caesar is praise indeed," Hilliard said to Merrion.

"Imagine the cocksucker getting emotional? Probably had to wipe away a tear. How insensitive I've been: All these years I've been reading the guy without ever guessing he liked me." He snorted. "Freddie must think the old saying's a commandment: Each man kills the thing he loves. Does his best to, anyway."

"I think we should give him a present," Merrion said. "How about we make a blivit, nice big bag full of fresh, soft dogshit, with a brick in it, throw it through his window on his desk."

The run-up to the withdrawal began in the spring of 1980. When Hilliard figured in newsworthy events, the identifier in the papers gradually changed; "Powerful Ways and Means Chairman' became "Embattled Chairman."

"I used to love it when they did that," he mourned to his friends, 'called me "powerful." He had begun to depend on them heavily for companionship. Weekends bothered him badly; drinks and dinner among 'my pals' Sunday nights at Grey Hills took on extreme importance.

What he called: 'my well-known downfall' began semi-privately. Mercy, on her way home from drinks with Diane Fox at Gino's Hearthside one fine evening in the spring abruptly decided that she'd had enough and determined to kick him out of their lovely new home in Bell Woods. By noon on Tuesday word of what she'd done had reached Beacon Hill. "Dja hear what happened Friday night, Danny Hilliard? His wife got home this class she's takin' up at UMass.? Threw him out. He wasn't even doin' nothing. Didn't have a fight with her or anna thing like that.

Just sittin' there, havin' a beer, watchin' the TV or something'. Had no idea anna thing goin' on; just waitin' her to come home. Make him some dinner, you know? How'd he know what she's got on her mind? But she comes inna door, says: "Okay, I've had it. Get your ass out. I'm sick of lookin' at you. We're finished." Hear he begged and pleaded her, too; prackly got down on his knees, she'd give him just one more chance. Didn't do him no good. "Nothin' doin'," she says, "I said out, I mean out. Now leave or I calla cops." He couldn't budge her.

She was stickin' to her guns, an' that was it. His ass went out on the street."

The public humiliation immediately crippled him politically. Mercy's assertion of control and his submission to it emboldened people who until then had concealed their envy of the power that made them afraid to show him any disrespect. He initially resisted acknowledging the change.

"Not that it ever really meant anything, as you know. The adjective, I mean. The job hasn't changed any since I got it. It's still either the second or third in line: Speaker; Majority Leader; and then Ways and Means. Or Ways and Means before the floor leader. I never had any more actual power'n anyone else ever did in the job. It just became part of the title: "Powerful." Like when we were growin' up, the baseball team that always stunk, where the Red Sox always went to buy the player that they needed, Vern Stephens, Ellis Kinder? No one never called them the plain old "Saint Louis Browns." Always "the hapless Saint Louis Browns." So I was always "the powerful chairman." "A sobriquet"; it didn't mean shit, but I gotta admit I did love it."