Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

The food arrived with a robust aroma, as if to say in Waterloo there was something in the world other than meat and potatoes.

Quinn poured the Chianti. “Bang!” he said.

“So what brings you to Waterloo on this snowy night?” she said as she prepared the table.

“Greer, I came here kicking and screaming, and I’m not talking false modesty. All right ... I came here because so goddamn many people told me to come here. So, I’m here, I’ll look around and say, include me out. I’ve been to Waterloo, folks, and there’s no way I can make the presidency.”

“You’re full of shit,” Greer retorted.

“No, ma’am, I’m not going to be meat for buzzards. I’m not putting my family through it. During my first campaign for governor, AMERIGUN threw the book at me, including the rumor that I was buggering sheep.

Truth can be a little pebble that gets washed over a roaring dam. Yet some of those lying, rotten stories will stick on me to the day I die. Is there life beyond the presidency, or do they all leave office as dead meat?”

“I see snow out of the window,” Greer said. “I’m afraid you see acid rain. A tidal wave is forming up and could become unstoppable. You have rung the bell on an issue whose date is due. You are gun control to a nation pleading for it. You can’t walk away, man, no matter how it intersects your own life. Your country is bleeding, and that’s all the reason you have to know. There is another reason you won’t back out. You crave for your birth mother and father to look down from heaven and be proud of you: “Our son is running for president!””

Quinn paled. “Is that why I’m doing this?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I had a grip on it.”

“You lied to yourself.”

Greer responded to a knock on the door with movements that had been polished over the years to gain and hold the observer’s attention.

“Professor Maldonado, I do believe.”

“Greer!”

Mal came in, bussed her slightly, and made for an inspection of the bedroom and bathrooms .. . and the big walk-in closet. “So, what brings you to Venice?” he asked on returning.

“The same thing that brought you,” she said.

Mal went right at their dinners. “The veal is like butter.” He had grown old lovely.

“What’s going on out there?” Quinn asked.

“A phenomenon,” Mal said. “I’m being contacted by several Democratic governors who are interested in your candidacy. The party is lining up quickly behind you.”

“Do not count Quinn as a shoo-in. T3 is no pushover,” Greer said. “He

has done a masterful job of distancing himself from the Congress. Fewer

and fewer people hold him responsible for Four Corners, particularly

with this new humility, stiff back when the flag is lowered, occasional teary eye, and those gripping hugs to the parents. And Pucky Tomtree has done just as good a job.”

“They say that Darnell Jefferson has engineered it,” Mal said. “He and T3 are like non-identical twins. Whatever he’s done, the President has fought his way back.”

Quinn noticed a quick, mousy smile from Greer. “You run with that crowd,” Quinn said.

“Well, I did have an interlude with Jefferson a few years back, on Martha’s Vineyard. He was on a diet of white meat,” she purred.

“I thought Tomtree’s humility schtick was transparent,” Mal said, tossing down the tiramisu.

“People want transparent,” Greer shot back. “Look at the lineup of sitcoms. English not spoken here. Back up the garbage truck and carry off this week’s show. No! It’s worth billions in syndication. We recycle more shit in a year than the Chinese dump into their holes in a decade.”

“Yeah, get the children out of the room,” Quinn said softly. “Some kids today say ‘fuck’ so much they think it’s their middle name.”

Mal pushed his chair back, patted his feel-good stomach, and checked all the pitchers. The vodka looked promising.

“What we have shaping up here,” Mal began in a professorial manner, “is a recurring cycle. The human race is no less cruel, no less murderous than it was ten thousand years ago. Yet every so often it runs into a moral imperative that it has to overcome for civilization to advance. In America? The revolution against England was a moral imperative. The destruction of slavery was a moral imperative. The decision to fight Hitler and commence with atomic energy were moral imperatives.”

“You’re talking about Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt,” Quinn said, laughing.

“And maybe Quinn O’Connell. A great moral imperative ended in bleeding

tragedy in Six Shooter Canyon. AMERIGUN isn’t going to roll over and die easily, but you’re the man who faced them down,” Mal said. “So how are you going to live with yourself without giving it every ounce of fight you have?”

“The nation is ready to do some serious gun control, and the people know they will have a tough-ass president taking it on,” Greer added.

“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Quinn said.

“Wait, there’s more,” Greer jumped in. “It’s nine months till the election, and you have no national, state, or local campaign machinery, no money, no endorsements. But you are the king of the hot-button issue. Can you take the lies and taunts? Can you lead? If you think you can, I want to play!”

“Thanks for your glorious offer, Greer, but, baby, the American people may not be as sophisticated as you believe, and this won’t fly.”

“That’s a point,” Mal mumbled.

“I resigned from Crowder Communications yesterday.”

Her thunderbolt knocked them speechless.

“What? How? You’re a married woman!” Mal said.

“Oh, I’ll bet Warren Crowder likes this,” Quinn said. “It will bring his illustrious lady’s career to a crescendo.”

“Warren’s a player,” Greer said. “And he knows I’ll be back.”

“You two have got to behave yourselves,” Mal said. “I mean, really behave yourselves. If we can put Greer in charge of the nuts and bolts, she knows every political person in the country. She knows all the hired guns. She has access to money overnight.”

“I’d have your national committee in place in five days,” Greer said, “and in a week I’ll have a strategy on the table.”

“The voters will take a long second look at me. Better stay in Colorado, cowboy. Every time they’ve heard of Quinn O’Connell, it’s been the result of a fight. Urbakkan .. . AMERI GUN .. . and now the Six Shooter Canyon Massacre,” Quinn espoused.

“Slight difference,” Greer said. “The people may have the political will to follow a moral imperative.”

“I’ll call Rita,” Quinn said. “It has to be dead right for her.”

“You don’t have to call her,” Greer said. “I talked it over with her before I got my air ticket to Waterloo. Rita said, “Thank God you’re going to him. At least you’ll give him a fighting chance.”” Maldonado answered the phone. Senators Ebendick and Harmon were in the hotel and wanted a few minutes. “Phew!” Mal said, “some real big hitters just blew into town.”

“Who?” Greer asked.

“Ebendick and Harmon.”

“That is a statement,” Greer said.

“I’m going down and enroll them,” Mal said. He wanted to say more about hoping he could trust Greer and Quinn. Once they had melted cannons with their heat. How can an odd moment of stress or passion or joy not hurl them into one another’s arms? But Rita believed. What game was God playing putting a decent man like Quinn into the shredder as he slouches toward Jerusalem?