"I have a dirty little secret for you: I'm sick to death of campaigning. I think everyone in America has heard my message by now. Most people who have heard it seem to agree with it. My opponents don't, but, expecting Reverend Sweigel here, I've always found my opponents to be just a little bit on the goofy side."
About half a dozen people - those who had already seen the Fowler/Goofy image on TV - laughed loudly at this. Everyone else tittered uncertainly. The line wasn't intended for them. It was intended to be used on the evening newscasts, at the appropriate moment.
"So I'm not going to harangue you with my usual stump speech. Instead I'd like to speak, very briefly, about some of the ideas that I intend to put into action once I get settled into the White House next January."
At this point McLane paused for a moment and pretended to fiddle with his note cards. He was doing this because some kind of a distraction had arisen at one of the tables, and he didn't want to try and shout his way through it. He assumed it was something minor, like a glass of lemonade that had spilled into someone's lap. But it didn't die away. It kept building.
Several people had stood up now. They were all facing inward, looking at an elderly man who was leaning way back in his chair, almost lying down, pressing one fist into his breastbone. His mouth was open, he was gasping for breath.
"Are there any doctors present here? This man is in distress," McLane said.
Something caught his eye: Zeke Zorn, standing up, waving him away from the lectern with both hands, like one of those guys at the airport directing the jetliners. McLane moved quickly away from the lectern. Only later would he understand that this had been good advice. There were very few things a man could say into a microphone at such a time that would make him look as though he had handled the situation presidentially. There were many ways to screw up.
No one had responded to the call for a doctor. All of the lenses and microphones in the makeshift press gallery had swung over and brought themselves to bear on the man in distress.
People were doing the normal sorts of folksy first-aid things. A couple of men cleared off a table in one instant by yanking at the tablecloth, sweeping all the plates and glasses off on to the ground, and then four people gathered around the stricken man and lifted him up on to the table's clean surface. They loosened his tie. Someone offered him a glass of water. None of it was doing anything for his life expectancy, which clearly was measurable in seconds or minutes.
Mr. Markham approached the lectern, pulled down the microphone, and spoke into it. "I'd like to ask everyone to please remain in their seats for now. Give Karl some air."
The stricken man was Karl Fort.
McLane couldn't keep his eyes off the man. Fort had ruled over the McLanes' portion of California like a demon king. McLane had known the man's name and face since he had been a toddler. He had been fearsome and omnipresent to those Okies who worked for him, who suffered beatings from his goons and who wondered, each week, if Fort would see fit to sign their paycheck. Uncle Purvis had, for a period of three or four decades, personally vowed to kill Karl Fort with his bare hands at least once a day. And now, after all that, Karl Fort was dying right in front of Nimrod McLane's eyes. If only Purvis could have been here to see it.
There was sudden motion off to McLane's left. Someone had vaulted the high table and now was striding confidently across the lawn toward Karl Fort. Tip glanced over and realized that it was the Reverend Doctor William Joseph Sweigel.
In the same instant the entire press corps realized it too.
Karl Fort's attack had been an unfortunate coincidence. But when Rev. Sweigel stepped in to lay on his hands, it became something else: a campaign event. The plastic ribbon snapped. It was like a dam breaking. The journalists charged toward Karl Fort. There were three long rows of tables. Karl Fort was in the middle row. The first row formed a low barrier standing in the way of the journalists. The vanguard - nimble print reporters - made an end run. The second wave - burdened by minicams - simply rolled directly over the top of it, their knees nearly buckling from the weight as they jumped to the grass on the far side, and headed the print reporters off in the narrow pass between the first and middle rows.
Three minicam operators, with their instinct for seizing the high ground, jumped to the top of the middle row. One of these three planted his foot in the midst of a paper plate heaped with baked beans and slipped; his boot shot off to the side and slammed into the chest of the fifth richest man in California so hard that it sent him toppling backward on to the ground. The cameraman slithered to his knees and then his feet, trashing a few more plates of food as he tried to accelerate in pursuit of the two other minicam operators who were now well ahead of him. His boots got traction on the tablecloth but the tablecloth slipped over the table, and so for the first few moments he actually ran in place, like a cartoon character, his feet churning madly and his body going nowhere as the tablecloth, with its burden of plates and cups, accordioned down to one end of the table, depositing a slippery obstacle course of beans, ketchup, MOO-tard, and ice cubes as it went.
Finally he got traction and pursued the others, who had run into an obstacle of their own. Between them and Karl Fort was an ice sculpture, an intricately carved bowl of ice filled with pink lemonade. It had gone unnoticed by the cameraman who had momentarily taken the lead. His only concern was getting Karl Fort and Billy Joe Sweigel into his viewfinder as quickly as possible, and so he was running with one eye squinted shut and the other eye pressed into the neoprene cup of his eyepiece. Seeing the world in out-of-focus, black-and-white tunnel vision, he missed the ice sculpture entirely and slammed into it at a full sprint, catching it with both knees. The impact knocked his legs backward. The weight of the minicam on his shoulder jerked his body forward. He spun in midair, appeared to become completely horizontal, and then fell straight down on top of the ice sculpture. Half of the lemonade went up in the air and then all of it burst down and sideways as the cameraman's body crushed the sculpture into convenient bite-sized fragments. Nearby luncheon-goers caught the tsunami of ice and lemonade full in the face.
The second cameraman was only a pace or two behind the first, he tried to stop, his feet got ahead of his body, and he landed on his ass in the midst of the ice storm, sliding to a halt and then careening off the edge of the table and landing full-length in the laps of three consecutive luncheon-goers.
The third cameraman, also suffering from video tunnel vision, planted one foot in the small of the first cameraman's back. That leg buckled. He caught his full weight on the other leg, hopped on it three times like a wide receiver trying not to go out of bounds, planted that foot on some ice, and skidded on one rigid leg for a distance of several feet, now looking perfectly like a figure skater. He finally got the other foot down on the edge of a serving platter, catapulting a dozen fresh grilled burgers into the chest of a prominent comedian-turned-real-estate magnate.
At which point he realized, finally, that he was about to run over Karl Fort's body. He planted both feet and once again created an accordion effect on a tablecloth. This carried him forward until he reached the edge of Fort's table, where his rubber-soled boots contacted solid, clean, dry formica, and stopped dead. This slammed him forward on to his knees, which was perfect: he stopped in a kneeling position with the lens of his camera about four feet away from Karl Fort, looking straight down on his body.