The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [280]
As Jack flew back to West Virginia for a short-lived celebration, Bobby trudged over to Humphrey’s hotel and walked with the politician back to his headquarters for his public capitulation. Bobby appeared deeply touched by Humphrey’s emotional concession, though his tears were like those of a pyromaniac standing back from the conflagration he has set off as his victims run from the burning building.
Jack stayed in the state capital long enough to shake Humphrey’s hand, thank the voters over television, and hold a short press conference. At her husband’s moment of triumph, Jackie stood alone like a shanghaied but unwanted passenger on a voyage to parts unknown. She turned and walked back to the car and sat there by herself in the darkness waiting for Jack.
As the Caroline flew back toward Washington in the predawn hours, the passengers were as giddy and lighthearted as a college football team returning from a victory. Only Jack was different. He sat there in the half-light looking ahead toward the Maryland primary and trying to gauge how his West Virginia victory would affect the uncommitted states. He was on the greatest journey of his life, and he was only partway there.
20
A Patriot’s Song
On a Thursday evening in early July at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Wyoming cast its fifteen deciding votes for Jack, and the forty-three-year-old senator became the Democratic nominee. The candidate had secreted himself away from the convention, his whereabouts known only to his intimates. Soon after the vote, he descended on the new Los Angeles Sports Arena out of the cool night, his arrival signaled by a score of lights hurtling through the blackness.
In the cottage outside the gigantic arena stood the most powerful Democrats waiting to greet the man their party had just accorded its greatest honor. Only they had the clout to whisper a few words to Jack before he made his grand entrance to thank the delegates. The party leaders stood back as Jack got out of the sedan and greeted Bobby and Sarge Shriver, his brother-in-law. Part of the pols’ reticence was the natural deference to power. As prominent as they were, and as much as some of them had done to further the younger man’s ambition, there would always be a line now between them and the man who stood before them. Something else, however, kept them at a distance. As much as Jack had pretended that he was one of them, an American politician born and bred, he was different.
Jack did not have the politician’s grayish pallor from a life measured out in planes, auditoriums, public meetings, and too many smoky rooms. He looked like a great star arriving to grace a Hollywood premiere where the klieg lights played across the sky and the urgent masses stretched for a glance or an autograph. Exuding movie star sexuality, he was astoundingly handsome, his perfect white teeth set off against his tanned skin. He was a vibrant, charismatic figure who seemed to radiate healthful vigor.
There was a daring, seductive quality to Jack, as if he would always be showing up out of a dark, mysterious night. “Yes, this candidate for all his record; his good, sound, conventional liberal record has a patina of that other life,” the novelist Norman Mailer wrote, “the second American life, the long electric night with the fires of neon leading down the highway to the murmur of jazz.”
Jack’s sexuality was real and dangerous, and while all the rest of the politicians nestled down at the Biltmore and other hotels, Jack was staying in a secret hideaway on North Rossmore Avenue, off in the long electric night, a continent away from Jackie, who had stayed on the East Coast. In his apartment, Jack heard not the murmur of jazz but the sweet laughter