May We Be Forgiven

We were supposed to become president ruling from the children’s table while never daring to dream of going beyond where our parents had been; never transcending.
    My heart sinks—here I am with these legal pads, the literal hand of my subject in mine, and I’m losing time, digressing.
    I begin again, staying focused on Nixon and his contemporaries and a period of enormous change in this country—the bridge between our prewar Depression-era culture and the postwar prosperous-American-dream America.

    F ROM R. M. N. BOX 345 LEGAL PAD #4 NOTES MARKED; GOOD AMERICAN PEOPLE.
    Wilson Grady is a man alone. Each morning Grady wakes with pride swelling in the center of his chest—he is filled with possibility, the hope that each day will be better than the last. He is a lucky fella, a fella of good fortune, crossing the plains, mile for mile, trailing a cloud of dust, his holey muffler so loud people think it’s a crop duster flying low. He sees folks in the distance looking on as he’s coming in—he jokes about it when he gets out of the car. “No surprises here,” he says. “She may be loud, but she’s what got me to you folks and I’m countin’ on her to get me back home at the end of the week.”
The lady of the house steps off the front porch and comes towards him—a woman home alone will never invite him in—that’s understood.
“Wilson Grady,” he says, extending his hand. “Thank you in advance for your time.”
If she likes him at all, she’ ll offer him a cup of coffee.
“That would be nice,” he says, whether or not he had another cup two miles down the road.
“How do you take it?” she asks and then before he can answer she adds, “We’re low on milk.”
“Black with sugar would be fine.”
He waits while she goes back inside. You can tell a lot about folks from their porch—Is it painted? Are there chairs, flowers? Curtains in the windows? Crocheted doilies under the lamps in the parlor? He has made himself a kind of a mental checklist.
The coffee is hot—the thick ceramic cup nearly burning Grady’s hands.
“You mentioned your children; how old are they?”
“William, the oldest, is eleven, Robert is nine, Caroline is eight, and Raymond is six.”
“One of the things I’ve got with me is an encyclopedia set, packed full of information, history, maps, things each and every one of us should know.” He leads the woman towards his car—carefully opening the trunk, which is outfitted like a traveling five-and-dime. “What I can tell you about these books is that every night when I have my supper I myself sit down with another letter of the alphabet—there is so much to learn. I’m on the letter ‘H’ right now—and getting a good education.”
“How much is it?”
“I’ ll be honest with you,” he says. “It’s not cheap. The 26 letters of the alphabet are combined into 13 volumes and it comes along with an atlas of the world. Makes a heck of a Christmas gift and it’s something all the kids can use—even the little fella will be reading soon.”
“Do you have children, mister?”
“Not yet—but someday. I’ve got my eye on the girl I want to marry, she just doesn’t know it yet.”
The woman smiles.
“I could let you have the full set for forty dollars.”
She nods. “That’s quite a lot.”
“It is,” he says. “It’s an investment, a lifetime of knowledge.”
“Do you by chance have an iron?”
“I do”—taking a moment to find it. “Steam electric,” he says, carefully taking it out of the box to show her. “I got one of these for my mother and she says it does a beautiful job.”
“How much does that go for?”
“Six dollars and forty-nine cents.”
“And what about penny candy?” she asks shyly.
He laughs. “Don’t think you’re the first person this week who’s asked—I have peppermint balls, lemon drops, red and black licorice, and, if you’re looking for something fancy, I’ve got a couple of boxes of See’s chocolates.”
“I had one of those once,” she says, “it was heaven on earth.”
“Chocolatiers to the stars,” he says.
She laughs and reaches into her dress pocket. “How about I take the iron and fifty cents’ worth of candy.”
Grady works door to door 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. If the husband is home, Grady makes it a point to seem interested in whatever it is the fella wants to show him—it’s always something—a project he’s got going in the barn out back or in his basement workshop. Grady finds it sad—all the