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Travels In The United, Divided States

Fondly recalling several New Yorkers in his infantry unit in Korea, “guys with lots of colorful expressions,” Moose said he’d wanted to visit the city since he first watched the ball drop on New Year’s Eve in Times Square on TV. “All those people in one place. That always amazed me.” Happy to hear that his hotel, the hulking Marriott Marquis, is in the middle of the Crossroads of the World and looking forward to visiting Yankee Stadium (the Indians are in town), Moose still couldn’t believe he’d been chosen to be a delegate. “I’m small-town. I didn’t even know I was under consideration,” Moose said in his reedy, relentlessly modest drawl.

“You know, we’ve been Republicans here a long time, back before Robert Taft. We’re not rabid. But I like President Bush. I like that he takes a position and sticks to it,” said Moose. No policy wonk, Moose reeled off the names of failed or failing local businesses (“Dayton Iron Company . . . out of business . . . Allied Chemical . . . out of business . . . the Ammonia plant, used to employ 2,000, out of business”) and then concluded, apparently without irony, that “they say the economy is picking up.” As for Iraq, Moose said, “That’s slackened up . . . you don’t hear much about American casualties now.” I handed Moose a newspaper listing the names of twelve U.S. soldiers killed in recent days. Moose looked at the article grimly. “I hadn’t seen that. I’ve been real busy this week, over at the fair.”

By this Moose meant the Lawrence County Fair in Proctorville, which was where we went next, walking across the muddy tractor-pull patch to check out grand-champion hogs and steers. In election years, local politicians bid up the prices on the winners of the livestock contests. The Republicans had gone “sky-high” for the 4-H’s grand-champion hog. The champ steer was way outside the budget.

Moose was not averse to munching a funnel cake or two, but he went to the fair in his capacity as county party chairman, to keep tabs on his candidates. Most of them were there, seated at the pin-neat Republican booth, beside giant pictures of Bush and Cheney. There was Cheryl Jenkins, secretary of the local Republican club, Rod DePriest, candidate for county treasurer, and Richard Holt, a fresh-faced 24-year-old African-American Republican who was running for the legislature even though Lawrence County has a black population of less than 2 percent. Holt said he was running “for the experience.”

As soon as Moose arrived, every candidate, many of whom had known him for decades, emerged from behind the booth to shake his hand. “He’d never let on, but Moose is the littlest big man around here,” said Sharon Hager, running for Dutey’s old recorder job. Moose had taken her “under his wing,” said Sharon, towering over her benefactor. “In Lawrence County, Moose Dutey means something,” Sharon said.

That much was clear as we picked our way through the cow pies toward the Democratic booth. The Democrats, sitting around like a bowling team, had a picture of Kerry, but it was on the floor, upside down.

“Moose!” called out George Patterson, an imposing man in his fifties. The Democratic county commissioner, Patterson, a Lawrence County version of Philip Roth’s Swede Levov, was remembered, Moose said, as “one heck of a football player, maybe the best we ever had.” Still in Coal Grove, still best friends with Moose’s younger brother, Patterson said it wasn’t easy being a Democrat here. “Even my wife voted for Reagan.”

But this time it would be different. “I’m getting six this time, Moose.” By this Patterson meant Democrats would win half of the countywide offices. “Don’t be silly,” Moose said with grinning dismissal. “You’ll be lucky to get two, George, you know that.”

“Three?” Patterson asked, bluster diminishing.

“Two’s all I can give you. Not another stitch.”

The fact is, Moose said later, the Democrats might win only one, Patterson’s own race, for county commissioner. The Republicans were running Kenneth Ater, son of a well-known Lawrence County judge. Ater was putting up billboards, getting his name on pens and T-shirts. But he wasn’t going to beat George Patterson. “He’ll get beat real bad,” Moose said. Asked if he is ever wrong about such things, Moose winked and said, “Hardly never.”

Moose Dutey was a kick. I liked his self-effacing manner, and that he was secretly a killer of a local pol. I liked that he pronounced Bush’s name “Booo-ish.” So what if he didn’t believe in evolution? There is a place in my America for Moose Dutey. I hoped there was a place in his for me.

That night, Moose had been invited to hear Laura Bush call the upscale, hilltop Chesapeake, Ohio, home of Rick and Kathie Gue. “ ‘Goo,’ they pronounce it ‘goo,’ ” Moose said as we went up the long driveway, passing a sign saying THE GUES WELCOME YOU TO BUSH COUNTRY.

Kathie Gue, a thin, perky blonde woman in what looked to be her forties, was “real gung-ho for Bush,” Moose said. This seemed true as she greeted us by jumping up onto a chair and shouting “W.!” This was the cue for the 25 or so people, both young and old, many wearing elephant-shaped jewelry, to jump from lawn chairs arrayed in the Gues’ driveway and yell “Four more years!” This call-and-response was repeated as Mrs. Gue passed out slices of red-white-and-blue cake. Chowing down, Moose and I chatted with the head of the Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce, Bill Dingus.

Dingus, Dutey, and Gue: They didn’t have this back in Brooklyn. In the pleasant twilight air, even Laura Bush saying, “All of you know what makes George such a great president . . . It is his heart. I know his heart,” sounded faintly bearable.

It was only when the Gue family began speaking that things began to unravel. One of the Gues’ four strapping sons made reference to “thousands of babies murdered” since Roe v. Wade and called for everyone to “Hannitize the vote,” by making sure everyone they knew registered. This was seconded by Kathie Gue, who said how upset she was that “only 22.5 percent of Christians” voted in 2000 and how that “had to change.”

Then came Rick Gue, a salt-and-pepper-haired man dressed in a dark-blue suit, who, after thanking “the Lord” that he’d been able to raise “four Christian, conservative sons,” said, “If there is anything that really turns my stomach, it is a liberal man. The idea of raising children without Jesus Christ and conservative values as the centerpiece of family life is unthinkable to me.”

Earlier in the evening, as a visitor from a far-off metropolis, I’d been asked to speak and said how happy I was to be here, in the Ohio River Valley. Now I looked up to see if Rick Gue was staring at me or not. But by this time, he’d slapped a plastic George Bush mask onto his face as everyone jumped out of their lawn chair to shout “Four more years” yet again.

We rode back to Ironton, passing the rusting factories along the river, saying little. Finally, Moose, attempting to lighten the mood, offered that he sure was looking forward to visiting New York, to see my hometown, just as I’d seen his.

“I’ll be happy to see you,” I said. “But I won’t be happy to see Bush, or a lot of these people.” It just slipped out, what I thought, what most people in New York thought: that the Republicans were coming only because of 9/11, and how creepy it was that Bush would use this supreme heartbreak for his own personal gain. I told Moose that and immediately regretted it, because that wasn’t what I’d come to Ohio to say.

I could feel my heart, which I’d imagined to be an infinitely expanding canvas—like New York itself—close down. I had my America, and, sad to say, lots of Americans, people I liked, appeared not to fit inside it. Not now. Not in 2004.

Moose, noting my discomfort, said, “It is true that I feel more comfortable over at the fair. Those are the people I grew up with. But Lawrence County is filled with all kinds of good people, good Republicans. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That’s what the country’s all about.”

Couldn’t argue with that, I supposed, a few days later, back in the city. I’d done what I could, tried my best. Made nice. Now I can go to Central Park and scream for Bush to go home, like everyone else.