Kuiper's place of business was outside Hilliard's district, but his voting residence was in it and he got a good amount of business from construction companies who had big and important projects in the region. He got more from the Commonwealth, and he considered those enough reason to warrant generous support of Dan Hilliard. He was one of the stalwarts, with a regular place at the big oak table for the 'dancing-school meetings' Hilliard and Merrion held in the second-floor office on High Street. Carl introduced Heck as a kindred spirit with some darned good ideas to expand the regional industrial base. Heck always kept his checkbook with him, too, Carl said.
In due course Hilliard led Heck by the hand through the whole rigamarole of negotiating State contracts, as he made a practice of doing with many businessmen he knew from his district and nearby anywhere in the Commonwealth, really, if they came to him asking for help, because in those days he was keeping open the possibility he might want to run for Congress some day. Under Hilliard's guidance Heck tuned his pitch to the purchasing agent in the office of the Secretary of State and the Governor's commissioner of Administration and Finance. He emphasized the ripple effect that expanded light industry offering steady employment for skilled workers would have on the economy of the area, disproportionately and dangerously dependent on _ i agriculture ever since the mills along the Connecticut River shut down.
Hilliard said he meant to make that the theme of his career. "The way I see it, taking care of the voters in the district means working to improve their future," he liked to say in the Grange and Legion halls out in the dark hills after summer had receded again, the fairs were over and the nights were starting to get cold. "The future of the men and women who get up every morning and go out and do a job, come home tired at night, hoping they've done something that day that'll mean a better future for themselves and their children. A better day tomorrow, and then an even better one, the day after that. To do that we have to bring industry back here. That's the only way, and so I'm determined to do it, make this place prosper again."
"What an utter and absolute load of shit that was," Merrion said one night in Hampton Pond, fatigued and hungry but still an hour away from a drink and a meal, sliding into the driver's seat of Hilliard's car he or another worker always drove between campaign stops, so that if the candidate's car hit someone or something, no one would be able to suggest it had happened because the candidate had been speeding to his next event, negligent or drunk. It had been maybe the second or the third time Merrion'd heard him unload that particular extravagance on an audience, but the first time he'd actually listened to it. Hilliard, also dead-tired, beat, had confounded him by snarling back: "That "utter shit" I happen to believe, you fuckin' asshole. Every last fuckin' word of it. Don't you ever sneer at it again."
Merrion had subsided, knowing Hilliard did not believe it, but wanted to, because after trying it out a few times, he knew it worked.
"Sings," was the way he put it: "That stuff just sings to them."
"The way I look at politics, and how it oughta work," Hilliard would say thoughtfully when the mood washed over him again and he felt the time evangelically right, embellishing the theme that sang, 'it seems to me that it should be the man who gets the job in Boston should remember where he comes from, and he should make sure that when he gets there and while he's serving you down there, he's still listening to what's being said out here. Still listenin', and still talkin' to the people, the people who said to him: "All right, now we've heard what you said, and we're sending you to Boston. Now let's see what you can do."
"So here I am now and I'm sayin': "All right, now what else can I do?
How can your government help you? And: How can you help, what can you do, to help me make our government work better?" See, we're just getting' started here. We're not close to finished yet."
"But Jesus Mary Joseph," Hilliard would say, when they were in the office by themselves with no listeners around, when it was someone like Heck Sanderson he was teaching to dance, 'it's awful hard helping a black Protestant bastard like this. Haskell Senior was a Know Nothing.
My father told me that. No Irish in his shop. "No Irish Need Apply."
His son takes after him, too. I'd bet on it. You swallow that stuff with your mother's milk, you grow up a bigot.
