Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

“I can’t—” said Hawkins. “I know,” said Tim, recovering as quickly as he could. “I know. You can’t have this.” In fact Fuller was thinking: No, what I can’t do is even tell you why I came across town—how it was the television picture I saw of you emptying Potter’s ashtray, looking gaunt and desperate, the circles under your eyes as dark as the ones under McCarthy’s. And because of the glimpse I caught of that cold-eyed prick Bob Kennedy, no different from the way he was at Harvard a half dozen years ago, glancing at you while you fussed over the ashtray, annoyed that this hardworking little fairy was cluttering up a piece of history in the making. That was what he wanted to say and couldn’t. But, yes, he did want Tim to stop crying now, and he was wishing he’d resisted the impulse to drive across town and get him. He was wishing he were right now back with the uncomplicated cracker kid he’d had the other night, a rawboned boy who no more considered it sick to mess around with another man than it might be to eat a bowl of ice cream between two helpings of cotton candy. He wished he weren’t putting them both through this.