The Politician by Andrew Young Read Free Book Online Page B

was late and she was already in bed, she told me to just come on into the bedroom and put the suitcases in the closet while her husband went to look in on the kids. “It’s all right, Andrew,” she would say. “You’re family.”
    It was a warm but also surprising statement. I had worked for the senator for only a few months, and my direct contact with Mrs. Edwards couldn’t have added up to more than a few hours total time. But they were exceptional people, and being with them made you feel you were putting your time and energy into a noble cause. We
were
trying to make things better for people, to make the country and the world a better place. And because this kind of mission couldn’t be squeezed into a nine-to-five box, I saw the Edwards family in their home and at odd hours. If that didn’t make me family, it made me something more than an employee, and it felt pretty good.
    Even so, I resisted when the Edwardses told me to address them by their first names. For some reason—maybe it was to remind myself that we would never be on equal footing or that he might be the next JFK—I would always call him “Senator” and her “Mrs. Edwards.” I did this even on the night I dropped the senator at his home and got an emergency phone call before I had reached my own house, asking me to come back right away.
    When I got there, I found the senator and Mrs. Edwards dressed for bed and laughing. It turned out the kids had jumped into bed with them and the whole thing had crashed to the floor. They said they needed my help putting it back together. I tried to respect Mrs. Edwards’s privacy—her nightgown was a bit revealing—while helping her husband get the slats and rails in place, lift up the box spring, and seat the mattress. In my mind, it was an oddly intimate and personal chore, but there seemed to be almost no limit to what the Edwardses might ask of me or the degree to which they would let me into their lives.

INSTANT SUCCESS

    B
orn off of East Africa in the middle of August 1999, Dennis wandered north and west to the Caribbean, where he flexed his muscles and became a full-blown hurricane. He reached the North Carolina coast on September 1, lashing the state with dangerous winds and heavy rains. The sense of relief that came with the return of the sun didn’t last very long, as the storm actually came back a week later to dump as much as eighteen inches on towns at the shore. Much of what wasn’t flooded the first time got washed away with the second pass, including our wedding cake.
    The cake was at the Holiday Inn Resort at Wrightsville Beach, where Cheri and I held our wedding reception in a moment of quiet weather on September 11. Months of planning produced a nearly perfect ceremony and celebration. We were married in a historic church, surrounded by family and friends, and walked outside to fountains, a horse-drawn carriage, rice, and the sounds of the church bells. It was a beautiful day, but the true meaning of it all didn’t hit me until we were on our honeymoon in St. Lucia. Marrying Cheri made me happier than I had ever been. I had gotten the girl of my dreams, and my tumultuous past seemed far away.
    While we were in the Caribbean, North Carolina went through a nightmare as another hurricane, Floyd, slammed into the coast near Cape Fearon September 16 at three in the morning. Floyd packed winds over a hundred miles an hour and brought a ten-foot ocean surge that flooded towns up and down the coast. He dumped so much rain that rivers across the state overflowed their banks and flooded thousands of homes. Fifty-three people would die from storm-related causes, and the state would suffer more than $3.7 billion in property damage. More flooding came as a series of lesser storms swept through, and by the end of the month there was hardly a dry spot in the eastern part of the state. Cheri and I watched in horror from our honeymoon paradise as CNN showed footage of the steeple of the church