From there, we progressed in different directions.
Beau became a dock manager—the guy in the hard hat and white lab coat who toted a clipboard as he marked shipments headed for the deep freeze and had the pallet drivers sign paperwork. He worked from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and never got his nails dirty. He worked desk jobs all through college.
I unloaded the sixty-pound boxes from railcars filled from floor to ceiling, often working from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. It paid better and you earned overtime. I also worked at a local restaurant in Greenville, Delaware, as a waiter before being demoted to busboy, after which I was demoted to dishwasher. Later, I parked cars for a valet company and pushed a cart through the Senate office buildings to deliver photos taken with visitors.
Beau clearly made smarter choices right from the start.
In high school, Beau became known as “the sheriff.” Not only was he the designated driver, he was also the designated leader. Parents knew that as long as their kids were with Beau, they were safe. He would disqualify friends from a party because they drank too much; if Beau told you to stop drinking, you stopped drinking. He was the sole arbiter and everybody respected that. But he didn’t act like everybody’s mother; he was having as much fun as the rest of us. We all just knew that his judgment was intact while ours wasn’t.
Beau was beloved, by me most of all. He was an engaging, approachable, and striking figure, even back then. He was quick with a smile in a way that was impeccably authentic. He exuded a sense of complete confidence in who he was, whatever the situation.
People flocked to him, in any room, at every age. He was always full of energy, always needed to be doing something, whether it was playing sports or going out. He was captain of the high school tennis team and played varsity soccer. He knew early on he was headed into politics. It’s what he wanted to do. He was president of his class every year.
He was also funny as hell, often with a shocking sense of humor. He could be biting, but he was never mean. He was competitive but not obsessively so—he wasn’t a jackass. He was almost compulsive in the way he dressed, which later meant the same khakis or jeans, an Izod polo shirt or Brooks Brothers button-down, and a variation of the same loafers, lined up perfectly against a wall before he went to bed. He had the longest eyelashes to go with those striking blue eyes. He had great hair. He was that rare kid who other kids didn’t resent for his good looks. Instead, everyone felt better just by being around him.
He didn’t avoid conflict, didn’t back away from it, but he was slow to create it or engage in it. We argued as kids about kid things: whose turn it was on Atari, what TV show to watch, which side of the couch the other had to stay on. Later we’d argue about the best directions to take to get somewhere and what time we needed to leave. Beau was always late, his sense of time completely warped. If we had five minutes to be somewhere, and the location was twenty-five minutes away, he’d shrug and say, “We’ll make it.” It drove me insane.
More than anything else, Beau was fun. He could fashion a great time out of the incredibly mundane. He loved music and he loved to drive and he usually combined the two. He was nuts about the first car that Dad got for us, a 1972 green Caprice Classic convertible with white vinyl seats, which he picked up at Manheim’s Auto Auction for $2,100. He and I spent a lot of time riding in cars together, and he always had music on and he always sang along. We loved to listen to WXPN, then the free-form college radio station broadcast out of Penn. His musical tastes ran from the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills & Nash to early R.E.M. and the Hooters.
We were inseparable, often referred to by a single moniker: BeauAndHunt. We went together to every dance, every party. We double-dated, even for the prom. We had the same group of friends.
We thought alike but acted on our thoughts differently. If we went to the highest point of a cliff to jump off into a quarry’s water hole, our instincts were the same: do it. But I had no filter. I’d walk up, look down, and say let’s go. Beau would arrive at the same decision, but he was almost clinical. He’d inquire about the water’s depth, inspect for rocks. In the end, we’d jump together. Friends viewed us as different but not as separate. Two sides of the same coin.
The biggest difference between us: I drank and Beau didn’t.
CHAPTER FOUR
LOADED
The first drink I remember taking was a glass of champagne when I was eight. My dad had just been reelected to the Senate, in 1978, and I was at an election-night victory celebration at Archmere Academy in Claymont, where Dad went to high school and Beau and I would go later. I took the glass under a table and drank the whole thing. I didn’t know what I was doing, really—to me, champagne was just a fizzy drink. I wasn’t trying to get drunk; it would have been just as likely for me to wind up under the same table stuffing my face with a piece of cake. Someone must have looked under there at some point and spotted this eight-year-old with an empty champagne glass, acting kind of goofy. Next thing I remember, my grandfather took me outside, somewhere near the football field, to get some fresh air and straighten up.
The first drink I ever took knowing what I was doing—or, more accurately, knowing what I shouldn’t be doing—was in the summer between eighth
