the stout lady reporter was there , needing to know who the democrats would nominate for the presidency in 1976 ; there was a death-eyed farmer in biballs with a picture of his son , a smiling young man in air force blues , who had been reported mia over hanoi in 1972 , he needed to know if his son was dead or alive ; a young woman who looked like sarah with tears on her smooth cheeks , holding up a baby with a hydrocephalic head on which blue veins were traced like runes of doom ; an old man with his fingers turned into clubs by arthritis ; others .