The King is Dead - Jim Lewis

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a few minutes, the door opened and in came a small slight man with a great big round head, and hair and eyebrows so white he might have been an albino; but he was merely old, and stripped clean of color by the speed with which it happened. Walter stood; the senator shook his hand softly and motioned him to sit again, taking a winecolored leather chair himself and drawing in a long breath.

      Walter Selby … said the senator, gazing at him frankly. You’re a big fellow, aren’t you? That’s good. I like that. He took a moment to look at the papers on his desk. Walter Selby: I’ve been hearing about you. Walter nodded, and then there was silence, but for the airs of the house around them. At length the senator spoke again. Do you know how far it is from Memphis to Sugar Creek? he said.

      About five hundred miles.

      Four hundred and seventy-five, said the senator. That’s a long way. A lot of highway. Our truckers are getting shaken down all along it. We have to do something about that. We’ve got to help the farms a little, as much as we can. We’ve got some classrooms with forty-five children in them, and others with just two or three. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. We’ve got utilities up in arms about the TVA, and people still don’t have power in some parts of the state. No power. No lights, no refrigeration, no radio to listen to after dinner. There are people who believe that the only solution to our problems is World Government.—The senator paused to taste the words.—World Government. Over there in Memphis there’s a group of businessmen, meet in secret every Thursday night at the Badger Room to discuss the establishment of a … World Government. There’s another group, meets in secret every Monday at noon in the back room of a luncheonette on Union Avenue, to discuss how to thwart the first.—The senator held his hands up in an attitude of prayer and pushed them against each other. You see? he said. Two opposite and equal forces. I’ve taken them both aside and told them how much I appreciate what they’re doing. Told them, I can’t come right out and endorse you, of course, but you have my tacit support and my gratitude. And they do. As long as they keep pushing against each other, they can’t push against anyone else.—Here the senator shook his head sadly. Sweet Jesus, the state’s crawling with lunatics. Half my job is keeping them howling at the moon, so they don’t start howling at me. I was talking to a doctor down at Vanderbilt the other day, man working on an immunization program. A good program, too, and I’m going to get behind him. Then I asked him: When are you boys going to come up with a vaccine for foolhardiness? That would solve about half our troubles right there.

      Walter smiled slightly.

      All right, said the senator. Let’s talk.—He leaned back in his chair, paused, and then leaned forward, until Walter could smell his clean breath and barbershop aftershave. I saw what you did in that campaign. I watched you pretty closely. You’ve got your war record but you’re not riding it all over the state. You’ve got family ties here from a long ways back. I know all about it, don’t you worry. Nothing to be ashamed of. There’s probably a little colored blood in all of us.

      What? said Walter.

      Old Lucy Cash, she did what any woman in her position would have done.

      The name had come from so far back that Walter had to pause and think.

      You didn’t know, did you? the senator said softly.

      That’s my great-grandmother.

      She was a colored woman from Chicago, said the senator. High yellow, a lovely girl. She wanted to pass, so she came down here.

      Walter shook his head, looked down, and studied his blood—the same blood now, but it felt burnt. Where did you get this from? he said.

      Well, you know, I looked into things, said the senator. I wanted to know who I was talking to. The important point is that it’s not important. Do you see?

      Walter nodded and said, No. A pause. No, of course it’s not important. I bet half the people in Tennessee have some Negro blood in them somewhere.

      That’s right, said the senator. That’s what I’m saying. But I don’t think people are quite ready to hear that yet. Not today, anyway. Maybe tomorrow.

      Maybe, said Walter. Tomorrow. Is that why you and I are meeting?

      Oh, that’s just a little part of it, said the other man. We have so much work to do, you and I.

      I suppose maybe we do, said Walter.

      I can tell you’re a virtuous man, and a practical man, and an eloquent man. You represent the future of Tennessee, and you carry it well. One of these days you’re going to be an important figure in this state, perhaps even the country as a whole.—The senator paused and gestured needlessly to the papers on his desk. I’ve been talking to the state party chair, going to dinners all through the wards. I have solid support. I’m going to run for governor, and I think I’m going to win. But I need you, Selby. I need you to go down to Memphis for me and watch what goes on. Keep an eye out, keep Crump’s men at bay. I need you to write some speeches for me, to get these people out to vote. So, said the senator, and he lifted his head and smiled. What can I give you to make you sign on?

      Later, Walter would wonder what Nicole was doing at just that instant, what beauty of girl-in-body she was performing on the stage of her hometown. But he wasn’t thinking of her when the senator first charmed his loyalty from him, even as an ideal to come. He wasn’t thinking of the people, he wasn’t thinking of history: there would always be room for the state and time for the century. He was thinking of the senator, and the magic he’d wrought from the past, making Walter a different man, though in no way he could tell. The news of the color in his blood was meaningless; but the way it had been delivered was a little miracle, a perfect manifestation of knowledge in the service of authority, and authority as guarantor of knowledge: a system sufficient unto itself, which the senator had put on display just to show that he could. He was an inevitable man, and his campaign would be steered by the stars. Walter shook the senator’s hand that evening and began his phone calls and visits the following afternoon.

      In November the senator became the governor, and Walter became his aide—his speechwriter, his adviser and confidant, his bully when a bully was needed, and his eyes in the west. There was an office in Nashville and another in Memphis, with a room or two in Knoxville and Chattanooga. You can have Memphis, my perfect man, the Governor had said to him, as he stared and smiled up at Walter from his seat behind his desk. But I want you to beware, for me and for yourself.—He spread his hands, as he did whenever he was about to take a rhetorical liberty. These are parlous days, he murmured. Women and children cower in doorways whilst crime runs free in the streets; there are Communists all the world over, and our enemies come to us disguised as brothers; the South is bearing a New World, and the midwives in Washington have filth upon their hands. And the poor can’t bear their burdens any more. Et cetera, he said. Et cetera.—The Governor smiled again, now more broadly, with the delight of a small man who’s just been challenged by a big man he knows he can beat. Just help me keep these sons of bitches off my back, he whispered, so I can get some work done around here.

      Didn’t Walter walk in Tennessee? And didn’t he take every stride with confidence and pleasure? You can rely on me, he said.

       20

      He had stories to tell Nicole, and he told them well. Men and women he had met along the way, histories veiled and exposed. The Governor had served his first term without reducing the state to ruins as his opponents had predicted, and for that he was elected again. Then the bosses had started coming around: local power brokers, ward captains, industrialists, preachers of distinction. Each time he finished one anecdote she asked for another, and each time he complied. What had been said in the room, that made the electric utility keep prices down until spring. Who was sent to the Baptist ministers, to convince them to allow trucks to carry cases of liquor on the Sabbath. Who got the contract to build the airport runways, in exchange for what contribution to which of the Governor’s causes.

      Tell me another, and I’ll give you another kiss. It was a warm October

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