Primary Colors (4 page)

"New York for artificial sweetener," I said. "And sometimes you'd get one or two. Someone would wake up feeling honorable. Or guilty. Most of the time, there was no percentage in it for them. Why ask for trouble? It was all pretty predictable in any case. We'd win. Then we'd be gutted in the Senate; we'd settle for their version. You know, I got to see Donny O'Brien with his palms raised more times than I'd ever need to. I could wad his palms by the time it was over. We'd walk through the rotunda to his office, past all the tourists lit up with history--and I'd always be thinking about the chasm between politics and history. But the Lark would just be out there, making himself available to the civilians, into his cybernetic 'Good to see you' maneuvers." Susan laughed. "Yeah, I've seen him do that," she said. "It's like Stanton's mom, working the slot machines in Vegas. Automatic. Once you see something like that, it's tough to get past it. You know what? First time I saw Larkin doing that, governors' conference or something, I had this . . . wicked feeling"--she was giggling now--"that he made a conscious decision to emphasize the 'you' rather tha
n t
he 'see' because he wanted to seem more . . . what? Natural?" She slapped herself on the forehead. "God. Poor guy."

"Not so poor," I said. "He is the majority leader."

"But he wants more, and he'll never understand why he won't get there," she said. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'd guess Donny O'Brien is the exact opposite--surprised he got as far as he did, black Irish to the Senate, and then leader? Jeez. Had to be just thrilled to be there, right?"

"Sweet man," I agreed. "And clever. We'd go the office and he'd offer the Lark a Harp. Lark would ask for mineral water. He wouldn't want to say Perrier in front of Donny. And, of course, Donny would use that. The tip-off was, we must have gone there a dozen times over the course of a few years, and Donny always offered the Harp--just to start him off on the defensive."

"And your guy never took the beer, to see if he'd get a better deal?" Susan asked.

"Amazing," I said. "I always wondered about that. He didn't even have to go for a beer."

"Right." She was giddy. "He coulda really rocked Donny's world--asked for a Diet Coke, a 7UP . . . a club sandwich." It was late, but I hadn't expected the irreverence, the humor, the love of the game. She was breathtaking. "So what, then? How did Donny let him down?" "He'd go up with the palms. 'Lark, this is what we've got. This is what we can do. I owe you one, buddy. What can I say?' " I stopped. I hadn't quite caught the fullness of Donny's Irish grease--he cast a spell, as all the good ones do. "In the end, it didn't mean anything anyway. We'd take it back to our side, renegotiate the lulus, pass the damn thing. And then, as we knew from the start, the White House would veto. And we'd celebrate our great moral victory: we forced a veto."

"That was something," she said.

"Not enough. It was even worse on the stuff that had to pass--the budget."

"So you dropped out," she said. "You gonna drop out on us?" Very smooth. She was closing the deal.

Okay: "Have I dropped in yet?"

"Say you have."

"Well, I was always curious about how it'd be," I began. "How the whole process--yeah, I guess the country, too--would work with someone who actually cared about . . . Well, y'know, I wonder: It couldn't always have been the way it is now, the feeling of--of blab. Swamp gas. Stagnation. There had to be times when it was better. The other guys had it with Reagan, I guess. But, to me, he was just floating with the flow. He didn't try for anything hard. . . ."

"And a good thing, too," she said.

"Yeah, I guess . . . The thing is, I'd kind of like to know how it feels when you're fighting over . . . y'know--historic stuff. I'm not like you. I didn't have Kennedy. I got him from books, from TV. But I can't get enough of him, y'know? Can't stop looking at pictures of him, listening to him speak. I've never heard a president use words like 'destiny' or 'sacrifice' and it wasn't bullshit. So: I want to be part of something, a moment, like that. When it's real, when it's history. I . . ." I had let things slip a little bit. That wasn't good. I was interviewing for a job where my primary responsibility would be to not let things slip. "Goddamn," I said. "My, my, my," I said--just like my father, and just like his father, the Reverend Harvey Burton, the man Susan Stanton had praised. Embarrassing, to make this into Black History Month; unprofessional. But I saw: she was with me. It was okay. Still, I had to button it up. "I feel like--a real jerk--even saying that sort of thing," I said. "Maybe we're not living in a time when those kinds of dreams are possible, or even appropriate. But it's late and you asked, and there it is."

"No, you're right," she said. "It's good. History's what we're about, too. What else is there?" Then, "Sleepy?"

She led me into the living room. There was a pillow and a blanket folded on the couch: "Your quarters," she said, patting me on the back, squeezing my arm, drifting off toward the bedroom. I tossed the blanket, lay back on the pillow. It was light now; there were birds, and a piney breeze through the screens. Summer camp. Uncle Charlie came padding through, wiry taut in a sleeveless T-shirt and boxers. And tattoos: "Momma" with a heart on one arm, on the other a sly devil with a pencil-thin mustache--like his--and the words "Made Me Do It."

"Hey," he said. "Coffee?"

Chapter
II

Henri, you think its possible for a black girl to look like Winona?" Richard Jemmons asked.

"Get lost."

"Oh yeah, I forgot. You don't like black girls much."

"Fuck you."

"But then again, there's that Mexican girl in scheduling, Maria Whatsis--she's got the hair and the mouth. So if a Mexican can look like Winona, then maybe . . ."

"Richard, you are diseased." And he was. He was manic, obsessive, very strange-looking, thin as a whippet--his body and all his features were narrow, thin lips, thin nose, dark thinning hair, which made his thick, black-frame eyeglasses seem enormous; everything about him was sharp except his eyes, which were opaque. He never seemed to be looking straight at you, never quite took you in--and that quality, a vehement opacity, defined him. Every conversation was a monologue, more or less. He was an explosive talker, though not always comprehensible--all honks and bleats, mutters and half-swallowed imprecations. He was also, reputedly, the best political strategist in the party. We hadn't seen much evidence of that yet. He wasn't zoned in yet. But he was a trip. He had the eccentricity part of the program down
pat. Having seen Heathers in a hotel room somewhere, he was on a Winona Ryder jag. He called every woman in the office Winona. Of all the people we'd taken on that fall--and they were legion (it is amazing how many people start showing up when one of these things gets rolling)--I liked Richard best. He had come down to Mammoth Falls in early October, and spent the weekend riding around with Stanton in the governor's Bronco, on the cell phone to Ohio, where he was in the midst of a hot special election for the Senate. Stanton didn't offer him a job, either. They just rode around, the governor listening to country music--and to Richard, working his campaign long-distance. They hit all the hot spots. Fat Willie's Barbecue. The Misty Hill lounge. Uncle Slim's. Aunt Bertha's Soul Shack. Then down to Grace Junction, to Momma's place. Momma, of course, loved Richard. He didn't even say hello; just scooped her up in his arms and said, "How did such a little, bitty woman have such a big ol' redneck sonofabitch of a boy?"

That night, after take-in chicken--Momma never cooked; she ordered--and after Richard stopped using the cell phone, he and the governor sat on the screen porch till three in the morning and held what Richard later called "the Mommathon." They talked family stuff. Family stuff was mostly Momma stuff with the governor, of course. Richard, on the other hand, had more family than he could keep track of--seven brothers and sisters, innumerable cousins, uncles, and aunts; he worshiped them all. His daddy, who was gone now, was a combination justice of the peace, postmaster, store clerk. "Daddy dint say much," Richard would say, "but he said it all." His momma--well, she had been touched by God. She was blind. She was beautiful. She had lost one leg from diabetes, and was in danger of losing another. "And a complete, drop-dead, hold-the-phone, ever-lovin' genius," Richard would say. He couldn't talk about Momma without misting over. He and the governor had several good cries during the Mommathon. At one point, Richard smashed a lawn table out of frustration over his mother's lot; the governor hugged him and sang "You Are My Sunshine," which, he--inevitably--pointed out, was written by another Southern governor and was probably "the most American goddamn song I can think of." They were locked for life after that.

The thing I loved about Richard was, he was overtly race-conscious. I took it as a piece of performance art, a running commentary on the mortal prissiness of most white people.

Most white people do this patronizing number: They never disagree with you, even when you are talking the worst sort of garbage. It is near impossible to have a decent, human conversation with them. They are all so busy trying not to say anything offensive--so busy trying to prove they aren't prejudiced--that they freeze up, get all constricted, formal. They never just talk. This may be more true in the political community, where everyone is hyperconscious of perceived offenses and consequences, than it is in real life. But it is hard to be black, and in politics, and not disdain these fools.

There are two subgroups, however, that are tolerable: There are those who are truly color-blind--like Jack and, to a lesser extent, Susan. They will argue with you, yell at you, treat you like a human. And then there are the occasional miracles like Richard Jemmons, who just lay it all out there.

"Lacoste, face it, you are a honky," he would say. He called me Henri Lacoste because I'd gone to Hotchkiss. I was a preppy, an elitist. "Y'all ain't but one-half black--and that's the best part of you. Enables you to intimidate the palefaces, 'specially lib-blabs, and work that voodoo sexual shit with white girls. Ins probably blacker'n you are. I got some slave in me, somewhere. I can feel it."

"Richard, you are the whitest person in America."

"Richard Nixon is the whitest person in America. Although, second thought, maybe not. He's got the rage, right? He's a poor boy, right? Someone's gotta be whiter than Nixon. . . . Ahhhh, whattabout Mondale? Walter Mondale is a fucking albino of the human spirit. Y'knowwhattamean? Can't get much whiter than Norwegian. Though French, Lacoste, is pretty damn close. Too damn close for comfort. Right? You listenin' to me? Right?"

Richard came and went in the early months. He'd pop in for a day or two, then disappear. This was the heavy Winona period and it almost got him into serious trouble. He was particularly obsessed with Jennifer Winona--Jennifer Rogers, one of the press muffins--who really did have the look. He was hitting on her nonstop, but she wa
s v
ery cool; she could handle him. Which made him all the more crazy--Winona, he imagined, would be able to handle him, too. The day the Ozio business began, he and I were sitting in the litde office. This was our first headquarters, a former Olds dealership just down from the state capitol--a big open space, plate-glass windows, with small offices, including my digs, in the back. Richard was in the ratty chair, jiggling, looking over into the big room, not paying much attention to me--I was talking Midwest fund-raising, looking for Ohio money or something--when he spotted Jennifer over at the copy machine. He launched himself in her direction, and I could see hint fluttering around her, jabbering, arms windmilling, a spastic Lothario. Everyone else saw it too, but pretended not to notice--everyone knew it was Richard, and Richard was nuts. But he was really on her, and I began to think that maybe I should distract him, pull him back. He was talking about his hotel room. "Got everything, y'know. Got movies. Got room service. Winona, it's like, like . . . paradise. Y'all come back there, we gonna walk the snake."

"The snake?" she snorted. "More like a worm, I'll bet. In fact, an enigma: an asshole can't have a penis."

"An enigma? It's a fucking python," he shouted. "You don't believe me? You don't believe me?" He was unzipping his pants. I was rushing over toward him, saying, "Hey, hey."

But it was too late. He had it out.

"Hmmm," Jennifer said, not flinching, looking right at it. "I've never seen one that . . . old before."

Richard turned fuchsia. He zipped up and dashed out of there. There were cheers, applause. ennifer curtsied. I took her arm, walked her back into my office and closed the door. "You okay?" I asked. She nodded.

"You've got his life in your hands now, you know," I said. "Don't worry," she said. "I just hope he's worth it."

"Don't we all," I said. "But you're okay?"

She leaned over, took my chin in her hand and kissed me on the cheek. "Very kind of you to ask," she said. Jesus.

At which point, of course, a knock on the door. "Henry, you got a visitor," said Eric, another of the muffins.

"Who?"

"You ain't gonna believe it."

"Cut the shit, Eric. Who--" But I had swung open the door and now I saw: Jimmy Ozio was sitting atop a desk in the middle of the Big Room, taking a very intent look around. He was a big guy, curly hair, handsome in a lucky kind of way. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt, gray tie. We shook hands. His was a cruncher.

"So, what brings you to Mammoth Falls?"