Spinning Dixie (22 page)

Indy Four and Mickey joined Claudine and me on a horseback riding trail. Indy led the way south on a quarter horse, Mickey on a small appaloosa. I became excited, thinking we were finally going to see in daylight what went on in that glowing valley, but when we neared its approximate area, Indy veered sharply in another direction.

“I like this horse, Mickey,” Indy said. “He doesn't trot, he
shleps
.”

Mickey threw his head back in one of the bigger bursts of laughter that I had ever heard from him. “Where'd you get that word, Indy?”

“I was on a charity board years ago with a guy named Rifkin who was in the music business in Nashville. I picked up a few words from him…. You know, Mickey, I'm aware from the papers that there's trouble up north.”

“Like you wouldn't believe,” Mickey said. “And not just in the gambling business. There's been talk in the legislature about turning Jersey into two states, North and South. You know all about that, don't you, Indy?”

“Studied it all my life. Know more about why we lost and why they won than anybody, I imagine.”

“Maybe you could teach me something. All I know is why I think the war really started. Your war, the Civil.” Mickey gestured, adamant. “Why would, say, a banker up in Philly really care about how you conducted your business down south? He may not like slavery, but is he going to give up his fortune to fight you for a moral reason?”

“'Course not. It was about money,” Indy said. “In the South, we had slaves. Had ninety-nine of 'em right here. In the North, industry was booming. You had to rely on immigrants. You didn't pay 'em much, but you paid 'em, right?”

“Well, sure.”

“We gave our slaves good treatment, but we didn't give them cash. My granddad, who grew up here, too, told me—and I believe him—that the North was worried about competition pure and simple. You know where the antislavery movement started? England. Yes, sir, they saw their riffraff—us—building a superpower. Then they started on the morality line.”

“Well, to be honest, Indy,
slavery
—”

“I know, I know. The North didn't like it, but they didn't like blacks much, either. In New York, whites killed a hundred blacks in a riot. It's not like the South started slavery. It was the Spaniards. A half million slaves were brought over and they grew to four million by the Civil War just by, you know, populating.”

I had never seen anyone cut Mickey off the way Indy had. Mickey came back, but with a concession.

“And the slave traders, weren't they Northerners?”

“Right. Now here's the point that nobody up North gets. With what you're going through with gambling, you answer this for me. How would you feel if Utah—okay, bad example—say, Vermont started telling you how to run your business in Atlantic City. You've been there how long?”

“Seventy years, my whole life almost.”

“Right, and all of a sudden, Vermont's making all of this money with industry: Do this, do that. Now you know what the Civil War was really about. The North gets rich with its industry and starts with a swagger. The big trouble came after my cousin, James, the president, annexed the whole West.”

“Oh, is that all,” Mickey said. “I thought I rocked the boat when I sent a guy to scout out a desert town in Nevada for gambling.”

Indy let out a guffaw. “You see, when the country moved west, the North said, ‘Industry's the way of the future.' The South says, ‘Nope, we're gonna farm it with slaves.' Do you have plans for gambling that go beyond Atlantic City?” Indy didn't look at Mickey when he said this, he just smirked, I don't know, like Al Capone. The teddy bear.

Mickey nodded. “Legalized gambling will be nationwide soon enough. Everybody'll be into it. Government. Fortune Five Hundred companies. Once they run the Italian and Jewish boys out, it'll be moral all of a sudden.”

“Ah, slavery was a red herring, too,” Indy declared. “It's what Lincoln used for moral cover, to get the Union upset enough to send their sons into battle for something other than machines and taxes. About sixty percent of America's exports were cotton. We had a way of life!”

“Indy, whether our ways were right or wrong, at least we had ways,” Mickey said. “Now, there are no ways. Everything's okay. If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now, how would you have saved the South?”

Indy drew his horse closer to Mickey's and leaned over conspiratorially. Claudine and I advanced as the men approached a hill.

“We didn't need to win, Mickey, we just needed to keep the North out. There's a difference. We didn't want Pennsylvania! We just didn't want Pennsylvania
in
Tennessee. Slavery would have died itself within twenty years, wasn't a thing that could have been done about that, and shouldn't have. The problem was that we wanted to expand west and were in no position to take it. Sometimes you have to go with the best of your bad options.”

“My people fought the Romans a long time ago,” Mickey said. “Didn't do so hot. I figured, ‘Why not cut 'em in this time,' so I did. Now it's 1980, and I'm still having trouble with the Romans. That's how clever I am.”

Claudine trotted beside Mickey, which uncharacteristically emboldened him to talk. Beauty makes us all stupid.

“Such schemes we had, Claudine!” The Pine Barrens were perfect for making liquor, Mickey told the rapt Polks. The pines had had a population of ten people per square mile during Prohibition. Outside of the pines, the average in Jersey was about a thousand people per square mile.

“That's big trouble, my Polk friends.”

Beneath the Pine Barrens was one of the biggest freshwater reservoirs in America. “Fresh water!” Mickey shouted, letting go of the reins. “Not saltwater like in the ocean. Not polluted water like in the Delaware. Perfect for quality liquor. Do you disapprove?”

“Heck, no,” Indy said. “My daughter-in-law likes to talk about the Polk statesmen and generals, but she's not too keen on the gamblers and rogues that came before.”

“The later generations find those facts inconvenient,” Mickey said.

“Indeed they do. The Polks had duels. My grandfather killed a sheriff down in Texas. Will Polk, of course, gambled to win this property. Charlie Polk before him led night raids to kill Indians that were a threat to his property. Another Charlie Polk was a bit of a pirate. He sold bad hooch to Indians and scammed anybody they passed in the forests of Kentucky. Back then they were called ‘Indian traders.' You know what they'd be called today?”

“Yeah, I do,” Mickey said. “Mobsters, gangsters, Mafia. Everybody who makes it in America had to use a little muscle or a twist,” Mickey volunteered. “We needed the Pine Barrens real bad. We needed to keep people away. We paid the pineys money to stay away from the stills, but sometimes a smart aleck would sneak on by. That's when we got this big monster costume from a friend who worked backstage at the 500 Club. It looked like a giant moose with a wolf's head. Two guys had to get in the costume, one on the other's back. We dragged dead deer carcasses around the still so it would stink to hell. We started telling stories about the mutant thirteenth son of an old woman in the forest named Leeds. Scared the crap out of the pineys.”

“Pop,” I said, “are you saying that you dreamed up the Jersey devil?”

“Dreamed up? We put him in business! But you can't make people believe something they don't already believe. Never forget that.”

Indy, again: “You know, the real money the Polks made was made in hemp. Rope. The Polks used their friends in government to get all the contracts for the rope that the U.S. Navy bought. We supplied half the rope—
half
—that the whole navy used.”

“Geez, what happened?” Mickey asked.

Indy Four squinted philosophically into the sun. When the Civil War came around, the Polks refused to sell hemp to the Union Navy. The South didn't have a navy so there was no business in the Confederate fight.

Indy sat straight up in his saddle. “We could have cut a deal, but we didn't. We were faithful to our way of life and we paid for it dearly. When my grandfather, one of the Immortal Six Hundred, returned to Rattle & Snap, he told terrible stories about Sherman's March. He was stunned to see our place still standing. Spent years digging around this property for gold that some of Nathan Bedford Forrest's troops supposedly buried around here for use in fighting the North.” Thank God George had been in that Mason brotherhood.”

Mickey began grousing. “The Pilgrims landed the
Mayflower
at Plymouth Rock. You know why? They ran out of beer. One of the guys kept a journal. There was about to be a mutiny over beer unless the captain pulled over. And what does the
Mayflower
crowd do a few hundred years later? Prohibition!”

“Hey, Mickey, you shouldn't complain. You did well by Prohibition.”

“You know something, Indy, you're right. Tonight, we'll drink to hypocrisy.” The old men, to Claudine's and my bewilderment, laughed for the remainder of the ride like two teenagers who had toilet-papered somebody's lawn.

When we returned to the mansion, Indy ceremoniously took us into his study and produced the diary of his cousin, General James H. Polk, who had been the first U.S. commander to hammer into Germany under Patton's command. General Polk had written:

“When Jim, returned from World War II, the photos he showed me of the Nazi concentration camps sickened me. Those sights changed him forever. Jim liberated some of those camps.”

I got goosebumps and shuddered.

“I, myself, was unable to serve in this war,” Indy squeezed out a confession. “They said I didn't have the right vision.” He tapped on his lenses. In addition to Claudine, I had fallen in love with her grandfather, brother, and groundskeeper. A spell indeed.

Mickey excused himself, holding a handkerchief over his face. When I saw him next, his eyes were red.

“The dust from that damned volcano” was all he said.

At dusk, the straw-haired bandleader urged the crowd to clap their hands. He began singing a John Denver song called “Thank God I'm a Country Boy.” While clapping her hands, Deedee (wearing a gold-sequined formal gown) turned to Petie and said, “Did you know that John Denver smoked the hemp plants that he grew in his own backyard?
Marijuana,
” she added helpfully.

“Why, no,” Petie said.

“It's true,” Deedee insisted. “He admitted it. Whoever heard of such a thing, growing hemp in your own backyard? You know, they turn it into reefer?”

Poor Petie nodded.

Tonight's event was an annual affair, held for no reason that anyone could remember. Hundreds from Maury County were invited to listen to music, dance, and sample local delicacies. Fortunately for the locals, Deedee had run out of lox.

As everyone clapped, a mammoth of a man with a burning red face, big nostrils, and a Marine jaw ambled through the revelers and kissed Petie on the cheek. She seemed happy to see the man, but he didn't strike me as the kind of person someone like Petie would like. As thick as he was across the middle, he had spindly little arms that sprung awkwardly from his short-sleeved Oxford cloth shirt. His legs were funny, too—twigs wrapped in a thin layer of khaki.

J.T. stood right behind the big man. J.T. wore a seersucker sport jacket. He looked like a swollen Kennedy. Ever the stateswoman, Petie made the introductions. The giant was Smoky Hilliard, J.T.'s father. J.T. stood back as his father slid his hand beside Mickey's and breathed down on him. A fresh cut wound was on J.T.'s cheek where I had struck him with the belt. Claudine, an appropriate but maddening expression of concern across her face, inquired about the injury. He attributed it to a football, judging from a throwing gesture. Mickey was polite, as was Deedee, who was still unaware of the attack on me. Indy Four shook Smoky's hand cautiously.

I had been warned. Indy Four had suggested that J.T. and I forge some kind of tolerable peace that would hold out for the summer. I wasn't happy about it, but saw no alternative. Mickey's arrival had been a bonus, of course, and Smoky Hilliard, through Indy Four, had requested a “word” with us.

Smoky squinted at Mickey as Mickey bobbed his head, too much like an immigrant tailor for my liking. Smoky's was a look of disappointment, not menace.
This
is Mickey Price, the squint said? I knew that Smoky knew who Mickey was. After what had happened on the street in Columbia, Smoky Hilliard probably did what we did—checked out his adversary. But
this
Lilliputian is the great bootlegger who once told Al Capone to stay west of the Alleghenies?

“Mr. Price,” Smoky bellowed, “I'd appreciate nothing more than to spend a few moments with you when you are able.”

“Fine,” Mickey said. “In a few minutes, if that's all right.”

“You betcha!”

The difference in the size of the men was outrageous, as if two different space civilizations had come to meet on a neutral planet in the
Star Wars
franchise. Smoky wistfully turned his head to take in the mansion, then plunged, hoglike, back into the crowd, where people greeted him in the same manner that they would greet a presidential fart—with a combination of awe and revulsion. J.T. followed his father, looking far less menacing than he had in our earlier encounters. There was something soft about him when he was next to Smoky. He was like a lot of the rich Main Line kids I used to see trailing their fathers into the casino. J.T. was just the sum of the quantifiable achievements and goodwill of his family. Youth fawned on guys like J.T. I hoped that adulthood would be less generous to him and vowed to chronicle his downfall.

Mickey watched the Hilliards walk off and took a hobbit stroll toward the band as soon as the song by the hemp-smoking John Denver was over. I followed out of curiosity.

“Here,” Mickey told the bandleader, who reached out gently toward him. “I brought this music sheet. It's an old klezmer song called “A Tune from Meron.” I carry these music sheets around and hum them when I'm on trips. Sometimes I find a band that knows klezmer.

“Why, I played a little klezmer down in N'awlins a long time ago,” the bandleader said.

“Didja now?”

“Sure did. This'll be a hoot,” he said taking the song sheet and sharing it with his band mates. “We'll look it over.”

I took Mickey aside.

“Pop, what do you think Mr. Hilliard wants?” I asked, feeling dizzy.

“He wants what he wants. All I'll ask you is to keep your mouth shut when we talk. This little sit-down is no time for disunity. Do you understand me?”

“What if J.T. says something?”

“J.T. is not a man who knows what to say or what to ask.”

I huffed.

“Jonah!” Mickey persisted.

“What are you going to say, Pop?”

“I'm going to play the downside,
boychik
.”

Before I could ask what this meant, Mickey started toward a picnic table beside the mansion where Smoky, a man identified as Smoky's brother, and J.T. waited. Irrationally, I expected the two smirking painters who stood nearby during the fight to emerge, but they didn't. I followed, feeling prepubescent.

Smoky Hilliard began. He had a deep, ambitious voice. His cadence was conscious, cautious. His eyes were cold and laser straight. Whatever bad things I felt about him viscerally, I sensed Smoky Hilliard was intelligent—smart in the way that self-made men are smart. Smoky's strength made me hate J.T. all over again. Maybe I despised him so much for the same reason I loved Claudine so much: lack of availability. Underexposure provided the fertile opportunity for my imagination.

“Mr. Price,” Smoky began, “I understand there's been some problems with my son and your grandson. I thought I might explain my position. Hopefully, we'll be able to avoid such unfortunate incidents as occurred not long ago.”

“I would like nothing more.”

“Swell, then. Just swell.” Smoky took a deep breath and frowned at J.T., as if to say, “Now, this is how it's done, son.” There was congestion in his lungs.

“These two,” Smoky began, gesturing toward the land, “Claudine and my J.T. have been playin' around these fields since they were little kids. Whether or not it comes to anything else, only time will tell. You never know with these things.

“Now, when Jonah came to town, it set something off in my boy that was unwise, and I regret that it occurred. We have talked about it, believe me. But you know how boys are these days, heck, how they always have been. What J.T. did must be understood against the history down here. I certainly don't want trouble. None of us wants trouble, and I'm doing what I can to keep things calm from my end. But you must know, Mr. Price, that while your business may move the hills up where you are, it doesn't hold the same cachet down in these parts. We've got our share of Damon Runyon types around here, too. I beg you not to make the leap between what your influence means up north and what it means down south. I can't tell Jonah to leave. I can only tell you the hurt it has caused so it can be factored into what happened and what happens. If that is acceptable, I have no doubt that the remainder of this summer will be peaceful. That is all I have to say.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I took to be a smirk on J.T.'s face. I felt an instinctive tightening in my lower back. Mickey had instructed me to keep calm. I hated him for it, but I would listen. For now. All of my self-interest aside, I was afraid for Mickey, seeing him contrasted against this geological formation, Smoky Hilliard. I had never seen Mickey addressed like this in my life—I was used to moronic displays of obsequiousness, even among the cops. I wanted to protect Mickey, whose time had come and gone. I couldn't have raised a countersmirk if I had mobilized all of my muscles.

Smoky had not directly stated an action item, so I assumed that the message was ominous. People who have easily implementable suggestions just make them. Threats are made more subtly. I read the message as follows:
Beat it, ya rum-running little Heeb.

Mickey nodded at Smoky Hilliard, again weakly, I thought. I felt ashamed and deflated. The little Wizard of Odds indeed was not much of a Wizard south of the Boardwalk. My existence suddenly felt like a factory error.
“Sorry, Mr. Eastman, this grandfather you got is a lemon.”
All of a sudden, I wanted to reach out for Mickey and take care of him. I felt acutely aware of my roots. My parents' sad spirits slumped around me.

“Mr. Hicksen,” Mickey began, softly but firmly.

Christ.
Hicksen?
Disaster.

“It's Hilliard, Pop,” I reminded him very gently. I couldn't be completely silent, could I?

Mickey tapped his head and shook it to remind us that he was the oldest and feeblest one at the table. He was not angry with me for this interruption.

“Forgive me, Mr. Hilliard. I'm eighty years old,” he said. Mickey's South Jersey accent and its associated fragments had evaporated. His voice was soft and ocean deep. Odd, but all of a sudden, Mickey seemed refined.

“I get that way myself sometimes,” Smoky Hilliard volunteered, nostrils flaring.

“Yes, of course,” Mickey said softly. “Mr. Hilliard, do you like to gamble?”

Smoky glanced at his brother and J.T. After a beat, he replied, “I enjoy a game of cards, yes. How about you, Mr. Price?”

“No, I don't like to gamble, I prefer a sure thing.” Both men chuckled, Mickey more than Smoky. “I'd like my grandson's safety to be a sure thing…. It occurs to me that we have so much to lose. We're soclose, so close to our dreams for our children. I appreciate your saying that it was your boy who attacked my grandson, but I think it's important that you do more than say it. It is important that you understand it. Your son not only took this action, he did so in a deliberate fashion. It was thoughtful. It was planned. An organized endeavor. The desired outcome was the destruction of my grandson, who is…my whole life.”

A slight transfusion of energy crept into my blood. Had God breezed in at halftime?

“I certainly—,” Smoky interjected.

“You spoke,” Mickey parried, his face shining. “Now I speak.” He held his hands to his heart.

Smoky held up his hands in apology. I stiffened my posture.

“There is nothing you can say that will make me feel better about what happened, nothing to cancel out my anger. Jonah's arrival here is about a boy falling for a girl, not about my desire to impose my way of life or my business on this community. I have nothing to do with Jonah's romances. If it were up to me, Claudine and Jonah would never have met, but they did. I'm dealing with that as you are dealing with the disruption this has caused to your plans.

“You have accomplished a lot in your life, and I would never try to judge a man for his dreams. But there was violence. Violence organized and executed by another gang, not by me, not by my grandson. I hate violence not because I am immune to it, but because it has become too easy. That frightens me for my grandson, especially because Jonah has no parents on this earth. I am, for better or for worse, his father, probably for worse. I won't live to see his promise come to light, but as long as I do, I will sacrifice everything I have to increase the odds of that promise coming true.

“My exploits unfortunately have been dragged through the press since Mr. Kefauver started his show business. Yours have not. Now we've got Love Canal and all kinds of things bubbling up. Captains of industry, criminals overnight.

“Jonah will go off to college far away from here after Labor Day. J.T. will go off to school. He will be with Claudine. What will happen will happen independent of me.
Entrances are wide, exits are narrow.
A saying. Things haunt us. Things are easy to break, but hard to clean up. There is much to lose, especially for those who have come so close.”

The pizzicato beginning to “A Tune From Meron” began from the stage. Mickey rose. Color fell like a brick from Smoky's face. J.T. appeared to be confused. As was I.

“Your grandmother loves to dance to this song,” Mickey said to me. “I can see that she is waiting for me. But first, Mr. Hilliard and I will have a few words alone.” J.T. and I walked away, but not together.

More than at any time in my life, I loved my grandfather with violence because the aggregate of his goods and evils were aimed solely at my survival. I had never seen his fabled strength harnessed on my behalf before, even though I did not understand the action that would derive from what I had witnessed. The moonlight hit Mickey through the trees and gave him a ghostly strobelike movement. It actually made me think of him as Moses. I followed him as guests parted so that he could dance with Deedee, who waited like a teenager in the center of a circle. Light from dozens of yellow lanterns reflected from her eyes. With all the venom she tossed Mickey's way, she also adored him, and he did her. It would take me decades to understand this contradiction and its coexistence in a marriage. For now, I only understood the one dimension of Rattle & Snap love, which was at full throttle as I winked at Claudine across the blue lawn. She winked back, her surplus of sexuality downing the few moths that flitted between us.

We all watched Mickey and Deedee dance. Indy Four put his arm around Claudine, who kissed him on the cheek. Deedee was spinning, spinning toward no far-off place, but in the moment. I stood next to Petie, who surrendered this to me: “It's divine to see.”

When the next klezmer song began, Claudine tugged me out to dance. It was a slow tune. I glanced around for the Hilliards, but didn't see them.

“Do you know this song?” Claudine asked. I felt her breath in my ear and I shivered.

“This one's called ‘Miserlou.' It's about a princess who wandered through the desert to find her love.”

“‘Miserlou',” she repeated, perhaps to make me shiver again.