Three Days Before the Shooting ... (10 page)

Talk of consternation—but wait! While this was going on, the Senator is said to have shouted, with that marvelous vocal projection for which he’s famous, these outrageously provocative words:

“Now that he’s communed with great art, it’s time to swing my little nigger!”

One can imagine the effect of this in the mere telling. The gathering gasped, the old man went apoplectic, his wife turns deathly pale. A waiter drops a tray of champagne glasses; the protocol officer of a foreign embassy, entering the room just as the whirling stops, stands with his eyes popped and his mouth agape, pointing frantically to the scene—as though everyone else in the room has had his head stuck in the pages of the
Philadelphia Bulletin
!

Finally, the wife broke the spell by stammering, “Unhand my husband, you beast! Unhand him now, I say! Put him down this very instant!”

To which the Senator answers quite gaily, “Of course, ma’am, yo’ah lawd and mahster and mah little jigaboo!”

Then, as the gathering watches, he slowly lowers the old man to the floor, saying, “Come on down now, J.P. Come on down off your cross,” laughing in the friendliest manner. Then, taking the hand of the outraged wife, he kisses it three times quite gravely, and turning swiftly on his heel moves away and out. All of this very quickly, and his face was described as “suddenly masklike and grave, his eyes bright with a quick welling of tears.”

“Now what the hell did he mean?” a reporter said. “What kind of a connection was he making between
art
and communication?”

And now, shifting about and sweating, they discussed the Senator’s manhandling of the old gentleman and his use of the naughty, naughty epithet, and how our attitude toward personal insult and matters of honor had changed. Years ago, it was said, the old man would have sought out the Senator with a set of dueling pistols, a bowie knife, a Colt Navy Special, a commemorative shillelagh—and have done with him. He would have caned the Senator, “thrashed” him. But then they went into the fact that the great repercussion that had been expected to take place in the Senate the following day failed to come off. For this some blamed the telephone, others the District’s gossips and servants, through whose eager, swift, and countless retellings the cruelty of the act became quickly submerged and the malicious comedy implicit in the scene accentuated.

It had soon become obvious that although the Senator refused to explain his action there was no real danger of retaliation against him in the situation. Because for all the high respect in which he was held, there was something quite pompous about the older man. His flinty and most bigoted principles, sharpened by his wit, had over the years drawn too much blood and had too long defied change and historical and political realities. During his endless tenure he made countless enemies by frustrating the ambitions of many of his colleagues, businessmen, minority groups, and labor leaders indiscriminately. So that far from being censured for his cruel act, the Senator emerged as something of an underground hero, a dragon slayer, a holy fool manqué.

But as always, there was a sinister undertone throbbing beneath the Senator’s maneuver. Far from giving way to impulse, one of the men insisted, the Senator had acted with careful calculation; he’d stacked the deck. A few years ago, it was said, he had provided, quietly and without publicity and from his own pocket, a dozen generous scholarships for graduate students in American history. They were required to do nothing in return, simply to follow their own researches. However, it was gotten across to them that the Senator would be most pleased that if in the course of their work they would look into the court records of several cities of the old South and jot down any information concerning the blood relationship between the old families and their slaves and between contemporary members of these families and the descendants of the slaves who share their esteemed names.

Our informant went on to say that the result of these researches was quite startling, even though he could not name anyone who had seen the actual documents. Nor is there knowledge that the Senator has ever discussed the material. Indeed, the scholars themselves have denied that it exists. Nevertheless, all who were said to have received the Senator’s assistance are now tenured members of the faculties of important Southern universities. Perhaps the information doesn’t exist. Perhaps they became innocently involved in a situation which many people find threatening, but there is no question but that the very rumor that such information exists, carefully arranged and codified by certified scholars, and in the hands of the Senator, makes some bloodstreams approach the freezing point. Nor is it unthinkable, as the gossip insists, that upon hearing of its existence, a number of people left for parts unknown. And whatever the truth of the rumor, there has been, without doubt, an aura of impending revelation emanating from the Senator. It was as though he walked over in a suit of blackmail which not only rendered him invulnerable to would-be attackers, but intimidated their ability to act by threatening to turn some secret but forgotten weakness against them. Very few have been willing to take such chances.

CHAPTER 4

A
ROUND ME NOW
a thousand questions were echoing through the hall, each concerning some contradiction of character, some trope, some scandal, some audacious Sunraider caper.

“Did you know? Did you see? Did you hear?”

They swirled about my head like a swarm of flies.

Why? Why? But why?

And it came to me that only yesterday I had overheard a most innocuous question which, although addressed to another, resulted in my witnessing not only one of the oddest incidents involving the Senator, but one of the few from which he could be said to have emerged less than triumphant.

It had been a fine spring day made even pleasanter by the lingering of the cherry blossoms, and I had gone out before dawn with some married friends and their children on a bird-watching expedition. Afterwards we had sharpened our appetites for brunch with rounds of Bloody Marys and bullshots. And after the beef boullion ran out our host, an ingenious man, had improvised a drink from chicken broth and vodka which he proclaimed the “chicken-shot.” This was all very pleasant, and after a few drinks my spirits were soaring. I was pleased with my friends, the brunch was excellent and varied—chili, cornbread, and oysters Rockefeller, etc.—and I was pleased with my tally of birds. I had seen a bluebird, five rose-breasted grosbeaks, three painted buntings, seven goldfinches, and a rousing consort of mockingbirds. In fact, I had hated to leave.

Thus, it was well into the afternoon when I found myself walking past the Senator’s estate. I still had my binoculars around my neck, and my tape recorder—which I had along to record birdsongs—was slung over my shoulder. As I approached, the boulevard below the Senator’s estate was heavy with cars, with promenading lovers, dogs on leash, old men on canes, and laughing children, all enjoying the fine weather. I had paused to notice
how the Senator’s lawn rises from the street level with a gradual and imperceptible elevation that makes the mansion, set far at the top, seem to float like a dream castle; an illusion intensified by the chicken-shots, but which the art editor of my paper informs me is the result of a trick copied from the landscape architects who designed the gardens of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. I was about to pass on when a young couple blocked my path, and when I saw the young fellow point up the hill and say to his young blonde of a girl, “I bet you don’t know who that is up there,” I brought my binoculars into play, and there, on the right-hand terrace of the mansion, I saw the Senator.

Dressed in a chef’s cap, apron, and huge asbestos gloves, he was armed with a long-tined fork which he flourished broadly as he entertained the notables for whom he was preparing a barbecue. These gentlemen and ladies were lounging in their chairs or standing about in groups sipping the tall iced drinks which two white-jacketed Filipino boys were serving. The Senator was dividing his attention between the spareribs, cooking in a large chrome grill cart, and displaying his great talent for mimicking his colleagues with such huge success that the party was totally unaware of what was swiftly approaching. Nor, in fact, was I.

I was about to pass on when a gleaming white Cadillac convertible, which had been moving slowly in the heavy traffic from the east, rolled abreast of me and suddenly blocked the path by climbing the curb, then rolling across the walk and onto the Senator’s lawn. The top was back and the driver, smiling as though in a parade, was a well-dressed Negro man of about thirty-five, who sported the gleaming hair affected by their jazz musicians and prizefighters, and who sat behind the wheel with that engrossed yet relaxed, almost ceremonial attention to form that was once to be observed only among the finest horsemen. So closely did the car brush past that I could have reached out with no effort and touched the rich leather upholstery. A bull fiddle rested in the back and I watched the man drive smoothly up the lawn until he was some seventy-five yards below the mansion, where he braked the machine and stepped out to stand waving toward the terrace, a gallant salutation grandly given.

At first, in my innocence, I placed the man as a musician, for there was, after all, the bull fiddle; then in swift succession I thought him a chauffeur for one of the guests, a driver for a news or fashion magazine or an advertising agency or television network. For I quickly realized that a musician wouldn’t have been asked to perform at the spot where the car was stopped, and that since he was alone, it was unlikely that anyone, not even the Senator, would have hired a musician to play serenades on a bull fiddle. So next I decided that the man had either been sent with equipment to be used in covering the festivities taking place on the terrace, or that he had driven the car
over to be photographed against the luxurious background. The waving I interpreted as the expression of simpleminded high spirits aroused by the driver’s pleasure in piloting such a luxurious automobile, the simple exuberance of a Negro allowed a role in what he considered an important public spectacle. A small crowd had gathered, which watched bemusedly.

Since it was widely known that the Senator is a master of the new political technology, who ignores no medium and wastes no opportunity for keeping his image ever in the public’s eye, I wasn’t disturbed when I saw the driver walk to the trunk and begin to remove several red objects and place them on the grass. I wasn’t using my binoculars now, and thought these were small equipment cases. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

For now, having finished unpacking, the driver stepped back behind the wheel and suddenly I could see the top rising from its place of concealment to soar into place like the wing of some great, slow, graceful bird. Stepping out again, he picked up one of the cases—now suddenly transformed into the type of can which during the war was something used to transport high-octane gasoline in Liberty ships (a highly dangerous cargo for those round bottoms and the men who sailed them) and, leaning carefully forward, began emptying its contents upon the shining chariot.

And thus
, I thought,
is gilded an eight-valved, three-hundred-and-fifty-horse-powered lily!

For so accustomed have we Americans become to the tricks, the shenanigans and frauds of advertising, so adjusted to the contrived fantasies of commerce—indeed, to pseudo-events of all kinds—that I thought that the car was being drenched with a special liquid which would make it more alluring for a series of commercial photographs.

Indeed, I looked up the crowded boulevard behind me, listening for the horn of a second car or station wagon which would bring the familiar load of pretty models, harassed editors, nervous wardrobe mistresses, and elegant fashion photographers who would convert the car, the clothes, and the Senator’s elegant home into a photographic rite of spring.

And with the driver there to remind me, I even expected a few ragged colored street urchins to be brought along to form a poignant but realistic contrast to the luxurious costumes and high-fashion surroundings: an echo of the somber iconography in which the crucified Christ is flanked by a repentant and an unrepentant thief, or the three Wise Eastern Kings bearing their rich gifts before the humble stable of Bethlehem.

But now reality was moving too fast for the completion of this fantasy. Using my binoculars for a closer view, I could see the driver take a small spherical object from the trunk of the car, and a fuzzy tennis ball popped into focus against the dark smoothness of his fingers. This was joined by a long wooden object which he held like a conductor’s baton and began forcing
against the ball until it was pierced. This gave the ball a slender handle which he tested delicately for balance, drenched with liquid, and placed carefully behind the left fin of the car.

Reaching into the backseat now, he came up with a bass-fiddle bow upon which he accidentally spilled the liquid, and I could see drops of fluid roping from the horsehairs and falling with an iridescent spray into the sunlight. Facing us now, he proceeded to tighten the horsehairs, working methodically, very slowly, with his head gleaming in the sunlight and beads of sweat standing over his brow.

As I watched, I became aware of the swift gathering of a crowd around me, people asking puzzled questions, and a certain tension, as during the start of a concert, was building. And I had just thought,
And now he’ll bring out the fiddle
, when he opened the door and hauled it out, carrying it, with the dripping bow swinging from his right hand, up the hill some thirty feet above the car, and placed it lovingly on the grass. A gentle wind started to blow now, and I swept my glasses past his gleaming head to the mansion, and as I screwed the focus to infinity, I could see several figures spring suddenly from the shadows on the shaded and shrub-lined terrace of the mansion’s far wing. They were looking on like the spectators of a minor disturbance at a dull baseball game, then a large woman grasped that something was out of order and I could see her mouth come open and her eyes blaze as she called out soundlessly, “Hey, you down there!” Then the driver’s head cut into the field of vision and I took down the glasses and watched him moving, broad-shouldered and jaunty, up the hill to where he’d left the fiddle. For a moment he stood with his head back, his white jacket taut across his shoulders, looking toward the terrace. He waved then, and shouted something which escaped me, then, facing the machine, he took something from his pocket, and I saw him touch the flame of a cigarette lighter to the tennis ball and begin blowing gently upon it, then, waving it about like a child twirling a Fourth of July sparkler, he watched it sputter into a blue ball of flame.