The King is Dead

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.

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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 night, and they were sitting on his porch swing. Stories for kisses; her hair smelled sweet but her breath was slightly sour; every time it shocked him, made her kisses more real, which in turn made them more fantastic. He would have told the entire history of Tennessee for her kisses.

Well, he said. There was a fellow I met in Chattanooga, ordinary man, ordinary size, little pink bald head, he must have been about fifty, maybe fifty-five years old. I met him at an American Legion Hall, but I still don’t know what he was doing there. The Governor was giving a speech, I was waiting outside, and there was this man. I don’t even know how I got to listening to him, and at first I didn’t know what he was going on about, something about a man named James Ewell. Every time he spoke of this man he used the full name: James Ewell. That’s what I noticed first, as I tried to keep up with him.

Well, it turned out James Ewell was a neighbor down the road, and James Ewell had a daughter named Evelyn, about seventeen years old.—No wife, his wife had died when the girl was a baby. This too went on for a while—James Ewell, Evelyn Ewell, the farm they lived on—until it last came out that the daughter was a crack shot with a rifle, best all-around shooter in the county, and James Ewell was as proud of the girl as could be, and he was very close to her. Very, very close. You know? Closer than anything. People used to wonder about that.

All right. James Ewell and his daughter used to go hunting together in the woods, the man said. James Ewell and his daughter, they would disappear for a day or two and come back with their truck loaded up with deer. Until one day when the daughter come into town alone, walked calmly into the police station, and said she had shot her Daddy, out there in the woods. It was an accident, she said: she’d been following a buck through the trees, and the next she knew the old man was lying on the ground with a bullet through his neck. And now no one knew what to do; the girl never missed, that was the legend. But what proof did anyone have? And so they let it go with her tale to cover it.

An interesting story, Walter had said to the man. What can I help you with?

Well, I’ll tell you, said the man. Now this selfsame daughter was going around with his own son. I don’t want the boy to end up dead, and I don’t want to tell the girl no, and the goddamn chickenshit police won’t do a thing about it, said it wasn’t anything they could do. (And here Walter apologized for his language, but that was what the man had said; and Nicole just smiled and nodded.) But I saw your Governor was coming in to talk, and I wanted to ask him for his help.

I’ll tell him, said Walter. You leave me your name and how to get hold of you, and I’ll let the Governor know all about your problem.

The man had been disappointed by that. He wanted to put his case to the Governor himself, but Walter had said that wouldn’t be possible; he was very sorry. Still, he promised he would do his best. He handed the man his notebook and a pen.—Well, all right, said the man, and he scribbled down his name and an address on a rural route.

Of course, the Governor had wanted nothing to do with the man, his son, or Evelyn Ewell, but Walter himself had been curious, and he’d checked up on them with the local law, a few months later.

And? said Nicole.

Son and girl were happily married, had a baby on the way; and the old man wouldn’t talk to either of them, so sure was he that doom was still making its grim course toward them, delayed only for a few years, which, as far as doom was concerned, was no time at all.—And for all I know, said Walter to Nicole, they’re still living just like that. He paused and looked at her thoughtful face. What do you think? he said. Was the man making it up? Am I?

Nicole blinked. Oh, no, she said quickly. Neither of you, no. I believe you. I believe him. You can tell by the story that it has to be true. Even if it isn’t true. Don’t you think?

I do believe you’re right, said Walter, pushing the swing back with his legs and letting it glide gently forward again.

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Walks in the evening, beneath a dark, humid sky that reflected backward on the day. They would stroll along the riverfront, stopping here and there to peer into the water; or park at the edge of the wealthy streets east, and wander up the roads, looking through fences at gardens. One evening they had dinner and then dropped by the zoo an hour before closing time to watch the elephants get ready for bed. He kissed her, and all his ideas went dead by the contact, like lights burned out by a short circuit, leaving only one thought dangling down in the darkness: Farther.

He reached for her, but she stood back with a slight smile on her lips. I think I should go home now, she said.

He nodded, straightened up, and smoothed down his jacket. Yes. All right.

He took her home, kissed her once more at the door, and let her go. She stood inside the threshold and licked her lips. Walter was gentle, polite, considerate. He was stable, he was staying. He was a man, then, worldly and resourceful. So he was staying. So good, she was glad. The next time they went out, he kissed her again at the hard dark end of the night, and she pressed forward into him, where it was closer still to midnight, venturing in, with her kiss returned, toward everything he knew. That night she took him home; and the nights afterward she did or didn’t, depending on how she felt: whether it would be too much to be with him, or too much to be alone.

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The Governor called Walter. Now, what’s going on with that accident out east? The one with the schoolchildren.

Nothing much, said Walter. Some of the parents are looking to throw a man in jail.

Who?

Anyone they can think of. The bus driver, the school board, the farmer whose property the road passes through. Other than that, nothing’s going on. Nothing at all.

Good, said the Governor.

No, I don’t think so, said Walter. I think we have to do something.