The King is Dead

Of course, said Walter. This is Anderson we’re talking about.

This is Anderson, said the Governor. I need you to get him to back down. I need your voice: you talk to him. Appeal to him. If that doesn’t work, think about what we’ve got that he wants more than he wants a war memorial, and then tell him you’re going to take it away from him.—And without so much as a good-bye, the Governor hung up the phone.

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Now, Senator Anderson, the Governor has asked me to call you and talk to you about this war memorial. The budget’s tight as can be …

I know it is, said Anderson. But, goddamn, I’ve got over two score dead boys from this district, three or four of them from the most prominent families in the state and all of them good supportive people.—Supportive of the Governor, too. They’ve given up their sons, and they’ve been waiting almost a decade for some sort of official recognition. You, of all people, should understand.

Yes, said Walter. I understand. I honestly do. And you can have the money. You can have it.

This gave the Senator pause. I can have it? he said, a little more quietly.

Sure you can, said Walter. All we have to do is find something else in the budget to take out.

Something else? said the Senator.

Yes. So I’ve been going through it again.

I’ll bet you have, said the Senator. What are you trying to tell me?

Well, here it is. It’s not your district, but Strachey right next door’s got about fifty thousand tied up in this little tree-planting business. He wants to prettify the highway from Crossville to Cookeville. Walter slipped his hand under the waistband of his underwear and gently, thoughtlessly, cupped his scrotum.

… That’s his wife’s project, said Anderson softly. There was an old silence on the line. The Senator had held his office since the days when his district was lit with kerosene, and was reelected at the end of every term on a platform of sentimentality. He had never been much of a statesman, and he was growing tired.

In time Walter spoke. Is that right? he said.

You know damn well it is. You know if you try to kill his wife’s beautification program, he’s going to come after you.

That’s all I could find. We can handle him.

God Almighty, said Anderson. He’s going to come after me, if you tell him why. I need him for the new maternity wing on the hospital. The man thinks, because he was born in his mother’s bed, that’s good enough for everyone.

Anderson was starting to drift. Walter Selby was nodding silently and absently drawing a poplar tree on a sheet of official stationery. That’s all we’ve got, he said. What do you want me to do?

You tell the Governor … Ah.—Anderson sounded close to tears. You tell the Governor I handed him this county on a silver platter.

He knows, said Walter Selby, but I’ll tell him again. The budget was safe now, and he could afford to humor the man. How’s your own wife doing? Still got a thousand recipes for rhubarb?

Yes, said Anderson, but all the life was out of him now. She’s published them in a book.

That’s fine, that’s great. I’ll have to go find a copy, and you give her my best.

I will…. Well, I guess I better go now, said Anderson. He was sixty-eight years old, and his only son had passed the last thirty years drooling his supper down his chin in the Nashville Home for the Mentally Impaired.

Go on. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, said Walter Selby.

There were some reports in a stack on the corner of his desk; he glanced at them and then turned his chair around so he could look out the window. The morning sun was crooking through the branches of the tree outside; overhead, a pair of perfectly formed cloud puffs were gliding across the dark-blue sky. Life was short and singular and the State was on his desk, the day was bright and angled toward the evening, and Nicole was the name of happiness. He nodded softly to himself and then turned back to the day’s work.

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He waited that night until nine, and then he found her name in the phone book again, took the telephone receiver from its base and quickly dialed the number, already beginning to pace the floor before the rotary had returned to its resting place from the last digit. There was a pause, within which he could have planted an oak tree. Then the line began to ring,—rang again,—and rang seven times before he reluctantly hung up. Having made the effort, he found it almost unacceptable that it should have no effect, and for several minutes afterward he was unable to sit down; instead, he walked the length of his living room and then returned to the telephone and dialed her number again, with the same result. He was needled and stung, now. A police car passed outside his window, siren whooping into the darkness—not a common occurrence in that neighborhood—but by the time he got to his front porch it was gone. There in the driveway sat his car, big-shouldered and black. He considered driving over to her house. And what would he do there? Wait outside. In anticipation of what? He couldn’t say, he wouldn’t have been brazen enough to try to approach her whenever she finally came home. Where was she? There was nothing for a man to be, but lonely.

At last he went to bed, if only to close his eyes. Through the sleepless hours he saw her telephone number, he saw her friends, he saw the car they had ridden in. He saw everything but her face; she was so beautiful that her features had disappeared, as if in a blindness begotten by the brightness of her smile. He spoke out loud. You are a fool, he said. Go to sleep. And he went to sleep.

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Late the following afternoon the Governor called. I’m coming in on Thursday, he said. We’ve got a brand-new firehouse opening up down in Smollet, and they asked me to come cut the ribbon.—There was great enthusiasm in his voice: the Governor liked openings of every sort, schools, hospitals, TVA projects, all things municipal and structural. He would drive two hundred miles through rain and fog to sit for an hour on a podium in some county seat and speak for five minutes on the occasion of the opening of a new Hall of Records, be it little more than a spare room in a courthouse. Write me something, will you? the Governor commanded. Get in a few lines about the utilities program we’ve been pushing here, but don’t make it look like Nashville’s trying to cram anything down their gullets. Just remind them, somehow, that we’re well aware that it’s our state, our resources. You know how sensitive those people can be.

How long do you want to go? said Walter.

Not very, said the Governor. We can save the big show for some other time.

Walter made an assenting sound, and there was a silence; then the Governor took an audible breath: exhaustion, concentration, or just air.

… What else? said the Governor.

What else?

What else do you have for me? Anything?

Nothing big, said Walter.

Well, tell me something small then.

For a second Walter considered mentioning Nicole. If the Governor didn’t already know, he’d want to be told, and he’d like the story; he’d have a little file on her in a day. No. He spoke up. There was an accident out in Farragut, a school bus went off the road and down into a gully.

Ah, that’s terrible, said the Governor sorrowfully. How bad is it?

So far, not too bad, said Walter. A couple of high school kids with broken bones.

That’s bad enough. We’ve got roads in this state that haven’t been repaired since Davy Crockett was in the legislature. Have the papers gotten hold of it yet?

Some local editions, round about where it happened.

Ah, shit. Get me the name of an editor out there. I’m not going to say anything, but I want to know who I’m not saying it to.

The editor’s name was McAllen, then Walter sat down to write a few remarks for the Governor to speak in Smollet. History, promise, revenue. He considered calling Nicole when he was done, but anybody could have interrupted him—his secretary with some papers, the Governor on the line, officials and lobbyists, and others and others.

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It was four days further before he reached her; at last one evening she answered, and when she did he was so surprised that he didn’t know what to say. There was a bar of silence. May I speak to Nicole Lattimore, please? he asked. This is she, said Nicole, her voice giving nothing away, not surprise, delight, or suspicion. It was a certain reserve that she’d learned since she came to Memphis, no more than a polite and professional way to answer the telephone.

He reached up and touched the knot of his tie with his fingertips, to make sure it was straight. This is Walter Selby, he said softly. We met the other night, I guess it was about a week ago, at the ball game, in the parking lot afterward. I hope you don’t mind my calling.

Not at all, said Nicole, who just moments earlier had been measuring the century for solitude. She put her fingertips down on the edge of the table before her and listened while he made his way through an invitation, a date, dinner. The simple fact of his attention was gratifying to her, and so was his obvious nervousness. She hadn’t had much in the way of romance since she came to town; the boys in the car had been friends, that’s all; one of them worked in the advertising department at the station, the rest were his pals, and after a bit of jockeying they had settled for adopting her as a sort of mascot. It was just as well: she’d needed a few weeks to set up her little house, a few more to acclimate herself to her new job. The radio station was big and busy, and they needed her everywhere, all the time, answering phones, fending off salesmen, fetching reels of tape, cataloging 45s.

But Walter Selby was an important man, wasn’t he, and he was asking to take her out to dinner. She felt, for the first time in a very long time, an advantage on the world. She wasn’t frightened of him. She agreed to dinner; she saw just how it would go, on that night and the nights to come. They would talk, maybe they would laugh; they would date a little bit, now and again; perhaps she would touch his bare chest with her hand and burn away a little misery; and then one way or another it would end, and she would be six months older.