from Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes
KEITH MAILLARD

1965

Days passed, a thousand combat infantry landed at Camranh Bay, Dean Rusk told the North Vietnamese that they’d better watch out or we’d bomb their asses off, the Marines creamed the Vietcong near Da Nang, Johnson was thinking about calling up the reserves, the heat wave did not break, it did not rain, and I did not work on my novel. I usually avoided weighing myself, but, one morning in July, driven by morbid curiosity, I stepped onto the bathroom scales and discovered that, just as I had suspected, I had been growing inexorably larger. For the first time in my life I was over two hundred pounds. My God, I thought, I have become gigantic. Later, flipping through my Civil War books, I discovered that on that very weekend in 1863, everybody in Raysburg had been expecting John Hunt Morgan to drop in. I took it for an omen.

Morgan had been in the midst of his great raid—on the run by that time, desperately trying to find some place to cross the Ohio, escape his pursuers, and vanish into the mountains of West Virginia. Terror swept the town: “Morgan’s coming! Morgan’s coming!” Church bells were rung, horses hidden in the woods. Every male with a gun had it cleaned and ready. And people sat up all night waiting for those apocalyptic horsemen who never arrived.

I called Revington to tell him all about it. “Christ, man,” he said, “you’ve hit two hundred pounds on the very same day when Raysburg was not invaded? I can’t believe it! This calls for a celebration… You know what we need, Dupre? Mint julep.”

I called Cassandra. “You’re so full of shit,” she said. “Come on over, I’m boring myself to death.”

I didn’t know how to make mint julep, so I settled for a fifth of J. T. S. Brown, drove out to Cassy’s house. She hadn’t changed into her evening uniform of jeans, was still in her white bikini, reading Camus on the front porch glider. “What the hell you got there, Dupre?”

“Some of that old J. T. S. Brown. Want a snort?”

“That’s a very evocative name...”

“Yeah, it’s Fast Eddy’s drink in The Hustler.”

“Oh Jesus,” she laughed, “you and William, you’re both so full of shit. So what are you playing today, Jackie Gleason?”

“I’m gigantic.”

“Yeah, you sure are. You keep on going, you’re going to look just like the sheriff of Ohio County. No… no, I don’t want any of that damned stuff. I’ve still got some pride, you know. At least I can wait till the sun sets.”

Within minutes Revington drove up, parked, and strolled toward us carrying a gallon milk jar. “Excuse me, son,” he said to me, “do you know the road to Morgantown?”

“No,” I said happily, taking up an imaginary guitar, “but if you hum a few bars, maybe I can play it for you.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Cassandra said, “you guys are pathetic.”

He set a jar down at my feet. “It should be a demijohn, but I couldn’t find one.”

“All right, I’ll be the straight man,” Cassandra said. “Excuse me, William, what’s that?”

“Aren’t we celebrating John’s gigantism and Morgan’s raid? It’s mint julep.” He picked up the jar with both hands, raised it, and saluted me with it. Ice cubes tinkled. “To your health, sir,” he said, “and to a steady increase in your weight. May you achieve the stature you so richly deserve. And to the South, sir. Long may she simmer.”

“Amen,” I said. “You know, it really is the perfect metaphor… Morgan’s raid. Raysburg on this very day,” and I allowed myself to expand to the mellifluous oratorical tones of a Senator Phogbound, “as is the inevitable destiny of this hallowed city… as it will be its destiny forever… was once again bypassed… by anything important.” I took up the jar and drank. “Yow, that’s got a bite to it.”

“Do you clowns want glasses?” Cassandra said.

“No, no, straight from the jar,” I said and passed it to Revington.

“It’s like Kierkegaard’s rotation method,” she said. “It may not be much, but it’s all we’ve got: every night we can change drinks.”

“The hot water at ten,” Revington muttered in a deeply funereal voice, “and if it rains, the closed car at four…”

“But of course it’s never going to rain,” I said. He offered me the jar; I took it and had another good gulp. I could, I thought, develop a taste for this damned stuff. “Stetson!” I yelled, “how the hell you been, man? I haven’t seen you since the war.”

“I’m doing just fine,” he said. “I read much of the night and go south in the winter.”

“You guys are just so unbelievably full of shit,” Cassandra said.

“Oh Jesus, another month and my sentence is up.”

The light was changing, the shadows cooling toward blue. The violet hour, I thought, still drifting along with Eliot, and it was enough, for the moment, to be sitting there getting plastered with my friends, talking nonsense, the taste of mint and bourbon in my mouth, with no plans and no need of plans.

The night is closing around us like the screwing down ofthe aperture on the good doctor’s Nikon; mosquitoes have begun to needle my forearms. I am sitting with my shoulders against the back porch railing; my shirt is glued to me; I can feel sweat trickling down my sides. And I’m watching Cassandra lull about in the crook of Revington’s arm. Oh, this is intolerable, intolerable. The son of a bitch had started to make his move, and Cassandra had not been at all one of Diana’s elusive does, had rather come to him like a bridled mare. He’s talking on, his voice pitched with resonant sincerity, invoking himself in power: politics. He’d worked for Johnson in sixty-four; he’d met some of the top Democrats in the Northern Panhandle. And now he knows all those damned crooked old-time Democrats in Alicia’s family down in Charleston. He’s presenting us with snapshots of meetings behind closed doors, in back rooms, those famous back rooms where decisions are made in camera, far from the sweating populace. He’s telling us how Kennedy bought West Virginia. “It’s not just about spending money,” he’s saying. “It’s an art… like being a great actor. They talk about the Kennedy charisma as though it didn’t take any work. But no one realizes how much planning goes into it. Care. Skill. Timing.” The image before the lenses; get it right for the lenses. Presenting himself now to Cassandra: look at me, I am potent. Potens, Potentia. I’M A LONG TALL TEXAN. Oh, Jesus, this is intolerable.

I wander into the house. Zoë’s in the living room with her boyfriend—a tall quiet kid—and with another couple. Zoë must have decided that her Courrèges copy wasn’t just for her book after all; she’s wearing it, and she looks spectacular. The good doctor is having himself a drop of Scotch; he’s discoursing to the boys on Vietnam. I stumble up to the bathroom. I’m dragging my bottle of bourbon along with me, absent-mindedly. Most of it has gone into the julep jar by now, but a couple good shots left. I drain the bottle and step on the scales. Dressed, I weigh two hundred and seven pounds. I lie down in the dry bathtub, tilt back the bottle, and lick up the last drop of bourbon. I am boiled, I am plastered, I am drunk as seven skunks. What am I doing here? ASK NOT, ETC. Intolerable. Perhaps I’ll take a nap in the bathtub. Someone’s banging on the door. “Hey, John, you’ve been in there forever. What are you doing?” Zoë.

“Damned if I know.” I climb out of the bathtub; I find movement surprisingly difficult. “Sorry,” Zoë says when I open the door, “but other people have to get in here too, you know.”

“I’m gigantic,” I say idiotically. Her hair is curled, her eyelashes are curled, and she’s painted her lips and fingernails pink. It’s just as hot that night as it’s been every other damn night since I’ve come back to Raysburg, but she’s wearing stockings—and her go-go boots of course. I’ve photographed that dress, so I’ve certainly had a good look at it, but I still can’t quite believe how short the skirt is. I put my arms around her, murmur, “Ah, Zoë, are you one of Lyndon’s little majorettes?”

“Oh, good grief,” she says, laughing at me. “Come on, John, cut it out. Stop it, you’re drunk.”

“No shit.”

“Hey, let go.” Giggling, she slaps my wrist so hard it stings. “Cut it out. I mean it.”

“Ah, Zoë, my love...”

“You’re really being silly.” She’s pushing me. “Out, out, out. I’ll have an affair with you when I’m twenty. Now just get out of here, OK? That’s it, just keep moving forward. Out, out, out.”

I’m floating down the stairs, carrying my empty bottle of J. T. S. Brown with me. The whole house seems to be rocking gently as though we’ve drifted away down the river. Passing the living room, I wave languidly to the good doctor, ooze through the kitchen and out onto the back porch. “The problem that Johnson faced in Congress...” Revington is saying. Oh, Jesus! I sink down onto the floor next to the julep jar. The ice has melted long ago, now just tepid mint-flavored whiskey. I’ve got my muzzle sunk into it, gulping away. Revington’s shirt is open; Cassandra is playing with the hair on his chest. In the dark, her white fingernails stand out starkly against his skin. I RIDE FROM TEXAS ON A BIG WHITE HORSE.

“Mah fellow Ah-mericans,” I yell, imitating Johnson’s shit kicker accent. “I know I told you’ll I was a peace candidate, howevah that was just to get my sorry ass elected. Now I’m gonna bomb the fuck out of those little bastards… Jesus Christ, Revington, I voted for that hypocritical peckerwood. Now I wish the hell I’d voted for Goldwater.”

There is a silence in which I can imagine Revington regrouping. I am, I know perfectly well, not precisely welcome at that moment on that back porch. “Yes, that’s just the sort of man for you, Dupre,” Revington says, “a loser like Barry Goldwater. The biggest piece of political flotsam in recent American history.”

“An honest man,” I say, “stupid and wrong, but honest. The last of a vanishing breed. From now on, only the most wretchedly empty of men will go into politics.”

Revington doesn’t answer. It’s too dark for me to see his face. And all that mint julep is running through me like water through a sluice gate. Christ, I can’t climb those stairs again. I jack myself to my feet, lean against the side of the house, and begin to piss off the porch. The sound of the urine splashing onto the lawn is somehow very appealing. “What the fuck you doing, Dupre?” Revington is yelling at me.

“What the fuck’s it look like I’m doing?”

He stands up, drags Cassandra by the hand toward the door. She pulls free of him. They stand there a moment: two silhouettes against the light from the kitchen. Then he shrugs and goes in. She hesitates, then follows. “Do you think you’re going to get rid of me that easily?” I’m mumbling. I follow. Revington has closed the door. As I reach for the knob, I hear it lock.

I begin to chuckle, take off at a run, around the house, up the steps. Revington has beaten me to the front door. It’s locking just as I jerk open the screen. I’m suddenly furious: “You goddamn prick, I’ll kick your teeth down your throat!” I yell at him. Through the small window I see him blow me a kiss and turn away.

I wander to the back porch and the whiskey jar. My blood is pounding in my temples; a red haze is beginning to float in front of my eyes. Some detached part of me is saying, “It’s not just an expression. You really do see red.” And then the detached voice is gone, and I’m smashing the back door, ramming my shoulder into it. “You can’t keep me out,” I’m yelling. “I’m gigantic!”

The wood is cracking. I’m immensely satisfied with the sound of it. CRACK! SMASH! Revington is just inside. I can see him. He’s leaning against the door. He’s afraid of me. Good. I hit it again. CRACK! Inside the house are running footsteps, voices, yelling. The front door bangs. Footsteps running around the house. I look down; at the bottom of the stairs is Zoë, giggling at me. “John! What the hell are you doing? You’re breaking our door!”

With a whoop, I leap off the porch directly at her. I land on all fours in the grass, and she’s running away, laughing. “Zoë, my love!” I yell. “Fire of my loins!” And I’ve leapt up and am running too, chasing her. She’s screaming with laughter. I’m howling and barking like a dog. At a dead sprint we’ve run around to the front of the house and I’m chasing her up the street. Her little white go-go boots are flickering in the dark just ahead of me.

PAIN! The world has tilted on me. I’m flat on my face on the pavement. I roll over onto my back. “Owww, owww, owww.” My God, that’s my voice. I’m baying like a whipped beagle. I’ve run into a fireplug.

Cassandra is looking down at me. “Stop it,” she gasps out between spasms of laughter, “you’re fucking pathetic.”

“Owww, owww, owww!”

“Stop it, John, you’ll have the neighbors out!”

And here’s Zoë, panting and giggling, staring down at me. “John? Are you all right?”

“Owww, owww, owww!” I pull up my pants leg, feel my shin bone. It’s still in one piece, thank God, but my hand comes away bloody. “Owww, owww, owww.”

“For God’s sake, please stop it,” Cassandra is saying, but she’s laughing so hard she sinks to her knees on the pavement.

Zoë looks genuinely concerned. “Come on, Cass, let’s get him up,” she says. They lever me to my feet. There’s a sister under each of my arms. “Come on, help us, John. Don’t just hang there. You weigh a ton.”

“I’m gigantic.”

“No shit. Come on, walk!”

I begin to shamble toward the house. And here, hesitantly, comes Revington to meet us. “You miserable prick!” I yell at him. “Save your Confederate money, Revington, the South’s going to rise again! Ho Chi Minh forever! Juan Bosch Presidente! Hang Lyndon Johnson from a sour apple tree!”

I was too drunk to drive home; Revington had to take me. As I was getting out of his car, I said, “I’m sorry, William.”

“You asshole,” he said.

>Looking Good

<Morgantown

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