Grass Roots (32 page)

“I think you’re terrific.”

“I’m glad, but you don’t owe me a thing,” she said.

“However, if you ever start feeling this way again, then I’d like it if you and I could just fuck ourselves silly. Can we leave it like that? That’s the way I’d like to leave it.”

“Sure. If that’s what you want.”

“That’s it. And you just relax about this trial thing. I know how to keep my mouth shut. I’ll be there to testify, and you didn’t change my testimony.” She stood up and slipped into her two small pieces of clothing.

“You go back to sleep for a little bit,” she said, kissing him.

“Goodbye, Charlene,” he said, in a long sigh.

“Goodbye, Will. Until you want me again.”

She left, and Will sank into a rosy haze of sleep. will arrived at the Atlanta headquarters on Monday morning light of step and of heart. He marveled at the transformation he felt in himself.

Could an act of sex—well, several acts of sex—release some rejuvenative hormone into the bloodstream? Or was he simply feeling some primitive elation over a conquest?

Not that the conquest had been his. Charlene puzzled him.

Here was this perfectly beautiful girl, though country of manners and speech, who had it in her to seek out and seduce a man whom she had met only once, then describe their relationship dispassionately and without rancor, in a way that Will could never have brought himself to do, and say she was available for more whenever he wanted her.

Why? Was she simply sexually overheated? Larry Moody had said as much; maybe it was an answer. Still, maybe she had been striking out at Larry. If so, he felt both fortunate to have been chosen as the means, and frightened at the thought that anyone but the two of them might ever learn about it.

Tom Black looked at him, puzzled.

“You must have had an awfully good day off,” he said.

“An awfully good day off.” Will grinned. If Tom only knew.

“Well, I’m happy to see you in such good spirits. I wish I felt as happy.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Money’s drying up, that’s what. Every day, our telephone bank is becoming less productive; we’ve had fundraisers at the homes of everyone who would help; we’ve been back to the well two or three times with some of our contributors, and I suspect they’re getting sick of us. What we need is a shot in the arm, something favorable that will impress enough people to refresh our sources. The debate helped, and a second debate might have helped more.

MacK Dean was smart enough to know that; I think it was one of the reasons he canceled.”

“Have you talked to my father about this?” Will asked.

Tom nodded.

“He’s beaten the bushes two or three times with his own network, too.

What we need is Ben Carr out there stumping for us and putting the arm on people.”

“That we’re not going to get,” Will said.

“He’s made progress, I think; he can communicate in a minimal sort of way, but not enough even to give a press interview.”

“There’s another thing,” Tom said.

“Emma Carr has been making appearances at teas and fundraisers for MacK, saying her brother loves MacK and never trusted you.”

“There’s not a hell of a lot we can do about Miss. Emmy,” Will replied! “except maybe have her committed, and I’m not about to do that.”

“It’s a pity we can’t,” Tom mused.

“I’d put out a contract on the old biddy, if I thought I could get away with it.”

Will laughed.

“Don’t say that, even in jest. Suppose MacK had this place bugged.”

Kitty Conroy came in bearing a bulky Federal Express envelope.

“This just came, addressed to you. Will.”

“Open it. Do we get many Federal Express deliveries around here?”

“I can’t even remember one,” Tom said.

Kitty pulled the string on the package, looked into it, then turned it upside down and shook the contents out onto Will’s desk. Several bundles of multicolored paper, secured with rubber bands, lay there.

“What the hell?” Tom said, picking up one of the bundles.

Kitty was fishing a single sheet of paper out of the envelope

“It’s a letter from Lurton Pitts,” she said, handing it to Will.

Will looked at the letter.

“Jesus, Will,” Tom said.

“These are checks.”

Will’s mouth fell open.

“Dear Will,” he read from the letter.

“Our bunch was very impressed with you. We made a few phone calls to some of our acquaintances and rounded up the enclosed. Hope you will find it useful.

Regards, Lurton.” Will looked at the bundles.

“How many do you think there are?” he asked.

Tom and Kitty were stripping off the rubber bands and riffling through the checks.

“There’s nothing here for less than five hundred dollars!” Tom said.

“Most of them are for a thousand!”

The three of them began sorting the checks into stacks by amount, then they counted each stack.

“I don’t believe it,” Kitty said, looking at the pad before her.

“I make it four hundred and ten thousand dollars!”

“This can’t be legal,” Will said.

“We’ve got to get this money back to Pitts before somebody finds out about it.”

“The hell you say,” Tom crowed.

“There’s not a check in here for more than a thousand dollars that’s the individual legal limit. Each of these checks is from a different person. This is entirely legal and proper.”

Will stared at the pile of checks.

“This is impossible.

This can’t be happening. There’s some sort of catch.”

A campaign worker stepped into Will’s office.

“Will, your father is on the phone.”

Will punched a button and picked up the phone.

“Good morning. Dad, how was your weekend?”

“Never mind that,” Billy Lee replied.

“How’s your morning going? If what I hear is true, it ought to be going great.”

“You know about the package from Pitts?”

“He just called me. He wanted to reassure me that every penny was raised in accordance with the campaign laws.

He asks only that you don’t reveal that he or any of his group was behind it.”

“We have to give a list of contributors to the campaign commission,” Will said.

“That’s all right. Lurton and his friends will be down for only a thousand each.”

“I’m still trying to think of something wrong with it,” Will said, shaking his head.

“Boy, stop worrying about it, and start spending it!” Billy said goodbye and hung up.

Will looked up at Tom.

“It’s legal, proper, and okay, too. But only the three of us know who assembled all this.

Pitts has demanded that we keep it to ourselves, and I don’t want it to go beyond this room, got that?”

“Got it,” Tom and Kitty responded simultaneously.

“Will,” Tom said.

“Yes?”

“We’ve got our TV campaign.”

Will was fumbling in a desk drawer; he came up with some campaign stationery.

“I think I’d better write Lurton Pitts a personal thank-you note. Get somebody started on the computer—1 want an individual letter to each of these people over my signature.”

“Will,” Kitty said, “your mama brought you up right.”

“One more thing,” Will said, beginning to write.

“Somebody get these checks into the bank immediately.

It makes me nervous having all this money on the premises.”

Kitty began raking bundles of checks back into the big envelope. will sat nervously with Tom Black, Kitty Conroy, and his parents in a small screening room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke; he stared at a large, blank television monitor and waited for something to appear on it.

Will had just spent two days in a tiny studio down the corridor, staring into the lens of a camera and speaking to it as if it were a person. It had been a disconcerting experience;

Tom had not allowed him to see himself on a monitor during all that time; he had been constantly patted on the face by an elderly woman with a sponge and a jar of makeup; and at no time had he been given anything to read from. Tom had forced him to talk about himself in a way he would never normally have done, until he spoke of his own accomplishments as if they were those of someone else. At the end of the time, he had been weary, hoarse, and disoriented. Now he was to see the result of his effort.

The monitor flickered, and suddenly Will’s face appeared on the screen.

It was alarmingly large and close, but Will was immediately aware of how beautifully it was lit.

The voice of a professional announcer spoke.

“Will Lee is running for the United States Senate, to represent Georgia.

Here’s what he has to say about it.”

Will, looking directly into the camera, began to speak;

his voice was relaxed, natural, and richer than it ordinarily sounded to its owner.

“For eight years now, I’ve been working for Senator Ben Carr in the United States Senate.

I’ve done just about everything in his office. I’ve been his press secretary, his chief legislative assistant, and counsel to the committee he chairs, the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

He permitted himself a small smile.

“I’ve gone for a few cups of coffee in my time there, too.” Then he became more serious.

“I’ve had the opportunity to learn, at first hand, from the man I believe to be Georgia’s-perhaps America’s—greatest senator in this century. And now, since Senator Carr can’t himself run again, I’m running to replace him—to the extent that anybody can replace Benjamin Carr. I want your vote, so that I can put my experience to work for you in the Senate. I think that experience qualifies me to do a better job than anybody else who’s running. I hope you think so, too.”

A title came up: “Paid for by the Committee to Elect Will Lee.” The monitor went blank.

Will found that he had been holding his breath; he released it.

“That was fine,” Patricia Lee said.

“Careful, everybody,” Will laughed, “that woman is a mother.”

“She’s right, you know,” Kitty Conroy said.

“I think it’s perfect,” Billy Lee chimed in.

“You’ve done a magnificent job, Tom.”

“Thanks,” Tom said.

“We’ve got seven more one-minute spots.” He signaled for the technician to start the tape again.

Will watched himself as the spots ran. It was an eerie experience; he felt both a participant and a detached viewer. By the time the spots had all run, he felt comfortable watching them, even liked them a little.

“I feel too close to this to make any sort of rational judgment,” he said to no one in particular.

“Let me tell you what I wanted to accomplish,” Tom said, “and you tell me if I got it right. MacK Dean’s stuff is all flag-waving and patriotic music; I wanted a sharp contrast to that. I wanted to keep the message simple, friendly, and believable; I think Will is a believable man, and I wanted that to come out. I framed the shot so closely because I wanted intimacy, too. One of the criticisms that has been made of Will is that he’s too cool, too hard to figure out, that his charm is superficial. I worked him until that went away, until I felt we were right down to the core of the man. In the beginning, he was stiff, was trying to project earnestness; in the end, he was relaxed, maybe even a little tired, and I like him that way.”

“It’s an outstanding job, Tom,” Billy said.

“I think you accomplished exactly what you wanted to.”

“Thank you. Billy.”

“Hey, don’t I get any credit for any of this?” Will asked with mock hurt.

“Maybe a little,” Kitty said.

“I’m also doing a thirty-second version of each of these spots,” Tom said.

“That’ll give us a bank we can use right through the general election.”

“Thank God for that,” Will said.

“I wouldn’t want to go through this again.”

Somebody came into the room and called Billy to the phone. When he returned, his face was neutral.

“I’ve got some news,” he said.

Everyone looked expectantly at him.

“A source of mine says that a few minutes ago the State Republican Committee picked Jim Winslow as the Republican candidate.”

“Whew!” Tom said, slumping in his seat.

“You were afraid the Reverend Don Beverly Calhoun would get it?” Billy asked.

“I was,” Tom said.

“But why?” Billy asked.

“The man’s a buffoon.”

“So’s Ronald Reagan,” Tom said, “from my point of view, anyway. But he’s good on TV. So’s Calhoun. What’s more, Calhoun’s about as well known in this state as Ronald Reagan. He’s got his own television studios, and he can reach any home in the state two or three times a week;

he’s got a massive mailing list, too, all computer-catalogued by county and city and all sorts of other things.

If Dr. Don wants to send a letter to all the people in metropolitan counties between the ages of forty and sixty who have given him more than one hundred dollars in the past years and who are terrified of gays, he just punches it in, and the computer cranks out a list: I wish we had a data base half as good.”

“Well,” Billy said, “he’s out of the picture now, unless he campaigns for Winslow.”

“I don’t think he will,” Tom said.

“Winslow is too liberal for him; Winslow thinks abortion should be available in cases of rape and incest.”

“When do these spots start running, Tom?” Billy asked.

“We’ve only got ten days until the primary.”

“Tonight,” Tom said.

“Three of them. Big blast, statewide.

By primary day, we’ll have spent three hundred thousand of our money.”

“Aren’t you loading too much of your money into the primary?” Billy asked.

“What will you have left for the general election?”

“If we don’t win the primary, we won’t be in the general election,” Tom replied.

“We’re getting poll results frequently now, and I’m prepared to commit our whole budget to the primary, if the figures we get warrant it.”

“Sounds risky to me,” Billy said.

“Billy,” Tom said, “I’d hate to wake up the morning after the primary with three hundred thousand dollars in the bank, having lost the vote by half a point.”

“I see what you mean,” Billy said.