think it was the fourth time that he'll never speak to me again. This time I think he means it. Now you come along and tell me that this means that fucking vacancy more like an open sore is finally going to be filled.
'My Christian heart is filled with joy. Now I know Larry was telling the truth when he said he was happy when I got the job. He told me when Chassy Spring he was appointing me, 'cause you had hammered Chassy, he'd never been so damned relieved in all of his born days.
'You getting it meant I was free. Free of all the nagging bastards who been after that damned job. 'Sorry,' I could then tell them, 'Dan Hilhard's man's the winner. You gotta beef, it's with him. I can't help you one bit.'
'I didn't believe him then, but now I do, I do. It's the exact same thing with me. Now I can finally tell the late Richie Hammond's favorite nephew and also the late Larry Lane's grandson that the fucking job is filled and they are out of fucking luck, 'So stop pestering me and beat it.'
'The Lane grandson especially. His mother came from miles away she was in Japan, the time to help boot Grampa Larry out of his own house and make him go somewhere else to die. But her kid is delicate; he told me he suffers from chronic depression and can't leave his bedroom about ninety-eight days a year. I told him this makes it hard for me and Lennie Cavanaugh to see how he could possibly hold down a job in the courthouse. I told him having to go to the courthouse every day makes even perfectly normal and stable people like me, haven't got a thing wrong with them, feel pretty depressed quite a lot.
'He thinks that shouldn't matter. He thinks the fact his gallant unsung dad singlehandedly resolved some trade dispute with Taiwan should make everything all right for him, always, in perpetuity. In other words, what I think doesn't matter. He wants the job and therefore I should give it to him.
'Now I can tell him he's probably right, but I can't do it for him.
And: 'If you're down in Hell hstenin', Larry, understand that this one's for you.' I can tell the same thing to the Hammond kid, too, who obviously doesn't know his late Uncle Richie hated me and did everything he could think of to fuck me over, or what warm feelings I still have for the bastard. 'And Larry, if you're still kstenin', if you should run into Richie down there, tell him this one's also for me.'
'I will say to those two fresh kids: 'Hate to tell you this, guys, but the both of you seem to've lost out. To a nigger, can you beat it?
Hey, it's Affirmative Action what can I tell you? I've been neutered, made to sing soprano and rendered powerless, also my hands have been tied. But I want you to know, I'll always have you in my heart.'
'Same for the other four hundred and thirty-two people who've also let it be known that they'd like the job. Not a bunch of fireballs; most of them look to me like they need their rest and generally manage to get it. I will tell them you got me in a hammerlock, ignored my piteous cries, and ordered me like the Nazi you are to give it to this fine young gentleman of color. So now they can stop calling me and start calling you day and night to threaten you with death for giving it to Amos. Or was it Andy you just said? Whichever, doesn't matter;
I can't wait 'til he gets here.'
Senator Green until his entry into politics in 1981 had for several years taught social studies and coached the jay vee football and basketball teams at Cambridge Ridge and Latin High School, where he had encountered Tyrone Thomas. Thomas had been the youngest son of a single mother whose two elder boys, by different footloose fathers, had both been in trouble with the law before apparently getting themselves straightened out as US Army volunteers. Tyrone had not been a standout as student or athlete, but he was a genuinely nice kid, and he had become one of Green's favorites, using his average intelligence as diligently in the classroom as he did his body and his average skills when playing sports, cheerfully doing what Green, his mentor and after a while his surrogate father told him to do. He earned a B+ average and varsity letters as a second-stringer in football, basketball and track, and received a need-based scholarship from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.
Correctly assessing as poor his prospects of even a brief career in professional sports, and believing that the practices and games took too much time away from his studies, Thomas dropped football midway through his first season and basketball after his sophomore year at the Cross, slightly disappointing one of the basketball coaches who had hoped he might develop into a capable substitute small forward, but gratifying Green. Green said Thomas's decision was a mature judgment, confirmed by his subsequent graduation with a 2.7 grade-point low B average in sociology, and his subsequent admission to the New England School of Law in Boston.
Thomas earned his J.D. while partially supporting himself and two children his wife, Carol, also worked, as a $17,000-a-year clerk-typist in the State Department of Revenue as a $24,000-a-year assistant manager of the Great American Inn motel on Fresh Pond Parkway in Arlington. When he graduated he had firm assurances from GAI upper management that his record in Arlington coupled with his college and law degrees put him on the fast track for early promotion to the national executive offices in Alexandria. He was flattered and inclined to stay with the company.
Senator Green told him not to do it. He said: 'If you do that, Tyrone, if you sell yourself to them, you will be a big fool. Because that is how they do it now. They don't sell us in the markets any more to white planters who will own us 'til they decide it's time to sell us again. What they show us now is this tinhorn fantasy of a great career so that we will sell ourself on it; do it to ourselves. What they will do with you is they will take you down there to Virginia, and give you some hocus-pocus about how grand you're going to be, if you stay with Good Kind Massa Company.
'What that grandness will be, Tyrone, when you finally achieve it and your head has cleared enough so that you can see what you have got, will be a desk and a chair outside of the office where the white boys go inside and shut the door to run the store, and that is where you'll always be, no matter where they send you. And send you they will. They will make you move and move, and then they'll make you move again, all around this great big country, anywhere they need to put a black man's face where folks can see it. No matter what they call it, that will be your purpose. That's what you'll be for. A mannequin, store-window dummy, nothing more 'n that; and you and Carol and your kids will have one lousy life. You wont ever be, anywhere, son.
'You'll always be where you happen to be now, on the way to someplace else. Not where you were before and not where you're going next, never anywhere. And then one day you'll get old and be retired, and you wont know where you want to be, or even where you've been. That's what they've always done to us, kept us on the move. 'Noplace' will be your home. And that's no way to live.
'No, you listen to me, Tyrone. I've never let you down. I will find something for you. I will find you a good place.'
'What was the other one's name there again now?' Whalen said. 'The woman, I mean, not the new black kid. Jeannie, Jeannie Flagg there, 'm I right? Now there is a very nice broad. All of us like her a lot.
Not much to look at, I grant you that, she should lose a few pounds, but still, a very nice broad. Very businesslike woman. Knows what her job is and does it. Very professional person. Last week there we had her in here both nights. Didn't see you at all.
'Anyway, it's been a while we seen you in here. Nice to have you back.
Got something goin' on, have you, getting' too good for us here? You been very busy or something?'
'Not particularly, no,' Merrion said, feeling easy and relaxed and in command. 'No busier'n usual, for the summer months, at least. I hadda have a woman we've got under more or less loose supervision come and see me in the office this morning. We've been hearin' some things that we didn't like, kind of thing she might be doin'. Kind of a sad case, really. Isn't what you'd call too sharp. Doesn't have a steady job; lost the one she had. No one to watch out for her, take care of her.
Not much you can really do. So I made her come in today. Give her another talkin'-to, see if maybe that'll do a little good, get her straightened out again. Though of course it's hard to say. You know how it is, you guys: want to help the people that you come in contact with, but whether what you do does help, you never really know.'
Whalen showed no sign of interest in the woman's problem or identity.
That indicated either that he already knew all he felt he needed to know about Janet LeClerc, or else that he knew nothing and was relying on his good and well-informed friend Ambrose Merrion to bring him up to speed if there was anything about her that he ought to know. All right, then, nothing to be concerned about; it was always hard to know what detail in any offering would capture Whalen's magpie attention as the jewel to be seized, and often necessary to offer several choices.
'Got in a round of golf with Danny after lunch this afternoon. Went down to West Springfield, saw my mother in the home. Geez, those nuns're awful good. They really do good work. All those poor people in there half-gaga, two-thirds of them out of their gourds, no idea which end is up, and those nuns're with them all the time. Don't get any relief. It must be an awful strain on them, hard life to hoe.
