Blood and Thunder

he flubbed a shot; the glee when he really connected with one made up for it.

We began to trudge down the hill, to where Seymour’s ball waited.

“These college girls,” I said to Murphy. My head was playing the Anvil Chorus. “Do I remember us goin’ to their hotel room?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“Was mine a redhead?”

“I believe so.”

“I’m not married or anything….”

“I couldn’t rightly say.”

Seymour hit the ball straight and hard and it bounced onto the green, a healthy but possible putt from the pin.

The Kingfish chipped it on, but he three-putted and then Seymour made his shot with grace and seeming ease. I was keeping score for the Kingfish, and when he reported the number of his strokes-off of which he had shaved two-I jotted it down dutifully. The shakiness of my pencil line, however, might have been the work of a recent stroke patient.

As we walked to the next tee, Seymour said, “Shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Smith?”

“Hell, no,” Huey blurted. “Let that slowpoke sumbitch catch up on his own time, at his own speed. I don’t wait for nobody.”

“Actually,” Seymour said conspiratorially, “I’m glad he’s not around.”

“Oh?”

“Couple things I wanted to mention that I’d just as soon the good doctor not be privy to.”

“Well, then, hell’s bells-shoot.”

Seymour tasted the sentence before spitting it out; it was bitter. “I’ve been able to confirm that Elmer Irey’s in town.”

That remark penetrated the swollen lump of pain that was my head, as I dragged my sorry ass and the ton of clubs behind them.

Huey seemed unconcerned. “That right?”

“No question there’s a major investigation under way.”

“They won’t git anything on me. You got yourself covered, Seymour?”

“I believe so.”

“Sometimes I don’t know about you boys,” the Kingfish said, shaking his head, teeing up. “Without me ’round to hold ya down, I’m ’fraid you’d all land in the penitentiary.”

He swung, missed, said, “Shit!” then grinned back like a silly kid at Seymour and said, “Practice swing.”

Then he slammed it down the fairway.

Seymour teed up. “This bad blood between you and the White House, it could ruin us, Huey. Never mind this tax threat-look at the way they’re usin’ patronage against us! Shuttin’ us off, and givin’ all the WPA jobs to our political enemies to dole out! It’s goddamn blackmail.”

Huey’s grin was nasty as he rocked on his heels, holding his golf club in two hands before him like a riding crop. “Ever hear of the tenth article of the Bill of Rights, Seymour?”

Pausing at the tee, Seymour frowned. “Certainly. It’s not exactly on the tip of my tongue….”

It was on Huey’s. “Anythin’ not specifically permitted to the federal government or forbidden to the states is straightout reserved to the people.” He bounced over to me, handed me the club to put away in the bag.

Then he turned to Seymour, and thumped himself on the chest.

“And of course,” he said, “as we all know, I am the people.”

Seymour had been about to address the ball, but this stopped him. He frowned in concern.

“What do you have in mind, Huey?”

Huey’s sneering smile made me think of a mean little kid laying out the details of a particularly nasty prank for his cohorts.

“One of the laws I’m gonna push through in this special session,” he said, “forbids any federal official or employee from disbursin’ any public funds appropriated or made available by the Congress…if, in the Louisiana state government’s opinion, that spendin’ would encroach upon states’ rights.”

“This is a law you’re talkin’ about?”

“Sure as hell ain’t a request. Violators’ll be sentenced to a year in jail! We’ll fill the hoosegow so full of them Roosevelt henchmen, there won’t be no room left for the honest crooks.”

Seymour seemed to have forgotten his teed-up ball; he went over to the tee bench and sat, numbly, and Huey joined him.

Quietly, reasonably, Seymour said, “Kingfish…you have one of the best legal minds in the country…”

“Why, thank you, Seymour. The Supreme Court of the United States, ’fore whom I’ve argued many a case for the great state of Loozyana, agrees with you.”

“…and you know, at least as well as I, that such a law would be found unconstitutional….”

“I don’t give a diddly damn. Either way, it’ll tie up them federal funds till after the election, come January.”

Seymour sighed; his expression was dark. “You’re playing into FDR’s hands with this one, Kingfish-with this probe he and the House of Representatives are about to launch…”

Huey stood, stamped his feet like a child in a tantrum. “They can probe my hind quarters till the cows come home! Claimin’ Louisiana ain’t a ‘representative form of government’ no more? Hell-that duck won’t hunt. Everybody knows that crippled fucker is afraid of me!”

“Then you haven’t…reconsidered?”

Huey spoke through clenched teeth; whatever subject Seymour had just broached, it was a sore one. “Reconsidered what, Seymour?”

Seymour said nothing.

Huey put his hands on his hips and leaned forward mockingly, inches from Seymour’s dour face, pronouncing every word distinctly.

“Yes, I’m runnin’ for president,” Huey said, “and no, I don’t necessarily expect to win…not in ’36. But by God, I’ll sure as hell set the stage for 1940!”

Huey backed off, folded his arms, raised his chin.

Seymour said, “Kingfish…we don’t even have the damn South sewed up. Does the word ‘Mississippi’ conjure up anything? Bilbo’s man just beat your candidate’s ass, there!”

Senator Bilbo, another rabble-rousing populist, had backed Hugh White for governor of Mississippi; Huey’s man Paul Johnson had been narrowly defeated. The papers were still full of the ongoing recount.

“That’s a goddamn fluke,” Huey said dismissively. “And it wasn’t me that got beat- it’s that shif’less sucker Johnson…he shoulda took more of my help! Look what my stumpin’ done for Hattie Carraway! Jesus Christ couldn’ta got that prune-faced old gal elected. But I did!”

Seymour was shaking his head. “I’ve told you how expensive a campaign of that magnitude would-”

“Fuck it! We got a war chest so fulla loot we cain’t close the goddamn fuckin’ thing!”

“It’ll clean us out, Kingfish.”

He nodded, and kept nodding. “And we’ll have another four years, ’fore ’40, to fill the ol’ dee-ducts box back up ag’in, won’t we? Now, git off your ass, and hit your goddamn ball, Seymour. I ain’t got all day.”

A weary Seymour got up, his demeanor at odds with his sporty golf apparel, addressed the ball, hit it hard and clean, but not as forcefully as Huey, who was heading down the slope while Seymour’s ball was still in the air.

“House of Representatives my ass,” he was muttering. “Four hundred and thirty-five fuckin’ dumbbells…”

As I trailed along, my pounding head barely functioning, I gathered that Huey and Seymour had moved on to discussing possible candidates for the next figurehead governor, now that O.K. Allen’s “reign” was coming to an end. Huey kept saying that he’d promised this one and that one the job.

“Jesus, Huey-who haven’t you promised this job to?”

“Hey, it keeps ’em all on my side, and when the time comes, I’ll find an excuse and a fat job for each of ’em,