to keep ’em there. You worry too much, Seymour.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” a startled Huey shouted.
He stood fuming, like a bull preparing to charge, as up and over the hill came the party responsible. Trailed by his armed caddy, the blond heavyset man, with an eagle’s beak nose in an incongruously blue-eyed, boyish face, trotted down the hill, smiling benignly. He wore a straw hat, a short-sleeve white shirt with no tie, an argyle sweater vest, and-like Seymour-the childish knickers so many golfers insisted upon humiliating themselves in.
“Didn’t expect to get such a good piece of that, Kingfish!” he called, in a booming, pulpit-schooled baritone.
“You dumb sumbitch!” Huey shouted. “You tryin’ to kill me?”
“What,” Murphy whispered to me, “and end his meal ticket?”
This “dumb sumbitch” was Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith, the rabble-rousing revivalist preacher who headed up the Kingfish’s nationwide Share the Wealth Clubs.
Smith knocked his ball up over the next hill and he and his caddy moved on ahead of us, for a change.
“Why do you tolerate that two-bit bible-thumper?” Seymour muttered to Huey, as they walked along. “He’s only out to feather his own damn nest.”
Huey snorted a laugh. “Tell me somethin’ I
Seymour frowned, and didn’t even bother lowering his voice. “The bastard’s a Jew-hating Fascist, and his ravings and rantings draw us the wrong kind of attention.”
“There’s no such thing as the ‘wrong kind’ of votes, Seymour.” The Kingfish laid a hand on his adviser’s shoulder. “Besides-next to me, the Rev is the best damn rabble-rouser in the You Ass of A.”
I whispered to Murphy, “Is Seymour right about Smith?”
“Guess you folks up North don’t get the priv’lige of Reverend Smith’s insights,” he said dryly. “We hear ’im on the radio, a lot, down these parts.”
“Really?”
Murphy nodded. “The Rev got bounced out of his home church ’cause he was spendin’ too much time workin’ with a North Carolina black-shirt outfit.”
“North Carolina
“If I’m jokin’, I’m chokin’. They advocate overthrow of the gov’mint by armed insurrection-the whole shootin’ match.”
We had the same thing in Chicago, of course-the Bund was always rattling imaginary swords-but I couldn’t dispel from my hungover brain the absurd image of a bunch of hillbillies wearing bib overalls over paramilitary black.
Then Seymour hit a long ball that sent him out ahead of the pack, and it was Reverend Smith’s turn to do the bad-mouthing.
“That Hebrew ‘friend’ of yours is untrustworthy, you know,” Smith said, in a hypnotically mellow voice. Like so many preachers, the resonance of his voice lent Smith’s words undeserved weight.
“If I can trust anybody,” Huey said offhandedly, it’s Seymour.”
“So Christ thought of Judas,” Smith insisted. “Weiss is one of that tribe that uses both capitalism and communism to dominate the world and eradicate the godly.”
Huey said nothing, as they trudged down a steep hill; his ball mocked him from a sand trap up ahead.
“And this
This guy obviously wanted to play Goebbels to Huey’s Hitler, but then he made the mistake of being too direct about it.
“America needs its own Fuhrer,” Smith began.
And Huey turned on him.
“Don’t you compare me to that son of a bitch!” he roared, his nose an inch from the blinking Smith’s, his forehead buckling the brim of the Reverend’s straw fedora. “And knock off the goddamn Jew-baitin’ bullshit!”
When Huey backed away, the Reverend hung his head and said, “Please accept my apologies. I forgot myself. I bow to your more Christian instincts.”
“And don’t you fuckin’ forget it,” Huey muttered, moving on.
Two holes later, Smith and Huey were alone again. After Huey swung-and his mood was brightened by another two-hundred-yard-plus drive-the ass-kissing Reverend politely asked if he could discuss business for a moment.
“What kind of bizness, Rev?”
“Share the Wealth Club. I merely wanted to suggest that we charge our members a nominal ten cents in dues….”
“No.”
From his expression, you’d think Smith had been struck a blow. “But with eight million members at ten cents a month each, think what that would bring us!”
Huey looked like he was going to spit out a seed. But all he spit out were words: “We’re lookin’ for support, not money, Rev. The money’ll come. It’ll come. Now…what’s this about you bein’ against tellin’ our members about my thirty-dollar-a-month old-age pension plan?”
The Reverend lowered his voice to the timbre of a very special prayer. “Dr. Townsend is promising his followers two hundred dollars a month…so I suggest we just put in the word ‘adequate’ and let every man name his own figure….”
Huey roared with laughter. He slapped his spiritual adviser on the back.
“The Lord broke the mold when he made you, Rev,” Huey said. I couldn’t tell if that was spoken in admiration or contempt, or maybe half-and-half.
Finally, Huey and I found ourselves alone, with both Smith and Weiss off chasing their balls, so to speak. I filled the Kingfish in on my visits to the three names he provided me from his “son-of-bitch” book. I did it quickly, but in detail, and he took it all in with eyes that were hard and focused.
“I’ve made myself available,” I said, “and easy to find. I was at the Heidelberg most of the time, as you know, but the night I called on Dandy Phil, I stayed in New Orleans. And nobody’s contacted me, or approached me, about anything.”
“You think you gave ’em enough time?”
I shrugged. “I think if anything was afoot, from these quarters, we’d know. Remember, I talked to Hamilton and LeSage on Tuesday, and Dandy Phil on Wednesday. Your old pal Diamond Jim sends his regards, by the way.”
Huey shook his head. “God, I miss his spaghetti and meatballs.” We had reached his ball and he began to address it, then turned to me with a frown of thought and said, “You know, that tip I got said I wouldn’t live through the special session.”
“How long did you say the session would take, again?”
“By Monday, we’ll have them thirty-one bills rammed through. Would ya mind stickin’ aroun’ till then? I can use another good man at my side.”
I stepped back while he took a swing and raised a healthy divot.
“Practice swing,” I said.
“Goes without sayin’,” the Kingfish said, and waled at the thing. It went flying over the hill, just like my ten- grand advance had flown.
But another few days at $250 per wasn’t a bad consolation prize.
“I’ll stay,” I said.
“I thought you might,” he said jovially. “Considerin’ how you and Alice Jean done hit it off….”
He went on up and over the hill while I stood there with my mouth open.
“What’s wrong?” Murph asked, as he came down over the slope behind me.
I swallowed thickly. “I think the Kingfish knows I’m bangin’ his sweetie.”
“Hell, Nate,” Murphy said, moving on past me with a soft chuckle, “everybody in this damn circus knows that.”
