Blood and Thunder

trousers and jingled his change nervously. “The lot was jam-packed-every farmer, every shopkeeper, every mother’s son, not to mention every mother, was piled inside that capitol watching that clown perform.”

“So you didn’t stop?”

“We would’ve had to park a couple blocks away, and we said, forget it.” He shook his head. “Shit. If only I’d stopped in there, maybe I’d’ve run into Carl and stopped it. Whatever the hell happened.”

“I wouldn’t waste time thinking about that. Your sister-in-law said you ‘know things.’ What things, Tom Ed?”

A girl’s happy laughter rippled through the night; a horn honked a few blocks away.

“I was still drivin’ around with my pals, along Third Street, when we noticed a crowd swarmin’ around the State-Times newspaper office. I pulled over and got out, and somebody in the crowd said Long had been shot. Somebody else said that a Dr. Weiss did it. That gave me a chill.”

“Did you think of Carl?”

“Carl? Hell, no! I thought of my dad! With his hotheaded political ideas, it’d be just like him to get in some stupid scrape with Long. Anyway, I asked the guys to take me back home, drop me off. The front porch lights were on, and Dad was standing on the front steps. He looked kind of…dazed. He said, ‘Something’s wrong. Your mother’s sleeping, she doesn’t know.’ And I said, ‘Doesn’t know what?’ And he said, ‘I’m not sure, but I’m afraid something’s happened to Carl.’”

He swallowed and touched his hand to his face; squeezed his nose. Swallowed again. I patted him lightly on the shoulder.

“Then what, Tom Ed?”

“Then I guess I told Dad what I heard at the newspaper office. And he told me he’d heard something over the radio, and sent me over to Carl’s, to see what was going on. There were all sorts of people, in the street and on the lawn; I pushed through, and rang the doorbell. Vonnie stepped out on the porch. She was very panicky. She said, ‘Carl’s gun isn’t in the house!’”

“Why do you think she checked for his gun?”

“She’d heard the vague radio report, too. I don’t know-maybe she thought Dad had taken it. Maybe she didn’t know Carl had been carrying it with him a lot, lately. Anyway…I told her I thought Carl had been killed, and she looked out at all those faces in front of her house, and she…she started to scream.”

I didn’t know what to say. The only sounds were the jingle of his change and a distant car. Lights were starting to wink off along fraternity row.

“Dad showed up about that time,” he said, “and took Vonnie inside. I was so…so damn frustrated! We’d had no official word! It was only two blocks to the capitol, so I decided to walk over there, and see for myself. My cousin Jim lived just down the street, and he went over with me.”

“When was this?”

“Oh…it must have been about eleven, eleven-thirty. The capitol doors were locked; the state troopers were keeping people away. But we found Carl’s car.”

“Where?”

“Right in front. Just to the left of that fancy front stairway with the states on the steps. Huey Long himself didn’t have a better parking space.”

How had Carl Weiss managed that?

“The car was locked,” he continued, “but through the window, we could see Carl’s bag on the seat. I figured we ought to move the car, so we ran back home to get the spare keys. But when we came back, the car was gone.”

“Gone? Did you find it?”

The boy nodded. “Somebody had moved it around on the east side of the building. When I unlocked it, I found his medical bag on the floor, on the passenger’s side, and the bag was open.”

“Open?”

“Somebody’d ransacked it, instruments were sticking out every which way, the whole contents in disarray. The glove box was open-they rifled it, too-and there was a white flannel sock on the floor. That made my mouth go dry.”

“Why?”

“That was what Carl carried his gun in. ’Cause the gun had a little grease on it, and he didn’t want to get anything messy.”

“Did he carry the gun in his bag?”

“Sometimes. But mostly in the glove box. He caught a drunk sleepin’ it off in his car one time, and had to scuffle with him, some.” The boy shrugged. “He’d had the gun a long time, you know. It was a little.32 Browning he brought back from France.”

“He liked guns.”

He gave me a hard look. “That doesn’t make him a killer. He liked music, too, but it didn’t make him an opera singer.”

“What do you think Carl was doing at the capitol?”

“Well, he sure as hell wasn’t there to shoot Huey Long. My brother was too moral, had too much respect for life, and love for his family, not to mention a complete disinterest in petty local politics….”

The same Weiss-Pavy family song.

I sang the Heller song: “But he did go in there. He did confront Long. Why?”

Tom Ed shrugged. Jingled his change.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Tom Ed. Something no one in your family has told me, yet.”

He looked at me sharply. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing! I’m trying to find out what the hell your brother was doing there! No one in your family believes the gerrymander issue could have triggered this tragedy. What did?”

“Well…”

“Well, what, Tom Ed?”

He looked away from me. His voice was barely audible. “If aspersions had been cast on the Pavy family, I could…I could see Carl doing something about it.” Now he looked at me, and his voice was not soft: “Not murder, never murder…but confronting Long? Arguing with him, maybe even punching the son of a bitch in the mouth? I could see that.”

“What sort of aspersions, Tom Ed?”

He shrugged again. “That’s all you’re gettin’ out of me. I gave you plenty.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, you did.”

A tiny half-smile formed. “Didn’t mean to get smart.”

“It’s okay. Family honor’s a big deal down here, isn’t it?”

“Counts for a lot,” he said. “Funny thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You’d be surprised how many people in Louisiana consider Carl a hero. A martyr. We get letters damn near ever’day from people wantin’ to fund a statue.”

“Do you think your brother was a martyr?”

He bristled. “Hell no! He was a murder victim. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Heller. I still have studies to tend to….”

He shook my hand and headed up the walk of the fraternity house. But even this sheltered world wouldn’t be shelter enough for the brother of the man who shot the Kingfish.

Beauregard Town was a residential section near downtown Baton Rouge, a stone’s throw from Huey’s White House-like governor’s mansion. It was after ten o’clock, and the moon mingled with soft-focus street-lamps to lend the quaint, late-nineteenth-century subdivision, which ran to gingerbread cottages with small well-tended yards, a quiet charm.

I pulled the Ford up in front of one of the slightly larger, newer bungalows, a one-and-a-half-story wood- frame with a broad open porch and tapered piers; centered in the roof was a dormer with triple windows. The lights were on in the downstairs front windows.

I went up the walk, onto the gallery-style porch, knocked on the door.