crowhopped around the rug on my big bare feet. I kicked the walls like somebody on their way home from
Before I go any farther, though, I should tell you that during the years 1958 to 1962 Terrell was governor of the state; that from about 1958 on, Terrell had just about run Tennessee; and that some people, myself included, thought that he had run it very, very badly.
What?s more, Terrell certainly had a major grudge to settle with Jimmie Horn.
That night, my batteries all recharged, I wrote up a long, inspired list of follow-up calls and visits I still had to make in the North. For the very first time, I felt totally comfortable with the story.
I prepared for a trip out to Berryman?s summer house in a place called Hampton Bays. It was there that I was to make my one big mistake in judgment while recording this story.
PART III
Hampton Bays, July 20
Thomas Berryman?s house at Hampton Bays was a sprawling, storm-gray sea captain?s house with a long canopied porch and five hundred feet of private beachfront. There were separate garages all over the place. The garages were literally everywhere you looked.
Inside the ten-bedroom house I found an unexpected surprise: Berryman?s girlfriend, a strange, beautiful lady named Oona Quinn.
A modern woman I guess you could call her, Oona Quinn was growing up in the manner of young men: she was groping, grappling, scratching for what she considered her rightful place in the world. That?s why Thomas Berryman liked her, I imagine.
Oona is tall and thin. (5?9?, big bones, 130 pounds.) She has flowing black hair that can come below her waist, but she generally keeps it up in a large bun. She has the classic, stately look of New England, and the best of it. She?ll smoke brown cigarettes, however, letting them hang out of the side of her mouth.
Unlike Ben Toy, Oona was the kind of person I?d known in my own life. She?d been a clerk in a boutique the spring and winter before she met Berryman. But she was bright with common sense. She was the one, for example, who finally gave me a reasonable explanation why
are forever hugging. She said it was their way of breaking sexual tensions. I liked that idea.
Oona Quinn said she was twenty, and that was a startling, but possible, fact.
I first saw her through a screen door, a black, dirty screen in the kitchen. I had my eyes and nose up against it and the shadowy outline of her hair was wild and bushy. A beautiful witch, I thought. I called inside.
During our first moments in the doorway?as I explained how I?d come to the house via Ben Toy?I scratched my nose, took a deep breath, scratched my chin, my ear, blinked several times, brushed the shoulder of my jacket, and lit a cigarette.
?Haven?t you ever seen a woman before?? she asked. I laughed (embarrassing memory) and said, ?Uh course.?
At the outset, Oona was reluctant to talk about anything?even the kind of day it was, or wasn?t, or ought to be. This didn?t surprise me, of course.
We walked down to the water on a gray picket fence that was laid flat instead of standing up. She carried a little kitchen radio that was playing cabaret songs, and it was almost as if I wasn?t there.
After we?d tramped a good distance from the house she asked me some questions. ?What ? exactly what did Ben Toy tell you?? she said.
I didn?t see a good reason to hold anything back, so I told her most of what I knew. She listened to it all, and then she simply laughed.
?He?s crazy, you know. Tuned out.?
?He said you know what happened in Nashville,? I told her.
?He said?? she stopped walking and turned to me. ?Or are you figuring things out by yourself, Mr. Jones??
She drifted away without an answer. Over closer to the water so it ran up over her feet. Her toes were long and bony with spots of red polish on the nails. And she
outrageously attractive.
When we finally reached a point out of sight of the house she plopped down in the sand. ?Lili Marlene? came on her radio and she turned it up full.
?I feel very ? like wind and things can pass right through me. It?s very weird talking to you right now. Unreal,? she said with a big sigh.
I asked her if Berryman was around somewhere and she gave no answer.
And then for some reason (I wasn?t able to understand it until I?d gathered more information) Oona Quinn began to tell me little things about herself. She spoke cautiously at first. In a cynical, irreverent sort of way. But after a while I started to get the feeling that I was hearing a nervous, maybe even a contrite confession. I also got the feeling that the girl was scared and confused.
She and I spent nearly three days together in Thomas Berryman?s house, and she spoke more and more freely (I thought) about what had happened between herself and Berryman.
One time she called him ?the master of good vibes.? She said that he had a ten-inch prick, if that question was circulating around my mind. And she also said that I tended to be gloomy.
All in all it was a crazy environment for me. For one thing, I?d never spent a lot of time with beautiful women before; for another, the only other time I?d been at the seashore was in Biloxi, Mississippi. I also had trouble sleeping. At night, it got cold as Tennessee winter out there.
