The rebel, p.35
The Rebel, page 35
“You took my hand, remember?” Jimmy said. She looked straight ahead and smiled, and they walked hand in hand. “Since we’re not in any danger according to whoever’s behind us, and since we’re not going to Birmingham.”
“Who told you that?” Claudia asked.
“Your friend John Lewis. He figures since we’re not taking tents and camping equipment, we won’t have anyplace to camp, so the idea is that we march out of Selma and then come back, and then we do the big walk tomorrow. So maybe Dr. King will make the march tomorrow.”
“Maybe he will.”
“You knew all about this, didn’t you?” Jimmy asked. “You could have mentioned it.”
She shrugged. “Not important. What’s important is ahead of us.”
A force of blue-uniformed troopers was positioned at the bottom of the arched steel bridge. Each man wore a helmet, carried a nightstick, and had a holstered sidearm and a gas mask. Along the edges was Sheriff Jim Clark’s posse with silvery badges affixed to their helmets. Some were standing, some were on horseback, and all brandished nightsticks or cattle prods. Sullen, hateful faces.
“John, can you swim?” Jimmy heard Hosea Williams ask John Lewis.
“No.”
“I can’t either,” said Williams, “and I’m sure we’re gonna end up in that river.” He turned around to Jimmy. He had a wide face and a neatly cropped mustache. “What about you, Mr. Dean? We might all be taking a dip in the river.” The river was a few hundred feet below.
Then he turned and led the marchers right up to the police line.
The troopers began removing their gas masks from their belts and putting them over their faces. An officer stood in front of his troops—stood right in front of Hosea Williams and John Lewis—and spoke into a loudspeaker. “You are all ordered to disperse. Go home or go back to your church. This march will not continue. You have exactly two minutes to comply.”
“Major, may we have a word with you?” Williams politely asked the officer.
The major appeared not to have heard him and glared straight ahead at Jimmy. That son of a bitch certainly knows who I am.
The marchers and the troopers faced one another. Only the wind and the rustling of clothes could be heard. Barely a minute passed—Jimmy could feel the blood pounding in his temples like a clock—and, still staring directly at Jimmy, the major shouted, “Troopers, advance!”
Jimmy heard the distant clomping of horses, as if they had somehow dropped out of the sky, and the troopers rushed the marchers in a coordinated attack. Swinging, kneeing, kicking, beating everyone in their way. Marchers were falling all around him.
Jimmy had lost Claudia.
He had just been holding her hand.
He shouted “Claudia!” as a trooper clubbed a woman to the ground a few feet away from him It’s not her and Jimmy could smell the trooper’s cheap cologne, could smell that through the bitter dust and sweat and blood, and it was as if he was standing still in the sea as breakers of blue-uniformed, white-helmeted troopers were surging and boiling past him, stepping over bodies, rushing after the marchers, who were running, retreating, and then, only then, did Jimmy hear the howling, terrified screams of the marchers. It was as if he had been deaf for those first seconds, and he realized that none of the troopers not one came near him. He was a ghost. Protected. No, it wouldn’t do for Sheriff Jim Clark’s men or the troopers to bloody a movie star, and then there were pop pop pop sounds and the air turned hot white, frosty white, tearing white, dust and tear-gas white, and the cloud settled over Jimmy, even as he ran away from it, and his eyes burned and his throat was raw meat, and there were screaming, crying specters all around him. “Claudia Claudia Claudia!” Jimmy shouted, and she called him.
“James!”
He’d found her, even as he heard the whapping sound of clubs against bone, as another trooper clubbed another woman, another figure, a specter, and Jimmy shouted Claudia! again, but there was no answer, and he punched the trooper who had taken down the woman, pulled off the man’s helmet, head-butted him, kneed him, took his nightstick, stood his place, and started swinging.
Cameras were going click.
Jimmy had found her, was holding her, Claudia. But how could she be so light? He carried her away from the dust and smoke and jaw-breaking screams, pulled her dragged her helped her out of the scorching biting pounding whiteness to safety.
Click. Click. Click.
Then realized he was carrying a stranger.
Click. Click. Click.
He heard a hollow crack, felt a warm numbness in the back of his head.
You’re not Claudia, you’re not Pier, you’re not Marilyn. His thoughts faded into a mushroom-white explosion. He felt a tickling sensation all over his scalp, and as he fell through perfect whiteness, he remembered the “trick” he always used to ask his mother to perform—the egg trick—and Momma was once again gently rapping her knuckles on his head (breaking the egg), and then ever so slowly and gently, she would spread out her hand and just barely ruffle his hair, and Jimmy would shiver and squeal in disgust and delight because indeed it always felt as if a raw egg was gelatinously spreading right across his skull.
Momma…
TWENTY-FOUR
Sooner or Later
LOS ANGELES: MAY 1965
“Yeah?”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back home safe and sound.”
“Who the hell is this?”
A pause. “Caroline. Caroline Tuchman. Jimmy, please, don’t hang up.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I’ve got something you want.”
“Yeah? Well, give it to somebody else. You had your chance, and you ran a game on me. You only get one chance, honey.”
“I gave you up to Bobby for your own good, to protect you. I was trying to do the right thing.”
“For my own good?”
“It wasn’t a game.” Then, gently, “Honey.”
Ordinarily, that would have softened Jimmy, but not now, not after Selma, not after Pier. “So what do you have that you think I’d want?”
“Information.”
“You want to tell me what you have or what?”
“Or what.” Jimmy didn’t respond. “Can I come over?” That said in a tiny, almost childish voice.
“You got something to tell me, tell me.”
“Not over the phone.”
Jimmy hung up the receiver. The phone rang immediately.
“Jimmy?” Silence. “I really do need to talk to you.”
“Fuck off, Caroline.”
“I talked to Pier a few weeks before—”
“You what? What the hell was she talking to you for?”
“We used to talk every once in a while.”
“Behind my back.”
“She trusted me, Jimmy. She needed to talk about her hopes and fears—and about you.”
“Shit, she must have been crazy toward the end.”
“I was going to get in touch with you before, but—”
“But what?”
“My own life sort of fell apart. My husband and I are separated.” Silence. “I was also in the hospital.”
“For what?”
“Can I come over, Jimmy?”
“What did Pier talk to you about?”
“Can I come over, Jimmy?”
CAROLINE MUST HAVE CALLED HIM FROM A NEARBY PAY PHONE BECAUSE the doorbell rang a few minutes later.
“You look like hell,” Jimmy said as he let her into the house. He had intended to ask her about Pier immediately, but now that she was here, he didn’t want to know. Not just yet…not just yet. I need to breathe, I need to get my head straight, then I’ll be ready, then I’ll be all right.
“Thanks.” She looked around, obviously awed by the paintings and the cracked beau monde ceiling mural. “A bit over the top. I wouldn’t have expected it from you and…”
“Pier. You can say her name.” Ask her.
Caroline nodded, and Jimmy led her into the library.
She looked around the room and said, “Jesus Christ, you once told me that Pier collected dolls, but I had no idea. God, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Caroline looked hollowed out, wasted. Her hair was cut shorter than when he last saw her, and her face was thin, waiflike; she had lost a layer of softening fat and appeared anorexic. In fact, she looked like a haunted child. Yet she had aged.
“You lost your tits,” Jimmy said, realizing only then how cruel that sounded.
“And the rest,” Caroline said as she sat down beside him on the couch. She seemed mesmerized by the shelves of dolls, by the porcelain-white relics of the dead.
“You want a drink?” he asked. Jesus Christ, she looks like Pier somehow. She shook her head. “Dope?”
“No. Thanks.” She glanced nervously around the room. “It’s like all the dolls are watching you. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“I sold the house once,” Jimmy said, ignoring her question, lighting a joint, musing, nattering on. “And then when Pier and I got back together, she had to have it back. Nothing else would do, and I had to buy all the paintings back at double their value. A sheikh from Iran or Iraq or somewhere around there bought the house, and he didn’t care about any of the stuff.” After a beat, he said, “He just wanted to fuck over a movie star. Sound familiar?”
“I imagine you sold it to him for a good piece of change in the first place.”
Jimmy laughed. “That’s why he wanted to fuck me over. At least he had a reason.”
“Stop it, Jimmy,” Caroline said. “If I was smart and doing the right thing for my career, I would have published Marilyn’s diary. It would have been the story of the year.”
“So how is your career?”
“I left the Times.”
“Yeah?”
She looked directly at him. “Okay, I was fired. When I was going through the divorce. I was acting a bit…out of character. I pissed a few people off, fucked up a few stories, and now I’m making more money freelancing.”
“That sounds like bullshit.”
“Okay, I’m making the same money, and I’m my own boss.”
Jimmy kept the curtains drawn in the library, and the light in the room was dusty, subdued. This had become a quiet place, a reliquary, a memorial for Pier. “You know, in this light, you…”
“What?” Caroline asked.
“Why were you in the hospital?” Jimmy asked, quickly changing the subject.
“Because my husband…my ex-husband beat the hell out of me.”
“Why?”
She forced herself to look Jimmy in the eye and said, “Because he found out that I was fucking Bobby.”
“What?”
She chuckled darkly. “Now you sound like Bobby.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Talking to himself. “So that’s how he got you to get the diary.”
“No, nothing was going on then. I did that because—”
“Because he convinced you it was for my own good.”
“And Pier’s.”
“Tell me about Pier,” Jimmy said softly.
“Bobby is a bastard,” Caroline said, seething. “When I needed just this much support”—she made a broken circle with her thumb and forefinger—“he had his numbers changed so I couldn’t reach him. Just like he did with Marilyn, huh?”
“So is this why you’re here, to get some phone numbers?” Bobby asked.
“No,” Caroline said. “Bobby promised me a job when he became a senator. I’m good at what I do. You know that.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
She let that pass and said, “I want the job.”
“What job?”
“To be his press secretary. For all that I think he’s a prick, I also think he’s going to be the next president.”
“Yeah, and I’m going to be governor.”
Caroline smiled at him, as if she knew something.
“What?” Jimmy asked. “Tell me what you were talking about with Pier. Now.”
“In a minute, Jimmy. Let me get this off my chest.”
“You don’t have a chest.”
“Fuck you, Jimmy.” After a beat, Caroline continued. “Bobby and I were friends. We had an affair, that’s all it was, but I never was in love with him. I thought he was sensitive and smart. My husband was a prick.” She laughed. “Like Bobby, I suppose. I just needed…something.” She sighed. “I guess I always just need something. Anyway, Ethel caught us.”
“Caught you? Jesus Christ.”
“In the proverbial act. Or almost. Just the same, she knows.”
“You’re crazy, Caroline, absolutely bug-fuck. Of course he changed his phone numbers. What the hell did you expect him to do?”
“I expected him to be a man. At least close the circle, call me and say good-bye, it was nice knowing you, bitch.”
Caroline looked at him, and all Jimmy could think was that she was a ghost, the ghost of a beautiful woman he had once known, and soon, like Pier, she would disappear, just dissipate into the air and become entirely spirit. “I want the job Bobby promised me.”
“So you do want his number.”
“No, I want you to talk to Ethel. Bobby told me how much Ethel likes and respects you.”
“What do you want me to tell her, ‘Oh, Ethel, remember the broad you caught screwing your—’”
“Jimmy, if you do me a favor, I’ll do you a favor.”
“Caroline, just tell me about Pier, like you promised, and then go home.”
“Remember the woman you were seeing in Selma?”
“What about her?” Jimmy asked warily.
“Her name is Claudia Clemson, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s big in the Black Panther Party. Very big.”
“What about it?”
“Ever wonder why you don’t see her anymore?”
“She told me she was going to be moving around down South trying to register voters,” Jimmy said, lying to protect her.
Caroline shook her head. “She’s in New York. I can give you her address, if you want it.”
In New York? Jimmy shrugged. “What kind of a game are you running now?” He waited for her to give more away.
“Did you care about her? Do you care about her?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. He had felt something for Claudia, some sort of closeness. “We didn’t have enough time together.” Too close to Pier’s passing away. He made a sour face. Passing away—as if Pier had gotten into a cab and left town. But Claudia took the pain away a little. Another ghost.
“The scandal magazines were certainly having a heyday with it.”
“Yeah. So what else is new?”
“And you being front-page news and on the covers of Time and Life for saving that woman and standing up to those troopers on Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday in Selma. You can’t buy that kind of publicity, Jimmy. And you shaking hands with Martin Luther King when he came to visit you in the hospital. All that. Heady stuff.” Then she said, “Bobby thought that your relationship with the Black Panther woman would hurt your career, and I think for all his concern with civil rights, it went against his grain for you to be seeing a Negro.”
“Seeing a Negro? Who the fuck cares whether it goes against his grain or not?”
“Well, your girlfriend was in some very nasty trouble, and Bobby fixed things up so she wouldn’t have to go underground like the rest of her friends did.”
Caroline certainly had Jimmy’s attention. Claudia had said something about having to go underground, going to Europe for a while—“Just part of the gig, Jimmy”—and that she would call him when it was safe. “What do you mean, ‘fixed things up’?”
“Called in favors, I don’t know. Whatever he does.”
“Why would he bother?”
“To get you out of harm’s way. That’s what he told me.”
“Harm’s way?”
“He thought it would hurt your political career.”
“I don’t have a political career. I’m an actor, remember?”
“Okay, your political future.” Jimmy shook his head in disbelief. “The deal was she doesn’t see you.” She paused. “You want to check it out, I told you I’ll give you her number and address in New York.”
“Bobby, you little son-of-a-bitch bastard,” Jimmy whispered. “Who do you think you are?”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Caroline said.
“I’m going to break his fucking head,” Jimmy said. “Manipulative bastard.”
“He was only doing what Pier would have wanted. She used to call him.”
“Are you going to tell me that—”
“No, Jimmy, nothing like that. But when we talked, she would tell me about how she wanted you to be more like Bobby.”
“Be like Bobby? Son of a bitch.”
“No, she wanted you to be a leader.”
Jimmy laughed. “No. She wanted to be the star. I told her once that if she wanted to be First Lady, she’d have to marry Bobby. I guess she took me seriously.”
“She wasn’t interested in Bobby. Not in the least bit.”
“Yeah.” Even now Jimmy felt the hot juices working through his chest; he was jealous of his dead wife. The dead can’t fuck.
“But she seemed obsessed with the idea of you being—”
“Something I’m not,” Jimmy said.
“I’m not sure she was so wrong. You’ve been giving a lot of political speeches these days.” She looked smugly at him. “Actually, you’re already a politician. You’ve been putting your ass on the line for politics. Heady stuff, like I said, especially when you combine it with winning two Academy Awards and—”
Jimmy snorted. Academy Awards…and he thought about how he felt in crowds. In possession. Being possessed. In control. Not thinking. Being. Just being and forgetting Pier and Marilyn and maybe even Claudia a little.
“And you know that Pier really wanted to be your support person. She wanted to make you cookies and have your babies.”
“You’re talking about some person I never married.”
“Maybe you needed to talk to her.”
“Maybe I did,” Jimmy said. “Okay, you done?”
“Will you talk to Ethel for me?”
