The rebel, p.44
The Rebel, page 44
“It’s too close to call, that’s what—”
“Whether you make a victory speech or a concession speech, you got to go down there.”
“So what do you care what I look like?”
The Colonel smiled at him. “Because you’re my boy. Now, you want to take that chip off your shoulder?”
“Tell me what you got to say.”
“Here’s your acceptance speech.” The Colonel handed Jimmy a few sheets of lined yellow paper.
“I think I can do that on my own,” Jimmy said.
“’Course you can, son. This was cooked up by Goldie and the nigger.”
“Leonard’s his name,” Jimmy said. “Leonard.”
“Yeah, well, I just made a few suggestions for you,” the Colonel said. “But you’re the boss. It’s your speech.”
“That’s right, I’m the boss.”
“What are you so pissed off about? I just made you the most powerful person in California. Or you’re just about to be, anyway. I think you—”
“I don’t owe you. And I’m not your boy, Colonel.”
The Colonel nodded. “I think you are, Jimmy. I think you are.” And then the Colonel was smiling and backslapping, as well-wishers crowded around them, shaking their hands, as if both were celebrities of equal merit, and Caroline touched Jimmy’s arm, guiding him out of harm’s way. They spent a few minutes chatting with Marty, who seemed genuinely happy for Jimmy and Caroline and was earnestly playing the successful auteur all dressed in white. Jimmy owed Marty and was trying to pay up. There was a huge shout and clapping, everyone watching the televisions. Jimmy was ahead, but it was close. Jimmy had a drink but refused the next. He talked with Bobby, only then realizing that he finally felt calm. He might not be able to trust many people in this room, or the packed rooms adjoining it, but he was calm. He stared down at the thick, beige carpet and listened to Bobby, the nasal and drawn-out vowels of his Boston accent somehow comforting, and he thought of his cousin Markie, Bobby and Markie. One he loved, even though he hadn’t seen him for years; the other he distrusted. Yet he owed Bobby. Perhaps Bobby had done so much for him out of guilt for Marilyn. They stood close together, shoulders hunched, as if unconsciously mirroring each other, then Jimmy was talking with Ethel. Ethel was comfort, sweet milk and kindness and children mixed incongruously with a wholesome, healthy wildness and eccentricity, but she looked drawn tonight, as drawn as Jimmy.
“The baby okay?” Jimmy asked.
“Baby’s fine,” Ethel said, patting her stomach. “They don’t call me Old Moms for nothing.”
“You okay?”
“Not so fine,” Ethel said.
“Yeah, stupid thing to ask.”
“No, it’s not. I’m getting there, it’s just—”
“Yeah?”
“The dream. The dream’s all coming true. I told you about it, didn’t I?”
Jimmy nodded. “At your brother’s funeral.”
“I really appreciated that you came,” Ethel said. “You being so busy with the campaign and everything.” She looked at her hands, examining them, as if she’d just touched something she shouldn’t have, and said, “But I was happy to see you and Caroline. It really helped. A lot.”
“We wanted to be there.”
“You know what someone said who saw the plane crash?” Ethel said; she looked haunted, transported. “He said that he saw a man looking out the window and smiling, just before it hit. Whenever my brother George was in real trouble, he always smiled. It was a terrible smile, like a grimace. That man saw George in the plane. I know it was George smiling like that, and I can’t imagine how he felt looking out that window while his plane circled, going down, going—”
“Ethel, don’t,” Jimmy said, putting his arms around her. “Let it go.”
A woman with an expertly painted face and a sprayed helmet of dyed black hair gave Jimmy and Ethel a surprised look; she’d have something to gossip about—Did you see James Dean and, would you believe it, with Robert Kennedy’s wife, what’s her name?
“And Bobby told you about Kick, right?”
Kick was Ethel’s niece. She had taken a little girl, a friend’s daughter, for a ride in her convertible. Somehow, little eight-year-old Hope O’Brien fell out of the car and later died.
“Yeah. Caroline said she called you.”
“Within the last three months, George dies, and then this business with Kick. Both times I had the same dream, the same dream I always have when something terrible is going to happen.”
“Ethel, it’s—”
“You got an explanation?” she snapped.
“No, I don’t have an explanation.”
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” she said. “God, I’m some friend. This is your big night, and here I am acting like an idiot.”
“You’re not acting like an idiot. This is difficult stuff.”
But Ethel wasn’t listening. She went on: “When I came into the lobby, just before, I remembered the dream, I felt it. It hit me, it really hit me. It’s not over, Jimmy. Something terrible is going to happen again.”
“No, it’s not,” Jimmy said, realizing how inane that sounded.
“I worry about Bobby, and you, and everybody. After Jack…I worry about Bobby all the time.”
“That’s only natural,” Jimmy said.
“When I got pregnant again, I thought everything was going to change, that everything would be fine.”
“It will be, Ethel.”
“Promise?” She grinned at him.
“Promise.”
“You remember that party, when Bobby was spending all his time with Marilyn Monroe?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, suddenly wary.
“Somehow I feel the same way tonight.”
“Bobby’s just working the room,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah, I just feel, I don’t know. Empty, but I feel better seeing you. In two minutes I’m going to be so happy I’d jump into a swimming pool, if there was one here.”
“There’s one on the roof, I think,” Jimmy said, smiling at her.
“Jimmy, are you happy?”
“Yeah…?”
“I mean with Caroline.”
“Where are you going with this, Ethel?”
“Sorry. God, I can’t even keep my mouth shut. Look, I don’t have any hard feelings toward Caroline. What she did with Bobby…” She laughed bitterly. “A lot of people did that with Bobby.”
Jimmy squeezed her hand. “Who told you I wasn’t happy?”
“No one. Honestly. I just…I just hope you love her. Do you?”
“Yes, Ethel. Very much.”
She smiled. “I’m still in love with Bobby. Through it all.” She smiled and said, “I guess I must be, with number ten in the oven.” She patted her stomach. “Has Bobby talked to you about his…plans?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“About running against you-know-who,” Ethel said. “I think he should do it. That’s what he wants, but he’s afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Past history.”
“Because of Jack?”
“And Lyndon, too. I shouldn’t be talking about this. He’d kill me, but he’s afraid people would see him as…ruthless.”
“So?”
“And he doesn’t want to split the party,” Ethel said.
“He wants it so bad he can taste it, doesn’t he?” Jimmy asked. “But you’re the one who’s really afraid, aren’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you be?” She laughed at herself after she said that. “No, you wouldn’t. Both of you think that you have to flirt with death to prove something.”
Neither Jimmy nor Ethel realized that Bobby was standing nearby and had heard what they said. He put his arms around Jimmy and Ethel and said, “Naughty, naughty, this is Jimmy’s night. She telling you about her dream again?” he asked Jimmy. “It’s as cockeyed as that curse thing she dreamed up with my sister-in-law.”
“Jackie?”
Bobby laughed. “No, Joan.” He squinted at Ethel and said, “Birds of a feather.”
“You’re rotten through and through, Robert Francis Kennedy,” Ethel said.
“Jimmy, you know when I decided I wanted to be president? It was when I was”—suddenly he changed his accent to mimic CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite—“It was impossible to pinpoint the exact time and place where he decided to run for president, but the idea seemed to take hold as he was swimming in the Amazonian river of Nhamunda, keeping a sharp eye peeled for man-eating piranhas.” Dramatic pause. “Piranhas have never been known to bite a U.S. senator.” He patted Jimmy and said, “And I doubt they’d bite the new governor-to-be of California, either.”
“How much have you had to drink?” Ethel asked.
Locking eyes with Jimmy, he said, “Not nearly enough.” And then a shout went up, everyone clapping, pushing, rushing over to Jimmy and Bobby, congratulating.
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Jimmy said.
IT WAS ELEVEN-THIRTY.
The Embassy Ballroom was pandemonium, the crowd was shouting screaming chanting for Jimmy, and for Bobby, too, and Jimmy and Caroline, Bobby and Ethel came down a freight elevator with Jimmy’s bodyguards. Bobby made it difficult for his ex-FBI security man Bill Barry; he wouldn’t allow him to carry a gun. If Bobby had his way, he wouldn’t have any security at all.
Neither would Jimmy.
Onto the speaker’s platform, the rush, the wild singing in the ears, ahead like a writhing continent were Jimmy’s supporters, adoring, loving; pennons and posters and balloons bobbed, two thousand people reaching out, this was the rush moment, this was all the marijuana rolled into a life-size joint, no wonder Kerouac, the silly asshole, was drunk, blasted, blasted out on the crowd.
Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy
And Bobby was waving, smiling, bathing in it, for this would be his state…when he needed it, then Bobby at the mike, introducing Jimmy, but the crowd wouldn’t stop applauding, and Ethel leaned over to him and said, “They’re clapping for you, Bobby, not Jack—you,” and Bobby nodded and stretched out his arms, as if he were going to high-dive right into the crowd of campaign workers, party members, hangers-on, fans—all those who wanted needed had to be close to the sweaty charisma of power, as if by being close to Bobby and Jimmy, Jimmy and Bobby, they would live longer, freer, be richer, happier, immortality, this moment forever. There were young men wearing white T-shirts and red jackets, rebel accountants, rebel dockworkers, rebel cabdrivers; there were senior citizens wearing white boaters with photographs of Jimmy; and there were the ever-present kids, the hallmark of the campaign, the beautiful, idealistic, horny, energetic, enthusiastic loyal kids in suits and jeans, the kids who had worked their strong young hearts out for Jimmy, the kids who loved him wanted him. Wanted to be him…and for these thunderous, glorious, staccato moments, they were him.
“I don’t know if any of you folks heard Ronald Reagan’s concession speech,” Bobby said, leaning in toward the microphone, “but to quote our opponent, ‘From one actor to another, Jimmy; break a leg.’” Applause, cheering, but Bobby was in control, the crowd was listening, not screaming for him to turn blood into wine. Turning to Jimmy, “Now, I know you and Ronnie are old friends, that you go back to the old and early days of television”—laughter—“but I’m afraid that when he said break a leg, he was probably wishing you bodily harm.”
The audience loved it, and Jimmy was laughing, laughing and remembering how he’d watched Bobby discover himself in front of crowds, how his voice had stopped cracking when he became excited over this issue or that, how Bobby had become an actor of sorts; and then Jimmy was in front with Caroline, Caroline trembling, now with stage fright, for this was different from anything she’d experienced; this was directed at her by dint of association and standing here and now on this charmed podium.
The crowds were tearing their throats screaming. It was a good ten minutes before Jimmy could speak.
He was the good boy, the good man, the regular guy.
BE A REBEL WITH A CAUSE—VOTE FOR JAMES DEAN
DON’T DROP OUT, DROP IN WITH DEAN
MAKE CALIFORNIA WORK
The smells in the air changed, subtly shifted into Hoosier summer, childhood summer. Jimmy smiled, as if he could see his mother in the audience, standing in the back, way back, standing on tiptoes to see him, straining to hear.
Jimmy thanked the workers, quickly ran through the litany of names, Goldie and Leonard’s speech folded in his jacket pocket. “So I’m going to keep this short. After all, I don’t want to interrupt the party.” Shouting, clapping, Jimmy’s image bobbing a thousand times on a thousand posters. “But you know who would have enjoyed this party? Pat Brown, may he rest in peace.” Cheering.
“So maybe we should take a minute, moment of silence.” And he bowed his head—coon peering out of a henhouse—watching, squinting into the crowd, the crowd shivering quivering with anxious energy, a few more seconds, one, two, three, and then “We did something wonderful today. We stopped dead in their tracks all those ideologues on the right who would foster fear and racism, who would take away our civil liberties under the guise of protecting them, who would pull out every societal safety net, who would…”
It felt like a second, being there onstage. Jimmy spoke for twenty minutes, made love to them with them for twenty minutes, twenty lifetimes as flashbulbs flashed blue-white, flashed like firecrackers, like blinking afterimages after looking into the sun on a perfect mirror sea, and then he was rushing through the kitchen, the back way, Caroline holding tight to him, thank-yous and congratulations from the cooks and kitchen staff, then through the pantry, down the back elevator to the cars waiting.
In the plush, cushioned backseat, and the blue-black flashing night, Jimmy held Caroline’s hand and said, “It’s the damndest thing, but I don’t feel tired anymore. “You want to go dancing?”
THIRTY
Dancing in the Dark
SACRAMENTO: APRIL 10, 1967
“I thought you wanted to discuss the budget,” said Carl Lowenstein, the state finance director. He was a rabbit of a man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, but he looked sixty. He was balding, and he combed what hair he had from his right temple over to his left, covering his bald pate with a few smudgy strands, as if that would fool anyone.
“Yeah, well, let’s start off by deciding if you’re going to take the fall for all your creative accounting,” Jimmy said, wanting to take a scissors and cut Lowenstein’s long, carefully positioned and pomaded fringe. Lowenstein had been Pat Brown’s finance director; Jimmy couldn’t afford to jettison him just yet. “I really appreciate that you just forget to mention that I’d be inheriting a three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar shortfall.”
“We had no choice but to delay any tax increases until after the election,” Lowenstein said, “or Reagan would have eaten us alive. But we have a plan in place—”
“I have a plan,” Jimmy said, tenting his hands on top of the walnut desk that was large enough to serve as a dining table for eight. He looked at the men and women sitting and standing before him, his team, his cabinet—or rather Pat Brown’s team and cabinet, old Pat ruling from the grave—every one of them running a different agenda, everyone watching his or her respective ass, no one watching my ass. Jimmy smiled at them, hello and thank you and fuck you very much chief of staff, press secretary, cabinet secretary, finance director (but not for long), appointments secretary, legislative secretary, clemency secretary. Caroline sat on a folding chair to his right, perched on the edge like a bird, Caroline there for him, Caroline watching the others just as he was; but things were changing, changing quickly. He glanced at Goldie, who was now consultant to the governor, Goldie in a holding pattern until he could make his way back to Bobby, but in the meantime, in the meantime Goldie was part of Jimmy’s unofficial cabinet, what Jimmy thought of as the true cabinet. Cameron Nicely, a deceptive name for a sharkskin lawyer, leaned against the doorpost of the paneled office, caught Jimmy watching him, and smiled. He was gazing at an engraved bronze plaque mounted on the front of Jimmy’s desk, a gift from the Colonel: BREAK THE RULES OR GET OUT. Caroline had found Cameron; checkmark in the “tentatively trust him” category. Standing near the window to show herself off to best effect was Sheila Foster, his ersatz press secretary—that was Caroline’s job.
Jimmy spoke now to Paul Cottrell, his new chief of staff. He didn’t trust Paul, but Paul knew how to make everything go clickety clickety clack down the right tracks. Caroline hated him but agreed with Jimmy: perhaps he could be brought on side, eventually. “You know what I’ve discovered?” Jimmy said. “California is ranked as the sixth-largest economy in the world—or would be if we were a country instead of a state. And Carl is going to tell us that all we’ll have to do is raise five billion dollars’ worth of taxes to make up for his shortfall and balance the budget.”
“It’s not my shortfall, Governor,” Lowenstein said.
“Yeah, it is,” Jimmy said. Back to Paul. “I picked up one good idea at the governors’ conference. We cut government spending by ten percent, right across the board, no exceptions. If we’re going to ask the taxpayers for more money, we should show good faith.”
Paul chuckled. “You can’t do that. It will end up costing more money in the long run.”
“Yeah, how?”
“Because various programs are funded to varying extents,” Lowenstein said, interrupting. You take ten percent out of, say, mental health, and you’re going to have those people out on the streets, and then there’ll be a hue and cry, and you’ll have to spend significantly more money to fix it.”
“Carl’s right,” Paul said. “It will disadvantage some departments over others.”
“Tough shit.”
“Okay, let me put it another way. It will punish some departments and not others. Why not cherry pick?”
“Because it’s not fair, it’s discriminatory, it will piss everyone off.”
“And this won’t?”
