The Thomas Berryman Number Page 13

  He wore hornrim eyeglasses and was continually massaging the bridge of his nose. His eyes were sore. He worked right through the cleaning lady.

  Study, study, study–and then study some more. Do it right; perfect your technique.

  After a café lunch of eggs, grits, and tenderloin, Berryman drove and walked around the capitol and business sections of Nashville. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses, a Levi’s shirt, cowpuncher jeans.

  He thought that downtown Nashville was typical of the New South: it was a small town, with big city pretensions.

  The Nashville skyline was a cluster of fifteen-to-twenty-five-story buildings which made Berryman think of a smaller, poorer Houston. The capitol buildings looked like a miniature Washington. A pretzel configuration of parkways added a hint of Los Angeles.

  It was a clean city though; and the air was still relatively fresh.

  Nashville’s rich and poor alike bought their clothes off the rack. The men wore Sears and Montgomery Ward double-knit suits. Most of them wore white patent leather belts and white loafers with golden chains and buttons.

  Nashville women still wore short skirts, and stockings. Thigh ticklers and hot pants were on display in all the department and dime store windows.

  The southern city was practicing conspicuous consumption, but most of it was being done in Rich’s department store and Walgreen’s.

  To help complete his own ensemble, Berryman stopped in a Kinney’s Shoe Store and bought a pair of beige Hush Puppies. They figured to go well with the green suit, and they were also dress shoes he could run in.

  The clerk who packaged them looked from sunglasses to shoes, shoes to sunglasses. “Don’t look like your type,” she said.

  “Mos’ comf’table walkin’ shoe in America,” Berryman smiled. It wasn’t what you said, it was how you said it.

  In the late afternoon, he drove uptown to Horn campaign headquarters. It was located in an unrented automobile showroom on West End Avenue.

  Still squinting in the harsh sunlight, he stood outside the storefront and walked its length.

  The showroom windows were covered with posters of Jimmie Horn talking one on one with a wide spectrum of people. All of the photographs were striking; Horn apparently had some southern Bruce Davidson following him around with a camera.

  There was Jimmie Horn standing on some grassy knoll with a white football coach. Horn with his wife by their kitchen stove. Horn with Howard Baker and Sam Ervin. Horn fishing off some country bridge with an old black grandfather. Horn with Nixon. With Minnie Pearl. With a young vet just arrested for robbing a gas station.

  Berryman felt the correct emotion: a warm friendly feeling about Jimmie Horn.

  Behind all the photographs, inside the showroom, a gabby campaign worker cheerfully outlined the mayor’s Independence Day schedule for Berryman. She sat under a faded Sign of the Cat, talking like a parrot.

  “In the early mawnin’,” she used a leftover salesman’s desk as her lectern, “startin’ with a pa-rade at nine, the next senator of Tennessee will appear at a celebrity Rallie to be held at Vand-a-bilt Stadium, or rather, Dudley Field.

  “Jahnny Cash. Albuht Gohr. Kris Kristoffason. They’ahr just a few of the personalities who will be on hand.

  “At noon”–she handed Berryman a glossy leaflet entitled The Dream–“at noon, there will be a fund-raisin luncheon at Rogah Millah’s King of the Road.

  “At fohah,” she smiled like a mother of the bride, “the mayor will speak to ow-ah black people. This will take place at the Fa’mer’s Market.

  “At eight. Mayor Horn will appear with Guvnah Winthrop at the new zoom, zoom, zoom, Nashville Speedway. This will be ow-ah fawworks show, uh course.”

  As the ramble continued, the long-haired youth from the Farmer’s Market wandered in off West End Avenue. He was wearing the same green fatigues, and close up, Berryman could see he was easily in his mid-twenties.

  This was Bert Poole, the divinity student later killed by the gunman from Philadelphia.

  “Help you?” the garrulous woman called to him.

  Poole didn’t answer, or even look up at the voice.

  He read some handouts about Horn stacked high on a wooden banquet table. He examined the advertising posters on the walls, and looked at Berryman and the woman with the same critical eye.

  Then he popped out the swinging doors, just as quickly as he had come in.

  “Comes in here every other day,” the gabby woman said to Berryman. “Never answers a civil question. Never smiles. Never volunteers to do a little work.”

  Berryman watched as Poole crossed West End Avenue, going in the direction of Mason’s Cafeteria. “Huh,” he commented without looking around at the woman. “Sure looks like a strange one all right.”

  The woman smiled, then went on with her own version. “Son of one of ow-ah so-called doctors of divinity,” she said. “Over at Vand-a-bilt School uh Divinity. Name of Bert Poole. The boy. And he’s slightly off. Slightly buggo. Says Mayor Horn has sold out his people, now isn’t that the most ridiculous … Sold out to whom, I’d like to know? …”

  Thomas Berryman shrugged his shoulders. He started to walk off with The Dream and a few schedules rolled up in his hand.

  “Oh, I thank you for these,” he smiled and waved back like Tom the Baker. “Very good work here. Wish you lots of luck, too.”

  Claude, Texas, June 29, 30

  Retired circuit judge Tom Berryman’s house is twenty-one ramshackle rooms on the road to Amarillo, Texas.

  It’s a pink stucco house with green tile. Surrounded by unkempt hedgerows gleaming with large yellow roses, it sits lonely at the center of fifty thousand acres. There’s a swimming pool, but it’s deep in weeds, and looks more like a ruined garden than a pool.

  The whole area is ugly, almost supernaturally ugly and sad.

  In need of rest, however–at least a day’s good rest; in need of a Mexican visa in the name of William Keresty, Thomas Berryman went to Texas. He took a Braniff jet, and then, because he’d sometimes fantasized the scene, he rented a limousine and drove home in the twenty-two foot Lincoln.

  Since his 1963 stroke in Austin, old Tom Berryman had been confined to a wheelchair. Each morning, Sergeant Ames would push him out among the twisted vines and monstrous sunflowers of his garden. There, the retired Texas Ranger would talk and read, and the wasted judge would only occasionally nod or open his puffy mouth to smile or curse. More often than not he’d just think about dying in the military hospital in Austin.

  When old Tom Berryman got especially tired, his head would hang back as if he was finally dead. So it was that Young Tom popped in on him completely out of the blue (that blue being the high Texas sky). Young Tom was carrying about thirty shiny magazines that the old man knew must be for him.

  As Berryman came up from the garages, he was struck with the arresting thought that his father was a stone on wheels; a two-wheeled boulder; a rolling tombstone. The old man was situated in the garden, and Sergeant Ames was sporadically putting a Lucky Strike down into his mouth.

  Berryman passed beside a bawling cow in the garden. Slapped at its big swinging tail. Wondered if Ames ever struck out at his father. Struck out at the very idea of the old judge reduced to such wreckage.

  Judge Berryman brightened immediately as his son appeared in an upside-down scene of pear trees and sunflowers and sky. Ames was so excited he spilled lemonade on his trousers.

  “Lo Thomas,” his father managed with great effort. But he was up at attention, his hands were fluttering, and he was smiling. For some reason, decoration perhaps, Sergeant Ames had allowed a Wild Bill Hickok mustache to grow around his father’s lip. It was stiff and dead-looking.

  “I brought the Times and these books for Bob to read to you,” Berryman spoke very slowly.

  Then he dipped down and hugged the old man, let him feel the strength and life in his arms. The judge’s shirt smelled punky, like babies’ clothes.

  Young Tom rose and fidd
led around with the paper. “So what do you think of Johnny Connally?” He avoided his father’s eyes.

  “Boy’s doing al-right, Tom.” The judge grinned wider and wider, even pausing in the slow speech. “Al-right for himself, I’d say.”

  Neglected for the moment, the old ranger had poured everyone iced-tea glasses of lemonade. “Hey Tom, watch this,” he said with a boy’s grin. And to prove that he was fit as ever (Berryman later guessed), the old man swooped up a garden toad and ate it.

  After he and Sergeant Ames had spoon-fed his father an imprudent but satisfying dinner of frijoles and red peppers, and after the old man had won a bid for some B & B before bed, Berryman took the limousine out on Ranch Road 3.

  Mesmerized behind the wheel, he just let the unmended fences, and the loose ponies and cows, work on his mind. He let the mesquite and prickly pear, and the pearl-white pools of alkaline water do their dirty work.

  Inside the dust bowl of a little desert valley, Thomas Berryman eased down barefoot on the Lincoln’s accelerator. Warm air rushed in through all the windows. Texarkana roadmaps whipped around the back windowsill. The striped red line of the speedometer moved over 100 and a safety device buzzed. The radio blared. Merle Haggard, then Tammy Wynette, then Ferlin Husky, all three plaintive and usual. But the limousine, with its speedometer marked for 120, would run no faster than 101.

  Driving that way, stuck at 101, Berryman remembered being stuck at 84 in a black Ford pickup. Running through irrigation ditches. Running over bushes head-on. Missing a cow, and soft, instant death. Killing a chicken.

  He remembered Ben Toy drinking warm beer and singing corny Mexican love songs. And coyote balls hanging from the Ford’s rearview mirror. And snuggling up with girlfriends and watching bullbats swoop over sad shallow ponds.

  Country living was a turned crock of shit, he thought.

  Over a bumpy half-mile stretch, he pulled the big car off the dirt road. He got out and went around to the trunk for his rifle. He’d wrapped it in a horse blanket. It, too, smelled of dung.

  He set the gun on the car roof, then sat on the fender fishing shells out of his pockets. These too he set on the roof. He slowly loaded the rifle as a peach-colored sun half-blinded him and made him think of sunstroke. The word, “sunstroke.”

  Berryman put the rifle under his chin, and looked at the desert through its crystal-clear sight.

  There were telephone poles that were connected to nothing. With functionless blue-green cups up and down their sides. There was an ancient highway BUMP sign. Its black lettering stretched high on rusted gold.

  There was a puny rabbit peeking out of a hole in the ground. And a bird with a song like electricity. Berryman could see bacteria squirming in the hot air.

  He squeezed the trigger. Lightly, like a piano player.

  The slender rifle barked. Jerked to the right. The BUMP sign was left intact.

  Berryman carefully squeezed again. Nothing.

  He took more time. Barely touching the trigger. Knowing he had the crotch of the M. Missing everything.

  Berryman fired and missed. Fired and missed. He began to perspire. His arms and eyes weren’t making sense together. He stopped everything.

  He set the rifle against the car for a moment and collected his thoughts. It was his style. Automatic.

  He calmly unscrewed the rifle’s sight with his penknife. He fired a single shot without the sight. Gold metal disappeared and the BUMP sign burst open through its back.

  Berryman continued until he had shot the sign away. Made it nothing. Then he drove on.

  He didn’t recognize the outskirts of Amarillo. There were hundreds of quick-food stops. Supermarkets with corny names. Drive-ins showing quadruple beaver movie features.

  He stopped at one of the many taco places. He had a beer, and then he called an old girlfriend named Bobbie Sue Gary, now Bobbie Sue Pederson.

  Sitting on the orange tile floor outside the phone booth, Thomas Berryman talked to the girl about old times. He gulped sweat-cold Pearl tallboys. Smoked a half a pack of Picayunes. Ate a taco that was tasty as a fist.

  “My husband’s a night shift supervisor for Shell Oil,” Bobbie Sue said.

  “There are airplanes and bats flying all over this desert.” Berryman reported on the scene out the Taco Palace window.

  “Well, I have three children now. And one in the hopper,” Bobbie Sue reported.

  “Well, I don’t give a flying fuck,” Berryman said. “I want you to get into a party dress. We’re going to party.”

  “Tom,” she complained in a lighthearted, giggling voice. “You’re just trying to get into my panties all over again. I’m married now. No more hotsy-totsies for Bobbie. I have my responsibilities now.”

  “Oh, come on Bobbie.” Thomas Berryman was laughing hard, “Don’t you want to get into my pants?”

  That said, he told her he was on his way.

  Bobbie Sue Gary Pederson had grown slightly rat-faced over the years. The nipples of her breasts were dark brown and showing through her blouse. They looked unattractive.

  On account of all this he took her to the dark cocktail lounge at the 7-10 Bowling Alleys. But he was pleased with her looks. Really.

  Bobbie Sue wore a red A-line skirt umbrellaed out over seamed stockings. She wore black pumps with blue ribbons over her toes. She drank Singapore Slings, and they both ate the special chicken-fried steaks.

  Thomas Berryman got high on Bobbie Sue.

  “What’s it like,” he asked, “kissing old Tommy Pederson? Just tell me that one thing. I’ll go away from here content. I’ll sing in that jet back to New York City.”

  She was patting his leg and saying, “Now, now, now.” It was just like he’d never gone away and they were still high school sweethearts.

  “Don’t give me that now, now, now stuff. C’mon, babe.”

  “It’s like kissin … Noooo …”

  “C’mon, babe. ’Fess up, Rev’ren Thomas is here …”

  “Like a rug on a floor. Kissin it.”

  “Ooh, Bobbie Sue!” Berryman howled with delight. “That’s terrible, babe.” He was laughing, and talking southern, and she thought he was hilarious.

  A white moon rode the dark Texas skies as they fornicated in the big cushy Lincoln.

  Sergeant Ames found him asleep in the rocker beside his father’s bed. It was morning. The judge’s thing was lying out of his pajamas, large as a king post.

  As he revived the judge, Sergeant Ames told Young Tom an old story about falling asleep on a cattle drive. Waking and finding he was being circumcised.

  Old Tom Berryman just lay on the bed and looked at the paperback on the floor near the rocker. It was Jiminy. After some puckering and smacking his lips, he asked his son if he was reading about Jimmie Horn.

  “Well, yes I am,” Berryman said.

  “Well, good for you then.” The old man struggled with each word. “He seems … He seems … like a hell of a good nigger.”

  Berryman spent the morning back in Amarillo, arranging for the visa in the name of Keresty. His supplier was an egotistical Mexican artiste who hand-lettered the document himself. For his morning’s drawing he earned three hundred dollars.

  That afternoon, Berryman flew back to meet the man who was paying heavily to have Horn killed. This man was ex-Tennessee Governor Jefferson Johnboy Terrell.

  Thomas Berryman was calm as a snake after its sunbath.

  Nashville, October 12

  This past October 12th, Columbus Day, was the kind of unexpectedly cold day mat makes grown men, like me, sleep through their alarm clocks.

  That morning–a flat, gray, homely one–the state had its first frost.

  That afternoon, ex-Governor Jefferson Terrell was driven into downtown Nashville to face a grand jury on the charge that he had paid over one hundred thousand dollars to accomplish the murder of James Horn the previous July.

  Terrell’s car, a somber, black, 1969 Fleetwood, was chauffeured by a soldiery-looking man with
short sandy hair brushed back like Nixon’s Mr. Haldeman.

  Terrell’s new lawyer, a slick gray fox (also from Houston), was riding in the back seat with him.

  The media coverage for the upcoming trial had by this time risen above the noise level of Procter and Gamble’s newest soap detergent commercials.

  People would hear about the trial on the radio coming home from work; then find it staring up at them from the newspaper on their front porch; then get hit with it on both the local and network TV news programs.

  People from the hills were already planning weekends around a Friday at the trial and a Saturday trip to Opryland.

  Over three thousand of them greeted Terrell at the courthouse on the twelfth.

  Johnboy struggled up out of the Cadillac, revealing patent leather loafers, then a gray banker’s suit, then a pasty, death-mask face.

  Not that much had changed about Terrell’s general demeanor though.

  He held one of his familiar dollar cigars instead of smoking it. But otherwise, it was the way he’d been around the capitol for all the years I’d ever seen him there.

  He shook a few hands and gave a proper politician’s wave all around. Yes his health was just fine, he answered a query from some well-wisher in a checkered bird-dog hat.

  Then a little man in a gray raincoat got ahold of Terrell’s hand and wouldn’t let him go.

  “Bad times,” the man was heard to say a few times.

  “But it’s a good, strong country all the same,” Johnboy told him. “Isn’t it a good country we’ve got here, my friend?”

  The eyes of the man in the raincoat blinked on and off. Then he let go of Terrell’s hand.

  Johnboy then bulled his way up the forty-three courthouse stairs and disappeared inside without once looking back.

  “He’d make a fine corpse,” Lewis Rosten muttered from somewhere behind me. “Mr. Dickens, in his neat mystery Martin Chuzzlewit.”

  During the secretive grand jury proceedings, the newspapermen and TV guys sat around the second floor of the courthouse drinking free Folger’s coffee.