A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (31 page)

I hope you agree with me, James and Percival, Percival and James, Permes and Jacival. This is the Senator at his best. You may have imagined he didn’t have it in him, this subtlety and thoughtfulness. “I like to think outside the box,” he often says to me.

He is so much more than the labels slapped on him. Those who do that use him as an excuse, a person to hate so they won’t have to hate themselves. For my part, I can find it in my heart to love him. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I admire him exactly. Still, for all his short-circuiting and conniving, he has struggled not to be defined by the circumstances in which he found himself. Of course he has not succeeded, but he has never stopped trying.

Which of us can say the same?

I’m not feeling as well as usual, so I will close this short letter. Ordinarily, I am like a dandelion: not much to look at but not likely to wilt on you. I don’t know exactly what it is now, but I feel like Wordsworth: The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.

Affectionately,
Barton Wilkes
Barton Wilkes

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

March 1, 2003

Dear Juniper,

I write this in letter form and not as a memo, since the material I intend to present to you (as a gift) is not at all memo-like. You understand. This is a voyage of discovery for me, this letter.

Barton Wilkes has been fired. I showed you the memo from Thurmond’s office. You remember? I hope so. I need your memory, among other things. He has been fired, and you and I both know what his twisted mind will do with this. He will sit in his bare room (a much-befouled bed, a lamp, a cheap bureau, a desk with pictures on it—of movie stars and Senator Thurmond and those he broods upon). On whom does he brood? Yes, I’m afraid so. Me. And I’m very afraid his brooding will turn to thoughts of vengeance. He will want to hurt me in the worst way. I just know it. He will want to stick things in my ears and eyes and tongue and anus. You feel I’m right, don’t you?

Of course I had nothing whatever to do with his firing. You may have, but I didn’t. But will that matter? Ha! Might as well tell the Voyager Satellite that blew up that you were sorry you decided to come on board as tell Wilkes he is misdirecting his rage. He is obsessed with me, I know. Now he will be thinking of blood. What is it Macbeth says? Something about wanting blood. Anyhow, he needs distracting. Wilkes, not Macbeth. Once started, both are like locomotives on a straight track. It’s Macbeth’s wife I’m thinking of, come to think of it, and that just makes it worse.

I count on you renewing your physical association with Wilkes. That way you can discover what is on his mind (or minds) and also act to deflect his passions, as it were. Try domestic animals.

Whatever you do, tell no one he has been fired. Tell no one. If it spreads, he will come after me. He will come after me anyhow, but if he thinks I’m the one who spread it, he’ll come after me—well, indeed he will.

Tell no one, especially not Everett and Kincaid, that Wilkes has been fired. I’m almost sorry I told you, except that you know already and I need you to help me.

What’ll I do when you are far away and lonesome too, what’ll I do? You know that song. It’s very apropos. Please.

St. Patrick’s Day. Party at my place. The theme will be “concealed green.” We’ll each wear (or adorn ourselves with) green in places—well, you know. There will be prizes for those who can most successfully search out the other’s green pastures, so to speak.

Love and I mean it,
Martin

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

March 2, 2003

Dear Barton,

I have just heard from that horrible Snell person—can you imagine a world in which Snell presents the best alternative available?—that you are no longer an associate of Senator Thurmond. I hope and trust this is an excretion from Snell’s diseased brain. You seem to me to be the one who provides all the energy there, certainly the one, according to Kincaid and Everett, providing the material and guidance for the book.

Say it ain’t so, Barton!

So or not, I realize that you are in a position far worse than mine. You are forced to disguise your talents and, I suppose, your views. I cannot, certainly, say that such is the case with me. I simply have to be around Martin Snell’s mad insecurities and uncertain lusts. I don’t really think Snell is possessed by ill will.

But are you in such a situation? Madness is one thing, but active and informed plotting is something else.

I am writing a very bad letter here, Barton, struggling to sympathize with you without knowing anything about the circumstances.

What I should have said was that I am your friend and hope you will tell me how I can help, if help is needed.

Fondly,

Juniper

March 5, 2003

Dear Juniper,

I think there’s an old saying that goes something like: when you’re down and out, lift up your head and shout, “There’s gonna be a great day!” Actually, it’s a song. You will hear his horn: rooty-tootin.

Well, your letter came rooty-tootin to me, Juniper. It’s extremely noble of you to reach out your hand to such as I. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend. God knows I’ve tried. I learned as a kid the best way—the best way for me, anyhow—to have a friend was just to pick someone and hang around and hope they assume they are your friend. I mean, you try and force them, which is what it comes to, to do the things friends do and hope that means you’re friends.

If you can stand it, I’d like to pursue this a bit. During the summer after my freshman year in high school (quite undistinguished school, only a few students reached the level of mediocrity, such excitement as prevailed was centered on the football team and the choir, directed by a very colorful pedophile, whose detection and ejection sucked away the only creative energy which had been there)—during that summer, I say, I found myself without the easy means of doing with others things friends did. There were no classrooms, no gym changing rooms, no lockers, no enforced lunch periods. I lived a few miles away from those I wanted in my little friendship play. They didn’t come to me or call me. I had no way to get to them (no car, city bus line a bit embarrassing, landing me on a wide street and forcing me to go house to house like a salesman, which I was, but without a product anybody wanted). So I would call them, one after another, and say, “Hey, let’s go to a movie!” Movies were all I could think of to do. (Then and now.) Every so often, somebody would go and I would be very happy. But the acceptance rate was lousy, and I should have seen what was building up. These reluctant movie attendees were comparing notes. That fall, when school finally started and I swooped into my old drama with something more than relief, I was met by my mates, who, together, made a great show of laughing together and telling me they were anxious to go to movies with me. I wasn’t especially hurt. I just saw what had happened, not that I was able to avoid it after that. It was all I could think to do, and my need remained greater than my wit.

You’d think my obvious yearning for friendship, my open advertisement of myself as friend-in-waiting, the clarity with which I expressed my liking for others, would have attracted somebody. Maybe it did. After a while, I did manage to be alone less, though the summers were never less vacant.

Two years ago, at a class reunion, Lynette Archer, a quiet and pretty girl, told me she had had an aching crush on me through high school. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “Oh, Barton, you were always so popular, and I was so shy.” She smiled and touched my coat sleeve. It was the best moment of my life, not because I could now entangle myself with Lynette Archer—she was now, happily I hope, Lynette Russell—but because what I had wanted all along had happened. I had had friends. I hadn’t known it, really, but other people had. So maybe they were right.

But it isn’t often I think so.

And it was your letter that came along, like Lynette Archer, only better.

In any event, let’s talk about you. I am sorry that you are leashed to Snell, who doesn’t strike me (even me) as having enough holes in his bowling ball. Tell me how I can help.

As for the book, that will go on as if nothing had interrupted it. It’s sure that somewhere the sun is shining! And so the right thing to do is make it smile for you. A heart full of joy and gladness will always banish sorrow and strife! So always look for the silver lining, and try to find the sunny side of life. You know that lovely tune? I know it can be ridiculed, but I have never had much talent for ridicule.

So, the book will go on. I’ll work with K and E, who seem (I must say) very good at receiving material and not quite so good at doing anything with it. Still, they are writers and must proceed at their own pace, assuming that the word “pace” applies to them at all.

It’s important that K and E, E and K, know nothing of this pebble in our path, this temporary shower of trouble, this slight blip on the screen. I will be back where I was in no time, certainly, and there’s no need for them to be distracted.

Nor you.

Your friend, your grateful friend,

Barton

Interoffice Memo

March 7, 2003

Dear Percival,

Since you’re often accusing me of jumping the gun, being preemptory, getting my oar in ahead of the rest of the crew, I can only say, “well”?

I have been waiting and waiting. For your response, you know. Where is it? We got that stimulating letter from Wilkes (dated February 27) several days ago. What’s your view? I can tell you my view, but that’s what you always object to, me telling you my view before you tell me yours.

I sometimes think you are giving too much time to other things in your life: the other books you wrote a while back and are still publicizing shamelessly, this fucking English Department, your students, your stock portfolio, your pets, your exercise regimen, your arty-crafty projects, your partying, and those chemicals you ingest. Oh, and your wife. I am not being judgmental about chemicals. As you often point out, chemicals are in everything we swallow, like broccoli. I take your point, as an uncle of mine, who never understood any point unless he sat on it, used to say. Still, there must be a difference between broccoli and those pills you buy from that rummylooking guy over by the Coliseum.