Some Faces in the Crowd (2 page)

“That magnetism wasn’t even keeping you in beans a few weeks ago,” I reminded him.

“That’s because I didn’t have you, Marshy,” he said.

“You haven’t got me now.”

Not that he hadn’t tried.

“But you’re what’s keeping me here,” he said. “I was always a wanderer. My feet get itchy after a few weeks. With the singin’ an’ the talkin’ I’m always good for a few bucks wherever I go. I play the fair grounds and the barrel-houses. All I need to kill the people is to stay in one place. I never knew a woman good enough to stand still for. Until I found you, Marshy.”

So it seems I had the love of Lonesome Rhodes. I was also responsible, in an indirect way, for elevating him from folk singer to political sage. It happened at the bar of El Rancho Gusto. The local sheriff, who was running for re-election, had had a snootful and in the dim light of the lounge he mistook me for Yvonne de Garbo or somebody. A pass took place. Lonesome Rhodes rose to defend my honor. Lonesome had had not one drink but one bottle too many and his aim was inaccurate. I sometimes wonder if his fist had ever connected with the jaw of the candidate, would he have gone on to his fabulous career. Missing the would-be sheriff left him with a king-sized frustration.

Next morning he worked it out of his system on the air. He said this fella who wanted to keep on being sheriff of a great, thriving, forward-looking community like Fox, Wyoming, didn’t even deserve to be sheriff of Lonesome’s home town, Riddle, Arkansas. Or maybe, he said, that’s exactly what he did deserve. In Riddle, he said, the way they picked their sheriffs was they figured out which fella could best be spared from useful labor. In some places, he said, the village halfwit has to be put on town relief. But in Riddle, as an economy measure, they made a sheriff out of him. He said that is pretty much what Fox would be doing if they re-elected this poor fella of theirs.

The following day I had to answer fifty letters from listeners suggesting that Lonesome himself run for sheriff.

He answered some of them on the air. He said he would have to decline the honor as he had never gotten around to learning how to read and write and he had heard that this sort of erudition came in handy if you were going to be a sheriff. He said the only difference between him and the other fella was that he, Lonesome, admitted he didn’t know nuthin’.

He kept this up day after day all in good clean fun until he had that poor man crazy. And the people loved it. In fact he could just stand there picking his teeth over the microphone and the fans ate it up. For instance, one day he said into the live mike—and he wasn’t kidding either: “Marshy, I’m tired today, didn’t get my beauty sleep last night, hold the mike while I caulk off for a minute or two.” And he handed me the mike and closed his eyes. I could have killed him. I got out a couple of letters I was answering and read them to take up the slack. But when I was half through, he mumbled, “Shhhh, Marshy, yer disturbin’ my sleep, le’s keep it absolutely quiet.” So thirty seconds of dead time went out over KFOX. Anybody else would have been fired. But when Lonesome Rhodes did it he got fan mail.

On election night the sheriff, whose margin last time had been 362 to 7, found himself licked for the first time in sixteen years. The fellow who won, an undertaker named Gorlick, got more votes this time than he had in the last four campaigns combined. (His seven votes in the last election had come from members of his family.) Lonesome introduced the new sheriff on his program next day by saying that Gorlick obviously was an unselfish public servant, for the better sheriff he was the less business he’d have for his undertakin’ parlor.

That and some more of the same was how Lonesome got his first break in
Time.
I could hardly believe it when a local photographer phoned the station to tell us
Time
had called him to come up and get a picture of us. I say
us
because Lonesome was making a kind of assistant celebrity out of me. If he couldn’t find something—in a playful mood he might pretend he had mislaid the commercial—he would call into the mike: “Marshy, Marshy—where is that forgetful girl? Neighbors, if there’s anything you don’t like on this here program I want you to remember it is Marshy’s fault, so send your letters of complaint to her.” I was always the patsy, the fall girl. So
Time
said they wanted me in the act too. The still man came up to the studio on time, but Lonesome wasn’t around. That had become one of my headaches. Getting Lonesome to the studio on time. He was just a small-town star, but he was developing a talent for big-time ways. Twenty minutes before the morning show I’d find him in his room. The only way I could wake him was with a cold wet washrag right over the big, lovable, exasperating face. Lonesome Rhodes. My life work.

The
Time
piece had it pretty accurate. They called Lonesome Rhodes a younger, fatter, coarser Will Rogers in the American grain of tobacco-chewing, cracker-barrel, comic philosophers, a caricature of the folk hero who has always been able to make Americans nod their heads and grin and say, “Yep, that fella ain’t so dumb as he looks!” It was hard to tell whether
Time
was putting the laurel wreath or the knock on him. You know the style. But it didn’t matter. Lonesome was in. The next day I got a call from Chicago. It was the J & W Agency and they wanted Lonesome. Right away. Five hundred a week. There was nothing like him on big-time radio, the man said. A simple, lovable, plain-talking, down-to-earth American. I said Mr. Simple-Lovable would call them back.

I found the great American just where I expected to find him, in the sack in his room with a half-empty jug of blended by the bed. I said, “Get up, you slob, destiny is calling.”

“Collect?” he said.

“Chicago,” I said. “J & W. Five hundred cash money a week. One hour every morning. Week-ends free. And all you have to do is be your own irresistible self.”

He looked at me with those big, bloodshot, roly-poly eyes. “What do you think we oughta do, Marshy?”

“You,”
I said. “You can find yourself a new slave in Chicago.”

“I’m gonna marry you in Chicago,” he said. “I’m a-gonna make a honest woman of you in the Windy City, little gal.”

Among his many bad habits was his way of creating the impression, through careful innuendo, that we were a team, biologically speaking. This was a figment of his imagination and designs, but since when have people ever accepted truth when nasty rumors are so much more fun? “Why talk of marriage when your heart is wrapped up in somebody else?” I said. “How could I ever replace Lonesome Rhodes in your affection?”

“Marshy, I’ve known some pretty good-looking broads in my get-arounds, but they always took me apart. You’re not going to win any beauty contests, but you put me together. You get me up in time to go to work. You get me on and off. You keep in touch with my public. You cue me when I start repeatin’ myself. You always tell me when I’m gettin’ close to the line. I lean on you. So you say yes and we’ll go to Chicago and make it hand over fist and you’ll be the rich Mrs. Rhodes. I can’t afford to lose you. You’re the smartest good-lookin’ gal I ever got hold of.”

“Take your hand away,” I said. “This is business. Shall I tell them
yes?”

“If you’re in it.”

“Well, only as a job,” I said, “a job I can quit when I’ve had enough. You understand?”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll take my chances.”

“So I’ll tell them yes.”

“Only not for five hundred. Lonesome Rhodes is not a three-figure man.”

He had started at seventy-five like me and was getting a fast century now.

I called back J & W in Chicago and gave them Mr. Rhodes’ estimate of his own value and they said even with that publicity from
Time
a four-figure bill was too big for a starter. I ran back to tell Lonesome (in his bathrobe drinking beer now) and he said, “I better get on the phone and talk to ’em myself.” It took him an hour to pull himself into his clothes and get down to the station where he had me get on the other phone and take down what they said so he could hold them to it. Where he got that adding-machine mind I don’t know, but he was never a cowhand when it came to finance. This is what Lonesome Rhodes, that simple know-nothing troubadour, suggested: That he work gratis for nothing for two weeks. At the end of that period if they want him to continue they pay him his thousand a week including back pay for the trial period. And at the end of twenty-six weeks an option for fifteen hundred for the next twenty-six weeks. “A-course I’m not tryin’ t’ run your busyness, gents,” he Arkansighed, “a’m jest tryin’ t’ give ya an idea what a fella figures he’s worth. Oh yes, an’ transportation. Transportation fer my li’l o pardner Marshy Coulihan and yours truly.”

So we flew in to Chicago and now Lonesome was on coast-to-coast. The show was called “Your Arkansas Traveler.” It was pretty much the same routine that had made him the idol of Fox, Wyoming. With one important exception. That sheriff election had gone to his head. He wasn’t content just to sing his old songs and tell funny stories about his family in Riddle, Arkansas, any more. He had to hold forth. It is one of the plagues our age is heir to. No longer do disc jockeys play the music. Now they lecture you on how to solve the traffic problems of New York and improve the United Nations. That’s the bug that was biting Lonesome. He was rushing in where not only angels but a majority of fools would fear to tread. I did my small best to talk him out of it and get him to know his place. But he was male-stubborn and he knew so little that any meager idea he had came to him as a world-shaking revelation that had to be shared with his public. I suppose the doctors would call it delusions of grandeur. It seems to be one of the main symptoms of the dread disease of success.

He had only been going a few days, for instance, when he interrupted the singing of “Barbara Allen” with the announcement that he was pretty sick of that song anyway and he would rather talk about the street-cleaning problem in Chicago. He said that Chicago reminded him of Riddle except that Riddle was a one-horse town and Chicago was a ten-thousand horse town and the difference between one horse and ten thousand horses ain’t hay. The next day a Citizens’ Clean-Up Committee was formed with Lonesome as honorary chairman. On his program next day Lonesome sang “Sweet Violets” in honor of the clean-up campaign and he said it gave him a funny feeling to be connected with “sech a projeck” because his Grandpaw Bascom used to call his paw a sissy for insisting on changing his clothes every year.

It was only a matter of weeks before Grandpaw Bascom and Cousin Abernathy and Great Great Uncle Wilbraham and the rest of Lonesome’s so-called family had become public property. The famous comic-strip artist Hal Katz came to Lonesome with a deal to do a daily and Sunday strip around the Riddle characters, featuring a Lonesome-like folk singer to be called Hill-Bilious Harry. What was in it for Lonesome was a thousand a week and a percentage of subsidiary loot. So by the time the option was taken up, Lonesome, our overgrown Huck, wasn’t exactly going barefoot. He was pulling down twenty-five hundred a week, not a bad living for a country boy. Lonesome was not impervious to money, either.
Au contraire,
he was decidedly pervious. He began spending it as if he had had it all his life, only more so. He lined up a pretty fancy flop at the Ambassador East and bought himself a powder-blue Cadillac that just said “Lonesome” on it. A monogram would have been too ritzy, he said. Right away he had one of those Swiss 18K calendar watches and a closet full of suits all a little baggy and country-cut but good goods. He was a folk singer, remember?

He went in for me, too. He never kept his promise about my being strictly business. He always figured the natural charm would finally overcome me. I was his one-’n-only, his indispensable can’t-live-without. One night the phone woke me up and it was Lonesome getting ready to jump out the window if I didn’t marry him. He said he felt confused about all the success and that I was his anchor. His anchor to reality is what I think he said. That is not exactly a compliment but I said I would think it over. I don’t know if I was in love with him. Call it 90 per cent disgust and 10 per cent maternal. Oh yes, I’m the maternal type as well as the professional woman. To tell the solid truth, I was always ready to give up the high rank and all the loot whenever I found the right man. At first a girl thinks kids would be too much trouble, and then that maybe there’s something to it even if it is trouble, and later that her life will not be complete without them, and finally that it is the one thing in the world she really wants. I was hovering around stage C the morning that Lonesome called. I told him to ask me at a more reasonable hour and when he was stone sober. And not to muck it up with suicide threats. What was a down-to-earth simple-grained one-hundred-and-ten-per cent Amurican doing with that psycho out-the-window talk? He said, “Bless you, Marshy, you do me good. Even when I’m the greatest, you’ll be right alongside me.”

“Lie back and get some sleep and do yourself some good,” I told him.

The sponsors were awfully happy with Lonesome. He was the hottest salesman on radio-TV. He’d open with “Look down, look down that lonesome road,” and then he’d slide into “Hiya, neighbors, this is yer Arkansas Traveler,” and he’d have the people eating out of his big and sometimes trembling hand. He’d say, “Shucks, folks, I don’t know if you’ll like the stuff, maybe you got funny taste, but
I
love it, it’s what makes my cheeks so rosy,” and the assistant geniuses of the advertising companies would shake their heads and acknowledge Lonesome as a full-blown number-one genius. A dry cereal called Shucks came out with his picture on it. He got the idea of forming Lonesome Rhodes, Inc., so he could keep some of the gravy. It turned out he was nuts for cars—he was on a vehicular kick—so he bought a Jaguar to keep his Cadillac company. His Nielsen kept climbing until he was almost as popular as Jackie Gleason and Bishop Sheen. And when it came to getting his stuff across he could more than hold his own with both those boys. “He’s got it.” That was the only way the advertising brains could explain it. “He got it,” they’d say, and they would all nod their heads with a sense of accomplishment and go out to a long lunch of martinis.