Standing in the Rainbow (44 page)

“So, Vita—should I do it?”

“Why not,” she said. “Go ahead and try. What do you have to lose? If nothing else, it will be fun to watch.”

He came back into the office, sat down, and said, “I think we should do it.”

After he got everyone to agree, Hamm pushed a button on the phone and said in a syrupy voice, “Betty Raye, could you come down here for a minute?”

They heard her answer over the speakerphone: “Hamm, I’m already in my nightgown.”

“That’s alright, honey, put your robe on and come on down the back stairs. I need to talk to you.”

Rodney looked grim. “She ain’t gonna go along with this, I can tell you that.”

Hamm said, “Yes, she will. But now, you boys have got to help me out here, make her see how it’s our only chance.”

Betty Raye could not imagine what Hamm wanted with her at this hour or what he wanted, period, but she put on her robe and, wearing the big fuzzy pink bunny slippers that Ferris, her youngest boy, had given her for Christmas, went down the back stairs. When she opened the door she was startled to see a room full of men. She clutched at the neck of her robe. “Oh, I didn’t know you had people here.”

“That’s all right, come on in, Betty Raye, and have a seat,” said the spider to the fly.

As she reluctantly walked in she became even more uncomfortable. All the men in the room turned and stared at her as if they had never seen her before, including her husband.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

“No, not a thing, sweetheart. The boys and I just want to talk to you about a little something.”

An hour later they were upstairs in the bedroom and Betty Raye was crying. “How could you do this? You gave me your word that this was the last time. Just four more years, you said.”

“I know I did, honey, but you heard what the boys said. I’ve got to finish what I started. If I don’t, Earl Finley will undo everything I did and those roads will never get built. I owe it to the folks that voted for me . . . and you running for me is our only chance, our only hope.”

“Oh, but Hamm, the whole thing is ridiculous. I don’t know anything about politics much less how to be a governor.”

“You don’t have to know anything. You wouldn’t really be the governor, you’d just be standing in for me.”

She went over to the dresser to get another Kleenex. “And that’s another thing. I’m the mother of two children. I don’t want to be involved in some scam, something that’s illegal.”

“But it is legal. Wendell told you it was.”

“Maybe so. But it’s totally dishonest. To pretend to be the governor when I’m not. What will people think?”

“Honey, it’s not dishonest. People will know they’re voting for me. And people will thank you. You know how high my ratings are. They would vote for me anyway if it were not for that stupid law. You’re doing everybody a favor. Wendell told you that.”

“Well then, why doesn’t Wendell run?”

“Because. Honey—”

“I’ll tell you why. Because everybody knows he’s got good sense and I’m just an idiot you can push around. That’s why.”

“Oh now, Betty—”

“And what about my house? I’ve waited eight years . . . and you promised me, just four more years, you said.”

He came over and sat down on the bed. “I know I did, sweetheart, and I’m just as sick about it as you are. But we have a duty to the people.”

“But what about us? We’re people. What about the boys? I wanted them to have a normal life for a change. They never see you. I never see you.”

“But, honey, this
is
about the boys. And their future. I don’t want them to have a daddy that failed. My name is all I have to leave them. I want to make sure for their sake the Hamm Sparks name is one they can be proud of. I owe it to them.”

He could see she was now at least listening. He pulled out his big guns. “Betty Raye, I’m ashamed to tell you this but I haven’t been completely honest with you. I was seriously thinking of running again in sixty-eight. But now I know it would be too late. If I don’t hang in there now, while I still have a foothold, and fight now for everything good I did, all the work and sweat and sacrifice will be for nothing. And honest to God, Betty Raye, I don’t think I could take it. You’re the only hope I have. . . . Do you think I’ve enjoyed being away from you and the children so much? No. But if you stick with me one more time—”

“Hamm, don’t. I’ve heard that before.”

“I know you have. But—and I mean this—if you will do this, I will swear on my life, on my children’s life, that I will never run for governor again. I’ll swear it on the Bible in front of the Missouri Supreme Court if you want me to.”

Another hour of Betty Raye crying, with Hamm pleading, went by and Betty Raye was beginning to weaken.

“Hamm, please don’t make me do this. If you do, then you might as well get a gun and shoot me right now, because I’ll just die if I have to get up there and make speeches.”

“You won’t have to do a thing—just stand up, introduce me, and sit down. That’s all you have to do. Other than that, everything will be exactly the same as it always was. The only difference is this time you and I will be together twenty-four hours a day. I’ll be right by your side all the time; all you have to do is just be my silent partner. Why, if I was to take a regular job I’d be gone every day and we’d never see each other. Don’t you see, honey, this way we can be close like we used to be. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, you know I would but—”

“It’s just four little years and then I can leave knowing I’ve done the best job I could and we’d be done with politics forever.”

She swallowed hard. “Are you sure it’s the only way?”

“You heard what Wendell said. If you don’t do it the whole state will suffer.”

She teared up again. “But what about my house? I bought so many nice things . . . it was going to be so pretty. . . .”

“I’ll tell you what. You can keep the house.”

“Really?” she said.

“Sure. It will wait, it ain’t gonna go anywhere. And you and Cecil can decorate to your heart’s content. Then when the term is over, we will walk out this door and move right in. In the meantime you and the kids and I can go over and spend the night or the weekend anytime you want. Or you and I can go over by ourselves and leave the kids with Alberta. It can be sort of like our love nest. What do you say? Will you do this one last thing for me?”

She looked at him. “No speeches?”

“None.”

“Do you swear?”

“I swear. On the Bible.”

She moaned. “Oh, God, Hamm, I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this. But if it’s really for the good of the state . . .”

And so, at 2:34
A.M.,
the woman in pink fuzzy bunny slippers agreed to run for governor.

He looked at her, genuinely grateful. “Oh, thank you, honey, you won’t regret it. I know I haven’t been the best of husbands but from now on things will be different, you’ll see. I promise.” He kissed her and quickly jumped up and ran off to the office.

As she sat on the bed and blew her nose with a fresh Kleenex she wondered what she was in for now.

She sat there for a while and tried to think about what Hamm had said. Maybe he was right, maybe this would bring them closer together. After all, it was the first time he had really needed her in eight years. Maybe it would not be so bad. She did get to keep the house and he had promised to swear on the Bible that this was the last time; he had never done that before. Maybe it could be like it used to be. She hoped so. Because for better or worse, she was still in love with her husband.

The Two-for-One Sale

E
arl Finley called Vita, screaming at the top of his lungs. “That sorry son of a bitch promised me he would support Boofer. We had a deal and now he’s harpooned me in the back. You tell that son of a bitch that I’ll get him if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“I’ll tell him, Earl,” Vita said.

“I could kill him with my bare hands.”

“I know how you must feel. Believe me, I was shocked. Just shocked when I heard.” Vita put the phone down, smiling. To hear a man who had done nothing all his life but pull one dirty deal after another so incensed and outraged that it had happened to him was highly amusing.

Minnie Oatman was in Pine Mountain, Georgia, at a Singing on the Mountain when she heard the news. She had just finished doing her new hit, “I Love to Tell the Story,” when someone came running out onstage and handed her a note. She then threw her hands up in the air and called out to the boys, “PRAISE JESUS, YOUR SISTER IS GONNA BE GOVERNOR!”

When it was announced to the public that Hamm was running his wife, the news was met with mixed reactions. The people who were for him laughed and winked at each other, tickled that their man had pulled one over the big shots. The rest were furious. They felt Hamm was making a fool of himself and them. But for him or against him, the announcement caused a loud stir. This was news. So far in the entire history of the United States, there had been only two women governors and they both had been elected back in 1924. In a special election, Nellie Ross of Wyoming had succeeded her husband after he had died in office, and Miriam Ferguson of Texas had stepped in after her husband was impeached for misappropriating funds. In 1964 women in politics were still considered a novelty, as well as something of a joke. The Fergusons of Texas were laughingly called Ma and Pa Ferguson and when it was joked that Missouri now had a new Ma and Pa team, Hamm loved it. The national magazines had a field day, coming down and taking pictures of him in an apron and with a feather duster in his hand. And they all wanted to interview Betty Raye but everyone on staff was instructed, “For God’s sake, whatever you do, keep her away from the press!”

Contrary to what Hamm had promised, Betty Raye was immediately picked and poked at by a slew of hairdressers and makeup artists and dress designers Cecil brought in to “improve her image,” as he put it. Not that she had an image, as he also said. After endless hours of Betty Raye trying on dress after dress, “look” after “look,” and standing there while Cecil and his friends argued back and forth, it was decided they would go with the Jackie Kennedy style, simple little knit suits and pillbox hats. But it turned out not to be a good look for someone with glasses. So the second thing Cecil did was to convince her that she simply must get contact lenses. “Darling, you have such beautiful eyes and you’ll take a much better picture, trust me.” What resulted was a disaster. At her first big press conference she stood beside Hamm, her hair in what was supposed to have been some hairdresser’s version of a Jackie Kennedy flip and looking extremely uncomfortable, squinting and blinking her eyes in pain. Then right in the middle of Hamm’s speech one lens popped out and Betty Raye panicked. “I’ve lost one!” she said and frantically started searching around the bustline of her dress to see if she could find it. A reporter turned to another and asked, “What did she lose?”

The second man said, “I don’t know, buddy, but I’m afraid to ask.”

What followed next were long days of running up and down every road in Missouri, packed in cars with trucks following behind carrying sound equipment, banners, folding chairs, a portable stage, and Le Roy Oatman and the Missouri Plowboys, who had been pulled back in for the occasion. Betty Raye would sit in the car and read until Seymour came to get her and escort her to the stage, where she would go to the microphone and say, “We are so pleased to be with you today and it is also my pleasure to introduce you to my number one adviser, my husband, your governor, Hamm Sparks,” at which point she would sit down and Hamm would talk for the next forty-five minutes while she sat behind him, waiting to be taken back to the car and head to the next stop.

Hamm was attacked from all quarters. Carnie Boofer banged his fists. “This hoax Sparks is trying to pull on the voters of Missouri is an insult and an embarrassment to every woman in America.” Editorials accused Hamm of using the state as a patsy and of trying to ride back in office by hanging on to his wife’s skirttail. Everybody in the state and out had an opinion about the matter. Back in Elmwood Springs, the morning Dorothy heard she was running, even though she had a strict rule and never endorsed a political candidate on her show, she did say this: “It looks like our Betty Raye is running for governor and we just could not be happier. I don’t know of a sweeter and nicer girl in the world.”

But Doc and Jimmy were of a different opinion. One night the two of them were out on the porch when Doc said, “That girl shouldn’t be dragged through all that mess. What is he thinking about?”

Jimmy said, “It’s a hell of a mean trick to pull on a nice lady, that’s for sure.”

“He ought to be horsewhipped.”

“Or something.”

Jimmy did not say what he really wanted to do. He had hated Hamm Sparks with a passion ever since that Christmas four years ago when he had been visiting his buddies at the veterans hospital in Kansas City, where the name of Hamm Sparks had come up quite by accident. His friends had handed him a present and when he’d unwrapped the box there were twelve cartons of cigarettes inside. One of his friends said, “Don’t thank us, thank the governor.” Another said, “Yeah, he’s over here all the time to see his lady friend. Since they took up, we get a lot of attention.”