“I don’t know nothing about politics.”
“You’re a star on the Barn Dance. People will listen to you.”
“Who else is going on the show?”
“Everybody in the band except Troy.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s in a hospital. He was taking heroin. I never knew anything about it until he came out on the stage so jazzed up he couldn’t remember his lines.”
“I didn’t know he was on it.”
“When can you come back?”
“I’ll take the afternoon train.”
“I can wire you some money.”
“I don’t need none.”
“Are you still hot about that run-in we had before you left?”
“No.”
“Because we have some big things ahead of us, and we don’t want anybody to mess it up.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” J.P. said.
“Is something wrong? You don’t sound very interested.”
“I’m interested. See you in the morning.”
He put down the receiver and went to his room. He called the railroad depot and made reservations on the three o’clock train. He opened his suitcase on the bed and packed. The porter came up for his bag. J.P. had an hour and a half before train time. He took out his guitar and thumbed the strings to pass the time. Oh the train left Memphis at half past nine. Well it made it back to Little Rock at eight forty-nine. It was a blues song he used to hear the Negroes sing around home. Jesus died to save me and all of my sins. Well glory to God we’re going to see him again.
He took a private compartment in a Pullman car. He had the porter make up his bed, and he slept through the afternoon. The train moved down from Nashville into southern Tennessee, rolling through the sloping fields of winter grass partly covered with snow. The land became flat as the train neared Memphis and entered the Mississippi basin. The river was high and yellow under the winter sky. The train rushed southward into Arkansas, and the land was sere and coarse. For miles he saw the board shacks of tenant farmers, all identical, with their dirt floors and mud-brick chimneys and weathered outbuildings, which were owned by the farming companies, along with the bleak fallow land and the rice mills and cotton gins and company stores.
He changed trains at Little Rock and arrived in Louisiana the next morning. He checked into the hotel, shaved, and went to Hunnicut’s room. He met Seth in the hall.
“The Live-Again man is inside with Virdo now. They’re waiting for you,” Leroy said.
“I come straight from the depot. I couldn’t get here no faster.”
“Do you know about the show?”
“Virdo told me over the phone.”
“We’re going all over the state, and Lathrop is picking up the bills. He give me a two hundred dollar advance for pussy money.”
“What’s this about Troy?” J.P. said.
“He’s in the junkie ward. They had to strap his arms down when they took him in. The doctor said he’s a mainliner. Shooting it in the arm twice a day. The last time he was on the show he come out on the stage and started cussing in the microphone. They had to cut us off the air. I think April got him started on it. Her and that quack that comes in to lay her every Sunday.”
“What do you know about it?” J.P. looked at the pockmarks on his face and the reddened skin and the coarse brown hair that was like straw.
“That’s how she pays her bills, spreading her legs for Doc Elgin. He comes up here every Sunday morning to collect.”
“The hell he does.”
“I seen him go in her room with a bulge in his fly and his tongue hanging out. He always walks down the hall with his hand in his pocket. Stay away from her, J.P. I found a new place if you want some good girls.”
“I ain’t got time to talk anymore.”
He knocked on Virdo Hunnicut’s door and went in. Hunnicut sat in a leather chair with his feet across a footstool. He wore a purple robe and house slippers. Big Jim Lathrop sat at the desk, eating breakfast from a tray that had been brought up from downstairs. He was in his early fifties, dressed in a tailored blue suit with an expensive silk necktie. His fine gray hair was combed straight back. A gold watch chain was strung across his vest. He cut the pork chop on his plate and raised the fork to his mouth with his left hand. His hard gray eyes looked at J.P. as he chewed.
“Come on in,” Hunnicut said. “Meet Mr. Lathrop.”
Lathrop turned in his chair, still chewing.
“How do, boy. Sit down,” he said.
“Are you ready to go into politicking?” Hunnicut said.
“I reckon.”
“Jim and me have been making arrangements for the show. We’re going to Alexandria tomorrow night. We’ll have everybody down at the auditorium. No admission. All you got to have is a Live-Again box label.”
“Who you running against?” J.P. said.
“Jacob Arceneaux from New Orleans,” Lathrop said. “He’s French and he’s Catholic, and he’ll take most of the parishes in the southern part of the state unless we swing them over.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Nigger politics,” Virdo Hunnicut said. “Arceneaux has a reputation as a nigger lover. He hasn’t tried to stop the nigger kids from getting in the white schools, and it’s going to hurt him.”
“We’re running on the segregation ticket,” Lathrop said. “We’re going to show the people in south Louisiana what will happen when Arceneaux gets in office. Their children will be mixing with the colored children, and pretty soon they won’t be able to tell one from another. The future generations will be one race of high-yellow trash.”
“We’re going to get the nigger vote, too,” Hunnicut said. “We’ll put on special shows across the tracks in the shanty towns.”
“My singing ain’t going to put nobody in office.”
“People know you and they’ll listen to you,” Virdo Hunnicut said. “They know you’re one of them as soon as you open your mouth. One good country boy talking to the hicks is worth all the nickel and dime politicians in Louisiana. If a man can get the rednecks and the niggers and the white trash behind him he can do anything he’s a mind to.”
“I think J.P. understands,” Lathrop said. “He knows where the money is, whether in politics or selling Live-Again.”
“It’s in the hicks with eight bits in their pocket for a bottle of vitamin tonic that don’t do them no good.”
“All right, J.P.,” Hunnicut said.
“The boy is being honest,” Lathrop said. “The people want something and we give it to them. This time it’s a pro-segregation administration.” He chewed on the pork chop bone and dropped it into his plate.
“We already got the north part of the state,” Hunnicut said.
“Jacob Arceneaux is the man we have to break,” Lathrop said. He wiped his fingers with a napkin. “I want you to write a song about him.”
“Have something in it about him being partial to niggers,” Hunnicut said.
“I ain’t a songwriter.’
“It don’t have to be much,” he said.
“Get Seth to do it.”
“I don’t think Seth can read.”
“I can’t write no song for you.”
“You gotten high-minded since you went up to the Barn Dance,” Hunnicut said. “Remember it was Jim sent you there.”
“I ain’t high-minded about nothing.”
“Let the boy alone,” Lathrop said. “He’s just gotten off a long train ride and he’s full of piss and vinegar. He’ll be all right when he has some sleep.”
“I ain’t writing no song, Mr. Lathrop.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“It don’t matter. I ain’t going to do it.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Hunnicut said.
“I got rights about what I’m going to do and what I ain’t.”