As Rodney said, Hamm knew where the public itched and just how to scratch it. And scratch it he did. He took full advantage of all the upset and unrest, told his audiences exactly what they wanted to hear. He got more people mad and upset, more frightened, and was gaining more support by the day. Soon Hamm came down with a full-blown case of Washington fever and started doing anything he thought could get him in the White House. He made deals with people he should not have, said things that were more and more outrageous. Vita told him to be careful. Betty Raye begged him to come home. But it was like trying to stop a moving train. He was not a bad man, just a recklessly ambitious man. Soon even the people around him began to worry and Wendell put it best. When a woman at the John Birch Society luncheon gushed that she thought Hamm was the only man who could save America, Wendell said, “That’s fine if she believes it. But when Hamm starts believing it, we are in big trouble.”
Genetic Flaw
NORMA WAS OVER at the beauty shop for her weekly hair appointment and Macky was eating his lunch at the Trolley Car Diner, as he did every Friday. Sitting at the counter, a few of the other men were discussing politics and Hamm Sparks, as usual. Macky said, “The guy is dangerous. He’s getting crazier by the minute. Right now he’s got every lunatic-fringe group and hate group coming out of the woodwork. If somebody doesn’t shut him up, he’s going to drag us right back into McCarthyism and the next thing we know we’re going to be dragged into a war with Russia.”
“I read the other day that the Klan was backing him now,” Ed said.
Merle, who was just a step away from being a part of the radical right wing, said, “He can’t help who backs him. He came out in the newspaper and said he wasn’t one of them.”
Macky said, “He says that, I can guarantee it, but he’s taking money from them right now and God knows who else.”
“What do you think, Jimmy?” asked Ed. Jimmy, who had not said anything, said quietly, “I agree with Macky. He needs to shut up and quit putting his wife through all this mess.”
Ed said, “Yeah, but how are you going to stop him? Like he says, it’s a free country.”
Monroe Newberry, who had come in from the tire store, added, “I was talking to Bobby on the phone the other day and he says all the big insurance companies up there are getting behind Hamm, but I don’t know what his real chances are.”
Merle said, “I don’t care what the papers say, I think he has a good chance to win.”
Jimmy took a swipe at the counter with his rag but said nothing else.
Two blocks away, at Tot Whooten’s beauty shop, the conversation was definitely not about politics. Betsy Dockrill, who had just come out from under the dryer and was getting ready to be combed out, remarked, “They are having a sale on caper coats out at Montgomery Ward. I got two, they were so cheap.”
Tot pulled Betsy’s hair net off. “Well, I wish I had time to sit around the house in a caper coat. I don’t even have time to shop for one, with my schedule. By the time I close this place up at night, all I want to do is go home and get off my feet.”
“You need to take a day off once in a while.”
“I would if I could.” Tot cut her eyes in the direction of Darlene, her twenty-five-year-old daughter, who worked in the shop with her. Betsy got the implication. Darlene was not overly intelligent and could not be left alone in the shop without someone watching to make sure she wouldn’t put the wrong thing on a customer’s hair again. Tot’s insurance was already sky-high.
Norma was sitting in the next chair, with her hair half rolled up, flipping through a magazine. She asked Tot, who was taking a drag off her cigarette, “Do you think Elizabeth Taylor is happy?”
Tot blew the smoke out. “She’s sporting a diamond the size of a doorknob, why wouldn’t she be?”
“I just wonder if all that fame and money and all those husbands have made her really happy.”
“Well,” Tot said, “if she’s not, I’d like to switch places with her. I’d be downright delirious. She can keep the men; I just want the money and the ring. Between having to put up with Daddy and James, not to mention Dwayne Junior, I’ve done my time in hell, thank you.”
“Oh, Tot, you make it sound so terrible. I can’t believe your life has been all bad. Weren’t you ever happy?”
Tot took another drag on her Pall Mall and put it back in the black plastic ashtray. It was an interesting question, one she had never been asked before. She thought about it for a moment. “Well, let’s see, there was the wedding. Other than Daddy getting drunk and passing out in the vestibule and me having to walk down the aisle by myself, that went fine, right up until we went outside the church and James got that piece of rice stuck in his ear. The honeymoon was ruined from the minute we got in the car because all he did was complain about the ringing in his ear. That ear drove him crazy for over two months. He was so dizzy all he did was lie down. It was so bad they had to operate on it three times looking for it, and we went into debt paying hospital bills.”
Norma said, “I had forgotten about that.”
Tot continued, “So I spent the first three months of my marriage being a nurse and then after he got drafted and went off to the army he came back home five years later a full-blown alcoholic, just like Daddy, who I’d married James to get away from. So I was happy from the time I said I do until we got outside the church and somebody threw rice in his ear. How long does it take to go from the altar down the aisle to outside the church, a minute? So you can say I was happy for a minute.”
Norma felt terrible that she had even asked the question. “Poor Tot,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well, don’t be, because it’s my own fault. I did it to myself. I should have known when I had to give my own self away, it was a bad omen. I should have just turned around and gone home but everybody wants a wedding, I guess. Women are fools; they will marry anything that has a heartbeat just to have a man.” She glanced over at Darlene again. “I’m still paying for her last fiasco, number three. And it’s not just the women—Dwayne Junior has already got two girls pregnant that I’m having to pay child support to. Sometimes I wish both my kids had turned queer and saved the world a lot of trouble.”
“Mother, I don’t think that’s funny.”
“I know you don’t but it’s true.” Tot looked at Betsy in the mirror. “From fifteen to twenty-five she managed to marry every half-wit in town and is dating number four.”
Her daughter defended her latest fiasco: “He has a job, Mother.”
Tot rolled her eyes. “Well, if collecting beer cans in the back of a truck is considered a profession, then I stand corrected.” She changed the subject: “Darlene, run down the street and get me a tuna fish salad on whole wheat and a bag of chips. Do you want anything, Norma?”
“No thanks, I just had lunch. I’ve been up since five-thirty.”
After Darlene left the shop, Tot shook her head. “Norma, just be glad you have a daughter with good sense. Darlene is about to drive me crazy. I tell you, from the day she flunked out of tap school it’s been downhill ever since. I went in her house the other morning and she’s sitting there at the table with a brick. I said, What are you doing and she said, I’m filing my nails. I spent a fortune sending her to beauty school and she’s filing her nails with a brick. After the tenth grade she was flunking everything but fooling with her hair night and day so I shipped her off to beauty school. I figured she’d be good at it. But I was wrong. And I don’t know where she got that thin fuzzy hair. She didn’t get it from my side of the family. She got it from the Whootens. No telling what’s in that gene pool, but it’s the worst possible advertisement for the hair business. I swear, between her and James and Dwayne Junior I’m so worn out I can hardly get up in the morning.”