Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  3

  Mickey Keane stood in the back of a crowded anteroom of the Gospel of Freedom Church of Atlanta and exchanged waves and greetings with members of the press he knew from around town. Nobody asked him why he was there, and that was okay with him.

  Keane looked up as the group of men entered through a side door and took seats on the platform at the front of the room. They stood in a group for a moment to allow the photographers to get their flash shots done. Keane took note of an impressive-looking man standing next to the Reverend Don Beverly Calhoun. He was tall and lean and of erect bearing, with thick, close-cropped gray hair and dark eyebrows. A handsome man, who had “military” written all over him.

  “Who’s the guy next to Calhoun?” he asked a reporter from the Constitution leaning against the wall next to him.

  “That’s Colonel J. E. B. Stuart Willingham,” the reporter said, “formerly of the U.S. Marines. Old Jeb, as his friends call him, was supposed to be a shoo-in for commandant of the Marine Corps, until he got in a little trouble in Vietnam, something about too many casualties in his unit for the ground gained, suicide missions, that sort of thing. There were some closed congressional hearings on it, and Willingham was reassigned stateside. He retired not long afterward. Since then he’s run something called Americans for a Strong Defense, some sort of right-wing lobbying organization. He’s—”

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The booming voice brought instant silence to the room of television and print reporters. Floodlights came on, illuminating the group on the platform.

  The commanding figure looked around the room, blessing the group with a small smile. “My name is Willingham,” he continued. “I am chairman of the board of deacons of the Holy Hill Pentecostal Baptist Church, and it is with considerable regret that I must announce that, this morning, our board accepted the resignation of the Reverend Doctor Don Beverly Calhoun as pastor of our church, rector of Freedom University, and chief executive officer of Faith Cable Television, Incorporated.” He paused for effect, then continued. “Our regret, however, is lessened by the knowledge that, as a candidate for the United States Senate, Dr. Calhoun will be making an even greater contribution to his state and country, and we feel we must share the talents of this fine man with our fellow Americans.

  “But our loss is also our gain, for we now have had the pleasure of appointing to succeed his father the Reverend Ralph Beverly Calhoun, who, until now, has been Dr. Calhoun’s right-hand man in the church and its related activities.” Willingham turned, and a thin blond figure rose and gave a little wave to the crowd. The Reverend Ralph Beverly Calhoun was a younger, skinnier version of his father, with the same capped teeth and the added attraction of an angry red pimple decorating his left cheek.

  “And now,” Willingham continued, “it is my pleasure to introduce to you the Reverend Doctor Don Beverly Calhoun.”

  Calhoun, a flatteringly cut blue suit covering his paunch and a bright red necktie lighting his way, approached the podium. “Good morning to you all,” he boomed cheerfully. “I would like you all to know that this is my last public appearance as the Reverend Doctor Don Beverly Calhoun. From this day forward, I am just plain Don Calhoun, Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Georgia.” He paused, as if anticipating applause that did not come, then rushed ahead. “As of today, I am severing the ties that for so many years have bound me to the Holy Hill Church, Faith University, and Faith Cable Television. I will preach my farewell sermon this Sunday”—he turned and looked at his son, who grinned back at him—“at the kind invitation of the new pastor of our church, the Reverend Ralph Beverly Calhoun. All of this means, of course, that all business and financial relationships with these organizations will end. I will no longer be paid a salary, nor enjoy any other benefits from this connection. Now I am prepared to take questions from the press.” He pointed to a young woman who immediately stood in the front row. “Jane?”

  “Dr. Don, does this mean—”

  “Please, Jane,” Calhoun interrupted, “I have never liked that particular sobriquet, and it is particularly inappropriate from this time forward. Just call me Don.”

  “Uh, Mr. Calhoun,” the young woman continued, “does this mean that you will no longer have the use of the five-million-dollar business jet in which you have been traveling for the past few years?”

  “Jane, as you know, that aircraft is owned by an independently run corporation which has, at times, leased its use to Faith Cable Television, Incorporated. Should I require the use of the aircraft during the coming days, my campaign will, of course, come to appropriate terms with the corporation and pay, in full, for the aircraft.”

  “What will the hourly charge for the airplane be to your campaign, Mr. Calhoun?” the young woman asked.

  “Uh, we have not yet worked that out, but you may be sure it will be fair.” Calhoun pointed to another reporter.

  “Dr.—ah, Mr. Calhoun—last year, the Holy Hill Church built you and your wife a twelve-thousand-square-foot house on the campus of Faith University, the furnishings of which were rumored to cost more than two million dollars. Will you now move out of that house?”

  Calhoun beamed at the man. “Of course you know, Ed, that most of the furnishings of the house were gifts from various members of my congregation, and I’m happy to say that the Board of Regents of the university has agreed to give me a ground lease for ninety-nine years on the property, and I will be buying the house from the university.”

  “Sir,” the reporter interrupted, “your declared salaries from all the positions you hold with the church, the university, and the cable television company come to a total of ninety thousand dollars a year, and now you have resigned those positions. How will you pay for a twelve-thousand-square-foot house?”

  “Well, I will be making a modest down payment from funds my wife and I have saved over the years, and the university will extend a mortgage to me for the remainder.”

  “What is the agreed price of the house, and what will the terms of the mortgage be?”

  “That has all got to be negotiated, you see, but I am sure that, in a spirit of Christian love and cooperation, we will come to an agreement that will be satisfactory to everybody concerned. Now, I believe I have time for just one more question.” Calhoun turned to a young man wearing a name tag declaring him to be a reporter for Faith Cable Television News. “Yes, son?”

  “Mr. Calhoun,” the young man said, reading mechanically from a sheet of paper, “what will be the aims and objectives of your campaign for the United States Senate?”

  There was an audible groan from the other reporters present, and technicians began packing gear.

  “Well, now, I’m glad to have a political question,” Calhoun chuckled. “My campaign will be a Christian one, down to its roots.”

  In the back of the room, Mickey Keane recognized this as his cue. As Calhoun continued his spiel, Keane went to a window and looked out. A large bus was parked across the road from the church. He opened the window, leaned out, and gave a thumbs-up signal. Manny Pearl stepped out of the bus and crossed the road toward the church. He was carrying a sign that said SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! A.B.D.D.!!! and he was followed by an even dozen striking young women, each dressed in a very small bikini, each carrying a similar sign.

  As Calhoun droned on inside the building, a sound man for a local television station happened to glance out the window. “Holy shit!” he yelled. “Take a look at that!”

  The room turned, then, as one man rushed to the windows, nearly trampling the young man from Faith Cable Television News. Calhoun stopped talking and gave his attention to the crowd at the windows. “What is going on?” he demanded, bewildered.

  “Lemme outta here!!!” a cameraman shouted, pushing his way toward the doors at the rear of the room. He was followed by two dozen members of the media, flattening the rows of folding chairs as they stampeded from the room.

  Calhoun stepped down from the pl
atform and strode to the windows, followed by his son and his board of deacons. He took one look out the window and turned to the Reverend Ralph Beverly Calhoun. “Call the police!” he bellowed; then he turned and ran for the doors.

  Mickey Keane was standing on the front lawn, laughing his ass off, when Calhoun burst out of the building, followed by his board of deacons and, finally, his son. Calhoun ran across the lawn and brought himself up short on the other side of a drainage ditch from the parading strippers. Half a dozen television cameras swiveled to take in his arrival on the scene.

  “What on earth is going on here?” he demanded.

  “Just returning the favor, Dr. Don,” Manny Pearl yelled back. “You been picketing my place of business, so I thought I’d picket yours, me and my girls from the Alley Cat, here. That’s one of my most popular places.”

  “For God’s sake,” cried Calhoun, “get something on those women! They’re next to naked!”

  “Listen, if you want to see everything, just stop in at the Alley Cat tonight,” Manny called back, noting that television was recording all of this. “Or the She Cat, or the Jungle Cat. We’re open from five P.M. to four A.M., six days a week!”

  The whooping of police cars could be heard in the background. A moment later, two of them screeched to a halt in front of the church, and a large sergeant got himself out of one. “Awright, what’s going on here?” he asked nobody in particular.

  “Officer, I demand that you remove these people from our church property at once!” Calhoun shouted.

  “Awright, Manny,” the sergeant said. “You’ve had your fun, now pack up these girls and be on your way.”

  As if on cue, a young man carrying a briefcase exited the bus and crossed the road. “Excuse me, Sergeant,” he said, “my name is Wilcox, and I am an attorney representing Mr. Pearl and these young ladies. I would like to point out that they are not on church property, but on a public right-of-way, and they are not blocking traffic or impeding the progress of anyone.”

  A young woman stepped up to Manny Pearl and stuck a microphone in his face. “Excuse me, Mr. Pearl,” she said, “but on your signs, there, what does A.B.D.D. mean?”

  “That’s a political slogan.” Manny Pearl grinned into the camera. “It means Anybody but Dr. Don!”

  The girls behind him burst into cheers. “Anybody but Dr. Don! Anybody But Dr. Don!” they began to chant in unison.

  An unmarked police car skidded to a stop at the edge of the crowd, and a man in a suit got out. The sergeant saluted him. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m afraid we got us a situation here.”

  “Hey, Harvey!” one of the girls yelled at the lieutenant. “I haven’t seen you since last night! How you doin’?”

  The lieutenant reddened. “All right, all of you people are under arrest. Indecent exposure!”

  The young lawyer stepped forward. “Lieutenant, I’d like to point out that each of these young ladies is wearing a perfectly proper bikini, which is acceptable attire in public anywhere in this country.”

  “And I ain’t exposed!” Manny Pearl yelled. “At least, not yet!”

  “Everybody onto that bus!” shouted the lieutenant. “Sergeant, your car leads, the other car follows. Next stop, city jail! We’ll discuss the particulars in front of a judge!”

  Mickey Keane rolled helplessly on the grass in front of the church, clutching his sides and howling with laughter, as Manny and his girls noisily boarded the bus, and Don Beverly Calhoun led his party back toward the church.

  “Reverend Ralph!” Calhoun was shouting. “Call my lawyer!”

  4

  Will called the meeting to order at ten o’clock on Monday morning. “All right,” he said. “I want to hear from everybody this morning. We’re in a whole new ball game here, one we never anticipated, and we’ve got to find some new ways to deal with it.” He turned to his father. “Dad, let’s start with you. Where do we stand financially?”

  Billy Lee cleared his throat and stared at a sheet of paper before him. “We’ve got a little over a hundred and ten thousand dollars in the bank; if we deduct our unpaid bills, we’re liquid to the tune of about seventy thousand dollars.”

  Will suddenly felt a little sick. “That’s all? Are you perfectly serious?”

  “I am,” said Billy. “And I reckon we’re going to need a million dollars to make it through the general election.”

  “This is my fault, Will,” Tom Black said. “If you’ll remember, I insisted on putting nearly everything we had into television in the two weeks before the primary. My insistence was based on what the polls told us would be a close race with Mack Dean, followed by a general-election campaign against Jim Winslow. What we had, of course, was a landslide over Mack, after his wife decided to nail him. I tried to cancel as much television time as possible in the last couple of days of the primary race, but most of it was simply uncancelable. We’d paid for it up front, and the stations didn’t want to hear about refunds.”

  “Well, you couldn’t foresee that Mack would be removed as a factor, Tom. You made the best decision you could, in the circumstances, and I agreed with you. Anyway, maybe that flood of commercials we ran will do us some good in the general election.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Tom said. “We’ve got six weeks to go before the second Tuesday in November, and folks can forget a lot in that time. Anyway, they’ll be bombarded with new stuff from the opposition.” Tom shifted in his seat. “The second part of our campaign plan, running against Jim Winslow, didn’t happen, either. We’re facing a much tougher race now.”

  “There’s some good news on the financial front,” Billy said. “Mind you, there’s some bad news, too.”

  “The good news first, please.”

  “Well, Lurton Pitts and his group have given the Democratic party half a million dollars.”

  “That is good news,” Will said. “Are we going to get all of it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Billy said. “That’s part of the bad news. The Democratic State Executive Committee has allocated us a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What?”

  “They say they’ve got some tough congressional races to fund. That’s nonsense, of course; there’s only one close congressional race in the state that I’m aware of. Frankly, I don’t think they’re optimistic about your chances. Later on, if we can show them some gains in the polls, we might get some more money out of them.”

  “I don’t understand,” Will said. “I was beating their sitting governor before he shot himself in the foot. They don’t think I can beat a TV preacher?”

  Billy said nothing for a moment, then continued. “There’s more bad news. The Lurton Pitts group has also given the Republican party half a million dollars.”

  “They’re working both sides of the street?” Will asked, incredulous.

  “It’s not the first time a big contributor has done that,” Tom Black said.

  “I haven’t finished,” Billy said. “Word is, the Republicans are giving Calhoun the whole half million, since, the reasoning goes, he’s starting from scratch, and they don’t have a lot of hope in the congressional races anyway.”

  “Oh, swell,” Will said.

  Moss Mallet, the pollster, entered the room. “Sorry I’m late, Will.”

  “Have a seat, Moss; we’ll get to you in a minute.”

  Kitty Conroy spoke up. “I think you’d better get used to the idea of Calhoun having more money than us to spend. Don’t forget his mailing lists; he’s been known to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day for his TV show; he ought to be able to do it for his campaign, too. By the way, did anybody see his so-called farewell sermon yesterday?”

  “I missed it,” Will said.

  “So did I,” Tom echoed.

  “It was a thirty-minute campaign speech on free television,” Kitty said. “The only time God was mentioned was when Calhoun said he would strike down his—Calhoun’s—enemies. I think he meant you.”

 
Will laughed. “I guess I’d better get used to that.”

  “You’d better get used to something else, too,” Kitty said.

  “What’s that?”

  “He went heavy on the homosexual thing. He didn’t mention any names, but I think we all know who he was referring to. There was a lot of stuff about the liberals and the homosexuals distorting the purpose of government, and how he was personally going to prevent any other homosexuals from gaining more political power in this state. Judging from his attitude yesterday, I don’t think he’s going to let up on this.”

  Will couldn’t think of anything to say to that. “All right, Moss, what have you got on last week’s polling?”

  “Well,” Moss Mallet began, spreading some sheets of paper in front of him, “this is Thursday’s stuff, after the strippers at the church, and before Calhoun’s Sunday-morning sermon.”

  “Jesus, wasn’t that stripper thing wonderful?” Tom said. “I’ve never laughed so hard.”

  Will tapped a forefinger on the table. “Just be sure that we don’t get connected in any way with this Manny Pearl and his girls. Screen the donation checks carefully. I don’t want any money from that quarter; if it gets out, it could kill us.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed the stripper incident, Tom,” Mallet said, “but a lot of voters didn’t, at least not the little bites of it they saw on the news follow-ups. In fact, I think that might have something to do with our position at the moment.”

  “Just what is our position at the moment?” Will asked.

  “Well, as of Friday—this is phone interviews with six hundred likely voters, a good sample—with a four-point statistical margin of error, Calhoun has forty-six percent, and you, Will, have thirty-nine percent.”

  Will was stunned. “You mean after a primary victory, and with Calhoun just announced, we’re seven points behind?”