The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  Prudence Hawthorne was impressed by the lanky twenty-year-old’s determination to return to school. She felt it only right to encourage him.

  “All right, Joe. I’ll tell Miss Mackay at the library. It stays open until nine. Complete the test, after you’re through seal it in the envelope she’ll give you, and we’ll get the results.”

  “My problem,” Joe explained to Jerry, who had agreed to give him a ride to the movie house, “is that I’m not so sure I could pass that test. Been a long time since I did grammar and multiplication and that kind of thing. What I do know is that when I get instruction I’ll whiz along. So, buddy, what I want you to do for me—this is very important to me, Jerry—is to go to Miss Mackay at the Little Wolf library at seven tomorrow and take the test—sign my name.”

  Jerry was, for a moment, taken aback. He wound a curl from his red hair around his index finger, steering the car with his left hand. He understood about going late in life to school—he would be going to the University of Illinois as a freshman at the advanced age of twenty-two. What the hell. Yes. He’d drive to Little Wolf in his car, Joe’s old car—“I’ll drive with you,” Joe said. “I’ll sit in the car while you take the exam and say a rosary that you do well!”

  Miss Mackay was not surprised that it was a young man, not a child, who asked for the sealed envelope. She handed it to him and pointed to an empty desk. “Good luck, McCarthy.” She corrected herself. “Good luck, Joe.”

  Joe’s confidence in himself was well placed. He sat down in September with thirty-nine boys and girls aged fourteen; nine months later he was ready to graduate alongside forty seniors whose ages averaged eighteen. Prudence Hawthorne, who administered progressive exams to Joe what seemed every few weeks as he skidded upward to ninth, tenth, eleventh, and now twelfth grade, was deliriously proud of his record, but not happy at the prospect of his leaving, because she loved it when Joe was at school. He was always playing with the younger children, offering to do odd jobs that needed doing, and unintrusively flirting with the younger teachers, and with some not so young. He seemed utterly untroubled by a schedule that had had him working at the Cash-Way from three until eleven and all day on Saturday. But now only graduation lay ahead.

  Joe told Miss Hawthorne, passing by her office on Tuesday morning of the big week, that he wanted to have a “date” with her after the school graduation lunch.

  “Doing what?” she asked sharply.

  “Never mind. Do you promise?”

  She promised. And when the time came, after he had kissed his mother and shaken hands with four siblings, Joe guided her to his new car, telling her to hush up.

  Twenty minutes later, Prudence Hawthorne was being coaxed into a little Piper biplane. Joe’s graduation present to her would be a flight in an airplane—her first. Joe had never himself been up, but promised himself he’d do it soon, after saving money to hire “High-Fly Jim” for a second ride. Meanwhile, he would just watch Miss Hawthorne.

  She looked pale when she stepped onto the boarding ladder and into the tiny cockpit. She had no reason to suspect what was in store for her: Joe had arranged with Jim to take her up—and then to do a loop-the-loop.

  The whole trip took only five minutes, but when she was helped out of the plane by High-Fly Jim, Prudence Hawthorne was a pale and very irate lady. She said to Joe that she would never speak to him again and would certainly not recommend him to any college. The tirade gave out just about the time Joe’s car pulled up at her little cottage. She let Joe take her by the arm to the front door. He took her door key from her, put it in the keyhole, and turned the lock.

  “You are a scoundrel, Joe.”

  Suddenly she turned, pecked him on his cheek, closed the door, and rushed to the telephone to call all her friends, one after another, into the early hours of the evening, to tell them about her incredible afternoon, just like Lindbergh.

  5

  McCarthy goes to Marquette

  It didn’t surprise the family and friends of Joe McCarthy that the momentum he had built up would take him on, past high school. In the fall of 1930 he matriculated at Marquette, the large and busy Jesuit-run university in Milwaukee, celebrating, the year Joe entered, its fiftieth anniversary.

  He lost no time entering into college life, though his primary concern was the money needed to see him through. His boardinghouse, shared with a dozen other students, was four blocks from the campus and charged eight dollars a week for room and board. Joe did everything, including dish washing (“It’s okay. Just think about something else”), construction work, and janitorial duties (“I’m going to be nice to janitors for the rest of my life”). He sold flypaper and did short-order cooking in a beanery (“I have become a very good cook,” he wrote to his mother. And he would volunteer to do the cooking when he visited his girlfriends). Every few months he sold blood, his blood. After a while he fastened on two service stations to which he gave as much as eighty hours of his time during the week (“In a perfect world, everybody would run out of gas once a day”).

  He paid his way and became something of a money broker. He continued, as ever, to be a gift giver, and anyone who needed a dollar went to Joe, who gave the loan without any regard to whether he would be repaid. As regularly, he borrowed money. At one point he borrowed from his father and brothers. What seemed moments after, he bought another car.

  He had a very early disappointment. Applying to the football coach, he was asked, Had he played football in high school?

  To the astonishment of his friend Charles Curran (“I’d have expected Joe to say he was captain of the school team”), he admitted that he had not. In that case, the coach said, he could not apply. Joe talked back. “So I haven’t played before, how do you know I won’t be the best football player in Wisconsin after a couple of months?” The coach told him he’d run that risk, and turned to the next applicant.

  He decided to box. He worked at it diligently, and the great day came: He saw his name in print in the Marquette Tribune, which recorded that “McCarthy is a husky, hard-hitting middleweight who promises an evening’s work for any foe.” He worked hard at the sport, and in his second year, when he learned that Marquette’s coach had resigned, he applied for the job and held it down for a few weeks, in charge of seventy student boxers. Joe was much taken with his new responsibility and befriended a boxing instructor at a Milwaukee gymnasium. He would stand by at coaching sessions and learn from the points stressed by Coach Fred Saddy. He took these lessons to heart, and toward the end of the year faced a rematch with a heavier competitor who had trounced him the first time out. Joe practiced determinedly, stressing the points Saddy had taught him. He fought now hard as ever, but with finesse, winning the fight. He was so transported by his success that he went early the next day to the gym to find Saddy.

  “I want to talk to you about becoming a professional boxer.”

  The deflation was quick. Saddy sat him down and ended his little lecture by telling him he, Saddy, would rather have a college degree than be heavyweight champion.

  Joe signed up to join the Delta Theta Phi fraternity. He was warned by his sponsor that when examined by the admissions board he would be expected to give a five-minute speech. “I’ve never given a speech,” Joe said deferentially to the senior. “Could we just skip that one? I’ll do a boxing exhibition if you want. Or maybe milk a cow?”

  Dutifully, Joe reported to the debate coach, Hank Razzoli. His first experience was humiliating. When his turn came, Joe stood, looked down at the other dozen applicants, seated, and over at Razzoli, at his desk at the end of the room. Joe stood there, mouth open, but no word was framed.

  After a half minute the coach snapped, “Say something, McCarthy. Anything. But don’t just stand there.”

  Joe stepped away. “Sorry, coach. I’ll be back.”

  Day after day he practiced. He memorized (always easy for Joe McCarthy) Brutus’s oration over the dead Caesar and spoke it in whispers when on the bus, and in a loud, declamatory voice
in the park at night. He would imagine huge crowds listening to him.

  “Is he any good?” Joe’s brother Howard asked the debate coach, seated next to him at a football game.

  “He’s pretty fluent now,” Razzoli said to the chatty younger McCarthy, convivial like all the McCarthys, except for father Tim. “But there’s a monotone problem. Your brother speaks almost always in the same tone of voice.”

  “What can you do about that?”

  The coach jolted up on his feet to cheer a touchdown. And then replied, “Joe’s quick to learn. He’s no orator. But anyway, who really cares?”

  Joe cared. He cared a great deal. As a freshman he had registered as a prospective engineer. By the end of his second year he had decided that the law was better suited for him: Now he imagined a lifetime of oral arguments and pleadings before juries and judges.

  He’d be good at it, he knew. He was persuasive, and everybody liked him. Soon he was a member of the Franklin Debating Club, debating every week. In his final year at law school, five years after his matriculation under the amalgamated curriculum, he resolved to run for president of the Franklin club. This proved painful when, at lunch in the cafeteria with his closest friend, Charlie Curran, he learned that Curran had already filed for the same post. They agreed, in high bonhomie, to vote for each other. The vote was a tie. A fresh vote was scheduled, which Joe won by two votes.

  “Did you vote for me?” Charles Curran asked, a severe expression on his face.

  Joe smiled impishly. “We were told to vote for the best man, weren’t we, Charlie? Well, I did.”

  The big moment loomed: graduation from law school in exactly one month. Charlie Curran had ruminated with Joe. Most of their classmates planned to take a week’s vacation, perhaps even two, then they would line up and try to endear themselves to law firms in Milwaukee and about. “Not me,” said Charlie. “I’m going to open my own office.”

  Joe looked surprised. He would play that game with Charlie. He said he thought it rather presumptuous to do any such thing. Charlie liked that. “Some people are more enterprising than other people, Joe. Never mind; after you hustle for a year or two, come on over to where I’m practicing, and I’ll see if I can make room for you.”

  McCarthy waited until the morning of the graduation on Saturday. Walking down the aisle dressed in academic gown and hat, keeping rough time with the ceremonial organ music, Joe leaned over: “I bet I’ll have my own office before you do.”

  Charlie managed a disdainful smile. “You’ll have to open your office before Monday. That’s when I’ll hang out my shingle.”

  Joe feigned distress at such a challenge. Then he spoke, quietly, because they were now nearing the stage where the fifty-seven law students would sit for the commencement ceremonies before going to Madison to be sworn in at noon. “I bet you twenty bucks I’m in business before you are.”

  Late in the afternoon, McCarthy—Bid at his side with her Brownie camera to record the great moment—opened his office, a single room shared with Mike Eberlein, an older friend who was himself excited at going out more or less on his own. Bid could not disguise her elation: two sons dropped out of high school, one son—a lawyer! She went to St. Ambrose church when dark came and prayed out her gratitude for Joe Raymond McCarthy.

  His work was routine. There were a lot of title examinations, local people selling their houses and farms, others picking them up. Joe encouraged all his friends to make out their wills if they hadn’t already done so, and to revise their wills if they had—if they preferred to pay him only upon death, he would arrange that. He wrote a lot of wills. He wondered about the first client who asked for help in obtaining a divorce—Bid wouldn’t like that—but, well, money was scarce, and he couldn’t turn down business. He lent himself ardently to the enterprise and even performed as a stakeout two nights, opposite the house where his client, Snowbird, insisted he’d get evidence of her husband’s impropriety. Joe was disappointed the defendant didn’t perform for the benefit of his plaintiff, and confessed to Charlie, who had forgiven him after a few months his duplicity in winning twenty dollars on a sure thing, that he had to think for a minute or two about the moral problem. “There I was, hoping to catch Mr. Snowball, I’ll call him, going into that little house to screw the lady. I was disappointed it didn’t happen! That’s strange, isn’t it, Charlie?”

  “Nah,” Charlie said. “Lawyers always hope the other side screws up-”

  “Watch your language, Charlie.”

  He laughed, but Joe accepted the point, the lawyer’s perspective. He won the case for Snowbird and two other divorce cases later. But after a few years of routine activity he felt the tedious exasperations of the country lawyer. He began to notice the surrounding political scene. In less than one week, he had his target, his objective. He was careful not to talk about it until the idea settled, but he yearned for an exchange or two that would accelerate his thinking. He was several times tempted to talk about it to Charles Curran and to brother Bill. On November 16, 1937, he got into his car and drove forty miles to Little Wolf. He had made a date with Prudence Hawthorne.

  “Taking me out to lunch, Joe McCarthy! You certainly have got yourself fancy ways. Are you making a lot of money in the law business?” Miss Hawthorne had said over the telephone, and never mind picking her up in his car, she would walk to the hotel from school. Either she had gone home from school before meeting him, or else she had taken to school, to put on for her lunch date, the velvet beret with the royal coat of arms stitched up front and the matching pocketbook. What would she like from the menu?

  As they ate, Joe said he wanted to confide in her. He found his law work boring. “It’s right, isn’t it, Miss Hawthorne, to use whatever talents you have?”

  “You have a lot of talents, Joe. You’re never going to be a professor; you’re too restless. What do you have in mind?”

  “Politics,” Joe said.

  “Well, why not?” Prudence Hawthorne applied her knife to the chicken. “There isn’t anybody better than you at getting on. What post you thinking about taking on, Joe?”

  “State judge.”

  Miss Hawthorne paused before taking her fork to her mouth. “State judge? That’s for older people, isn’t it, Joe? Maybe you should wait before you do that, wait maybe … five, ten years?”

  Joe impulsively reached out and pressed her arm. “Miss Haw thorne, ma’am, this is what I was born to do. I love to mix with people, and people like me and trust me. I haven’t told anybody about this, and I have to raise some money, of course. … No no no, not from you, I mean, you know, a candidate has to have some money, has to get around. But mostly I’ll go and call on people. You know, I’ve done a lot of that, Miss Hawthorne, a lot back when I was selling eggs, and I got a lot of eggs sold, Miss Hawthorne. I’m going to tell everybody how good a judge I can be, you know, somebody who really worked his way up from nothing, you’ll agree. … No, no, I don’t mean Dad and Mom were nothing, they’ve been wonderful parents, but you know, there wasn’t any thought I’d finish high school—thanks to you, I did—or go to college. And law school? I mean, that was for other people to do, not the McCarthy kids. So I thought, well, that’s worth listening to, that’s something I can tell them and that the facts bear out. …”

  Prudence Hawthorne had stopped eating. She just listened. Joe was unstoppable. He gave the details. He would run for judge, run in the Tenth Judicial District, run against the veteran incumbent—Edgar Werner.

  Miss Hawthorne resolved to put away her reservations about his age and experience. When they parted she gave him a matronly kiss on the forehead. “I’ll vote for you, Joe. But remember something. There are some people who won’t vote for you. And some of those aren’t going to like what you’re doing, competing with a nice gentleman who almost seems to own that job.”

  “Don’t worry, ma’am. People are good sports. They’re used to sports. Some people win, means some people have to lose.” He smiled broadly and blew another kiss
at her. He was right, he thought. He would get the most reliable judgment on his enterprise from Prudence Hawthorne. Because she was an educated woman with a lot of experience and she knew what Joe McCarthy could accomplish. She had seen him through those incredible four years of high school in nine months. It was from her that Joe wanted to hear about climbing steep hills.

  For the declaration of his candidacy, his mother and father arrived dressed as they had been dressed at Aunt Bessie’s funeral. Tim McCarthy was without his overalls, wearing a scarlet tie with the profile of the state of Wisconsin on the front. Bid’s dress was calico, her wide hat a dark blue. Joe’s two older brothers sat stiffly, their neckties inconclusively knotted. Miss Hawthorne was there, sitting upright, the same posture in which she was found every day by her students when they trooped into her classroom. Joe’s old friends Jerry and Billy wore the jeans and open shirts they wore at school—dressed, with this or that difference, like the half-dozen other high school classmates present, all of them much younger than the candidate. And, of course, there was Mike Eberlein, his law partner, dressed as if preparing to instruct a jury.

  They gathered at eleven A.M. in the grand dining hall of the Grand Hotel in Shawano, ordinarily kept closed during the hard winter months to economize on the heating bills. Diners during that period ate on tables set up in the lounge opposite the reception desk. The dining hall’s ten heavy wooden tables were cramped together opposite the four large windows, creating a spacious working lounge. Enough chairs were brought in to seat fifty people.

  Representing the media was a single reporter, Jim Kelly of the Appleton Post-Crescent. Joe and Mike Eberlein, who was now not only law partner but also campaign manager, had done everything they could to promote the announcement. With only twenty-four hours to go, only one of the fifty-odd invitations sent to radio broadcasters, country weeklies, dailies, and scattered celebrities had signaled acceptance. Joe and Mike spent a half day on the two telephones in their law office. They dialed the numbers on their roster, leaving nobody out. Joe—or Mike—would ask whoever answered the telephone: “Is it true that young Joe McCarthy from Appleton is going to oppose Judge Werner in the April election and is going to announce tomorrow?”