Always

by Timmothy B. Mccann

  Unbeknownst to anyone, I started collecting Henry Davis memorabilia. I had a clipping of him at the dedication of a library, and I had one of him speaking to the state legislature in Tallahassee. But the last one I put in there in 1982 was “Local D.A. Loses Bid to Unseat Congressman Moore-house.” While in Miami, Ronald Reagan took a photo with Moorehouse which appeared in the Herald and that was all it took to cement the victory. I could feel the pain as much as Henry did. I noticed he was married to this attorney, but I knew deep in my heart she could not love him the way that I had or the way I was afraid I continued to. Although I was married and could not imagine myself cheating, being in Florida made me want Henry more. After putting the kids to sleep and making sure Darius was okay, I would take whatever dessert was left from dinner and sit on the back porch just thinking of what we had. Then I would look at the moon and what-if myself past midnight.

  My mom lost her right leg to diabetes in 1983. It was a tough time for her, with my dad, bless his heart, being gone and all. He’d died of a lung disease the previous year, so I moved my invalid husband and six kids into a four-bedroom house about three blocks from her home. I still had a little money from the sale of the property in Arkansas, and although Darius never knew it, I sent Henry a thousand-dollar check for his second congressional race.

  Looking at my life, I decided it was time to make some changes, so I enrolled in Miami-Dade Community College’s nursing program. I knew it would take a while, but as the saying goes, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

  HRS came to my aid and helped me find someone to assist my mother while I was at school. Her name was Chianti’, her skin tone was smooth and even, she wore thick-as-a-banana dreads with ebony lipstick, and wore Little John Lennon-like glasses. She would assist Mom in going to the bathroom and dressing and sometimes would even cook for her. I used to rush over to help out after doing my housework and getting Darius and the kids situated, but she always had everything under control. So one day she and I were talking and she asked me if I needed any help with my family since I was going to school. Although I wanted to say no, I knew with a little help, maybe just for three hours a day, I could have a much better GPA and spend a little more time working out to get rid of the weight. So I said, “Sure, but when could you do it with your schedule and all?” She said, “No way.” She was going to school and had two other patients. But she said her boyfriend had decided at the last minute not to go into the military, and his folks were not too happy with the decision. He had moved in temporarily with her and they needed the money.

  Her boyfriend’s name was Brandon. He was eighteen, I was almost thirty, and it was the fall of ’83.

  Chapter 4

  Washington, D.C.

  November 8, 2000

  NBS News Studio

  12:45 P.M. EST

  “Welcome back to our NBS Studios in Washington, D.C. This is Franklin Dunlop and we will be momentarily taking you to Chicago, Illinois, and Judy Finestein for an update on the new leader in the race, Vice President Steiner. If you are just joining us, after a few key victories in the Midwest, Ronald Steiner has taken a small lead in the race for the White House. He is at present narrowly ahead of the man who has led the race all night and in a way has been leading the race since his party’s convention in August.”

  “If you were not with us earlier, the vice president picked up wins in the states of Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio, as well as his home state of Illinois, as expected. But the biggest victory of the past hour has been the Empire State of New York. Yes, the Steiner train has rumbled through the Northeast, and we are projecting New York and her thirty-three electoral votes will be carried by the vice president. The Baldwin campaign, which badly needed to take a major state if it was going to have any opportunity to win tonight, has had little to shout about thus far. The only state they have added to the fold is Arkansas, and we are told they are trailing badly in California, which would be the cornerstone of any chance they would have tonight for a victory. It has not been confirmed, but we are told as soon as the results in his home state of Arizona are announced, Governor Tom will give his concession speech.

  “As for the Davis campaign, they are still very much in the hunt and stand an excellent chance of winning tonight. They won a key victory in New Jersey and carried the state of Texas, which was a must-win state after losing in Florida. They have also won in Maryland and Massachusetts. As of this minute the numbers look like this:

  DAVIS 172

  STEINER 174

  BALDWIN 118

  “Now, for more on the state of affairs in the Davis campaign, we will go to Gus Edmond, who is standing by with a former Davis supporter in a small suburb of Atlanta, Stone Mountain, Georgia. Gus? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I am, Franklin. Actually I am in Marietta and I am with a former Davis supporter who calls herself a Reagan Democrat, Mrs. Agnosia Clay. Mrs. Clay, tell me, how does one go from being a major and even vocal supporter of one candidate to a supporter of the opposition in such a short time?”

  “Well, I just had to look at all the relevant facts. First, as a black woman, I think for myself just as many other black people do, and we don’t feel obligated to vote for a person based on the color of his skin. I looked at the person he picked for his running mate, I looked at the new role his wife has taken in the campaign, and I also looked at the moral issues that Vice President Steiner pointed out so poignantly in the debates. I come from a family that has always voted Democratic and I have never pulled a Republican lever in my life except in eighty-four, but there comes a time when you have to make a choice as to what is good for America. I asked myself, would America be better off in the hands of Vice President Steiner, who has worked in government for the past thirty years or so and knows the ins and outs, or in the hands of Mr. Davis, who I just don’t think is ready for prime time? At least not as ready as the vice president, and in my opinion, now is not a time for on-the-job-training.”

  Fontainebleau Hotel

  Presidential Suite

  Turning up the volume of another network, Henry responded to the knock at the door. “Who?”

  “Henry, it’s me.”

  Standing up and walking backwards to the door so as not to miss a second of the results, Henry opened the door for his brother.

  “Did you see me on TV?” he asked with a widSe-eyed puppy-dog look in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” Henry said, turning to him with a smile. “You did good, man. Really good.”

  “Thanks. I was nervous as all get out. You see how they tried to get personal with the questions, but I wouldn’t let them.”

  “I noticed,” Henry said, sitting back down in his chair with his leg over the arm and looking at his brother, who fell on the couch. “So tell me. What’s the mood like down there in the lobby?”

  “I don’t know,” Herbert replied, with a drink in one hand and a fistful of granola in another. “I mean, at first, people were going crazy, but now they’re more subdued. Ed and I were trying to determine the mood of the crowd in Chicago and they seem to be a little quieter also.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. So you realize,” Henry said, looking back at the TVs in front of them, “it’s gonna come down to California.”

  “I was just talking to Willie Brown about that. I hate it, but we still polled well there as recently as Sunday night, so I feel good about it.”

  “I know. But California scares me, man. It’s still a conservative state, and I think a lot of moderates there feel good saying on the phone they’d vote for us, but when the curtain closes, they’ll find it easier to vote for Steiner.”

  “I don’t know, I got a good feeling about Cally.”

  There was a knock at the door to the suite. “Who?” the two brothers answered as one.

  “It’s, aha . . . it’s me, Senator. Me and Penelope.”

  “Let them in,” Henry said as he watched another defector, who had transferred from his camp to the opposition, being parade
d out by the network.

  “Ah, Senator Davis? Penelope and I have some important news to pass on to you,” Ed said, and inhaled a deep breath as he rubbed his palms together.

  “What’s going on?” Herbert asked, chewing his snack as Henry continued to watch the TVs.

  “Umm, Senator Davis, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear me, sir?” Ed repeated as Herbert’s chewing slowed and his eyes volleyed from the back of his brother’s head to Ed and Penelope.

  “Henry!” Penelope shouted. “Turn off the goddamn TV, for chrissakes!”

  Herbert glared at her as she transferred her weight to one foot while crossing her arms over her large breasts and then composed herself.

  Henry reached down blindly and picked up the remote. With a single click, all four TV sets went black. Refusing to look at Ed and Penelope, he asked, “Better?”

  “Aha, yes, sir,” Ed replied, and put his hand on Penelope’s as a clue not to repeat her previous performance.

  “So, Penelope? Ed?” Henry asked stealthily. “Do they know who he, or they, are?”

  “Know who? Henry? What the hell are you talking about, man?” Herbert questioned, thoroughly confused and about to spill his drink on his indigo blazer.

  Silence loomed over the room as each person waited for another’s response. And then Penelope snatched her arm away from Ed’s grasp, and said, “Sir, were you informed earlier?”

  Henry’s thumb moved back and forth over the remote like a wiper over a windshield. After an elongated pause, Henry clutched the remote in his palm and looked at a square of wallpaper above the TVs. “No need to inform me. You know how it feels to stick your finger in something hot,” he said with a sardonic smile, “or have grease pop on you when you’re cooking? You know how for just a split second . . . you wonder just how badly it’s going to bum? I’ve lived in that split second for the past six months. Just waiting for the bum. Maybe it’s something primitive we have in common with other animals, but it’s a queasy feeling you get in your stomach when death is around the comer.”

  “What the fuck’s going on! Who’s trying to—” Herbert shouted.

  “Hen.” Penelope lowered her voice. “Henry, they know who he is, and rumor has it he’s in the hotel tonight. We haven’t confirmed that with the FBI, but our people tell us he is here. Now,” she continued as Ed looked at her, “with the race as tight as it is, for security purposes the FBI and Secret Service would both feel more comfortable with you and Les in a more secure place. They would like to take you out of here, via helicopter from the roof. You can watch the results from—”

  “Not gonna run,” Henry blurted out with a burst of air and looked at the delft-blue screens of the TVs. “I’ve waited for this damn moment my entire life, and I’m not gonna run and hide now. This is a part of the show.”

  “But, sir, it’s not a cowardly act and it’s not running!” Ed replied as the eyes of the room landed on the small flushed man moving his hands like a demonstrative professor. “It’s preposterous to stay here. If he has infiltrated this hotel, he may have accomplices. That’s what we fear the most, and if he has, then the Secret Service said they could not guarantee our . . . I mean your safety in this place. What they would simply like to do is to—”

  “Henry,” Herbert said. “Maybe we should consider this seriously. I mean, this threat, unlike the rest of them, could be for real.”

  Looking at his brother, Henry continued to stroke the rectangular remote and asked, “Are you aware that I have received, according to the FBI, more threats in a week than the other candidates have received during the entire campaign? One agent told me that during my campaign, I’ve received more level-three threats than the president has received in eight damn years in office!” He closed his eyes to gather his composure, as his Adam’s apple slid up, and paused. “I’m not trying to be a martyr, and I know there are more than a few bullets with my name on them.” He clicked on the televisions and added, “But I believe in what we have done so far. So if some asshole tries to take me out because of it, I’m a man. So he can . . .” Henry’s torso tightened as he opened his eyes, unable to finish the thought.

  Ringgggggg . . .

  The Democratic presidential candidate picked up the cellular phone, listened a moment, then hung up.

  HENRY

  I could not wait to turn the calendar to 1993, because that was the year I actually started campaigning for the presidency. It was still seven years away, yet all the pieces were in place. Naturally, whenever anyone in the media asked me if I was running, I never said yes, yet was far from saying no. But in ’93 we started targeting key benefactors in each state we would need for our run. My advisers felt we would have to have a minimum of twenty million in the bank or near our fingertips the day we made our intentions known. Planning for that in a quiet manner was not the easiest thing to do, but that was our mission.

  I won the seat in Congress in ’84 and won reelection in ’86. And then I ran for, and won by a landslide, the U.S. Senate seat in Florida in 1988. That was the first time I made the cover of Ebony magazine and it was the easiest race I had ever run. The incumbent senator was in his third term and took us for granted. But we did a lot of grassroots campaigning and started the “One Man, One People, One Vision” campaign, whereby we would visit a work site in each county and my staff and I would spend a week working just like the common people. One week in Tampa we worked as ditch diggers for the county, and in St. Augustine we spent three days in an elementary school reading to blind children and assisting the teachers. In Dade County we helped build houses with former President Carter, picked up 60 percent of the major city newspaper endorsements, and at every stop the media coverage grew larger and larger. By the time Senator Griggs noticed us, we’d tied him in virtually every county in which he held a lead, and weeks later we were looking at a possible landslide victory.

  In the final days of the campaign, Griggs, who was an old-school cut-and-gut dirty-tricks campaigner, started getting negative in his attacks. With a week left, he went on a campaign swing from the Panhandle of Florida to the Keys, holding airport press conferences where he would blatantly lie about my record in Congress. Once he said I cheated on my law school entrance exam, and another time he hinted that I had been arrested in Little Havana for solicitation. Although his tactics were crooked at best and slanderous at worst, the ink was in the water, and the negative ads worked. We were told by our pollster that our opponent was pulling closer even in my home district.

  So on the Monday before the election we decided to take a chance and not play it safe. Griggs was holding a press conference in Fort Myers, and we conveniently set it up so that Leslie would be flying out of Fort Myers to meet me in Panama City for a rally. Just as we had planned, she and Penelope just happened to be on the tarmac as Griggs was in the midst of making up another half-truth, and Leslie just stood there with her overnight bag over her shoulder. On the news you could see the look in Griggs’s eyes when he saw her for the first time. It’s easy to lie about someone with his or her back turned, but another thing to do it face-to-face with a camera and thirty reports looking at you, examining not only the words you say, but also the words you leave out. Griggs then took a chance I don’t know if I would have. But then, he did not know the Yvette side to my Leslie.

  “Well, well,” he said, “it seems we have been infiltrated by the Davis campaign.”

  Leslie stood quietly without expression.

  “It appears that while the congressman is off doing whatever it may be he is doing today, he sent the little lady to defend him.”

  Leslie remained silent and continued to hold the garment bag just as rehearsed.

  “I think that speaks volumes about Mr. Davis.” The next thing Florida saw on The News at Six was Leslie walking toward Senator Griggs. When she did so, you could hear the oohs and ahs in the background.

  “Sir, my husband did not send me here, nor do I believe he even knows you are here
. I am simply flying out of this airport to meet him for a rally. But let me say that my husband and I are saddened by what you have become in the last few days of this election. You, sir, have served the people of this state with dignity for twelve years. Now you have stooped to outright lies and slander, and we have decided to stick to the record. You knew we could not respond to the outrageous statements in the last seventy-two hours of the campaign, so you have resorted to the oldest trick in the book.”

  I watched on TV while Griggs looked at his assistant, and when he looked at Leslie with the cameras all pointing her way, I know he knew he was in trouble.

  “Sir,” she continued, “we refuse to allow ourselves to sink to your moral and ethical level. Win, lose, or draw, we will not hang our heads due to anything we have done in this campaign. We only hope that you can do the same.”

  Griggs stammered, trying to get the attention of the reporters with a snide retort, but most of them continued to focus on Leslie as she looked at her watch, then walked quietly through the crowd and headed for her plane, refusing to take any questions, but taking half the reporters with her.

  Needless to say, the ploy worked. The next day, election day, from coast to coast the image of this gray-headed white man debating my wife was on every newspaper in Florida. He came off looking scared and a part of the establishment in Florida. Leslie looked like a wife defending her husband’s morals and dedicated to changing the face of politics.

  When I think back to the early nineties, what I think most changed my life was sort of unusual. Rodney King hurt, don’t get me wrong. I know the brother made mistakes and may still make more, but I don’t think there is a black man in America who didn’t see himself, under the lights, getting lynched by the public servants when it was shown over and over on TV. The ending of affirmative action in many states stands out, because I took it as a slap in the face to all of the leaders who had fought and died for the cause. But when a reporter asked me what event in the nineties impacted my life more than any other, it was a day in ’91. Actually, the date was November 7, 1991, when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive.