The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart

by Glenn Taylor

  Articles on homebrew, like articles on coal mining or the race issue, had caused A.C. to consider offering his own expertise and experience. Maybe he’d write something about the new mining technologies, the surface or strip variety that put men out of work and killed whole mountainsides and the streams that ran there. He thought about a piece on Moundsville, on men like Arly Jr. But, to write such material would open things he’d closed tight. To do so would risk uncovering what he’d worked hard to cover. It would risk U.S. Marshals and the F.B.I. and sons-of-bitches like Fred Dallara and the Crews brothers. He had no idea if such folks were still interested in tracking him, or if they even lived and breathed. He was not ready to find out. He stuck with writing on mustard poultices and walking sticks and boiling up poke greens.

  The phone rang and Dorothea picked it up. She signaled him and excused herself for lunch. A.C. walked over and found his sweetheart’s voice on the other end.

  ‘It’s official,’ Cynthia Webster said. ‘Kennedy will be in Charleston on Tuesday. They say he’s planning to campaign hard.’ John F. Kennedy had finished up his primary in Wisconsin and most folks thought he’d skip West Virginia for fear of too many stubborn Protestants.

  ‘Hot damn,’ A.C. said. ‘You comin to town early then?’

  ‘I booked a flight this morning. I’ll be there Sunday evening.’

  ‘I’ll scrub the floors and clean out the ashtrays,’ he said.

  She laughed. She knew him now better than most, though he’d never told her his true identity. She forgave his mistrust of the automobile, his dislike of the big city. She did not find it unfair that he’d never come to New York. ‘A.C.,’ she said. ‘Bill Simpson over at the Times got me an inside track to Kennedy’s primary plans. I think I can get you and Jim an interview. Apparently, he’s familiar with Jim’s work.’

  ‘Hot damn,’ A.C. said.

  Cynthia spoke with the man from the New York Times later that day and got Bobby Kennedy’s number on the road. He told her his brother would be glad to sit down with a man like Comstock, that he could ride along a little if he wanted. By Saturday, the news had spread through Richwood. The Catholic rich boy was willing to ante up.

  On Sunday, A.C. took the early train to Charleston to wait for Cynthia’s arrival. They’d agreed to meet at the train station at six. At 6:30, when a fat lady in the coffee shop started hollering before she fainted outright, he was still waiting. He’d have to wait forever. On approach, the DC-8 had lost altitude fast and exploded against the side of a mountain.

  The ABC store was thirty-seven steps from the train station. He’d counted them after the news came in about the crash. People cried and gathered around televisions. But A.C. just kept quiet and walked out of the place. When he got to the liquor store, he cursed the blue laws while at the same time thanking them for keeping his hand from the bottle. But they couldn’t keep his hand from the loose brick protruding from the building’s façade. He pried it out and readied himself to throw it through the glass windowpane. To re-unite him with the best friend he’d given up so long ago, the liquid friend who could ease his pain like no woman ever could. Now that he’d lost another woman, he figured he’d let it rip. But his knees buckled before he could throw the brick. His behind hit the pavement and his vision went red as it had so many times before. The blurry crimson came again with jumbled visions. Mountains crumbled. Automobiles and jet planes were ignited in fireballs. The high-pitched, vibrato howl roared through all of it.

  A.C. came to and stood up. He dropped the brick, walked back to the station, boarded the 8:00 to Richwood, and holed up in his apartment. He curled on his mattress and wondered if everything he ever loved would forever turn to shit.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Kennedy Had A Way

  Jim Comstock didn’t wait long to fix things. He had a key to the apartment upstairs, and though he’d never have done so otherwise, he used it when his knocks went unanswered. It was past noon on Tuesday. He had news.

  The door’s catch clicked behind him, and he could see A.C. under the thin white sheet, still balled up. Comstock knew the place smelled like Ajax on account of Cynthia’s perceived arrival two nights prior. He walked over to his friend. ‘I don’t know what to say about it, so I won’t say anything other than I’m sorry. Truly sorry.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, I reckoned you’d let me pound all day, so I let myself in. Got news.’

  A.C. had never been one to sulk or show weakness in the company of others. He sat up. He was still in his undershirt, slacks, and socks. Before he said anything, he loosed a Chesterfield from its pack on the bedside table and lit it. Smoke in the lungs could halfway right the ship this early. ‘News you say?’ He was forcing out meaningless words, like a character actor.

  ‘News. You know ol Doc Pinkerton’s had an eye on those gums since you got here.’

  A.C. eyed him sideways.

  ‘I never have paid you enough to even think about a dentist, I know that. But Dorothea’s the action type. In time of sorrow especially. She’s been around the last couple days taking up a little here and there.’

  ‘C’mon, Jim.’ He held the cigarette with his lips, pulled his shirt on.

  ‘Now just listen. You know he made that wax impression when you went in. He’s over there finishing up a set of temporaries right now. I believe he called them ‘immediate dentures.’ Somethin new.’

  A.C. stood. He had the movements of a man about to give up. Too tired to really argue. ‘Jim, false teeth ain’t going to fix what’s happened.’

  ‘I know that. But work fixes anything that’s broken. And I’m putting you to work. The dentures is just so you don’t send young Kennedy running for Spruce Knob.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’ve got something that’s come up. I’ve got to go to Hinkle tomorrow. Personal business.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Anyhow, he’s speakin at the capitol tomorrow noon. I’ve got you on the six a.m. back to Charleston. You’ll follow him around like a dog for as long as you can. Sniff out the Catholic.’

  ‘Jim, I’m not interested in—’

  ‘His brother Robert knew Cynthia a little I guess. He said nice things. Said for you to come on.’

  A.C. sat down on the bed again. He dragged, inhaled, exhaled, and shook his head. ‘I wasn’t even goin to New York for the funeral, Jim.’

  ‘Well. That’s alright.’

  ‘I didn’t even know her goddamned people, her kin.’ He clapped himself hard on the back of the neck four times.

  Comstock was through talking. They exchanged a look.

  ‘Teeth,’ A.C. said. ‘Goddamned teeth.’

  They hurt and they were hard to talk with. He’d practiced all the way on the train, gumming rubber and tonguing porcelain. He read aloud all the newspaper reports Jim had saved about Kennedy’s primary thus far. In Wisconsin, the Catholic issue had blown open even wider. The waves reached all the way to Senator Bob Byrd, now back home, with his fiddle in one hand and Bible in the other. He was stirring folks that hadn’t thought to be stirred, playing to the crowds at backroads churches. A Catholic was coming to sell West Virginians on what they couldn’t afford to buy, he said.

  A.C. couldn’t have cared less about religion. About a rich boy from New England. He just wanted to work so he could forget her. He couldn’t drink and pick a fight just to taste his own blood, so work was the next best thing.

  There were close to five hundred people on the steps of the Charleston Post Office that day at noon. John Kennedy moved back and forth among them with a microphone gripped tight in his left hand. He had a way about him that told questioners to bring on the Catholic stuff. To have at it. ‘I am a Catholic,’ he spoke loudly. ‘Does that mean that I can’t be the president of the United States?’ Folks listened to him. ‘My brother was able to give his life, but we can’t be president?’ A.C. already had death on the brain, and listening to this young man speak on his own brother’s death allowed some clarity on the subject somehow. A.C. had seen pl
enty of death, and he’d come through okay before. He nodded as Kennedy hollered to the listeners, ‘Nobody asked me if I was a Catholic when I joined the United States Navy. Nobody asked my brother if he was a Catholic or Protestant before he climbed into an American bomber plane to fly his last mission.’

  The New Englander had gained the quiet attention and respect of the West Virginians. He was scrappy, and when he spoke, the words became truth somehow. The words were not manufactured. They were honest. They were real. A.C. pulled his notepad out and wrote down all of them.

  After the speech, he spoke with Kennedy’s campaign chairman, a fellow named McDonough. McDonough told him to come on to Huntington that evening. He set up a six o’clock dinner interview, assuming A.C. was willing to follow them. ‘I don’t carry in automobiles,’ A.C. told him.

  This confused McDonough, who only said, ‘Jim’s Steak and Spaghetti, six o’clock,’ then walked away.

  A.C. hotfooted it back to the train station to check the Huntington schedule.

  The United Mine Workers favored Hubert Humphrey, not John Kennedy. In the space labeled Periodicals at the Huntington Public Library, A.C. read on this and other things. Some bothered him. Miners and railworkers didn’t back the young senator from Massachusetts, for one. But other things impressed A.C., like the man’s service on a Torpedo Boat at Guadalcanal. Kennedy had saved men. He’d survived when others might not have. To do what he’d done, to swim for miles like that, it was something. And, A.C. thought, to see those coconuts on that faraway island, John Kennedy was liable to have possessed the power of wide vision.

  A.C. looked at the clock. It was ten to six. He’d gotten stuck reading and thinking on wide vision. He walked out the doors and down 5th Avenue to the restaurant.

  When a man in a black suit directed him to a large booth against the right wall, Kennedy still hadn’t sat down. He was glad-handing and posing for photographs. McDonough stepped in. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘this is Mr A.C. Gilbert, writer for the West Virginia Hillbilly. I spoke to you about him.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ Kennedy said. He shook A.C.’s hand and looked him in the eye. ‘I like your paper’s name. How do you do?’

  ‘Evenin,’ A.C. said.

  They sat down. Introductions were made to Frank Roosevelt, FDR’s grandson, and to a man named Sorenson. The waitress had an accent that said Logan County, if not Mingo. She wore all white and her hair was pulled back. She was nervous and she reminded A.C. of Clarissa. The other men ordered, all of them spaghetti. A.C. got a little hitch in his throat from the waitress’s looks. Clarissa had got him to thinking about Cynthia and he had trouble speaking. ‘Cheeseburger,’ he managed to say. His upper denture came loose. He bit down, clenched the upper hard against the lower. Kennedy looked in his direction while he drank water, fast.

  A.C. shifted in his seat. Air wheezed from a rip in the green naugahyde. McDonough cleared his throat. They were all tired. The day before, they’d campaigned from 4:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. ‘Well,’ McDonough said. It had almost become awkward.

  ‘Mr Gilbert,’ Kennedy said. ‘I heard from my younger brother of your colleague and lady friend, Ms Webster. I’m very sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Thank you,’ A.C. said, and he meant it. It occurred to him that another man might have forgotten such a thing on little rest and long hours and rough hill towns and speech upon speech to strangers and reporters. Or, even if he remembered, another man might choose not to say it.

  ‘Would you like to ask me some questions for the Hillbilly?’ For some reason, A.C. laughed when Kennedy said this. It may have been his accent, the way he said his A’s. The way he spoke the word ‘hillbilly.’ Whatever it was, he’d showed his false teeth.

  Kennedy laughed right along with him.

  ‘Well,’ A.C. said. ‘I reckon you’ve heard about every question you’d want to hear on mine workers and our fine state’s slow descent into poverty.’ The waitress brought out coleslaw and he smiled at her, making sure to keep those straight pearly whites pressed tight against each other. He worked the salt shaker while he spoke. ‘And I know you’ve heard enough on religion to last you on up through the Second Coming.’ They laughed some more. He’d awakened the men. He took a bite of his coleslaw, careful to chew with his back molars. ‘Why don’t we get fed a little. I can ask questions when they come up.’ They ate.

  A.C. spoke on West Virginia having a dozen Congressional Medal of Honor winners. On having more vets per capita than any other state in the union. He complimented Kennedy on his bravery in the Solomon Islands, and Kennedy thanked him for it.

  They spoke on vote-buying and how the slate system meant everyone bought votes, in one sense of the word. ‘I’ve never handed a man a bottle of whiskey or a twenty dollar bill to make a mark on paper ticket,’ Kennedy said.

  It was important to him not to speak poorly on the character of Humphrey, no matter what the man said on him.

  In the middle of a discussion on Senator Byrd and his anti-Catholicism, Kennedy said, ‘This is the most unusual spaghetti sauce I’ve ever tasted.’

  The man who would be president fueled up on the strange, thick sauce that night. He put his arm around Jim Tweel, the restaurant’s owner, for a picture. He told A.C., who’d written down little of what was said, ‘Why don’t you come along to the mines in Logan with us tomorrow morning?’ They were going to greet miners at six a.m. Comstock had given him a little extra for incidentals, hotel fare.

  A.C. met the campaign team outside the number three mine at six the next morning. He took notes on how the senator asked the men questions, genuine questions, about their equipment and hours of operation. Kennedy said little about himself or the election. One miner, an old, stout man with a Kentucky Cheroot stump stuck in his teeth said, ‘Senator, what I want to know is, is it true you’re a millionaire’s son and never done a day’s work in your life?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it is true.’

  The man slapped Kennedy’s back then and smiled. ‘Well, that’s just about alright,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you somethin. You ain’t missed a damn thing.’

  Everyone who heard it laughed. Kennedy the hardest of all. He nearly bent double.

  Later that morning, they drank strong coffee together and John Kennedy told A.C. that he’d had the opportunity to see some of the state. ‘It’s not right how some of the people are living down here,’ he said. ‘If we make it, I’m going to do something about it.’

  It was these words, more than the others, that would stick with A.C. after that day. He spent nearly a week with John Kennedy, on and off. He’d almost come to think of him as a friend. But something about the vow to ‘do something about it’ worried the mind and troubled the soul. Kennedy had called West Virginians ‘forgotten.’ On the one hand, A.C. wanted Washington to start remembering. His people needed money more than most. But with money came other things, expectations of change from on high. He remembered the studies of Mr Estabrook, the eugenicist. The Widow had said such men wanted to change what they found in the hills, erase it maybe.

  A.C. remembered what Arly Sr had told Arly Jr all those years back. ‘When they look down at you, start em to lookin up.’

  He had found, in work, exactly what he needed to keep going after Cynthia died. Thought. Real thought. He followed its paths while he rode back to Richwood. He watched the dark mountains pass outside his window slow, none the same as the other. When he got home to his old Underwood, he put down words unavailable to the meek-hearted masses among us who think they have something true to say.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Discovery Had Its Way

  He made it to New York City after all, a year and a month after Cynthia died. The story he wrote on Kennedy, entitled ‘Hill People Found a Man to Reckon With,’ had run in the mid-November issue of the Hillbilly, days after the man had been elected president. The New York Times picked it up and ran it front page the following week. In April, A.C. got the call that he’d won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting.r />
  The story had taken no easy sides. It had spoken truths so simple that they’d become invisible in the face of assumptions. In part, it read:

  Senator Kennedy never handed whiskey to a woodhick. If any of his people did, he didn’t know of it. The same went for paper money. West Virginians, by virtue of our topographical isolation, among other things, could use money more than most. We are often called ‘forgotten’ by those who live far away from here. So, outsiders come. They study. Once, a supposed scientist named Arthur Estabrook visited here and measured our heads and wrote a load of horse manure and called it a book. In many ways, it is folks not unlike him who have alleged that our votes for president can be purchased. But any vote-buying here happens in places like Logan County, in elections for offices like sheriff. It’s been that way for years, and if you can fix it, come on down and start studying.

  It is true that we have a slate system for presidential candidates, but until that is made illegal, until critics understand its workings, I’ll not fill the page with more words on that system’s inequities. No, John F. Kennedy did not need to buy our votes. He won them outright with his gumption. He looked us in the eye, not from a steep angle down the bridge of his nose, mind you, but straight on. He asked us questions about poverty the likes of which he, as so many who profess to fix it, had not seen before. He shook our hands and made us a deal. It was a deal to forget all that which goes on in the papers and in the television box nightly. Massachusetts means this, West Virginia means that. Catholic means that over there, Protestant means this right here. Hogwash.