A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond

by Percival Everett

  Should I rush her or wait?

  Love,

  Barton

  May 27, 2003

  Dearest Barton,

  Wait.

  When life delivers such great news and brings together two people in such perfect symbiosis—like sharks and those little sucker fish that attach themselves to them or oaks and lichen—you just have to say, “Whoopee!” I can’t help it, Barton. I’m just so happy.

  I guess I am happy for you, but it feels like I am happy for me.

  Can I be your best man?

  Don’t wait more than two weeks, though.

  Love,

  Juniper

  May 30, 2003

  Dear Reba,

  Have I done the right thing? Barton proposed to me in such a fine letter. I didn’t say yes or no, but I didn’t leave a lot of room for no. I didn’t want to.

  Love,

  Septic

  June 2, 2003

  Dear Septic,

  Of course you haven’t done the right thing. But what the hell. You’re doing what you’re doing, and I will be head cheerleader for you. (I’ll need to get new tights, though, having split mine at the big last game of the year against McKinley Heights, though that’s another story.)

  Have I done the right thing?

  I’ve been spending more time every day with Ralph. I thought it was just habit, that he was easy and comfy. Well, he is easy and comfy, in his uneasy and uncomfortable way, but he is so many other things. Of course he never says a word about what’s happening, but it’s almost like it’s happening without either of us bothering to mention what it is that’s happening—whatever that might be.

  Am I wrong?

  Love,

  Reba

  June 5, 2003

  Dearest friend,

  You’re as wrong as wrong can be.

  We ought to set up as Advice Columnists.

  Love,

  Septic

  SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  To: Juniper McCloud, Ralph Vendetti, Arthur Sullivan, Reba McCloud, James Kincaid, Percival Everett, Barton Wilkes, Septic, Miss Mary Jane Dawkins

  From: Martin “Up a little, please” Snell

  Date: June 10, 2003

  I thought I had the date wrong, but I didn’t. Next week is Flag Day.

  PARTY!!!!! MY PLACE!!!!! 5:30 P.M.

  Costumes are required. Dress in—you guessed it—a flag. Drape yourself. Let a flag be your umbrella on a rainy, rainy day.

  Flags only. No other drapery. Shoes OK and hats.

  The smaller the country, the smaller the flag.

  Hint—I’m coming as Monaco.

  Theme of the Party—MAKE UP AND MAKE OUT.

  The moon belongs to everyone—and there’s worse things in life than me.

  June 10, 2003

  Dear Reba,

  I would really like it if you would marry me. I can’t imagine why you’d like it or why my liking it would be much of an inducement, but if you’re willing, Barkis, then WOT LARX.

  Love,

  Ralph

  June 10, 2003

  Dear Professors Everett and Kincaid,

  It strikes my old pate that we should be getting this book done. You up for it?

  I should ask if you are up for dinner with me. My place. Next Tuesday? That not good for you, Monday is OK too.

  Devotedly,

  Strom

  DINNER WITH STROM

  Saturday, 6:00 PM, Washington, D.C., a rental car, some kind of mid-size Ford with ice-cold air-conditioning that can’t be shut off or turned down. Everett is driving. Somewhere on Wisconsin Ave. approaching M Street:

  KINCAID: God, it’s cold in here. My nipples are hard.

  EVERETT: That’s a little more than I needed to know.

  KINCAID: Do we really have to do this?

  EVERETT: What are you griping about? You’re not the one he insults.

  KINCAID: Yes, and how insulting is that?

  EVERETT: What?

  KINCAID: It’s like being found attractive by the ugliest girl at the party. Imagine how I feel not being insulted by the good Senator.

  EVERETT: That’s perverse, but I’m afraid I get it. You know, I think we should simply publish our correspondence on this thing and call it quits. Or go on with our fake Strom voice.

  KINCAID: That’s what I think. We’ll never figure out what’s in his head.

  EVERETT: I have figured that much out.

  KINCAID: Well, yeah.

  EVERETT: A parking space right in front. That’s a bad omen.

  KINCAID: Omens. I don’t believe in omens. I bet you could turn to religion in a really bad time.

  EVERETT: Any minute now.

  KINCAID: How do I look?

  EVERETT: [nothing] KINCAID: What is it?

  EVERETT: I’m looking for a hint of irony in your question.

  The door is opened by Hollis.

  EVERETT: Hello, Mr. Hollis.

  HOLLIS: Mr. Everett. Mr. Kincaid. The Senator is in the media room. If you’ll follow me.

  THURMOND: Hi, boys. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get up. I’m just watching the end of Flubber. God, I love this picture. This and Gone With the Wind are my favorite movies. Have you ever seen Flubber?

  KINCAID: I think so. Long ago.

  EVERETT: No.

  THURMOND: You think they could really make up some stuff like that? This is the part I really love. Ha! That cracks me up.

  HOLLIS: Sir, I’ll get your coat.

  THURMOND: Hollis, go get my coat. I can’t keep these boys waiting. I’m sure they’re hungry enough to eat a…a…a…HOLLIS: Cow, sir?

  THURMOND: Cow. Mr. Kincaid, have you ever milked a cow?

  KINCAID: When I was a boy, I did once.

  THURMOND: Good man. Ever see Gone With the Wind?

  KINCAID: Senator?

  THURMOND: Gone With the Wind, ever see it?

  KINCAID: Long ago.

  THURMOND: What about you, Mr. Everett?

  EVERETT: No.

  THURMOND: I don’t blame you. If I was colored, I wouldn’t see it either. You boys ready to go?

  The BOYS: We’re ready.

  THURMOND: Head ’em up and move ’em out. Mr. Kincaid, you ever milk a cow?

  KINCAID: No.

  Restaurant in Georgetown—Estelle’s Southern Cuisine

  THURMOND: Is this table okay? It’s my usual place. I like to be close to the toilet.

  EVERETT: It’s fine. We might find it convenient as well.

  KINCAID: [pointing to a nearby table] Is that…

  THURMOND: Tillman. You’ve met him, I’m sure. He’s always around. He’s here to keep some commie pinko bastard hippie lowlife from trying to cheat me out of the last couple years of my life.

  EVERETT: Yes, these are your golden years.

  THURMOND: You bet your sweet ass. The food is great here, just like my mammy used to make when I was a young whippersnapper. I especially like the fried okra and the lima beans. Their cornbread makes me feel like I’m home.

  EVERETT: We’ve been considering abandoning the project.

  THURMOND: Do you like grits?

  EVERETT: There’s a raging fire behind you.

  THURMOND: There’s nothing better than grits for supper.

  EVERETT: [to Kincaid] He’s gone.

  KINCAID: Senator, we’re not going to write your goddamn book.

  THURMOND: Kincaid, why are you swearing?

  EVERETT: [taps Thurmond] Senator?

  THURMOND: I’m sorry, Mr. Everett, but I can’t hear anything on my left side.

  EVERETT: Jim, tell him we’re leaving.

  KINCAID: Percival wants me to tell you that we’re leaving.

  THURMOND: Why, boys? I thought we were just coming to some kind of understanding.

  KINCAID: We can’t figure out what you want this book to be.

  THURMOND: It’s supposed to be a book. The title is A History of the Col
ored People by Senator Strom Thurmond, America’s Oldest Living Lawmaker. What’s so hard about that?

  EVERETT: Tell him he needs to find some other guys, some Bible college professors maybe, to write his book.

  KINCAID: You might be better off hiring somebody closer to your own politics to write your book. We’re going to write ours.

  THURMOND: But I want Everett. He’s from the South. He’s colored. That’s a good thing, for my book anyway. I don’t know you, Kincaid, from Adam, but you’re a Yankee and that’s kinda like being colored, in some people’s eyes anyway. Are you boys serious about leaving?

  KINCAID: We’re serious, very serious.

  THURMOND: Well, I’m not listening. You boys think it over some more. We’ll just eat tonight. You can ask me questions and I’ll answer them and then you decide. Where’re you going, Mr. Everett?

  EVERETT: I’m just moving over here next to Jim so you can hear me better. How’s this? Can you hear me?

  THURMOND: Yes.

  EVERETT: We’re doing our book, not yours.

  THURMOND: Let’s talk about this.

  Clarence Thomas stops by the table.

  THOMAS: Senator Thurmond.

  Tillman stands.

  THOMAS: Senator, it’s me, Justice Thomas.

  THURMOND: It’s okay, Tillman. It’s Justice Tom. Tom, how are you?

  THOMAS: I’m fine. How about you?

  THURMOND: If I were any finer, I’d be sick. Justice Tom, I’d like you to meet Professors Kincaid and Everett. Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Justice Charles Thomas.

  THOMAS: Pleased to meet you.

  THURMOND: The professors here are helping me with my book. It’s about your people.

  THOMAS: Republicans? [Thomas and Thurmond laugh]

  THURMOND: Remember that song we sang at your house the night of your confirmation?

  THURMOND and THOMAS: [to the tune of the Fats Domino song] I found my thrill on Anita Hill. [they laugh]

  THOMAS: Let me tell you a story about this man. One night I was standing on E Street, outside the Corcoran Museum, in the pouring rain. It was coming down in sheets and not a single taxi would stop for me. I waved at one after another and none stopped. The drivers would look at me and just drive by. Then the Senator came out and he put up one finger and three cabs pulled up. Of course he let me take one. That was some night.

  THURMOND: Where are you sitting?

  THOMAS: We’re over by the kitchen. In fact, I’d better get back over there. I think my food’s arriving. I really hate cold chitterlings.

  THURMOND: See you later, sweet tater. He’s a good boy, that Clevon. Dumb as a plucked chicken in a truck, but a good boy.

  EVERETT: What do you mean by a “good boy”?

  THURMOND: You know, does his job, doesn’t try to upset the pineapple cart.

  KINCAID: Kisses ass.

  THURMOND: [laughs] He has beautiful hands. Did you notice them?

  EVERETT: Do you think he belongs on the Supreme Court?

  THURMOND: Why not?

  EVERETT: You just said he was dumb.

  THURMOND: Lots of people are dumb. So what? He’s not so dumb that he’s not useful. Hell, nobody’s that dumb. Except maybe that Clinton. He just couldn’t keep his puppy in the house. Well, nobody can really, but he let everybody know about it. It’s good to let people play with your puppy, but hell, you can’t put a big neon collar on it with your name and address and everything. You’ve got to be discreet. Tom wasn’t too discreet with that Blueberry Hill woman, but we got him out of that mess. We need more like him.

  KINCAID: Let me ask you this: Do you believe that black people have it better now than they did in 1950?

  THURMOND: What do you mean by “better”?

  KINCAID: Do you think black people are treated equally?

  THURMOND: I believe they always have been treated equally. They had less, but, hell, that’s just the way it was. If they had the money, they could have bought what I bought in 1950.

  EVERETT: An education?

  THURMOND: Of course.

  EVERETT: Equal education?

  THURMOND: Yes. Equal, however separate. But that’s all changed now. Heck mercy, man, you teach with Kincaid here at that College of South California?

  KINCAID: Lordy.

  THURMOND: This happened in the war. I was a tank commander and I was at the Battle of the Bulge. We were well away from the front line, but I could hear the artillery all night and the real distant bangs of mortar fire. It was cold and wet and we were stuck in the holler waiting for orders. It was a mess. About four hundred men stuck in there and I remember a lot of them boys were from New Jersey for some reason. Where it wasn’t muddy, the ground was frozen hard. So when those Negro soldiers showed up, we put them right to work digging us some latrines. Boy, they really saved the day for us. As I remember, they dug real nice latrines. They tickled me too, the way they wanted to go fight some Germans. Those diggers were a godsend.

  KINCAID: That’s some story.

  THURMOND: You see, that’s partly why I want to write this book. I want the diggers of the world to know that I appreciate them. I want them to know that we white people don’t think of them simply as dirty diggers or lazy diggers or even agitating diggers.

  EVERETT: You really are nuts, aren’t you?

  THURMOND: I don’t mean to be offensive.

  KINCAID: God just made you that way.

  THURMOND: God. That’s the other reason. I’m getting old. I don’t know if you noticed. I know I’m not going to live forever. And when I die I’d like to have a seat at the big party, if you know what I mean. You probably don’t. I’m talking about heaven, boys. I’m cramming for finals, trying to make amends, trying to have my parking ticket validated.

  EVERETT: Even if the cows have already left the barn.

  THURMOND: I realize I’ve done some underhanded things and that I’ve hurt a lot of colored people. But hell, I hope I’ve hurt as many liberals and Jews. But we’re all Americans, aren’t we? And that’s what counts. The world has changed. You got that Colin Powell now and that Rice woman in the damn White House with a Republican president. Granted, he ain’t the sharpest hoe in the shed, but he is a Republican, and peaches grow in trees and not on vines, you know what I’m saying? Times are different. Now we got Muslims and Arabs to hate. You know a lot of them are pretty dark. What’s that tell you?

  EVERETT: Okay, that’s enough.

  KINCAID: Let’s go.

  THURMOND: But we haven’t eaten.

  Everett and Kincaid walk to the door. Thurmond follows.

  THURMOND: Wait up, fellas. Maybe we could just hang out.

  KINCAID: Where did we park?

  EVERETT: Hell if I know.

  THURMOND: The air out here is nice, ain’t it. Hey, watch this.

  EVERETT: He’s standing on his head again.

  KINCAID: I think we parked up that way.

  EVERETT: Jim?

  KINCAID: Yeah?

  EVERETT: He looks funny.

  KINCAID: What do you mean?

  EVERETT: Look at his face. And he’s not talking.

  KINCAID: Oh, shit.

  EVERETT: Where’s Tillman? Tillman!

  TILLMAN: What is it?

  EVERETT: He’s not talking.

  TILLMAN: Oh, shit.

  KINCAID: What is it, Tillman?

  TILLMAN: Fucking shit.

  EVERETT: He’s dead.

  KINCAID: Dead?

  EVERETT: You know, not alive.

  TILLMAN: Shit, shit, shit. Hollis! Hollis! [pulls out his cellular phone] Hollis! Where are you? Well, get the car over here. EVERETT: Shouldn’t you get him down?

  TILLMAN: I think you two should just get out of here.

  KINCAID: I’m for that.

  MAN IN RAGS AND A SHOPPING CART: Senator Thurmond?

  TILLMAN: Stand clear, sir.

  MAN IN RAGS: That’s Senator Thurmond.

  WOMAN IN A TIGHT RED DRESS: Look at that man on his head.

/>   MAN IN RAGS: That’s Senator Strom Thurmond.

  TILLMAN: Everybody get back.

  HOLLIS: Oh my good lord. Tillman, help me get him into the car.

  EVERETT: Jim, let’s get out of here.

  HOLLIS: Watch his head.

  TILLMAN: Why?

  SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  June 23, 2003

  Professor Percival Everett

  Professor James Kincaid

  Department of English

  University of Southern California

  Los Angeles, CA 90089-0354

  Dear Sirs:

  I regret to inform you that the materials you have sent us do not justify our going forward with this project. By actually reading the contract, you will see that we are simply exercising our rights, enumerated therein in any number of clauses.

  We wish you all good fortune in finding another publisher. I am sure you will have no difficulty doing so.

  Sincerely,

  Arthur Sullivan

  Arthur S. Sullivan

  Senior Editor

  F. Everett

  PERCIVAL EVERETT

  PERCIVAL EVERETT is the author of fifteen works of fiction, among them Glyph, Watershed, and Frenzy. His most recent novel, Erasure, won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and did little to earn him friends. Everett lived in South Carolina from age five to sixteen. In 1989, he was invited to address the South Carolina State Legislature, but during his speech refused to continue speaking to them because of the presence of the Confederate flag, thus touching off a controversy that ended with the flag being removed from the Capitol building some years later.

  Matt Kincaid

  AMES KINCAID

  JAMES KINCAID is an English professor at the University of Southern California and has written seven books in literary theory and cultural studies. These books and Kincaid himself have gradually lost their moorings in the academic world, so there was nothing left for him to do but to adopt the guise of fiction writer. Writing about madness comes easy to him.