A Savage Wisdom

by Norman German

  Just before my graduation, in May of 1960, Mr. Bork’s history classes held a mock presidential election. Forty percent of the students at LaGrange were Catholic. After the ballots were tallied at sixth-hour, Mr. Bork’s voice came through the P.A. system during end-of-the-day announcements. His voice quavered with excitement when he said Kennedy had trounced Nixon by garnering eighty-five percent of the vote. That meant non-Catholics were willing to throw a few votes his way.

  The mini-election was in fact a prognostication of the real thing. In the televised Nixon-Kennedy debates, Jack Kennedy was incredibly handsome. With his extemporaneous repartee, JFK beat the daylights out of the stodgy Nixon. People began to forget Kennedy was Catholic. All but the Catholics, who had waited a long time—forever, really—for this moment in history. In November, we had our first non-Protestant President Elect. On a blustery January day, he ushered in a new era with confidence and caution:

  “We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

  The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. . . .

  So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. . . . Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce. . . .

  All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

  . . .

  Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history that final judge of our deeds, let us go forth. . . .”

  * * *

  The summer before the presidential election, I entered politics myself. Among the city’s several departments, the least prestigious jobs were in Public Works. The least desirable position was file clerk. After graduation, through my father’s influence, I became—wouldn’t you know it—a file clerk in the Department of Public Works.

  Here’s what went through our office: anything having to do with garbage, water, public transit, or streets and drainage. An animal control division was on the drawing board when I arrived and would be implemented by the time I switched departments a year later. But there’s one division I failed to mention. Sewerage. How I hated that word! It sounded so nasty—so nasty and foul that I set about on a kind of personal crusade to clean up the word by changing it to “sewage,” which, for whatever reason my girlish mind had conjured up, sounded more sanitary.

  I had intended to keep the job for the summer only, but something larger than we are—chance, or fate, or God—has a way of redirecting our lives. “The best laid plans of mice and men,” Mrs. Hennigan used to say. Maureen, who was barely a year older than me, had been at LSU for a full term when I graduated. In her letters, she told me of the campus and football games, sororities and fraternities, things that sounded interesting to watch, but the fact of the matter is that I never was much of a participator. Mo begged me to come to LSU and not waste my time at McNeese Junior College. “McNeese sits in the middle of an old cow pasture,” she wrote. “That should tell you something.” Mom found Mo’s arguments convincing, and now that Daddy was “one of the little big shots,” as she was fond of saying, she was positive they could work out a way for me to attend LSU. After all, Mother said, I was the real thinker in the family and deserved to go to the big university. Like people often do, Mother mistook reticence for deep thinking.

  Ha! If she only knew. She should have said I was the dreamer of the family. I had this idea that I would meet a graying doctor or lawyer (a bachelor, of course, someone who had waited half his life for the right woman, meaning me), and this distinguished gentleman would be irresistibly drawn to my beauty, plain though it was, and beg me to marry him over the protestations of my parents. Just exactly where I would meet this grizzled, latter-day Romeo I couldn’t have said. But things always had a way of working out. Didn’t they? Well, didn’t they? That’s what the romances I devoured by the dozen promised.

  Now, you probably think I’m going to say that this best laid mouse-plan got squashed by the rat-trap of reality. But that’s not what happened at all. What happened was even more romantic than my outlandish imagination could have fabricated.

  Chapter 21

  1961–1962

  I filed papers. Norlene, the office manager, or Natalie or Cheryl would give me a pile of dog-eared carbon copies and set me in front of a gray cabinet, and I would file and file. When I was done, they’d give me more stacks and point me toward another cabinet. By five P.M., my hands were covered with ink, my face smudged by the day’s war paint.

  In just a few weeks, I became aware of the pecking order. Kind but business-like, Norlene, a pixie with a high-pitched voice, was friends with Cheryl and Natalie, girls she had gone to school with, but not with Debbie, once a cheerleader at St. Marion Catholic. And nobody liked Gloria, who was oblivious to the girls’ ire and delighted in everyone. None of this was immediately apparent. To an outsider, Norlene and Cheryl seemed to be arch-rivals bent on making each other’s lives miserable. So you’d be shocked the first time you saw them laughing on their lunch hour at MaryAnn’s Cafe. Their competitive fussing was in fact a secret code that drew them closer each time a barb struck home.

  Although my first month on the job was mostly dull, I did see some advantages to staying put. For one thing, niftily-dressed men would occasionally pass through the office. Possibilities I could almost touch. All I had to do was actually meet one of the younger attorneys. Norlene and Cheryl’s incessant chatter on this topic definitely had an encouraging effect on me. This was, after all, City Hall. Running errands up and down four flights of stairs, I saw most of the city’s big wheels roll right by me during any given week, and the birdwatchers in the office educated me on the species that hadn’t found nest mates.

  When Mayor Deer passed through, I got a tragic feeling in my heart, like a man of his stature shouldn’t have to soil himself by walking down the halls of the Department of Public Works. If anything, though, he treated us with extra kindness, as if he understood that someone had to do the dirty work. The Mayor always said a few words to each of the girls, and after the third or fourth time Norlene introduced us he remembered my name.

  “Leigh Ann,” he said with a smile and one squinty eye as he aimed at me down the barrel of his finger. “Right?”

  “Yes, sir.” What I wanted to say was, “Leigh. Just Leigh.”

  “I knew I’d finally get it,” he said. “My brain’s filled with so many trifles it doesn’t have time for the really important stuff, like pretty girls.” You could tell he really wasn’t flirting. It was that superficial kind of talk important men engage in when they want you to know you’re all right in their book. I felt foolish, looking over my shoulder and up at him from the swivel stool, a swatch of ink probably streaked across my face.

  “Do you like your job?”

  “Oh, yes sir,” I said. “Very much.” What was I supposed to say to the Mayor?—”No, I can’t stand it?”

  The Mayor turned to Norlene. “Is she a good worker?”

  “The best,” Norlene said. “We give her all the dirty work, and she just smiles and asks for more.” The Mayor laughed. He and Norlene went way back.

  “A regular Cinderella, huh?” He said this to Norlene while looking at me. It made me feel like a pet, something for the amusement of its owner.

  “Looking for her Prince Charming,” Norlene quipped.

  “Well,” Mayor Deer said, �
��I can tell you one thing.”

  The Mayor looked around at all the women. “He ain’t in here.” Everyone laughed at his cleverness. He punched me on the shoulder. “Sister,” he said. “I tell you what. You work hard here, and I’ll see if I can move you to a more kicking department, hear?”

  When I bragged to Bobby about the Mayor’s attention, he gave me the most bored look he could muster. “Big rip,” he said. Janice was lying in his arms on the sofa. He was a senior working hard on being coolly detached and couldn’t afford his big sister bringing up the embarrassment of his former life as a Junior Deputy.

  At the end of the summer, I decided to stay. College wasn’t for me. Never was. I tried to convince myself that I based my decision on the money I was making, on the feeling of being a tiny cog in the great machinery that ran the municipality, and of course on the prospect that any day Prince Charming would sweep me off my feet and into a lakefront mansion where I would command a host of servants.

  Looking back on that time, I think it was probably just plain old inertia that kept me where I was. A year passed, and still no dapper young attorney from a moneyed pedigree had married me. But at least the Mayor kept his promise. In the summer of 1961, I was appointed clerk’s assistant in the Legal Department, which was composed of the City Attorney, two lawyers, and a support staff. James Hargrave, the City Attorney, looked like a ninety-year-old W. C. Fields, and the two younger lawyers were married and fat to boot, so there I was again, Cinderella without a beau to escort me to the ball.

  The next year moved slowly and might have been unenduringly tedious if it hadn’t been for the outbursts over President Kennedy’s latest political stratagems or private escapades: the Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe, and all that. I filled the endless days dreaming up and populating my own little Camelot, fancying myself a junior-auxiliary Jackie Kennedy who would be swept off her feet by . . . who else? It had to be the most improbable and therefore unattainable man I could imagine. Otherwise the fantasy was worthless—who but Mayor Deer? I imagined how an ordinary comment from him would elicit an incredibly witty response from me. He would smile and give me a special look. Our eyes would lock and he would slowly approach and take me in his arms, drawing my sensuously parted lips to his. I spent many a day in romantic agony while anticipating the next arrival of our good Mayor. Generally, he showed up three or four times a week, each time cheerfully greeting me with an impersonal pat on the back, exclaiming, “Sister Leigh of the Pious Ink Blot!” or some similar condescension that would blow my cotton-candy kingdom to smithereens.

  And so the days went, sliding from oppressive heat to biting cold without a transition. A month of winter, a short recess of spring, and then the heat again.

  The summer of 1962. That’s when I really started to live. Rumors of Mayor Deer running for governor sprouted into plans. Just when I knew all the municipal politicians by name, the faces of other important men began to plague me. Then the money started showing up. Millionaires I heard of daily but had never seen: Ralph “the Ghost” Rivers, T. H. Burden, and Martha White, a wrinkled old crone with clown make-up who made her zillion by purchasing every over-worked piece of farmland and worthless marsh in Cameron and Calcasieu Parishes and striking oil on nearly every acre. Lord, it was like a convention that never stopped.

  Then, mysteriously into this menagerie of millionaires and band of big-wigs floated another element. Priests. Fathers, Brothers, and a Monsignor circulated through the secular crowds that took care of the affairs of this world. Occasionally, I saw a priest with a cigar in his mouth, taking a light from a politician. Clergy, politicos, the old and new rich—I didn’t want to know anything about the glue that held this dubious brotherhood together. It was exciting, though, the hustle and bustle, the feel of being caught up in a relentless mass moving toward the future with purpose. In October of 1962, Mayor Deer asked me to be part of his campaign. He asked me in front of everybody, in that way of his, like he was talking to one of the boys and there was no answer but yes. This was the moment I had been waiting two years for. My heart was jumping against my ribcage like a bullfrog in a shoebox. I looked up at him and delivered the incredibly witty response that would launch our romance.

  “Me?” I said. A struck-dumb look came over his face.

  He glanced around the office and burst out laughing.

  “Yes,” he said. “You.”

  I was red as a tomato. Down a long tunnel, I heard myself say, like an idiotic schoolgirl, “Why, what can I do?” The Mayor laughed again and looked around.

  “Why, anything you want to, Little Bit. Except, of course, run for governor. That’s my job, see?” The voice he used was somewhere between that of a comedian and a cartoon villain. I could barely contain myself for the rest of the day. I felt . . . something. Special. Important in a small way. A dust mote blown about by the winds of destiny. A foot soldier in the battle for higher ground. Leigh Ann Bienvenu, modern-day Joan of Arc.

  “Anything I wanted to” turned out to be stuffing envelopes and making phone calls. The job was neither fascinating nor glamorous, but I consoled myself with the fact that I was a part of Mayor Deer’s campaign and thus he would have to talk with me sometime. Inside a week, I was lodged in my post at campaign headquarters across the street, next door to Immaculate Conception Church. From my second-floor desk, I could look out the window and see City Hall, the jail, and the Courthouse guarded by a silver cannon from the first World War and the greening statue of a World War II foot soldier. Priests, politicians, and millionaires promenaded across the streets, stopping in little clots under the massive, drooping limbs of the live oaks and then scurrying on with some priceless morsel to communicate to the next ant in the hill.

  * * *

  It was bound to happen. Scandal. No self-respecting Louisiana political campaign could run its course without one. November, 1962. The serious, get-down-to-brass-tacks part of the gubernatorial race had begun. On the front page of the November 28th American Courier, the headlines announced:

  TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY!

  Toni Jo Henry Execution

  Citizens Recall Rumors

  The execution was legendary. Lake Charles held the distinction of executing the only woman ever to sit in Louisiana’s electric chair. After twenty years, gossip about the woman still abounded. Some said Toni Jo Henry had served as the jail’s prostitute to get privileges ranging from cigarettes to excursions outside the lockup. Others said she had serviced only Sheriff Abraham “Mule” Deer and that was enough to get her all the special favors she wanted. None of the citizens quoted in the article was mentioned by name. Beside the headline was a photograph of the stylish young murderess reading under a fan at the desk in her cell, a caged parakeet barely visible in the upper right corner.

  Naturally, as such things go, the old Sheriff’s son was left to answer for his father. Mayor Deer was outraged. At a strategy meeting, he said someone was trying to sabotage his political career. He offered five hundred dollars to the person who could expose the people responsible for the libelous comments.

  I had heard about Toni Jo Henry for most of my life. Suddenly, however, her life enlarged in significance as it became capable, to my surprise, of affecting mine. It was a week before I could look up the original accounts of the execution. I had been working till nine each night and falling exhausted on my bed by eleven so I could be at work for seven the next day. I wasn’t after the five hundred dollars. I only wanted my curiosity satisfied about the matter that upset Louisiana’s next governor.

  At the Parish Library, I asked Mrs. Harrison where the old newspapers were. She tilted her head down until her glasses, attached to a necklace chain, slid off her nose.

  “I’m afraid we dispose of newspapers after a month.”

  “Oh,” I said with great disappointment. “I really need to look up some things from . . . around the war time.”

  She inspected me for a moment. “Well,” she said, “the only thing I can tell you is to go to the morgue.�
��

  “The morgue?”

  Mrs. Harrison emitted a weak laugh, realizing her mistake at assuming too much on my part.

  “That’s what they call the room at the Courier where all the back issues are stored.”

  I put my hand on my chest and sighed with relief.

  At the Courier, a cub reporter met me and said he’d have to ask his boss if I could enter the morgue. He disappeared behind a maze of partitions and reappeared, much older, a minute later.

  “I’m Cal Sonnier,” the man said, holding out his hand.

  “City Editor. And I have the pleasure of meeting . . . ?”

  “Leigh Bienvenu,” I said, taking his hand. “From the Mayor’s campaign headquarters.”

  “A lamb in a den of wolves. You’d better be careful.”

  His black and gray eyebrows arched, and I knew then who he reminded me of. With his high forehead and bushy mustache, he was a perfect blend of Charlie Chaplin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Adolf Hitler. Taking his comment as a joke, I laughed and asked about seeing the morgue. We had to walk single file down the aisles between the rows of bookcases.

  “Here,” he said, stopping before a shelf housing large binders of dried leather. “What year were you looking for?”

  “1942,” I said, my heart pounding. “November.”

  Sonnier pressed his glasses to his nose and squinted up and down the stacks until he spied the volume he wanted. He pulled it and ushered me back to the newsroom with a toss of his head. Sonnier dropped the folio on the nearest desk. A small explosion sent paper flakes and dust devils whirling into the sunlight. “Holler if you need anything else, hear?”

  “I will,” I said.

  On the maroon cover, the month and year were impressed in gold lettering. As I pulled the heavy chair to the desk, a feeling of reverence came over me. Then a feeling of dread. I had a premonition that I would find something I didn’t want to find. I knew the date Toni Jo Henry was executed: November 28, 1942. I decided to sneak up on the red-letter day as if I had been catapulted back in time and was a reader during the week before the murderess’s appointment with justice. At first, my curiosity sidetracked me through clothing ads and comic strips. I’d never heard of Mandrake or Mickey Finn. The first relevant article I came across was dated November 21.